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You have ever looked inward and relied upon your own strength; at one point in time, you thought your vast reserves of fortitude to be a gift from the Mothercrystal herself, bestowed upon her wayward daughter. When the wyrm Midgardsormr stripped you of her blessing, and still you stood upon your own two feet, you began to wonder at your own limitations, your sheer capacity to act as a conduit of pain, absorbing and redoubling it upon your enemies.
You were not so fallible as to think yourself invulnerable; truly you had healed thousands upon thousands of bruises, gashes, lacerations, burns, flayings, and shattered bones, your skin emerging clean and unmarred each time.
Upon the Light-soaked aether of the First, the seemingly unending reserves of your strength begin to wane.
Perhaps it is the unsteady ground upon which you find yourself, the migraine seeming to ever lie in wait at the very edges of your mind from the refulgent Light above, or the vast quantities of Light-tainted aether you took unto yourself with each Lightwarden slain. Your comrades were older, different, changed for their time away from you.
Your very title, that of the Warrior of Light, made you an enemy in these sunbleached lands. You could not remain as you were, and so the Crystal Exarch bid unto you to become somewhat different. To change as the rest of this world had too changed.
It is upon this unsteady and treacherous footing that you find yourself cleaving to any steady surface; your friends stare at you with concern so sweet it turns cloying, and so you find yourself rejecting their sweet mercies and doting concerns. Emet-Selch offers a different sort of succor in his gilded eyes and sardonic smile, but you knew that to cleave to the Ascian would mean plummeting down into depths you would never surmount.
And so, on a night that should have been night but looked no different from any other incandescent afternoon, you ascended the stairs of the Crystal Tower and cleaved yourself to the only steady facet remaining to you.
You happened to see the Crystal Exarch emerging from a small door off to the side of the Ocular on a handful of occasions, and you blindly find yourself knocking upon the door. He answers after only the second knock, as if he had already heard your footsteps and was waiting for you to entreat him. The Exarch takes in your disheveled appearance, his full mouth slightly parted for one moment before he swallows. “My friend,” he says. “Are you quite alright?”
You were swaying on your feet; he reaches out at once to steady you, squeezing your shoulders with grounding firmness. You lick your dry lips, swallowing down your fears. “I need,” you find yourself saying, “I need—I feel unsteady,” you finally manage. “Unmoored.”
“Well, then we shall simply have to find some lines to lash you to shore,” the Exarch says, his lip quirking in the hint of a smile. “Why don’t I make you a cup of tea?” he steps aside, widening the door to allow you inside.
It feels unspeakably private to see the Exarch’s innermost sanctum; it looked as if this room had once served another grander purpose, but the Exarch had adapted it to suit his modest needs. There was a simple bed to one corner of the room, unmade, with a great deal of tomestones and books scattered across the floor and every available surface, and a wooden desk, humbly made and scattered with scrolls and parchment and broken quills. He guides you to sit upon the bed, wrapping a worn quilt about your shoulders before moving to the other side of the room to clatter about with a strange looking kettle and two chipped mugs.
He presses a mug of steeping tea into your hands before dragging his desk chair across from you, taking a steadying sip and meeting you headlong.
“Unmoored,” the Exarch repeats. “Yes, I am quite familiar with the feeling myself. Even the greatest of heroes find themselves consumed by doubt. And upon such a strange land besieged by such iniquity, even a hero such as yourself isn’t immune to such doubts.”
“I just wish someone would tell me what to do,” you find yourself rambling, almost nonsensical. You wonder if it is the Light polluting your soul which brings forth such vomit, “tell me who to be, what to eat, when to sleep—if I should feel happy or sad. When to breathe.”
You nearly clap your hands over your mouth to keep the toxic seep of your own words from escaping; you stare deep into your tea, as if the shifting leaves at the bottom might grant you your desire. But the Crystal Exarch does not recoil, nor regard you with his usual good natured humor; instead, he leans forward very slightly. You suspect his hood is glamoured, so deep are the shadows upon his face, but you could feel the way his eyes rove over you.
“You are a very tightly wound spring waiting to explode,” the Exarch whispers. Though he has said nothing untoward—and certainly nothing untrue—something about the way his tongue curves over those consonants sends a terrible shiver spiderwalking down your spine. “Is that correct?”
“Yes,” you find yourself saying—not sure if you were talking about listing ships or springs unsprang.
The Exarch reaches forward with his Spoken hand, cradling your hands wrapped around your tea. He was staring very deeply into your eyes—you knew it with utter certainty as he says, “I believe I can grant you what you need. I have only ever wanted to serve you, Warrior of Darkness—in any capacity you may require.”
You knew this to be true with complete certainty. Y’shtola reviled the man for his falsehoods and half-truths, but you have always known that whatever his origins or motivations, the Crystal Exarch lived to serve you, to uplift you unto the station he believed you to be capable of.
“I know it is a very great thing to ask,” he says softly, “to trust me so completely. But I can bring you relief—at least in this singular way.”
You take a great steadying gulp of hot tea before setting it down upon the worn wooden table. The Exarch watches you, his mouth half-startled as you sink to your knees upon the cold marble floors and settle your head in his lap.
“Tell me what to do,” you beg. “Tell me how—how to be.”
The Exarch settles his hand upon your forehead, and tells you.
The flogger's tails drift over the raised gooseflesh of your exposed backside. The Crystal Exarch's chilled hand braces your lower back. You desperately grip the hem of his robes, burying your face into the fabric, inhaling deep the scent of burned aether and parchment. You moan as the flogger twitches; not enough to strike, but your breath hitches all the same in anticipation as the leather strands tease and tickle your sensitive flesh.
"You are entirely certain this is what you want?" he asks with maddening calm.
He wants you to admit it to him; it is somehow more humiliating than your current position, splayed naked across his lap upon the dais of Xande's throne room. "Yes," you whisper into his robes.
His icy-cool hand shivers up your fevered skin, coiling easily around the nape of your neck. "Forgive me, but I would like to hear it with greater conviction." He does not laugh, but you could hear the smile in his voice.
You raise your head. "Please," you moan, reflexively squeezing your thighs together.
The Exarch knots his fingers in your mussed hair, and the flogger strikes.
The leather straps send a thousand little sparkling points of pain across your flesh, burning down into glowing embers of warmth. And then he smooths his crystal hand over the inflamed flesh, soothing the burn before the lash falls again. Over and over he strikes, favoring the underside of your cheeks, between your thighs. You jump and jolt and whimper at each strike. Once, he twitches right upon your weeping cunt, and you arch upwards, sobbing and drooling into his bunched robes as you feverishly hump the air in a paroxysm of sheer need.
He murmurs with concern, cradling your cheek, the leather straps of his gauntlets reminding you all too much of the flogger rending such exquisite torture unto you. "O my long-suffering warrior," he sighs. "You must have needed this for moons." He swipes two fingers between the seam of your cunt, and you wail into his robes, soiling them with both your need and your drool, raising your ass to him like a slavering bitch in heat, fevered with the need for release.
He clicks his tongue, tilting up your chin until you meet his hooded gaze. His smile is eternally patient. "I suppose," he says, "if you can be well-behaved, there might be somewhat to be done about that." he taps a finger to your quivering cunt for emphasis; you nearly scream through your teeth. He presses the handle of the flogger into your clenched fists. "Hold this for me."
So desperate for release, you do not question him, gripping the leather-padded wood with both hands. The flogger is well made, the oiled leather creaking very slightly in your grip. He slides an icy finger—the crystal, with its faceted ridges—between your labia, spreading you wide for his examination, moving with methodical, maddening slowness. As if perusing the index of a book before reading the prologue. Your thighs tremble as he dips his finger just inside your entrance. Your muscles suck him inside eagerly to the first knuckle; but no, that wouldn't do. He retreats, fingers dancing just between your labia, dragging upwards for one sparkling instant to circle your swollen clit.
You wail with utter indignation into his finely gilded robes; the Exarch slides his finger all the way inside of your cunt. Reflexively, you drop the flogger to the floor with a clatter, holding tight to his muscled thighs and calf.
The Exarch retreats entirely, and his hand braces the back of your neck.
"Pick it up," he says. He does not demand, but the ringing of authority in his voice shimmers in your mind. You are still stunned from the loss of his touch, your mind's edges frayed through the pleasure and pain and worse, the denial of either.
"Please," you find yourself begging. "I need to—please—"
"Pick it up and hold it," the Exarch commands gently. "I need you to focus for me. Can you do that?"
He reaches down for you, retrieving it from the floor and pressing it back into your empty hands. "If you are very good," he promises, "you'll have your release. Or," and his icy crystalline hand taps your asscheek for one splintering second. “You will hold it between your teeth while I spank you.”
He does not exert any amount of force upon your abused flesh, but it is enough to exact a perfect understanding in your mind what would happen if he were to actually mean it. It would hurt, that hard crystal smacking into you, the ridges of his palm perfectly bruising capillaries into your flesh.
You who have used your body as a god-killing instrument are more curious than you are terrified.
“The choice is yours as always,” the Crystal Exarch continues smoothly. He drags a thumb across your tear-stained cheek. “I confess, I know not which I look forward to more.”
Let it be to your credit, you did try. As the Exarch plumbed you with two fingers, scissoring them gently inside of you, levering you apart, your slick dripping off his fingers as he began to gently pump you with slow, indefatigable certainty, you gripped the handle so hard your knuckles whiten, nails biting into the leather and leaving embossed crescents. You’ve never wanted to finish so bad in your entire life, and your legs began to shake with the sheer need. Desperate as you were, you began to feverishly grind your pubis into his clothed knee as he fucked you, leather creaking as you squeeze tighter and tighter. You moan around the wet wad of fabric in your mouth, gagging yourself on his robes in your desperation for stimulation.
“There you are,” the Exarch soothes—oh, the pride that glowed in his voice. The exultation. You were everything he had ever hoped for, you simply knew it. “You are so very close. You need this so very badly, don’t you?”
“Y-Y-Yes…” you whine, dragging it through your teeth as you rock forward against his knee, moving in rhythm with his pumping hand. The Exarch briefly retreats before plunging you with a third finger, and moving in earnest now, finding the swollen spongy flesh inside you and rocketing against it. You were so, so, so close now—
You did not know you’d dropped the flogger, but you knew you’d done something very wrong when he completely, entirely stopped.
And then he smacked you with his crystal hand.
It reverberated through your entire body, jolting you forward until you half-fell out of his lap with a startled yelp. Oh, how the pain burned across the meat of your ass, a thumping bruising agony that left you gritting your teeth as you scramble for the flogger.
The Exarch collects you at once in both his arms; the world spins as he rights you in his lap until you are facing him, straddling his knee. “Breathe,” he commands you, using the sleeve of his robe to wipe your tears and snot as you begin to bawl in earnest. “That’s a girl. Breathe.”
“I—I didn’t mean—I didn’t know—I was trying, I was trying to hold it—“
“I know you were trying,” The Exarch says gently. “But there are consequences to everything, even in this. You understand, don’t you?”
“I just want to come, please, please, please let me come, please, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything you want—“ Even now you are dragging your swollen cunt over his knee, desperate for any amount of friction. He steadies you at once with both hands, squeezing hard to pin you in place.
“You said you would obey me in all things. If you are disinterested in doing so, then I can escort you back to your quarters.”
“No!” it leaves you abruptly. “No, please, I’ll— I’ll do anything, I really mean it, let me try again—“
The Exarch holds the flogger in his hand. “Open your mouth wide,” he says inexorably.
You miserably obey; something fractures across his features as you do so, and he swipes his thumb over your wet bottom lip. Kiss me, you wanted to beg. Have me, fuck me, use me, please please please—
But it seemed the only pleasure the Exarch truly yearned for was a job well done; he places the flogger between your teeth, and you obediently, if reticent, bite down upon it. “I am going to count to ten,” he tells you, caressing your flushed and salt-stained cheek. “I want you to count with me. If you drop the flogger again, I will take you back to the Pendants.”
And if I don’t? You think desperately. If I am good? What then?
“Do you understand me?” the Exarch asks. He brushes your sweaty hair from your forehead as you nod pitifully. Then, he arranges you across his knees once more, careful to ensure you could pillow yourself upon his thigh, your knees resting comfortably upon the hard floor.
You were not fearful before, only resentful that you would not find your long-sought after and long-yearned for climax. When the Exarch’s hand comes to your exposed and reddened cheeks, you begin to feel a true sense of fear. The first one had hurt very badly and still stung. How much worse would multiple be?
He strikes swiftly; you rock forward upon his knees as you scream through the leather. It felt like being hit with a stonework bat, but with all the force and control of a human hand, each of his five splayed fingers arcing their own terrible anguish into your abused flesh.
“Wuh-wuh-one,” you wail through the flogger.
Again he strikes you—the other cheek this time, where he’d struck before. The pain is multiplicative, every facet of his hand embedding itself into your flesh. The agony was so great you feared you were bleeding; tears spill afresh down your flushed cheeks.
Your answering two is mangled and muffled through the gag.
The Crystal Exarch is unyielding, exacting the same amount of pain upon each of your bruised cheeks seven more times. By the sixth strike, you can do aught but drool through the gag and moan with each hit; by the ninth, you have scored your nails down his calf, little lines of scarlet bleeding down his leather sandals. You hated him. You loved him. You never wanted him to stop. You thought torture from the Garleans would hurt less.
He spanks you for the final time, your meat too bruised and broken and overwhelmed to even truly register the pain except simply another magnitude. Sobbing brokenly, the saliva-soaked flogger drops from your lips as your cries fill the room.
At once, the Exarch rights you, carefully arranging you in your arms so your bottom is carefully protected as you weep into the crook of his neck. He strokes your hair, whispering soft encouragements as you find your own release in the cradle of his arms. You cannot seem to stop crying, not from the pain anymore, but from the dam that had been built up inside of you—the stonework walls you’d built to hold all your resiliency—finally coming undone, crashing down in a tidal wave that swept your entire psyche away with the force of its currents.
“You handled it so well,” the Exarch whispers. “You were so brave, so splendid.” His crystalline hand, now an icy balm, gently sweeps over your backside. “I dare say you’ve earned your release—if you will still have it, that is.”
You did not consciously decide to kiss him, but it seemed the only fitting expression to describe your gratitude; his mouth is still and surprised against yours, but after a moment’s shock he melts against you, squeezing you with shocking fierceness as he returns your teary kisses. You pant desperately against his crystalline neck as he edges his hand between your pressed bodies, and you clench your fingers into his robes as his fingers stir against your cunt. You palm desperately through his robes, searching for his own sex, but he swats your hands away.
“Think only of yourself,” he commands of you, his fingers stirring in earnest against you, a rapid-fire pace against your swollen and overstimulated clit that jars you to your molars. “Your pleasure. Your release. Your strength.”
“I—I want you, I want—I—“
Something flickers across the Exarch’s face, one of those indecipherable emotions that made you wish very badly you could see his eyes in order to understand it more clearly. It it something in the shape of his mouth that makes you think it is an expression of pain. But he kisses you sweetly, as if to say thank you. But he makes no move to pleasure himself or guide your entangling to anything greater, only continues his ministrations with greater urgency. You collapse forward against him, your pelvis shifting upward enough to allow him to slide another hand beneath you.
Filling your cunt with three cold, ridged fingers, you muffle your scream into the hood of his robe as you break across your climax like the coming dawn. It is a shattering, an undoing, the halves of your psyche coming unglued and coalescing once more into primordial fluid. You are dimly aware of warm wet splashing down your thighs, of your body collapsing against him, of the Exarch’s ever-gentle soothing words, “let go, Warrior of Darkness—let go.”
You drift down into the most restful sleep you have known since your arrival upon these strange lands.
In the morning, you find yourself returned into your familiar bed in the Pendants, staring at the ironwork wardrobe, ajar in the self-same manner as you had left it the night before. For a moment, with tiny slivers of light stretching golden fingers across the wooden floor, you wonder if you had dreamed everything after all—
Until a dull, throbbing pain in your backside stirs you to from your bed.
You turn and twist in the mirror, equally horrorstruck and fascinated.
Upon your backside the crystal hand had left a livid recreation of the facets of the Crystal Exarch’s hands, reddened broken capillaries and deep purple bruising, every fingertip embedded into your skin like a lithograph. He had not broken the skin, but he had not erred in exacting his punishment upon you.
Out of everyone upon this soil, the Exarch was the only person who did not doubt your capacity to absorb pain, and for that, you were grateful.