harlots & harlotry

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Everything is red. 

Your hands, slick and shining, and the flickering glow against the smoke-filled sky, and the bodies, piles of them, flesh peeled like rind, insides glistening, nothing but red. The bloodmist of the Zephyros Borderlands minces light, turns it scarlet. Evening scrapes the forest a new, rawer hue so everything, rock and bark and dirt, becomes flayed and blistered. You half-tumble down a steep hill, bones and twigs snapping underfoot. Pushing yourself upright sinks your palms into muddy soil, and you can’t be sure what sort of grimy wetness sticks to your fingers. Blood and water look the same here.

A wolf would not have chased you this far. A bear might have crossed into the borderlands just briefly, long enough to sniff the air and realize no prey was worth the danger. But your pursuer is a Lifetaker mage, and he doesn’t hunt for hunger or even for duty. You were herded here, you realize, your desperation preordained and calculated, pushed hard and far enough that you had no choice but to risk trying to lose him in the borderlands. 

You weren’t the first. That became clear to you quickly. Corpses were plentiful as soon as you breached the treeline and they grow in number the deeper you go. Their wounds are unnatural, bodies broken in ways impossible without the use of a Lifetaker’s sadistic magic. Bones protrude from tight whorls of flesh, burst organs leaking from new, twisted orifices. Some died mercifully quickly, outrunning him long enough to bleed out. Most did not. 

He’s there when you look back, looming at the top of the hill. Lifetakers wear black but he’s painted in the same vivid red as the rest of the forest, light like blood spilling across the flutter of his cloak. “You’re tired,” you hear him call out to you, his tone condescending. “You’re hurt. You want to rest. So why don’t you? We both know how this is going to end.” 

Running is pain. Your lungs burn. Your legs ache. War spilled over into your village days ago and you haven’t rested since as Lantenwood pushes deeper into Ophidran, subsuming and obliterating everything in its path. You’ve heard rumors of safe havens, sanctuary for those who surrender. It matters little if those were lies or if this Lifetaker is defying his orders. He intends to make this place your grave. So you run, even with a twisted ankle and wheezing, uneven breaths, even as the darkness of the borderlands deepen and you know you’ll never find your way out again. 

You see scraps of those who came before you, scraps of fabric clutched by thorny branches and bloodied handprints smeared across tree bark. A corpse lays in the path, one grasping hand still extended towards the road ahead. The forest is cruel, the foliage sharp and cutting as you shove through the underbrush. The Lifetaker’s light, airy words follow you on the wind, never too far away. “I hear how your heart beats. I taste the salt of your tears. Soon I’ll feel you, the tremor of your throat under my hands. I’ll shape you into something beautiful.” 

The trees open and the sight of the valley before you churns your stomach. Red. Endless red. Piles of corpses. Rivers of blood. It’s almost nightfall and the dulling of the light protects you from seeing it clearly, but the abstractions, those towering, misshapen silhouettes of flesh, are even worse. The stench of death is overwhelming. And there are things among the bodies, hunched, skulking carrion-eaters licking blood from the earth with their long tongues. You stumble back on reflex, prepared to run right back the way you came even if he’s close, even if that means falling right into his arms, because you can’t go any further, but the choice is taken from you. 

Your foot finds a slippery patch, a puddle of mud and innards, and your bad leg crumples under you. You fall and there’s nowhere to go but straight down into the maw of the necropolis, among the dead. This is where the Lifetaker plans to end it. He breaks his unhurried stride to lunge after you, his cloak fluttering like wings in his swift descent. Your scream is trapped under his fingers as he pins you with his body, his hand wrapped around your throat. He’s draped in thick shadows and all you see is a sneer. You won’t even know the face of the person who kills you. Your nails scrape desperately across his wrist and he speaks in a low, excited murmur, telling you exactly what he’ll do to you, how he’ll change you, how splendid you’ll look when he’s through—

And then he stops, his mouth hanging open in shock, as a wet squelch splatters you in more red. A gnarled, long-fingered hand with hooked claws is shoved straight through his chest from behind. The Lifetaker grasps at the wound in a panic and you feel the hum of his magic in the air as he tries desperately to heal himself, willing his flesh to close, but he’s too slow. The claw comes crunching back through him, leaving a gaping, oozing hole of snapped ribs. Something lunges with a snarl and he’s snagged away from you. 

He barely hits the ground before he’s swarmed by three snarling creatures, each tearing into him with teeth and claw, pulling him in different directions. His screams are drowned out by the sound of his own body being torn apart and the cackling of the creatures. Terror blurs your vision as you push yourself back, away from the things, unable to take your eyes off of them. Gaunt and skeletal—snaking bone along their chests like external ribcages clinging to sickly flesh, ridges of spinal protrusions along their backs—maws that unhinge, rings of teeth—

“Careful, softbody.” 

You stiffen, holding completely still. Long, clawed fingers grip your shoulder. You’re turned around slowly, made to face one of the things as it crouches to look at you. They’re eerie, even when they’re at rest. Powerful, muscled legs bend in strange, animal ways with a flaccid cock hanging between them. Their arms are so long they must drag on the ground, and this one keeps them bent, hands in stiff, rigor mortis claws in front of his chest.

The face that stares back at you isn’t human, but it pretends to be. What you initially mistake for narrowed, drooping eyes are just narrowed slits in the face, mimicking a sorrowful expression curtained by long, dark hair. He has a mouth frozen in a perpetual smile, baring sharp teeth. There are indentions in his face, lines like the segmentation of an insect’s body. 

You recognize that from the others. The head unfurls, opens like a flower. Inside is nothing but teeth. 

“You smell afraid,” the crouched one says. He sounds human. If he had called out to you from the trees, you wouldn’t have suspected a thing. You’re too stunned to speak. When he reaches for you, you flinch. He smears fresh blood on your face as he grips your jaw and examines you, turning your head. “Hm? Too far gone? Should we eat you, too?” 

The threat finally pushes through the fog of paralyzing fear, a desperate litany of “no” and “please” and miserable noise spilling out of you. He  drags you closer, still clutching your face. He rests on his haunches, pulling you into his bony lap. You let out a frightened squeak and your hands skitter from his shoulders to his chest, unable to find any spot of skin that isn’t coated in gore. “Poor thing,” he coos. “You’re shaking.” 

The Lifetaker is no longer screaming or struggling. Your gaze wanders, drawn by morbid curiosity and the disgusting sounds of flesh and viscera shredding between sharpened teeth. He  stops you, his palm against your cheek. He drags your eyes back to its face. 

“You don’t want to see that,” he assures you. “What’s your name, hm?” 

He’s being gentle with you. You can’t figure out why. You stammer what he wants to hear and he makes a curious sound, repeating your name back to you with a strange, stilted pronunciation. Several of the others have grown bored of their prey and you can hear them ambling away from the fresh corpse. One strides right over to the two of you, looming above you and the crouched one. You look up just in time to see its face reform, a petal of flesh sliding back into place and closing a gap in its maw. That one has shorter hair, a clot of blood tangled in it. The indents that almost look like eyes are a different shape, arched in glee. It licks the blood from its lips as it stares at you. 

“Mhair,” it rumbles, “what is that?” 

“Softbody,” the one holding you says simply. He pets you clumsily, like he’s seen the action performed but never done it. 

“I can see that. Why aren’t you eating it?” 

You shudder and the one you assume is called Mhair coos softly, stroking your head. “This war’s turned you into gluttons. Before, we didn’t eat everything we saw.” 

“Your loss,” the other says. It stalks away without argument.

“He’ll come around,” Mhair says absently. “He knows I’m right. We only ate the dead before. Company was special. Sweet softbodies like you are treasures.” You’re surprised when he lets you go, setting you gently back down before he stands up. When they aren’t hunched or crouching, they’re frighteningly tall. “Are you hungry?” he asks. “Plenty of fruit in the groves south of here. All for you. We don’t eat that.” 

You don’t take the hand he offers to help you up. “Why are you helping me?” you ask, your voice hoarse. 

Mhair keeps his hand extended patiently, his unusually long arms putting it well within reach even with him standing straight up. “I told you. You’re company. You’re special.” His face ripples, the seams fidgeting in what might be impatience, or excitement. “And where else can you go?” 

His palm is rough and gnarled against yours. He doesn’t smile—he can’t, not when the seams of his face make him look as though he’s always smiling. But his face flutters, flaps of flesh quivering again, when you take his hand. 

He’s talkative. You can’t tell if he’s oblivious to your discomfort or trying to help, but he chatters the whole, long walk through the valley. “Your people call us grave-eaters. You revered us once for keeping plague from your cities, but that was a long time ago. I miss those days. Once a year, we would receive offerings in thanks—meat, and a sweet softbody. The dead we ate. The living we mated until sunrise. Deathtouched, they were called after that. Blessed by grave-eaters and immune to sickness.” He pauses, watching you limp alongside him. “Should I carry you?”

“No,” you say quickly. “I’m fine.” 

You aren’t, but he doesn’t push. You see a few others on the way to the grove. Sated grave-eaters recline in the grass, long tongues plucking bits of skin and tissue from their teeth. Others tussle playfully over scraps, their unraveled faces tangled together like an unnerving tentacled embrace with chunks of flesh ripping between them. None of them approach you, but some leer as you pass, licking their maws. Mhair is watching you watch the others. He tilts his head when you catch him staring, feigning innocence. 

You come to a shallow river, the water a deep, wine red. Trees grow along the banks, boughs heavy with strange fruit you don’t recognize, something unique to the borderlands. Mhair reaches up and plucks one easily, offering it to you. It’s firm and plum-colored, wrapped in thin, curling leaves. You take a tentative bite and sweet juice drips down your chin. “Good?” Mhair asks. You  nod cautiously. You shiver when his thumb strokes the corner of your mouth, picking up some of the juice. He lifts his hand tentatively to his face, his tongue snaking out for a taste, and his entire face crumples up in displeasure. It would be cute if it wasn’t so bizarre. 

“You asked me earlier where else I would go,” you say. He makes a sound in acknowledgement, sauntering off. He doesn’t go far, wading into the river until it’s up to his knees. You watch him bend slightly, rinsing the blood from his hands, ladling water across the ridges of his chest and washing the stains on his body. “You expect me to stay here?” 

“If you want to survive, you will,” he says. “A Lifetaker chased you here. Would you risk running into one that doesn’t play with his food?” He wades back to shore glistening, cleaner than before, and sits beside you in the grass. You keep an eye on him as you nibble on the fruit. “If you run, I guess I won’t stop you,” he muses. “But it wouldn’t be smart. I’m willing to shelter you, keep you fed and warm in the night.” 

“You want something in return,” you say accusingly. 

“Nothing is free, softbody.” He lifts his hand in a beckoning gesture. You inch closer. He lunges for you, catching your wrist, and you end up trapped against him again, straddling his lap. “Aren’t you curious about the old ways?” he murmurs, his thumb grazing your cheek. 

“No,” you say stiffly. 

His movements are slow, languid, as he caresses you. Constant exhaustion has left your nerves frayed and every touch is both repulsive and strangely soothing, familiar, human warmth in his inhuman hands. “But your heart is racing.” 

“I’m afraid,” you insist.

He’s relentless, knocking the half-eaten fruit out of your hands and tugging your wrist down between his legs. “Fear is malleable. See for yourself. Here, I’m like you. We’re perfectly compatible.” 

He’s not lying. His cock is remarkably human. It’s bigger, though, even when soft, proportional to the rest of him. He closes his hand around the back of yours and moves you the way he wants, hissing in pleasure. He twitches against your palm and you start to notice differences as he hardens, an unusual curve and firm ridges along the bottom. It isn’t long before he’s as thick as his arm and so long his tip is nearly in your face. You must look as horrified as you feel because he catches your chin between his fingers and draws your gaze back to his face. 

“I’ve taken plenty of offerings,” he assures you. “Many sought me out more than once.” 

That doesn’t put you at ease, and he must notice, because he tries to distract you. He makes quick work of the ties on your tunic and the garment comes off in a swift movement before you can stop him. His hands are large and warm, and you lean into him to escape the cold of the night. When you stop touching him, he drags you closer. You’re pressed chest to chest, feeling every groove and bump along his strange form. “Prepare me,” he says, his tongue dragging suggestively along the shell of your ear, “and I’ll prepare you.” 

It feels absurd and filthy, coming so close to death only to end up here in the arms of a grave-eater. He undresses your lower half with similar swiftness. Your hand is seized again and you wince when his tongue slithers out and curls around your fingers and his, wetting them in thick, slimy saliva. He tugs insistently at your wrist until your hand is on his cock, only letting go when you start stroking again. You don’t pay much attention to what he’s doing until you feel one cold, damp finger tracing the flesh of your entrance. Your gaze flicks nervously to his.

Does he have eyes, you wonder, underneath his hair or somewhere else? Or is he doing this entirely by sound and feel? He must’ve been telling the truth about having previous human partners, because he knows what he’s doing. He opens you slowly, his finger curled and prodding with gentle patience between your inner walls. The second finger goes in faster and easier and you find yourself pushing back against his hand, your grip on his cock faltering. 

“You’re doing well,” he murmurs, the praise making your face heat up. “Relax. There we go. Ahh, I missed this. You’re going to be a tight fit.” 

His cock fills your hand and it’s throbbing, globs of precum dribbling from the flared tip. He urges you to hold onto his shoulders and then his hands are on your hips, lifting you, positioning you just right. The head of his cock just kisses your entrance, smearing arousal across your skin. “Promise me,” you beg him. “If I do this, you’ll keep your word. I’ll survive here. You’’ll protect me.” 

“I swear on oaths your people have forgotten, but I still honor. Take me and I will be your claws and teeth.” 

You start to lower yourself and your heart stops when his face completely comes apart, splitting wetly along its petal seams into flared peels of flesh. You think he’s going to kill you, but no bite ever comes. The sight is utterly terrifying, staring into the abyss at the center of his head, the segmented inner lining of his maw with rows of thorn-like teeth. They twitch and wriggle slightly, shivering in the air. Every bit of him you take makes him sigh in pleasure, his open face fluttering. This is a good sign, you can only assume. 

It’s impossible to relax with him looming in your face like that, but he tries to make you. He rocks his hips in a gentle rhythm and starts sliding his hands up your body, caressing your chest. You close your eyes and that helps you focus on the sensations, the stretch, the way he palms your chest and teases your nipples with just the slightest graze of his claws, instead of the hot breath fanning across your face. 

“You’re perfect,” he hisses. “You’re divine.” His thrusts are slow and deep, easing you into taking him to the hilt. That patience starts to slip as he gets excited and you struggle to keep up with him. His hands return to your hips and you’re pulled into his harder thrusts, breathless with every hard, upward movement that punches the air out of your lungs. “You should stay…stay after the war. Stay forever. Doesn’t it feel good?” 

It feels like too much. Your hands are shaking and you’re balanced right on the edge of pleasure and pain as he bounces you in his lap. He’s too big and his preparation was too rushed. He’s reaching places you didn’t even know you had, the ridges along his underside dragging out new, blistering sensations that white out your brain. It’s good and it’s awful and you couldn’t answer if you wanted to. Mhair suddenly leans back in the grass and brings you with him, gripping you tightly against his chest, and he stops holding back entirely.

You’re engulfed in him, your head cradled in the prickling grasp of his unwound head. The fear ends up muted as he slams into you, the obscene slapping sound of him fucking you hard and fast filling you with heat. Mhair’s tongue slips into your mouth and you experience the full length of it like a tentacle fucking your throat, the whole thing thick and slimy and dripping with bittersweet ooze. You sputter some of it up and feel it dribbling down your cheeks, but most of it you can’t help but swallow. His pace grows even more frenzied. You don’t know how he speaks, but he does, the words breathy and ragged.

“So good…so tight, so good! It should always be like this, sweet softbodies open and wanting for me. Should keep you. Taste you every night…!” 

You cum, somewhere in the mess of it. Shivering and overstimulated, you moan helplessly in his grasp, your voice muffled by his maw and the constant thrust of his tongue. He’s not far behind, panting and eager as his slamming thrusts become quick and straining. You feel the ridges of his cock pulse in sequence as he pumps you full. He keeps going through most of it with clumsy, messy thrusts that spill some of his cum and leave it dripping down your thighs. He doesn’t stop until he has absolutely nothing left, humping you dry with frantic moans. 

He lets you go in stages. His head first, flaps of skin falling limply around your face. You sting in places where his teeth dug in, but he was surprisingly careful. His tongue pulls out of your throat, not without one last, affectionate lick at the corner of your lips. He visibly struggles to form a humanoid face. The edges don’t quite meet, the flaps sagging. His grip softens, no longer bruising. One hand smooths up and down your spine. He pulls his softened cock out of your aching entrance and you whimper at the sudden, aching emptiness. The two of you rest there, sharing breath in the red dark of the borderlands. 

“You’ll stay with me,” he tells you, his voice noticeably thin.  “It’s best if you don’t leave my sight. The others have formed some bad habits lately.” 

You shudder, remembering how the others tore apart the Lifetaker. “I’ll stay close. But I’m not staying forever.”