Surfacing Ch. 08

They easily may have abandoned Gavin entirely and turned on me as one, and I may not have been able to get enough distance in that small room.

"How many souls did you claim for Fierna upstairs, Lady Maris?"

*Maris?* I realized that Mathias was talking to me when I looked at him, and we held eye contact for a few moments. He was still putting on that performance, for both our benefit.

I smiled. "I took all five Men that dared enter the apprentice's room. Though they may be with another entity in limbo by now."

"Indeed, I saw them, Lady," Mathias said. "Throats torn out, guts punctured, one bloated with poison, turning green. It was glorious, the pain they suffered on Jacob's account. And they will never reach Musanlo's light now thanks to you, they are lost in the grey."

The Witch Hunter's face crumbled for half a moment before he started trembling in rage, all his muscles straining and pulsing just before, with a powerful yell, he tried one tremendous pull as if to bring down the entire roof. The support beams did not budge, though the lash of the chains going taut as his feet left the dirt floor battered my ears, followed by his bellow in the small space.

I could also tell that the sound stopped traveling at the wall, and it was not drifting outside.

"So that is your revenge, you putrid slut!" the last Witch Hunter shouted at me, red-faced, the whites of his eyes pink and tendons standing up on his neck. "I did what was right turning you in, and you know it! It was for your own good to save your soul! But you wouldn't allow your pact with the devil to be broken, wouldn't allow yourself to be saved, even as all you had to do was confess! Your black bitterness in the afterlife offends Musanlo's light! What did you have to trade for such power? Are you some devil's gaping, soiled arsehole, parting your cheeks whenever he asks?"

"Is it more than you ever got from her?" Mathias asked, and Jacob tried to spit on him but it fell just a bit short.

"Damn you, castrated servant of the Underdark!"

So he had been listening.

I was not sure I wanted to continue to engage such vitriol directly. I was not a true interrogator by training or leaning, though I knew of some Drow back home who would have taken on this Human with glee and made it last for months, years if the Human was strong enough.

For me, there was no pleasure once we started going in mental circles, and the only way I knew to break that was to start wearing down the body. Certainly my encounter with Kurn showed me a time when reason played no part in a debate.

Mathias was using me to his advantage, though, and letting me watch—if not fully understand—the male attitude of where we were going. I could not expect females living there to have any more status than the Drow males in my own City. Potentially, these Women had even less if it was widespread that any independence on her part resulted in punishment to keep her compliant, and if those born with magic were culled.

I could not see how a city could function if all within its borders were like Jacob, however. It seemed to me that the Priest-mages may have sent these Witch Hunters away to roam and live outside the city because they were so disruptive to daily business. If their rhetoric was "blessed," and they had that letter of approval...then it made sense for the Priests to send them out only to spread fear and control in the surrounding area.

But the true magic users of Manalar sent these Men without any true magic of their own, likely so they wouldn't burn the whole Surface down in their misjudgments.

I could not say that the actions of many Drow females were much better than this—though at least the male magical ability was not squandered but harnessed. I could say that, except for the Consorts and the mystical divinity that surrounded them, every matron knew it was simply because they did not want to share the power and had the ability to keep it that their males stayed in their subservient role.

The reasoning may have something to do with the ability to give birth—that it made us the superior sex according to our Goddess—but it was nearly a side note in our culture these days when compared to Jacob and this external, twisted, convoluted fear of everything; that those like this Witch Hunter viewed the submissive gender as the actual threat to which they reacted with compulsive over-indulgence, with little self-control.

Males like Shyntre and Auslan could be admired and prized for their strengths, even being submissive possessions to more powerful females like Rausery and Wilsira. Our ability to encourage and strengthen our males' talents while still maintaining control of them reflected well on our understanding of balance and using what scarce resources we had in the Underdark.

This was completely lacking in Jacob's spouts of dogma. It made me wonder as to the source of the hostility. In some ways, these particular Human males—these Witch Hunters—made the entirety of their existence dependent upon the power that the female had over their minds, the power that they gave her, whether she wanted that it or not.

Whether she asked for it, or "deserved" it...or not.

Something about the scale of that kind of lack of control and balance was unsettling to me. I'd already met Human Men with much more mental ability and intelligence; I knew this was not normal for the male gender of this race. In my society, an animal acting this far out of its nature would be slaughtered for the well-being of the population... yet this religion was organized to reward this behavior for power and control of neighboring lands.

This must be how it was spreading and why there were adversaries like the Guild. It could not hold this way indefinitely; something had to change, and the Godblood and Tamuril somehow were connected to this.

According the Gavin, the Godblood's arrival at Manalar might very well be that change. Yet Jael...my Sister...she was searching to find and to kill this Man for our queen, and she approached this male-dominant, extremely religious city without knowing what she faced.

Rausery had been certain Jael would die, and she had been to Manalar once. Somehow, that very journey was what had drawn Cris-ri-phon to this area to wait for us. Our own Elder had known to what the queen had sentenced Jael, but she had said nothing. Perhaps because it would not do any good.

I felt flat denial at that thought now. No.

I had to get out of Brom's inn, somehow; I needed to find Jael, to prevent her from bearing the full brunt of this sickened, rotting Man's city.

"Stay a while, Lady Maris," Mathias said now. "allow me to entertain you and fulfill the final part of your vengeance."

I nodded slowly. I would stay; I needed to see all I could, and Brom was right in that this Man was best suited to show me.

I removed my pack and setting it on the floor at my feet before leaning against the wall. I let the skin hunter take his lead as he demonstrated the best ways to get beneath Jacob's skin. For a while, my direct participation was not needed and my presence was enough.

I watched in fascination as Mathias's creative taunts and well-chosen mental imagery—much as Jacob liked to use himself but without the holy fervor— combined with strikes using the Hunters' own switches and whips... actually seemed to be arousing the Witch Hunter.

*crack!*

"Nomilu sancji!" Jacob cried with face lifted to the ceiling.

"Tinirus gothii," Mathias chuckled.

"SILENCE, HERETIC!"

*CRACK!*

Every moment for Mathias was cool and calm in the face of Jacob's riotous bile and nearly ecstatic cries. The skill of lashing in general, I could see, was obviously familiar to both Men.

More interesting was that Jacob was denying his erection, fighting that arousal every time he remembered I stood in the room. I would have started bending by now, accepting it. I already had, many times.

The trap was well-set and inescapable, and Mathias did not hurry as the prey had nowhere to go, not even inside the privacy of his own head. Jacob had given far too much of himself away and Mathias wielded the offered length of rope and Jacob's own whips with the same confidence he handled his bow and other hunting tools.

I had never seen Mathias so happy.

My body eventually responded to the struggle and firmly guided resistance unfolding before me, and I did not think much of smoothing the pads of my fingers over the leather of my crotch, rather as I had while watching Kurn fight so hard against his desires as well.

Mathias almost seemed to be watching for that as his eyes found my hand between my legs quickly. He straightened and circled to stand before the other sagging, heaving Man; he inhaled the close, moist air in the outbuilding with relish.

"Lady Maris," he said, "please, grace Jacob with a view of your infernal temptation. Show him that it has remained as hellfire hot and lustful despite what his brothers may have done to you to try to quench that flame. His weakness is theirs, it was his doubt that broke their power of protection when they broke that door to take your servant... isn't that so, Jacob?"

"NO!" he bellowed at both of us. "You lie!"

"She did, Jacob. She killed them all, and she could because your lingering desire for her weakened the faith of every one of you. It brought your downfall in that inn."

"Not true! She made a pact against me!"

"A pact more powerful than Musanlo, apparently."

"Blasphemous bastard!"

*CRACK!* That one had been across the front of Jacob's sweating chest.

"Lady," Mathias said quietly on an exhale. "Please, I beg you. Show him."

Hm.

I detached my fighting daggers first, then lifted my belt a bit and began unlacing the ties at my left hip, much to Jacob's baying dismay. Mathias immediately went to retrieve a simple wooden chair for me, set it down next to me, and watched with what I could consider appreciation as I slowly pushed my leathers down my thighs to rest just atop my knees.

The interrogator's appreciation more for the action itself and what it meant for the atmosphere and the tension, rather than the blunt desire of Brom or Kurn.

Without speaking, I had agreed to assist him.

I did not sit immediately, and Jacob growled like a wounded animal as Mathias kneeled down before me, stroking the whiteness of my fur delicately with his gloved fingertips. It felt pleasant.

The Witch Hunter looked down at the floor and stubbornly refused to watch, squeezing his eyes shut and chanting a mantra I'd already heard multiple times by now, over and over again. Mathias chuckled and leaned to give me a bewilderingly light kiss right on my mound before he stood back up and motioned for me to sit.

"Get comfortable, Lady Maris, spread your legs so he can see that white crowning your woman's flower. Pure as fresh snow."

"It is false! Mold growing atop blackened rot!"

Mathias grinned wider. "Touch yourself if you wish, Lady. This is justice as you would have it."

Time passed easily as I watched Jacob's responses to painful and pleasurable repetition begin to change. More than once, the Witch Hunter was brought to the very edge of his control and Mathias stopped him from losing it. Jacob responded well to the sharp pains of the lash, seemed to become deliriously high on it, but then Mathias would change that pain with a hard blow to the kidney or something similar to send him crashing down.

Then they would start over.

I did touch myself. Mathias made for an extraordinary trainer; it occurred to me to wonder if he possessed the skill to break mounts for riding.

"Now... watch me worship her cunt as it is supposed to be worshiped, Jacob. Watch me."

I drew in my breath slowly as Mathias kneeled down by me and placed a hot palm on my bare thigh; his other hand slowly reached to join my own between my legs. He concentrated on brushing my fingers only, stroking them a couple times as my fingers still pressed to my netherlips; he glanced over his shoulder at Jacob, who had turned his face away and was muttering prayers.

The interrogator chuckled and got back up again to leave my side, returning all his attention to softening his target's will to resist. Within a quarter hour I heard the second bleat of weakness from Jacob's mouth that had prompted Mathias to kneel and touch my fingers between my legs in the first place.

Sure enough, Mathias made the same command—to watch as he worshipped my cunt—and returned to my side again. His palm was again on my thigh, and his left hand sliding along my inner thigh; a muscle twitched involuntarily.

Finally Mathias looked up to meet my gaze. He was gauging my response as much as Jacob's.

I licked my lips briefly and drew my hand back, shifting my hips forward a bit so that my soft, slick flesh touched the pads of his fingers. He smiled at the added layer I'd granted.

"Oh," I said softly as the skin hunter touched me very lightly, and that made Jacob look at me.

The Witch Hunter sucked in a breath as his eyes widened, his face flushing a deep red, and he shut his eyes again and looked down, chanting much more loudly now. Again, Mathias laughed softly and stood up again to return to Jacob to torment him some more, all without once making him bleed.

This process was repeated again and again; how many times, I had lost count, but somehow I had the patience to observe a master at work even as my sex began to ache fiercely as I was teased as well. Each time, Mathias grew more bold in how intimately he touched me, how deeply he slide his fingers inside. He encouraged my sounds of pleasure, took the time to learn how to pleasure me, and I knew that my heated scent also helped; they were tools for free use in this place.

"Watch, Jacob," the interrogator commanded yet again, setting down his whip once again, kneeling again at my frustrated sex, seeming almost tireless in this game.

I widened my thighs for him, tilted my hips to make myself more accessible, with a deep breath of my own as I anticipated his fingers.

Jacob lifted his head slowly then, unexpectedly, and I made eye contact with the Witch Hunter at last, holding that hateful gaze—exactly as Mathias's tongue flicked out and caressed my netherlips, his broad hands gripping beneath my splayed thighs.

I gasped and cried out. "Yes! Oh, Goddess!"

"SLUT! Festering cunt, cuckolding WHORE!" Jacob screamed, struggling against his chains. "May the devil ram a red hot poker in and cauterize that oozing gash closed!"

My bare fingers embedded themselves in the skin hunter's thick brown hair as I felt two thick fingers pushing readily into my very receptive channel, as gentle tongue and lips caressed me, his teeth nipping me lightly. The breath of his exhale was hot as it ruffled my fur, as he thrust fingers in and out, firm but relaxed...slow. He allowed me to cover his other hand on my thigh with my own so that I always knew where it was.

Jacob's eyes were still wide open, but Mathias's were closed in concentration; I could bet he heard every shift in the room. I chuckled and cooed at the top of his head as he licked and sucked me. I had to admit being charmed and impressed, enough to feel that I could climax from being serviced with such exquisite timing, watched by such a helpless, hateful prisoner.

It was almost as if Mathias had been tutored by the Drow, though he may not have realized it. Still, there had to be a reason Brom had spoken with such pride of his talents; surely the sorcerer had had something to do with Mathias's training and development of his tastes.

"Ohhh," I breathed again, moving my hips and pressing my mound harder to his mouth, bringing me closer to the edge.

I was long aware of Mathias's lack of weapons—he'd removed them all and kept them far from his prisoner—and his utter focus was on me and on every shuffle, jerk, and foul word that Jacob roared in his weakened, gravelly voice.

I felt safe enough to cum.

I broke eye contact with Jacob when the large swell of sensation washed over me, as I felt my pussy clutch and flex around Mathias's slowly twisting fingers, and my thighs tightened on the interrogator. I let enough voice through as I tilted my head back for both Men to know the depth of my pleasure.

"REVOLTING BITCH!"

I gasped almost desperately for air as I laughed and came down.

When Mathias straightened up and smiled at me, I wondered for a moment if he would try to settle his cock between my legs—and I wondered whether I would allow it?—but he only shifted out of the way so that Jacob could see my tingling slit unobstructed. Then Mathias reached with one hand to gently part my lips with his fingers.

The Witch Hunter stared transfixed at the deep, wet pink of my pussy.

"Nomilu sancji," Jacob muttered, his bottom lip trembling as tears became visible, the sweat on his body thick as ever.

Mathais took his hand from between my thighs and pushed himself easily to his feet. I could well imagine the taunt in every breath and scent when the skin hunter next stood face-to-face with the Witch Hunter. Mathias hadn't even wiped his face clean of my juices, but he put one of his wet fingers into his mouth, sucked it clean, and wiped the rest of his hand off in Jacob's hair.

"DON'T TOUCH M—"

Mathias clasped Jacob's face in both hands and the blond man was too stunned to respond at first as his torturer forced their mouths together. This resulted in such thrashing from Jacob, in such a loud, spewing tantrum as to be...truly astounding to me. Jacob made it clear what he thought of another Man sharing female slickness on their lips...or perhaps any fluids he'd deem "unclean."

I stared at them with my mouth open.

Possibly because of the circumstances, of power and control, because Mathias understood the nuances so well...I did not think that it had looked any different than any number of wet kisses shared between the Red Sisters in the cloister, although I had not given much thought to males in general kissing each other before.

The memory of Shyntre pushing Auslan in the garden of House Itlaun came back then, and I remembered that first time realizing that they knew each other fairly well, of how I'd wanted it to go further. I had wanted to see them fight and wrestle, as my Sisters did. Different but the same. The fantasy had aroused me even as I had not gone toward kisses and other uses of the mouth before....it wouldn't be a far leap to do so.

Laughing in profound delight, Mathias with his intense situational awareness noted when I had moved to tug up my leathers as my afterglow waned naturally. He quickly retrieved a clean, if coarse, linen cloth from his tools and handed it out to me.

"Here, clean up with this and hand it back to me, if you please."

I hesitated at first then reminded myself that everyone had pretty much agreed that Mathias did not use magic—Gavin had even said he only had the one life aura about him.

"You will not tell Brom?" I asked, being vague on purpose.

Mathias immediately shook his head. "No. What happens here is mine alone, Lady. He will not know unless you tell him."

I was happy to hear that. I obliged, wiping the cooling wetness away thoroughly and giving it to the interrogator to add to his tool kit. Then I stood up to set my leathers, belt, and weapons to rights.

"Were you entertained, my Lady?" he asked quietly, with a small smirk on his face.

"I was," I admitted.

"Would you give me more time?"

"Of course."

He bowed his head. "I thank you for your assistance, Lady."

I knew to take my leave of my host then, ignoring Jacob's final threats and insults at "Lady Maris, the Demon Slut" as I waited for Mathias to unbar the door and let me back outside.

I looked forward to seeing how different Jacob was the next time I saw him. Mathias used all his own weaknesses against him, and he had not even gotten to any true physical torture yet. I wondered if he would need it? What would we discover of Manalar proper when Jacob began talking?