Slayers Fan Fiction ❯ Word of Subjugation ❯ Part Four: Incision ( Chapter 4 )

Word of Subjugation, chapter 4 of ?

By Tsutsuji

Rating: Mature-NC17.

Warnings: yaoi, mind control, non-con, violence. Also, not beta'd.

Comments: Are much loved. Really. A lot.

 

Summary: Xelloss hopes that Zelas can break Zelgadis' hold over him, but when that doesn't work, he returns - like a recurrring nightmare - to try to convince Zelgadis to release him. (Remember, folks, Xelloss is a demon, and Zelgadis ain't no saint, either!)

 

Part Four: Incision

 

Xelloss' Mistress found him out on the cliff's edge, before he worked up the nerve to go to her. He licked his lips nervously as Zelas approached, and lowered his eyes, focusing on her bare feet and the hem of her gown swishing over the windswept grass. She slowed when she came closer, and he looked up in time to see her raise her head as if to sniff the air. Her silvery eyes gleamed as they focused on him again. Xelloss winced; she must have already sensed the spell bound into him.

 

"Xelloss," she said as she came closer. She tipped her head to look him up and down, and for a moment he was distracted by the flash of white-gold hair falling over her face.

 

"Jou-sama," he said, bowing formally. A shudder ran through him. Obeisance was natural to him as a Mazoku underling and as priest of the Greater Beast, but the show of respect was tarnished by the memory of his submission to Zelgadis moments before.

 

"What have you done, Xelloss-san?" she said. Her tone was musingly curious, but her gaze raked both false flesh and soul, cutting into him on all levels of his being. "Your fascination with humans has rewarded you with a little gift, I see."

 

She reached up and touched the Beads, running long, curved fingernails over them with a soft clacking sound. Xelloss shifted uncomfortably; unlike everything else that he appeared to wear, he could not feel her touch on the Beads.

 

Her curious smile turned to a frown as she studied them, and the frown deepened when she looked into his face.

 

"Explain, Xelloss," she said. There was an edge of anger in her voice already. Naturally, her words held all the power of Zelgadis' spell and more, but even in the face of the rage he expected, it was a relief to do exactly as she commanded.

 

He confessed his seduction of the chimera lightly, though he suspected she was already aware of his indulgence. His attempt at his usual self-deprecating humor, with which he usually entertained her when explaining his little failures, fell flat when he described how easily Zelgadis had ensnared him in the spell. Her eyes narrowed as he described the spell, and then flashed as his words faltered to silence before telling her the details of its effects.

 

She lifted his chin with her finger, and he forced himself to look steadily into her eyes. She raised one eyebrow, her elegant lips curled upward, amused at his discomfort.

 

"Xelloss-san," she said musingly. "The other Lords said I made you too strong; I've always wondered if I made you a little too human! Go on," she commanded. She stepped back and folded her arms.

 

Out of habit, Xelloss appeared to take a deep breath (too human indeed, he thought sharply as he caught himself). Keeping his voice even, he described all that he'd done under Zelgadis' control.

 

When he was done he fell silent, and waited. She stared at him with the slight smile still on her lips, but he didn't think she truly found his story humorous at all. At least, he hoped not. A horrible thought occured to him - surely she wouldn't let him stay this way!

 

"You'll go back to him, I suppose," she said after a while. Her voice was casual, her head tipped to the side as she watched him.

 

"I - " he began. "No. If I don't go near him again..."

 

"The spell will remain in effect throughout his life," she reminded him, "which, I must assume, will be very long. We don't know its full power, perhaps the chimera doesn't even know its strength. His thought alone might be enough to bind you, for all we can tell."

 

"Surely not!" Xelloss exclaimed.

 

She touched the beads again, and again he shuddered at the strange sensation of not feeling her touch. At the same time, on the astral side, she reached out and curled a part of her spirit around the thread of power, and tugged on it. Xelloss winced as something inside him twisted.

 

She let go and stood back again, looking thoughtful.

 

"Mistress," he burst out, suddenly desperate. "Please, break this spell. Take it out of me, please! I can't ...bear it..."

 

"Xelloss-san," she said, with a flash of humor again, "you should know by now how strongly your human admirers can become attached to you! You want to reject your lover's little gift so quickly?"

 

"Please!" he begged. He grabbed the beads and held them out to her as far as they would reach. "Take them off!"

 

She nodded, smiling grimly. "Yes, I think that would be best."

 

She closed her clawed fist around them and pulled.

 

Xelloss winced when he felt onyx and dragon's teeth digging into the back of his neck. Zelas tugged on the necklace experimentally, twisting the strand this way and that, testing the strength of it against the solidity of Xelloss' physical form. Try as he might, he could not simply will his form to let them pass through, as he should be able to do. Worse still was the sense of the spell's power cutting into his spirit as his Mistress pulled on that level as well.

 

Unable to simply yank them off of him, she stopped pulling and let them fall into place around his throat. Her long fingernails clicked against the beads where they rested on his shirt. Xelloss craned his neck to look down at her hand on them. Both his spirit and body shuddered where she touched him, both the shell he wore and the true body beyond it. He watched as her fingers appeared to slip into fabric, and deeper, into his flesh.

 

At first, her touch was almost a caress, parting his illusionary flesh gently, as she traced the shape of the necklace around his throat, slowly cutting into him deeper with the soft burn of her power. He realized she was only exploring the shape of the spell, searching for an end to the strand.

 

Xelloss watched her face for a moment, her gleaming eyes looking inside of him, feeling him, lips parted and nostrils flared to sense his spirit and the spell wound into it. Then he saw her eyes narrow - and the next thing he knew was blinding, searing pain as her talons sliced right through him, flesh and spirit at once.

 

He screamed, without reservation or shame. To offer her his agony was as natural as a human's breathing. He felt his energy begin to leak away, bleeding from him through the gashes she cut around the spell.

 

Then all at once he felt a deeper, sharper pain, like a shaft of light, so intense he could not even scream into it, such a deep, sweet pain that it was almost a pleasure - a pleasure so intense it was torture.

 

He heard his Mistress growl. Then suddenly, he found himself on his knees in the grass, solidly back on the physical plane. Zelas stood above him, her face dark except for the gleam of her eyes. Her hands dripped with black energy, the blood of his astral energy that still seeped from the gashes she'd made.

 

He dragged his awareness back together, coalescing his will in body and spirit - and found, to his horror, that the spell remained in place, twisted around his soul, a choking weight around his physical body, like a hand of stone gripping his throat.

 

"Quite an impressive piece of magic your sorcerer friend has devised," Zelas said, showing feral teeth as she smiled down at him. Her voice was light but laced with fury, as much at himself as at Zelgadis, Xelloss had to assume. "I will need to look into it further."

 

He blinked up at her, unable to speak. Her golden eyes watched his fingers clench over the wounds she'd given him.

 

"There's no point in my trying to cut it out of you any more at the moment. I can't break the spell that way, so I'll leave you alone to heal," she said.

 

She looked down at him with an arched eyebrow and a cool smile.

 

"Of course you'll want to conduct your own inquiries," she said. She sounded as much amused as angry now, to his surprise, but of course it was all at his expense in either case. And well she should be angry, he thought, with a grimace as he tried to staunch the flow of his bleeding darkness and knit his substance back together. "While I'm investigating this peculiar magic, perhaps you'll find the answer on your own. Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll just have to make the best of your chimera lover's little gift for now, Xelloss-san," she added, just before she turned and walked away.

 

He would have groaned out loud at those words, if he'd had the strength left to do so.

 

Find the answer on your own... Xelloss looked up after she'd gone, staring grimly at the stormy skies above the island. Her words were his orders, as always, he decided. As soon as he healed, that was exactly what he intended to do.

 

________

 

 

 

The voice came from the shadows, as smooth and cool as the night air, as soft as the waves lapping at the shore of the lake where Zelgadis had camped.

 

"When you said 'go away,' you didn't mean 'stay away,' did you, Zel-san?"

 

He thought he was dreaming. He'd hardly slept for so long, it had become hard to tell dream from waking, and that soft voice had haunted the brief moments of sleep he'd managed to steal since he last saw Xelloss.

 

The lack of sleep made him slow. The Trickster Priest was on him before he knew he was really awake after all, and the full weight of an angry demon in physical form slammed him to the ground. He barely had time to yelp in surprise before Xelloss flipped him over, face down in the dirt, arms and legs splayed wide and pinned to the ground.

 

It took a few more seconds to realize he'd been hit with more than mere physical force, and that his mind was muddle by more than simply the lack of sleep. All of his wakeful nights and days had imagined this: an attack in the dark, a mazoku's spell that would render him unable to speak, and a swift return to his helpless submission under Xelloss' seductive control. His mind seemed disconnected from his tongue, and he hardly recognized the sounds coming from his mouth as his own voice, only knowing that he must be making useless sounds of protest and pain - as Xelloss clawed at his limbs and ripped his clothes to shreds, and bored down on him...

 

Zelgadis had known, really, that Xelloss had only let him struggle and fight against him in the past for his own amusement, on those occasions when Zelgadis tried to fight him off, until he was ready to take him in whatever way he wanted. False hope, he'd guessed, was a better appetizer for the ultimate feast of humiliating defeat than the quick and easy conquest he could have been. This time, though, Xelloss wasted no time on preliminaries at all. It was only surprising, deep in the fog of Zelgadis' spell-seared mind, that the mazoku even cared to use him this way again, rather than simply tearing him limb from limb, as his nightmares had expected.

 

Not that this assault was any better than his worst dreams. Holding his head down in the rough sand, Xelloss lifted his hips and entered him, so hard and so fast Zelgadis could hardly catch enough breath to scream. The mazoku's fingers dug into his hard skin like talons, and after a few swift thrusts, he slowed his movements and leaned down over Zel's back. All Zelgadis could see and taste was the dirt, gasping in mouthfuls of it, but he could imagine the nightmare gleam in Xelloss' violet eyes as he bent close.

 

"I will find a way to make you release me from this spell, Zelgadis-san." The voice was velvety soft, but it cut through Zel's muddled mind like a beacon slicing through the fog. "One way or another..."

 

Each word was punctuated with a deep thrust, and, to Zel's sudden horror, accompanied now by those dangerous fingers curling up tight on his crotch - not to stimulate him, but to threaten with the one horror even his nightmares had not imagined.

 

Panic raced through him, making his thoughts whirl even more wordlessly than before. Xelloss sighed happily against his shoulder.

 

"Your pain and fear is even more delicious than your usual desperation, Zelgadis-san! I should have just done it this way from the start.

 

Why didn't you​? Zelgadis wondered again, just as he had from the moment he realized Xelloss was playing with him. But his mind was still numb from whatever magic Xelloss had used, and even the question disintegrated into meaningless sounds inside his head.

 

"Release me," Xelloss whispered harshly into his ear. The fingertips lightened their grip, became a brief caress; Xelloss shifted his hips so that the next thrust sparked a terrible jolt of pleasure through the pain. "Release me now, and I'll allow you one more moment of pleasure before you die..."

 

For a moment, Zelgadis thought this must really be one of his horrible dreams after all, because all of them took this turn, just before he clawed his way awake again in horror. In his nightmares, he always knew he would give in.

 

And yet, in a way, the nightmares were a relief from his waking memory of what he'd done, and how much he'd enjoyed it.

 

Even Xelloss' spell couldn't silence the desire to taste that power again, any more than his own denial of it had been enough to keep him from repeating a single word, day and night, without thinking. His mind was blank; with each gasp of pain, he choked on the grit that filled his mouth, and he hardly heard his own voice scream into the ground.

 

"Submit!"

 

Xelloss froze in the midst of another violent thrust. Zelgadis blinked dirt out of his eyes, startled; he barely understood why the assault had stopped. Suddenly everything was blindingly sharp again as his senses cleared; Xelloss wrapped around him and inside of him, the scent of lust and magic rising around them, his own heart pounding in his chest and the soft sound of Xelloss hissing through his teeth - unable to do anything else.

 

Zelgadis lifted his head a little and spat dirt out a mouthful of dirt. Xelloss' hand in his hair was now only a yielding weight on his head, and his other hand still clutched loosely around Zel's crotch, more enticing than threatening now that the murderous will behind it was subdued.

 

He moved, flexing slowly back against Xelloss, finishing the movement the mazoku had begun, and then slightly forward again to press himself into the cupped hand. Xelloss shuddered, and Zel rolled his hips back again, slowly, twisting a little and clenching his own muscles so that Xelloss gave out a tiny gasp.

 

"That's it," Zelgadis said, softly, hardly aware that he spoke out loud. He reached down and pressed Xelloss' hand into place around himself, and finally, turned his head enough to look up over his shoulder and see the mazoku's face.

 

Dark hair fell across Xelloss' cheek like the shadows around them, and his lips were parted on a grimace of disbelief and fury. Dark, violet eyes glittered. Zelgadis smiled.

 

"Xelloss... submit, and... don't stop." He flexed his hips forward and then back again, making his meaning perfectly clear. "Go on, Xelloss. Finish this, only, make it good for me now..."

 

The dark eyes narrowed marginally, then closed as the furious tension in Xelloss' arms melted into a purely sensual embrace. Without another sound of protest, and with the attentive touch of a devoted lover, Xelloss did exactly as he was told.

 

to be continued