Elutherius stayed locked in a rigid silence until a muscles twisted sharply within his body. He fell forward onto the slick metal. Rain splattered and cooled the open burn wound in torrents that tormented him as much as it relieved. He gasped against the landing pad on the apartment balcony. The condensation of his warm breath fogged up his wet skin.
A heaviness settled behind him. The metal bowed by fractions of atoms under the Massassi’s booted feet. They rested by his squirming calves as Elutherius squirmed and kicked at the ground.
One foot gained purchase on the balls of his feet. The flat of his palm pushed at the ground. He arched into a broken bridge. A gasp grated his throat as the slick durasteel gave under the sandal sole. His teeth clicked as his chin bit the ground.
Elutherius squared his shoulders. His left side sagged to the ground. The muscles fell limp. He was surprised by his body’s own heaviness as it struggled to understand being permanently rent. tendons severed from bone and burned away. A silent crisis. Elutherius pressed his palm firmly against the floor until the bones in his hand ached. The stiff ligaments in his fingers stretched backwards. Pain was a recourse from pain.Â
Black spots swam at his eyes. His dim unseeing eyes staining the world a watercolor of navy blues and grays. But as his consciousness ebbed from this world, a clarity washed over him. It washed from the bruised bones in his hand up his arm. Elutherius shoved, and he rocketed up. His figure twisted in a crooked shape against the stark outline of lightning. An inhuman shape, but it was apt; he’d become something more.
The wounds screamed ragged and raw over the back of his ribs, but Elutherius stood on pigeon toed feet. His back locked into jagged heaving shapes. A strange buoyancy filled him. Invisible cloth packed into his wounds, filling them painfully with whispers that clouded his head. Somehow it remade him whole.
“It still--” he gasped. His lips were wet, but his mouth was dry. Elutherius straightened himself, one limb popping at a time. He hadn’t realized some of his convulsions had thrown his shoulders out of alignment until they slotted back into place by force. “It still hurts,” he rasped. He stretched his back, and though a wave of sickening sear filled him, the black faded from his vision, the world coming into a sharp focus.
Elutherius’ lips parted as he stared out over steep blue spires cold against a hot sky. Steam rose form the dark clouds winding its way against the edges of the city.Â
“I--” Elutherius stepped forward and his body followed in perfect rhythm. Hot nasty pain followed it as naturally as blood did the pumping of the heart.
“This is power, Apprentice.”
Elutherius turned to look at his Master for the first time. He was as dark as wine, but his features chiseled themselves into a high arched face as proud and cruel as it was aloof. He stepped forward. The thick matte cape flared gently in the misty downpour. Elutherius reached to touch it as he drew level. Leather. This was what leather looked like. He stroked it absently.
Elutherius’ back was still warm and quivering from blood, but it was okay. He felt something enter him for every drop he lost. Something more solid.
“Pain leads to power for those strong enough to grasp it. You are only as humbled as you make yourself.” He placed a heavy clawed hand on Elutherius’ shoulder. “This lesson used me to inflict its meaning. Pain, you must remember, is not the absence of love.”
“Yes Master,” Elutherius said breathlessly. He glanced up warily and wondrously at the large brooding Sith Lord framed against the light polluted skyline. A strange thing to be told by this man after such a long complicated history, but in seeing his Master for the first time, Elutherius realized that pain and the endurance of it also won favor if one survived.
He looked back out over the great city, spread in glorious freefall below. He shook with pain but knew he’d keep his feet underneath him now. Defiance of limitation.Â
He’d not survived. He’d thrived. Elutherius thrived in defiance of debilitation. Poverty. Death. Pain. He’d stared it all in the face and spat.
Friyr sat on the bed of the medical bay and bit down on the leather strap as heavy alien hands twisted him. Under the skin he could feel the gap where the flesh sagged over missing muscle. His chest lay flat into the bed. The weight on his hips increased until they had turned sideways. A swollen deep knot pulled against his ribs, and Friyr cried out. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he curled. Only the muscles down the right length of his body responded. The left side was dead as the day His Master’s lightsaber had cut through it.
The hands released him.
There was a sigh from above him. The medical ward was sterile. Quiet except for the beep of machines.
“At your mark,” the deep rumble of a voice said.Â
Friyr had never quite heard anything like it. It was startlingly inhuman while also being clinical - a quality he was unused to in alien intonations. Cathar, Friyr remembered the doctor had disclosed.
Friyr pushed his right arm under his body, and winged as sore muscles began to cramp. He pressed his hand deep into the mattress. It sank under the weight he exerted, but pain was not forthcoming from the cotton. No matter. Friyr locked his shoulders and pushed up. He didn’t get half-way before the conglomeration of knots tightened into a festering nest. He seized and fell. Cloth drowned his gasps of pain.
Another patient sigh followed large hands pressing his frame flat. Pressure dug its way into the screaming points of pressure. Friyr whined, high and drawn out as the anger dissipated slowly for a cathartic type of pain driving them from each point of contact. He twitched as he loosened.
“At your mark means at the mark of your body,” the voice snapped.Â
Friyr made a wordless sound through tears fogging his already dead vision.
“Quite frankly, O’m surprised you’re alive if this has been your version of self-sustenance though it does explain your condition; let me tell you summat: it’s not a werking one. The muscles you do haff, you’ve ground down to what looks loik permanent nerve damage. I cannae blame them fer wanting to stick you in the-- what? Jedi Service Corps? You cannae fight loik this; you cannae continue to live loik this. I dayn’t kno’ who told you you could, but they lied.”
Friyr shuddered into the pillows and curled tighter. The clear heat undercoating Frizz’s tone came with the expectation of being collar wrenched up, tight grips of frustration, sedation. Slaves were not well-cared for in the Empire. But perhaps that wasn’t it. He clutched the pillows because his perceptions of his family, the person he’d wanted to believe cared for him slipped his grasp as easily as a slick metal landing pad did feet.Â
“On your mark, Padawan Illustratum,” the voice addressed him again. More patiently. “Oi’ll do my best to get you the mobility you’ve wanted fer all these years.”
Lord Ignolis had made him a weapon and had kept him well oiled, pressed to stay at a hair-trigger. He’d loved the way Friyr moved. The way he’d bloodied his hands, but he’d never cared about the cost because it was Friyr’s bank account. The account was long overdrawn, and Lord Ignolis was nowhere as he repaid it.
Friyr closed his eyes. “My mark will take a while to come.”
“That’s fine.” The doctor kicked a stool underneath himself at Friyr’s bedside. “The nice thing about this job is that it’s slow enough that I can avail myself.”
Friyr relaxed against the bed and breathed deeply.
The city sparkled wide and magnificent as Friyr gazed with his eyes. One failing. Ones optical nerve cut. A smile found his face. He wasn’t naive; he knew that Ignolis was using him to build the Pureblood’s throne up from the desertion of an heir, but Elutherius was used to shouldering the weight of others on his newly bloodied back. This bleeding only represented years of struggle. Toil. In physical form.
This wasn’t the love he’d ached for as a boy; It was harsh. Already tainted by Lord Ignolis’ prior objectification. It would continue to be cruel. But it was the kind of love Elutherius knew how to reciprocate.Â
Well.
That wasn’t entirely true.
There was a face he could write features into, like missing words in a love note. Elutherius knew his emotional bond to Quirt was good conditioning taken a step too far. Elutherius blamed his queer predilection towards men and having been forced into a confused adolescence around someone he’d been charged to take care of. But--Â
He shook droplets from his long wet hair plastered against his face.
Perhaps he had cared as a slave to repress his heart, but as a free man... this was what he’d been saddled with. As a free man, though his devotion was only operant, he could explore something once unquestionably unprofessional.
“Imagine how surprised Quirt will be when he sees me,” Elutherius murmured to keep the words from swelling his lungs and the wound. Lord Ignolis’ head flicked to him out of the corner of Friyr’s vision. The new stimulus made him jump, and he stared back wide-eyed at the displeased grimace.
“You’re entirely too concerned with Quirt’ansilm, Apprentice.”
And the feelings that Elutherius had locked behind a complacent neutrality as a slave turned his lips upwards into the first soft smile. A bloom in spring.
“I know.”
His Master’s scowl deepened, but he said nothing.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
