twisted little game

The geas burns beneath his sternum. Rancid magic, rotten little claws digging into the muscle of his heart—in the dead of night, staring at the ceiling, he can hear that accursed name echoing inside his heartbeat: Vizaeth, Vizaeth, Vizaeth fucking Thaezyr.

He’s tried to get rid of it. Oh, how he’s tried—hours of reading, scouring the deepest recesses of Sorcere’s libraries, creeping about like some common criminal in the fouler parts of the city in search of someone, something, anything that will rid him of this infection.

Pharaun rubs at his chest, the habit already tedious. None of his efforts have yet turned up a way to untangle the mangled skein of magic encasing his heart like Lolth’s own webs, so he must perforce find other ways to compensate his suffering. Particularly after the rat decided to blind and then rape him. That little stunt he did not, ironically, see coming. Up until then, even with the geas, he’d thought Vizaeth still squarely under his thumb. The boy was so obsessed, so devoted—charmingly, naively devoted, the perfect slave and scapegoat—that Pharaun never thought he’d grow an actual spine.

The influence of the Dyrr apprentice and his friends, no doubt. A touch of power rubbing off, making him think he can just get away with things, the way real people can. Well. Geas or not, it’s about time Vizaeth was reminded of his place in the natural order.

“After you, my dear,” Pharaun says, gesturing through the tavern door, holding it open with as light a touch as possible. It, like everything else in this part of Eastmyr, is covered in a thin layer of filth. His skin grew grimy the moment they stepped onto the street at whose end this establishment lies—hard to believe anyone lives here voluntarily when the only thing it has going for it is that it’s not the Braeryn.

Vizaeth casts a nervous smile at him, a light in his eyes that turns Pharaun’s stomach. He’s painted them the way Pharaun painted his own yesterday, shadowed red and shimmering, the shade matched to the ruby pins in his painstakingly imitated, imperfectly executed braids. Some of those pins, Pharaun knows, were stolen from his dresser.

He steps after Vizaeth into the tavern. Immediately, the stench of stale sweat and old beer assaults his nose, and he very bravely keeps from grimacing—without Ryld to take care of any unduly offended riff-raff, he’d rather not start any unintentional fights.

(Ryld would not be impressed by his plans for tonight, which is why he didn’t mention them. His dear companion is no more a fan of Vizaeth than Pharaun is, but his sensibilities can run a touch tender at times.)

“Where should we sit?” Vizaeth asks, his voice a near-whisper.

“Up at the bar for now.”

Eyes follow them as they cross the room, most of which are fixed on Vizaeth. Pharaun told him to dress nicely, and the boy has outdone himself. Where he got such spectacular robes Pharaun neither knows nor cares, but down here, among the drunk and the destitute, they’re a glorious beacon of unbelonging. White and red, rubies—or more likely paste fakes—like beads of blood drip from his throat and from the edges of several elaborate cut-outs, rendering him a walking wound. So much skin is on display through one slit or another, it’s a wonder he wasn’t snatched away to some terrible fate on the walk here.

Not to worry. He’ll meet a terribly entertaining fate soon enough.

Vizaeth hops up onto a barstool, perching his narrow feet on the crossbar. Pharaun leans next to him, holding his gaze with a deliberation that makes his grey cheeks darken. It was disgustingly easy to convince him to come. That all was forgiven, that their love affair—love affair, Lolth’s distended abdomen, he could vomit—is a precious thing he wishes to nurture.

“Allow me to buy you a drink,” Pharaun says, and Vizaeth fairly squirms in place. He emotes much too openly around the object of his desire, forgets every lesson his Matron ought to have beaten into him about decorum and subtlety and appropriate male behaviour.

“Thank you,” he gushes, when the bartender deposits a surly glass of what is absolutely not their finest wine in front of him. This place doesn’t have a concept of ‘finest’. Only ‘cheapest’ and ‘most potent’.

“You’re very welcome,” Pharaun purrs, and Vizaeth blushes darker, takes his first sip, and thus the night begins.

It’s simple enough to distract him through the first three drinks. A few questions about his favoured subject and he’s off and away, rambling with unattractive enthusiasm about necromancy and Thayan death rites and other such worthless nonsense. Already he’s starting to slur his words. Hardly surprising; the boy is half-starved, very nearly one of his beloved undead. There’s nothing to absorb the alcohol except his pitiful excuse for a brain.

The completion of his fourth glass—beer this time, mixing drinks to maximise impact—lends him a hesitant boldness. He sets a hand on Pharaun’s knee. “I want to kiss you.”

“Do you now?” Skin crawling, Pharaun leans in, as if nearness is something he actively wants. “And what would you do for a kiss?”

Confusion clouds Vizaeth’s eyes. “What?”

“What would you do for a kiss?” Pharaun repeats, enunciating clearly. Vizaeth wets his lips. Swallows.

“You know I’d do anything for you. The same as you’d do for me.”

“True,” Pharaun lies, tapping his chin as if in thought. He casts his gaze around the room, making a show of searching. His eyes land on the table in the back corner, locking with those of the less-than-savoury individual he made contact with several days ago. The man nods. Pharaun lifts his chin in acknowledgement, then turns to Vizaeth.

“How about this?” he says. “You take a message to my friends over there”—he gestures at the table—“and when you’re done, I’ll give you a kiss. Sound fair?”

“Alright,” Vizaeth agrees, without even looking at where Pharaun’s sending him. There are these furry beasts called dogs up on the surface; loyal, trainable, abusable creatures. When they form an attachment to their master, they look at him as Vizaeth is looking at Pharaun now, all trust and hope and obedient enthusiasm, with the expectation of a treat setting their tail wagging. Vizaeth has no tail, but doubtless his cock is twitching at the thought of Pharaun kissing him in front of all these people. Claimed publicly—for certain values of public, anyway—by a Mizzrym. What a perfect blessing he must think it.

Pharaun chucks his chin. “Off you go, then.”

“What about the message?”

“Clever thing, I almost forgot. Here.” He pulls a folded note from his pocket and tucks it into Vizaeth’s hand. “No peeking. It’s a private message. Peek, and I won’t kiss you. Understand?”

Vizaeth nods. He hops off the barstool, a touch unsteady already—though that’s as likely to be his nature as the nurture of the drinks Pharaun’s fed him—and scurries off across the tavern. In the gloom, in all that skin-baring white and red, he’s just asking for trouble.

A good thing, then, that Pharaun’s message will ensure he finds it.

The table in the back corner is one to which the bartender is paid to turn a mostly blind eye. A long-standing arrangement, well-known to the kind of folk who frequent this place. Sadly, violence is not a part of said arrangement. Or at least not the kind of violence one enjoys at a gladiator pit or an overexcited temple.

The kind that is permitted is the kind Vizaeth, in his infinite foolishness, decided to inflict on Pharaun not long enough ago. Pharaun claims Vizaeth’s stool for himself, trying not to look too excited. It’s hard. He paid for the show; he’s eager for it to begin.

Vizaeth stops at the table, the slant of his shoulders already betraying his nerves at facing such a group. Nerves and distaste—for such a low-born boy, he thinks very little of those closest to his station. He holds out the note, and Pharaun’s contact—Imdar, his name is—takes it as if he doesn’t already know what’s written on it. Opens it. Makes a show of reading it. Passes it around to the four friends he’s brought with him—they’d agreed on three, and Pharaun hopes he won’t be expecting extra payment for the addition. Negotiating after the fact is in very poor taste.

Thinking his duty is done, Vizaeth starts to step away, but Imdar catches him by the wrist. A brief struggle ensues, during which a ripple of unstable Weave tells Pharaun that Vizaeth is trying to cast something. A subtle, elegant gesture cuts short the attempt, and a moment later Vizaeth is in Imdar’s lap, a thick arm around his waist to keep him in place.

“Stay’n have a drink, ssin’urn,” Imdar says. His compatriots concur, sliding offerings across the table. Vizaeth’s refusal is drowned in a deluge of dark beer—Imdar holds his chin, keeping his mouth open as his friend empties an entire glass into it. The gagging bob of his throat sparks a delighted burst of satisfaction in Pharaun’s chest. He sips his own awful wine, wishing he’d thought to bring a bottle from his personal stash; a decent vintage would make this tableau he’s crafted all the more enjoyable to watch.

The next few minutes see Vizaeth passed from lap to lap, with drink after drink foisted upon him. None of his squirming does him any good—Imdar and his friends have been paid too well to let him slip free. Hands slide inside the cut-outs in his robes, beneath the high slits, groping at his legs, his chest, his waist. He might be scarred and underfed, but he’s a tender morsel nonetheless. A sweet treat, if you don’t know, as Pharaun knows, the rot that lies beneath.

He casts a look of glassy-eyed distress in Pharaun’s direction, his meticulously copied make-up starting to smear. Pharaun flicks his fingers in a cheery wave and leans more comfortably against the bar as one of Imdar’s friends takes Vizaeth’s jaw and pulls him into a kiss. Vizaeth hits at his chest, his small fists clumsy and ineffective. This act of defiance delights the group, who laugh and lay hands on every part of him they can reach.

Pharaun’s heart burns. The geas doesn’t like this, but it can’t stop it. He isn’t doing anything to the object of revulsion he’s unwillingly bound to. He rubs at his chest, lifts his glass, finds it empty, and decides to indulge in vice and order another.

“No, stop’t…” slurs over from the table, where Vizaeth is rebelling against his temporary owner’s desire to put him under it. “Master M’zzim will—”

“Master Mizzrym will be very put out if we don’t follow his orders,” Imdar says. “Stay down now, there’s a good boy.”

Oh, and isn’t that a sight to savour: Vizaeth on his knees, robes rucked and rumpled, too drunk to escape the lazy leg hooked around his back. Imdar tugs open the laces of his trousers and takes out his cock, letting the fat head fall against Vizaeth’s lips, and it’s not arousal Pharaun feels, watching him force his way into Vizaeth’s throat—it’s vindication. For every minute he spent scrubbing the taste of Vizaeth’s cock from his mouth, Vizaeth will endure twice that at the mercy of these hired slobs.

Beneath the chatter of the tavern, Pharaun’s keen ears can pick out the gagging, the noises of complaint; can hear with exquisite clarity the gasp and sucking sob as Imdar pulls Vizaeth off his cock so he can slap the slick shaft on each flushed cheek before shoving it back in.

A short while later, Vizaeth is sitting sprawled on inturned knees with a look of utmost confusion above the cum dribbling from his mouth. Imdar rises, swapping places with one of his friends, whose startlingly large cock is already out and ready. Vizaeth snaps his teeth at it but, intoxicated and uncoordinated, it looks like he succeeds in biting only his own tongue. Imdar’s well-endowed friend pats his head.

“Feral creature, aren’t you? Don’t worry, we’ll tame you.”

And so it goes. Vizaeth splutters through another load deposited at the back of his throat, still choking on it as the next of Imdar’s companions takes his turn. A nervous bar-runner comes over twice with more drinks for the group, valiantly not noticing the mouth being fucked raw not two feet from him. Every time Vizaeth hits at a knee or scratches at a thigh, someone bats his hands aside, or gives his hair a yank.

“You need to relax,” Imdar says, as the fifth member of their group expels himself with a satisfied groan, little bubbles of white spilling from the corners of Vizaeth’s mouth around his cock. Imdar takes up one of the freshly filled glasses and reaches under the table with it.

“Here,” he says, replacing the spent cock with the lip of the glass. “Have another. On us.”

Vizaeth hiccups and chokes the beer down, trying to gain his freedom once more, scrabbling at the floor, trying to—oh, Lolth’s most perfect eyes, he’s trying to crawl away. Pharaun chuckles as Imdar catches him by the hair and hauls him back under the table. His cock is hanging out, ready for another go-round by the look of it, as are at least two of his friends, given the way they’re not-so-subtly stroking one another beneath the table. Wonderfully virile, this group. Pharaun is pleased at that; he does so hate to waste money on unsatisfying performances.

The second act sees them paint Vizaeth’s face rather than fill his gullet. Imdar leaves him sticky from eyebrows to chin; the well-endowed fellow leaves his mark over neck and chest, and the third of the group is astonishingly potent, thick streams of seed spraying into Vizaeth’s hair and all over his lovely robes. The other two add their own contributions simultaneously, nearly blinding him as they finish at point-blank range. Cum splatters the bared sections of Vizaeth’s skin, and his hair is out of its braids, strands dangling in damp clumps either side of his face. His make-up has collapsed into parody, all streaks and wet smears, the only part of his cheeks not glazed with cum the dark-edged tracks of tears.

It’s all Pharaun can do not to applaud the masterpiece.

Someone taps his shoulder.

“Yes?” he says, offering the bartender his most charming smile.

“That’s enough for them,” the bartender says. “They’re making a mess.”

“As they were paid to.”

“And you didn’t pay me or mine to clean it up. Coin, or they’re done.”

Pharaun sighs heavily. “Very well.”

He strolls over to the table, where the group are finishing what remains of the drinks they currently have and laughing amongst themselves. Imdar has Vizaeth back in his lap, rubbing their collective handiwork into his lips with a thick thumb.

“Ah, don’t tell me the fun’s over already,” he says, as Pharaun approaches. His cock, half-hard again, juts up between Vizaeth’s thighs. He bucks his hips jovially, rubbing against the visible tent in the front of Vizaeth’s robes. “He’s about ready for something more than a mouthful, I reckon.”

“And perhaps on another night you shall enjoy such dubious delights as the rest of him can provide,” Pharaun says. There’s a general grumble and some muttered complaints, but Vizaeth is at length pushed to his feet, where he staggers against the table. He reeks of sex and beer and sweat, his pupils huge and shining. They lock onto Pharaun with near-audible desperation.

“My kiss?” he asks, wracked and ragged and like a child on the verge of realising that saying I want does not imply I get. Pharaun smiles down at him.

“Of course.”

He takes a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes a space clean on Vizaeth’s forehead, and bestows upon it a brief, dry peck of lips. The way all the hope just drains from Vizaeth’s body is absolutely delectable. Pharaun lets the feeling sink in, suffusing his much-abused soul, then puts a hand to the air above the small of Vizaeth’s back. “We’d best be getting back, my love,” he says, letting the word wrap itself in subtle venom, the lie of it sweet on his tongue. “I’ve a great deal to do in the morning.”

Vizaeth shuffles ahead of him, wrapping his bony arms around himself as if their meagre protection will hide what’s become of him. The image of him stumbling back to his room in Sorcere like this, past who knows how many other apprentices, fills Pharaun with a near-religious glee. They carve whore and variations thereupon into his door with clockwork regularity; it’s only fair to give them the pleasure of seeing exactly that.

As they step out onto the dark street, Pharaun rubs once more at his chest, at the phantom feel of scarred letters beneath his fingers.

He might not have found a way to break the geas yet, but he can devise a thousand ways around it until he does.