Echoes In Eternity 002 (Patreon)

She woke with a gasp, her body jerking instinctively at the echoes of soul-rending -or, perhaps, rended-soul- agony, only to cry out as her arms failed to move with her torso, yanking her shoulders in their sockets and twisting them to a degree that was uncomfortable for someone even as flexible as she was. Her eyes, focusing quickly as she through off the lingering effects of deathunconsciousness, darted upwards to see that they were manacled above her head, steel cuffs a good three inches wide wrapped around her wrists with foot-long chains leading to a hook further up the wood wall that she was pressed against. Her ankles, too, she could feel, were chained spread-eagled, with even less slack to them than her arms.

She was naked too, she could feel that much quite easily from where she was pressed against the rough wood to her back and from the cool, damp air that was surrounding her other three sides. A quick glance confirmed it, and she absently noted that her breasts seemed quite a bit bigger -were those freckles? She didn’t remember having those, and she didn’t remember her skin being quite this olive either,- before a whimper of pain had her ears pricking strangely, drawing her attention away from herself.

Her eyes swept the room that she was in, her rational, professionally-trained mind functioning in a moment of stress and confusion where the rest of her couldn't. She was in a large room, metal reinforced wood, think wood. There were crates and dressers all over the place, one entire corner was dominated by a dais with a large desk and chair and the literal piles of gold and jewels that nearly hid them from height. Several sturdy tables, littered with mugs and empty bottles of what could only be alcohol, and a row of a half dozen…she wasn't even sure what, but they were obviously intended to keep someone imprisoned, because that's exactly what a silver-white haired faunusmiqo’te currently was. The other woman was utterly naked, she could see that much, with her head and wrists trapped between two hinged, iron-reinforced panels of woods, her feet likewise bound wide-spread at the ankles.

Behind her were two people chained to the wall in the same way that she was. A pair of twins, from the looks of things, silver-white hair still half-braided, slumped in their bonds and wearing what little remained of their garments, bloody and torn, pale skin bloomed black and purple with bruising. They couldn't have been much older than Ruby, and she could see all too easily the way they were trying to curl into each other for comfort, and she caught a glimpse of something white on their clothes and hair and skin. Then the whimper of pain rang out again, the pair of them flinching and trying to turn away from the sound, and her eyes resumed their course to find a large, frankly opulent bed…and the man and woman that were in it.

She was a faunusmiqo'te, like Blake, though with flaxen colored hair where her friend's had been dark as a raven's wing, stripped naked and covered in long red welts, scratches and bruises. There were tears in her eyes, a fresh crimson mark spreading across one cheek, as the man on top of her thrust between her legs roughly and unrelentingly.

She…she was being raped. The realization came sharply, like lightning from a clear sky. Raped and beaten, right before AnastasiaPyrrha's eyes, and as she watched the man doing the raping -tall, wiry, scarred, short brown haired human- wrapped his right hand around the faunusmiqo'te's throat and started to squeeze.

Stop! Let her go! Leave her alone!" she cried out, writhing against her bonds, trying to pull herself away from the wall, but it was fruitless. She had no leverage to work with, the chains themselves were sturdy, and their bond to the wall certainly didn't feel weak either. Worse still, despite her shouted words and the racket her bonds made as she fought against them, the rapist didn't spare her more than a glance, giving her only the smallest glimpse of leering lips and cruelly glinting eyes, bright with vicious delight and arousal as they took her in, before he returned to his current victim.

But he wasn't the only one to look at her, because her cry, her demand, had drawn the attention of the other three chained women, and while the twins didn't have much in the way of strength in their eyes, the woman in the stocks did, looking up and meeting her eyes directly with a gaze and was calm and calculating despite the white streaks painting the bruises on her own face.

Yet AnastasiaPyrrha couldn't pay more than a moment's attention to her fellow prisoner, her eyes drawn inexorably back to the bed. The faunusmiqo'te woman's eyes were bulging now as her oxygen was cut off, her struggles growing weaker by the second. AnastasiaPyrrha thrashed harder against her restraints, feeling the metal bite into her wrists, drawing blood that trickled warm down her arms, soreness and burning building in her shoulders, but still they would not loosen.

"I said STOP!" she screamed, her voice raw with desperation, with hate and helpless fury.

A door slammed open somewhere behind her, heavy footfalls announcing another presence. A large, huge, man stumbled in, wearing thick and heavy armor with an open-faced helmet. A large axe was slung across his back, and his right hand was holding a large, dark brown bottle. She could smell the stench of the alcohol from here, and she shuddered as his eyes landed on her.

"Thought I heard screamin', boss. Shoulda known that it was your new one. The old ones know better'n to make noise when yer fuckin'em." he slurred gruffly, his eyes bouncing back and forth between the apex of her thighs and her breasts. Even with her anger, she tried to shift to hide her sex away, failing entirely thanks to the chains binding her ankles, and only seeming to amuse him. "Yer sure I can't play with her, Cap'n? Looks ripe, might break 'er if she don't get loosened up a bit ferst. And I’ve not had a viera before…"

“She’ll wait her damn turn, and so will you, you bloody hound. You know better than to go panting after wots mine. ‘nd that goes fer t’ other three too.” the Captain growled, not breaking rhythm as the faunusmiqo'te woman beneath him went limp, eyes rolling back. "This one's almost done anyway."

AnastasiaPyrrha felt bile rise in her throat. "You're killing her!" she shouted and snarled, the chains rattling as she strained against them with renewed desperation, desperately afraid that she was about to watch a woman get raped to death. Blood ran freely down her forearms now, warm and slick, the chains biting deep enough that they would surely scar without healingAura.

The large man chuckled, taking a swig from his bottle, unconcerned. No, not even unconcerned. Amused, lecherously so. "Ain't that half the fun? Boss likes 'em to pass out, or ride right on the edge. Says it makes 'em tighter." He leered at her, which was almost enough to draw her attention away from the way that the 'boss' was clearly finishing inside of his current victim, his hips jerking erratically as she whimpered raspily. "You'll find out soon enough, pretty thing. Hope he shares when he's done, but the Cap'n can be a mite greedy at times, and I’d not easily share a rare toy like yerself were I him."

She was trying to figure out how to respond, and how to fight past her rage and disgust enough to speak at all, when the Captain finally released the faunusmiqo'te woman's throat and pulled away with almost casual disdain. No, it wasn't even disdain, or contempt. He simply didn't care. He'd used her, abused her, raped her, and now that he was done with her, she didn't matter enough to look down on.

The woman gasped weakly, drawing in ragged breaths as cognizance slowly returned to her. Her body trembled, but she made no move to escape or fight back, or even to shield her battered body from view. Her eyes, once they focused, held a hollowness that chilled AnastasiaPyrrha to her core as she simply…laid there on the bed.

"Get her back to The Hole with the others." the Captain ordered, rising from the bed without bothering to clean himself, and she felt the urge to wretch at the sight of his penis, slickened with traces of blood and sexual fluids. He scratched briefly at his chest, and her eyes narrowed as the key hanging there from around his neck bounced in the light. "She'll need a day to recover before she's any fun again. Tell the others to keep their hands off until I damn well say otherwise. If she dies she's no good to us or to Denn, and they’ve other whores to make use of. And tell the men outside the door to fuck off on your way out. I’ve a new toy play with, and I’m not inclined to let them get their rocks off listenin’ in."

The large man grunted in acknowledgment, moving over to the bed and throwing the listless victim over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes -she cried out softly, voice rough and ragged, in agony as her bruised and battered body slammed into his armor- before stomping from the room with his 'cargo'. It was casual, unhurried, like it was an insignificant chore. Again, just like his leader, there was no malice in the action. No deliberate cruelty, only a strange sort of apathy.

It was all that AnastasiaPyrrha could do not to vomit.

The Captain turned his attention fully to her now, and the rapacious hunger in his gaze made her skin crawl. He approached with unhurried steps, casual in his nakedness, his arrogance and surety in the power he held over her. Clean-shaven, a purple dagger tattoo splashed across his face, short-cropped brunette hair and brown eyes…he looked utterly average. Like a two-bit 'trash mob early game villain' from all those RPGs that her friends and teammates like to play. That they'd started to get her into, before everything went wrong.

"So, yer fin'lly awake, good." he said, his voice disgustingly laid-back for a man who had just committed such atrocities as the ones he had been committing to the young woman that had just been carried out. "Fine hair. Interestin' eyes. Strength, what wit' the way yer bleeding yerself ta try 'n' escape. And a viera at that. Yer lot are rare round these parts. Were I t’ sell ye, I’d make a king’s ransom, but…" He reached out, finger and thumb gripping her chin to tilt her head back, inspecting her like an animal. "Yer a fine one, finer than any woman I’ve yet seen in me life. Be keepin' ye fer meself, I think…"

He cut himself off with a yowl of pain as her head snapped around, first freeing itself from his grip, then darting forward like a striking serpent so that she could sink her teeth into his hand, her canines punching through the soft skin and tissue between his thumb and index finger.

Blood flooded her mouth, copper and salt and rich with aether, but she bit down harder all the same, grinding her teeth as deep as they would go. His yowl turned into a scream of genuine pain and fury as he tried to yank his hand back, only succeeding in tearing the flesh further, dealing greater damage and causing greater pain.

"Ye focking bitch!" he roared, his free hand coming around in a vicious backhand that snapped her head to the side and filled her vision with stars. Still she held on, jaw locked like a vice, the damage worsening, until his fist crashed into her temple and the world went white with pain. Pain enough that her grip loosened involuntarily, letting him wrench his hand free. He stumbled backward, clutching the mangled appendage to his chest and giving high, snarling hisses of pain with every breath. Blood streamed between his fingers, and she spat a chunk of his flesh onto the floor between them, her lips curled in a snarl despite the throbbing in her skull, the burning in her eyes.

"Don't you fucking touch me!" she ground out through the bitter tang of blood coating her lips and tongue, fire seething and acid dripping from every furious syllable, the words echoing strangely in her ears, reverberating low and rough.

He didn't say or do anything immediately, just half-stumbled, half-ran across the room to one particular chest of drawers, cradling his bloody hand to his chest as he fumbled through one particular drawer. She could hear the clinking of glass, bottles maybe, as he clearly searched, and she absently licked her lips. The burning in her eyes intensified, the fire the hunger surging higher as it collected more of the blood on her lips. What she'd done to him wasn't enough, she thought somewhat distantly to herself. He needed to pay for what he had done, what he wanted to do. He was a villain, a monster, as worse than any Grimm. He didn't deserve his aether, unworthy of it's blessing.

She would take it from him and give it to those he hurt.

She inhaled deeply, heart full of wrath, and felt a new strength surging through her veins as her wrists itched, the skin knitting back together slowly. She strained against her bonds again, intent on reaching the monster across the room from her. Intent on punishing him, stopping him, consuming him, and the chains that bound her stretched. They stretched, and bent, and finally gave way. The man didn’t hear the abused metal snap, didn’t hear the stifled gasps of surprise as she reached out to wrap her hand around the heavy padlock holding the white-haired faunusmiqo’te in the stocks, twisting it and dropping the ruined chunk of metal and wood on the floor. He certainly didn’t hear the woman gasp and start to heft the heavy wooden bonds off of herself.

He was too busy snarling threats.

"Yer gonna pay fer that, ya little whore. Yer lucky if I don't throw ya to me crew…no, t'the wolves! See how bitey yer feeling after the hounds have ruined yer blighted cunt, ye fookin…" he was muttering to himself, pulling a large bottle full of bright blue liquid out of the drawer and unstopping it with his teeth. "Gonna put ye in the fooking stocks, gonna…"

His words, his litanies of threats and curses and cruel promises, were cut off as he down the contents of the bottle in a single heavy gulp. Light gathered around his wounded hand, and he tossed the bottle aside with a hiss that was long and low as the flesh visibly knit itself smooth again. Flexing his newly restored hand and clenching it into a fist tight enough that his knuckles went white, he started to turn back around, his mouth starting to form words again.

But whatever it was that he intended to say, he didn't have the chance.

Her fist connected with his jaw before he could even register her presence, a sickening crack echoing through the room as bone gave way beneath her knuckles. The impact lifted him clear off his feet, sending him crashing into the dresser with enough force to splinter wood. Bottles shattered, their precious healing contents spilling uselessly across the floor in a riot of colors.

"What the f—how...?!" he gasped, the words mangled from his fractured jaw, blood bubbling from his lips and his eyes wide with shock as he scrambled to understand how she'd broken free.

She didn't give him time to process, to prepare or to defend himself. She stalked forward again, every motion as graceful as it was predatory, each step deliberate and a promise of violence as she closed the distance. So like the grace she had shown in the arenas, and yet so unlike anything that she had ever done before. The burning in her eyes had intensified, her vision now tinted with an intangibly crimson haze that made the world seem sharper and clearer. She could see the pulse at his throat, could smell the fear beginning to seep from his pores.

She stooped down on him, hand wrapping around on his throat, the irony not lost on her in the least as she lifted him into the air as she squeezed. His eyes bulged, his hands scrabbling at her wrist, but she felt unnaturally strong. Something inside her had awakened, something primal and vengeful that demanded retribution. She wanted him to regret giving himself to the darkness within his soul.

"You don't get to talk!" she hissed, her voice still carrying that strange, resonant quality. "You don't get to threaten! You don't get to hurt anyone ever again!"

He tried to babble something, a plea for salvation, maybe, though she caught a reference to her eyes in there somewhere, before the haze descended completely. Leaning closer, her lips only a few inches from his own, she paused…and breathed. Deep, powerful, filling, it reached deep and pulled.

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Alisaie Leveilleur was a lot of things. Brash, opinionated, aggressive, short-tempered, and far better in a fight than she was in a negotiation. The opposite of her dumb twin, really, but if there was one trait that the two of them shared, it was that neither of them were cowards. Neither of them was unintelligent, either, even if her twin was a stupid idiot with an ego too big for anyone their age, but as she watched the other 'special prize' that Madison had been so proud to crow about as he'd gotten his disgusting fluids all over the pair of them and Y'shtola earlier do…something to him.

She’d enjoyed watching the strange vieran woman -she didn’t know that women other than an elezen could get that tall! And, inappropriate as it was, she couldn’t help but wonder at just how soft her ears might be…- break his jaw, even as she had wondered how the hell she had gotten lose, never mind freed Y’shtola from her own bonds. But then…then she’d seen the older girl’s eyes, and her vindictive satisfaction had been driven right out of her mind at the way they were burning, not shining, with an inner fire. She’d seen a driftwood fire, once, back before her grandfather had…left, and it had been such a pretty lavender-blue. With a strong tint of a very lovely green -from the copper, grandfather had said, in the nails still buried in the wood- lacing through it, which only made it more beautiful. She would say that this stranger’s eyes reminded her of that, if the fire wasn’t far brighter and the green far stronger.

If they weren’t so frighteningly inhuman.

Then the viera had picked him up, one hand around his throat, holding him aloft like he weighed no more than a lalafell instead of a full-grown Hyur. She’d thought, for a moment that she was, for some bizarre reason, going to kiss him. That had quickly been put to paid, as she’d instead simply…inhaled. Inhaled in a way that had her skin tingling and every hair on her body standing on end, before a streamer of pure white-gold light -his aether, she’d realized almost immediately- started flowing out of his mouth and into her own.

At first it was nothing more than a trickle, a thread, barely visible and terribly thin, but it quickly thickened and brightened until it was a brilliant flood. Madison’s body convulsed, his limbs spasming wildly as his essence, his life, was forcibly ripped away and consumed. His skin began to gray, withering like fruit left out for too long in the sun, wrinkles forming and deepening across his face as his cheeks hollowed and his eyes sank into their sockets. It was like he was…aging, somehow. Being aged, with decades passing by in seconds.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over.

His emaciated body, little more than paper-thin skin stretched across bone, was dropped at the stranger’s feet…and those brilliant, burning, radiant eyes turned to look at her. At her twin, at Y’shtola. She looked at them, the key once around Madison’s neck dangling by it’s chain from her hand, and Alisaie had the feeling that the stranger was seeing her in a way that could hardly be quantified.

Then the woman -was she even a woman, still, or was some sort of voidsent wearing her skin?- took a step towards them, then another, her bare feet tapping softly on the wood as she approached. Alisaie shifted as best she could to shield her twin, eyes narrowing and teeth baring in a defiant grimace, not wanting to believe that this woman would hurt them -not after saving them, not after how enraged she had been at the treatment of that poor miqo’te- but she would never bank her precious twin’s safety on an assumption like that.

Then Y’shtola was there, interposing herself between them with hands that shone of unfocused aether. Not an ideal way to fight, but her grandfather’s student had an Archonship in Aetherology for a very, very good reason. Alisaie had little doubt that she could do plenty of damage to anyone she saw fit, foci or not, now that her hands were free for her to cast with. And now that she didn’t have the safety of the twins looming over her head and forcing her to behave herself, she was clearly willing to do that damage.

The woman seemed to sense, to recognize, her fear and protectiveness and the danger she was willing to unleash for what they were, and smiled. It was a beautiful smile, warm and reassuring and soft…or, at least, it would have been if it wasn’t for the blood still staining her lips and chin and teeth -canines overlong, gleaming sharp- and the way her eyes still burned like torches.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt them, or you. I just want to help you, that’s all.” she said gently, her voice back to normal, the echo and the strange resonance absent, as she stepped forward again. Y’shtola relaxed, then, ever so slightly, only to tense sharply in alarm once more as the stranger continued, the echo back again as one long, bloody-wristed hand reached out to cup her cheek. “A gift of aether, from a villain to a victim.”

She breathed again, but this time she wasn’t consuming, but expelling.

The aether that flowed from her lips was different, this time, warm and golden and pure. It washed over Y’shtola, drawing a gasp from the miqo’te’s lips, and Alisaie did the same as she watched the welts and weals and bruises on Shtola’s skin fade rapidly away until it shown with a healthy and unblemished pallor.

“There…” the viera murmured, her eyes finally dimming to a normal luminosity and color -a striking, sharp green that reminded Alisaie of her mother’s jade earrings, and wasn’t that an absurd thing to think of in this moment?- as she licked her lips, streaking the blood there without any apparent sign of noticing. “That should help with the worst of it. Are you able to help the twins?”

“…yes, and I thank you.” Y’shtola confirmed slowly, staring at the stranger for a long, long moment, before glancing at Alisaie and Alphine. She quickly made her way over to kneel beside them, her hands resting over their wounds, and Alisaie groaned in relief as strength flooded back into her battered body. The aches and pains from their captivity melted away, leaving only the emotional turmoil, and behind her she heard Alphine’s sharp intake of breath as the healing energy worked away on her as well.

She blinked up at their rescuer, who seemed to be watching them and the large door both, simultaneously, and felt a sudden, irrational annoyance and envy at the size of her breasts -when was she going to inherit her mother’s genes, damnit?!- before taking in the scars taht littered the redhead’s body. her very muscular, tall, slender and athletic body, and Alisaie swallowed at the sight of the largest and most brutal. One borne from a wound that, by any sense, probably ought to have killed her.

“Who…what are you?” she whispered the question incredulously, before instantly cringing and near-biting her tongue, afraid that her thoughtless words would anger or insult the hero -and a hero she damn well was, for saving them, regardless of…that- in front of her.

Instead, her hero’s expression grew troubled, distant, and Alisaie’s eyes narrowed slightly from instinct as those jade eyes flickered, brightening and dimming again like a lamp.

“I…don’t know.” she finally said, before her lips quirked slightly. “Call me…call me Joan, I guess.”

“Joan?” Alisaie tested the name, watching the woman’s reaction carefully. Something about it didn’t quite fit, in a strange sort of way, but it was obvious that the name held meaning to her from the way that her eyes softened just so.

The now-named Joan nodded, though her eyes betrayed a moment of uncertainty. “For now, at least, yes.” she turned her attention to the chains binding the twins, examining the manacles with ill favor. “Let me get you both free.”

She took that key more firmly in hand, unlocking their wrist shackles, and the twins cried out softly in relief as their arms were finally able to be lowered, rolling their shoulders and grimacing as they rubbed and pressed at the healed-but-tired muscles there. An instant later, their ankles were free as well, and neither wasted a moment before wrapping each other in a firm, warm, desperate hug.

"Alright, start getting the blood flowing back to your hands again. While you do that, tell me anything you know about where we are, how we got here, and who these people holding us are." Joan instructed kindly, but firmly, dropping the shattered remnants of her own bonds to the ground even as she rose to her feet and padded away, starting to paw through various drawers in search of something. What, Alisaie didn't know, but she didn't let her curiosity prevent her from answering.

"We don't know where we are, not with any degree of certainty at any rate. A cave system in Western La Noscea, we're quite sure, but nothing more solid than that. We, and many others, were taken captive when the Serpent Reavers -the pirates holding us- attacked the ship we were traveling on." Alphine was the one to answer, this time, promptly and with a calm that only Alisaie could recognize as a thin facade, a faint blush on her cheeks as she delicately worked around the subject. Alisaie snorted out a 'rapist pigs' in agreement and correction, and both watch as Joan's jaw worked tightly, before she slammed another drawer with a scowl and turned away towards the door. Something visibly caught her eye, and she quickly snatched a necklace of some sort off of a desk, frowning at it in what looked like confused familiarity before slipping it over her head, grabbing a pair of daggers, and looking at the door.

“I’ll find clothes later. I’m not waiting another minute if there are other women going through what that faunus woman was suffering. C’mon, we’re getting out of here.” she bit out, stalking towards the door. Realizing what she intended to do, Alisaie jolted to her feet, one hand held out in supplication.

“Wait, there are sure to be guards everywhere in the caves! We need a plan!” she pleaded, but Joan didn’t even slow down.

“I have a plan. Kill these scum, free their victims, and get everyone to safety. Now grab a weapon that you can use and let’s get moving.” she growled in response, her tone and bearing making it clear that she was going to do this even if no one else did. Somewhat awed, Alisaie obeyed, scampering over to the pile of loot in one corner of the room and casting about for an option. Her eyes landed on a bejeweled rapier, well-made and incredibly valuable, and she snatched it up with a fierce, tooth-bearing grin. She might not remember much of the fencing lessons she’d bullied her father into letting her have, but she remembered enough not to be useless.

And she was determined not to be useless, and she was determined not to stay here either. Because she knew, as Y’shtola snagged a decently-made wand from another pile and followed Joan, that the safest place in this entire fucking place was right behind the furious, dangerous vieran redhead and the powerful miqo’te Archon.

It was time to get a little bit of their own back, and save some innocent people while they were at it.

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