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ashintheairlikesnow · 8 months

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The Heretic's Chosen, Chapter Four

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |

CW: Aftermath of noncon/dubcon, nonsexual nudity (or... post-sexual nudity?), mentioned bruises, creepy whumper, intimate whumper

Present day

“You don’t believe in Dromada.” Grigori keeps his gaze firmly off to one side, refusing to grant the bastard the privilege of eye contact. Instead, he stares through the barred window at the beautiful day outside.

Bohli only laughs, straddling Grigori’s hips as he reaches over him to untie his hands from the intricately carved headboard, one by one, before pulling them down to tie them together. Why Bohli bothers, Grigori will never know - it’s not like he can go anywhere, like he could escape this. Put that damn pendant back on and Grigori will look like he’s in love if he’s told to. He’ll feel like he’s in love, and be utterly unable to understand he isn’t.

“No,” Bohli says, voice low and heavy, and Grigori’s mind may shudder at the idea that Bohli will want him again so soon, but his body responds differently. “Or rather… yes, but not the way you think.”

He pulls away, leaving Grigori to shiver in the sudden chill when Bohli’s too-warm body is gone. He sits up, watching Bohli dress in his black leathers while Grigori can only sit there naked, picking at the knots on his wrist without success. “What’s that meant to mean?”

“Well, I believe in Dromada, but I don’t believe in any such thing as your silly human goddess,” Bohli responds easily. His leather slide on like a second skin, and as soon as he has them, Grigori can hardly remember what he looks like without clothing - only a sense of skin absolutely covered with runic tattoos in the elven tongue that he refuses to explain or elaborate on. “Those are two different things, Grigori.”

Bohli is a little flushed from his exertions, his hair a wild mess atop his head, but he doesn’t even bother to try and comb it down. He has a feral look to him, with his narrow chin and hard jaw and sharp teeth, that isn’t attractive, not in the slightest, no matter what Grigori’s immensely traitorous body thinks.

“No, they’re not,” Grigori says. Before he can finally work one knot open and free himself, Bohli is back in front of him, pulling him to his feet on shaky legs. His hips hurt, his lower back aching in a soft way that might have been sweet, if any of this was what he wanted.

Isn’t it, though, by now? He could be fighting harder than this.

But he doesn’t.

As days pass, he fails to see the point in trying. At least his mind is wiped clean, for a few perfect minutes, each time Bohli overcomes his resistance. At least he has peace, briefly, before all his self-loathing rises again.

“Hm?” Bohli blinks, pulling Grigori’s knuckles to his lips, giving each one a gentle kiss that has Grigori’s fingers twitching in an urge to throw a punch that he knows damn well won’t land, just to say he did it. Just to keep fighting. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Dromada is the human goddess of forgiveness,” Grigori says, slowly, frowning and jerking his hands back from Bohli’s grip. The half-elf… man… whatever he is, laughs and ties a new rope to the short bit of slack between Grigori’s wrists, backing up while jerking on the makeshift leash to force Grigori to stumble forward, naked and sweaty and marked from Bohli’s attentions, with lips still red and thighs still shaking. “Wait, what-... what are you doing-”

“Taking you for a walk,” Bohli says cheerfully, continuing backwards to the door, yanking Grigori into the hallway even as he starts trying to drag his feet.

As lean as he looks, though, Bohli has inhuman strength, and no amount of struggle keeps Grigori within the relative safety of his room.

No, his feet stumble onto the thick, heavy rug that runs the length of the hallway, and his face flushes a deep dark red as he sees two of the bandit gang turn to look before they burst into laughter and murmur to each other.

Bohli keeps him moving, away and not towards the two who still direct their laughter at Grigori’s back.

Grigori’s heart pounds in his chest, he’s dizzy from rage and humiliation as they pass bandits in ones and twos, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door of this ramshackle home for evil out into the sunshine. Every single bandit laughs at him - he knows all their darkest sins, they come to confession regularly whenever Bohli commands it, and they don’t lie. They want him to know the depravations they pursue, they want him to see the wicked natures of their hearts.

He knows the worst things they have ever done, and yet here, they laugh at him - and he can do nothing. As far as they're all concerned, he is just Bohli's bedtoy and prisoner, here to amuse, here to be ground under their feet, here to give Bohli his basest desires to play with, a holy man to turn into profane perversion.

Not that he feels holy any longer.

Please, he prays, but Dromada doesn’t listen. Maybe She can’t hear him in the Kaila, maybe the woods are beyond Her ability to reach. Maybe that’s why mankind stays away from the darkness here, the trees older than time, the first forest to have ever existed. The place where the elves once came from, before they were chased back into it, before they were destroyed.

Or were they?

Please save me. I will be your priest again, and I will not waver this time. Please, please, goddess, please.

She gives him nothing.

The sun, at least, is warm on his hair and skin, and the grass is soothing and soft under his bare feet. Bohli tips his head back and Grigori watches his eyes close as he seems to preen and flower under the heat and light coming from the bright blue sky. Grigori looks wrecked, like a whore after serving in the war-tents for the soldiers.

You are a whore, now. You know that, right?

He forces his own thoughts away. Grigori knows he looks destroyed, torn apart, scratched to bleeding, bitten to bruising, slapped to redness on his arse and face according to Bohli’s depraved lusts. But Bohli… looks pristine. There’s no red marks on him, no bruise. Nothing to show what he's done.

Only his lovely, sharp face and his bright, shining smile.

As if Grigori had simply fucked himself into this appearance, and Bohli had stood by above it all.

“I hate you,” Grigori says aloud, hardly realizing he’s done so until Bohli opens his eyes and turns to look at him, looking faintly surprised.

“What?” Grigori’s heart quakes, just a little, at the way Bohli’s smile drops off like it was chalk washed away by rain, and something in those dark eyes turns coldly elven, all his humanity simply gone like it’s only a mask he wears and he can take off at will.

“You… you heard me,” Grigori says, and somehow his voice stays steady. There are more bandits out here - the ones patrolling the edges of the clearing, guarding against wildlife that might try to make its way in. A few simply sitting out on the grass enjoying pints of beer they make themselves here from stolen grain. He knows they’re looking while pretending not to look, seeing the marks on his body, knowing their leader put them there. “I hate you. You have-... you have ruined me.”

For a moment, those black eyes on his feel like voids he might fall into and drown.

Then Bohli throws his head back and laughs so loud that a flock of birds is startled out of the trees nearby and takes flight with raucous caws and the beat of wings.

He keeps laughing, the bastard, his knees folding and then giving out until he falls onto the ground, jerking the rope until Grigori is pulled down, too, to land on his hands and knees on the grass. Someone calls out something filthy about what they could do with him out here like this, and his face burns. Tears are hot beyond his eyelids and he works as hard as he can to ignore them.

Bohli is still laughing, airy and breathless, as he drops onto his back, turning his head to look at Grigori with appraising, glimmering eyes. “Gods below, you thought I would care. See, Brother Grigori-”

“How dare you call me that!”

“-this is why I like you so much! You are a fucking treat. I’m so glad we let you live. I’m so, so glad I found you. You’re a beauty, and you’re mine. Now that’s a gift from the gods, don’t you think? My very own dirty little priest.”

“I-I’m no longer-”

“Oh, you still are one. Just because I have taken all your sacred parts and sanded them down to mud doesn’t mean you aren’t still a priest of Dromada, my pretty little man. You are a pure man turned to slut at my command, and that's all I need you to be, really. Come here.”

Grigori sets his jaw, knowing it won’t matter. But he can’t force himself to move, and he has to make Bohli work for this, even if he isn’t sure why he bothers. “No.”

“I said, come here, little priestling.” Bohli's smile shifts again, fades a little.

“And I said no.”

They stare at each other, for one long breath of silence broken only by the wind in the trees and the fading calls of the fleeing birds. Then Bohli’s smile widens so much that he seems like the stories of sea monsters and sharks, a mouth full of rows of endless teeth, black eyes that take in light but don’t reflect it. “Oh, Brother Grigori,” Bohli breathes, lighting up with new desire. “If you want me to take you again so badly, you should just say so.”

“What?” Grigori’s eyes widen in shock and new horror. He still hurts, he still throbs. “No!” He throws himself backwards, and Bohli isn’t expecting it - the rope slips through those long fingers fast enough to make the half-elf wince before Grigori is on his feet and fleeing, still naked, towards the woods.

Others in the bandit group stand, but Bohli holds up a hand. “Let him go,” He says, voice bright, getting softer as Grigori runs. “I’ll give him a ten-minute head start, let's see how he begs for me to take him back once I catch him.”

Grigori hears more laughter, but he ignores it, making the edge of the clearing in only a few seconds. He’s always been a good runner, fast and strong. He used to race some of the others in circles around the temple, see who could do the most laps in the shortest amount of time. His breath burns his lungs as he things, unwillingly, about his brother priests, the family murdered by the same bandits who keep him here as a sort of toy for their amusement, who shred him body and soul, day by day, to… what? Prove some point about their hatred of the goddess?

To prove some mysterious point to the King, a man Grigori has never met, who no one has ever seen in person outside the palace and the battlefield?

He runs, half-blinded by tears that come unbidden, that he can't quite seem to force away. He runs as if fleeing the flames that had burned down the only life he ever knew and left him to dissolution, to being preyed upon by a creature of such absolute devotion to degradation.

The trees at first seem natural and normal, but as Grigori runs straight into the woods, the Kaila begins to crowd around him. The sunlight grows dimmer, blocked by the grand canopies of the trees that loom over his head. After a couple of miles, maybe three, the canopy is so thick that it seems as dark as night around him. Things crash away from him through the woods, wildlife startled by him into fleeing.

His feet hurt, sharp pains as he keeps stepping on things he can’t see through the underbrush. He's panting like a child - or like a man who hasn't been allowed to run in a year.

By now, he knows, Bohli is after him, tracking his trail through the trees. Grigori comes to a stop, looking around himself and realizing he has no idea how far he will need to go to find one of the safe paths through the Kaila.

Or if there even is one in this direction.

He takes a breath through lungs that burn, realizing he can’t even give up and turn around and go back. He has no idea which direction he’s come from, and no idea which direction to go. His rebellion may be simply to die, lost in the dark forest that is damnation to man, doomed to wander as just another trapped spirit caught here between the trees, subjected to the whims of the lingering traces of the elven gods and their terrible cruel amusements.

But at least he will have wiped that smile off Bohli’s face, taking from him his toy and breaking it where he cannot follow, the bastard.

Grigori squares his shoulders, looks around, and walks in a direction at random, heading for the sound of some kind of stream he can hear, picking his way more carefully now that the panic has subsided. Do elves track by scent? Bohli might, if they do… he doesn’t know. But it can’t hurt to stop for a drink of water before he moves on anyway.

Show me the way, he prays. He pleads, he throws every last remaining shred of belief he has in Her mercy into his mental voice. Please, my goddess, I have worshiped you since I was an infant. Save me. Please, please save me.

She doesn’t answer.

She hasn’t answered him since the day his brothers all died and he was spared by a trick of fate.

Still, he keeps moving.

His last act as Dromada’s Chosen, he supposes, will be simply to take from a wicked man something he wanted for his own. It’s not much.

It’ll have to do.

If he’s very, very lucky, he’ll get Bohli so lost he dies in here, too.

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@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @arlin-always-writing @sunshiline-writes @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @befuddled-calico-whump

#whump #the heretic's confession #fantasy world #fantasy writing #fantasy whump #captivity #nonsexual nudity #aftermath of noncon #creepy whumper #cheerful whumper #defiant whumpee #runaway whumpee #religious whump #I mean fantasy religion but #priest whump #more foreshadowing hints if anyone cares to guess #humilitation tw #escaped whumpee

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