User blog:MockingJester/Sickness of the mind

"Him...I want him." A velvet finger pointed solely at a prisoner interned in a cage of strong, dull iron. Days passed since the advent of the choking violet mists that swept the island.

Its mystic tendrils of formless spice swelled and passed through every crack, every window, every hole. Its formless mass of spicy fragrance tickled every nose it could meet, freezing the bearer in place.

Then came the dark ones, notched in leather and elven forms. Under their dark skins, they came and stole everyone frozen in place. Through the doors, they barged in. Through the windows, they shattered. Through the escape hatches, emergency exits, hidden entrances, nothing was safe, nothing was sacred to those bearing purple hair.

They came for the furthest prisoners of their airborne poison while their sisters of whiter air, numerous, came for the closest ones. With glee on their faces, they dragged the hapless civilians, funneling them on hundreds of cages.

With contempt, however, they watched the violet-haired ones holding their would-be prisoners in bridal carries, the latter, out of consciousness, slowly setting them on their temporary prisons. One of them set her eye on a prisoner like many of her closer sisters in violet did.

Then came the rite of the first, the prized slaves to be plucked. Shouts and strife filled the surrounding cages not towed in darkness, at the heart of the now-empty cities. Knights and captain asked the highest bids or the first draws of which none of the dark elves, perhaps, save for the violet-haired ones, began to fight over.

To then be reprimanded into discipline by their matron, the eldest of their kind was embarrassing. To be admonished the rite to their more distant cousins, one of which was drawn from her kin...

Humiliation turned to confusion as she walked down the stairs of their making. She turned from the prized 'items' of the top and skirted the lower 'goods', stopping at one.

"Him...I want him..."

And the next one did the same. And the next one. And the one after her. They left a matron confused and her coven utterly bamboozled. They left in their separate direction, the meager slave they chose towing behind them. A measly man every time, leaving them the best ones to pick for themselves...and none of them moved, flabbergasted by their unorthodox choices.

None of them spoke a word to their white-haired cousins. Their questions, their voiced surprise, the more unhinged's scalding remarks, all went unanswered as they walked away, disappearing in the distance whilst giving orders to the despondent men they towed behind them, never to be seen again...

---

It was here, in this desert land that she brought her quarry. A scorching land of sand and searing breezes towed inside a venerable manor of hardened sand. Glimmering, crystal clear glass served as the numerous windows. It is surrounded by the presence of sand hot enough to be uncomfortable.

"Your name." Her voice called to the man whose cuff she unbound, leaving his hands free of the strain that buckled them down. It was devoid of the same flavor of hostility the others they left.

It didn't leave any impression on the man. As someone who saw what happened to those who tempted resistance, he just blurted out they did when lashed to docility "My name...is what you wish, mistress..."

"Wrong." A velvet finger bends and cups the recanted man's chin. His stature was already shriveling to the shape of a servant, pure white eyes narrowing as she does. It clutches the tip and lifts his head, forcing a deep look into her snow-white irises.

"To ensure this relationship of ours does not start on the wrong foot, I need to know the full extend of my minion's name. Hence, I am asking for your name, not a regurgitating of what you think I'd want to hear." Looking so close into her piercing, elven eyes, the man noticed the ambient glasses adorning her visage. A violet structure traveled around her head, setting itself as the frame of the glasses that it bears.

Between its presence and the single braid laying on her left shoulder, the dark elf looked like she just came out of a library. Which is saying nothing of how she was speaking.

He answers with urgency "Aaron! Aaron, mistress!"

"Hmm...'Aaron'. Acceptable, if a bit mundane. I expected simplicity from a place devoid of any characteristics. Very well." Still holding Aaron by the chin, the dark elf presses her free hand on her chest "My name is Virág. You will remember it."

"Yes, mistress!" Aaron hurridly nods.

A sigh escapes her purple lips as she lets go of his chin, arms crossed underneath her reasonably large bust. A sight the man turns away from, blind to her eyes wincing slightly "We will work on this sheepish demeanor of yours. For now, I will show you around my manor. Memorize all that you see, it will serve to make your impendent tasks easier to do."

"Yes, mistress!" And he follows. He follows her through the library set in the living room. The place was decorated with a vibrant, golden-colored wood sheltering legions of books, rows reaching several stacks up. The colors of their covers were uniform on each stack, making them easy to differentiate.

Smooth, velvet chairs and sofas adorned the center of the room, surrounding a short rectangular table as polished as the wooden parts of the furniture.

He follows through the many halls decorated in violet banners, each one, featuring a golden chalice. Underneath everyone, a small pillar half the size of a man stands with a chalice idle over them. If Aaron looked into them, he'd see liquid so perfectly still inside. Whatever purpose they had, he didn't know it. All he could do with them was revere in their golden beauty, compounded by four brilliant amethyst beads encrusted into them.

He follows still, more and more, seeing the kitchen, a large room dedicated to culinary arts. An equally expansive bathroom with extended glass panels leading to an outdoor pool. The whole wall and floor work were splendid aquamarine marble tiles, beautifully opposite to the sandstone leading outside of the manor. Several folded piles of cloth idled at the edge of the gothic pillars that spiraled upward to an open ceiling chiseled squarely.

Bedrooms, other rooms, miscellaneous places were the rest that he was shown. His chores were to take care of them among other things. His true calling was to stand ready to her call within the library where she often idles. A book in hand was her main pastime. Aaron was going to make sure she didn't need to move too often to fetch an item of her desire.

Though, that was for later. Right now "You need to rest. I'm sure walking hundreds of miles in a desert has left you tired. You will take a room in the guests' hall and make it your quarters."

"Yes, mistress!"

"Do not sleep too late. I expect you first thing tomorrow. Am I clear?" Virág re-dresses the glasses on her face whilst presented with another 'Yes, mistress!' from the man who already seemed to learn his place here. A side effect of a few hours under the cell of a dark elf, no doubt. She turned and walked away without much more to say, a novel in her hand, a thoughtful expression behind her glasses. Whatever thought she had could wait to tomorrow, where his use could truly begin...

---

First thing tomorrow...Aaron woke up in a beam of light showering him from the window. A sure indication of the morning. He wastes no time picking himself up alongside the pile of new clothing folded not far from his bed. Putting it on revealed a purple, sleek attire that he would see on a butler. White gloves, a buttoned white shirt underneath a tie, and a suit in matching colors. His shoes were nowhere close to the raggedy pair that saw a lot of use from his past years as a courier.

His feet carry him in a sprint through the halls to the library room up to the second floor where the stack of books that envelops the place puts him in awe. Every room he visited here was a venerable, unique place with its atmosphere. This quiet, serene room filled with a very faint scent of burning incense was no exception. It felt very different from the rest, almost like it didn't belong. But then again, which room did, beyond the sand that surrounded them all?

Aaron slowly walks in, a set of unsure glancing left and right, striving not to make any noise. Disturbing the absolute peace this room has on his first day wouldn't put a good impression on the one that essentially made an indentured worker out of him...after dragging him out of a ruined city in chains.

Speaking of which, there she was, flipping a page of a tome, eyes traveling the pages she was reading. Was. They looked at Aaron the moment he took a step in. A slender finger lured him closer in a 'come hitter' way. With earshot of the most gentle whisper that anyone can utter.

"Sit. You will know when you are needed." She demands, prompting the man to take a seat at the opposite in silence. And he stood, waiting, a nervousness plastered over him.

The serene nature of the place, however, seemed intent on chiseling away the anxiousness. Its gentle incense scent inviting deep and soft breaths. The occasional bells quietly shimmering from the wind traveling. The warmth of its presence washing over the room, all seems to loosen the man.

He leans back to the seat, slightly more relaxed than the nervous stiffness he had binding him up to now. His mind wanders the place, guiding his eyes to the murals and structure. How candid it is, an unapologetic coziness where anyone could lose themselves in the ambiance. As he does, slowly letting the scenery take over, inviting him to a more fruitful rest than the scraping by he did yesterday to try and make himself sleep.

Days like this awaited him. Days of morning leisure facing someone who scarcely ever needed anything from him save from the occasional tea pour. The occasional refill of the kettle from the kitchen. Fetching her meal. Fetching her snacks. To then, at noon and beyond, wander the rest of the household, cleaning and maintaining whatever he can.

Every day passed eased him into this new position. The large warrant of panic that pounded in the confines of his mind gradually lessened, facilitating the idea that perhaps, she wasn't so...

---

This day was no different from the rest. Aaron stepped out of his bed, a yawn taking his focus as the dim morning light beamed inside, tickling him into awakening faster. A light step follows and leads his way from his designated room, fully dressed and ready to cater to the whims of the quiet reader.

He silently slips through the many stacks of books that surround the heart of the room where, once again, Virág was, oddly occupied with sewing as opposed to reading.

The small table that was adorned with condiments and a kettle set was higher, wider. Fully garnished for sewing equipment with the kettle and teacup close by.

Aaron stopped midway his pacing to his post, eyes still caught in their wonder 'How does she wake up so early? It feels like she never sleeps.' That thought lingers while he idles, seemingly aided by the vibrant white beaming from her eyes as she looked back at him. They seemed intrigued by the thinking that radiated back in his eyes. They seemed...wanting to ask in their beautiful, pure shade, illuminating his...ohh...

"Oh--oh! Sorry, mistress! I just..." She was staring at him. She was looking at him. Looking at her servant just idling on the side, stalling. He realized this and hurriedly shoved himself where she once pointed, looking away from her interested staring, almost pondering about this sudden bout of shuffling.

He stands on one side of the miniature table-turned-table and waits to be of service. The serenity of the room welcomes him still, offering the same docile sensation of warmth and scent, this time, compounded by the sight of the bespectacled elf in chocolate tan making a tapestry out of lint and yarn.

Minutes pass, firmly in the dim, faint light of the still waking morning before a rattle came to his ear. It snapped him out of this candid sensation washing over him.

"H--huh?" Aaron shakes his head slightly before looking ahead. His mistress, Virág no longer was sewing, her piece halfway done. She no longer leaned on the table, but sat straight up, a hand on a cup. A cup on a saucer.

"I require tea. Pour it for me." She demanded, looking back at his incredulous face, the latter, quickly jolting into action.

"Right! Sorry, mistress!"

"You need only to pour it. As per usual, I've already prepared the concoction to my liking."

"Of course!" He hurriedly grabs the kettle and pours, hands trembling still from his impromptu awakening.

He pours until she lifts a finger away from the cup, a sign for him to stop. With the brew steaming close to her, the dark elf returns to her tome, laying back more deliberately.

Aaron, in his hurry not to be in the scoop of her view, pulls back, his movement, sluggish from his body still waking up from his impromptu semi-sleeping. His hand slips and drops the kettle through a spasm. A spasm from a room that lured him to sleep, or a lucid ambient rest. A pattern that repeated in this quiet, chiming room.

"!!" A mixture of hot water and herbs splashes over the small table as the kettle itself shatters into pieces, the biggest one, slumping over the stained plate it was supposed to go back to.

"No, no, no! I'm sorry, mistress!" Panic spreads in his mind like a wildfire, coercing his hands into a hasty attempt to salvaging the muck up. They snag as many pieces as they can from the plate.

Unfortunately, the numbness that pulled control from his fingers lingered still, making his pick-up clumsy and hasty. They go without caution and gorge themselves on cuts from the surprisingly sharp pieces of what used to be the kettle.

The gloves he wore were the first to go, shredded to ribbons from his promptitude. Red streaks were slowly showing across his palms when he suddenly stopped. He felt the creeping sensation of a glare burning behind him. Close behind him, almost into contact.

Virág stopped the moment she saw him crouch in his usual apologetic manner. Her deathly silence came in close, watching from atop his lower posture, watching the mess he made and...no longer...tried to cobble away.

In a hair's breadth, she was before him, a knee on the now wet carpet they were on. How she managed to step around him without his awareness, he couldn't know.

All he saw was her pristine hand reaching out, a voice of silk warming to his ear. Or, he thinks so. Her lips moved with no sound behind them. Her eyes looked at him with no glimmer behind them, hidden by a...darkness. Aaron's body began to feel uncomfortably hot. Hotness luring him away from the sensation of Virág's hand that reached his, wet with drips of his weeping wounds.

A haze briefly overwhelmed him, pouring from his being, denying him any feeling that was playing. And then, it no longer was, the sympathy he thought he saw, erased.

"You once again impress me with your utter incompetence, you stammering baboon! This callous stupidity of yours has cost me a priceless kettle!"

Pain. Pain was the first thing to return to him. The aching cuts blistering on his hands. The vice grip tightening around his wrist, threatening to snap it in half. The painful torsion in which her grasp forced his arm at, away from the damage he so intently tried to salvage.

"DO you have any idea for how long I've had this porcelain kettle?! For you do break it so casually after only a few days of your slow-witted presence here, sleeping in your duties like you did!"

His eyes ache from the anger distorting Virág's visage, folding its flawless features into imperfections. The gentle image he was cultivating over the first few days was instantly obliterated, replaced by an iron-handed tormentor.

"It seems that I have been too accomodating with you. An obvious, yet tiresome mistake more common than I expected. Ugh..." With teeth-clenched ire, she rises back on her feet, still gripping on Aaron's bent hand, forcing him to follow suit.

"My fault for thinking that you could muster a task this simple..."

"Mistress!" Aaron squeals, still wincing in pain from the way his arm was now pulling him, twisted. Twisted still "Ahh!"

"For your sake, oaf, I suggest you shut your chatterbox. I have no desire to hear the nasal voice of the oaf that can't pour tea without fumbling around."

"B-but, mistress! It was an accident! I just--"

Pain once again worms into his arm, traveling through it like electricity biting into his joint. It coursed through as she pulled and pushed on it, shoving the man aside in annoyance. He stumbles, struggling to get a footing from falling. The ache lingered still in his weeping arm, begging for comfort from his other hand.

Looking back, he saw her figure still leaning towards the mess he made, meticulously picking up the pieces, each one, with a curse under her breath. The occasional glare in his direction, belittling as it was full of condescending scorn somehow hurt him more than the convulsions still in his hand, his arm.

It hurt so much, seeing what looked like a gentle demeanor. His eyes trembled in denial as did the rest of his body. It felt wrong. All of it. Her demeanor, her sudden malice, it didn't fit...it didn't belong. No, surely she wasn't really like this--

The radiation from before returned in an impromptu fashion, culling away his thought in an invisible tide of burning heat, engulfing his body whole. His vision began to blur, the mist-like fold gathering in its perception. The idea of day and night became naught to all-consuming darkness...

---

"H-here?" Aaron's voice temptingly speaks out as he stepped into a courtyard. The metal clanging of weapons deep in their hilts follows him in his every step under the appearance of twin swords made to complement one another.

Another brush of time passed through his eyes since that day, piling hidden and unhidden plight on his back. Insults, shouts, condescendence, all left their lick on the man. Ephemeral, yet oddly permanent. Like it always was, as if the gentle demeanor she occasionally showed was but a mask.

It couldn't be. It surely wasn't. The way she led him here, branding tools of combat on his waist, the soft-like demeanor in which she ostensibly went to do so, it told him that maybe he just imagined things...

"Yes, I believe it is time to properly assert--" her voice blurred out for a second. Spilled out in garbled vowels. Came out...wrong.

He blinks in confusion, unsure of what she said "E...excuse me, mistress? I'm not sure I understood the last part. I'd...I humbly request for repetition."

"I said that 'I believe that it is due time for us to assert your--" The garble spilled out again. He didn't understand a word beyond 'assert'. All he could decipher was the cold, coiling intent behind the incomprehensible words.

His 'heatstroke' came anew, washing him whole, blurring his sight, narrowing it as it did behind a dark fog. Blotted out the surroundings, exacerbated his proximity, the details. Shined a light to his mistress, the only highlight in a world that darkened in his view. He saw her slowly drawing out a hand scythe, heard the rattling of chains that followed it. A golden claw clutching itself to a fist fell to the sandy ground, the stage on which they stood. It looked ostentatious, primed with decoration, each of them, seemingly adding to its lethality.

The chains that bound it to its place were without gold, without shine, only function. A function that was quick to manifest as it whirls into twirls. Virág spoke, but nothing close to a complete sentence came out of her voice. Only the scowling expression on her visage and the repetition of words drenched in increased contempt at every repetition.

'Your weapons--your weapons--your weapons!!!'

No sooner than Aaron pulled out his dual swords, said to be the type to match his style, so she said, that Virág slammed the deceptively heavyweight to her chain besides the man. His reaction was non-existent to the whirling item smashing the sand beside him, erupting it at high velocity in the air.

Panic froze him. Leaping from the sand cloud that was already in its fallout state, the dark elf appeared from the fall, feet in the air, her kama branded in a cutting stroke. Reflected behind her glasses, her snow-white eyes winced in apparent impassivity, looking at him as an enemy and no more.

He wasn't ready for whatever she had in plan for him. He couldn't steady himself, steel himself into any semblance of resolution. No, he crumpled and his hands could hold his weapons no longer. They fell on the soft ground, rendering him utterly at his mistress's mercy, nothing to bat away the scythe and chain darting at him.

He saw it, saw this supposed mercy he fixated on her. The way she would have stopped before even swinging. The hands poised on his cheeks, pulling his fearful visage to hers, looking into his eyes. The faint, understanding smile she would have given him as she picked up his weapons, telling him that soon enough, he would no longer fear anyone doing anything close to it. To slowly grind his posture to polish, his ineptitude to polish.

He thought she would. Instead, he felt a sharp cut traveling his stomach, never seeing the scythe pass through, only its stop at the opposite of where it started.

"Ahhh!" Blue vapors wheeze out of his belly, sapping his strength considerably. Balance became a foreign concept as he fell on his back, fully witness to the large blue gash that was his clothes and belly.

A virulent fear controlled them as it choked him, fumbling every word he wanted to spit out. The sheer shock to feel her remorseless cut, the way she passively followed in his backward fall, mere steps away from him. She looked at him, glaring at someone who couldn't even muster a semblance of defense. A failed assessment as a potential sparring partner. A weak thing, unfit to serve as anything more than a whipping dummy.

He read her words in that stare. His heart skipped a beat feeling them, seeing them parade in her eyes, wholly dissonant to the ideal of his mind, the hopeful mercy he persistently saw.

It was rendered moot as easily as his meager attempt to block the next blow that doesn't even land on him. Another eruption of the sandy stage his back was laying on. He trembled, unprepared to anticipate it.

And the next one, splashing more sand on the right side.

And the next one, this time, exploding behind him.

And the next one...

...and the next one...

...and the next one.

All around him. Fear clutched his heart, gripped his limbs, locked him in place. He never knew when she'd stop, the impassivity turned to glee fueling her wanton abandon in the pseudo-attacks.

Before long, the dust had settled. The blows around him stopped. He was alone once again, his mistress, leaving him here. If he couldn't pretend to fight back in any way, then he'd make an entertaining dummy with his terrified reactions and quivering. This was going to be a daily event, a repetition that slowly his psyche away to porous dust.

Minutes passed and still, Aaron trembled, his body not knowing that the danger long passed. It still suffered the heatstroke that washed his vision in darkness, crowning his expression in dread. Denial still clung to him. This wasn't how she acted, it couldn't be. It couldn't...

---

Days passed. They became weeks and months. The heatstrokes worsened, becoming more vivid, increasingly abundant, and lingering. It began culling into his strength and sapping his focus. His mind became cluttered with the torment that coursed across his body. Every stroke of malice the dark mistress imparted on Aaron marinated in his dreams-turned-nightmare. The ardent dreams that once filled it his debut here became distant, blurring. Almost as if he slowly lost the faith he had in it. Maybe that was only his delusion...

The way she talked...the faint smiles he swore he saw in lingering seconds...the touch he felt here and here...it was all corrupted into what increasingly looked like reality. And still...wandering as he was, a trolley in front of him across the many idle chalices standing beside him...he still clung to those vivid imageries, the gentle face he saw looking at him from the hollow cage he was interned in. Still hoping that it wasn't an illusion still casting its influence on him.

Alas, the days only proved to further lash him with suffering. The times of before became vague and transparent to him, hard to recall. Harder to recall. They were overtaken by the servitude that no longer hid behind the gentle mask she occasionally displayed. Only the cruel face of a taskmaster remained, working him to the bone, grinding them dust and scowling him whenever he fell or failed.

Too much...it was too much. Aaron couldn't. Today was much the same. Cold indifference looking at him as goods. A venomous tongue lashing scathing insults at him for every tiny mistake he couldn't avoid over the load of chores and service he was forced to continually provide. An hour of terror at the mercy of her thrashing chain and sickle beating the sand mere inches away from him as he stood, petrified by the terror of a potential scarring caress.

Days and days of this wheel turning without stopping. But, in the depth of this wanton, unmasked apathy that now was front and center to his mistress' behavior, Aaron still clung to the last shred gentleness that his heatstroke-addled mind hadn't gotten to yet. Though it was hard to remember it. He struggled to keep it at the heart of his mind throughout the day, the last piece of light he had in this deserted darkness.

It was on this particular night that he was stocking up for tomorrow as well as putting his equipment back. The darkness enveloped the desert land, turning the golden scorching landscape of sand into a dim, violet tide.

In the darkness of the halls, he walked, going straight for his room, coincidentally passing by the mistress's room. A sliver of her door was open, offering a small glimpse unto a lavish room full of marble furniture. The counters, the bed frame, the mirror stand, the picture frames, every piece of polished wood present was laced in a gild-like color, giving them a marble-looking texture. It was beautiful to behold, especially when countered by the purple walls lining the walls and ceiling.

The chandelier hovering upward matched the wooden furniture's color as well as other wall-latched candles. But, every one of them paled in comparison to the sight offered to him: her.

Among her bed offset by four wooden pillars lined in the same reflective gold-like shade, the dark elf sat, a one-piece pajama adorning her, looking more like a dress of the night. Its silky fabric did nothing to hide the womanly form it coated, be it the bust that shaped its countless small threads in a perked-up round shape...

...to the seamless figure pouring down the two mountainous pair down to her stomach and belly. Hips and waist. Thighs and legs, the latter, barely hidden by similarly white leggings to the outfit. No part of the attire left anything for Aaron's imagination, parading her womanly form in full display. With the candid light of the night lurking from the window centering at her, the mistress looked like a venerable living portrait.

One that he could watch in real-time, see its subtle movement, see time pass on. Try as he can, Aaron's breathing becomes labored from simply staring, his heart trepidatious and stuttering. Heat courses his cheeks, rendering them flamboyant red. The view was delicious to behold, even from the slivered opening that restricted most of her.

Her posture had her staring down a piece of parchment among others folded back, seemingly unaware of a night peeper. The occasional ruffle of paper being pulled reached Aaron as he crouched down, watching.

She looked like an angel, a peerless splendor rekindling the image she provided him on their first meeting. Like a winged guardian inflamed in grace plucking him from the darkness of his shivering cage away from the rest of her much less merciful ilk. Promises of a better life than what they had in store for him filled his mind, blurred between reality and imagination.

But then, as he was lost this fantasy-induced daydream, it stopped under a sharp scream of his instincts. It blared an alarm in his head, an immediate danger.

Looking ahead after shaking his head, he saw it. Virág no longer was reading through her parchment. No, the glasses adorned still on her reflected scowls in his direction. Directly at him, his crouched posture behind the slightly opened door, catching his widening expression, compelling him to stop breathing.

Aaron blinks...and suddenly, she was gone. No leap, no walk, nothing. His mistress disappeared.

He couldn't help the feeble 'huh?' that escaped him. As well as the shiver creeping up his spine as he felt a pair of eyes looking at him. From behind.

"Ahh! Mistress!" Turning around, Aaron was met with her shadowy form standing in the darkness of the halls, her glasses being the only visible thing. Them and the eyes behind.

His body slumped to the back in a panic, falling on the unlocked door. Light spreads outward as it is flung open, leaving the man to flop on the floor, giving him a full view of her body. It was more gorgeous than he could ever anticipate up close, but the way she was looking at him froze him on the spot.

Then, she moved. Leaned towards him, a hand coming suspiciously close to his face. It...displayed imageries in his head. A hand reaching down to him, only to hover mere inches from the man, waiting. Waiting for his hand to make the journey to hers. Waiting to lift the man who hit his head on the floor. Waiting...with a candid expression on her face. A blurring face distorting by fog and darkness, the reminiscence to his condition.

The worst case of a heatstroke consumed Aaron, however, coursing through his body like a living flame of liquid, simmering every inch of his body alight. This sudden bout of hot-bodied stroke compelled him to close his eyes, turning away in a powerless attempt to make it stop. And it did...

Replaced with the hands he thought would hover close to him...instead clasping on his throat, tightening strongly "!!!"

"Will you look at that? A titillated little vermin croaking in the darkness..." Her voice came out as she lifted the strangled man above the ground. His struggle, coming in the shape of his hands tightening around her wrist, is meaningless. Powerless.

"Tell me, did you really think you'd be able to hide like this? With that revolting panting akin to a starving dog? Sickening..."

"I'm--I'm--gah--sorry! I just--" Talking while barely breathing was a painful experience for Aaron, forced to juggle between.

"Spare me the excuse, domestic. I know what prompted you to slither on my door. I find your drooling in my quarters to be exceptionally disgusting to behold. But, then again, I am not surprised. Not at those gormless eyes so wavering..." Her words are pure bile spat at him. Even the act of clutching his throat seemed to be a sickening touching on her part.

Aaron couldn't speak, all of his efforts bent on just breathing "C-c-can't--ack--ack...can't--"

"..." Tightened once again, he fully could no longer breathe, his face dragged close to hers. She looked at him with absolute revulsion. A hint of malice lingered in her snow dew eyes.

"I suggest you take one good look at me, slave. You will never see me in a figure that arouses your filthy eyes ever again. Enjoy the imagery while you can, I will burn it off your mind soon enough...when or if it does, you'll be more...pleasing to the eye...languishing, obedient, like the canine you acting as. Until then..." She looked at him, choking, gasping, eyes leaking tears of suffering as his powerless state forced them out. They were as hot as boiling water, serving only to add to his pain.

With that said, she hurled him away from her room, back in the darkness. Gasps and coughs became his reality for a minute or two, struggling still with burning tears pooling from his eyes.

"Gah---ack--uuh..." Then, the tears of pain turned to lament. Tears of sorrow. The last shred of idealistic imagery that kept him here was corrupted, lost. He was convinced as he held his sore throat...it was all a delusion. A fantasy she paraded, an illusionary oasis that was no more than the sand that it pretended not to be.

With sobbing and sniffling, Aaron, struggling to get back up in his ragged outfit, limped away, still recovering from the toss. He no longer wanted to remain here, his spirits broken. He was not going to remain here...

---

His sniffling culls away the silence of the darkness, his trembling shape, a disturbance to his surroundings. A bag lays on the bed he was shown to, filled with rudimentary items. Things for the long traveling he was about to subject himself to.

As he closes it, Aaron takes a hand to his throat, still sore. It brims with the memories still, competing between it and the physical pain as to which was the worst to him.

Regardless, feeling the two sensations collide earns a few more drops from his lamenting face, a few glimmering stars leaking from his cheeks. He thought that...maybe she would be as she came to him in that cage. A gnawing feeling in his gut told him, but it lost the fight, no longer able to convince him.

Nor retain him from leaving, which he quietly does while shrouded in a rugged Pancho of his former clothes "She probably won't even notice..."

So he does, stepping out of the palace, a disfranchised look on his face. The desert was cold as it was hot during the day, biting at any shred of exposed skin with chilly teeth. The wind blew, seemingly attempting to push him back right out of the door.

But still, Aaron wanders forth, never looking back. Dunes and bitter coldness awaited him, better not to add sorrow to the mix. He walks and walks with difficulty. The food she fed him with help with his muscles, but the steep, thick sand that tries and swallows his feet in every step still made it a hurdle to continue.

But, he made progress, crossing the first of many dunes of sand. A city shined at the distance, perhaps, with a night's worth of continual walking, he could--

"Ugh..." The worst case of heatstroke clamped at him, almost paralyzing "Ahhhh!!!!! Uhhh!!!"

It almost burned him, pulling at him, keeping him in place, strong enough to drag Aaron on his knees. He couldn't move, not while sundering. Not until it stopped. But, at the same time, it got him worried. With a heatstroke like this, something always happened. Something horrid. Involving her.

But...she wasn't here. She was back in her palace, behind closed doors. Far from maltreating him with words and sticks and stones. Far from being twisted into what she really was, far from him--

"What do you think you're doing?" Her voice sent a chill down his spine. No...no, no, no...can't be, couldn't be. She was back in the palace. She couldn't have--

"I asked you a question, slave!" Aaron's breathing became short and labored. he felt her eyes piercing into his chest, a few meters away, concealed by the dark of the land Nothing but those white, glaring irises were visible...alongside chains rattling in the wind.

His mind flashes back to that horrid chokehold, the spitting insults, and scathing promises, all breaking his psyche...and ran. No more. He wasn't going to endure anymore.

"Slave! Where do you think you're running to?!" Her voice bites into his ear, filled with a venomous tone that only serves to drive his survival instincts, which pulled his feet to run faster.

As he ran, however, feeling her form following close by, the shade of her hand reaching out ahead, Aaron sees the fog that blurred his eyes swell and wax in the distance. The city he saw a while ago, the beacon to his escape to anywhere else...blurred out in darkness.

"No..." Losing the one hope to his release served only to make him run faster, never turning back...only...

"Minion..." Her voice. This time...different. Far from the bile of previous seconds. In the sand, in the wind, it came to his ear, a plea to...stop...

It was drenched in...sorrow? "...please...wait..."

It hurt him. Somehow, hearing what sounded like the anguished plea of a woman losing someone she loved was hurting him. Even more so than the abuse he suffered moments ago...loved?

It felt as if she loved him. It couldn't--no, no that wasn't--it couldn't--

"...I'm sorry...please..." His ear feels the sobbing caress of her defeated voice struggling to reach him. No, no. It wasn't. It isn't. It is a parlor trick, a change of tone to try and get him to stop...

So why? Why did it hurt him so? Why did it hurt him to keep running? Why did it hurt to ignore her? Why did it hurt so? It doesn't matter, Aaron runs still despite it. Despite the heatstroke that now truly threatened to consume him. Burn him. Devour him. Peel his skin off. Turn to ash. Turn him to dust. Turn him to...

---

"Ack!--eh?! Where--where am I..." Aaron no longer dreamed. The heatstroke that threatened to consume him seconds ago dissipated in a sudden burst. As if he was in a dream.

"Ugh...more like a nightmare..." he mutters to himself, gradually taking awareness of his surroundings. The hovering chandelier was the very first thing his decreasingly blurry eyes noted, idle and quiet, devoid of its blue flames that lit the darkened atmosphere of the night. An indication that morning was currently here.

"Uhh..." He struggles to sit up on the wolven sea of violet sheets that surrounded him in themselves, falling to his lap as he did so. The heat that wormed itself as his fever was also no longer present, but instead, locked in a suit of armor on his left. It was a full onyx set, featuring orange edges running across it and the front of its mask. It was burning fervently with an orange flame corrupted with hints of sickly purple on the fire's aura.

The purple shade on the fire's edges looked like a prisoner in agony trying to escape the onyx prison, lashing and dancing as it was, never able to unbind itself from the armor that, while idle, had the posture of a man cradling his chest...where the entirety of the fire was languishing. It was almost as if it sought to keep the corruption from taking over Aaron again.

He can't help but notice ethereal chains running across the flame of orange and sickly purple, all sprouted from the suit's hands "This...thing? I...it feels familiar...but I don't recall summoning anything like that."

"You didn't." A very familiar voice caressed his ears from the other side. Facing his armor and him was his mistress...his wife. Virág. Dressed in her casual outfit, a kimono that hides her hands, likely covered in whitened sock-like gloves reaching to her palms. However, the way she was sitting, they were very much visible, one finger among them, proudly adorned with a silver, flawless loop around it. Pure silver.

"I have brought it here as per my mother's instructions" she continues, displaying the shriveling flame corrupted by the sickly purple lashing at its edge. Thorny chains reacted accordingly, batting its most stretching edges away before wrapping around it, wearing it down through a war of attrition.

"What? You've---" Confusion still reeled at Aaron, who still struggled to move reality from fiction. The face she was showing was one of a spouse half-worried, half-relieved. It was nothing like the nightmare he experienced a moment ago. Was it real? The heatstroke that still pulsed its vestiges made him doubt...

"??!" Aaron feels a hand posed on his forehead...and sees her face from much closer. Close enough to feel her elven features peeking as subtly as they are blatant. They usher him in a blush that feels...familiar. A close intimacy, small like this. Like it happened countless times before. Impossible--

"Hmm..." Her tone changes subtly, mostly unsatisfied. With a radical shift, Virág leaped on the bed, deliberately straddling Aaron, the sheer shock of the act pushing him back in the folds of the bed.

Not dissuaded by this, she leans and lays on the man, the lower folds of her kimono pulling up to her waist, presenting white leggings reaching up to her thighs, leaving them, and her smooth, chocolate rump to be almost nude. Only a silky white panty disavowed this path.

She leans deep into Aaron, a hand reaching behind his head and the other, on his chest...alongside her buxom bust squeezing into his. She was making no effort to have any sort of personal space, unlike the way she acted in the dream-turned-nightmare. Or was this just a prelude to another bout of intense heatstroke, sure to pervert this view?

Locked in place, Aaron had no say to the dark elf gently pushing her forehead against his, caring nothing for the amount of sweat that was still glistening it, blemishing her flawless features. Long she stayed like this, measuring the hotness of his cranium before removing herself from him. In a way.

Her surprisingly light body was still straddling him, hands fully posed on his sleep-wrought outfit. One of hers, the one bearing the silver ring, entwined itself with his correspondent, also wearing a loop of pure silver. They cling as they joined under her pensive expression "My scintillating spouse still has this wretched ailment to endure, I see...how vexatious."

She speaks with bile, but...not at Aaron. No, judging by the glare she was showering the tainted fire withering in his armor's arms, it looked like to be the target of her ire. A smile, however, came to her lips as she looked back at him "Do not worry, my beloved minion, it shan't be long before you recover."

"Recover? But, you---you were--no, no, no...that can't be--you were--" Confusion still latched at his tongue and mind. He was convinced that it was only a matter of time before she'd turn from this increasingly intimate woman who treated him like a spouse. Like they were married. The bands didn't tick him off...

...but the sudden, sweetened kiss she planted, taking advantage of his confusion, did. It was no quick smooch, but an elongated exchange. The smoothness of her lips locked with his, the sweet flavor they conveyed, and the faint hint of spice of her breath that tickled his tastebud, all of it drowned him in the familiarity that pounded in his head.

Everything thought he deemed corrupted returned in force to him. Different. That first incident when his sleepy lapse cost him her kettle. She did nothing close to hurl him away in a tempest of disgrace. Clear as day, he remembered 'minion, your hands...' as she kneeled, cupping his wounded palms hastily trying to salvage the shattered stewpot, dropping its pieces away. Carrying him away from the library room to the infirmary, the room populated by medical goods in the basement...

Or the first time he was compelled to hold weapons against her, months after. The first clash of theirs, intended to grind him as a sparring partner. When he dropped his weapons, fazed by his combat ineptitude. The weight in the shape of the claw that pounced near him, the sand that erupted close as she leaped close. Watching him squirm under her lashing frustration was never a reality. No...she clutched him up, his weapons back. 'Remember this feeling, my minion. This paralyzing fear. This powerlessness. I will take it away from you. Make you my adjuvant. You tremble like this no longer once I am done.' These were her words as she bid him try again.

And again.

And again.

Day after day.

Week after week.

Month after month.

Each time, he lasted a bit longer. Each time, he reached a bit further. Each time, he became a bit stronger. Until he could strike back, movements as gracious as hers, endowed in fire as she was in poison.

Or even that shattering event, the one that left him in a plight, running away in the cold sands of the night, never looking back. When he peeked through a door suspiciously opened in a sliver, lights pouring out just enough to stand out in the dark halls.

When she proclaimed that she would never accept a meager, worthless slave like him looking at her 'assets'. That he was nothing but a domestic, a worm for her to lash and task...until she needed him no more...

It faded away, melted down under the more...steamy aroma that lured the authenticity back in his mind the same way Virág lured him into her bedroom, a visible allure in her bespectacled eyes. Proclaiming, in his hypnotizingly fascinated eyes that he was going to 'belong to her in a way only a woman can do so'. To then a few weeks later, officialize their union with the very bands that dot their fingers...

He remembers it all from this simple, passion-filled kiss that rotted the creeping vestiges of the ailment that made him doublethink. Aaron's eyes widened as he realized that his mistress had also become his wife. Clear as day, splendid as a portrait "Virág? Virág?!"

"Ahh, excellent...~ A trail of saliva knitted their parted lips still, her breathing labored, yet content "...I'd recognize that polished, yet coarse tone anywhere. You are duly back from the abyss of this vile little predicament.~

"Came back?...oh..." He looks again at his armor, the last shred of this...ailment now crushed between the shackled palms of his armor in a guttural scream, an inhuman death knell of something that never was meant to be.

All that remained was the natural supernatural magical flame that douses his armor, acting as an additional layer of mystical protection. Still surprising to Aaron, feeling like he just came out of a year-long coma "...what happened?"

"Well, it turns out that you are among the few who managed to become afflicted with the 'Ürek Elmék', or the 'Vacant Memory' syndrome."

"A...the what?"

"You are confused. Your tone says as much. That is understandable considering the rarity of this ailment. In simple words..." Virág dresses upward, straddling the man once again, hands on his belly hidden by sheets and top "You might have absorbed a bit too much of my distant cousins' handiwork."

People who deal with dark elves from their cages can become fearful, distraught. So traumatized, either by the ordeal or the way the more typical dark elf act with their raid's prisoners that they recede in their mind, acting as nothing more than fear-addled mannequins that only move under an order. A partly, pitiful condition that set many monstrous hearts in despair, the hope to connect with someone else, lost to the lifeless man that stood before them.

Aaron was the best 'tool', a word that she used very, very loosely, to correct course that trauma, absorbing the traces of it from their psyches and let the monsters nurture their new husbands' recovery. It is a common thing among the lilac-haired dark elves do. Very effective as stripping a man of the crippling traumatic ordeal. Alas...

"...the men we had to treat had been extra horribly handled. More so than I thought, now I that see how you've been bed-stricken. As thus, I fear that the backlash was just enough to have traces of their memories absorb into you, somehow escaping what should have been a complete eradication of that filthy aura. Merging into you, it paraded as your 'true memories' while snuffing out your original ones. Because your body knew better than it, however, it conflicted with it, leaving you confined to our bed."

Her eyes turn to sorrow, mild, but, in his honed senses, Aaron saw the bluntness of the sadness pooling from her usually perfect features "I heard you whimper in your sleep. The ways I supposedly treated you, the abuse I inflicted on my beloved henchman...it...hurt to hear your sobbing as you did...trying to escape..."

"I...I'm sorry...I didn't..."

"No, you didn't. This isn't your fault, my sweet. Never was. Don't apologize on behalf of that filthy thing that bled into you." Pure bile escaped her lips on the last word. It was cold as steel.

"Ohh, right...how long?"

"A day and a half. It was fortunate that I found you when you were collapsing on the way back from your clean-up duties in the outside yard. Mother told me that having your armor nearby would act as a purifier to you as you did to them. A sight I found rather ironic considering your usual fortitude."

"Right..." He looks back to his suit, a bit peeved to have been caught so earnestly under.

Only to feel a hand gently reach for his cheek, pivoting his face back to the gentle, endearing smile of his wife as she grazed the cheekbone with her fingers "Oh, there is nothing to be ashamed of. The ailment isn't something one prepares for. Not when it falters and withers as easily as it may have somehow slipped through your guards. Besides...it never happens twice."

"Well...I suppose. Wasted day, though. I'm sorry."

"Hmpf, you need not worry about that, my minion. This palace of ours will crumble with one day's worth of dust--and no..." Virág feels her spouse stirring under and firmly locks herself over his hips. As sick as he had been, his immense strength had yet to recover properly.

"...you will not 'go back to work' as you think you can, mister. You are a sick individual who had to contend with a rare illness."

"B-but--I'm fine now! I truly am!" Aaron did not want to have another day bound on the bed, not with the many things Virág taught him. The tapestry, especially, a family affair that she trained him in to be her second hand in the manufacture. Beautiful curtains and effigies of seemingly unnatural origins left their hands fetching exorbitant prices among monster nobility, the sort that he slowly learned to acclimate to.

He wanted to return to this, help her as per the reason of his long-wrought presence to this desert palace. But, he was also still recovering. Still slagged in yesterday's sweat, exhausted and unfit for the delicate nature of sewing.

"No, you are not. That you tremble still in subtle ways tells me otherwise. Besides, my mother has told me that a day beyond the affliction is to be used as rest and recovery. That is what you will indulge in and I will remain nearby. Think of it as a...reversal for today."

"But I--

"Ahh, I see you still are reluctant about this. Mother told me that you might be dissonant to the idea of 'taking a load off'. Father apparently has had the same discordant behavior a long time ago when it happened to him. Fortunately, I have...something to remedy this..."

Moving her hands away from Aaron's sheet-muffled chest, Virág joins them in a hand sign, two fingers entwined protruding upward while the rest bundled around them. A regal tone spills from her lips "Ninja arts: Vixen Craving."

Briefly, her eyes light up, an influx of purple lighting coursing through them before traveling down her body. Down to below her belly, that sweetly feminine spot, claimed countless times by the man it was straddling.

"Mistress, what are you doing?" Aaron asks, noticing the glow going beyond her clothes. A brilliant blue mark begins to shimmer and ink on that spot, culling away the perfect brown tide as smooth as the silk she works on.

"What are you doing?!" he asks again, a bit of panic in his voice as Virág moved her hand down, pulling her priceless, delicate panty to the side. It was as splendid as the first time he saw it, felt it, tasted it as it once clung to his member while he took her purity long ago. Every moment he saw her forbidden fruit in the bare, a craving took over him, teased by its looming presence, teased by the woman exposing it as she bid him come closer, longing for companionship.

Only here, his mind was elsewhere, begging to play catch up, a thing she wasn't going to allow him to. Not with the insignia of what looked like a vessel shaped like her muliebrity down under. A vessel thirstily gulping down a stream, hoping to fill itself with it. The background of the insignia was twisted and distorted, a firm symbol of where it once hailed, without its former lethal endings.

"Mistress--" Aaron's words die in his throat as the sash holding her kimono in place was unfasted just enough to let her breasts spill out, emphasized by the still clinging Zipanguese cloth.

Her glasses were on the side as suddenly as his sheets...and pants were gone. He was as bare down under as she was. And her hand clutching his stiff member did not help.

"My beloved...~ she speaks, a tone full of blissful love contrasting the eerie grin of a predatory creature plastered on her face. Her flawless features were not distorted by it, ironically making the expression more uncanny to him.

"...I will not allow you to try and service my domain only to collapse because you have not retained enough rest. This will make sure that you fully absorb and appreciate a day spent in leisure...even if movement becomes impossible for the majority of it.~

"Wha-what?! Mistress, I think--" And again, his words keel over in his throat as a soft, but firm tug on his 'tool' snuffs them out.

"Aha...you know how bad it is for a minion to backtalk his mistress like this, do you not, dear? This will remind you...~ A hot, spicy breath flees her lips as she locks them with his perpetually postponed voice. He was not going to offer any conflicting idea, not after the dark elf was done draining her husband of the ability to do so.

Not while sitting close to him, immersed in the role he often played as her butler, her fetcher, armed with nothing more than a book and an open ear for a tired man's mild requests. It is nice to treat another once in a while...