Chapter Text
The new product out of Treviso was the worst and the best dream liquor Gawain had ever tried. The first time he stirred a few drops into his cider he still made fun of the dealer. It couldn’t possibly be that good. Half an hour later his brain was trying to claw its way out of his skull while the world bloomed into a beautiful, celestial and fleshy horror of melting shapes and whale-song that he somehow could touch with every tiny hair on his skin. It was horrifying. Exhilarating. He’d never had a similar experience before.
He needed it again.
There was only one problem. There was no other source but Treviso and it produced very, very little of it. And everyone who tried it got hooked, just like Gawain. A single drop could cost a man his hovel, a vial was enough to buy a chantry and there just. Was. No. Supply.
Gawain was an expert in wyvern venom and its uses. Like so many things in nature, it was both deadly and delicious. And wyvern were apex predators, but humans would still turn them into little more than breathing flesh with no power or agenda of its own, using nothing but their cruelty and ingenuity. The 27 wyvern on Gawain’s venom farm were a monument to this truth. 27 territorial beasts, taking up less space than a moderately sized village barn. Deadly monsters, whimpering and writhing in fear when their human captors walked the rows of cages. Anything, absolutely anything could be taught to fear the cruelty of man, this Gawain believed. Anything but the Blight, that was, but the Blight was de-fanged, withdrawing from the world. It was a new age, even if it wasn’t actually a new age, yet.
People would need lightning dreams to let them escape this reality. So far, Gawain, his wyvern and his alchemist could only offer small crackle-and-pop emulations of the true brain-melting impact of the new thing. He was ready to try anything, he imported rare and pricey substances to mix with the wyvern venom, but it wasn’t the same.
When he got another dose of the true Trevisan dream liquor he rode that lightning dream for hours while the walls melted and the sky spoke to him. The sky slowly turned into Tarvaul, his spy for a lack of a better word, who snooped around and told him about potential sources, dangers, enemies.
“There is a wyvern-man at the Refarouy ruins,” he said.
Gawain looked up at him from the nest of cushions he’d lain down on a good while ago to listen to the universe breathe and break and bicker. “A wyvern-man?” he asked. “A man who is a specialist in wyverns?”
“A man who is part wyvern. I saw him fly in and out. And he spoke.”
“Did you take anything before that?” Gawain slowly moved into a sitting position, his head swimming.
“No. Was clear as day. And he had an Antivan accent, Trevisan actually. Thought you’d like to know.”
Gawain grabbed the pitcher of water he’d brought with him to his nest. He drank until his tongue no longer itched, then he emptied the rest over his head.
“Call in the hunters,” he ordered. “Let’s get ourselves a wyvern-man. If nothing else, it should be entertaining. And he may know about the dream liquor.”
Lucanis had little interest in archaeology, once it became clear it was mostly dreary work cataloguing finds and making drawings of dirt. The serials depicted it as being a lot more adventurous. Emmrich, though, was in his element and that was enough to get Lucanis interested by proxy. Emmrich would study a new stone tablet with tiny, time-ravaged writing on it and then make excited exclamations while Lucanis watched him.
He loved that. Watching him. The happy spark in the Mortalitasi’s eye when he had a new artifact to study, how his hands moved as he explained the importance of a certain burial. Lucanis would hunker down on some chair, talons digging into the wood while he sat, crouched and wings tucked in tight to not knock anything over. And then he’d just watch and sometimes throw in a few comments. This was the time they could steal, a few hours of him sneaking onto a dig or into the University. Bringing home a half-monster abomination to the staff housing had become an amusing game of him flying, climbing, and hiding like a teenager visiting a forbidden lover.
At least on a dig, Emmrich usually had his own tent. With a sadly very small cot. But there was a mocha pot and now, with evening upon them, Lucanis breathed in the fragrant steam rising from the fresh brew in his cup.
Taste it! Spite leaned over him and stared at the beverage. Taste it now!
Emmrich stopped lecturing them on the nature of Storm Age coffin seals and smiled at them. “I hope the roast is to your liking. I got it from a local importer who does a lot of trade for luxury items with Antiva. This one is called ‘Queen Asha’s Delight’.”
“You don’t have to buy expensive coffee for me,” Lucanis reprimanded him softly. “I can buy my own.”
“Oh, certainly, but it made me think of you.”
He said it with such honesty and sweetness Lucanis had to look down into the dark swirls of coffee to not grin like an idiot.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s excellent. Warm and with a note of chocolate.”
He looked up, grinning despite himself. “Like coming home.”
“Oh you.”
Emmrich snapped the book he was holding shut and reverently put it down before moving over and taking Lucanis’ head in his hands to lean down and kiss him. It started out as just a sweet, quick moment of lips touching, but then he lingered and his fingers crept deeper into his partner’s hair, nails softly scratching across his scalp. Lucanis hummed and leaned into the kiss, getting a quick touch of the tongue and a slight chuckle from Emmrich, who - per agreement - kept to the left part of Lucanis' lips and mouth, where his fangs bit dry.
The necromancer broke the kiss and nodded. “Yes, I can taste the chocolate.”
“That is all?” Lucanis asked with a huff. Emmrich smiled softly. “No, dearest. I think I’m done working for tonight. Will you reconsider and stay the night?”
“I can’t.” Lucanis downed half the cup. “I need to be back in Treviso tomorrow and would like to spend a moment at the Lighthouse. And … I travel at night.”
“I know.” Emmrich ran a hand over Lucanis’ head, looking both fond and sad. “Thank you for visiting me. Even if it was only for two days.”
He leaned in for another, longer kiss. Their breaths mingled, Lucanis put the cup down without looking, eyes closed and humming under his breath. His wings slowly unfolded and Emmrich laughed into the kiss, lifting his hands to place them, very gently, on the long finger bones. “Watch the shelves.”
“You need a bigger tent.”
“I will not make the obvious jokes.”
Lucanis sighed and let his head fall and roll back. His tail snaked up to rest around Emmrich’s hips. “Thank you,” he said. “Always so cultivated.”
He stood and drew the necromancer in closer with the tail, then wrapped the wings around him, too. The wonderful, human warmth seeped into the thin membranes. He nestled his head in under Emmrich’s chin and breathed in his smell - shaving soap, a tiny hint of sweat, tea and the lavender oil his vest had been treated with. “I will not return here,” he said.
Emmrich moved to look down at him. “Why? I’m here for another three weeks and …”
“I feel like someone is following me. I don’t want to endanger you.”
“Lucanis, dearest.” Emmrich’s voice was soft and low. “I will respect your decision. But I’m not a fainting maiden. And if you are allowed to worry about me, I’m allowed to worry about you. Please be safe.”
Lucanis let himself be peeled off enough to meet Emmrich’s eyes. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Treviso is only a meeting, for now, not a contract. And it’s where I’m the safest.”
Also, not alone, Spite chimed in. Will watch.
“Thank you, my lovely spirit.”
“See?” Lucanis said. “I’m probably just paranoid.”
He stretched, rose onto his talons and placed another, quick kiss on Emmrich’s lips.
“Please write.”
“I will.”
Lucanis grabbed the cup, drained it and handed it to Emmrich, untangling wings and tail from him. “See you back at the University or the Lighthouse then.”
“I might come into Treviso for a bit, actually!”
“Then … to coming home.”
They dithered for a moment, like teenagers, then with a grin and a shake of his head Lucanis grabbed Emmrich’s hand and kissed his knuckles and grave gold reverently.
Then he stepped out of the tent into the night. It was late enough that all the students were already off the dig site. He could hear them talking, singing and drinking at their little group of tents on the other side of the ruins. He smiled to himself and padded off into the darkness, lifting his talons to move soundlessly on what Lace insisted on calling his “toe beans”. He climbed one of the pine trees marking the boundary of the ruins and set off in a glide, Spite lending a few feathers and a little strength to the wings. The air was still warm, a steady wind coming in from the coast and the constant maneuvering and adjusting of wings, body and tail was a welcome workout and stretch for muscles rarely used on the ground.
The Eluvian for the region, found by Bellara just a few months ago, was small and buried in a formerly half-collapsed cave, an hour of flight away. Which was also the maximum Lucanis was able to go without regretting it immensely the next day. He still needed breaks in between, the physiology of a human with grafted wyvern wings not meant for sustained and powered flight, even with demonic help. There was a tall poplar tree that he preferred as a vantage point ten minutes out from the dig site and he latched onto the talon-marked branches with a sigh and a long stretch of the wings.
Good. Flight. Spite seemed to be in a mellow mood, but the spirit loved Emmrich and enjoyed his company probably as much as Lucanis did. They just stayed there for a moment, loosening their shoulders, Spite slithering through muscles and sinews like a warm current, a touch of sunlight. So different from the cold and burning sensation of their first joining.
Food later? Spite asked. Churros?
“I’ll make madeleines,” Lucanis promised instead. “No need to use all that frying oil just for a few churros. It’s a waste.”
The demon grumbled. Then he suddenly went completely silent. Lucanis felt a change in atmosphere, too, something hard to describe. A minute movement somewhere in the dark, a sound that was not part of the natural Orlesian night symphony of chirruping cicadas and sighing poplar trees. The feeling of being watched was back, stronger than before, and he anchored himself to the tree with his tail, trying to gauge where it was coming from. Did he need to move? Or did he need to see the danger first?
If there was any danger.
Something hit his right wing just as he heard the twang of a crossbow string and he wheeled, jumped and tried to glide off - but the bolt had a thin, sturdy cord attached to it and it pulled, then ripped at the sensitive flight skin. He nearly somersaulted in the air, twisted and grabbed at the cord to stop it from butchering his wing completely, hooking his talons into the tree again. He drew a knife from his belt with his free hand and cut the cord just as there was more twanging and rustling in the trees around him. He dropped, bolts hitting the poplar, and tucked the wings in tight to crash into the foliage below and hopefully out of sight.
People were yelling now, shouting orders. About it being on the ground, getting it. He listened and tracked the sounds around him, gingerly moving the injured wing to gauge the damage. He had three more knives on him which was three more than he had admitted to Emmrich, but habits were hard to break, and so he threw the one in his hand at the next person to yell, a shadowy movement in the dark to his right. A meaty thunk and the trickle of blood on dry leaves told him he'd got a solid hit.
He moved, dropping out of the tree and drawing two more small knives from under his vest and ran towards a single voice. Without warning he threw himself at them, hard to distinguish from the moonlight shadows around them in dark clothes covered in sewn-on leaves and ferns. They screamed and he quickly threw them to the ground, ducked to cut their throat, and then loped off into the dark.
A sudden bright light blinded him and Spite yelled out, as Lucanis had to close his eyes.
Left!
He ducked and something drew a long and bloody line across his scalp.
Behind!
He dropped, rolled forward and turned and opened his eyes against the now many bright lamps to pick a target and throw another knife.
Right!
He moved back and another bolt missed him. Then he stepped onto a metal plate and he heard the crunch and snap of the jaws closing before he fell and he fell before the pain came. His right foot was caught in a bear trap, the heavy metal teeth dug into his flesh right above the ankle joint, where human flesh and wyvern scales intermingled, and he could feel broken bone grinding somewhere in that mess. He screamed the pain and frustration into the night while Spite howled - I didn’t see! What is it! - and lunged forward to grab the chain anchoring the trap to the ground - and him with it.
Nets came down around him, over him and he mantled his wings, fighting down panic to not thrash and immediately get tangled in the weighted strands. But they were all around him now. Half a dozen at least, after he had killed or maimed two already. He jammed one knife into the opening mechanism of the trap and forced the jaws open with another scream, the metal slowly sliding out of his crushed leg, then snapped up the wings with the nets to throw himself, now free, to the right and at one of the attackers. Spite yelled and beat his own wings, moving them faster than humanly possible, and Lucanis buried his last knife in the man’s chest. He snarled at the rest, spread his now tangled and half-bound wings, the slit in the right one opening like a rip in a curtain.
They hardly flinched. Instead they moved in and stabbed at him with short spears, topped with glass heads. They broke inside his skin, rammed into a shoulder, an arm lifted in defense, and poison entered his blood stream.
“Up!” he told Spite, cold dread settling in his guts. “Up!”
The spirit yowled and shivered inside him, the ethereal wings twitching aimlessly. Lucanis’ mouth went dry and his chest felt like it was caught in a vice. He swayed, then fell on top of the dying man. The nets pressed down on him and then there were loops of rope being thrown over him and tightened down. He fought the heaviness in his limbs, strained against the grip of the poison while tasting bitterness on his tongue. Someone tried to grab him, too close to his face, and he bit down on the arm, injecting his own venom in a vicious last ditch attempt to get them to back off, to leave him.
The person screamed, then was told to shut up.
“You know better!” someone said and put a boot between Lucanis’ wings. “Looks like a man, bites like a wyvern. Treat it like a wyvern. Idiot.”
Lucanis tried to buck, throw him off, but he only twitched. Whatever it was that they had dosed him with, it was like lead weighing his whole body down, slowing his very thoughts.
“You will … regret this,” he threatened breathlessly.
“It talks!” The man giggled. Then he leaned down and pulled a thick leather sack over Lucanis’ head. “And now it won’t.”
Lucanis sluggishly moved his head, tried to dislodge the clammy, heavy thing. It was filled with sweet-smelling herbs that scratched at his face, tangled in his hair. He was still stunned, disoriented from the suddenness and viciousness of the attack, the drugs roiling and whispering in his blood, his head. He’d been with Emmrich just moments ago and now he was bound and held down, his breath getting thin, with poison closing a cold and cruel fist around his heart. He’d been so alive just a moment ago. He recognized no voice, had seen none of the faces before, he did not understand.
“I’m not …” he began and was kicked in the jaw, nearly biting the tip off his tongue. Someone stepped on his right wing and he shivered as the rip in the skin opened wider.
“Bundle it up! You know the drill!”
The leader took his foot off Lucanis’ back, but he still couldn’t breathe. He moved his hands, tried to grab something, to drag himself away, anything. Rough fingers closed around his wrist, shoved up the bangle Emmrich had given him last year.
“And it brings its own gold!”
A rip and a quick movement and the pressure of the bangle was gone. Spite howled and writhed inside Lucanis’ mind, wordlessly giving sound to his rising panic.
“Hey, leave it for later! Bind the wings. And the hands.”
He was moved, rolled back and forth like a log of wood as they bundled up his wings and tied rope around the long, thin finger bones and the forearms to keep them closed, then looped a length around the thumb-claws to hold them together. He was barely conscious to hear them discuss how to proceed from there, but someone stepped on his tail and then hacked down at it. The pain was blunt and horrible, similar to the crushing and brutal weight of the bear trap, and he breathed in the dried herbs when he drew air into his lungs to howl.
The world flickered in and out of existence and each time he found himself in another position. The limbs-askew chaos of Spite having tried to escape, then tighter and tighter bonds until he lay on the back of a cart, swaying slightly, bound elbows to knees, legs tucked with heels to buttocks, hands at the back of his neck and his broken tail lashed to his front like an unwanted extra bit of luggage shoved into a bag. When he tried to move his wings he choked himself, the thumb-claws were tied to his neck and he would have been able to reach the knots, even, but his hands were completely numb and useless.
He was still too drugged to feel panic, but a leaden hopelessness settled into his aching bones. He breathed the sweet and stuffy air inside the leather bag and it, too, kept him unnaturally calm and unable to grasp a full thought. The air became hot. Then cooler again.
Finally he was lifted off the cart and carried until he was dropped into a tight space, as if stuck between walls of leaning houses. His head was grabbed and pulled, then cold metal bars snapped into place to the left and right and the walls holding him ratcheted even tighter. The pressure on his bound limbs and the broken ankle had him moaning quietly with what little breath his lungs could hold in this position.
The leather sack was pulled off and he looked at a dirty stone floor. And boots. As he began to lift his head, a hand grabbed his hair and forced it back down.
“Easy now!” The person chuckled. “Don’t know if you can spit poison but you better not try. Hold still and this’ll be quick. Also you’re the wrong size and shape for the cattle crush, this is awkward, but also I’ve hardly had any wyvern struggle as much as you did. Asshole.”
The hand let go just to give a quick smack to the top of his head.
Lucanis breathed in as much as he could, tried to move his limbs but between the rope bindings and the pressure from the sides it was little more than a weak twitch and a tiny kick of his left, unbroken foot.
“I am not,” he said. “A wyvern.”
“Sure. But I think I recognize the pattern. We caught a juvenile wyvern for some Vints a while ago with the same nice color bands! Hey, you’re not under some spell that turned you human, little wyvern?”
Lucanis strained against the metal bars holding his neck. He could move his head up and down, but as he tried to, another horizontally locking bit was shoved down to stop him.
“No no no. You stay right there. Might need a nose ring, huh? But first, let’s sample the wares.”
A pair of pale hands moved a chisel towards Lucanis’ face and he yanked and shoved at the metal bars, but his head was truly stuck and with another person gripping his hair, the outcome was inevitable.
“Open up or we break teeth to get in.”
A short, quick tap against his front teeth showed they meant it. He opened his mouth and a speculum was shoved in place, then quickly ratcheted open. His jaw creaked and even with the numbing and slowing poison still in his bloodstream, his heartbeat sped up even more.
Spite shoved himself to the front, shook their head and hissed and spit angrily at them.
“Eyes glowing again,” a man said to his left. “This is some magical shit, I tell you.”
“Don’t panic. If it could do more than wiggle and huff, it would. Just hold it still.”
Spite relinquished control again and manifested, crouched down in Lucanis’ limited field of view.
Do something! the demon yelled at him. Get us. Out! He then pawed at their face, trying to get the speculum out, but only hissed in frustration at the physical world.
A paper-covered jar was lifted up and his head maneuvered roughly to have the fangs bite down on it. When nothing happened, the leader gave a disappointed hum and began to dig fingers into Lucanis’ face. He pressed down on the still tender knot of scar tissue where the cheekbone had collapsed and Lucanis screamed wordlessly - it was too much, the wounds, the bound and numb limbs, the wrongness of the broken tail, the unrelenting pressure of the fucking cattle crush and he writhed, moved the tiny increments that he could, throwing a temper tantrum like Spite. When he calmed himself down again, breathing heavily and spit dripping from his lips, the demon stared at him, eyes wide.
“No venom sac on the left,” the leader said calmly. “But here.”
He pressed down on the right side and venom began to dribble into the jar. “See? Nice and clear. Don’t need much just for a first batch. There you go.”
He stopped the pressure and put the jar aside.
“Now, if you’re lucky this is just a stupid misunderstanding and we’re gonna kill you quickly and be done with it. If we’re lucky this is what we’re looking for and you’ll be a permanent installation.”
He gave him a pat on the head, like you would a dog.
“See you after a little trip on the moonlight road! Got a wyvern tail to catch and fly!”
They left. His jaw was still held open, his tongue drying out. Spite looked around and sniffed.
Smells like. Pain, he said quietly. Then he dematerialized.
Gawain shook the little vial, watching the clear, greenish liquid cling to the sides. “Try it,” he told Merek, the alchemist’s apprentice, and handed the refined venom over.
Merek took a dropper and put the tiniest amount on his tongue. He nodded, sat down and stared straight ahead, waiting. Gawain took a swig of water and watched his trial boy. Two sips later, Merek began to twitch, then hum, then he melted slowly into the chair he was sitting in, making small mewling sounds and grabbing at nothing.
“Looks good?” commented the actual alchemist, Marcaon.
“It does.”
Gawain took the vial and left the room with the softly cooing apprentice and went to his private room. He laid down on his bed, took a dose and rolled up close to the edge of the bed so if he vomited, he’d just spew over the side.
He breathed in the mellow air of the Orlaisian night and breathed out sparks. Spirits rushed by, a laughing wyvern dancing across a sky of oil paints and flower petals and Gawain was ripped from his body into a world of starlight.
He only returned a little over two hours later, smacked his lips on the aftertaste of bitter happiness, stood, got the chamberpot out for a piss, and then stumbled from his room. Tarvaul sat there, waiting nervously.
“So much better when fresh!” Gawain exclaimed. He grabbed Tarvaul's head and kissed his hair. “We will be the richest drug makers in Orlais. In Thedas!”
He laughed out remnants of the stars he’d swallowed, hiccuped, and nodded. “Is the doctor here?”
“He arrived half an hour ago.”
“Excellent.”
Gawain brushed his sweaty hair back with both hands, gave a loud whoop and then ran down the stairs. “We have a fortune to make!”
Spite crouched down in front of Lucanis and peered into his face.
We need to leave, he whispered, uncharacteristically quiet. Beasts. Are suffering. Here.
Lucanis, mouth and jaw aching from the speculum still stuck between his teeth, just shook his head. He was not a beast, but all he could utter were garbled, angry sounds. Like a beast.
Spite leaned in even closer, nearly touching his non-corporeal face to Lucanis’. Need strength.
He melted away and it felt like he trickled back into their body, bringing a soothing warmth with him.
Then the door to the dark room with the cattle crush opened and several people came in, one of them he hadn’t seen among his attackers. The leader nearly skipped over in his eagerness and grabbed Lucanis’ hair, keeping his head down and then unlocking and retracting the speculum with the other.
“Two questions!” he announced. “Then we’ll proceed. One: Are there more like you?”
“No!” hissed Lucanis after carefully closing his jaw, loosening the overtaxed muscles in his face and wetting his dried-out tongue.
“Can more be made?”
He nearly laughed. The only being who had the thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and magical ability to create a thing like him was dead, by his hand.
“No.”
“Well, even if you’re lying, we’ll go with this. Maybe give you another chance in a bit and then you’ll probably be begging to give up anyone else with your funny little venom teeth for a little time off. Good. Doctor? The mixture you made for the wyverns worked pretty nicely.”
The new person stopped forward and with his head still held down, clamped in place between metal bars, all Lucanis could see were slightly scuffed shoes and creased pants.
“What …” he began and got slapped.
“I’d like for him to not speak? Can we arrange that?”
“We’ll have to see what we can arrange,” the doctor said. “Never worked with … well … this before. I have some ideas and gave your builder a sketch, but this will be trial and error for a few weeks.”
Something clinked and then the man stabbed a needle into Lucanis’ neck. Within a few moments the world became fuzzy and free of gravity. He gagged on sudden nausea, then his face was covered with a kind of muzzle filled with sweet-smelling, wet cloth and he fell forward into a hazy semi-consciousness.
The pressure finally relented and he dropped through the opening sides of the cattle crush to the ground and was dragged, fading in and out. Once he opened his eyes to see Spite hover above him.
I will try. And get us out, the spirit promised.
Then he was heaved up onto a metal-covered table and in his disorientation he was back in the Ossuary, about to be chained down in Calivan’s work room. He limbs were a prickly, hurting mass of unresponsive muscle and he only whimpered vaguely into the drug-laden cloth.
They cut and unwound the ropes and Spite pushed into the front, reared up and grabbed for a knife held by a very surprised, very panicky young man. They were strangely mingled, stuck together, Lucanis willing his numb arms and legs to move and Spite forcing them to with the magical bonds they shared, puppeteering from inside their bones. They overshot, grabbed the blade, but held on. His talons moved across the metal tabletop, screeching like chalk on shale, and his broken right foot crumpled under him.
As he fell, he still grabbed the drug mask and tried to pull it off, changed his grip on the knife and slashed at the air as the men jumped away, cursing. Spite spread their wings and then overbalanced and they fell off the table, rolling and Lucanis screamed as his broken tail thrashed mindlessly. He lost time and found himself staggering down a hallway, shoulder to the wall and dragging himself forward on one foot. Someone grabbed his tail and pulled and he howled, fell, lost time again.
They were crawling towards the door. The knife was gone, but their right hand was bloody. A twang and a crossbow bolt nailed the half-slit right wing to the floor. Spite screeched and cried and finally, finally bled from his bones to kneel next to him.
I’m sorry, he said. I tried! I tried!
Lucanis vomited up bile and water and lost consciousness again.
He awoke because someone was cutting him open. He made an undignified noise, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, and heavy shackles clanked as he tried to move. A hand pushed his head back down to the cold metal table but he could still vaguely see the doctor hunched over, moving a scalpel with one hand and spinning pale green magic with his other.
“Found the glands!” he said. “Should be able to …”
He cut something, deep inside Lucanis, and there was a horrible change of pressure inside organs and ducts and he tried to writhe, but was held down by nearly a dozen hands pressing against his torso and limbs.
“Fucker won’t stop moving,” someone said. “Hope they get him set up nice and tight, never want to hunt that thing down again.”
He tried to say he was not a thing, to curse, yell, but his throat was dry and every breath was laced with poison from the mask. Spite watched from somewhere behind the people holding him down, his glowing eyes wide.
I’m here, he said.
Lucanis wished he wasn’t. Spite stepped through the men and put a hand over Lucanis’ eyes and he sank into painless darkness.
The next time, he awoke to a heavy, sharp animal smell. He flinched and wood and metal rattled slightly. He tried to look around but even that was impossible and it took a moment to understand the pain in his face. A metal ring had been inserted into his nose, up beyond the soft flesh and into the cartilage, and a light chain bound the ring to an eyelet in the floor. He was laid out with his neck on a wooden construction like a low doorway, heavily anchored to the ground. His throat was held by a broad metal band, as were his wrists, each a foot to the right and left of his head. He could feel his hips were similarly held down on a wooden beam, his feet dangling slightly off the ground and shackled, too. Tail and wings had been wrapped in leather bindings and tied to something above him, maybe even the ceiling. He tested the strength of the bonds but all he got was pain from the mangled wing and broken tail trying to move against the secure leather belts.
“Wha ...,” he said and even that was hardly a syllable. Pain lanced through his tongue. A thin metal bar ran from under his right cheekbone through his skin and flesh, between teeth, through his tongue and back out the other side. He yelped in panic and blood and drool dripped down. He rolled his eyes, tried to so see anything that might tell him where he was, what this was.
There was a wyvern to his left. Only a few steps away. Its wings were bound and it was stuffed into a cage too small for its bulk. Angry orange eyes rolled around to stare at Lucanis. A small tube of fine vellum protruded from its belly and a flask was collecting small drops of a greenish fluid.
Venom. Directly from its glands.
With a terrible feeling of horror he bent his neck and rolled his eyes down to see.
A tube, carefully wrapped with clean bandages, dangled from his abdomen down to a collecting bottle.
He went a little mad.
All his crying and howling and fighting against metal and leather and wood was for naught, though. The only reaction was the hissing and rustling of dozens of caged wyverns all around him. When he had spent what little energy he had he watched flecks of foamy, pink spittle drop from his lips and slowly, deliberately shut doors in his head.
Shut it all down. Don’t be here.
Spite leaned over him, as if his imaginary body could protect him.
They will come, he said. They always came for you.
Lucanis, unable to speak with the metal bar inserted into his face and tongue, could not help but remember that once it had taken them a whole year.
He had survived a year in the Ossuary. He feared this more.
Spite knew this body so much better than he used to. When he first had been forced inside, without understanding what inside meant, suddenly imprisoned in noisy and wet flesh with a quivering human mind vying for space? It had been a horrible puzzle to parse, to understand, a hated thing. Yet now he knew all parts and workings, knew that soul nestled up next to him, even enjoyed the movement and exhilaration of a bodily existence.
He knew, also, how fragile this existence could be. Knew very well how with bound limbs they were helpless, how pain dug into things that were not even of the body but of the mind. He remembered the many pains that had been wiped clean off their skin, the cutting and ripping, the putrid stench and horrifying deadly numbness of flesh withered in dry gangrene after hanging from their hands for days. This body had been remade often and in many ways and much more than Lucanis, Spite embraced the most decisive changes, although they had come to them in such torturous ways. Wings! And a tail. And taloned feet and venomous teeth, weapons to wield when no knife was at hand, to never be unarmed.
It was not enough. All Spite's determination and cleverness and viciousness had not been enough and they were imprisoned again. And somehow, it was worse for Lucanis. Spite did not understand, but he felt how his human became small and lost pieces of himself, cutting them off and hiding them. He let him. It had saved him before, becoming less in this way, keeping parts of himself buried deep. Spite had been a diversion, then, to hide behind. He helped! Even without wanting to, he had helped, even back then. And once they had agreed on a goal and a deal he had helped Lucanis stay alive in other ways, too. Had pushed him deep down where he did not feel when the pain and humiliation was too great for a human mind.
Spite was stronger. He took it. Sometimes Lucanis pushed him away when things happened that were horrible in ways Spite did not understand for a long, long time. Not until Emmrich and learning that some things of the body were for joy, but could be turned into demeaning punishment. They held each other and took the abuse for each other, echoing back and forth in their shared body, misunderstanding and still standing with each other.
Spite drifted, the center of his senses slightly untethered from the body. The wyverns, crushed and pitiable in their tiny cages, snorted and brayed. Great beasts reduced to things, producing a liquid the humans harvested twice a day.
As they did with their body now, exchanging bottles.
"Not much," one of them said and Spite, incorporeal, stuck his hand through his head and imagined it hurt, hurt a lot.
"He needs to drink, but he didn't the last two times I tried. But also stress is supposed to get production up. Would think this is enough stress, right?"
Lucanis made garbled noises, Spite distantly feeling the clink of the metal bar against their teeth, the blinding, digging pain of the punctured tongue, and balled a fist inside the human's head.
"Stress huh?" the first one asked. He reached out to tug at the nose-ring chain and this different, bright, ripping pain drove tears into their eyes. "Can surely get it more stressed."
And then he moved over, reached out a hand and ran it slowly down the underside of their broken, upwards-curled tail.
Spite hurled himself back into the body right as their heart rate jumped, cold dread filling their insides. Something cramped and more venom dripped down. The human whooped.
"See!"
The hand moved lower and Spite wrapped himself around Lucanis, who suddenly fought back. Inside, his voice was all muddled ideas and bits of impressions and wants and needs, but he had no outside voice to use. Spite felt his will to protect the spirit and it made him warm and hum with honey-golden feelings, but he did not relent.
You're not alone! he promised. I am here.
The were entwined, held each other in a way no bodily thing could, existing in a flow of thought-splinters and emotions and Spite did his best to hold on to his core. Not the anger, the biting and relentless need to fight and taunt. The calm and steady rock of a striving soul. Determination. Survive and get out. Survive and wait for help.
And so they both took a little of each other's pain as the human grabbed their tail with one hand, fishing out his beginning erection from his pants with the other.
At least the second human left with a scornful huff. "You're disgusting!" he called back. But he did nothing to stop the other one.
The one who grabbed a tub full of fat he had used on stuck bits with the cages and bottles, now pressing it inside their anus, pushing in first one, then two fingers to test. Lucanis whimpered and Spite shushed him.
We survived. Before, he said. Will survive again.
And they did. Spite weathered the pain of the breaching, Lucanis listened to the throaty grunts. They each let the humiliation, the helplessness and disgust float around them as it went on and on, pain bleeding into pressure and shame. And when the human finally leaned in after several quickening and haphazard pumps and gave an incoherent yell, spilling his hated and unwelcome seed inside them, Spite slithered through their body, distracting.
Lucanis still cried when they finally were alone with the wyverns. Their limbs shook. Spite let his image appear in front of Lucanis and knelt so he could see him with his face forced to look down, the chain to the nose-ring tight.
We survive, he promised him. We survive again and return. To our life.
Lucanis closed his eyes and his light went dull. Spite slipped back inside their body, held this light and keened silently. It was hard. To hurt like this. He forgave Lucanis for giving up, at least a little. But Spite would not.
He would get through and out and he would rip them apart once they gave him even the tiniest chance.