Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ser Agatha found the runaway huddled in a cave lapping up water from a shallow pool. With her phylactery smashed by rebels, it had not been easy to track her. Ser Mettin had given up on it entirely when it became clear that she'd made it out into the mountains, and had wandered off to harass the family member who'd allegedly sheltered her the night before. Agatha, though, had become a Templar to protect civilians — even the ones too stupid to understand why they ought to be cooperating with the Order rather than fighting against it. She'd persevered the old-fashioned way, following a trail of trampled brush and scraps of torn fabric. At one point, there had been a shoe stuck in the mud. After that, there had been bloody footprints.

The mage looked so miserable that Agatha half suspected she would come quietly if ordered to, but she wasn't about to take any chances. She hit her with a smite that knocked her on her face, then left her for a few moments to sputter and struggle desperately to push herself off the ground and pull her head out of the water. Only when Agatha began to worry that the girl might actually drown did she step forward to fix the shackles to her wrists.

The shackles attached to a long chain leash, which Agatha used to lead her silent, sullen captive out onto the mountain path from which they'd both come. The sun was already setting, and as the mage dragged her wounded feet, Agatha quickly lost whatever hope she might have had of making it back to the city before nightfall. She would have to make camp soon. Even if she didn't dare sleep without someone to stand guard, she could rest her legs and avoid stumbling over the edge of a cliff in the dark.

She would have to secure her captive well, of course. For that purpose, she found a tree and shoved the mage's back against it, then slung the chain over a high-up branch and pulled down until the prisoner's arms were stretched above her head. Agatha fastened the end of the chain to a branch lower down and further around to the back, where the mage would never reach. Then she fished a vial of magebane out of her satchel and uncorked it.

"Open up," she commanded. When the mage was slow to comply, she socked her in the stomach to make her gasp out, then shoved a pair of gauntleted fingers into her open mouth and poured the potion in around them. The mage gagged, but Ser Agatha removed her fingers from between her teeth to press them under her chin instead, and held her head back and her jaw shut until she swallowed.

With that taken care of, Ser Agatha settled in to camp. She built a small fire so that she would be able to see when darkness fell, then pulled her cheesecloth-wrapped rations out of her satchel and finally got around to eating. There was a roll of bread, a wedge of hard white cheese, and a link of sausage — all things chosen for their convenience during travel and not for how satisfying a repast they would make after a miserable day's work. Still, they probably would have been a decent enough supper if Agatha hadn't already missed lunch. As things stood, she couldn't help regretting as she ate that she was not instead enjoying a hot meal in the mess hall.

"Please," the mage murmured from where she stood bound. "I'm so hungry... the poison, it hurts. Please, just a little bit to calm my stomach."

"You should have thought of that before you ran away from the place that gives you free food," Agatha told her between finishing up the meat and starting in on the cheese. It had never quite sat right with her how many resources went to feeding mages while ordinary citizens went hungry. True, the Circle more than made back the money that was spent on maintaining it, but relatively few of the apprentices who enjoyed its benefits lived long enough to start giving back. Especially in an institution as big as the Gallows, it just seemed like there was a lot of waste that there ought to be some way to cut down on.

"It's not free," the mage argued. "The price is... obedience. If we don't do whatever you want exactly how you want, you hurt us. Starve us."

"Forgive me, then: you should have thought of that before you ran away from the place that gives you food with a few conditions attached, just like anyone else in the world has to put in some effort not to go hungry." Agatha finished the cheese and looked her captive directly in the eye as she tore the bread into four pieces and ate all of them one by one. "I didn't have the best day either, you know. And unlike some people, that wasn't because I did anything wrong. It was because I did everything right."

The mage shuddered, a rippling motion that made her breasts heave and her hips sway and the chains that held her wrists click together with a strangely pleasant jangling sound. A vulnerable little whine escaped her trembling throat. Though the mage was far from beautiful, Agatha suddenly found herself noticing, now that she'd had a chance to let herself relax enough for her mind to wander away from her duty, that she was actually quite attractive in a plain way. She had a sunburned face and unremarkable brown hair, but her soft build full of gentle curves made her look so very touchable. There was something a little bit unexpected about that, something that Agatha hadn't quite been able to get used to even after years at the Gallows. It wasn't the temptation of a flashy magister dressed and made up by her slaves, or of an ethereally beautiful spirit. It was unsettling how much mages could look like the ordinary people whom Agatha fought to protect from them.

She wasn't what she looked like, though, and Agatha knew exactly how to remind herself of that.

Agatha stood up and drew her sword. The mage gasped and flinched backward, only to smash her skull against the tree trunk. Her head lolled forward as she groaned in pain — so she was looking down at herself to see Agatha slash open the blouse she had presumably stolen or been given by her idiot sister, as well as the breastband underneath.

The breastband fluttered to the ground, and the blouse hung open in tatters, framing the mage's body like a pair of drawn curtains. A thin scratch beaded with drops of deep red ran like a river through the valley between her breasts. Aside from that small streak of color, she was so pale where her clothes had covered her that the contrast with her reddened face looked almost comical.

Her breasts were full and round. Laying her sword aside, Agatha grabbed them and squeezed down slowly, enjoying how easily the soft flesh gave beneath the unforgiving metal that covered her hands. Her fingers had sunken in almost an inch before they felt any resistance at all, and even then, she still managed to work them in farther by applying a bit more pressure. The mage screamed and thrashed, unwittingly making things worse for herself by tugging against Agatha's unshakable grip and causing her flesh to stretch. At first her cries were wordless, but finally they took shape into "No more!" and "Please!" and "Stop!"

Agatha did not stop until her own hands began to feel the discomfort of cramping. Then she released her prisoner, and stood back to admire the affect she'd had on her. The formerly milk-white skin of her breasts had been reddened and in some places spotted with bruises ranging from purple to blue. The tips had swollen and peaked — perhaps from the cold of the metal, perhaps in anticipation of further abuse. Agatha grabbed one and twisted it, watching the surrounding skin shift and swirl the colors she had just painted on it, listening to the mage's screams reach ever keener pitches.

When she finally let go, the mage went limp in her restraints, panting to catch the breath she'd screamed away. She started squirming again, though, when Agatha grabbed her skirt and pulled it down to pool around her ankles.

"Not here," the wretched thing begged. "Not now. Please, just take me back to the Circle first. I'll do whatever you want. I'll wash up for you, make myself smell good. You can use my bed, if you want to. Just please, not like this. It hurts, everything hurts so much."

"That's another thing you should have thought of before you ran away," Agatha chided her, and tore away her smalls to expose her. Her thighs were as pale as her breasts, but her inner folds were dark like ripe fruit. Agatha pulled her gauntlet off her left hand and probed them with her bare fingers. The mage whined and tried to wriggle away, but Agatha wrapped her still-armored right hand around her thigh and pinned it back against the tree, pressing in bruises with her fingertips as a warning.

She didn't normally take things this far, but after the day she'd just had, Agatha figured she deserved a special treat.

Agatha's fingers stroked the mage's cleft, feeling for her entrance. She was already slippery with arousal, and when Agatha's hand at last brushed against her hole, it opened to release another gush of wetness. Agatha took the opportunity to ram two fingers in at once. The warm, slick walls of the mage's body spasmed around them in protest, and Agatha felt an electric warmth growing beneath her own skin. She moved her hand experimentally, thrusting her fingers deeper only to partially withdraw them, curling and uncurling them, moving them in circular motions that swiped against all sides of the channel surrounding them. Some of the motions earned her more yelps and whimpers, but others drew moans that did not sound entirely pained. "And I thought you said you didn't want this," she taunted her prisoner.

"I... oh! I knew you were going to rape me," the mage managed to blurt out between the wordless sounds. "Knew I couldn't stop you. Don't know why I bothered to beg. Just have to... do what I can. To make it hurt less."

"This is a punishment, you know." Agatha moved her right hand from the mage's thigh and pressed it against her bare stomach, causing the mage's heat-flushed skin to tremble at the sudden touch of cold metal. "You don't get to decide how much it hurts." Then, with her other hand still buried in the mage's cunt, she cast a smite. Even with only the barest trace of mana left inside of her to burn, the mage screamed and seized, her body twitching around the invading fingers in a parody of an orgasm.

Once she had stilled, Agatha dislodged her fingers and stepped back to look her captive over. The mage half hung by her wrists as she swayed on her feet, limp and bruised and dripping. "Why don't you just kill me already?" she muttered, then finally broke down into abject sobbing. "Maker, I wish I'd died last night in my old bed, fed and cared for and still believing there might be some goodness somewhere! Just kill me now! I don't want any more regrets!"

"Is that really what you want?" Agatha asked, picking her sword back up from where she'd laid it down earlier.

"I..." The mage gulped heavily.

"Well?" Agatha pressed the tip of the sword to the hollow of her throat. "I need to hear your answer. A mage with a deathwish is a dangerous thing."

"No!" the wretch blurted out at last. "I didn't mean it! Please, please just forget I ever said that!"

"Are you sure about that?" Agatha pressed her ruthlessly. "You sounded an awful lot like you meant it to me. But maybe you just weren't thinking, like you weren't thinking when you ran away and caused everyone all this trouble."

"I— Yes! You're right! Of course you're right! I'm sorry! I just wasn't thinking!"

"A mage who doesn't think is also a dangerous thing," Agatha pointed out. A mage is a dangerous thing, always. She might look like a helpless young woman, like someone Ser Agatha would want to protect, like someone she would feel sick at the very thought of brutalizing like this, but she wasn't. The way she burned beneath her skin at the touch of holy fire proved it. So did the way Agatha burned beneath her skin as she watched her squirm.

"I'm sorry! I'll do better!"

"Well, here's something for you to think about." Agatha shifted her sword so that her armored hand gripped it by the blade just above the crossguard, and drew it back from the mage's throat to instead hold it horizontal at her eye level. "Which end do you want to be fucked with?"

"N-no," the mage stuttered out hopelessly. "Please, no."

"That isn't an answer to the question I asked you! Do you really want to die? I'll split you open with the blade."

"No!"

"No? You want the hilt, then?" Agatha lowered the sword and pressed the pommel up against the entrance she had just finished ravaging with her fingers.

"No no no!" The mage's voice was growing hoarse, her struggling against the contact more feeble. "Maker, save me!"

"The Maker is not on your side here! Do you want to die or not?"

"I don't want to die! I don't want to die out here all alone!"

"The hilt it is, then," Agatha said, unable to keep the note of triumph from her voice. She pushed upward, meeting some resistance at first, but once the widest part of the pommel had made it in, the rest followed easily enough. The mage flailed a bit at the initial thrusts, but when all she managed to accomplish was to nick her leg on the blade, she went still and pliant, her discomfort only apparent from the sounds she made.

The edges of the crossguard hammered her spread thighs with bruising force, until the handle had been worked deep enough in that Agatha had to turn it to avoid hitting them in order to make the most of each thrust. Some of those thrusts sunk the hilt so deep that the crossguard instead struck against the captive's inner lips and clit, sending her into a frenzy that made her forget or disregard the risk of cutting herself. She thrashed in her restraints until fat drops of blood trickled down her arms. She tried to kick Agatha away from her, only to bludgeon her own feet against the Templar's armor.

Agatha found that she had to angle the sword to keep the tip from scraping against the ground, and that gave her an idea. With one final, powerful thrust, she rammed the hilt in as far at it would go, lifting the startled mage onto her toes. On the downstroke, she drove the tip of the blade straight into the dirt. Then she returned to the fireside, leaving her captive impaled upon the hilt of the sword, her cleft split around its crossguard.

Agatha peeled away most of her armor, relieving some of the pent up heat that had settled around her, and made herself as comfortable as she could on the stony ground. She massaged her own most sensitive parts as she watched the mage fight to keep the weight off of hers, alternately pulling herself up by her chafing wrists and pushing herself up on the balls of her battered feet. Her bruise-painted breasts bounced with her efforts, and her stomach rippled with the movements that the sword made inside of her as she struggled her way up its shaft only to fall back down again and again. At last both her arms and her legs gave way, and her chin fell to her chest, and her body settled all of its weight down onto the weapon penetrating it, her only remaining movement an occasional shudder — whether of sobbing or of unwanted pleasure, Agatha did not know and did not care.

With a last, deep stroke of her thumb, Agatha brought herself to climax. When her own, undeniably pleasurable shuddering faded away, she was left with an overwhelming feeling of satiation that not even the hot meal she had so bitterly coveted earlier that evening could have provided her.

Maybe she would allow herself some sleep after all, she decided. She doubted the mage had the energy left to try to escape.