Netherworlds: Night of the Hallowed

"Sweetie, can you hear me?" Keira spoke again, hoping beyond hope that her slave would reply. Her heart jumped a little when Charli backed away from her on her haunches and took a breath: she was going to speak!

"Mistress, I scared!" She cried meekly, her voice tight with cold fear.

"I know, sweetie." Keira said. "Me also. Set Mistress free, and I will get you away from here." Keira looked at Charli, but her slave turned away, her eyes fixing on the ravished corpse lying open on the floor. "No, sweetie, no." Keira said firmly, although her voice still quivered with nerves and nausea.

"Hungry." She said morosely, almost sulkily, but she stayed put by her side and resumed her sensuous licking of Keira's sticky neck and face.

"Must not eat that, sweetie. Good girls do not eat that. Can you be a good girl for Mistress?"

"Have always been good girl for Mistress." Charli sulked, her voice losing its fear for a pained sound of utter misery.

"I know you have, sweetie. Such a good girl. Mistress loves her good girl." Keira said, and knew in her heart that she meant it. Despite her fear and nausea, she knew that her love for Charli had not been interrupted, even if Charli was now transforming into a bloodthirsty creature that would quite likely kill and devour her if she could not first persuade her fading slave to set her free.

"Good girl love Mistress." Charli began, and Keira noted that her slave's vocabulary was diminishing, as if she was losing more and more of her mind to the werewolf inside her. "Good girl hungry."

"I know, sweetie, I know." Keira gulped, her voice betraying the worry in her mind. "Set Mistress free, there's a good girl."

"Good girl hungry!" Charli shouted, startling Keira with the ferocity of her voice. "Good girl angry!" Her voice had changed, become deep and husky, like a growl. Just the sound of it made Keira's body quiver in something approaching terror absolute: she had faced down a pack of werewolves single-handed and burned their carcasses in celebration – but she had not been deeply in love with the former mind of one of them, and of course she had not had her hands tied and her body exposed to their hunger.

"Be not angry, my pet." Keira soothed in the most affectionate voice she could muster, although it wobbled and wavered away from the tone she had intended.

"Not pet!" Charli barked angrily. "Not pet! Not slave! Not toy!" She stormed across the room, snarling like a beast, her feet spattering in the pool of thick dark blood spreading from her captor's torn body.

"I know, sweetie." Keira said, aware that she was suddenly backtracking in fear. Charli would be physically strong with the werewolf in control; she could tear out her exposed throat like paper if she chose. "Never a pet, never a toy. Just a very good girl. A beautiful girl."

Charli's expression softened and she looked at Keira through a mask of blood-stained misery. "Girl love Mistress." She blubbered through her dripping red lips, and her eyes turned downwards in what looked like shame. Keira felt her heart leap to her throat: Charli was talking as herself again: she had somehow overcome the werewolf. Even if only temporary, it was a glimmer of hope that Keira clung to with all her might. For a moment Keira felt her fears subside, replaced by a feeling of great sorrow for her poor slave, caught in the violent grip of a changing werewolf mind.

Charli's down-turned eyes fixed on something, and then darkened along with her face, turning back to animal anger as if a storm cloud had blown quickly across her. "Girl angry!" She snarled, staring fixedly at the floor.

"Why, sweetie?" Keira asked soothingly, almost despairingly, feeling her hopes fade as the werewolf regained control of her slave's mind.

Charli bent down and picked up something from the floor: it was her chastity belt, discarded behind the table on which she had been tied. "Mistress made girl wear! Mistress teased girl! Mistress tortured girl! Girl wanted to touch, but Mistress not let girl touch! Mistress bad!" Charli growled, waving her arms wildly but with animal precision and speed.

"Sweetie, it was for your good!" Keira cried, feeling fear rise in her throat like vomit. "You were such a good girl, such a brave girl for Mistress."

Charli paused, and blinked, and suddenly her face softened again to a look of pure misery. "Girl sorry!" She blubbered as she broke into tears. She ran across the room to Keira and knelt down beside her, dropping the chastity belt to the floor with a clunk. "Girl sorry!" She cried into Keira's neck and she juddered with the ferocity of her deep sobs.

"Good girl, good girl..." Keira soothed over and over, wishing her hands were free so that she could comfort her distraught slave, and daring to hope that Charli's control might survive long enough this time to loose her shackles. "Release Mistress's hands, and we will get away from here."

"No!" Charli barked suddenly, after a pause long enough to change her expression to anger again. "Mistress put thing back on girl. Mistress tease! Mistress torture! Mistress touch then lock away what feel nice!"

"Sweetie, no, please listen to me!" Keira pleaded, and then yelped in shock and pain as Charli's newly grown claws dug into her thigh and lifted her buttocks forcefully from the table. "No!" She screamed, waiting with clenched eyes for the hot, sharp pain of fangs to pierce her neck or chest.

"Now Mistress know what it feel like!" Charli snarled as she snapped shut the chastity belt around Keira's hips.

"No!" Keira screamed as a wave of anger that shocked even her burst out of her mouth and scolded her slave. "Bad girl!"

Immediately she recoiled, fearing a backlash of aggression from the changing werewolf that would surely end her life. Instead of the snarl and snapping of jaws she was surprised when Charli scampered quickly across the room to cower in the corner.

The words 'bad girl' had not been uttered many times in recent years, but always preceded a beating of the most painful and humiliating proportions. When Keira had first taken Charli into her care, before they had become lovers, the girl was in the chaos and rebellion of her mid-teens, and it had taken a great deal of physical discipline, spanking and shackling to instil in her the behaviour appropriate of a slave. That kind of training cut marks deep into the soul, marks that were most likely never healed, only buried and forgotten.

A dawning comprehension hit Keira like a sunrise washing down the western mountainside, and she realised for the first time that both she and Charli may survive the night: Charli still lived in fear of the whip!

She must know that Keira would never use it without reason, and that her loving, caring, doting nature could never give Keira that reason. It did not feature in their lives at all since Charli had learned discipline – not even in their sex games, which were as tender and loving as they could be: more so than Keira could have imagined possible before she fell into the love of her slave.

But Charli's training still left deep marks in her – deeper maybe than the werewolf mind could dig. Fear of the whip was stronger than the lust for blood, the hunger for violence. Stronger than the eldritch voice that taunted the poor girl from inside her own head.

Keira began to realise: with a little persuasion, a little punishment and reward, Charli could be trained to conquer that voice and control her change forever, or at least as long as Keira maintained her domination of Charli's soul.

The whip was punishment enough – even the memory of that gave her enough fear to beat the werewolf temporarily from her mind. And now that the seal had been broken, Charli could receive the most divine rewards imaginable; the very reward that Keira had longed to give since they had first made love, the reward that she had always been denied.

The thought of the chastity belt around Keira's hips returned to her mind. The key had been smashed and destroyed, and she would need to travel to the distant cities of Mithian or Aradnu, many moons walk away, to find a craftsman of the skill required to fashion another key. But in the mean time, Charli would need her training reinforced, which could take many moons more if she was to be made safe to live among the villagers.

It may be many full cycles before Keira again felt pleasure, she realised with a sinking feeling. But at last she could give pleasure – and keep on giving, and giving, and giving again, until her sweet slave begged her to stop. With a brightening heart, Keira began to look forward to her future.

"Girl!" Keira said sharply, startling Charli from her cowering fear. "Girl, set Mistress free, now!"

Like a trembling ghost, Charli stood from the floor and stepped towards her, her feet sending ripples out through the pool of blood as she walked through it.

* * *

Many moons have passed since that fateful night, when our leader turned upon us. Yes, imagine my surprise when I pulled away the blood-soaked mask to reveal the face of Godric, the village chief, the man to whom we gave our trust.

His motivation I will never know, for in the fear and agony of her transformation Charli had torn him open like a curtain, and then gorged herself on his spilled entrails. I suspect it was the pressure of leadership that broke his mind, and the mask became his escape. To kill while masked was to not kill at all, for it was the mask that took the life, not its wearer.

I cannot explain why, but I was not compelled to reveal my finding to the village. I cleaned Charli's body, dressed Godric's corpse in his robes, and set fire to the wooden hut deep within the forest, where we had been taken to be raped and tortured. We watched it burn to the ground, Charli and I, before heading out of the forest for home. Charli was quaking with fear and cold, and I knew that in order to conquer the werewolf within her we would need to begin retraining immediately.

I still love her. I love her more than I can describe. Words can never do justice to the throbbing of my heart, the way it swells when I think of her, the giddy sensation when I see her, the tingling of my lips when we kiss or the fire that burns for her, hot and unquenched between my legs beyond thick contoured metal.

I love her for the sweet caring girl that she was, and is learning to become again. She now lives mostly in her own domain, that special world that only a true slave can enter; the space where punishment and reward are one and the same thing, each as divine and tortuous as the other. Pain still hurts her, but her mind now knows that all punishment is the will of her Mistress, and so it is as beautiful to her as a kiss or a gift from me. Likewise, pleasure itself still racks her body with immeasurable joy, but her enslaved mind tells her that she is undeserving of such rapture, and so it is also torture to her.

As much as she is now hopelessly under my command, I hope that one day my sweet slave will be able to transcend the werewolf blood within her completely. Progress so far has been good, and her vocabulary is returning: the wolf within is relinquishing slowly that which it stole, but I must still keep her shackled at night, as sleep brings to her terrible nightmares of rage, pain and unquenchable lust for blood. But it hurts me to sleep alone in the cold of winter, so far from my love's warmth, so I have taken to shackling her to the bed so that I may curl against her and bask in her body's radiant heat and love, and so that she may rest in my loving embrace and know that, just as the harsh chill of winter will soon give way to the new life of spring, salvation from her nightmares will come soon enough.

As for me, I have learned to live with the metal cage around my throbbing sex as Charli did before me. The fire within me rages like an inferno even when I am at peace, and blazes like a volcano when I make love to Charli, but it will never truly be calmed until Charli is cured of her infection and I have the time to travel to the far shores of the land. When my frustration becomes too great for me to bear I walk into the forest alone to seek the banshee, who holds against me a grudge that I have no desire to understand. Each time I find her, she tries again to take my life with her cold rapture, but my charmed body is immune to her seduction, and instead I am blessed with the freezing chill of her cold climax, the negative orgasm of hatred and anger and fear that leaves me drained of all but sorrow, but strangely satisfies my sexual needs, at least for a short time. Only once per cycle do I make this journey, and it pains me that I cannot be in the arms of my true love when I am taken to climax by such blissfully black rapture, but were Charli with me she would find herself the object of the banshee's affections, and would not return to the village alive.

So my future is one without true sexual pleasure, but it is a future in which I may watch my beloved slave re-grow from the thorny branch she has become into the beautiful rose that she once was. That alone is more pleasure than I ever deserve for my conceited life as a ranger. I devote every waking moment to her, I dream of nothing but her, and this has been so ever since I was enveloped by her tender love. When I am not punishing her as part of her training, I am pleasuring her as part of the same – or sometimes just for the sake of love and pleasure itself. I live only for her. Her mistress I may be, but now and only now do I begin to realise, as I prepare to lay down my pen and curl up against the radiant warmth and tender love bursting from within her sweet body, that ever have I been her slave, and ever her slave will I be.