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He’s not sure what he had been expecting when he infiltrates the Shackling Prison. When he easily kills the Cloud Knights guarding the deepest cell and leaves their bleeding bodies dead on the floor. When he opens the heavily locked door and enters the dark room.
He thinks he had been expecting the Imbibitor Lunae in all of the glory that shines through his fractured memories. A man standing tall with his spear in hand, ready to spar him as equals, ready to atone for his sin.
He finds nothing like that.
There are books everywhere, stacked in teetering piles, many strewn about the room face open, as if the reader stopped halfway through the story. It’s dusty and dark, the only source of light coming from a single small window in the back where dust particles visibly dance in the air.
And below that window is a low bed in a pool of water, the shimmer of the blue liquid’s reflection fluctuating on the wall. There are multiple blankets seemingly creating a nest in the bed, a lumpy mess of fabric that just barely rises and falls.
No thoughts going through his head, he approaches the pile, kicking aside some stray books in his path, his goal absolute. It should worry him how small the lump in the blankets appears to be, but he doesn’t entertain the notion until he kneels down and peels the top blanket aside.
He blinks. This can’t be right. He pulls away more of the blankets, desperate to uncover something different than what he finds, as if more of the Imbibitor Lunae is hiding somewhere beneath them. But all he finds is a sleeping Vidyadhara child that bears a striking resemblance to the man he once knew. The child’s face scrunches in his sleep, probably disturbed from the removal of his warm and protective blankets.
Somewhere in the depths of his wretched shattered mind, flashing images try to punch their way to the surface. This can’t be the Imbibitor Lunae. There are several valid explanations for what he’s seeing, but he refuses to indulge them, denial easier on his thudding heart than the alternative.
He stands and looks around the room again. It’s a humble dwelling space, small and mostly bare, barring the piles of books and a few other furnishings. He leaves the child and digs through the dresser drawers, examines the cart that holds empty glasses and plates, flips through some of the books.
He finds a book detailing the Vidyadhara history in a manner suitable to that of a child. It’s an old book, the spine worn and cracked from being paged through so many times. The images are colorful and painted with bright watercolors, the details of the history definitely simplified without nuance for its target audience.
There’s a shuffling sound behind him.
He’s staring at a depiction of Yubie when he hears a small shaky voice say, “Who are you?”
He turns around. The child is awake, sitting upright and staring at him with wide turquoise eyes, his long hair billowing behind him, a little ruffled still from sleep. He can’t be older than a prepubescent youth by human standards.
He doesn’t answer, merely snapping the book shut and throwing it aside to the floor. He approaches the child again, watching the way the small thing shirks back and bites his lip. He hears the clinking of metal when the boy moves. The child’s legs are now drawn out from under the covers, and he can see heavy shackles and chains adorning his small ankles.
Shackles for a prisoner. One who has done wrong and needs to pay for his crime. A guilty soul. That adds to his suspicions.
“What is your name?” His voice scrapes his throat like sandpaper, not well exercised from lack of use.
The child's round eyes shine with apprehension, but his lips part and he says, “My name is Dan Heng.”
It pierces his chest, as if he were just violently stabbed. He reacts physically, stumbling backwards for a moment before he regains his balance.
His jaw clenches, muscles shaking. “No it is not,” he hisses. “Do not lie to me!”
The child flinches hard, his tail emerging from the blankets to curl around himself, as if it could possibly protect him. He looks away for a moment before something hardens in him and he meets his eyes again.
“I am not lying.” The boy’s voice is slow, speaks with precision and caution. “My name is Dan Heng.”
It can’t be. This just can’t be. Anger thrums through his veins.
“Is that so?” He stalks forward, itching to pull out his sword. “Then tell me, Dan Heng. Why are you here?”
This gets more of a reaction out of the child. His small mouth drops open, the beginnings of tears pooling in his big eyes. “Um . . .” He looks away and hugs his tail to his chest.
He stands before him now, towering over the tiny creature. He feels like an Aeon, a god over a mere insect. “Why are you here,” he repeats slowly, his voice rasping.
The child has to crane his head to look up at him when he next speaks. His voice warbles ever so slightly as he answers. “I-I am a criminal.” He lowers his gaze and then adds softly, “That is what they tell me.”
Manic laughter reverberates from his chest. So it seems this is the hand he’s been dealt. The utter futility of it all comes rushing over him and pours out of his body in the form of more uncontrollable laughter. He covers his eyes with his hand as he calms his body, unable to stop grinning so hard that it pains the skin on his face.
What is he to do now? His path had seemed so clear coming here, but now it’s all but shattered. Completely broken and fruitless in the face of this child.
Or is it?
He stares at the child through his fingers that cover his eyes. The boy shuffles nervously under his piercing gaze. There’s still a twinge of denial that holds firm in his heart, that refuses to let go despite all the evidence that has been dumped at his feet. He simply cannot take this boy at face value. There must be something, anything leftover. Perhaps he just needs to drag it out by force.
He kneels down on one leg to the boy’s height, an arm casually draped over his knee.
“I am giving you one chance to reveal your true self to me,” he whispers through a rabid smile. “Do not hide from me any longer, Dan Feng.”
The child, the so-called Dan Heng, scoots back towards the wall, all the way until his back is pressed into it. “I-I’m not—”
His hand is around the boy’s throat and slamming him into the wall with swift and merciless speed. The child coughs and chokes, body spasming as his tiny hands come up and claw at his hand. The way his entire hand is bigger than both of the boy’s hands makes him dizzy with madness, and he snatches one of his hands away, encasing the entirety of it in his own.
Dan Heng’s hand. It is a small and soft thing. So unlike the hardened Dan Feng that resides in the corners of his splintered memories.
The boy is wheezing, and only now does he release the tight grip on his throat. He keeps a hold of Dan Heng, but allows him the gift of air, a gift that the boy greedily sucks into his lungs. He gives him time to recover, admiring the red bloom of color on his throat where his hand had nearly collapsed his windpipe. It will bruise badly. It will serve as a reminder for what he’s done wrong.
“Please,” Dan Heng gasps with a broken voice. “Please leave me alone.”
He is polite for a child in such a position. It is almost humorous that he thinks his words would be enough to sway him to abandon this task.
It’s a sick mixture of vengeance and twisted adoration that steers his next actions. Desperation to lure out the truth, but also the hunt of an emotion that so far has only existed in his memories.
He drags Dan Heng away from the wall and throws him back onto his bed, the boy crying out in a glorious sound that rings in his ears. He’s on the child within a second. The fight is over before it can begin, and he finds he can easily ignore Dan Heng’s tiny fists pushing against his chest as rips the boy’s clothes off of him.
“No!” He is much more animated now, limbs flailing wildly as more of his clothing is torn away. “Stop!”
It is almost endearing, in a way. To see the visage of the man he once knew reduced to a petulant child. “You would do well to give in, lest I—”
He doesn’t expect the water that rises from below the bed to pour into his mouth and cause him to choke and cough immediately, a fiery pain scorching his lungs and causing him to fall back.
The assault is short lived, and takes several moments to hack and expel the water from his body. Through haggard breaths, he looks up and registers the scene before him: the boy’s arm shaking and outstretched, the culprit behind the action.
He heaves, but this time it's laughter that bursts from him. “Well? Are you going to finish what you started? Do you have what it takes to finally kill me? Or do you just take pleasure in tormenting your victims?”
Dan Heng’s eyes search his face, very obviously confused as to what his words mean. Finally he says with a tremor, “Leave.”
A cackle leaves his throat. He lunges at the boy again, this time taking the offending arm in both of his hands, one at his wrist and one at his forearm.
“No! What are you—?”
He lifts the arm and bends it hard past its extension point with a deafening crack.
Dan Heng doesn’t scream. Not for a few moments. And then his wails fill the room. Gasping, sobbing, broken sounds coming out in between hyperventilating breaths. His body shakes terribly, eyes wide and distant that stare up at nothing. It must be so terrifying for him, he thinks. He must be so scared.
The cruelness that has been festering inside of him relishes at the thought of the boy being terrified.
He can get back to his task now that Dan Heng has been subdued. Peeling the boy’s clothes with much less resistance now, albeit over the sound of quiet sobbing, the last item he removes from the boy are the small turquoise shorts that had hugged his frame so tightly.
He feels a sickness rise in his stomach at the sight of the small naked body. He’s vulnerable and open in ways that would make anyone turn away. It should not be arousing to see the boy like this, and yet it is. It is as if his emotions and senses are wired incorrectly. A machine that’s badly malfunctioning, a resurrection that came back wrong.
And it is his fault.
He lifts one of Dan Heng’s legs, holding it aside so he can shift his way closer. He takes two fingers to his own mouth and briefly coats them with saliva before he brings them down to the boy’s small ring of muscle. He contemplates the notion of proper preparation before deciding against it, knowing that his time here is not long, as the morning shift will come and the knights will be alerted to his presence.
He shoves the barely wet fingers in the tight ring, marveling at the way Dan Heng’s tail slaps the bed and water from the action, the way the boy lets out a stuttered cry, voice breaking already. Soft pleas pour from the boy’s mouth as he squirms on his fingers. If he were normal he’d pity the poor thing. But when he thinks of all the pain and suffering he’s been through himself, he justifies ruining this child. The retribution he deserves after so many years.
His fingers push through, reaching deep into the small boy, scraping against his insides, places he’s sure have never been touched by another in this body. Dan Heng shudders underneath him, a warbled noise coming out of him when he pushes and rubs particularly hard at one spot inside him. His legs kick and body twitches in obvious pain, head shaking wildly back and forth.
“It hurts! Please. I-I don’t want this.”
He ignores him, opting instead to pull the fingers out slowly, watching with almost fascination at the way the child’s reddened hole clenches down and clings to his retracting fingers. He’s already swollen and sore and they haven’t even gotten to the finale yet.
“Disgusting,” he spits out. “You continue to lie like a sinful beast.” He punctuates his statement by grabbing Dan Heng’s small cock that has begun hardening against his stomach. He fondles it, smothering it with his entire hand.
Dan Heng squeaks and squirms with bulging eyes, his broken arm awkwardly moving with him. It’s already begun to blacken terribly at the break.
Such is the price he must pay.
“No,” Dan Heng sniffles, his chains rattling as he tries to move away. “Stop. Please!”
All the pleading in the galaxy couldn’t get him to stop, his pants now painfully tight. It’s wrong, he knows it. But the sensual images of Dan Feng that perforate his mind push him to continue. If he could just rekindle that feeling from before. Just a little bit more. He just needs some more of him and then he’ll be satisfied. Then he’ll stop.
It’s the same body, he tells himself. It just looks different, just appears younger, he tells himself as he pulls his cock out.
Dan Heng’s eyes go wide as more tears spill from them. He’s never been so low as to enjoy and perpetuate the suffering of a child, yet here he is about to make it so much worse for him. He grabs hold of the squirming boy’s hip, a bruising grip that will leave painful marks. He imagines the blood, red and sticky and bursting under his skin where his hand squeezes and gets even harder. He doesn’t care if the boy is prepared enough. The prospect of making him bleed from the insertion is far more enticing than making the experience less painful for him.
His cock lines up with Dan Heng’s hole, the boy near hysterics now.
“Don’t! I’ll-I’ll die! Please!”
He tunes it out and pushes forward, relishing the way the hole practically suckles on his cock. There’s no way he can do this without injuring Dan Heng, and he keeps pushing, keeps pulling Dan Heng’s body towards him, as his cock slips further into the boy. It’s tight and hot and almost painful. And it’s exhilarating. Dan Heng screams and yells and kicks but nothing is stopping him now.
He punches past something that makes Dan Heng gag and choke, and then he sees the blood trickling out against his cock. Yes. The grip he’s had on his self control slips through his fingers like sand through a sieve.
He bends over, one hand still on the boy’s hip, the other holding his weight on the bed next to Dan Heng’s head, and thrusts ruthlessly into him. His hips move of their own volition, chasing the bodily pleasure that he hasn’t felt in so long. Dan Heng’s warmth is different from what lives in his memories. He’s much tighter, and the sounds he makes are of fear and pain instead of pleasure. But it’s just as erotic in the end.
He loses himself in the pleasure of it all. The sounds of bloody skin slapping skin. The wet heat enveloping his cock. The look of terror and the never ending tears on Dan Heng’s face. It makes this trip completely worth it. There’s a part of him that knows this is not what he sought in the first place. But maybe it is better.
He’s quiet throughout the ordeal, but at one point he hears Dan Heng say something in garbled language.
“You’ll have to speak up, boy,” he says with a particularly hash thrust, grinding his hips into Dan Heng’s body.
Dan Heng cries out, a pathetic wail leaving his lips. “What did I do? Wh-What did I do wrong?” he sobs.
He stills, caught in genuine surprise at the child’s cries.
“I-I’m sorry! For whatever I did,” Dan Heng stutters out through miserable tears. “I’m sorry.” His voice loses momentum, trailing off into hiccupping sobs, and he turns his head to bury his face into his pillow.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, opting instead to sit upright and pull Dan Heng with him, his cock still buried inside the boy. He stares at the two horns protruding from the child’s head and takes hold of both of them with each of his hands. They’re small. He doesn't have a perfect grip on them, but it’s enough leverage for him to pull Dan Heng’s body up and slam him down on his cock.
Dan Heng sobs loudly as he thrusts up into the boy. Over and over slamming into his body and imagining a scenario where the boy’s horns break apart in bloody pieces. How glorious it would be to break them himself. To ruin the child forever. Just as he was ruined so many years ago.
He can feel himself getting close, and it’s almost disappointing. For the first time in many years, he’s found something that he doesn’t want to end. As he feels his gut tighten, he pumps into Dan Heng harder. He leans down and bites down hard on the boy’s pointed ear until he can taste the blood pooling into his mouth. It’s potent and heavenly, and he cums immediately, seed spilling inside the boy’s body. It’s exhilarating and cathartic. He feels his body loosen, his pain ease. His bones don’t hold that heavy weight, and he smiles and closes his eyes in genuine relief.
He slowly pulls Dan Heng up and off of him, his cock slipping out with a wet noise. Blood and semen spurts out of the boy’s hole, and it’s almost enough to get him hard again. He lets go, drops the child onto the bed with a flop, the boy moaning weakly, and gets up. Reorients himself, making sure to tuck himself back in and dust off his clothes.
He turns to check outside the single window in the room. The light of a new day is coming. He needs to leave quickly.
The sound of rattling chains brings his attention back to Dan Heng. He looks down and sees the boy attempting to crawl away from him on his stomach. He struggles badly, body too heavy for his one good arm to pull forward.
He watches the scene play out, waiting patiently for the moment that the chains catch and the boy can move no further. Dan Heng tugs on the chains uselessly until he breaks down crying again.
Something about the scene before him stirs an unknown emotion inside of him. He looks again to the dawn’s light coming through the window and back to the boy.
The boy shrieks when his sword comes down and shatters both of the chains in one swing. He turns his head and looks up at him. He’s not sure what he’s doing, where this course of action could possibly lead. Suddenly it’s not enough to just have sex with him and leave. Suddenly he needs more.
He scoops up the boy in his arms, marveling once again at how small he is. “If you make any noise, I will break your horns and shove them down your throat,” he warns Dan Heng with a hiss in his bloody ear.
Dan Heng’s eyes go wide, his body trembling. Still, he nods and curls into his arms. The small bundle of warmth is light in his arms, and he leaves the cell silently.
Everything hurts. His body is on fire. His pelvis burns and his arm pulsates in agony. He’s been in pain before, but this pain is novel and frightening.
He last remembers the unknown man entering his cell. Calling him that name that he’s heard before but knows isn’t him. And then the pain. The pain and terrible sensations all over his body. And then he remembers falling asleep in the man’s strong arms that held him like he was nothing.
And now he’s awake in a bed. In a new location. None of his books or his water or his window are here. It’s a dark room that smells sterile and clean, unlike his musty cell. He hears the hum of an engine. He must be on a ship.
He throws the covers off and looks down to find that his shackles and chains have been entirely removed now, his ankles bare for the first time in what feels like eons. He rubs them together, marveling at the feeling of skin on skin. He’s also clean now and in a pair of plain clothes. He checks his arm. It hurts terribly still, but it’s been wrapped and hung in a splint that hangs around his neck.
Dan Heng doesn’t know what to do. His stomach feels sick, and the lower half of his body still badly hurts and burns. Even so, he gets out of the large bed and pads across the room to the door, praying that the door is not locked.
It’s not. The door slides open with a whoosh. It’s dark in the hall and he continues down to another door. It feels strange to be walking so far when he’s normally confined to a small space within his cell. It almost feels wrong, for a criminal like him to be allowed to wander about like this. His legs are shaky and weak still from when the man hurt him, and he nearly falls a few times.
He makes it to the end of the hall and opens the next door. Beyond it is what must be the control room for the ship. It’s small and dimly lit, with most of the light in the room coming from the control panel and a few small lights in the ceiling.
In the pilot’s chair sits the man from before. Either he hasn’t noticed Dan Heng yet or he’s ignoring him, just leaning on his elbow and holding his face up with his fist as he stares into the void of space.
Dan Heng doesn’t know what to call him, what to say at all really, so he slowly approaches the seat and gets a better look at the man who hurt him so badly. He wants to ask him why he did that, why he stole him away, where are they even going.
The man’s blood red eyes snap to Dan Heng, and he flinches backwards, losing his nerve instantly.
“You’re awake,” is all the man says, his voice just as grating to Dan Heng’s ears as it was before.
Dan Heng swallows, doing his absolute most to quell his fear before he asks, “Where are we?”
The man hums and looks back out through the window. After a few moments of silence he says, “Far from the Xianzhou Luofu.”
His throat bobs with emotion. “Wh-Why did you take me? Where are we going? I-I don’t—”
“Enough!”
Dan Heng backs up as the man stands from his chair. “It is because of you that we are both suffering now! An infinite cycle that you started!” he shouts at Dan Heng as he approaches him. Dan Heng steps as far back as he can before he hits the wall.
The man brings a hand to his face and chuckles darkly. “Imbibitor Lunae . . . When will it end?”
He walks away from Dan Heng, muttering more words of anger and disgust under his breath. Dan Heng’s legs and pelvis hurt terribly at this point, and he sinks to the ground with his back leaning against the wall. He curls up, wrapping his arms around his legs and curling his tail around him.
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do at this point. He’s far from the only place that ever came close to being his home. And now he’s here with this strange man. For how long? Will he be able to get away? Where would he go even if he escaped? He has nowhere.
The realization that he has nowhere to go, no one to call family, seizes him by the heart, the organ stuttering in its beating before his breathing picks up and tears leak from his eyes. He feels as though he will vomit, and yet he hasn’t eaten in what must have been days.
Over the sound of his upset, he hears the man sigh above him, heavy footsteps approaching him. He hears the shuffle of fabric and movement, and then those arms are wrapping around him and lifting him from the floor.
When Dan Heng opens his eyes, he’s sitting in the man’s lap in the same chair he was in earlier. It’s cold in the ship, but the man’s body is somehow colder, making Dan Heng shiver as he curls into himself on his lap.
Finally the man speaks again, “You will stay with me . . . to atone for your crimes.”
Perhaps that’s fair. Dan Heng still doesn’t fully know what he did in his past life to deserve all of this, but if this is the punishment that’s been thrust upon him, then he has no choice but to accept. There’s something about this man that tells Dan Heng that he is suffering too, so maybe helping him is also part of his atonement. Maybe this will be better than his lonely cell and chains. If only he could have his books too.
Dan Heng holds back his tears as he leans into the man. His hand strokes Dan Heng’s head slowly, making soothing circles on his scalp and scratching behind his horns. He realizes that he doesn’t know this person’s name at all, and even if he’s afraid of him, he still wants to know.
“Can you tell me your name?” Dan Heng asks.
The man hums and is then silent for a while.
When he answers, his fingers in Dan Heng’s hair, once soothing and gentle, grip his hair painfully as if he were about to rip it from his scalp.
“I have no name. Not anymore.”
Fingers tilt Dan Heng’s head up by his chin so that he’s looking directly into the man’s eyes that seem to burn into Dan Heng’s soul.
“But you may call me Blade.”