Chapter Text
“Give me the stumpy one,” the shockingly warm voice said, rousing Ori from his fitful slumber. Then, he heard steps hastening away.
He wasn’t sure how long they’d been in these accursed, smelly dungeons, but when he was pulled to his feet almost violently, his muscles screamed in agony.
“I don’t know,” the person tugging at him vehemently muttered under their breath. “The King wouldn’t approve.”
This was not the same person who’d spoken before, Ori realised and tried to squirm away.
“I’m not the one to deny her—are you? She’s one of them—she’s too old and bitter to mind these pesky rules.” another replied in the same uncertain, muted tone before prodding and shoving Ori down a dark corridor. “What difference does one more or less make in the end? They’ll all die here anyway.”
Aware that he was in unexpected danger, Ori kept his peace until he was ushered into a small room. He heard the door clanging shut behind him and gulped.
The creature looking down at him from a natural rock shelf was of an eerie, positively alarming pulchritude, so he took a cautious step back.
“Dwarf!” The hissed exclamation clarified two things for the unfortunate prisoner: this ethereal, undeniably angry being was female, and it had been her who’d selected him from his cell. “I’ve waited for this so long!”
In a blink, she was beside him, her long-fingered hands digging painfully into his shoulders as she crowded him against the wall behind him.
“Run,” she laughed and let go of him—Ori didn’t think twice before begging his numb legs to carry him far beyond the reach of a grudge so ancient, he couldn’t even hope to understand it.
There’d been something so frighteningly intimate in the way she’d grabbed him that he was afraid of what would happen if he were left alone with her for any prolonged stretch of time.
Behind him, he could hear her vociferate still. She was talking about the death of a king he’d only ever encountered in books and the crimes of dwarves with whom he had very little in common.
Too late did he realise that he’d been running in circles.
“You nasty, dirty, treacherous fiend,” she screeched, launching herself at him ruthlessly.
Honourable to a fault, Ori tried to catch her only to be thrown on his back by the vehemence of her assault.
And then, her mouth was upon his—ravaging, biting, spitting insults and pleas alike—and he was unable and unwilling to struggle free again.
Instead, he drowned in the roiling ocean of her anger and was immolated in the fires of her vengeful lust—he offered up his fragile, mortal flesh to be castigated for crimes he didn’t commit.
“How I hate you,” she whispered as she tore his ragged clothes to shreds. “You disgusting, foul cave dweller! Insidious murderer and thief!”
Pinned to the hard ground and writhing pitifully, Ori whimpered and moaned softly. “Whatever my people did to yours, so many ages ago, let me try to make amends,” he hummed.
It was both humbling and humiliating to lie underneath this incarnation of wanton wrath, but he’d meant what he’d said, so he didn’t resist or protest when she sank down on him as if to engulf him whole.
Long-limbed and strong, she was nothing like the soft, shy maiden he’d imagined whenever the thought of carnal pleasure had hitherto crossed his rather innocent mind. Nevertheless, Ori knew that penitence wasn’t meant to be passive, so he met her halfway by thrusting up into the darkness of her flesh and soul fearlessly.