Verpa Domini Ch. 01

The Catcher then pressed harder. Faint white hand marks appeared all over the body of the woman; she whimpered and resumed her growl. She started shaking her hips, in the hope, perhaps, that a single strike of her member upon Fausta's body would suffice.

Arcadia watched from the doorsill and then retreated back inside. There was no point in watching. It all happened before. Her mistress was a pontiff. If nothing else, she held to a tradition. Over beasts, the pontiff told her once, one reigns with terror - yet offers them respite when all other hopes were broken and denied. Whenever a subject tried to enforce their newfound power upon the mistress or dared try and escape their holds, Fausta would teach them the lesson of Icarus - though not by the heat of Sol, but through its complete, cold opposite.

Fausta watched her subject with a look of whimsy. The woman was magnificent. Her genitalia, absurd before, was beyond rationality by now. Fit for a beast of burden or a horse, and even then the growths upon the crown and pulsing veins gave it a look of something monstrous rather than bestial. With every jerk of the body the member responded by a lazy sway; too heavy, too rigid with blood and humours to wobble and shake. To imagine a woman taking it is absurd. To imagine the body holding the fluids required for its prodigious discharges was ridiculous.

And yet there it was.

Fausta whispered again to the Catcher. Enough was enough. The lesson had to be dispensed. Curiosity can be fulfilled at any point - but an act of discipline has to be timely.

The pontiff uttered a command, and the Catcher pulled.

It did so slowly, with strong grip, overpowering the changeling woman, dragging while keeping her upright and facing her tormentor. With every thrash, the Catcher would strengthen its grip. Until colour would leave the skin. Until marks would be burned into the body.

The hermaphrodite howled, it's voice warped into a mix of bestial growls and pitiful human bawling. Nothing she tried would work. She felt powerful, mighty like never before - but it was insufficient. The Catcher had her. When she was dragged past her bloated victims, she saw that they stood upright - as cold and uncaring as before, despite their gravidity. She howled again, then: understanding, perhaps, how illusory was her rush for freedom and revenge. Her cage was merely an illusion: the real bars were slithering in the darkness around her all those times, and now, she was being forced back into her corner by the warden.

Something changed in her, then. She stopped trying to break away, and instead tried to grab her member, to Fausta's surprise and tepid interest. Why was that? Why was she seeking release? Perhaps she somehow knew of the power her semen would hold over an unprotected mind. Was that an instinctual knowledge, a part of the change that took over her body?

Fausta smiled. She'd have to experiment and find out. But for now, she had to be stern. The monstrous woman wanted to use her for release. To offer her any would be unbecoming, and thus, she whispered another command.

The she-beast whimpered, then uttered a pained shriek. Her member distorted, grabbed many times by invisible hands at every spot. She locked eyes with Fausta, panicked, suffering - but there was no respite in the emerald gaze of her master. This was a punishment to the end.

She was dragged through the house and the atrium to the long, thin wing that led to the pits. Dolls witnessed from all sides: from the shadows, they observed, an uncaring audience for the spectacle of punishment. Fausta preferred it this way. Let the subject know that their failure was witnessed. Let their moment of utter, helpless defeat be burned into their bestial minds. Let them know who torments them, who owns them, who grants them relief and forces punishment upon them. Let them know the face of Fausta, the Hermit-Pontiff, and let them fear it, so they'll never come out of their cages again.

Was it egomaniacal?

Perhaps, Fausta mused. But if it makes the subjects easier to handle and her project easier to complete, she'll be an egomaniac.

The Pits were silent. Only three were used these days, and their inhabitants were quiet. They knew the signs, the meaning of what proceeded, and they were scared. Fausta smiled.

With a final whimper, the gallic woman was pushed back into her Pit. The door, as the pontiff suspected, was ripped clean off; the metal was bent, ever so slightly, but it was not the bars that gave in, but the mortar. A pity, but the door was harder to replace than it was to set in a few new bricks. Thus, Fausta was happy.

She offered the punished creature one last gaze. The Catcher threw her against the walls of the Pit, where she now sat, shrivelling, hiding her face and sobbing. A subtle shake has taken her; was it of pure terror or a release from pain, Fausta did not know nor care. She turned and went back. Let the monstrous, beautiful woman, tall and mighty, with a member to rival the gods, cry and weep. She has a role to play, and it is not a conqueror's.

Fausta walked slowly and deliberately, measuring each step. She walked past the ruined wall and the broken, bent door. She swayed her hips, ignoring the evening chill. With each step, the Hermit-Pontiff listened.

There was one final test, one final piece of knowledge to be taken from the carnal outbreak of the gaelic woman. There is a tendency to beasts, as Fausta learned with time, to show unique behavior when put into a corner. As Diane made them, two choices are given to those stripped of a retreat: submission, the lying on the back and the display of one's belly, the choice of meek and weak, or a final, suicidal push of wild defiance. The subjects of Fausta were more beasts than thinking subjects of the Gods, and thus Diane's Choice stood before the gaelic woman, struck into the corner of the Pit. And Fausta waited, walking slowly, giving her a final chance for freedom.

And she took it.

Her sobs muffled and changed in pitch. A wet sound was heard as she stood up. Fausta walked and kept walking. Thus the lesson was perfected. For a beast cornered attacks for one reason: because there is still Hope, and Hope, as Romans know, is resilient, and succumbs only after Reason itself has perished.

The she-monster leapt.

Fausta did not turn to look, but let her lips curve. As she kept walking, she heard weeps, and the sound of flesh pummeled by invisible hands. Let the beast learn: that the magos never truly turns his back, as on every side of his body he has eyes.

She instructed the dolls on what to do and went to sleep, which she did with the great pleasure of a job well-done.

...

There was, of course, another witness to that night's events, even if she did so more by ear than eye. By no means she was forgotten. She was cared for, though from her cage she was not yet released. She sat quietly, sleepless, and listened.

The mark of slave she bore for forty years now, maybe more. Her given name she has forgotten - by choice, and not by trauma, since to bear it now would be an affront to the Wild Gods. She went thus by the name she got from her masters.

Titania, they named her. In memory of ancient monsters that their gods defeated. So she was told.

She didn't care much for her situation. She was tempered by the years. Whatever flame burned in her in old years past has dulled, if not died out. She expected little of her new master. She learned a lot of Romans and their ways in those past years, and the main lesson that she mustered was such: there was nothing more Roman than killing other Romans - as long as the reason was just. And thus she knew what to expect: to kill when told, and nothing more has crossed her mind.

At first.

But something was not right. A fleeting feeling of unease. The slavegirls that tended to her, empty-eyed, whom each and every looked like sisters and would not exchange a single word. The beastly howling in the night, produced by a human throat. And the horrible stench of the arcane, which persevered throughout this mountain domain, and the subtle, malevolent shift of the deepest shadows that surrounded her.

Titania listened until the howls subsided, then closed her eyes and dosed away.

In the old years, she was known as Morna, daughter of Yigrn, and in the Cimbrian Wars, she was enslaved.

...