Contract Negotiations

This isn’t really Glasya’s palace, Niamh knows that. Can’t get to Malbolge without going through five other Hells first, those are the rules—though if any devil was going to flout them for something as petty as meeting with a warlock, Glasya would. It’s why Niamh chose her in the first place: she doesn’t give a fuck.

It sure as shit feels like Glasya’s palace, though. She’s only visited it once, but once was enough. You don’t forget the feel of the place where the Princess of Hell plucked your soul from your body and replaced it with infernal magic.

Most warlocks, Niamh is aware, don’t get such a personal touch to their pact. The contact with one’s patron is usually a little less…intimate than she’s had with Glasya, though what she’s had with Glasya isn’t nearly as intimate as the dreams she knows the Princess has spied on. Not thinking about those dreams has been a struggle since she got here—ripped from her room through a portal of laughing fire—because the feeling of the Palace of Malbolge, whether it’s a facsimile or not, is so drenched in the feeling of Glasya. The Sixth Hell might be crafted from the flesh of its previous Archduke, but it’s Glasya who owns it, Glasya whose whim grants promotion and death to its devils.

And it’s Glasya who’s seated in front of her, with her feet in their pitch black, hellspike heels up on the bone-carved desk, slim bronze legs disappearing up into a dress that does so many incredible things to her already perfect body that Niamh is having something of a hard time concentrating.

Which is bad news, because she’s here to talk about her contract.

“How’s your year been, Niamh?” Glasya asks.

“Uh,” Niamh replies, eloquently. She shifts on her chair, crossing and re-crossing her legs. “Fine. Good. Cleared out a nest of dragon cultists down near Amn last month.”

“All by your pretty little self?”

Niamh nods.

“Then why are we here?” Glasya swings her legs down and leans forwards and eyes on her face, Niamh, do not stare at the Archdevil’s cleavage, don’t do it, don’t do it, I don’t care how phenomenal they are, do not look. “If everything is going so well…” She motions with one hand and a scroll snaps into existence between her clawed fingers. “…then why do you want me to alter this?”

That’s her contract. That’s her soul in scorched letters and a bloody thumbprint and Glasya’s kiss burned at the bottom. She has an identical copy hidden in the hollowed out base of her staff—she takes it out sometimes, wondering if the lip-print will still burn. It always does.

“Because I want more,” she says. Glasya’s copper eyes regard her intently, hellfire flickering in their depths. “The wizard I work with keeps finding more powerful spells. The warrior’s getting faster than me. Stronger. I’m falling behind.”

“You’ll keep pace so long as you keep doing what you’re told,” Glasya tells her. “There’s plenty I need done on the Material Plane—”

“I don’t want scraps,” Niamh interrupts recklessly. Glasya arches an eyebrow and the whole room darkens and Niamh doesn’t care. “I want power.”

“Everyone does.”

Glasya stands, bat-wings flaring, red-gold hair drifting about her shoulders in an unfelt breeze, the short points of her horns glittering in the light of the chandelier above. She strolls around the desk, trailing her fingers along the vertebrae edge. “The thing is, Niamh, you already sold me your soul,” she says. “So if you want more, you’re going to have to find another way to pay for it.”

The almost audible aura of persuasive desire radiating from her has Niamh squeezing her thighs together. Underneath that flawless bronze skin is an Archdevil. A being of ultimate power crafted from literal, actual, non-philosophers-discussing-it-on-streetcorners evil. It’s a hard fact to hang on to when the face of it bears such a sweet smile.

Glasya puts a hand on the back of her chair, leaning into her space. “What do you still have that I want, hm?” She trails her fingers down Niamh’s neck, over the scratched black leather of her cuirass, the buckle of her belt. “What do you possess that might tempt me?”

Clink of metal. Leather sliding over leather. Tug of belt coming free, pluck of laces coming undone, and Glasya’s legs either side of hers, warm breath on her cheek.

“Seems like you have something in mind,” Niamh manages, voice strangled. Glasya chuckles. Fingers slip into Niamh’s trousers, beneath her smallclothes, and she’s expecting—hoping for, because she’s well and truly beyond fucked—claws, but all she feels are soft fingertips in the nest of dark curls over her sex, and she gasps because it’s been a while since any hand but hers got within a country mile of her clit.

(The last was one of Glasya’s high priestesses in Waterdeep, and yes it was on the altar, where the fuck else would it have been?)

Two fingers venture lower, teasing at the hot wetness already building. Glasya’s full lips curve, and she leans closer so her words whisper against Niamh’s ear. “Seems like you do, too.”

At this point, Niamh would very much like to touch something herself. Those tits, for instance, threatening to spill out of that sinfully tight bodice. Or the hips that curve like a siren’s song into an absolutely impossible ass. But Glasya is not the kind of person one can touch without asking, and Niamh doesn’t have the voice left to do that, so she just sits there and tries to remember how to breathe as Glasya strokes her clit like she has all the time in the world to do whatever she wants with it.

Given where they are, she does.

When Niamh starts to rock into the touch, the hand on the back of her chair is suddenly wrapped around her throat. “Sit still.”

Niamh sits. Glasya kisses her forehead. It burns. “Good girl.”

Tension in her thighs, her abdomen; she can feel how wet she is on Glasya’s fingers, how easily they slide into her—when Glasya deigns to slide them in, that is. She groans.

“Oh, gods…”

“They can’t hear you down here,” Glasya murmurs. “Better find someone else to pray to.”

A single claw flicks Niamh’s clit, and there’s no holding off, there’s only giving in. Her head falls back with a cry, flushed hot with humiliation at how little it took to finish her. Glasya pets her once more, then withdraws her hand, holding her glistening fingers to the light.

“Pretty,” she says.

“Thanks,” Niamh replies, breathless.

“It’s a start.”

Glasya snaps her fingers and Niamh’s chair vanishes. She hits the ground with a thud, but before she has time to even think about complaining, Glasya snaps her fingers again, and she’s on her feet and naked. Instinctively she makes to cover herself, letting out a yelp of surprise. An array of clawed hands appear out of thin air and grab her wrists, yanking her arms behind her back.

“No need to be shy, Niamh. I’ve already seen every inch of your soul,” Glasya says. A smirk curves her lips. “And most of your dreams.”

“Um,” is about all Niamh can manage. Glasya laughs; a soft, girlish sound that belies her nature. She steps close, and even in her heels she’s only just level with Niamh’s eyeline—never mind good things in small packages; wicked ones come in them too.

“I’m willing to give you what you want,” Glasya says, tracing Niamh’s jaw with her still-wet fingers. “But first I want you to pick a number between one and…let’s say ninety-nine.”

Niamh blinks, confused.

“I’m sure I didn’t blow your mind that much already, sweet girl. Pick a number, or go home with nothing.”

There’s a wrong answer here. Devils never ask simple questions. Her mind races, trying to see the angle, find the loophole she needs to slide through to survive, and all she can come up with is that Glasya is Lord of the Sixth, but six is a very small, insignificant number, and if the number is related to her getting more power, she doesn’t want small or insignificant.

“Sixty-six,” she says. Glasya smiles widely.

“Oh, that’s a wonderful choice. Inspired, one might say. A perfectly excellent price.”

“Price?”

A sudden, unbearable pain manifests in Niamh’s thigh. She screams as her flesh burns; fuck, she can smell it cooking, hear the fat popping; there’s smoke drifting up from between her damn legs—!

And then it stops.

Trembling in the grip of the infernal hands, agony and aftermath crashing through her, Niamh, nauseous, dares to look down. A brand sizzles forge-red on the inside of her right thigh, bright against the brown. It’s not a complicated design. Just two numbers: a zero and a one.

“For that power you wanted,” Glasya says. She cups Niamh’s breast, flicking the bar piercing her nipple with the claw of her thumb. “Just sixty-five to go.”

Sixty-five orgasms. She’s talking about sixty-five orgasms—Niamh doesn’t think she’s come that many times in a month before, let alone in one…whatever passes for a day in the Hells. Or wherever it is they really are.

“I don’t know if I can—”

“Oh, not all right now!” Glasya tweaks her piercing, jolting a gasp from her. “We’ll call it debt owed. And you’ve already paid off one sixty-sixth of it, my industrious little pet. Kneel for me, there’s a good girl, and we’ll get started on the rest.”

Niamh does as she’s told. The infernal hands evaporate in puffs of coiling copper smoke the moment her knees hit the plush maroon rug she’s certain wasn’t there a blink ago. Such small comforts her patron is willing to grant her.

She traces the brand with hesitant fingers; it hurts, but in a way that makes her cunt ache. Sixty-six. That’s not that bad—it’s fucking great, actually. Sixty-six orgasms for all the power she wants?

Or all the power Glasya is willing to give her, since she didn’t actually specify what she wanted before she wound up writhing on her patrons fingers. Fuck. How much is she actually going to get out of this? A thimbleful of magic, plus horns and a tail to show how little of herself she owns now?

Whilst she’s having her crisis, Glasya goes over to the wall and conjures some sort of drawer into existence between the full-length mirror and the equally sized portrait of herself, bent over so her head and shoulders are impossibly deep in its depths as she rummages around inside. Her dress is stretched so tight over her ass it’s in danger of ripping apart—gods, her legs are gorgeous.

Glasya straightens up with a pleased sound. “Found it!”

Dangling from her hand is a tangled collection of leather and silk that makes up the harness of what might be the most beautiful strap Niamh’s ever seen. Black with glittering copper veins, ridged all down its length—modelled after some Malbolgian devil? After one of Glasya’s own forms, even? Hell’s Princess can shapeshift the same as every other Archdevil: she only wears the shape of a woman because she enjoys it.

Glasya shimmies her dress up over her hips, pulling a silk tie out of the air to fasten it elegantly out of the way at her waist. Niamh’s eyes are irresistibly drawn to the thick nest of reddish curls between her legs, shot through with metallic strands that fan out over the soft skin of her thighs. Does part of paying off this debt involve those thighs around Niamh’s head? Does she taste like a human girl? Like copper? Like fire, like magic, like the Hells?

“Some other time, perhaps,” Glasya says, as she steps into the harness, which buckles itself eagerly in place. “If you’re a good enough girl.”

“What does that entail?”

“I’ll send you a list.” Glasya points at her feet. “Come pay your respects.”

The strap is warm beneath her lips. Niamh keeps her eyes locked to Glasya as she kisses the head—she doesn’t know what it’s made of, that it pulses like six frantic heartbeats; she doesn’t want to know. She takes it into her mouth, sliding over the ridges as the spike of Glasya’s heel settles over her clit.

“Nice and wide for me,” Glasya says. “All the way, no half-measures.”

It’s a struggle to take it so deep into her throat—this isn’t something she’s practised at—but Glasya’s satisfied purr relaxes all her muscles until the choking feels good, until the gagging stops, until she’s drooling on the infernal strap like she was made for it. Glasya rocks her foot side to side and Niamh whines; in pleasure or pain, she’s not sure. Her hair is too short to get a real fistful of, but Glasya takes one anyway, holding her head down right at the point where she can’t breathe, and grinds her heel harder until Niamh lets out a muffled moan that shifts up into an equally muffled scream when the brand on her leg ignites again. Glasya releases her, pulling free of her mouth with a wet pop. Strings of spit run from the head of the strap to Niamh’s lips. Glasya severs them with a flick of her tail.

“Over the desk,” she orders. With no small effort, Niamh urges her body into obedience, shivering as Glasya runs a hand down her back. “Spread those pretty legs for me.”

Niamh does. Two fingers stoke her clit—she flinches, a throb of hurt and hunger spasming through her—before the head of the strap presses into her still-soaked cunt. Glasya’s claws dig into her hips.

“Let’s see how high we can get that counter tonight,” she says, and drives the strap home.

There’s nothing on the desk to hold on to except the desk. Niamh scrabbles for purchase as Glasya fucks into her over and over; no warm-up, no slow build, just a pace a half-step beyond what she can handle slamming the breath from her body. The ridges drag against her inner walls, the entire length of it several degrees hotter than she is—she’s at the brink before she knows it, and goes toppling over with a cavalcade of curses that don’t make Glasya slow, let alone stop.

This time she’s braced for the pain when the counter ignites; it sizzles with a knife edge of sweetness right down to the bone. Her clit aches, her body pulsing with insatiably hellish arousal, and she makes to try and touch it—because no-one said the orgasms had to be Glasya’s doing—and Glasya grabs her wrist, pinning it to the desk.

“Ah-ah,” she admonishes. “No taking what’s mine.” Her tongue trails a hot stripe along Niamh’s jaw. “That goes for the Material Plane, too. Until you’ve paid off what you owe, this sweet little ass”—her free hand delivers a sharp smack that makes Niamh cry out—“is mine. Not that it wasn’t already.”

“You’re kidding.” Niamh tugs ineffectually at the hold. “I can’t even get off by myself?”

“No.” Glasya kisses her cheek. “And I mean that quite literally. You can try, of course—I do so enjoy your dreams when you’re hungry—but you won’t get anywhere.”

An infernal chastity belt. That’s what she’s been slapped with. Niamh presses her face into the desk and groans. This is what she gets for making deals with devils.

“You should try,” Glasya continues. She releases Niamh’s wrist and tugs her up enough to get her own fingers where Niamh failed to. They circle her swollen clit, teasing. “You should try a lot, actually. Because I’m not going to bring you here or send an Avatar to the Material just because you’re a little needy. You want me, you’d better be desperate. The circumstances had better be dire.” Her fingers move faster, tracing what Niamh is certain are infernal runes. “If you’re calling for me to try to pay off some of this debt, I want to hear you moaning my titles, crying out my name, begging for relief three fingers deep and soaking your sheets.”

“Fuck,” Niamh hisses. She’s close again, rising on a tide of heat that turns her thoughts to steam. “Fuck, Glasya, please—”

“Like that, only better,” Glasya says. “Moan a little louder for me, move those hips—act like you want it.”

“I do.” The sound of the strap working her cunt is absolutely decadent. “I do, I do, I want all of it. The power, the pleasure—all of it.”

A claw scrapes over her clit. “The pain?”

“I want everything!” Her words stutter with moans, thigh blazing as her climax just keeps going, a second ignited by the first; something she’s fantasised about but never experienced before. “I want magic, I want strength, I want them all to see what I can do and…and…”

“And what?” comes the whisper at her ear. Her clit is screaming, too sensitive for any touch, let alone the frantic patterns Glasya’s marking it with.

“And fear me,” Niamh finishes, right before a sixth orgasm slams her heart sideways. Something wrenches loose in her throat as she screams through it, leaving a metallic taste on the back of her tongue. Her legs have turned to water, and she’s glad to be laying on the desk, because otherwise she’d be a puddle on the floor.

“Not love you?” Glasya asks. “Not want you or worship you or praise you?”

“Love fades,” Niamh says weakly, whimpering as the strap withdraws, leaving her bereft. “Want dies. Worship falters. Praise…is just words.”

“Sometimes you surprise me.” Glasya kisses the small of her back, making her shiver, then tugs her upright. “Here I am thinking you’re just a simple girl looking for a little leverage in the world, and then you go and say a thing like that.”

Niamh turns to face her, leaning heavily on the desk, sagging on shaking arms. Sweat shines on Glasya’s face, dripping down her neck, her cheeks flushed dark bronze; the show of exertion is entirely for Niamh’s benefit, and fuck if it doesn’t work as intended. She reaches out to touch her trembling fingers to Glasya’s cheek. “Can I kiss you?”

That grin; mischief and wickedness and seduction all in one. “Not today.” A snap of Glasya’s fingers, and Niamh is clothed again, though not clean—her smallclothes are instantly soaked, a sensation that tangles a knot of shame and desire low in her abdomen. Glasya leans in, eyes ablaze with internal fire.

“We’re going to have a lot of fun together, you and I,” she says, and everything goes dark.

Niamh gasps back to herself sprawled on the floor of her rented room. Warm light spills through the cracks in the curtains, bright enough to make her wince. She rubs a hand over her face with a groan—she’s been gone all night.

Someone raps a jaunty knock on her door. “Miss Niamh, are you up yet?” Mordecai calls, much too loud and far too cheery. The tiefling is a consummate Morning Person—capital letters most definitely necessary—and this morning is no different from any other as far as he’s concerned. Niamh grimaces.

“Almost.”

“You’d better hurry, or you’ll miss a chance for breakfast.”

“Sure.”

Niamh slowly sits herself up as his footsteps skip away down the hall. Gnawing her lip, she tugs her belt loose and squirms out of her trousers. Zero and six, six inches high on the inside of her thigh, glowing as if the branding iron has only just been removed. She runs her fingers over the numbers and a shudder courses through her, chased by the faint whisper of a laugh and the smell of burning flesh.

Her heart thumps. The hellish magic coiled inside her shifts over itself, snakelike. Is it stronger already? Is she stronger? She focuses, and magic flares to life in her hand, an explosion of copper light that nearly blasts a hole in the ceiling before she clenches her fist and cuts it off. Her exhaustion burns away, strength flooding her head to toe, her arcane core threatening to boil over—she could raze the building like this; flatten the town.

Hand still crackling with power, Niamh strips down, cleans herself up, and re-dresses in gear that doesn’t smell like sex and the Nine Hells. Sixty-six orgasms. It seems a fair exchange; far fairer than the demands other devils might make of her. And if that’s the kind of currency her patron is willing to trade in…she smiles to herself as she heads down to join the others in the common room of the inn.

If sixty-six gets her this, what might six hundred provide?