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Kressa moved the body into her own chambers before examining it more closely.
It was astonishing that the body wasn’t dead, with the wound that it carried at the back of the neck. And when she pushed aside the eyelid, she could see the signs that a mindflayer tadpole existed within the brain.
Was this believed to be a failure, and discarded hastily by those who considered themselves more adept and able than Kressa?
It must be one of the first of what were being called ‘True Souls’. Perhaps the very first! How exciting. And how foolish, for it to be thrown away. Kressa was not allowed to examine the True Souls currently being processed — that was only for the Chosen — but this destroyed creature… it could be her way of learning more.
No light in the eyes, and yet something in this shell persisted.
It was a lovely shell, though marred from physical damage — someone had been extremely angry at this body. The damage at the back of the skull was only the beginning. There were cuts littered across the form, rage expelled violently.
Kressa set herself to tending those wounds, bandaging and using non-magical tinctures.
No healing potions or scrolls. That might taint her experiments. Nothing to dull any pain, as pain was one of the most useful tools in judging the results of experimentation.
Her husband, Maghtew, arrived back to their chambers while she was still hard at work cleaning the body, wrapped his arms around her waist and nuzzled into her neck. “What have you got there?”
She shook him off impatiently.
The body was showing signs of accelerated healing. Who had it been, once upon a time?
“A pet,” she said. “A pet just for me.”
“Did the boss give you that?” he asked.
“I found it,” she said.
“So the boss doesn’t know,” Maghtew concluded.
Kressa turned around to face him, shielding the body from his view. “It’s mine. I claimed it! You know how little they let us actually study in depth. I ache to know more. I deserve to know more. We are the ones who will pick up the pieces at the end of the day. We are the ones who are devoted most purely to our work. It’s mine. You won’t… you won’t tell him, will you? He won’t let me keep it if he finds out.”
One day, Kressa knew that she would find a way to destroy Balthazar and take his place as Myrkul’s second, under General Thorm himself, but she needed an angle to succeed in a task like that. This body might help provide that angle.
Maghtew looked uncertain, so Kressa softened. It was difficult to focus on anything except the body behind her on the slab but she tugged her husband into a kiss.
“Let me have this indulgence, sweet husband,” she said. “It can be our little secret.”
“Our secret,” he agreed. “Very well, my love.”
The healing capabilities of the body were astonishing.
It was able to react when she was vivisecting it. Attempted to use its own intestines to strangle her. Might have succeeded, if more strength had remained in its arms.
Kressa restrained it more securely when she worked on it next.
Wrote down the characteristics — female body, elven. Had been badly mutilated but was healing extremely quickly and well, even with minimal caretaking.
It had tried to grunt out some words when it had attempted to strangle her, but nothing that could be understood.
Her lovely, feral pet.
It reacted to the elder brain’s calls to its True Souls, but with rage rather than obedience, which was fascinating to witness.
Having tested some of the limits of pain for the body, Kressa moved to a task that it might find more pleasant — was it still capable of pleasure?
The breasts had been sliced into when Kressa had first found the body, with one of the nipples cut off entirely, but it had grown back when the breast had healed. Astonishing. Experimentation showed that the regrown nipple responded to stimuli the same as the one that had remained whole. In all respects, it reacted identically.
She had taken to doing her experiments with her pet only when she was alone with it — Maghtew had acted disgusted when he’d walked in on her compressing the breast tissue to confirm the volume. Accused her of violating the body for her own pleasure — ridiculous! It was a lovely body, to be sure, but Kressa was acting in nothing but the purest of scientific curiosity. It was all useful data — the volume of the breasts, the pliability of the vulva, the depth of the vagina, how widely the various orifices could be dilated. There was nothing prurient about any of it.
“You know that I treat you with nothing but respect,” Kressa told her pet.
The pet couldn’t talk back, and it almost certainly never would be capable of such a thing, but that only made it easier to talk to. Maghtew had been growing ever more cross and argumentative, and even sex no longer seemed to quell his unease.
It isn’t the same, he’d said, You’re always thinking about that pet of yours, even in bed.
Why shouldn’t she think about the most interesting part of her life? She’d learned so much from her pet — it was incredible how much could be learned from a body that refused to die.
And why shouldn’t she reward her pet for how much it had taught her? That seemed only fair.
Kressa inserted an oiled finger into her pet’s vagina, shifting around until she could stroke against the spot that would trigger the body’s orgasm. It took several dedicated minutes of effort, but eventually her pet moaned wordlessly and quivered underneath her, wetting her hand.
She wiped her hand off on her pet’s stomach, where the most recent vivisection scars were already almost healed into thin lines.
“You are such an astonishing creature,” she told it. She cupped the breast that had been missing a nipple when she’d first found the body. Thumbed over the perfect dark pink of the nipple that had regrown. There were scars, but they were faint.
This was perhaps the most fascinating part of her fascinating creature — to have regrown not only the skin but the connecting tissues underneath. It was if her pet’s body knew what it was supposed to look like, even when injury attempted to intervene. She’d never seen anything like it before.
She’d never seen any creature like her pet before.
Truly, Maghtew didn’t understand how much Kressa restrained herself. She would love to put a collar around its neck and bring it with her at all times, like a proper pet. But she couldn’t allow anyone else to see it, and to realize that Kressa was keeping secrets from Balthazar. “You must have been an impressive person, when your mind was whole.”
“By the blessed bones of Myrkul, not again.”
Her husband’s voice, once so dear, brought a frown to Kressa’s lips. She fought against the urge to yank her hand away from her pet’s breast — that would be an admission that the horrible things that Maghtew claimed about her relationship to her pet were true. She wouldn’t allow him to taint their pure connection.
“Testing physical response,” she said. “This is the nipple that was sliced off. Is it not remarkable how it has regrown?”
She glanced towards him and grabbed his wrist, pushing his hand onto her pet’s breast. It was jarring and wrong, to see someone else touching it, but she must get Maghtew to understand the work that she was doing. If he whispered a word of it to anyone else, everything would be ruined.
They must be in this together.
His hand twitched but he didn’t immediately tear it away. It had been some time since he and Kressa had shared a bed — perhaps he was feeling some of those sexual impulses that he tried to pretend existed in Kressa.
“Test it,” she said, ignoring the clawing growl in her stomach that hated seeing his hand there. “The weight of it in your hand. Half of the tissue had been cut away, and yet — with so little care on my part — it feels the same as her other breast, which was much less damaged.”
She wrapped her arms around her husband, pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.
His hand stayed where she’d put it, loosely cupping her pet’s breast.
“Is it not soft?” she asked.
His fingers tightened, squeezing the tissue.
“It’s soft,” he confirmed hoarsely. His fingers skated across the breast, finding the nipple, which was hardened by the cool air of the room and Kressa’s earlier manipulation of it. “I would… beloved wife, will you not-“
“Kiss it,” she said, putting an edge of command in her voice. Maghtew had always enjoyed her ordering him around in bed. “Lick it.”
She slid her hand down to cup his groin, feeling his cock stir.
How long had it been since she’d touched him here?
Longer than she’d realized, perhaps, by the way he groaned and bucked into her hand.
“Kiss it,” she said again.
He leaned down and wrapped his mouth around her pet’s nipple, kissing and sucking lightly. She fondled him through his clothes, her eyes fixed on her pet’s face.
“See how it reacts to your touch,” she said. “The sensation is clearly there. Nothing was lost. Is that not truly beyond what you might have expected? Anything else would have been dead long ago, but this body persists. Feel how warm it is. Place your hand on its vulva. Feel the wetness leaking from its vagina.”
He obeyed her. Went further than that, his fingers slipping inside her pet without Kressa’s permission.
She suppressed her anger over his presumption. This was a good thing. He needed to be convinced that her pet was useful. If this was the use that he could find for it, then she would tolerate his vulgarity.
His cock was reacting to all the stimuli, hardening underneath her touch.
Yet she felt distaste at the idea of touching his prick directly. He had accused her of violating her pet, but he was the one thrusting his fingers inside its body. He was the one suckling at its nipple, making eager little noises and grunting like a pig.
She released him and took a step backwards, removing herself from his body, disgust pouring into her.
Her gaze went to her pet’s face again, and she was soothed by the whimpers that escaped its lips. A pleasing sound.
Maghtew pulled away from her pet’s nipple, a string of saliva lingering a moment before falling. His hand was still pressed flat against its vulva, fingers working inside the vagina.
“Kressa?”
She did her best to hide what she was feeling. She needed Maghtew to stop fussing over how she was experimenting with her pet. The more she could get him to compromise himself with it, the more he would indulge her when it came to her work. “Measure the depth of its vagina with your prick.” She had to force herself to add, “Sweet husband. Let us share this moment.”
Still, he hesitated.
“I- my love, I’d rather be with you,” he said.
But he hadn’t moved his hand. His fingers were still inside the body.
Liar. Hypocrite.
“I want to watch,” she said, trying to sound coy and not sickened. “I want to be able to think about you while I’m working with my pet.”
He pulled away from her pet so that he could expose his cock, and she made herself smile encouragingly at him when he glanced at her.
His prick was hard and engorged. He’d enjoyed touching her pet that much, had he?
There was one strap around her pet’s waist, holding it securely against the slab, and its hands were tied down — it was far too eager to use its hands when it felt threatened and had nearly strangled Kressa more than once. Otherwise, it was wholly available to be touched and manipulated.
Maghtew spread open its thighs, rubbing his hands against the skin — it was silk-soft, Kressa knew, velvet and warm. He stared down as if hypnotized by the sight of its vulva, as Kressa suppressed another surge of anger.
Still, she said nothing. This needed to happen. Her work needed to continue.
He spread open the lips of her pet’s vulva, spitting against the opening to the body, then using his thumb to rub his saliva into the skin. Kressa’s nose wrinkled, but she bit down on her annoyance.
Then Maghtew shoved his cock into Kressa’s pet with one long thrust, making it spasm on the slab. He sighed once he was all the way inside, resting his hand on the cold stone to the side of the pet’s face. For a man who’d complained about her attentions to her pet, he certainly seemed to enjoy having his prick sheathed inside its warm body.
Her pet looked distressed at the sudden intrusion, and Kressa whispered an inward apology to it. Her pet would not need to endure his touch forever.
“Whoever discarded my pet hated it with a passion,” she said. “Its vagina was packed with rose vines, the thorns cutting into the walls. It took over an hour to remove them all, to avoid damaging it further. Can you feel any defects?”
“No,” he breathed out, petting the side of her pet’s body. “Myrkul save me, she feels… perfect.”
“It,” Kressa corrected sharply.
Maghtew didn’t respond. She couldn’t see his face, so she moved around the slab so that she could get a better look. Yet even once she could see him properly, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“You’ve grown so attached to it, and yet you think of it as ‘it’,” he said finally.
“I told you — this is only a rational experiment,” Kressa said. “Whatever person that was once inside the body has long since passed. I have seen no signs of a personality, only physical reactions to what the body experiences.”
Explaining it made her relax somewhat. Perhaps this was what had been bothering Maghtew — he’d mistakingly believed that Kressa had been occupied with focusing her energies on another person, not realizing that her pet was only an empty shell. A fascinating shell with remarkable properties, but just a shell.
“Use it,” she urged. “The way you might use any object.”
“I… my love, will you touch me?” he implored.
Had he always sounded so pathetic?
She refrained from rolling her eyes as she reached out to stroke the side of his face.
“I’ll touch you,” she agreed. Her hand slid around to the back of his neck and she encouraged him to lean forward, to press his lips against the lax, open mouth of the body. Sometimes, her pet’s mouth was dangerous, but it seemed safe at the moment. “Kiss it.”
She settled her hand on the small of her husband’s back as he began to kiss the unresponsive mouth of her pet, and fuck into its limp body. She cooed softly, swallowing any hints of distaste. This would tie him to her research — he could not betray her without betraying himself. It was worth it.
Maghtew grew rougher as he went on, his hands cupping its breasts and squeezing so hard that Kressa suspected that he would leave bruises. He was licking into the open mouth, sticking his tongue deep enough inside that she worried her pet might choke.
The squelching noises of him fucking into the body were disgusting to listen to, and she wondered how she had ever managed to have sex with him before. Had he always made such vulgar sounds?
Kressa tilted her head curiously as she noticed her pet’s hand begin to twitch in time to Maghtew’s thrusts into its body.
Then Maghtew froze, abruptly reaching up to throttle her pet’s neck as if trying to murder it — she was horrified but then realized what was happening — her pet had woken up into a state of violence, as happened from time to time and-
“The bloody bitch bite my tongue,” Maghtew said, yanking his cock out of the body, his hand covering his bleeding mouth. His words were half-garbled, blood leaking through his fingers. “She fucking bit me.”
The pet’s eyes had rolled to the back of its skull and there was blood on its teeth, but it seemed otherwise docile, as if a taste of Maghtew’s blood had satisfied it.
“It’s not acting out of malice,” Kressa said. “It simply didn’t understand what was happening to its body. That’s all.”
Inwardly, she cursed the timing. Maghtew had been growing invested in her pet, but now he was frustrated with it again.
Despite her own reluctance, it might be wise to sleep with Maghtew herself, to give him some satisfaction.
But when she reached out for him, he jerked backwards.
“I need to drink a damned healing potion,” he said. “Fuck your pet if you want, Kressa. I’m not touching that thing ever again.”
He stalked out of the room and she clenched her fists.
Then Kressa turned to her pet, and her annoyance faded away.
It didn’t know what it was doing. It had felt an intrusion into its body and acted to repel it. It hadn’t meant to ruin anything.
She cleaned off the blood and other fluids.
“You didn’t mean to hurt him,” she said, in a soothing voice. “You didn’t mean to be bad. I forgive you, pet. I won’t punish you for this.”
Not that there was any point in punishing an empty husk. Still, it seemed to respond to her reassuring tone.
Absently, she put her hand on its vulva, dipped two fingers inside to feel the wetness seeping from its vagina.
Perfect, Maghtew had called it. He hadn’t been wrong.
“I’m glad he won’t be touching you again,” she confessed to her pet, sinking her fingers in as deeply as she could. Stroking the delicate walls. No violent reaction this time, but she didn’t have anything near its mouth. That was the mistake that she’d made with Maghtew. “I hated seeing his hands on you.”
She indulged herself for a while longer, even pressing her thumb against her pet’s clitoris to feel how that made its vagina contract around her fingers. A reward for her pet, for enduring the clumsy touch of her husband.
It took some time, but she was able to coax the body into another orgasm, clenching around her fingers tightly. Wordless whimpers fell out of its mouth.
Kressa sighed, pressing her own thighs together. She was wet, but touching herself would be like admitting that Maghtew had been correct in his accusations. That was… that was a line she refused to cross. None of this was for her own stimulation. It was all for her research.
Her motives were pure.
Reluctantly, she pulled her fingers out of its vagina, wiping off the wetness onto one of its thighs.
“Now,” she cooed. “How about we cut into you again? I’d like a look at your kidneys this time.”
Her pet didn’t respond, but that didn’t matter.
“You’re such a lovely thing,” she sighed.
Her lovely thing. She’d claimed the body. It belonged to her.
And nothing would be allowed to take it away.