Chapter 5
Chapter Five
A dream? A hallucination? A delirium brought on by evil magics?
Clove lay on his back and gazed, foggy-eyed from sleep, at the canopy overhead, and he wondered.
The crossbeams were absent their flowering vines. There was nothing but the gentle light of day striping the canopy; not a single leaf remained.
Not a single sigil, either.
The bedposts, while ornate, bore no markings.
The memory of the night still rocked vividly through him, drawing shivers as he remembered the touch of the beast. The tongue of the beast. The whole dark, serpentine mass of the dragon that had ravished him.
If he had been ravished at all.
For there was no clear evidence that the night’s passion had been anything more than a dream.
Hesitant to believe it could be true, he lay where he was for a long moment, attuning himself with his body.
He was sweat-sticky but not sore, and well-rested in such a way that the comfort went bone-deep.
The only part of him that wasn’t relaxed to the point of bliss was his head, which felt oddly weightless and wandering, like a kite kept aloft by a gentle breeze.
Disoriented.
Clove breathed in deeply, filling his lungs, and held the breath until it burned, but his efforts did nothing to ground his dizzy head.
Perhaps he had been drugged, he finally thought.
It would not have been the first time.
Most of the concoctions given to slaves were bitter and noxious, leaving a lasting aftertaste that was as humiliating as it was repulsive, but it was possible that the beast who “owned” him had access to a traceless substance typically too expensive and rare to waste on chattel.
Something that would make Clove doubt himself, and through his doubt, make him vulnerable.
He could not afford such softness.
It had been drugs, he decided. The things he had seen and experienced last night were impossible outside of hallucination.
Not just the physical distortion of his body, but his own reactions.
His own feelings. He would never have so willingly spread his legs and begged for it—would never have enjoyed such ravaging, such violation.
And when he found the beast who had tried to trick him into believing he’d enjoyed it, he would show no mercy.
The pleasure he’d felt—the satisfaction, the emotion—all of it had been nothing more than a chemically induced dream.
Resolved to uphold this revelation as the truth, Clove allowed himself to remain in bed in the hope the strange feeling in his head would lift so he would be more capable of fighting should he encounter his captor.
The last vestiges of sleep clung stubbornly to him, urging him to close his eyes and indulge just a little longer, but he knew better.
Despite the current peace and quiet, he was not safe.
He had to keep his wits about him. Quiet recovery was one thing, but sleep was something else entirely.
In the lair of the enemy, especially one so despicable, he couldn’t afford to take any more risks than were strictly necessary.
The feeling in his head did not go away, but it did somewhat fade, leaving him more aware of his body, and that awareness was what finally drove him out of bed—the sheets were soft, but they clung to his sweat-soaked skin like spiderwebs, and now that he had noticed it, he could not keep the unpleasantness out of his mind.
He rose, bare feet meeting cold stone floor, and flung the sheets from him. They crumpled messily on the bed, but did not leave him bare.
Clove looked down with a frown.
Sometime during the night, he had been dressed in a fine silk sleeping robe.
It was embellished with an all-over golden pattern and hung open at the front, so long on him that both ends of its undone belt dragged on the floor like a train.
He scooped them up and tugged the robe into place, then tied the belt into a large bow with loops that dropped well beyond his knees.
The silk was mortifying, but at the very least, he would not be naked if he crossed paths with the beast.
Armor in place, he looked out across the room.
What had been bathed in shadows the night before was now brought to light.
Beyond the island of the bed was a sea of empty, wasted space. Where the ceiling should have been there was instead a circular opening a good twenty feet across that overlooked the sky, its perimeter rimmed with smooth, seamless gold that shone in the morning sun.
The walls were a surprise. Arched, doming towards the ceiling, they were adorned with such a wide array of trophies and oddities that Clove could not help but stare.
Some items were obvious. He recognized the long, dragon-hunting spears of haebacks, winged half-men who lived in high and unreachable places.
The spears had clever, cruel heads, the kind which punched between scales and flared open inside, allowing the great flying beasts to be staked and trapped.
The sight made Clove’s skin creep as he wondered how they had come to be here.
Idly collected? Or the proof of vanquished hunters?
There were a lot of those spears.
Among them were other weapons. Halberds, axes, maces.
Some plain, some smoke-scorched, some glitteringly bejeweled.
Accompanying those weapons were their matches in armor.
Shields, helmets, war crests. Plain. Singed.
Jeweled. Knitting together an uneasy narrative about their owners, and the circumstances that had led to their assembly.
One item caught Clove’s eye; spying it, he lit up and made for the wall, only to stop short and scowl.
A sword hung just out of reach.
Almost as if to mock him.
It was a long blade, with a gilded pommel and no scabbard in sight. The metal reflected his own bitter expression back down at him.
Clove stood, hands on hips, looking up at the weapon.
He almost considered jumping up and down to try and reach it.
Ultimately, he decided not to, and turned away. The sword was immense, probably too heavy for his light frame. He wasn’t trained in swordcraft, anyway. What use would it have for him?
He scanned the great chamber again, feeling a sense of helplessness bubble up in him. Anxiety budded alongside it. At some point, he was sure, someone would come. They would find him here, clad in naught but a mockingly pretty silk robe, and then what would he do?
Before his mind could fill in that terrible blank, his eyes fell upon potential salvation.
On the other side of the bed, at first having been obscured behind the enormous, extravagant posts and curtains, was a large arched entryway.
The space beyond it was shrouded in shadows, nothing but black from his point of view, but Clove didn’t hesitate.
He made straight for it, footfalls swift and silent.
Through it, he was bound to find a way out.
He paused cautiously in the doorway, peering into the darkness beyond. Fists balled up, muscles tensed, jaw set, he prepared himself to confront whoever—or whatever—might be lurking, waiting for him.
But there was no one.
The room was quiet and empty, and as Clove’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw it was so vastly different from the bedroom that it felt as though he’d been transported to another place entirely.
Unlike in the bedroom, it boasted no source of natural light.
The windowless walls were cave-like and irregular, and while the floor was smooth enough by the entryway, it quickly gave way to striations and other dimensional irregularities, including outcrops of rock that jutted straight out of the ground and formed a ring around the middle of the room. The effect was disorienting.
Clove had been sure that he was on an upper floor, perhaps even at the top of a tower, but this place seemed like it came from the earth itself.
Curious, he unclenched his fists and approached the circle of rock, climbing each exposed striation like the steps of a staircase. At the top, he was able to see over the rock outcrop into the hidden center of the room.
The rocks were hiding a natural pool.
The water was dark and in a perpetual state of gentle movement, its crests and ripples sparkling from the small amount of light that streamed in from the next room. Clove climbed atop the nearest rock and dipped his fingers beneath the surface.
The water was warm, maybe heated by a volcanic vent or some other natural feature, a gentle, alluring steam rising from its surface. Across the pool, upon a natural stone shelf, sat several bars and bottles of soap, and next to them, scrubbing stones.
For a street urchin who had always had to settle for an icy stream or suspicious bucket of water to bathe, the setup was too tempting to resist.
Still, he eyed the dark corners of the room as he advanced, suspicious. Anticipating someone there, watching him… but there was no one. Reassured for the time being, he shed his robe and slipped into the pool.
He nearly moaned at the welcome warmth of it.
The cleansing effect was immediate—not for his body, but for his muscles, his bones, and his brain. The night’s disturbing, baffling memories washed away as he submerged himself, leaving him feeling ‘clean’ even before he had the chance to scrub.
He swam to the shelf of soaps and washing-stones, taking his time in making a selection.
He had not had the luxury of truly, properly bathing himself in years, and the choice mattered.
When he finally had a fine, coarse purple stone in hand and a jarful of peachy-smelling soap-stuff to dip it into, he found another shelf to sit upon, this one half-descended in the water.
It was only when he began to bathe, to touch his naked body, that a violent shock came upon him.
Clove froze in the middle of washing.
His hand hesitated under the water, inches from his cock, hovering above it.
Slowly he brought his hand down and touched himself very lightly.
He dropped the washing-stone.
It drifted to the bottom of the pool, falling into the shadows, and Clove forgot it, forgot the soap-stuff and his desire to wash away memories of that beast’s violation.
Horror grabbed him.
There had been no sigil visible on his belly, no sensation of ass gaped into a pit, no evidence that his dream had been anything but that—
Until now.
His cock was gone.
Well, not gone—it was changed.
Everything was changed.