Spellbound Ch. 04

Baccus didn't last much longer against the feeling of her dripping cunt pulsing with pleasure. When he slid out of her and shot himself forcefully over her belly, slick with sweat, she was forced to watch his face: that awful, cruel face molded by ecstasy. How could she have done such a thing?

He finished with a chuckle, and swung his feet to the ground.

"That felt delightful, little plaything. Few have given me that sensation." He stood by her head, then nuzzled her neck while smelling her hair. "I knew you'd love it." Maira cringed. With a rough tug, he removed the clips from her breasts, earning a yelp. Without another word, he left her and busied himself elsewhere, whistling happily.

Maira baked in the sun's judgment, feeling its frown of disapproval. The pleasant afterglow seemed to torment her, as shame and revulsion crushed her heart. She wept. The knowledge that this was exactly how Baccus wanted her to feel did not help.

***

For the duration of the day, Maira remained immobilized in some way or another. She was unable to retreat and hide herself from the poking and prodding, the proud jests, or the infuriating whistling. After defiling her body for a third time, he left her tied and retrieved a satchel from within his tent. For the next several hours, he experimented on her with various herbs, flowers, and gemstones to test her reactions.

Baccus carefully catalogued each one, murmuring to himself as if she did not exist. Most of the items did nothing. She watched him debunk a dozen peasant superstitions, even going so far as to rub what he claimed to be maiden's blood on her.

He then moved on to more exotic plants, none of which Maira had ever seen. He took the opportunity to brag about the trouble he'd gone through to retrieve some of them, speaking animatedly as if she were interested. He seemed disappointed when the majority of those had no effect on her either. Perhaps ineffective superstition was a universal concept among humans.

A soft red flower, which smelled of death, burned her skin at the slightest touch. She jerked away from it with a shriek.

"Valley's blush," stated Baccus blandly while transcribing. "Not surprising. All malicious magical beings are affected by it." He produced an unremarkable green herb with spiked leaves, which stung like a dozen tiny needles when rubbed against her arm. He raised an eyebrow.

"Dragontail? Interesting." He made a note in neat, compact handwriting. With delicate movements, he withdrew a single stick of incense from a separate pocket. He pinched its tip, closed his eyes, and murmured an incantation. The language of enchantment was all too familiar to Maira, and her ears pricked at the sound. It was disconcerting to hear it fall from a human's lips. Her brow furrowed.

The stick of incense began to smolder, and Baccus waved it before her face. In an instant, all her instincts drove her into a wild-eyed panic. The aversion was stronger than any she'd ever felt, as if a god-like predator stood before her brimming with power. She thrashed and tried to flee.

"Ahh, now that is useful information," he muttered to himself. "A shame it's so expensive." With another word, the stick was extinguished, but the smoke and its aura lingered.

Once he'd finished cataloguing, Baccus packed the herbs neatly and withdrew a deep purple gemstone. Rather than glimmering in the sun, its color seemed to radiate from within. It whispered to her.

He circled the clearing, holding the gem aloft, and recited a spell. But Maira could not hear his words; the gemstone's whispers carried across the open ground. A thousand voices knew her true name, and her mother's name, and the nature of her magic. It spoke deep, powerful words in her native language. Her soft features darkened.

At Baccus's bidding, the gem lent its power to the ward encircling them, and the malevolent glow regenerated. Maira groaned in dismay, as she hadn't even noticed it had been waning. But the return of the bone-deep weariness was unmistakable; it was as if she was being bled dry.

Baccus appeared to be almost as exhausted as Maira felt. His shoulders drooped, and his steps dragged.

***

Baccus seemed incapable of allowing a supposed achievement to pass into memory without repeated reminders of its existence. From that afternoon forward, whenever Maira was forced to endure attention from his experienced tongue, it was always to completion. There was little she could do to resist. His carnal knowledge of her had not faded over the years, and his newfound discoveries only invited further experimentation. He always pumped her with a finger or three, feeling her convulsions when she climaxed, so that she couldn't hide or pretend it hadn't happened. It never failed to leave her wet and swollen.

Though Maira almost always attempted to resist, there was a part of her which questioned why she did. She couldn't deny how it felt. And she was being indulged multiple times each day. Despite the circumstances, she sometimes allowed herself to be borne aloft by the delightful torment. It wouldn't last long before the shame returned to chastise her after.

One night, she was bent over the table in the same way as she'd been on her first day there. It seemed to be a favorite of his, as Baccus had taken his evening meal while watching her from behind. He didn't fail to notice her body's autonomic reaction to being bound and bent: she was already moist.

While preparing to violate her for the fifth time that day, he spoke amicably. As if they'd just been holding a conversation.

"I do hope you appreciate the effort I've put forth to prepare all of this," he said while folding his shirt, "and the cost of keeping you here. It's an inordinate amount of work." He sighed. "Master Vosk's spells were silly half-cooked ideas in comparison. I am the one who refined them into realistic application." He held out his arms. "And look where I am now. There will be entire tomes written of my discoveries."

Maira rolled her eyes. The braggart was nothing if not consistent. That earned her a firm slap.

As he stood behind her, Baccus seemed to be paying particular attention to her ass. Though the pain was not as striking as it had once been, it was still vile. His persistent slaps never left enough time to recover or heal, especially when he used tools instead of palms.

He grabbed her sore, reddening cheeks and spread her open.

"Hmm, I wonder..." He rimmed her black tunnel with his thumb. Maira's eyes shot open, and her head whipped around. Her wide, pleading eyes met his, and she shook her head frantically while begging through the gag. She knew it would not help, but was driven by desperation. Not there, she tried to say, anything but that. Baccus smiled, turning her blood to ice.

"Oh, I think I just might," he said. Maira whined.

He hawked and spat several times, and she began to yank against her bonds. The futility of it only added to her dread. Her quavering voice commanded ineffective, muffled enchantments with orders for him to cease. He pushed his cock firmly against her sensitive flesh, and her struggling became more urgent. She began to wonder if he had been using magic to boost his libido and make himself so remarkably hard. Maira clenched as he pushed past her resistance. She screamed in sudden agony, thrashing with all her might, as he sodomized her. Every inch of his cock dragged past her tiny hole; too deep, too tight. Her screams continued as tears ran down her cheeks. She could barely hear his moans of immense satisfaction over her own cries of pain.

The wood bit her hips as he forced himself in with powerful thrusts. Baccus plunged his full length in, and Maira felt as if she were being ripped open. His hands roamed over her ass and back, taking full ownership of her. Her writhing did nothing to dissuade him or ease her own pain, made worse by her inability to relax. Anguish and fury darkened her vision. How could a human dare to violate her so thoroughly?

As if reading her mind, or perhaps her screams, Baccus responded.

"This must be how it feels for you, whore!" He raised his voice above hers. "Complete dominance over another, subjugating their body and breaking their will. Ahhh, yes! Nothing you can do..." He trailed off. Maira screamed in protest. His cock stabbed her with a dull beating. "Don't agree?" he laughed. "We both take what we want from others. I bind with chains, and you with words." He paused to slap her ass. "You think this is any worse than depriving a man of a lifetime of pleasure? You're despicable!" Maira couldn't bring herself to consider his words, as pain and hatred dominated her mind.

His depravity was boundless. She was constricting him so tightly that she wondered how he could still feel his own cock. Her vision blurred with tears, and her throat grew sore from wailing.

"How many men have you stolen from!" he demanded, thrusting faster. "How many lives have you ruined? How many people has your treacherous body attacked?" The agony worsened. Without caring whether he would understand her, Maira screamed an answer: I will paint the trees with your blood!

Baccus let loose a mighty cry, then withdrew. She choked on a sob of relief, and couldn't even feel where he left his mark. Pain and heat glimmered all over her ass, and her muscles ached from the strain of attempting to free herself.

If he said anything else before freeing her limbs for the night, she hadn't heard it. Her breath came in shaky sobs, and she hurt with every movement. Her battered body seemed to cry with her. At some point, she passed into a dreamless sleep.

***

Baccus seemed to have an endless supply of new torments. Each day, he brought forth a new position, tool, or act which spread her open, stretched her, and forced her. There was never a pattern or predictability to ease the uncertainty. Once, after renewing the wards, he took advantage of her freshly-weakened state and fucked her in the grass while simply holding her down. Another time, he bound her on her back with her legs free, and fucked her throat where her head hung off the edge of the table. He seemed to enjoy the sight of her kicking helplessly.

Most days, Baccus would leave the clearing for several hours to hunt, bathe, or exercise his horse. He often stated his gratitude that he did not need to feed her like human women. Which made Maira wonder: could she starve to death? The purple gem's torturous ward had been taking her strength and magic for days, and Baccus had ensured she couldn't feed on him. Would she wither away? Would she be forced into hibernation? Or would he simply kill her before she learned the answer?

Her one solace was that the daily renewal of the barrier seemed to cost him dearly. He appeared drained and downtrodden whenever he performed the ritual, as if he hadn't been expecting to do it so often.

Maira did her best to appear obstinate, fighting back or angering him whenever she had the chance. But as often as she cursed his name, she found herself complying with Baccus's implicit demands. His insistence that she would break was all that prevented her from doing so.

Then, one cloudy morning after Maira had lost count of the days, the impossible happened. Woken by whistling and banging, Maira could barely believe what she saw: Baccus was packing. She watched silently as he deconstructed the oversized tent, as if drawing his attention would make him change his mind. Something about the tent seemed familiar - its dull autumn color, its rounded structure and pointed top. She'd seen smaller versions of it before. And his horse, though large, appeared too delicate of limb to be in the business of cart-pulling. She'd seen other men travelling with horses like that as well. It took her a minute to remember.

He was Lavosi. He had to be. His clothing was all auburn and brown and gold, and the smells of his cooking matched those of other Lavosi men Maira had hunted.

She continued to watch while trying to discern her fate. He kept sword and knife close by, but did not sharpen or oil them. His attitude seemed melancholy, not vicious, but she knew that could change in an instant. The thick, white clouds pressed close overhead, craning downwards to see what would happen.

Finally, the only things remaining in the clearing were Maira, Baccus, and the cursed table. He chained her, bent over, and violated her one final time. She desperately tried to ignore that it was happening, but he forced her to climax at his hand. Hope and despair warred within her.

When at last he finished on her legs, she went stiff with fear. He unfastened her ankles, and then began to bind them together with rope.

"I'm afraid our time together has come to an end, monster." She felt the hot seed leaving trails as it ran down her bare thigh. He knotted the rope expertly and yanked it tight. "Sadly, I must be going. My wards need work, and spells require further testing and refinement. But this has been a delightful opportunity to test them." To her shock, he unlocked the collar and removed it. "I have what I came for, thanks to you. And if the superstitions are to be believed, there are plenty more subjects to test them on. By the gods, perhaps I'll even see if the sea-witches are real. Entirely new pleasures await me, mine for the taking."

He removed the cuffs at her wrists, and the leather made a horrid sticking noise as it was peeled from her reddened skin. The only remaining binding was the new rope at her ankles. She slid listlessly from the table and dropped to her side.

"And for you, bitch, I leave a curse. Just as you left one with me." He knelt over her, blocking the early sunlight. Her eyes flicked to the knife at his belt. "Did you think I was going to kill you?" He laughed. "What a terrible waste that would be. No, you're going to live with what you've done. You may try to bathe yourself, or run to a different realm, or even cut off all your hair. But you will never rid yourself of the memories. You cannot change what happened here. And know that I will always treasure the memory." He grabbed a fistful of her hair, and leaned in close to take a deep sniff. "I will think of you often. Do not presume to comfort yourself with the thought that I might one day forget."

Baccus toyed with a lock of midnight hair, wrapping it around a finger. With a sudden snarl, he ripped it free. Maira blanched at the stinging on her scalp, and felt a trickle of blood. He dangled the hair before her face.

"For when I want to find you again." Maira couldn't stomach the thought of being hunted herself, especially knowing what would happen. She fought back tears.

Baccus placed the beeswax in his ears one final time, then mounted his horse and left without a backward glance. She listened as his whistling trailed off into the distance, a sad contrast to the sight of her crumpled body centered in the bare clearing. The clouds darkened.

Maira managed to fully untie the gag and threw it as far as her trembling muscles would allow. The purple glow, though faded, still persisted in its theft of her essence. She slowly crawled to its edge, pushing herself with bound feet and clawed hands. There was no sun to warm her path or see her through.

After what seemed like hours, she finally crossed the threshold and escaped. Her senses slammed back into her, and her natural strength returned somewhat. Even with its bolster, she had a difficult time of removing the rope binding her ankles. When at last it broke, she rose shakily to her feet and stumbled opposite the direction which Baccus had gone. She crashed ungracefully through the soft undergrowth, using trees and saplings to support her weight and catch herself when she stumbled. Brush and vines snagged at her feet when they would normally have blessed her passage. It began to rain. The soft sizzling of tiny raindrops coated the forest overhead, and fell coolly on her hair and shoulders.

Maira fled for as long as she could, not knowing where she was going, until her endurance ran dry. She found a patch of new growth, open to the sky, and collapsed. Her curled form was wracked with sobs, as the sky opened up to cry with her.

***

Comments and messages are welcome. Any feedback you can provide would be lovely. What did you enjoy? What do you hope to see more of?

Chapter 5 will be posted in 1 week.