#uncertain!

"What I would like to know," he continued calmly, as if Solas' strong reactions were nothing at all, "is where you took my slaves." He kept Solas dangling, his reactivity slowly calming until eventually he just hung limp. He could still breathe, and although the grip was painfully tight, it was not doing any substantial harm. He could tolerate this, and did not wish to bring a greater punishment down on himself. "You seem to believe you can save them. That you can offer them some grandiose utopia. But I offer them a purpose. Protection. Guidance. The Elvhen are a powerful people, but young. Untested. However, they can be shaped into something profound. What can you possibly offer them that is better than that?"

"Freedom," he rasped, voice tight. Elgar'nan shook him; gently, but the swaying was still disorienting and pulled hard on the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

"Ah, yes. The freedom to die on their own, is that it?" He abruptly let go, Solas plummeting to the cold stone floor with a sharp grunt, pain throbbing through his knees and palms. "You must paint them a fine picture. The liberated few, now…" the pause was deliberate, and he could imagine Elgar'nan's smug smile, "indebted to you. Tell me, does it quell your envy to have your own slaves? Does it soothe your pride to have them believing their enslavement a gift?" He tasted bile and swallowed, body trembling with rage that he wanted to loose.

But that was the point, and he would not play the role Elgar'nan wanted him to. He would not let anger loosen his tongue. No more than it already had.

He regretted the response. Not for Elgar'nan's reaction, which was to be expected, but as a confirmation of what he was doing. It had served him—served all of them—to have it as an open secret. In a single moment, a burst of anger, he had ruined that thin benefit.

Grief doused his anger like water over a fire. Someone else should be doing this. Someone else should be leading. Someone better, someone—

"You look pitiful." Elgar'nan's cold judgement brought him harshly back to the moment, to the varied aches in his body, the sting of blood in his mouth. Perhaps he bit his tongue as he fell. It did not matter. "It is almost enough to leave you in this state." He glanced up, met cold eyes with a heat of his own, and Elgar'nan smirked at his display. He wanted to bare his teeth, wanted to bite into the man's thick neck, fangs tearing through muscle and blood bursting in his mouth, dousing him in its metallic tang. Like an animal. At least the thought sickened him. "But then, what kind of father would I be if I let you escape your punishment? It would hardly be fair."

Ah.

Of course.

Still dreaming of violence, a cold reserve began to settle over him. He stayed on the ground, unwilling to contribute to his 'punishment'. He wondered what it would be, then tried to quickly put such considerations from his mind, refocusing on Elgar'nan's throat. On how his blood would taste.

Elgar'nan permitted his study, and Solas tried to ignore how smug the other man looked. To stare at his throat inevitably kept his face in view, his expression clear despite Solas' best efforts to see nothing save the tender, fragile flesh, pulsing with a flow that could be interrupted, stopped…

Consumed. For he still imagined the taste of it flowing over his tongue, the wet, hot mass pooling in his mouth until he swallowed.

He no longer begrudged himself these fantasies of violence. He had taken the form of a wolf many times. Had fought battles with tooth and claw as often as magic and blade. He knew the metallic tang of blood flowing over his coarse tongue, draining like inevitability into his throat.

He had swallowed that violence. His stolen flesh utilizing it. Stolen and stolen again. And now? Now it would be abused. This flesh which carried hints of so many others would be brutalized until Elgar'nan was satisfied.

Perhaps it was just. Perhaps deserved. Not for whatever had angered the All-Father, but for sins that ran far deeper.

The silence was so long, Solas slipping so deep into himself, that Elgar'nan's voice was like being doused with cold water: "get up."

He met the man's eyes. Golden.

They should be beautiful. Warm and rich. They were not beautiful.

Solas rose.

He did not want to, but he knew to deny it would be worse. Elgar'nan could kill him. It had always been a possibility. There was only so far he could dare to deny him, and he could see that the All-Father was in no mood to extend patience.

His golden eyes were not warm. They were not rich.

They were hungry.

He felt the tension of a spell a split second before it was cast, his will half-forming a barrier before his mind caught up and forced it away.

His fine robes unraveled. His high collar unwound. His leather wraps peeled and cracked until they fell away in thin sheets, leaving him bare, his modesty coiled in layers around his feet.

He did not cover himself. He did not shrink away. At least they were in the privacy of Solas' own room. A small blessing.

"If you care for the slaves as much as you insist," Elgar'nan began, holding Solas' gaze, "you will accept punishment as one of them."

He had known. He had. But still, the words were like a stone in him, a deep, sinking despair, horror bright and hectic on its tail. But he did not falter. He stood tall.

Pride, indeed.

"Of course," Elgar'nan continued, slowly pacing around Solas, "a pup should be properly adorned." The All-Father's presence at his back was like standing too close to a raging hearth, skin feeling brittle and sore with the heat. The hand that settled across his mouth made him flinch despite himself, Elgar'nan's laugh like something toxic. But his hand was hot, hotter then the heat at his back. He felt certain that his lips were burnt, as they might be from the sun.

As potent as the pain was, he was still distracted from it by the new rush of magic, aligned with Elgar'nan pressing his two middle fingers between the scorched seam of Solas' lips.

He reacted rather than thought it through, mouth falling open at the pressure, cursing himself inwardly as the fingers sank within. It took everything in him to not bite down on the offending fingers and their violation, although a significant portion of his anger was directed at himself.

Who parts their lips at pain? What kind of pathetic creature was he, that his body receives abuse and its instinct is to open up to more?

In his self-recriminations, he'd nearly forgotten what Elgar'nan had said. But as the fingers circled inside his mouth once, twice, and a third time, he tasted something hot, acrid, like a storm building on the horizon. He felt the pressure surge in his mouth, following the circle Elgar'nan's fingers had traced, something taking form behind his front teeth.

After a moment—and a single, thoroughly condescending petting of his exposed tongue—Elgar'nan withdrew his fingers from Solas' propped-open mouth. He felt that hot hand stroking down his jaw, the thumb digging in just under his ear. "That's much better, isn't it?" With a voice thick with artifice, sickly-sweet, the All-Father continued to idly stroke Solas' face.

But no gentleness now would ease what was to come.

His mouth was forced open by a gag which tasted of Elgar'nan's power. It was a promise: that he would make noise, noise the All-Father wanted to hear.

Here he stood, exposed even beyond the nudity, unable to do anything other than await the beginning. He could not yet think of the end. Couldn't allow himself to.

The beginning.

Elgar'nan was in no rush.

For a moment, he tried to imagine their roles reversed. Would he relish drawing out the suspense in this way? It was difficult to think about. Distressing, really, which was a grim kind of amusement given the current situation. That was what distressed him, while he awaited certain torture?

But his mind grasped again for the consideration. It was a problem to be solved, however pointlessly.

He balked at the general consideration, the idea of taking such vicious pleasure in suffering, but then he found himself moving from the general to the specific. Less a question of whether he would want to do this to someone, more whether he wanted to do this to Elgar'nan.

And he found that he did.

The All-Father forced to his knees before him, powerless and at his mercy. He, too, would want to draw it out. To extend anticipation and—his heart seemed to skip a beat—retribution alike.

"You're trembling."

The observation, spoken almost absently, forced him back to the moment more effectively than a strike would have.

Trembling. Showing fear. He did not want to show fear.

"I am going to enjoy this."

He was sickly grateful when the hand tracing his jaw clutched his neck, the anticipation snapping as it began. He was thrown to the ground, taking the impact on hands and knees. Elgar'nan made a low sound, something vaguely frustrated. "That's no good, is it?" He used his foot to shove Solas to his back, staring down at him appraisingly.

His lip twitched right as he felt the pressure of his will. Elgar'nan—without needing to touch him—forced Solas' arms in front of his chest, forearms together, hands just under his chin. He grimaced as the thick, tight binding materialized, coiled rows of stark red leather. "Hm. It appeals, but I think we can do better." He watched as the red faded until a creamy white remained. "Let's see if you can dye it back, shall we?"

He felt himself pale, Elgar'nan laughing above him. He reached down and grabbed at Solas' bound arms, using them to lift him. It made him aware of a band that wound beneath them and around his chest and back, keeping his arms in position against his body even as he was hoisted by them. He dangled freely, body arched, Elgar'nan seemingly expending no effort to hold him.

He did not fight. He did not strain to raise his head. He let himself go limp, trying to conserve whatever strength he could for what was to come. He felt Elgar'nan's weight shift a moment before it happened, flung forward, barely time to register the suspension of his body in the air before he landed on his desk, scattering his books.

He wanted to curl up on the familiar surface, as if the wood grain he knew so well could possibly shelter him. Instead he forced himself to remain in the awkward position he'd landed in, one hip and back against the cool wood. Elgar'nan reached out and shoved him so that he lay instead atop his bound arms.

It ached. And he embraced this pain, knowing it would be the gentlest to come.

A burst of magic, a flare of heat, then his ears caught it first, a sharp crack as something traveled through the air before a strip of brutal heat cut across his back. He tried to jerk away but there was nowhere to go, a second strip following, then a third. Forth. Fifth. As each new one was laid the others seemed to burn anew. Sixth. Seventh. He only slowly realized he was screaming with each strike.

Eighth.

Ninth…

Tenth? Twelfth? He lost count, mind unable to hold onto something as irrelevant as a number amidst this agony. His throat burned and he was sobbing wretchedly as he was struck again and again.

From the back of his neck to his knees, his flesh was a screaming mass of pain. "Thirty." The word felt important somehow, but he could not make sense of it. Another line seared into his back. Another. Another.

Another.

The world narrowed. It was as if he slept in the brief interludes between lashes, utterly unable to do anything other than wait passively. Mind empty and body reacting.

"Forty."

What did it mean?

"Fifty."

He screamed with an empty voice. A vague impression came that he was dead, unable to accept that this could be living.

"Sixty."

Something was there. Something in the voice. It was shaky, hoarse. The brutality slowed, but did not stop.

His body spasmed with each strike. They sounded wet now, accompanied by a thick splattering sound. The longest pause yet, his mind beginning to return. He made out another sound, a different sound, but before he could even attempt to make sense of it his flesh was introduced to a new agony.

"Mm," a horrible grating pressure, pain a jagged protrusion trying to rip free of him. "You make me an animal. But it feels good to be a beast. And you, a beast yourself, you can take it."

He woke.

Elgar'nan's hands on his raw shoulders. Elgar'nan's weight on his flayed back. Elgar'nan moving back and forth.

Back and forth.

He knew what was happening, retching, but nothing emerged but bloody spittle. He could feel it now, the firm line drawn against his brutalized body.

Elgar'nan was fucking him.

Fucking his open back, whipped raw. He wondered if skin remained, but could not tolerate the idea that a cock stroked against his bare muscle.

"I'm close." He moved harder, faster, and Solas saw stars as he lingered in one area, some of the line he'd felt before seemingly absent.

Where was it? Where? Elgar'nan was gasping, thrusting hard in the same spot, as though he'd sheathed his length within Solas' body.

He thrashed, a blind terror overtaking him, somehow even more powerful than the pain. But Elgar'nan just grunted and laid over him, gasping and moaning against his ear while something shattered in him.

"Mm, yes, I'm— there."

Hips jerking as he came. Each coarse rub of his body against Solas' a fresh agony. The violation as appalling as the pain, mind shying away from the brutal reality that Elgar'nan was orgasming within his body, that his seed slicked across Solas' interior, in places where nothing should ever reach.

He could not feel it within, but it was no blessing, his entire body throbbing with unyielding suffering.

Elgar'nan slowed, panting against his ear, while tears pooled beneath his cheek. He felt himself drifting again, mind numbed by shock and horror, and this time he welcomed it, surrendered to any respite.

He did not move, not even when Elgar'nan grunted and began to thrust again. He felt the vague sense of fingers digging into his neck, but he could still breathe. It only slowly occurred to him that the man was making sure he hadn't died.

Apparently, he would not want to fuck a corpse.

Solas wished he was a corpse.

Time stretched and contracted strangely, and he felt dazed, disoriented. He knew there was something he should feel, but each time he reached for it some part of him demanded he stop, so he did. There was a peace here, after all.

He felt nothing. Knew nothing.

He was empty.

All things were just a sensory tease, a flutter at the farthest edges of his awareness. Was that a sound? A smell? A sensation? He did not know, and it did not matter. He was nothing, nothing surrounded by nothing, and that was as it should be.

That was the only thing he knew.

Change occurred at the periphery, easily set aside.

His entire body rocked, and again, again, then it stilled. And he drifted.

He sensed himself at the edge of something enormous. A chasm. An eternity. A promise. He did not know.

But its presence was like force and absence. Something different. Demanding in its strangeness.

Like pleasure and—

Pain.

Pain.

It tore through him and he felt himself shredding in its wake, unbecoming, unmaking and unmade. His power pulsed around him and the bindings were smoke, his body twisting as he dislodged all parts of this heinous violation.

Elgar'nan fell and Solas followed, keeping them close as he sank his teeth into the meat of his throat and tore. Blood burst hot in his mouth and Elgar'nan's gasp was liquid and it made him want.

He swallowed, nearly choking on the evidence of his violence, only to do it again. The blood splattered across his face in a hot arc and he felt dizzy with desire.

He would have stayed here, biting and swallowing, until the man was nothing but a weight in his gut, but he was pushed aside. He screamed as he landed against his skinned back and then Elgar'nan was atop him, his anatomy exposed by the ragged holes Solas had torn in his flesh.

He did nothing to stem the blood that streamed from his ruined throat.

Solas met his eyes.

It was an awakening. Everything changed. How had he never seen, never known?

Instead of flinching away from it, he laid down flat, letting the pain overwhelm. He gasped at the glut of sensation, eyes fluttering shut.

This is what flesh gave them. This is what immortality granted them.

All experiences were a gift.

"I knew it." Elgar'nan's voice was wretched, hoarse, wet, and utterly ruined, but the words were just able to be understood. "I knew it. I knew you were like this."

Solas felt him bend in near, the blood that poured over him even hotter now. "You're just like me."

He shuddered, something wet between them. It took him a moment to place it as an orgasm. The pleasure was just another sensation. Elgar'nan put a heavy hand on his bare waist, fingers just catching the edge of his torn skin, and he yanked. Solas threw his head back with a loud crack as the motion tore strips of flesh free, panting and wanton.

"I saw it in you," he continued in a way that might be conversational if not for his voice. "It took time to emerge in me, too. But I needed it. Do you understand? I needed this—" he released his grip on Solas' waist to grab his head, shoving it into the bloody wet ruin of his throat as he cried out with his ruined voice.

Solas consumed. He gulped the thick blood, iron blooming across his tongue; he tore at flesh and muscle; he worried delicate tubes until they snapped in his mouth and he knew their flavor. All the while Elgar'nan trembled, hips thrusting.

He understood. He understood.

The pinnacle of sensation.

It was not pleasure. It could not be pleasure.

It was pain.

It was being destroyed and surviving. It was being killed without dying. It was what they alone could do.

This was not bestial. No, a beast would kill to feed or to protect. This was not bestial at all.

They were spirits who had taken flesh.

This was only for them.

No one and nothing else could understand.

Time lost meaning as they explored. He lapped at the interior of a body, grazed his cheek against the underside of skin, feeling how soft, warm, and wet it was. He drew his tongue across the ridges and divets of muscle, exploring the mechanics of organic propulsion. This let Elgar'nan move, let him command, let him call out.

Solas learned.

He could barely breathe as he pressed deeper in, blood running down him in layers, growing tacky against his skin even as it coated him anew. Suffocating in this violence did not matter, did not disturb—only another experience. He would not die, and perhaps when he woke Elgar'nan would have exposed a different part of Solas, or a different part of himself, to their mutual fascination.

A vibration against his skin as Elgar'nan moaned, hips jerking as he came between the press of their bodies, Solas feeling every ragged sound he managed to make despite the ruin of his throat.

This flesh was forged of violence, of violation. It haunted him, that cruelty, but it had felt inevitable… Mythal had needed to try and control Elgar'nan, and when she needed his help, how could he possibly deny her?

She was everything to him. He had been everything to her.

But flesh changed them both. It did not destroy, but it complicated. It complicated beyond reason, for here he was, supping upon tender violence like it was the only thing he knew.

Tactics had been abandoned. Logic, too. There was nothing but their strange desires, foreign and wretched and perfect. He was not trying to kill Elgar'nan, this man who had formed Solas' fate; he was sating himself.

He had been shown.

But it waned. His guilt interfered. How could it be harder to bear than the ruination of his back, than the layers of muscle he no longer tried to deny that Elgar'nan had penetrated, fucking into him until he spilled, his pale seed mixing with Solas' own dark blood?

But it was. It was.

He pulled away and Elgar'nan gasped, fingers scraping at his skull. "No, no—"

He had never thought to hear the All-Father sounding so desperate. It ached to understand.

They were alike. So alike. Even among the Evanuris, Solas could not fathom another favoring these extremes of violence. He knew as he drew away that he was rejecting something precious, something profound.

Such bliss. They could have this for eternity, doing nothing but exploring the furthest reaches, pushed and pushing. They could bear it: more, they could revel in it.

But he couldn't. Having the disposition did not force him. And it could not turn him away from his goals.

For if he gave in, even if he drew Elgar'nan into an eternal confluence, he would be standing aside while the others did whatever they so chose. He would be permitting empire to rein.

He could not.

He pulled himself out from under Elgar'nan. He told himself that dragging his ruined body across the ground hurt, that it was agony, that it was undesirable.

He met golden eyes.

He looked away.

Such sorrow… he had never expected to see it, not on that face. Elgar'nan looked as though he had lost the most important thing in the world.

Perhaps he had.

Perhaps they both had.

When it was clear that Solas would not look at him again, he felt the surge of the man's magic like an angry throb as he healed his throat. Solas did not watch him dress.

He waited until he'd left before healing his back.

Not because it made him suffer…