Archive of Our Own

A cold reflection. A mimicked, half-second, where the blurred edges of gold became silver, and the ripple of black turned to grey. Enver longed to dip his talons beneath the surface, even if they were stained mercury, especially if he could trace the intangible, half-truth.

Solid. Real. Bitter.

His father used to sprinkle salt over the tomatoes from the garden in the summer, crushing the crimson pulp between his cheeks, gushing over his teeth. He always said he added too much, till it wrinkled the innards, and turned to waste.

It reminded him of Ketheric’s favorite wine. Too potent, slicing beneath his tongue, embedding itself in the tender meat of his throat. Fuel for a dark, lonely heart, and he consumed it with a naked, blind fervor that left him stumbling. Aching for the real thing. Wondering if he might convince him to partake from Enver’s own lips. He longed for the familiar in the unique, the tingle that rushed down his nape at the sensation alone: ribs exposed in steel, bone claws sinking into his shoulders, his Netherstone pulsing at the proximity to its brother as much as his cock did for the General.

Pathetic.

He should rejoice in his weakness. At least with Thorm around he wouldn’t go mad as some of Bane’s children had before: their victory the freefall to their demise. His desires were not so petty, not so easy to achieve, and in that he had some security.

Yet it was not the allure of domination that kept him awake those somber nights in Baldur’s Gate, hands sliding beneath his silk sheets, lashes fluttering for a tendril of moss and lichen, tongue reaching for the familiar tang of rain kissed marble. He should be grateful. Longing for what could not be given, coveting what would never be offered. It was an effortless dance for them, circling one another in a glide, but it was –

Bitter. Lined with broken glass.

Enver’s smiles brimmed with salt, infuriating and beguiling, but General Ketheric Thorm was bound in his grimacing scowl, an acknowledgement and scorn in once. Why did he bother with his part? It brought him no happiness. A selfish indulgence. A powerful man’s graceless defeat. The Chosen of Bane would take every inch he could get. No matter how sour.

“Rejoice! I bring good tidings!” Enver gave him half a leer, hopping up to place most of his ass on the edge of Ketheric’s war table, a favored throne of his… If only because it infuriated the Half-Elf beyond measure. “It seems your little mishap in the Emerald Glade left us an opening, one I can use to our combined advantage.” He continued, without breaking stride for the looming silence that threatened to follow his first words, heedless of the fact that Thorm hadn’t even spared him a glance, his gaze still rooted to the map before him.

“What? No sigh of relief? No congratulations for saving your hide?” And that of their army. It had taken far too long to amass such a size without anyone noticing. They could not afford for anyone to find out about it, especially a bunch of tree-worshipping Elves, who guarded the natural barrier between life-and-death as if it was their gods given right. And maybe it was. Who knew, when there were none old enough to contest them for it, or to refute their claims?

As always, the General was morose in his silence, his thoughts unbroken by Enver’s entrance or his reassurance that he had handled his mess. The human in the room set his jaw, huffing as he rolled his eyes, and then – let his weight sink into the table, sprawling across one half of it with a twinge of a smirk.

“Enver.”

“He speaks!” Gortash couldn’t help but grin, dark eyes swerving over to find pointed ears twitching downwards, and crimson irises honed to pierce him. “I didn’t hear a ‘thank you’.” He rolled over, onto his stomach, resting his chin in the palm of one hand, while the other reached out to grab one of the many models strewn across the surface before Thorm. Luckily, he’d missed some battlements, finding a section of river to place his hip on, lest he be impaled by a tower in the west.

Enver twirled the archer’s wooden form between his claws, forcing the poor thing to pirouette upon the axis of its base, before releasing it to watch it spin. It plummeted into a carved ravine, one half of her feathered cap snapping off, and he mouthed an ‘oops’ to the General’s guttural growl. Thorm snatched up the figurine, replacing it back to its original position with a resounding thump that echoed within the carved enclave of the Tower’s lower chamber.

“Enver.”

Once again, the General came forth, not the indulgent father who might sigh after such a display, followed by a chuckle that was too good-natured and adoring to be truly angry. Enver had never met him. The father, that is, even if he had been the one to all but carry his dear Isobel all the way home to him. Orin had all but refused to touch her, sparing not even a single glance for the already dead, but she had been fascinated in killing those who had risen around her. Guardian Selûnites, carving their way out of the walls, from the stones beneath them, and even bursting in from the ceiling.

Enver would have loved to study the constructs, almost gargoyle-esque in their rising, but with… souls? Yes, they must have been, those wispy, whispering swirls of azure light that billowed around them before infesting the stone and metal. Damn Orin, she had to go and rip them apart, gushing strange, luminescent fluids around the walls, and making the whole place slippery. He’d almost dropped Isobel… three times. On the final turn he had, almost smashing her skull into the crumbling stairway, but he just managed to crash into it with his shoulder instead.

His whole arm hadn’t forgiven him in the weeks to come, where Ketheric didn’t spare him so much of a glance… or a ‘thank you’. He’d never thanked him. Even if he’d come out, stinking of the dead, dripping in his own blood, and raining dust with every tread. He didn’t know why he bothered, when the man had spared him not a second of appreciation, for if it had been left up to their wily third, his dearest daughter never would have made it out at all.

What is a son…?

He watched the General turn on his heel, walking across the room to peruse and acquire more figurines for his board. As if he had not run through strategy after strategy, formulating one plan after another, only to discard and settle on a new course of action. The years had given his mind nothing to do but turn. He had accounted for every scenario, found every possible way to expend as few resources as he could, but then… Enver’s efforts had changed the game, the nature of the field, drip feeding the General new information on every Earl’s favorite spell, their bands of mercenaries and trained guards, those with loyal, standing soldiers, and those with darker, more twisted bargains in place for safety.

So, he had returned to his game, playing out strategy after strategy, laying out piece after piece.

“Are you drunk?” Enver had shifted the entirety of the western flank with the eastern by the time he turned around, his nose crinkling as he approached once more. Gortash hummed in answer, onyx meeting sanguine as he glanced at him, head swerving to his other shoulder. His grin was full of teeth, wicked and scraping at his lower lip.

“What do you think?” The General’s sneer of disgust deepened, placing his new forces on the side rail, but he stopped when he saw the disaster that had become of his board: Enver had moved the archers to the neighboring forest, situated around a tower behind a river, and the warriors were now standing atop every peak in the north like little conquerors. He’d used a magical hand to pick up a dragon from the far room, placing it upside down in a ravine, and the cavalry had somehow found themselves all the way across the table to the furthest reaches of the Cold Lands.

“I think you should leave.” It was not a suggestion. Enver, who had turned to look down at his work with admiration, turned back to find Ketheric Thorm staring at him with such profound murderous intent that if Bhaal saw it he’d hand Orin’s seat to him without a second thought. Archduke Enver Gortash chuckled.

Thorm blinked at him. Enver coughed to diffuse the genuine sound, letting it ooze off his tongue, and slid off the table with a clatter. Oh, his cape had caught on a castle, and sent it plummeting to the floor. The General’s eyes squeezed shut, raising his hand to press against the side of his temple with pale, thick nails, as if to stave off the migraine that was Enver Gortash. He did not succeed. Instead, he turned on his heel, and made a strategic retreat for the balcony.

Enver floated after him with a hum, swaying in his stride, tongue searching beneath his canines for the bitter spice of grapes. The acid crawl in the back of his throat as he glimpsed Thorm’s daughter’s bedroom door tasted like tomatoes. Bright and bursting with red flesh, seeds sticking inside his esophagus, making it impossible to swallow.

“Fuck me.” The moonlight made him dizzy. Except the General had snuffed out his goddess, leaving only the scattered torches and candles that kept him in constant half shadows. He was always obscured or malformed: his eyes turning into blackened clots, his jaw a cut of hard, pallid stone, and the sharp silhouette of his honed, warrior muscles became the haunting monster that made even men soil themselves.

Thorm still half turned to him, brow furrowed, the upper corner of his lips twitching into something nasty. Something dripping. Enver found the power to swallow that sour note, throat kicking back, but he managed a smirk. It tingled like a grimace.

“What?” The General’s disbelief with his brazenness was always such a treat.

“You heard me.” Enver’s voice turned soft. Entreating. He would never plead for a lover as weak as Thorm, one that failed to ever make him cum, that spared no thought to his enjoyment. “Fuck me.” The Half-Elf leaned away, his disgust rippling through nose and cheek, reaching his crimson irises to swirl them closer to Gortash’s own.

He’d once heard that they were blue. In passing, through an archive where he’d been amassing what bare scraps of knowledge he could, on those who would claim to be his allies. Enver had begun to take trips after that… not so many as to be obvious, but a few extra ventures were required to Moonrise Towers after such startling information had come into his possession. He would linger too, when summoned, pretending to get lost within the labyrinthine husk of marble, its aching hallways thrumming with each footfall.

He blamed it on the Elvish architecture: his inability to put the skills of his youth to work, dodging between long shadows, and slinking into silent cloisters. The place was too empty, too hungry for the barest hint of a whisper, clawing into his lungs with its blackened miasma for its share of his vitality.

Enver shooed it away every time, foraging deeper, clinging ever closer to crumbling stairways and ducking beneath decayed archways, in his pursuit of a single bit of evidence of blue eyes. Always, after he discovered a few new rooms, another series of sprawling hallways, he’d be discovered by some wayward True Souls that were confused by his presence.

He’d have to explain, as always, that he got a bit… turned around. They offered to either take him to General Thorm or the exit. He always chose the latter. The last thing he wanted was Ketheric thinking he had a weak sense of direction. Not that he believed the General’s estimation of him could get any lower. All the same, best not to give him any sort of fodder. Not that he couldn’t put a perceived weakness to good use. Hm. Maybe he should reconsider.

Besides, they probably told him anyway. Might explain why he was starting to look at him with strange eyes, yet it was not as if the Half-Elf could accuse him of skulking. At least, not to his face.

Finally, the Towers must have gotten annoyed with his presence, their strange sentience either impatient or indulgent with his demands. Enver smirked when he found a new corridor, lined with curtain covered panes in deep, rich wood, embossed with precious metals. He rubbed his hands together with glee, the chimes of his claws echoing back to him with each little skip he took. Of course, the drapes were dingy, their edges a little worn from where the moths had been at them. It seemed whatever enchantments had been woven into the Elvish cloth kept them at bay, protecting the figures beneath, immortalized in oils and pigments that were just as rare and luxurious.

There was only one missing, the stones beneath bleached by lack of dust and debris, the age of a century forgotten to them. Enver could guess from the shape and size – and the fact that Ketheric kept a portrait of his daughter above his desk in his main office – that it was Isobel’s former roost. Hm. He let his claws gouge deep into the bricks, screeching just right over where the pretty arc of her nose would be, carving down to the jut of her lips. Enver drew back, admiring his work, the ringing still biting in his ears. Good, very good.

He climbed a set of stairs, following the line to –

The first he drew back furrowed his brow and pursed his mouth. Still, he leaned his chin away, regarding the matron of House Thorm under hooded eyes. He stepped back, bending at the waist, hands splayed before him before fanning outwards in a dramatic, low bow.

“We meet at last, Lady Melodia.” She had thick, silver hair, tied up in a hasty, yet elegant bun from the lines of a swan neck. Her skin might as well have been fresh fallen snow, her gaze pensive and yet… bemused. Her nose mimicked her daughter’s, though her lips were fuller, and her eyes were set deeper. There was something that Enver would dare to call hard about her, a young, yet weathered woman. Well, most Half-Elves tended to be that way, in his opinion, and it seemed Melodia followed suit. She appeared only a woman in her mid-twenties, yet had the bearing of one who had lived two lifetimes already, and her elegant dress of deep azure brought out the unnatural shine to her far too beautiful features. Pearls adorned her graceful collar, dipping into each seam, reflecting the firelight behind her.

She’d been positioned to sit – was this painted during her illness? Perhaps a year, maybe two before she brought her daughter into the world? – with one dainty wrist over the arm of her chair, while the other hand was lost amidst the folds of her dress. Somewhere, it had melded into a rich ivory, pooling at her ankles in midnight and milk, offset by the flames behind her. Who made that choice? Enver would have her under the moonlight, on that damnable balcony that Thorm liked to frequent so much, beset beneath a veil of stars.

“Now, how did that dreadful Ketheric Thorm score a beauty such as you, I wonder?” Enver pressed his left arm beneath his ribs, claws pattering against each other against his flank, while his other elbow pressed over the seam of his wrist. He scratched at his cheek with cold talons, an idle motion, barely dipping the dark skin in thought. “It couldn’t have been his charming demeanor, surely?” Enver tilted his head at her, pausing to tap his thumb against the curve of his jaw.

Melodia regarded him in silence, though he dared to believe her cool, mist-grey irises narrowed a little. Perchance the Moonrise really did play tricks on the mind, maybe the Curse was doing something to his vision, or he was willing to indulge a ghost far too much. Either way… He swore her gaze curved, alighting on the covered portrait to her left. Enver followed her eyes, before his onyx darted back to her, muttering more to himself:

“Perhaps I should see for myself?”

Each step echoed louder than the last, forcing him to curse the Moonrise, and he dared to look down either end of the corridor before taking hold of the grimy, silver cord.

Deep indigo, with cornflower comets swirling around the black moon of his pupils, bright and ethereal. Enver almost took a step back. He’d found them at last, yet a powerful shudder rolled from his heels to his crown, as if he were seeing something… he shouldn’t. He shook it away with a jerk of his arms, swallowing as his ink orbs took in General Ketheric Thorm in all his glory with greedy abandon.

The visage itself was not much younger, though hardly so aged. His hair retained only streaks of black at his temples, his beard a trimmed goatee around his mouth, and the lines of his face were weighted with smiles instead of scowls. He could inspire even simpletons with his handsome visage, the cut of his jaw, and the bare strength of his broad shoulders beneath dark brocade. It swirled with silver, a deep, ebon midnight that cut across his chest with a luminescent white hiding underneath. He wore knee-high boots with sparkling laces, legs spread before him, in a relaxed pose that Enver had seen only a few times on his throne.

Gortash glanced at Melodia out of the corner of his eye before his vision slid back to the delectable man before him. He withdrew a small, mercury disc, and leaned down to place it on the back corner of the painting. As he strode away, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He stopped at the threshold of the corridor, turning back around, and stalked back to her. Now, now he swore she had an eyebrow poised upwards, regarding him with a cool indignation. He jerked the cord of her portrait, shrouding her in darkness once more.

“We can’t both have him.”

He didn’t know why he said it.

He didn’t know why he didn’t hate her with the same burning intensity he did her daughter.

Now Thorm’s eyes were pools of blood, ones he had caught even Orin admiring, threatening to drown him in a sanguine mire.

“I am not in the mood for your petty games, Gortash.” The General moved to turn away once more. “Especially when you’re in this state.”

Was that…?

Enver shook the thought away as soon as it came. Thorm cared for no one… Except his daughter, that untouchable light, an eternal burden of a flame that Gortash was certain would burn him to cinders if he dared to touch it. Oh, but how he longed to, his eyes feasting upon that unfading glow, his lungs quaking for a taste of its spark. But it was too far away, the moon far beyond his mortal hands, dirty and clasping at every pale strand of her glow. Maybe if he could catch it, just hold it for a moment, he might be able to tinker, take it apart and find out what made her so worthwhile.

“Can you do nothing right, you wretched boy!?” The knife was too heavy in his hand. His father’s voice rang over the stones, within the hollow belly of the courtyard. Within the stone at the pit of his gut.

“I’m not that drunk.” He wagered it was not so much about consent as Thorm wishing to end a conversation he knew he couldn’t win. “It’s a quick shag, Thorm, come now… You like those!” A jab at his masculinity, at the fact that he never lasted longer than ten minutes on a good night for Enver, and five on a bad. The General had stopped, much to his own chagrin no doubt, and Enver pressed his advantage by coming up behind him.

He was grateful he’d forgone his armor for tonight, wearing nothing but the velvet and golden embossed underclothes, his tabard hanging between his legs with a flutter as Gortash skated his claws over his shoulders. Ketheric’s muscles bunched at the sensation, his crimson irises sparking in the darkness, catching him over his collar with a glare that crackled over his skin.

“You should learn to behave, boy…” Words of a bygone age to his life, accompanied by the lance of the whip over the same juncture, scratches in his chin, and knuckles in his hair. He stopped wearing it long, even the jagged locks he had now were hard to grab, forcing someone to find different grapple points. “Won’t do you no good to resist.” The pebbles stung underneath his nails as he was dragged through the dirt, wailing at the sharp talons that poured blood from his ankle, tearing him away from his room, his meager toys, and the glimmering creations of his early life –

There was a box of tomatoes at his father’s feet.

“I’ll call you ‘Daddy’, if you want me to.” It was a glance. A whiplash decision that made the scowl marks in Ketheric’s face hook and sink into furious indignation. It was the image of icons lovingly carved into a princess’s door, the unicorn and the eagle, and the knowledge that Thorm used to let such a meager hobby occupy his time. He’d seen the figurines sitting on the mantle of his fireplace. Enver smiled to see it, reclaiming his anger, the fury of a father condemning his child’s twisted interests. He danced back, laughing as the older man reached out for him, threatening to snatch at the expensive silk of his robes.

“You can breed me like a good little bitch.” The sheer vulgarity struck its mark, gouging into the Half-Elf’s gentle sensibilities. How could a man who severed spines with a twist of his hands, bashed brains into viscera with his fists, and fucked like a mad dog be so easy to entice?

This time, Enver couldn’t step back fast enough, and Thorm slammed into him with all his constrained violence. He grabbed at his ribs, the embrace of a man coming home from war, ready to scoop his lover up from the floor. Thorm’s hands, however, were braced to crush, threatening to grind his ribs into powder, but he withheld enough only to make them creak. Enver’s hands sunk into his chest, tearing at the silken fibers that made up the clothes he wore beneath his armor. For once, he despised the cold metal of his ornate claws, a pale imitation of the icy skin he could have felt through the General’s layers. He settled for the chill that permeated the air around him, tossing his head back with a guttural chuckle, not so genuine, not so sweet.

Bitter.

Their brows grazed one another, gunpowder to dark ash, the ebon sky above meeting a bloody banquet beneath a moonless night. The candles pierced below the murk, cutting through the endless trenches of his own, filling them with crimson. A reflection. Though his irises danced with mirth, the General’s burst with a righteous fury. How would he vent it upon him? The balcony was behind him. He could make the final steps so easy, hoist him up – as any good warrior who had abandoned the front and missed his lover should – and send him flying.

Enver would grin harder for him. Tear his claws into his cheek, take some of the thick hairs of his beard, leave a final scar amidst the gnarled veins. He’d be sure to taste their ichor on the way down, the wind in his hair, and a laugh billowing from his lips. He was sure he’d never know a sweeter nectar.

And yet –

Ketheric Thorm was a paragon of restraint. His jaw set in rictus, canines grinding, lips so close to his own. His tomb breath brushed over the clean skin of Enver’s cheek, a ripple of mist, the aged scent of dust, and ache of brittle bones. He closed his eyes, luxuriating in the burst of bumps it sent down his nape, and tipped a little closer. Enver could feel the General leaning away, trying to keep him in the prison of his hands, all the while denying him the intimacy of closeness. His arms snapped up, sliding up his chest to lock around his neck, but he would not overtread. Not this time.

Enver’s mouth scraped his cheek, canine dragging along the seam of his beard, but he dared not even let his tongue escape to taste. No, he drew up further, leaning harder into that immoveable chest. He had once joked with Orin that Ketheric didn’t need to breathe anymore. An unnecessary, leftover memory of humanity that they might exploit for their own amusement. Oh, how she had laughed! Enver had not joined her.

His pectorals were hard, relentless muscles that bashed into his own chest, sapping his breath, forcing a gasp against his pointed ear. Thorm twitched in the cruel embrace, his long, silken hair brushing the soft seams of Enver’s inner elbows. He didn’t pet him, didn’t run his fingers through his locks, though he dared to let himself see a sliver of darkness behind his own lids. Just at his temples.

It was there, in the sanctuary of his own mind, where he could loosen those hands and have them embrace him with the gentleness of fresh bloomed violets, rather than paint him with their color. It was there, in the place he used to hide from the devil, that he allowed himself to satisfy the rest of his fantasy. Enver’s lips ghosted at the end of his hair, a tender almost, as if he were uncertain. A gentle, tentative lover’s first question, brought with touch rather than words. Ketheric’s hands squeezed, nails digging in, blunt and pitiless.

Enver could pretend he was grasping just a little too tight. That he had been away for months and months, smiling into his own delusion if not for the man who’d never have him, a crest of lips that Ketheric nor any other had seen before. It was for no eyes that could call him weak.

Pathetic.

Finally, he allowed himself to touch his mark, to stroke it with the smooth seam of his lips. The ragged edge of Ketheric’s pointed ear, a peak of ice that twitched beneath his warm gasp.

His breath abandoned him. Vision tunneling to darkness and flickering greys to blues to mercury. He gasped through a laugh, choking on the fat snowflakes of dust that pattered onto his coat, finding the savage fury of Ketheric Thorm bearing down on him for a second time that night. His spine rattled with the ache, hands clammy within their metallic constraints, twitching with that old, childish urge to rub together. He could see the seams snapping, the seal breaking, and he chose to give him just that extra push –

He deserved it.

“I’ll even lie back and pretend to like it just as Melodia did.”

Enver had never been allowed into Ketheric’s bed. It was always a crumbling, cold wall, a convenient table that rattled, or a spot against a pillar. Out of sight. Out of mind. Another thing to be forgotten in a place that was nothing but tormented memories. Blisters on the soul that Thorm seemed more than content to pick at for the rest of eternity.

Gortash found himself hauled forward once more, by arm and torso, blunt nails bashing through his skin, forming bloody pockmarks he’d trace later as he took himself in hand. Head bowed, gasping the name of a man who’d sooner see him dead, but it wasn’t as if such a thing made Thorm special.

The room spun with that same, eerie azure glow. It followed him everywhere, as if the Towers remembered their purpose, and refused to forsake the tone of the night. Moonless or not. Godless and hollow.

Enver did not have time to take in the sights, his body hauled past a heavy door, and then flung into the dreary, biting air. The colors collided, the scent of grave sand to mahogany, of ancient tomes and the tang of weapon oil. His back bashed down onto a familiar surface, rolling with the force, seeking to secure only bruises and not broken bones from this brawl. There were chairs in the way, one nicking his face, but a cut cheek was the least of his worries. He hissed as he tried to orient himself, spying the dark maw of an elaborate fireplace across the way, and a door further along the wall beside it. There was an enclave, made for someone to sit, surrounded by books, and undisturbed from the rest of the room.

This was a man’s room. The room of a King rather than a General, with its grand furniture tipped and broken, the emboss of carved masonry and patterns strewn about in dizzying decadence. The stained glass caught his eye, drawing a halted breath, relics that had survived from a bygone era. For all the legends of his abandonment, he had kept them? Twin testaments to his loss, the glow that abounded them somehow both serene and spiteful. So, this was how the Goddess honored her former Champion? By haunting the haunted, surrounding him in his waking and resting moments, unbroken and unblemished by the passage of decades?

Pathetic bitch.

Enver wrinkled his nose, hissing when that hand returned, this time at the naked flesh of his nape. The frigid burn dragged down his spine, raising bumps that he could feel inside his throat. Thorm dragged him forward, towards the ornate bed he’d been content to ignore, and tossed his battered body into the sheets. But not before Enver was forced to clip his knee on the chest at its end. His teeth clicked together, assuming the only position Thorm ever deigned to have him in – ass up, head down. Habitual by now, an easy afterthought as grave moss and lichen filled his nose and stuffed into the corners of his mouth. The tang of rain-wet marble distant.

It snapped at his belt with dull claws, slashing into his hips, exposing him to the decrepit, icy air that was the lifeblood of Moonrise Towers. Enver’s tongue scraped the roof of his mouth, hunting that bitterness, the tang of wine. It mixed beautifully with iron, with the vice that returned to his nape, threatening to snap and grind his spine.

Enver’s vision speckled, lashes clinging to his cheeks, choking on wine and blood and hate. It comingled, threatening to drag him down, congealing at the seam of his throat. Itching in his esophagus. He tried to cough, old, stagnating air hammering at the seams of his lungs for an escape, but only a low wheeze managed to find freedom.

You still need me… It was a coherent thought, the only one he had, and he clung to it. Ketheric hated him in that moment, he was certain, always had, but that one blaring truth bound them together. You… need me… For his God, as all others had abandoned him, for his daughter, the last fragment of his beloved wife, for his sanity, the one thing Gortash had convinced himself he was saving in this endeavor.

Please. He had to be needed. If not by him, then by no one else. Salt in sunshine, the tomato still hot from being plucked, and it puckered his mouth to jam it against his tongue. Too thick with brine. Too bitter.

Air crawled down his throat, lashing his lungs, the trade halted and broken by coughs and ragged gulps. His brow shook, droplets of sweat colliding with the sheets, enhancing the scent of the sepulcher all around him. For what were the towers if not a mausoleum to a perfect family? And what was their Master if not the eternal keeper of their torment?

Enver’s toes dragged on the floor beside the bed, hacking as he felt at the bruising he knew would soon appear on the back of his neck, gritting his teeth at the pulse of blood beneath the surface. He tried his best to peer over his shoulder, where the General had already divested himself of most of his clothes, but he didn’t get time to appreciate the sight before that hand returned to remind him to keep his eyes down.

I could do better…

Ketheric – the one time he thought he might have glimpsed the father – had torn his daughter from Enver’s bleeding arms. His crimson irises were lighter then, almost pinkish, almost the same shade of blood that rolled down Gortash’s chest where his ghoul gauntlets had carved into him. But what was another gash, throbbing over the cornerstone of his heart, to the litany of others he had suffered? He wrapped her up tight in the broad, powerful security of his own, sparing no word for the blood that had dripped from Enver’s face onto her cheek… save to smear it away without a backward glance. Gortash had stood there, pelted by rain, harrowed by creatures from the door of her tomb to the gate of the Towers, arms still aloft, but empty of the girl he had carried for miles.

He waited with bated breath, eyes burning from the sheer width they had grown to, hands trembling in the air. He waited till the General was ascending the steps, disbelief melting away into the raw strike of fury. It was not Thorm who thanked him for his daughter’s return, but the paltry Half-Orc woman who played his lieutenant, always dogging at his steps.

Gortash had snapped at her, nostrils pinched, and lips turning into an ugly sneer. He had endured all that and for what? Just for the storm to prickle and slash his cheeks into hot trails as he boarded the carriage that would transport him back to Baldur’s Gate. His Steel Watchers made no mention of his state, their devotion plain. Simple. Grateful.

I should do better…

Enver Gortash was not the son of simple cobblers. He was an Archduke of the Sword Coast, dancing with nobility, supping with rulers the world over, but here he was… Presenting for a phantom that would sooner throw away the privilege he was giving him. He should be engaged to a foreign Princess by now, bedding Lords who desired his favor, or indulging the whimsical flirtations of a Queen whose husband had long abandoned her for his own young pleasure. Anything to secure a foothold that would give him an advantage, anything to take a new level of power, anything but the debasement he endured at the hands of Ketheric Thorm.

The man in question ripped at the seam of his trousers, right down the side, leaving the strings a useless inconvenience that dangled with the velvet against his thigh. The bed rattled with the first impatient graze, slicked by oil only on one side, and Enver’s sigh shook and creaked with the same intensity. He was getting what he wanted. Then why did his chest ache with that old familiar hollowness? Stuffed with cold air, the salt on his tongue breaking open his throat, straight to his gut. Empty. Hungry for something that could not be swallowed.

I will be better…

His brow tingled. Why was the room growing further away? He wasn’t choking. He wasn’t – The General had slicked his cock, yet spared no thought to his hole, leaving it dry and tight. Enver blamed the pain, the drag and press of the first few inches on the sting in his lashes, but the drink stripped him of the last of his dignity.

Even the arousal pooling in his gut beside the numbness could not awaken his cock. It hung, chubby and soft, in the crease of his thighs, but it was… tacky. Hot. Enver’s shoulders trembled, the crack of the whip indiscernible from the lash of the bed into the wall, from the searing burn that crackled up his spine. His lower back trembled, bucking down, hot with a want that tip-toed on the edge of his pain.

He masked the first sob with the creak of the bed as it rocked back. His eyes widened against the crimson that surrounded him, taunting him. Ketheric’s eyes were the same shade. The second he muffled with a mouthful of the dusty sheets. Had she laid here? His claws cut through the cloth, seeking the white meat beneath, but Thorm’s next thrust grazed so close to where he hated it. The third he removed with a choked retch. Enver bashed his brow into the silk, scraping his cheeks to both punish and hide himself. Chosen of Bane indeed, dominance incarnate, a tyrant who cried with relief at being wanted for a single, solitary second. Fulfilling a purpose that was worthless to another.

Pathetic.

The pleasure, as always, was a minimal thing, and it could not entirely be blamed on the dryness. Ketheric’s hips set a rhythm to punish rather than entice, for there was nothing about this encounter he wished to draw out, inch upon inch breaching him with a force that he had grown accustomed to. How could he be disappointed in something he asked for? In something he longed for every hour of every day? He consoled himself with this small victory, the strike and press, the rut of skin and knowing he’d managed to make the great General Ketheric Thorm give in…

But it was a bitter thing.

A wretched, weak thing.

Ketheric would not notice his tears. Even if he did, he would not care…

Let him call him feeble in the privacy of his mind, let him declare him a coward to his face, let him finally end the farce by driving his hammer –

Enver gagged on moist air, the foggy chamber pinching at the back of his mouth as his chest heaved, splintered irises staring up at the darkened canopy above. His head rolled, a stray hiccup wiggling free before he could stop it, thighs trembling on either side of the Half-Elf who stood over him. Bloody pools stared down at him, peeling back from pale irises just as his hips did, taking the burning fullness that he craved… Enver blinked, a few tears trickling free, painting his cheeks once more. He peered up at Thorm, whose lips had come apart, regarding him with something akin to… to…

Enver’s lower lip quivered.

“Stop…” His voice clung to his tongue, not the suave, charming tone that brought court ladies to their knees, and lords to his door begging for a shred of his attention. “Stop…” It bordered the dry wail of decades ago, begging the lash to stop, the talons in his hair to cease their cruel petting. “Stop fucking looking at me like that!” Enver’s arms broke free of their leaden shackles, ripping out of the decrepit sheets the General had shared with the last person he ever loved, covering his face with a halting breath that he strangled the wretched sob from.

I don’t need your pity. He didn’t want it. Even if it crept on its wounded knees, offering to fill numb pit in his belly, to assuage the cracking of his heart. All he wanted was his dick, even if he couldn’t satisfy his body, he might keep away the memories… Carve them deeper, replace them with something he could pretend was sweet, and had blue, blue eyes that he could float in. Even if the reality was unfeeling and held him with nothing but malice.

A thoughtless nothing to be washed away in her light.

Ketheric should leave. Enver didn’t care if it was his room. Yet he had not the voice to demand his withdrawal, trying his best to gulp down stale breaths to not weep, to quell the shame that alighted every inch of him. He hated how the room grew larger, his ragged sniffles and broken hiccups echoing back to him, heightened by the stone and glass. He turned on his side, gripping at his own face, gouging the gold into the smeared kohl around his cheeks and the divots of his temples.

There was a pull at his ankle, then another, following up the side to the seam beneath the skull at the front. His left boot came free, tugged down to expose the bare, harsh peak of his ankle, and the hard ridge of scars that lived there. Enver jerked his knee, gasping at the change in temperature, before twisting his chin around to stare over one hand at the General. He’d… removed it…? Before he could muster a curse, broken filled question, his voice was broken into a wavering staccato of a gasp, melding pitifully with his lingering sobs.

General Ketheric Thorm was kneeling by the side of his bed.

He took hold of Gortash’s ankle, cold callouses notching into the tender flesh, hard thumb rubbing over the bump on the inner side. The worn pad followed the curve, seeking one of the many silver bands that abounded the flesh. An unspoken question. An answer that Enver would never give. His brow crawled down into a furrow, lips pursing as his other fingers dragged tighter.

Enver’s calve twitched, arching his foot for a split second, and that… There was the subtlest twitch within the General’s beard. Yet the lines that usually roused with his disgust and scowl remained limp, while ones that Gortash had never seen stirred for the first time in over a century. His brow wrinkled, inhale hitching, but Ketheric kept his gaze on the exposed portion of his lower leg. Ketheric drummed his fingers once more, scraping his nails just a little, and Enver just managed to hide his giggle in a hard snort. He gave a weak kick in retaliation towards his broad shoulder.

“Stop that.” Still, he was a little too breathless, no force placed behind the command. Not that the General ever obeyed him… In fact, he seemed intent on doing just the opposite. Enver wasn’t sure if it was to frustrate or embarrass him. He regarded Ketheric with a suspicious pair of onyx pools, still lined with shards of mercury, but he was already reaching for his other boot. It received the same treatment, his toes curling as the cold air leeched away the warmth of his body.

Ketheric captured it, the same as its twin, though he did not attempt to tickle him this time. Instead, those red orbs surveyed the mapping of scars, and Gortash swallowed back something contemptable, letting it sink to the stalwart confines of his stomach. There was no denying where they came from, nor the age he must have earned them, especially from a man as wizened and experienced as the General.

Enver could stand it no longer, flopping back into the glossy blood beneath him, the ivory of the inner sheets exposed by his talons earlier. He twisted his upper body once more, a petulant motion that meant nothing, did nothing for him. It did not unsettle the Half-Elf between his legs, nor remove his legs from the questing paws of Thorm.

Enver had his share of embittered rivals in Baldur’s Gate, some of which he’d even taken to bed in his climb, and others he had left to fester with his repugnance. Any of them would handsomely for such information, would dangle it over his head, and spin whatever yarn it took to bring him under their sway. Or to ruin him. Quickest way to find Orin’s dagger in their back too.

He waited for such a jab or a jeer, for though Thorm had no interest in using him in such a manner, he held no secret for his personal disdain. After all, Gortash had given him plenty of reason to despise him, usurping his control within his own domain, and behaving like a pouting prat till he gave him what he came for.

Nothing came. There was only silence, the almost imperceptible, soft hiss of his battle roughened skin pulling over the supple skin of his ankle.

Enver took care of himself, as expected of a member of the highest echelon. He soaked his feet in hot water, then used stones on the soles to remove the abrasive edges his boots created in his heels and edges of his toes. Primrose and honey salts he saved for his body, especially his elbows and knees, which had been prone to flake in his youth… the scars on said joints didn’t help. He had his former, devil master to thank for them, the times he’d told him to kneel, only to be dragged across the floor. Made to crawl and beg for so much as a bite of foul supper from his rotting table…

He had baths filled with flower petals from lavender to gardenia, soaps bearing their buds and essence available with creamy consistency. He used balms afterwards for his hands, paying close attention to his knuckles, to the places his golden claws bit into during the day. If anything, Ketheric should appreciate the care he took in his body, that it was hard where it appealed and plush where it would gratify, or perhaps he’d take it as the final excuse to ridicule him…

As if his tears were not enough.

His pants bunched. The pressure grew intense, the velvet fibers clinging tight, and then relenting as Ketheric tugged them down. Gortash knew his belt was a lost cause, so he let the older man continue his bizarre exploration. He should tell him to get out. He shouldn’t raise his hips to aid in his undressing. He should roll away, grab his boots, and storm back to Baldur’s Gate. He shouldn’t glance down, note Ketheric’s half risen form, the stretch of his impressive biceps, and the almost indifferent glide of his cool fingers across the cup of his inner hip as he found the fastenings. Enver swallowed something hard and wilting.

The blunt, broad tips of his nails found new areas, his smallest finger digging in just sharp enough to bend his pliant skin. Ketheric followed it down, mapping the broad expanse of his upper thigh, into the sharp plane of his patella. Enver’s jaw clenched, blinking away new tears, demanding that they be the last even as the harsh callouses of the General’s fingers descended upon the thin seams of his knee. They followed the curves, the angular jut that had never disappeared from his starving days of boyhood, back into the thickened heft of muscles in his thighs. Finally, his knuckles flattened, and the whole of his chilling palm rose bumps down his calve.

“Mm!” Enver pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut, almost grateful for the heat that spread across his cheeks. It erupted downwards, responding to Ketheric’s unshakable cold, dappling his skin in rough splashes. Thorm released a breath above him, forcing his lashes to snap back, hot and thick with the damp. He was gazing down at his own hands, one in the bed by Gortash’s hip, and the other still resting so close to the juncture of his thigh… His lungs hitched, seeing how close it was to his soft prick, but he made no move to touch him. Instead, he continued his maddening path, deviating with his middle finger towards the curve of flesh just beneath his navel.

Enver’s stomach twitched, the subtle indents of his abs shuddering. He had half a mind to be offended. With himself. Ketheric was using barely more than a finger at a time, touching him with a force so tender as to be disgusting.

This is not what I came for.

But he dared not break whatever spell had befallen them, the Curse permeating into his bones, sapping his strength till he was a willing sacrifice beneath his marble cold hands. His cock twitched in its sad state, longing for more, body stretched taut and nerves hungry for every touch.

Enver let his orbs venture south, past that teasing finger, searching Ketheric’s aged though unwithered body, the powerful jut of his bones into thick muscle. Grey rolled over his chest, coils and coils, splintering down at the center seam to form a trail towards his pelvis. His hips were sharp, the striations cavernous and enticing, leading into a darker forest of hair below.

His scars glinted in the faint light: puckers to slashes, pock marks arising into divots. The sheer weight of them, the severity and depth betrayed by their length and thickness, forced his tongue to roll out. Enver tasted the cracks of his own lips, tongue catching the smooth skin of his hand, a paltry bit of flesh to the banquet before him. As if every mark, every luminous memory that had been carved into his skin could be invoked, granting him the power of all those he’d slain. Those who had dared to rise against him. Well, a more enticing meal had never been laid before Bane’s Chosen before.

He blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision as his teeth worried at the meat of his cheek. The General’s cock bobbed and twitched with black veins, thick and swelled as it wavered to into the right. The head was a deep plum, leading down to a pale pillar that possessed a blueish tone. Fuck, it was perfect, and he’d be hard pressed to say he’d seen one better formed or sized… Even with the unnatural coloring.

Well, ‘unnatural’ was a matter of perspective in a world as varied and interesting as their own.

Enver had never seen Ketheric naked. Only the ‘bare essentials’ removed for the General’s pleasure to be found. Now, he drank him with greedy abandon, content to let him touch as much as he wanted, as long as he got to enjoy the way his muscles glided beneath black veined, pallid skin.

Thorm gave a sharp cough from his throat.

Enver’s dark eyes flicked upwards, fingers squeezing into his palm, because the General was staring down at him with a half-lidded gaze. What did he expect him to do? Feign blindness? No, there was something else to his unimpressed stare, something Gortash dared to squirm away from. Thorm caught him, large hands sinking into the flesh of his thighs, hoisting him around in a spin that tore a ragged gasp from him.

In the motion, he was somehow divested of his outer jacket, hissing as he heard a few threads come loose… And not in a good way. Did he know how expensive his clothes were? The cost of the materials and the tailor? Then again, perhaps he reveled in destroying his things… just as Enver took some pride in spoiling his. It was flung over the other side of the bed, landing in a heap in the dust and mildew.

The mattress protested with only a gasp, a wheeze as he shifted them over the surface. Gortash lashed out, trying to grab his shoulders, but the Half-Elf swung him around. His spine crashed into his hard chest, melding his lower back into his abs, forcing him back as Ketheric sunk into the sheets.

Enver choked on another sob. He just managed to snap his teeth down on it. A trembling gasp ripped free, the General’s ice laden muscles digging into the warm softness of his own, leeching away the precious heat of blood pounding through his veins. His shirt was too thin, offering no resistance to the Half-Elf’s unliving body. His pelvis dug into his buttocks, spine curving over his sternum, legs splayed on either side of Thorm’s. One of his arms rose over his body, snatching both of his wrists, and pressed them into sternum.

Enver growled at him, a poor impression of the devil who’d raised him, and Ketheric made sure he knew it by releasing his own savage snarl. It vibrated through his body, raising the hair on the back of his neck, the primal surge of fear smothered by something hotter. Something that licked and ached. Enver’s breath withered, hitching and tugging inside his throat, but the arousal boiled across his skin with a feverish strike. His chest broke out in bumps, stomach trembling as the tip of his cock twitched, and he prayed with all his might that the General had not noticed.

Ketheric’s other hand traveled lower, bracing his lower back, arching enough to force Gortash to raise his hips. Enver squirmed, not in petulance, not in shock, but to throw off the apprehension that had coiled tight in his gut. The General tightened his grip, his cock scraping the inner hollow of his arse, the curve harder than he’d ever felt it.

“Ah…” Enver’s moan was more of a sigh, lashes fluttering as his head fell back. Ketheric had only ever taken him face down, if only to avoid his gaze, to distance himself from who he was doing this with, and Enver had let him. A puppet on his strings, a pretty hole to be opened and used, then tossed aside with his own weeping erection left unattended. Enver had begun to believe that Thorm enjoyed that in some way, some sadistic penance for giving in to be reaped upon the younger man.

For once, Ketheric didn’t reprimand him. His nose scraped his jaw, chest heaving beneath him as if he were not there to weigh him down at all. The air around him froze, his own lungs struggling to fill, mouth open wide to take deeper gulps. His cock found its mark. Enver’s hair hissed against his shoulder. The groan that tumbled free burned through his whole body, alighting a new fire as the man beneath him pressed inside. His hips twitched upwards, teeth sinking into his lower lip, only to be halted by the curl of Thorm’s other arm over him. Enver hissed at being thwarted, though he was relieved to find that the General had slicked his cock anew.

His rim still clung, the burn and stretch not half so intense, but –

“Ah… Ahh! Ah!” But he kept… going. His brow furrowed, gritting his teeth as his own weight worked against him, forcing him to sink deeper and deeper. Till his hole was spasming, Ketheric’s chest beneath him straining with the restraint to remain still.

Enver had long ago come to grips with the fact that Thorm would never let him prepare long enough to take all of him, that the Half-Elf was too impatient to linger for him to adjust to more than the necessary inches for him to cum. But this… Enver’s head fell back, wide eyes unseeing as Thorm flexed his waist.

“Gah… ah… ah!” Enver’s stomach bucked. The General’s steel band of a limb kept him there, rooted to the cock still sinking deeper, sinking deeper than it ever had. Why was he so big? Why did the girth stretch him so damn taut till he was about to snap? His spine arched against Ketheric’s chest, forced to curve, only to be met with the same unbreakable resistance.

Enver twisted his hands, his wrists, claws ripping at the thick, fine hairs on the General’s arms. No, he wanted to feel his scarred, thick hide under his nails, let the black blood stain them. Thorm made no attempt to stop him, to bind his hands anew, letting him slice new paths as his cock did inside him. Instead, he began to… to rock. To sway in gentle, blinding slides that Enver had to gulp against the moans to withhold.

“What… Ah… Ah! What are… Mmmm, uh… you doing?” It was too slow. This wasn’t Thorm’s usual pace at all, the brutal buck and rut of a dog salivating over a bitch, without finesse or patience. It was all instinct, apathetic, and unfulfilling. Instead, he rocked with slow swirls, his cock drawing out just enough to leave him clenching, but returning with none of the usual force. The bed didn’t even make a sound, none of its earlier whining and creaking, save the rustle of the sheets as he continued his gentle motions. He should probably be grateful for that, considering how much deeper Ketheric had chosen to get inside him.

“Come on, this… this isn’t – ngh!” It wasn’t enough. It shouldn’t have been enough. Not for Enver Gortash. Yet his cock betrayed him, soft and trembling, between thighs that quivered. His brow prickled, the damp crawl of sweat falling down into his eyes, mimicking the hot dripping that ached at the tip of his cock. Enver could feel Thorm’s, stuffing him till it threatened to press into his lungs. It struck a fiery brand straight through the middle of him, smothering that inner seam.

“Let me… Hah, let me take over…” Another delicate swirl, not even a thrust, just a subtle pull and rub over every tight crease inside him. “It’ll feel good…” Enver’s throat strained, head bashing back into the shoulder beneath him, but the General refused to increase his pace. Refused to let him have a modicum of control, and forced him to endure the maddening, tender push of his hips. His toes curled, pulling the sheets, and he drew up his knees to offer himself leverage.

“Let me… Just let me…” His heels dug into the sheets, trying to lift his buttocks, to sink his hips down in a sharp buck. The brace of limbs over his chest wouldn’t let him. Enver turned his cheek, rubbing it into Thorm’s beard, panting over his dry, cold lips. “I can’t!” He wouldn’t even release his arms to let him take himself in hand, offering him no recourse but to endure. “I can’t… can’t…” He refused to whine, to plead, to bargain. Gortash gnashed his teeth, groaning as the lie began to tear itself apart with every warning throb that reverberated up from his groin faster and faster…

He opened his eyes, trying to blink away the moisture, peering at him for – Bane banish him, he would not beg for mercy from General Ketheric Thorm. Still, shame found a new home beside the arousal, for blood filled orbs regarded him with cool intent. They peeled away his skin, forsaking his bones, becoming one with his veins. Deeper, deeper, for blood was the currency of the soul. He stared through his barren, obsidian eyes, and found all the truth he needed.

Archduke Enver Gortash had never felt so exposed, not even stripped bare, shackled, and wreathed in bleeding bruises beneath a devil’s heel. He was a fool. He never should have come here. His heart trembled in his ears, stopping up his throat, but his pride – ruined, hemorrhaging, broken and worthless – refused to be subdued. He jerked his chin to the other side, cheek mashing into the hard line of his shoulder.

His own heartbeat punched a whine out of him, darkness flirting with the edges of his eyes, blood under tongue and itching at the tip of his soft, bloated cock. The veins on Ketheric’s writhed, thumping against his rim, maggots wiggling at his insides –

His muscles ached. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, nails scraping, and crown stretched till they could tighten no more. His bones rattled. Every inch of him constricted towards his center. His dark locks stuck to ghost flesh, too tight, too sensitive. Ketheric was too close, too far, his grunt sending another lick of sensation sprawling through him. He clung to the steel rails of his arms, anchoring himself, but he could not muffle the moans that drained from his lungs.

Ketheric throbbed within him, aiding the pulse, the wicked jerk of his balls as his release was milked to its bitter end. Enver’s brow tickled, lashes tugging apart. He lapped at the salt on his lips, letting it score his throat. Make scars in his trachea to match those the General wore, those he’d carved himself.

He’s…

Still hard.

It was not a sobering thought. If anything, he almost felt offended. With himself. For himself.

Ketheric's nostrils flared in his vision, blood pools that’d make even Orin swoon feasting once more on his face, but his own was not so pinched. Not so furious. It was… lax. Despite the hammer of his erection within him, seeking another inch, another rich point to torment with its sheer girth. No, Thorm bore no impatience, no animosity, and Enver – What was he meant to do with such a face? By Bane’s brass balls, he was a fool. So was Ketheric. How could he bear such serenity, wear such appalling gentleness?

Who’s the drunk one here?

His cheeks prickled with an uninvited heat.

“Oh, are you embarrassed, little Enver?” Golden eyes watched him from the foot of an ornate bed, fiery sheets in disarray, but there lay a not even half-dressed imitation Raphael amidst them. The demon entreated him with a fan of his claws, curling back into his crimson palm. “Come closer, sweet Ember, I’ll do no harm to thee… Unless you’d like me to.” Barely fifteen, he had stumbled away, the horror on his face bringing a pause to the creature. “Ah, perhaps not quite yet.” His smile was a gentle thing. The only kindness he had seen in eight years. “Go along, sweet Ember, little Enver, you should not keep our dear Lord and Master waiting.”

“I have to go…” His words were too slick, slippery with weakness, but he tried to cling to what meager control was left to him. Even if his hands were heavy, fingers trembling against the arms that held him shackled over Thorm. Instead, he forced his neck to twist away, mashing his cheek into the Half-Elf’s hard shoulder. It was more desperate than necessary, dominance wrung dry, smeared across his thigh by his soft manhood.

I never should have come to begin with…

“Guh!” Enver found his face buried in a musky pillow, dust sprinkling into his hair, across the flushed skin of his exposed shoulder. His shirt had been pulled aside, clinging to his collar, sticking to his sweaty flesh. “Wait… Wait! I just – “Enver tried to claw back, only to find his hands caught, trapped above him, those gnarled knuckles weaving between the smooth skin of his own. Pen callouses meeting crossed scars, the rough sole of a sword’s handle. “Surely you can attend yourself, this once?!” Yet the cock within him did not waver, pushing down into the tenderest point inside him, forcing his knees to jerk and drag the stained sheets.

“Selfish bastard!” Enver wheezed without venom, with none of the resistance he should have spat at the General.

Ketheric scoffed overtop him, a sound of neither disdain nor disappointment, but amusement.

“Don’t be so greedy.” Thorm usually came with such ease, without a second thought to him, so why was he filling him with patient, almost meandering thrusts? Enver gasped as he pulled back, a few inches, rather than most of the way, as if the act itself could be deemed less pathetic with the least amount of time spent in him. He lingered once again, as if he had all the time in the world to carve him open, not cracking his hips open with the force he normally reserved only for his hammer. He rolled his hips side-to-side on the return, body poised over his, drawing in a tight hum as Enver buried his face in the sheets once more.

His stomach didn’t coil, not as it usually did when he was fucked, the knot growing tighter and tighter. Each buck of Thorm’s hips was more like a swaying, the tender roll of the ocean against the hull of a ship, brushing deep and not so much striking as rubbing his already bruised prostate.

Melting. I’m… Mmm…M’gunna… His gut clenched; waist bowed into the bed as his lashes fluttered. His lips parted, mashing his teeth into the meat of his lower lip, muffling his keen with the seam of his mouth. No! No! He would not give him the satisfaction! Not so easily. A second time after so little, a few strokes, and none of which had reached his soft cock.

“Just… ngh!” Once again, his complaint was met with not a sharp thrust, but the knowing caress of his cockhead against that spot. The one that sewed stars behind his lids, that brought new fire to his eyes, forcing molten shadows to slide free. “Guh… Ah, Keth – Ketheric.” He’d often wondered if a nickname wouldn’t suit the General, but he’d never been foolish enough to cross that particular barrier. Now, in the midst of his madness, he found one emerging anyway.

“Faster… Fast – ah!” His nape burst with a fresh wave of tingles. Canines sliced deep, molars battering the delicate, inner hollow on the side of his throat, threatening to break into the treasured artery that raced below the surface. Enver’s vision blurred, clearing for half a second as his lids snapped back, offering a clear focus of the headboard before him.

“Don’t… Ketheric – don’t you dare!” He should have known better. Some part of him did. That same part relished the drag, the fresh agony that dripped down into the enclave of his collar. His lashes fluttered shut, clenching tight around the cock within him, once more betrayed by his own desires. Ketheric’s hair brushed against his shoulder, moonlight trickling into the edge of his vision.

The friction was becoming unbearable, from fang to throat, hole to rod. A punishment and an assurance, a brand he’d cover just as he had the marks on his ankles and wrists. His pulse turned ragged, the hare trapped in the fox’s jaw, craving its quick demise, yet –

Would he replace them if I asked? The rings of shackles he hid with a smear of cream and powder every morning at the base of his throat. To the world he bore his naked throat and chest, though even that was a lie. Raphael would never be so kind. Ketheric’s fangs mauled the same juncture, mottling it with the same colors he’d already smeared on his ribs and hips earlier, but Enver hoped they’d stay… Hoped they’d replace the devil’s own handiwork.

When had he grown so weak, to wish for a weak man’s ownership?

And yet every swaying thrust was met with a moan he tried to fade into the sounds of the bed rattling, a groan for the time he almost drew out, letting the broad glands of the tip pull and tug at his pliant opening. Ketheric dragged them back and forth, grunting at the way Enver’s body tried to buck back, how his rim rippled and grew hotter with denial. Finally, Ketheric’s assault relented, peeling free of his neck, but Gortash gasped at the loss. He disguised it with a sigh, skin buzzing for one more stroke, one more nuzzle to his prostate, one more snap of teeth. When had he become so pathetic?

But the General returned with no relief, pitching his stroke downward, right where he didn’t need it, right where his stomach pooled into a steaming pile of weakness with another surge of cum from his limp cock.

Enver’s hole suckled, tugged tight around Thorm’s erection, needy and desperate. The Half-Elf above him lowered his torso to the bed, sternum between his shoulder blades, absorbing his pitiable squirming. Not even death throes were as weak as his muscles, honey dripping from a dagger that had lost its edge. He couldn’t even hold his lip between his teeth. A wounded kitten, given a warm bed and cream, didn’t sound as grateful and pathetic as he did. The room had taken a patina, worn at the edges, a smear of rust and bronze overlapping silver and steel. The man over him inhaled against the sweaty edge of his hair. Enver's head dipped back, allowing the intrusion of his corvid nose, seeking the crooked slice his dull teeth had carved into his own skin.

Enver nuzzled his cheek, lapping at his tongue, and Thorm returned his attention with a sharp inhale through his nostrils. He lapped at him, at the brine and blood, curving the muscle to scrape at the bottom of his tongue. Enver closed his lips around him, whining at the contact, at the plush, cool muscle taking on a new heat from the warmth of his own mouth… with his own iron filling in the gaps. Ketheric tasted of petrichor, sweet and lingering, rewarding his invitation with a hard trust of his tongue. Filling him from both ends, denying him nothing, and pushing deeper till his beard was scraping at the flesh of his cheeks. Enver’s vision speckled, neck craned into a cramp, but his shoulders relaxed to sink further into his embrace.

No… No… I have to...

He had to retake control. Even if that meant tearing his face away, even if that meant clawing at the tangled sheets, and trying to drag himself across them. He was the Chosen of Bane, not a concubine spreading her legs, foolish enough to fall –

He should have crushed this moment of lucidity, slunk back into the marshlands of his own undoing, let them carry him down. He wished he could crush his resilience, could wrap his hands around and squeeze, because he’d rather be drunk and mad. At least that way he'd be protected from his own desire.

Owned. Conquered.

Needed.

A broken toy for Ketheric Thorm to pull apart, reshape, lock away in a windowless and doorless tower, as cherished as that eternal damned daughter of his. What was it like? To be so beloved by a man so strong, so unbreakable, that he'd sooner break the gods to be with you?

The loss of his cock, the press of his body, had him crumbling at the threshold. The drag and catch of his head at the rim, the power of his muscles crushing him down, but he barely made it a foot before his hips were caught in a relentless grip. Not even bruising, not till he struggled and kicked out with a shaking ankle, because the General was flipping him over. Overcoming him with an ease that ground his molars.

“You’ve had your fun.” His snarl had no bark, breaths too heavy, and body trembling beneath hardened muscles. Enver gulped and wheezed, failing to disguise a groan as the elder man's cock found his abused opening. “I’m… You need me.” Still. Even now. Even as he grabbed hold of Enver’s left wrist to begin peeling at the gold that he had carefully forged to wind around his limbs. “I have to get back to Baldur’s Gate.” Because if he didn’t go now, he wouldn’t make it back… at least not with working legs. If they worked at all.

“Ketheric!” Not even a hiss, a feeble sound that might as well have given permission. His power, his Netherstone joined the heap of metal on the floor, a weak chime escaping. He tried to make a grab for it, to hold what little dignity he had left, but Thorm caught his wrist to push it into the bed.

His arms were nude, lean, but not half so muscled as the warrior above him. Pale and bearing long, dexterous fingers, smooth and lithe compared to the blunt edges of Ketheric’s. The General wasted no time, sliding his knuckles between his once more, and Enver… Gasped. Shuddered. Moaned as he took in the darkness of his skin, so hot and surging with a new wave of heat, and Ketheric’s own… pale and heavy, mottled with old wounds. Enver wore his only at the seams, a puppet cut from his strings, but the older man made no mention of them.

“You need me… You need me…” Slurring. Syllables sticking and giving way to an accent he’d tried so hard to train himself out of. Enver's whimper betrayed him as Ketheric pushed his hips forward, that clever, cruel burn of almost and too much tingling at the base of his spine. His head snapped back, the hunger of the sound that left him as pathetic as his resolve. "Yer gunna... gunna break me!" Through clenched teeth. Gods, that - that couldn't have been a mewl, his cheeks dipping, jaw unlocking as the shame boiled his eyes with fresh tears. They pattered into the sheets, coiling down his temples, shining in his dark hair.

Ketheric Thorm scoffed above him, drawing up at the waist, and reached up with one hand. His muscles flexed, shoulder bunching into chest, abs growing harder and bulging into the seams of his narrow hips. There was a sheen to him in the candlelight, flickering low and awaiting death with every new passing breeze, but the sweat and mist added edges to his bones and sinew that Enver absorbed with greedy onyx irises. He ran his palm down his scalp, passing lean fingers through his grey hair, forcing the long bangs that had fallen back into some semblance of order.

"Then be broken."

Enver's thighs trembled. Ketheric impaled him.

In a slow, tender glide. It was maddening. Enver found new divots of muscle to sink his nails into, scraping through furrows to hear the ragged hiss of the Half-Elf above him. But he never stopped him, letting him sharpen his wanton misery on his tendons, scraping through the rough forest of grey curls that branched across his pectorals. He waited between each bated breath, each stalled moan, taking another precious centimeter, his own sounds becoming grunts as he swayed back. Gortash watched his face pinch, vision turning into a haze as he plunged back, a little deeper. A little further.

He's… He’s…

“Uh… Uhhh! Keth… Kether… Keth…” His legs tried to hitch higher, one succeeding, aided in the grasp of the General’s hard fingers. The other slid, heel scraping at the back of Thorm’s knee. His stomach trembled, falling higher, lower, as Ketheric nudged upwards – Till his balls were being kissed by the rippling pucker of his hole.

Till his vision melded into grey and blue and pale skin teaming with red. The rivulets of rain mixing with the first thing he’d ever ruined. His father screaming at him in the courtyard. He didn’t want the lamb to suffer. His cock released a weak spurt, dripping down in bitter pebbles towards the dark hairs of his abdomen, pattering onto the sheets to form luminescent puddles.

No, no... He couldn't go back. Not after this. He'd never be the same. It's not fair! Ketheric couldn't know what he was doing. How he was ruining him. But he hadn't slowed, content to finally hunt his own release in the pliant, hot depths of his body. He was getting faster, yet not as fast as so many times before, but the strength was growing by the second. Enver’s gaze flickered, meeting –

His eyes had swirled darker, almost matching his own, boring into his face as the older man fucked… No, it would have been so easy if it were simply fucking.

He was taking him like he was a virgin bride on his wedding night. Enver’s neck snapped to the side, trying to nuzzle beneath the sheets, to twist his body away. He told him to stop that! Enver had given Ketheric the courtesy of silence when he wept like a babe! The least he could do was return the damn favor!

The General, on the other hand, never played fair.

After all, fairness meant nothing in either war or love.

He grabbed his jaw, forcing his head around, watching the light splinter from his onyx eyes. And it was that look, the swirl of crimson, the flicker of his muscles as his hips bunched and pressed and abused his already used body –

“Keth!” Enver Gortash’s whole body bucked, with enough force to surprise even Ketheric, but he was too deep. Squeezed too tight in the instant he found his release. It was tighter, hotter, Thorm’s seed spilling into him to send another surge of pleasure through him. One that made him mewl and claw, cleaving a wretched cry that tingled to the tips of his toes from the confines of his lungs. His eyes reached for each other, crossing as they roll up, calves tensed to prickling. His stomach seared with the intrusion, simmering over his nerves, taking him deeper as Ketheric collapsed on top of him.

He huffed panting breaths into his neck, mouthing and lapping at the sweat slick, bloodied tendons as Enver trembled through an orgasm he couldn't tear through the edges of. There was no mercy. He was forced up and through each wave, whimpering as Ketheric rocked his hips again, half-hard cock nudging his swollen prostate.

Salt and seed coalesced; his mind darkened in every corner as the bliss refused to abate. Enver's moan as Ketheric withdrew turned into a sharp exhale, throat too raw to voice anymore pleasure, his spend rolling over his quivering thighs as his entrance flexed. The cold leeched the heat from him, forcing a new shudder to rock through his boneless body. Ketheric stared at him. Except, his eyes were too wide, and the black was too big. An eclipse to his crimson cracked whites. Blown too thick, masking an unreadable thing that tightened his jaw with mithril screws, and cracked across his broad shoulders. Did he even know what he’d done to him?

“Keth... Keth...?" The lost lamb, nudging against the side of his palm, pressing too firm against the knife in his hand. Did it not feel his intent? Did it not feel the steel, poised with delicate reluctance against its throat? His heels slid across the sheets, leaden and trembling, sightless eyes as wide and dark as the ewe. "Can't... feel my... my l - legs." Whined nonsense, sticking behind his teeth, hands clinging to his tacky abdomen. Feverish brow heavy with dark coils, wool soft and glinting, with his throbbing lips tingling with blood.

"Love... I love..." Ketheric's breath blasted over the side of his neck. Enver’s eyes rolled, seeking him out of the corner to find his teeth parting as his pupils erupted outwards, an eclipse that lifted him high and dangled him over the threshold of true madness. Admittance never tasted so sour. "Love... when yer sweet."

Enver rode the last waves of his endless bliss into the dark, thighs flexing, and lashes fluttering shut. His last vision of Ketheric was a funny thing: it was a mixture of horror and… disappointment melding his brow into the shock of realization.

Ah, he sees it now. The waves washed over him still, submerging him till he had no choice but to succumb. Does this do it for you, General? Watching Bane’s Chosen submit to you? He wanted to smile through his bloody, kiss-swollen lips, but everything has turned heavy and distance. Will you get hard again? Will you use me to relieve yourself? He wondered, yet knew Ketheric would never tell. I wouldn’t mind… if you did.

Just this once.