Love as a Form of Binding Ch. 01

This is the first chapter of several concerning a female demon whose existence was once to serve the ruler of one hell or another. She's been at it a long time. Readers interested in quick sex scenes might want to look elsewhere. I won't get to that for at least another 2 chapters or so ...

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The return trip was always a pain – sometimes literally. She always felt relief when she was dispatched on some inane errand, or to fetch a badly tarnished soul. On her way out, it was as close to freedom as she could get, she supposed. Errands weren't that great, since there was usually some haste required, but the souls – well, she had to find them first, after all. Then she had time to examine their little lives in order to choose her moment. No one expected her to be back in an instant. She'd stretched a few out to more than a year each, like this one.

But the inbound trips, she just hated them. She was supposed to bow and scrape for some guardian someplace and sometimes more than one, as if there was a great crush to get into this hell – or any other hell that she'd seen for that matter. The nice thing about this one, she thought, was that she'd found a couple of ways in. Little unused pathways that she'd stumbled across. It wasn't much, but it was a small bit of satisfaction to her to slide in unobserved and appear in front of her master. He never seemed to mind, she thought. Well, if he was even aware that she'd done it at all. She couldn't tell.

She'd been traded here from a different place maybe two centuries ago. She had no idea why, she was just glad to get out of that one. The ruler there had been the bitch priestess from – well from her hell anyway, and was liable to use a flame whip for nothing. This one was better. As in any other of the hells she'd seen, the ruler here was prone to just grabbing somebody and screwing them apart. So far, she'd only ever seen him do it to males but that meant nothing. She did her best not to hang around the place if she could help it and always asked for another task immediately. Because of that, she knew that she hadn't witnessed all of the possible variations of her master's sudden lust. The females that she'd seen were handed off to others that she'd never seen as well, but she'd heard the results, loud and clear – none of this was supposed to be nice.

She had no doubt that he could eventually find her of interest somehow, but so far it hadn't happened. Whenever she'd been summoned, he was all business. His directions had often bordered on curt, but he always gave her enough to go on. She didn't know it, but her master liked her initiative, he didn't mind that she'd been the only one to find the other little holes to get in. He knew they were there, and he knew that she used them. He liked her enough to leave her alone to do his bidding, though he'd never tell her that.

What she hated was the place itself. Well, she supposed, every hell must be somebody's idea of paradise – like the ruler's. But this was a lifeless desert. It was always hot and dusty, unbearably so. The sand and dust got into everything, eyes, ears, and worse.

Once, she'd almost gotten past a guardian because the hot wind was blowing so much sand that they hadn't seen each other. Her first clue had been his whip around her throat. That was bad enough, but he had dragged her back despite her protestations that she just hadn't seen him. Then she had to submit to the whipping. Standing there in the blowing dust waiting for him to finish was awful. And it was worse because she had a pretty good sense that she could tear him apart easily. But then what? She preferred not to think about what the ruler would do to her for it, so she'd just gritted her teeth and taken it. That's when she'd begun to look for other ways in. She rarely used them to get out for fear of being observed.

On this trip, she was bearing the soul of an asshole, for lack of a better term. Just another in an endless line, she supposed. There might be some form of payment involved and she had no way of knowing if it was so, but a lot of what she did amounted to being one of her ruler's bounty hunters. If there was a bounty paid, she never knew of it and she certainly didn't receive it. She didn't know why this soul was wanted by her master. In this line of work, she'd seen pretty much everything, and almost never asked questions unless she wasn't clear about the directions. He'd been pretty easy to take. When she was ready, she'd just bowled him over as he was in the process of hurting somebody else. She waited until she knew that his orgasm was beginning, and then she tore through the closet door where she'd been hiding, ripped his soul from his bloated body, and they were gone. The woman on the bed was dead anyway.

She had no idea if this tendency that she'd observed in him was the reason that he was wanted. She didn't care – it was none of her concern. But she had a feeling that she knew what kind of treatment he was in for.

She stopped as she neared the place where this crack in the wall opened up behind some boulders and rubble. Something was different. She had no idea what, but even though she was still fairly new here, she recognized that something was out of place. Her master was in sight, but looking quiet for once. She slid inside since there was nobody else in sight. Taking her time moving around the place, she wondered about it briefly before coming up to the ruler to bow and deliver the soul.

He looked up as though from deep thought. "Ah, you have done well for me again. You are the only one that I do not have to trace and harass, or punish for coming back late."

"Is there more for me to do?" she asked. This was the one question that she loathed to ask, for she was always worried to hear the answer.

"No," he shook his damp horned head. He looked to be made of mud, but she knew that he was just wet on the outside, and that caused the dust to stick to him. He shrugged or flung it off him sometimes, and she'd seen his grey skin then. "I want you to leave here for a while," he said. "Go where you will. I will summon you when I need you again."

He reached for the quivering man, and licked him from his knees, over his soft belly to his face. The man squirmed and cried out, writing in disgust. The master laughed, and turned him around to do the same thing from the other side, before kissing the man savagely. She got a look at her master's organ rising, and backed away. Her master looked at her momentarily, and whispered, "Go now."

She wondered about this send-off, but wasn't dim-witted enough to hang around chewing on it. The man had begun to scream and shriek as her master impaled him. She knew it would get louder in a few minutes. Her master liked to pound his toys pretty hard. When they'd get quiet, he'd make them cry out again from any number of things, though mostly she'd just seen him use his teeth. Often, he'd stick his long, thick tongue into their mouths, and they'd choke in the agony of suffocation, but of course, they were already dead. It took nothing away from the torture. Then he'd happily screw them apart again, before handing them off to his lesser demons when he'd lost interest.

She drifted around, trying to get a sense of what was different, and then just giving up as she remembered that he'd told her to leave. Leave this place, he'd said, go where you will. It was almost too much for her to comprehend. She just followed an instinct, and headed for the same hole in the wall that she'd used to come in. There wasn't anybody to see her, so ...

Just as she got behind the rubble, she turned as she heard the approach of many of the denizens who she'd thought should have been here to begin with, only there were many more than usual. And they were all terrified. No one noticed her as she peeked out, but she could see that they were being followed by a great host. She darted out through the crack and did her best to get as far away from the place as she could. The sounds of battle came to her ears from the cavern behind her.

What did this mean? She wondered what was going on. It looked to her like her master - well, her master and his entire hell were under attack. The thought crossed her mind that if her master fell, then whoever won this fight could and would then claim her to their service. She shuddered at her miserable luck. She'd seen a few of the lords of the other hells. There was nobody that she would have wanted to work for. Likely it would just mean her own torment at someone's hands. Then she thought about her own soul.

She was a demon, but not all demons were soulless things. The more advanced ones had souls, different from those of humans, but they were kept from servant demons, mostly as a surety that they would do what was asked of them. If a master couldn't locate one of his minions, he only had to torment their soul. That was how it worked. She hoped her master would win this, whatever it was. In the meantime, she'd been told to leave. That was good enough for her. She'd beat feet out of there, and if she was called by her won soul, well what else could she do?

Just as she reached the outer edges, she thought to go as fast as she could, and launched herself outward. She'd figure out where she was later. What she didn't know was that her master was about to fall, and he knew it. He fought tooth and nail, but it looked to him as though there was nothing but defeat before him, and he wasn't about to become any other master's minion. He'd spent ages working his way up to the strength that he'd needed to take this hell from his old master.

He thought briefly about her. He didn't care about his other minions. They were all cut from the same cloth, and would likely quit his defense soon to offer to serve the winner. But she was different. She wasn't the kind to want power. She only did what she was told to do, and he admired her for that. He plucked her soul from its place in his pouch. He wished her well, wherever she went, he thought. He continued his vicious defensive tactics, laying wave after wave of his attackers down. He finally saw his usurper, a sand demon of tremendous might. As the first of what he knew would be many waves of pain hit him, he flung out his arms, and let his own spirit go.

In the mud and slime that he had thrown from his body, her soul flew free. Of the great army that had been raised against her master, no one saw it. When the wet debris hit the wall, the little soul found the crevice, and sped off toward its owner, increasing its speed as it traveled. As it reached the outer edges where she was, it moved so quickly that no one could see it.

She felt something, though. She'd felt the passing of her master, and turned. What she saw looking back was a pale thin line snaking toward her. She only saw it because she was looking along its line of travel. There was no time to dodge this missile, or whatever it was, she thought. Whoever had done her master in had no doubt sent this doom to her personally.

It struck her just as she tried to dodge it anyway. She felt the impact but knew nothing more.