Chapter Text
The mighty general walked down a corridor and carried a tray full of half-eaten delicacies, a brat's scraps. He was still a fine specimen of a man, but more haughty, more rugged in the face. With dark circles under his empty eyes. This was a man who had given up all thought, and was beyond all caring.
His destination was the kitchen, but he was stopped in the servant's dining hall by a group of ruffians: the sheriff's foot soldiers, the ones who were too brutal or crazed for the king's infantry. A few grabbed the tray and quickly devoured the leftover food while the rest circled him like hyenas around a wounded lion.
They had him bent over a table without a struggle. He didn't care, he wanted to die. But he had made a promise in a past life, to a past love, that he would never die by his own hand. And he would keep that promise, it was the only thing he had left to give to her.
He felt a strange contentment about the prospect of death, so he waited for the pain that would lead to that endless abyss. When he felt the tug on his trousers he realized death would not come swiftly enough, so he spun round but only managed to break a nose and one arm before they had him pinned again. It was cruel, this trick that fate had played on him. He dug his teeth into his forearm to bite back his screams as they entered him. Brutally, mercilessly they entered him. He shed no tears but exuded rage. By the time they had all had their way, his legs were useless. When the last pig finished the general slumped to the floor, unable to stand. Or maybe unwilling.
All the pigs left the dining hall then, taunting and jeering, bored with their used toy. He sat there with blood running down his thighs, without even the strength to pull up his pants. He used to be a man, he thought to himself. What was he now? It was then that he decided: one day he would kill them all.
He sat there, he didn't know how long. The sun had set. He stared at nothing. A chamber maid finally wandered through. One who was brazen enough to help him, this injured pariah. He couldn't look at her face, couldn't bear to see how she pitied him. She cleaned him up and sent him on his way. She could do nothing about his new and telling limp. The hallway was long and filled with whispers, darting eyes in the firelight. He barely noticed. He stood in front of the door to the room everyone did their very damnedest to avoid. The room at the end of the hall. He knocked twice and waited as he was trained to do. He heard shuffling and footsteps and he braced himself. He opened the door and was met with an iron blow, square in the face, end hot from the fire.
“Get in here.”
The blow had sent him to his knees. Without the strength to get up again he crawled forward. He got a hard kick in the stomach then, and another. So many he collapsed and rolled onto his back. He stared up at a woman illuminated in the firelight, fiercely beautiful, with cruel eyes that glowed with a fiendish delight.
“Stand up.”
He obeyed, slowly, with great pains and no sound.
“Do you know how long I've been waiting, Boy?”
A slap to the face.
“Speak, Boy.”
“I'm sorry, My Lady, there was a – a delay in the dining hall.”
Another slap caught his ear and started it ringing.
“I don't need your excuses.”
“Yes My Lady,” a crack in his voice, quickly covered.
“Take off your shirt. Go stand over there.”
He obey and turns his back to her, accustomed to the ritual of the night. The firelight dances over lash marks, some long scarred, others still pink and fresh.
“No. Turn around, Boy. You need to look at this.”
He obliges, and a contraction of pupils is the only thing to betray his fear. But it was enough. The monster saw it, devoured it, and reveled in it.
“Now turn around.”
He hung his head in his utter desolation. His hopelessness. He knew it would hurt. He could handle it.
When the first lash bit into his skin he yelled, a shriek of unimaginable pain.
A guard bounded into the room and froze, taking in the bizarre scene. The bleeding man on the floor, the princess holding a metal-tipped flail with pieces of flesh in the hooks. Her look of sheer rage at being interrupted. The man's pleading gaze, begging. The guard had never seen anything so pitiful. Or frightening.
“Get out.”
A moment's pause.
“Out!”
The guard fled, with a nightmare burned into his mind forever.
He was writhing on the floor by the time she was finished. He didn't know how many blows she had landed, too many. Too much. He couldn't hear her command him to sit in the chair. He could no longer feel her kicks. He could barely breath.
“Guard!”
The same frightened guard rushed in, only looked at his feet.
“Put him in that chair.”
It was only then that the guard looked up and saw the tortured man, with no more skin on his back, the muscle abused. Blood-soaked floorboards. The guard struggled not to retch, and obeyed.
“No. Not that chair, the other one.”
When his flayed back hit the chair he wailed.
“Now leave.”
The monster had him tied to the chair in no time at all. Noose around his neck and pants cut away.
When he emerged from shock the fingers of dawn were stretching through the window and there was nowhere that he did not ache.
“Oh, finally awake I see. You know boy I heard something very interesting. I heard that you like to get fucked.”
His heart dropped. “Please don't.”
“I heard you took forty men. Very impressive.”
“I didn't want it.”
He was crying now, the first tears in a decade. Reduced to begging the cruelest monster he had ever known.
“Please no.”
“No? No what?”
“Please don't make me do this.”
“Oh there, there.” She chided him as she violently grabbed a handful of his hair.
"I have a wife."
She laughed, genuinely amused.
“I only want to know if you can still get it up.”
“I can't. I'm a eunuch.” At least he hoped he couldn't.
“Well I know that, Boy. Truth be told I wanted you whole, but they always are worrying about keeping my virtue intact. Isn't that sweet?”
As she spoke her hand found her way to his crotch. She grabbed him and began to tug.
“Oh please..”
His breath came in gasps, untouched for so long. He forgot what he was asking for.
“I knew you would like this, Boy.”
“Please stop this, 'm begging you.”
A moment's hesitation, then the monster twisted her hand, eliciting yet another wail from the wasted general.
“Why?” she snarled.
“ – marr – married.... have a wife, please.”
His pitiful pleading pleased her in ways she couldn't explain. She dropped to her knees and took him into her mouth.
“Well what do you know? You can get it up.”
His tears were free-flowing now. He had lost all pride. His body had betrayed him. He had betrayed his wife.
He knew the monster would not kill him now that she had discovered his new trick. She straddled him in the chair and penetrated herself with his member. His head threw back and he moaned, mouth agape. He just wanted a respite from the pain, now that he was damned anyhow. This was a port in his nightmare of a storm.