Editing Bride of Slaanesh (section)

== '''Part 1''' ==

The drums thundered. The air was alive with the sound, a rhythmic pounding that shook the black tower like the heartbeats of a thousand giants. Velina licked her plum-dark lips to moisten them. Her mother had already started the damn ceremony. No backing out now.
 
The maiden sorceress, hair as black as her horse’s mane, skin as pale as Kislevite snow, moved through her richly appointed chambers to the grand balcony. Khurresh was there, snorting, the pegasus’ dark body eclipsing the setting sun. She could mount him now, leap onto his back and take to the skies over Karond Kar, never to return. The idea held some appeal, but no true temptation. Abandon her wealth, her status, her power? Never.
 
As if sensing her wandering thoughts, Khurresh stamped a black hoof on the mosaic ground of the platform balcony. His great wings, thickly-muscled and night-black, spread wide and blocked more of the cityscape view. Velina smiled at her steed’s display, running a pale hand – the barest touch of her fingertips – down the thin, veined membranes of his batlike wings. Khurresh snorted again, its baleful red eyes staring at her with something strangely approaching affection. She smiled at its glare, kissing the single greyish horn that thrust from the equine forehead.
 
With a final sigh she turned from the view of Karond Kar, putting her back to the towers and the bladed central spire of the Tower of Despair, and re-entered her candle-lit chambers.
 
Bare feet whispering across the purple carpet, she stood before her altar; once decorated with the ritual blades and bone relics of Khaine worship, now almost empty as she accommodated her new faith. She took the one item in her hands, looking into the cold, dark liquid in the bronze chalice. It was an exquisite artefact and she felt the sorcery used in its enchantment tingling her fingertips. Along the sides of the goblet, female druchii were carved, each one naked, each one entwined in a pleasurable or painful embrace with a creature of another race.
 
Velina’s thumb touched her favourite piece, covering the image of a dark elf maiden on all fours, offering herself to the horned beastman that held her hips from behind. Without breaking her gaze from the cold blood in the chalice’s depths, she ran her thumb tip over the familiar image, feeling the dark elf maiden’s slender form and biting her lip at the sudden rush of anticipation building between her legs.
 
‘Show me my mother,’ she said softly. The old blood, leftover from the night before, rippled once but revealed nothing else. Velina swore. It twisted her lovely lips into a frown. She needed fresh blood; the urgency of the incessant drumming reminding her that she needed it now, now, now.
 
‘Xavaric?’ she called sweetly.
 
Her chamber door opened immediately, and one of her nine older brothers stepped in with a rustle of silver mail. Xavaric’s held was removed, revealing his sneering features and ice-blue eyes, though his expression softened as he saw his only sister, the youngest member of the family. He was the one appointed to guard her today. It was a duty he often enjoyed.
 
‘What is it, Velina? Is everything well? Don’t make me go to Mother with another delay.’ He rested his hands on his sword belt, shaking his head. ‘She killed a good slave last time. She is not in the mood to be trifled with tonight, sweet one.’
 
‘Blood, my brother.’ Velina purred her response, pouting as she displayed the chalice with its cold contents.
 
‘I will fetch a slave immediately, sister.’ He nodded curtly, offering her a polite bow. ‘And Velina, oh brightest jewel of the family?’
 
‘Yes?’
 
‘I wish you luck, Bride of Slaanesh.’ He left with a lingering backwards glance.
 
Velina licked her lips again, fighting down her secret thrill at the title, as well as her secret fears. It was tonight. No way around it. Tonight was the ritual, and by tomorrow morning – after nine hours of sweating, painful, pleasurable, aching, tiring, delicious carnality – she would be inducted as a ranking priestess within the Cult of Slaanesh. Her mother had fought hard for this honour. It would not do to let her down.
 
The drums pounded faster, in time with Velinda’s heart. She had never been touched the way she would be tonight. All her evenings with pleasure slaves… Yet she was still unclaimed by a man, still untouched in one very special way. That had been a vital part of her mother’s case to acquire this honour for her daughter. The Bride of Slaanesh had to be a virgin, and Velinda was just that, no matter how many times she had indulged her desire for brutish orc males, offering her snow-white peach of a backside to them and letting them enjoy her asshole before she inevitably slew them.
 
As soon as the slave entered, it knew it was dead. There were only two reasons Lady Velina summoned slaves. For their blood, to use in her black magic, and for pleasure. Both types of summons ended in death, and though the goblin prayed to its ridiculous, distant gods that it was being invited to spend its last hours mounting the ass of the beautiful young mistress of the household, it knew its odds were slim. Firstly, from the drums beating in the vast dungeons under the tower, it was obvious to the goblin that Lady Velina was soon to be taken downstairs for the ceremony. Secondly, the mistress favoured orcs. He was, last time he checked, not an orc.
 
As it turned out, the slave was right on all counts. Velina didn’t even greet the wretched creature. She just wiped her ritual kris dagger across its throat before the goblin had a chance to look afraid. Discoloured blood gushed onto the carpet (which Velina noticed with a pretty, princess-like scowl) and spurted onto her bare stomach (which turned her scowl into a smile at the pleasant warmth).
 
She let the blood flow in dark droplets down her body, and though she wasn’t nude, the black silk of her clinging blackless dress with its plunging neckline didn’t hide much. From her throat to her pelvis, the dress was open, revealing a deep slice of pale cleavage, her bare (and now bloodstained) flat stomach, and plunged low enough to reveal smooth skin where there should have been soft, downy panther-black fur. She had shaved for the ritual, of course.
 
The slave died, falling over and drenching her with a last few spurts of blood. Her think silk dress now showed twin nipple bumps as the blood on her chest cooled. They poked proudly, chunky as the very tip of her little fingers, into the delightfully soft material of her scandalous little robe. She did her best to ignore the sensation of her nipples hardening, and concentrated on the new blood in the chalice.
 
‘Show me my mother,’ she said again. And this time, it did.
 
An image resolved in the blood, murky from such a weak sacrifice but clear enough to see. Her mother stood in her own ritual robe similar to Velina’s, directing the course of the sacrifices on the altar, the cauldron of burning blood where the bodies were stewing, and the naked, sporting couples on the rune-etched tile floor all around.
 
Her mother sensed the scrying. She looked no older than her young daughter, of course. The yearly blood rites kept it so.
 
‘Velina, the hour draws nigh.’ Mother had a serpent’s voice. It always made her daughter shiver.
 
‘I am coming now.’
 
‘Good,’ her mother didn’t hide her displeasure at the delay. ‘The Dark Prince has chosen… Oh, he’s chosen such a husband for you tonight, my sweet.’
 
Velina’s pulse quickened again. ‘May I see, Mother?’
 
‘Just a taste, my dear. Just a glimpse.’
 
The image wavered, forming again into a scene of powerful, masculine horror. Towering above the druchii as they made love and killed each other on the floor was a daemon with black skin, at least eight feet tall. Its head was a horned ram’s visage, dark-eyed and sneering with amusement and anticipation. Its powerful torso was an image of iron-hard muscles, leading down to its black goat’s legs, each one thick and shaggy with dark fur. From between its legs hung a member the length of Velina’s forearm. It was soft, just hanging there.
 
Waiting for her.
 
‘Do you see him, my daughter?’
 
Velina couldn’t answer at first. Finally, her plum lips curled into a smile. ‘I am on my way.’
 
It was going to be quite a night.
 
Xavaric escorted her down through the tower and into the dungeons. Her beloved eldest brother was taking no chances – he kept his blade bared, gripped in his mailed fist. Household slaves openly fled before the pair. Household guards, stationed at each arched doorway, bowed their heads in honour of the bride and her guardian.
 
The great double doors leading into the ritual chamber were wide open. A thin pinkish mist coloured the air, scented of Lustrian blooms. Velina smiled at the rarity of the petals used in the incense tonight, smelling the exotic flora of the jungle depths mied with the coppery scent of blood. Venombloom powder and Heartbane resin. Her mother had truly spared no expense. The smell of the intoxicating poisons, weakened by druchii alchemy and mixed with powerful aphrodisiac stimulants, tickled her nose as she entered the chamber. Xavaric entered with her, blade in hand. If a rival from another bloodline was going to strike, there would be no more perfect moment than now. The insult to the Dark Prince would be…infinite.
 
‘I smell Bloodmist,’ the handsome warrior said, smiling slightly to his younger sister as she took in the scene. She nodded once, understanding. It was a narcotic used by lesser warriors to incite themselves into a frenzy before a battle. Seeing the violence of the couples writhing on the floor, and her mother’s cruel smile, it was easy to see why the elder sorceress had added that component to the ritual incense. It all added to the moment.
 
Velina stared for several moments, her senses awash in the scene of her coming desecration. Thirty elves lay together on the mosaic-encrusted floor, lost in the throes of passion, filling the chamber with cries of pain and pleasure. Blood ran freely down several bodies. Three corpses of slain ritualists lay naked against one wall, ready to be dragged into the great cauldron of boiling blood that was close to the centre of the orgiastic ceremony. Their passion (or the passion of others) had evidently been their end. Velina licked her dark lips, tasting the gold-flecked lipstick she had been ordered to use by her mother.
 
There he was. Or…there ‘it’ was. Her husband. It stood next to her mother, brutish arms crossed across its sweating, bare chest. As she entered, it turned its monstrous head towards her, watching silently. She felt her heart beat faster to fall under its gaze, and her legs shook for a moment. Xavaric, mindful of decorum, offered his free hand to steady her. She took it as if he were just guiding her into the room, and gave him a secret smile of thanks. He had always been her favourite, treating her like this.
 
But the writhing ritualists and her waiting husband were not the only others in the room. Other druchii stood in a ring around the edges of the circular chamber, some holding torches that burned a holy purple due to ritual powder added to the flames, others were nobles from other houses come to witness the wedding.
 
They had been waiting patiently for her, and while most took her entrance as the cue to disrobe and join in, finally giving in to their drug-heightened senses, several now converged on Velina.
 
Xavaric tensed, keeping them all at blade’s distance. ‘No closer. Greet the bride one at a time, if you please.’
 
Several of the nobles smirked at his overprotectiveness, but Velina’s blush betrayed her pleasure. Honoured by nobles… Requiring a bodyguard… And her brother was so diligent, playing the part perfectly. She could, under usual circumstances, destroy any of them on a whim, but she needed to save her powers. Already, she felt a guilty twinge for using her sorcery to contact her mother before.
 
The first noble approached. Thin-faced, gaunt even, dark eyes and a smirk he incorrectly assumed made him handsome to Velina.
 
‘Lord Cyriath,’ she inclined her head politely, her bright eyes never leaving his.
 
‘Velina…’ he began, coming to embrace her slender figure and muttering the traditional phrases of greeting. She felt her breasts crush gently against his robes, her nipples poking into the dark silk he wore. She knew he could feel that. ‘What an honour you do your family,’ he said. And then, in a whisper, his lips against her ear: ‘I’ve sacrificed fifty slaves to the Dark Prince tonight, hoping he would grant me the honour of being one of those who pleasure you before the final hour.’
 
She smiled at the incredible price he’d paid. Now this…this was true power.
 
‘I am flattered, my lord,’ she said, her voice a sensuous promise. ‘Do you believe you will be favoured?’
 
‘I have offered your mother another hundred slaves for your family’s iron mines, and the promise of my support in the next campaign of raids.’
 
Xavaric was growing agitated at the whispering, but Velina soothed him with a smile. She listened to Cyriath’s last words.
 
‘All of that, just to fuck you in the ass, young Velina.’
 
He stepped away. She met his eyes as he rejoined the crowd, and with a shy smile creeping across her lips, the sorceress nodded once, agreeing to his terms. He would have her tonight. She offered herself freely.
 
The next to greet her was Xanthya. Xavaric, may Slaanesh and Khaine both bless him, saw none of the danger here. Velina flicked a glance at her brother’s lustful gaze, travelling over Xanthya’s near-naked form. The Witch Elf stepped closer to the sorceress, the firelight glinting off both of their pale, exposed flesh.
 
So alike as to be twins, the cousins embraced with false warmth, Velina kissing Xanthya’s cheek as her cousin kissed hers.
 
‘I despise you, whore,’ Xanthya smiled sweetly as she whispered. ‘You are a filthy dog whose only pleasure comes from the fingers and tongues of greenskins.’
 
Velina purred into her cousin’s ear. ‘You want me. It pains everyone who sees it. So, so, so obvious, dear one.’
 
Xanthya kissed her cousin twice more, butterfly-soft, on her cheek, then her lips. ‘I’ll have you tonight, before your daemon rides you.’
 
‘If you beg, I might let you watch,’ the sorceress smiled back. They kissed again, tongue-tips touching for a moment, before Xanthya stepped away with a bitter scowl she tried valiantly to turn into a condescending smirk. Velina blew her a kiss, which Xanthya mimed catching and holding to her heart.
 
‘She is divine,’ breathed Xavaric.
 
Velina just chuckled softly.
 
One by one, she greeted the nobles and noblewomen. Many asked for her time and attention in the hours before the ritual’s completion, offering wealth and slaves to her family for the promise of her lips, her tongue, her asshole. None pleaded for her virginity. That belonged to her summoned consort, who watched the proceedings with inhuman patience, understanding nothing of the gathering except that it was owed a great deal of pleasure from the pale dark elf that had entered. He could smell her skin and the scent of her clean musk from between her legs. Its senses were attuned to such things. Its senses were attuned to her, in fact.
 
As Velina spoke with the nobles, it hungered for her, smelling her virginity with a daemonic sense. The sight of her pale body coupled with that sense forced a low growl in the beast’s throat. Velina’s mother swallowed and took a step away.
 
Finally, finally, it was done. The last of the nobles walked away. Xavaric sheathed his enchanted blade, dimming the glow as it slid into his scabbard. With trembling hands, he stood behind his sister and lightly swept her silk dress off her shoulders. It fell to the rune-marked floor, and Xavaric stepped away quickly, head bowed in respect.
 
Velina stood naked, her body painted with spiralling, twisting runic symbols that marked her as an offering to the Dark Prince.
 
Her figure was slim, yet utterly feminine, as if the elven-born bred females to inhuman standards of perfection that cried out in the desires of mortal men. Her limbs were slender, athletic, lightly muscular from weapons training and riding her pegasus Khurresh into battle. Her breasts were pale, pert mounds in the eerie purplish firelight, capped by large nipples with hard nubs poking out into the warm, narcotic-scented air. Her flat stomach showed hints of the muscle beneath, leading down to her slightly flared hips. Her sex, still undefiled, was as smooth as her lovely legs, her usual raven-dark silken pussy fur shaved in honour of her coming violation.
 
Every single soul in the chamber stared at her. Many of the nobles already engaged in their ritual sex simply stopped, watching the bride finally reveal herself. Velina offered a slight smile as she saw Xanthya and Lord Cyriath in each others’ arms on the floor by the altar, moving slowly yet both staring at her. He thrust in and out of the Witch Elf, paying no attention. She sweated under his efforts, but stared at her cousin as she stood naked, almost forgetting the lord who pounded into her with weaker and weaker strokes.
 
Most obvious of all was the daemon’s growl. It sent a minor tremor through the chamber, through the tower, through all of Karond Kar. The great beast watched its bride stand naked and revealed, and its member rose and swelled like a spear of meat.
 
Velina saw the monster’s reaction, the lance of dark flesh that was all for her. In eight hours, after she performed the exhausting matters of the ritual, it would he her duty to lay on the stone floor, witnessed by all who survived the night of bloodshed and pleasure, and let that creature claim her.
 
She met her mother’s envious eyes, and the older sorceress nodded. It was time to begin.
 
Velina met the eyes of Lord Corolus, who kneeled naked between the open legs of a bleeding priestess. He’d been one of the many who had begged to claim her. Velina watched as he pulled out of the other girl, ignoring her as soon as the bride glanced his way.
 
‘Lord Corolus,’ Verlina purred, sliding slowly to her knees. With deliberate poise and teasing slowness, she arched her back and presented her ass to him. The floor was cold, not just from the stone but because she was on her hands and knees in a pool of cooling blood. She had no idea whose blood. She didn’t care.
 
The lord stepped closer, looking down at her. ‘Yes, Lady Velina?’
 
She slowly moved her pale, tight ass from side to side, looking over her shoulder at him. ‘I believe you wanted something from me.’
 
The pause was long as her heart pounded hard. Then she smiled.
 
‘It’s yours. Take it.’
 
It tickled at first. Just the warm hardness of his swollen cock head, tickling her asshole. Velina almost smiled, but the expression died on her lips when she looked up, seeing the towering daemon across the room watching her every move through the haze of thin mist. And the mist… Khaine’s blood, it made her eyes nose tingle, made her heart beat faster and made the delightful ache between her legs become a painful physical need. Against her will, she blushed as a trickle of warm juice rand down her inner thigh. By the Prince…she’d never been so…so wet, so aching, so desperate to be touched.
 
The pressure started, and she let out a breathless ‘Oh!’ as Lord Corolus pushed into her. Velina bit her bottom lip, closing her eyes. The old bastard was going in dry. His fat cock head already stretched her asshole as he slowly pushed the first two inches into her. Velina’s hands tensed like claws on the blood-slick stone. She almost lost her balance on the slippery floor, jerked forward in a painful nudge as he gave her another inch. Khaine’s unholy fucking blood, he was hurting her…
 
‘L-lord,’ she looked over her shoulder, seeing his sweating face and rictus grin, feeling his bony hands gripping her ass cheeks and spreading them wide. ‘Lord, you may touch me…down there. Use my wetness on your fingers… It will make it easier to…’
 
He jerked his hips and violently sank another two inches into her. She let out an accidental cry, lost in the fevered moans of the chamber, and saw the old elven lord smirking.
 
‘Shut your mouth, Velina.’
 
She wanted to argue, wanted to fight him off, but she was too deep into the rite now. It had begun. To refuse pleasure or pain once joining the ritual was to insult to he Dark Prince. So instead, she clenched her teeth against the rising pain as he slid almost all the way in, and hissed at him.
 
‘You like that, old man?’ Her voice was acidic. ‘I can barely feel it.’
 
He licked his lips as their eyes met, and with a final thrust, his balls slapped against her shaven pussy and his pelvis smacked into her raised ass. She hated herself for crying out again.
 
‘Oh, I think you feel that, sorceress.’ He started to slide out now, setting his pace and enjoying her body, never once meeting her gaze again. She tried to challenge him, to enrage him, taunting him.
 
‘Faster, old man. Harder. This is your one chance to please me…’
 
Nothing drew his attention from fucking her ass and staring at her sweating back. Velina’s hand slipped on the floor again, and she lowered herself to her elbows, her arched back lifting her ass higher for him to abuse. It was starting to feel good now, the pure pain blooming with hints of pleasure. Velina let her body move in time with his thrusts, pushing her ass back against him each time he pounded into her.
 
Dizzy from the pain, the growing pleasure and the narcotic mist, she smiled to herself, also enjoying the cold blood turning her hands and forearms red. The sorceress licked the mosaic floor, tasting the cold blood with several flicks of her tongue.
 
Mmm. Human.
 
For a moment she had presence of mind to worry that her immaculately clean hair was swishing through the pool of blood on the floor, back and forth with each motion of the old lord behind her. She almost giggled. Such a foolish thing to be concerned about. She’d be much messier by dawn.
 
The thought drew her eyes back to her daemonic husband. It watched her, its member steel-hard and long as her brother’s sword now. She thought she saw the beast nod to her, but her view was blocked by another naked form.
 
‘Hello, love,’ murmured Xanthya. Kneeling by her cousin’s head, stroking Velina’s hair with gentle fingertips. Velina smiled up at her cousin, her chin and lips reddened by the blood she’d licked off the floor.
 
‘Hello, sister of…’ she winced, hissing as Corolus slammed into her with punishing force. Xanthya grinned, and Velina took a few moments to speak again. ‘Hello, sister of my heart.’
 
It was an awkward kiss. The sorceress, on her knees and elbows, was rocked back and forth by Corolus’ ungentle thrusts. Head raised, her cousin’s fingers tangled in her raven hair, Velina kissed Xanthya’s lips. Their breath mixed, hot and coppery, as the sorceress panted into her hated cousin’s face, so pale and flawless like her own. Velina hissed and winced again at a particularly powerful shove from behind.
 
‘That looks like it hurts, my love,’ the Witch Elf whispered with a smile, teasingly licking Velina’s plum-dark lips. Velina’s answer was a wordless snarl, almost feral, lost in the clash of pleasure and pain from the elderly lord driving into her tight asshole over and over and over. He was merciless, and she hated herself for loving it.
 
Xanthya wasn’t done teasing. She stroked her fingertips down her cousin’s naked, sweating back, down the slopes of her slender thighs, kissing Velina’s neck as she slipped her fingers between the sorceress’s open legs.
 
‘Mmm,’ she whispered into Velina’s neck, ‘I can feel that old bastard’s balls hitting my knuckles. Big. Swollen. He’ll fill you up with his seed, I’m sure. Until then, sweet sister of my heart…’
 
Velina trembled, shivering as her cousin’s deft fingertips slid between her pussy lips, teasing small circles around her juice-slick hole. She drew breath to curse her bitch of a cousin, even to speak a word of dark magic that would burn the whore’s worthless face clean off her skull…
 
…but her rage was lost in an instant. Xanthya’s fingers teased, circled, and slid in. Two fingers, up to the knuckles. Between the kisses on her throat, the hands on her hips, the fingers exploring her virgin hole and the thick cock pounding in and out of her ass, she couldn’t even think straight. They owned her, at least for the moment, and the young sorceress let them – she had no other choice.
 
‘Look how wet the Bride is,’ sneered Xanthya, licking her cousin’s cheek. ‘I may have to taste this.’ With deliberate slowness, she slid her two fingers from Velina’s cunt, holding them before her face. The sorceress felt a sudden stab of loss, missing her cousin’s touch, but she’d swear allegiance to the Phoenix Throne before she admitted that to Xanthya.
 
The Witch Elf examined her glistening fingers, smelling them with a smile. ‘My, my, what a lovely scent, dear cousin Velina.’ She theatrically licked the juice from her fingers, making soft ‘Mmm’ sounds, while her free hand slid down her own sweat-slick body, down her muscled stomach, her fingertips sliding through her patch of downy black fur to slide into her own pussy.
 
Once she was done with her licking performance, she withdrew the fingers from her lips. ‘It’s only fair that you taste me now, love,’ Xanthya said with a dark smile over her angelic features.
 
Hearing this, seeing it all, Lord Corolus intensified his strokes, powering in and out of her and doing his best to hold her still as she trembled and writhed from the flinching stabs of pain.
 
Xanthya slipped her fingers from between her legs. They too glistened with sticky wetness. The Witch Elf held the three warm fingers before Velina’s lips. With each thrust of the nobleman’s cock, she jerked forward, her lips bumping her cousin’s fingers, leaving a thin, sticky string between her mouth and Xanthya’s hand.
 
‘Lick it. Taste me,’ Xanthya said, now using her free hand to stroke Velina’s hanging, shaking breasts. Velina smiled, filling her eyes with every ounce of her loathing, unwilling to lose this little test of hatred. She opened her lovely lips, and took her cousin’s fingers into her mouth, sucking them the way she sucked the cocks of her rare human slaves.
 
‘Khaine’s blood, I hate you, Velina,’ her cousin hissed. The sorceress smiled slightly as she sucked, her drug-heightened senses relishing the tangy taste of Xanthya’s pussy on her tongue. She wanted more. She wanted to taste more so desperately, she almost begged. She would have, if Xanthya hadn’t been taken away at that moment.
 
The Witch Elf was dragged gently back, a few feet away, in another elf’s arms. Velina glanced over her shoulder, her ass so achingly numb now she could barely feel the wealthy old lord brutalising it. He grinned at her, finally making eye contact again, and she turned away from him, not willing to show him her angry blush.
 
Xanthya was back. She faced her cousin now, on her hands and knees, sharing the pool of blood with the sorceress. Behind her raised ass, the heir to another noble house was positioning himself to slide into her. Velina clenched her teeth, despising the near-mirror image of the scene, and powerless as both men lifted the females they were fucking, gentle nudging them closer to one another.
 
Xanthya’s smile said it all. She loved this. And against her sense and reason, Velina’s lips met her cousin’s. Their tongues met a moment later, sliding around each other in fierce competition to be the most aggressive, the dominant force of the kiss. Meanwhile, the two lords fucked the beautiful cousins, smiling to each other over the girls’ arched backs.
 
Chants sounded from the edges of the chamber. The torches flared in gauntleted hands. The rite had begun in earnest.
 
Time passed in a haze of pleasure and pain, of voices barely heard and a hundred lovers all blurring into one. Even when it ended, she was assaulted by a storm of memory, the freshness and vividness of what happened making the scenes swirl through her thoughts in a flood of images.
 
Velina was sore, sore to her bones. She ached in a way she’d never hurt before, the muscles of her backside and spine seemed on fire, and the dizziness in her mind wouldn’t end, wouldn’t slow down. Her back bled from fingernail scratches. Her eyes ached from crying, her throat was dry from her moans and screams. The pale skin of her ass was raw with red hand marks from slaps, and marks where at least three men had bitten her. Her left nipple oozed blood from where another girl (Xanthya? Was it Xanthya? That…that bitch…) had bitten hard enough to break the skin.
 
Her tongue was thick with the taste of the sweet-scented mist in the air. Breathless, sweating despite the altar of cold stone she lay upon, Velina raised a trembling hand to her burning forehead. As her fingertips brushed her cheek, she felt the sticky warmth left there by the last man to use her. The memory swirled unformed behind her eyes. Who had it been? Someone young, strong… Someone who had talked to her and stroked her hair as he painted her face with his love-gift…
 
Khaine’s blood, no. She remembered his face now, remembered his closed eyes and whispered words as she sucked, looking up at him from his lap. Her lips closed like a noose around his swollen cock head, and her tongue had swirled fast circles around the meat as she’d sucked gently, her head bobbing up and down, up and down…

The memory rose to the fore of her shattered thoughts. She remembered the first spurt in her mouth, the salty gooeyness hitting the back of her throat, and her instinctive swallow so she wouldn’t choke. More followed – lots more – thick strings of cum that spurted from his twitching rod between her lips. Mouth full, dizzy and dazed, Velina had lifted her head to have time to swallow and breathe. The rest had hit her face, and he’d stroked her hair with one hand, pointing his cock at her face with the other. The impacts were hot, generous loads and she’d smiled through her full mouth, meeting her brother’s eyes.
 
Khaine’s blood, not Xavaric. She… She didn’t feel the revulsion she’d expected. Rolling to her side on the stone altar, she peered through the thickening drug mist to find him in the crowd of souls that ringed her. It took a while for her chaotic senses to pick him out, but there he was. He offered her a slight nod and a smile. Another memory came back to her as she saw his bloody, naked torso. He’d killed someone. He had slain someone for her.
 
The knight… What was his name? Tellios…that was it. Lord Tellios. So handsome, so strong, still reeking of the exotic, lovely poisons secreted by his bestial mount. Velina remembered him from a ball held in the Tower of Despair itself, thrown to celebrate…whose birthday? A wedding? The truth escaped her addled mind. But she remembered him, and remembered seeing him standing tall and proud in his plate armour. He was a Cold One Knight, honoured by the lords of the city. But the narcotics had taken a hold of him. He had almost defiled her, almost ruining her for the great rite.
 
They struggled as she lay under him. He was choking her, his warrior’s hands wrapped around her throat. His iron-hard shaft had withdrawn from her aching asshole and now banged between her legs, missing its soft, wet target in his mindless haste. She tried in vain to call for help, but no breath would come. She couldn’t even see past his leering, wrathful face. She wasn’t even worrying about the rite now; she was panicked and in fear for her life. Under him, with the powerful knight laying atop her between her open legs, the most resistance she could offer was to let her numb legs slide from around his hips.
 
He entered her. His manic thrusting had finally hit home, snagging her tight hole at a bad angle, and she screamed breathlessly as he parted her pussy lips with the thrust, the tip of his shaft sinking into her and twitching as she tightened around him.
 
Just an inch, she knew. Was that enough? She couldn’t care; she couldn’t even breathe. Blackness crept in at the edges of her already strained senses. And suddenly it was over, as quickly as it had started. The handsome, noble knight fell limp on her, crushing her with his weight until a mailed fist tangled in the corpse’s hair and wrenched the body away.
 
Xavaric had stood over her, his sword glistening red from his precise thrust sideways through the knight’s neck. It took Velina two dozen beats of her racing heart to realise her throat and breasts were drenched in the dead man’s blood.
 
She also remembered Xanthya’s laughter, broken and exhausted but no less full of amusement for all the Witch Elf’s own weariness. She was riding a lord Velina hadn’t recognised, and the cousins’ eyes had met again. Bitterness beamed between their gazes, before Xavaric had knelt down to see if she was alright. And that was when she’d… Oh, Murder God, she’d…
 
The growl brought her back to the present, to the world of violet mist and aching flesh. A shadow resolved out of the sweet fog: horned, powerful, and inhuman. With a shivering breath, Velina closed her eyes, tilted her head back and arched her spine, thrusting her pert breasts upward.
 
It was time.
 
The daemon was still wreathed in mist, but she heard it draw breath – three great animal snuffling sounds. It was trying to sense something, she knew. Or was it just savouring the mist?
 
Her mother’s voice slipped into her mind with a pulse of telepathic sorcery. ‘Open your legs, sweet one. It wishes to smell your purity.’
 
With a dancer’s grace, her long legs glided open, her sweating skin whispering on the stone altar as Velina revealed herself to her new master. It took a step forward, coils of pinkish fog trailing from its mighty body, and it made a sound Velina would remember to her dying day. A wet thunderous growl, coming over and again in short bursts. As it took a deep breath, it growled like this several times.
 
It was… It was laughing.
 
The world grew dark as the daemon towered over her. She could smell it now: it reeked of blood and pain, the maddening scent of burning cities with the tingling aura of untold secrets. It was like nothing she could describe, and she felt her tortured body responding again, nipples hardening under the strange sensation, and the tingle between her legs returning as she exposed herself.
 
‘Be ready,’ her mother’s voice said in a blur of importance.
 
She heard her brother speak her name, then many other voices suddenly raised in chanting. Her lover, her husband, ascended the altar to kneel between her legs. Its goatish eyes burned violent red, and those scarlet orbs were all she could see in the imposing silhouette that darkened everything else. She had a momentary bolt of fear and confusion. It was huge. It would kill her… It would surely kill her.
 
Without meaning to, she closed her legs. Or at least, she tried to. Before her knees could touch, the beast’s great paw batted them open again with bruising force.
 
‘Speak the words!’ her mother psychically sent. ‘Now!’
 
‘I offer myself to the Dark Prince, as his consort this night. Does he accept the gift of my house and bloodline?’
 
Velina looked up at the hellish creature, resting her hands on her knees and opening her legs as wide as she could. The creature breathed once, the burning air reeking of ashes and the sweat of mortals.
 
She had her answer a moment later.