The Twilight Hunt Chapter 8 - Word Games

· · ─────── ·☽◯☾· ─────── · ·

The wilderness of Norway really was extremely beautiful. That was the main thought in Max’s head as he finally came to a stop in the middle of the forest, taking a look around to evaluate. He was about 20 minutes further inland from the nearest fjord and the steep terrain would have made hiking challenging even if he wasn’t carrying a heavy backpack with him. Max wasn’t much of a woodsman. He knew the basic theories, but his idea of camping had more to do with parking an RV somewhere than setting up a tent and worrying about the wildlife.

For a mission like this however, that wasn’t going to be an option. There were no roads that went within ten miles of here, nothing paved or cut down, no buildings, pipes, or power lines. It was an unspoiled wilderness with nothing but the deer and the bears and the birds and an ocean of trees as far as the eye could see. It had to be. He had even needed to leave his camping site more than two miles away to make sure it wasn’t going to interfere. In today’s modern world, finding a stretch of land far enough away from human structures could prove difficult unless one did enough research first.

Max emerged from the dense trees to find a river crossing the loose game trail he had been following. The ground leveled out to a nice smooth patch, and while it wasn’t a large clearing it was large enough. Perfect for his purposes. The perfect spot for the ritual he would need to perform, far away from any trace of civilization.

Max set his bag down and pulled out all the materials he needed.

Astrid had spent the entire plane ride here going over what he was going to do with them again, and again, and again. The svartalf had laid out all the principles of the magic and had him repeat every bit back to her until he could do it by rote. Then she started making up situations and asking him to apply the principles to them, and she wasn’t satisfied until he was right every time. Even after all he had seen, even after what he knew, Max still felt silly thinking about magic and how to cast a spell. It seemed like this was an elaborate joke… but that was just years of misunderstanding how the world really worked. He focused on the magic every bit as intensely as he had anything else, no matter how uncomfortable he was. Astrid insisted that “magic” was nothing more than willpower, and even a mortal with little inherent power could learn to do the very basics. He could do this.

Max just wished that Astrid was here to oversee his efforts… but that wasn’t in their agreement. The svartalf had been very clear and very, very, very firm… if he was going to call up an ancient norn and attempt to blackmail her, then Astrid was going to be on a different continent while he did it.

With her daughters now under his control, the hard part was about to begin… getting Skuld herself under his heel. From the information he had, it seemed like in many ways she would be the most dangerous of all of the women he had to capture… the former Fateweaver was a formidable opponent. Taking her by force would be impossible, so the only way to capture her would either be by trickery or to convince her it was in her best interests to give in.

Bearing this in mind, Max had prepared his bags accordingly with what he’d need. As he used the small shovel out of his pack to dig a small hole in the ground on the other side of the stream from where he intended to work, and he mentally reviewed the instructions that the svartalf had given. Astrid had been clear… the elements had to be accounted for. The nearby stream would take care of Water. Between the vast expanse of land and the trees all around there was Earth in plenty, and he used the shovel again to dig a wide circle in the ground, packing it with dried moss from his bag. The cold wind raking through the forest would serve as Air, and he touched a lighter to the ring of moss and it rapidly became an enthusiastic Fire that would serve his need.

Magic, the way Astrid explained it, wasn’t about magical words or gestures, or dizzying amounts of practice. It was about Will, and knowledge, and knowing the right things to do to use natural elements. There aren’t any magic words… just magical places, and things, things that had energy. Say, for example, the vials of blood he had taken from Estrid and Nicia. The ritual was an ancient way of communicating with the Norns, but it wasn’t an obligation… or as Astrid referred to it, a Binding. She could ignore it if she chose.

If he used her daughter’s blood in the ritual though, she would sense it… and she would come. That was a different kind of “magic,” one that had nothing to do with magical words or spells or rituals, and everything to do with a mother’s love for her daughters.

That was what Max was counting on.

He took a moment to double-check his summoning circle. It had to be perfect… not because if it wasn’t the ritual wouldn’t work, but because if it wasn’t it would work too well. She would arrive here and likely turn him inside out before he could say a word. Astrid warned that the circle might not be able to hold an entity as strong as the faerie at all, no matter how perfect, but it should at least delay her. Max felt less than confident in the magic… but Max had been doing this since long before he knew of magic. He had the utmost faith in his contingency plans.

The circle now completed, he looked it over again to ensure that the fire was burning bright all around. He felt confident it would hold the faerie in place and keep her from attacking him right away. He placed four beeswax candles at the four compass points inside his circle, and then at the intersection points of an invisible star he drew in his mind inside that circle. The whole ritual felt silly to Max and he had to fight that impression and keep his mind on the task… those were the instructions Astrid had given to him, and Max was going to follow them to the letter.

One by one, Max pulled items from his pocket and put them into the hole. His car keys. A leather-bound dagger. A few other pieces of ferrous metal. Finally, the shovel followed the rest of his iron into the hole, and he double-checked to make sure he no longer had even a scrap of the substance on him. With everything now in place, Max took out the rope and set it on the ground in front of the summoning circle. The rope’s purpose was to bind the entity or spirit that was summoned. It made more sense to Max to use something like an iron chain since he was dealing with a faerie, but according to Astrid, using any iron at all in this ritual, or even near it, would destroy the spell. It was why he needed to ditch every bit of iron he had in the hole, covered by Earth and separated by Air, Water, and Fire from his ritual. It meant no gun, no knives, no restraints… Max was more than a little uncomfortable abandoning all the tools he knew in favor of this sorcery, but according to Astrid there was little else he could do, and she hadn’t led him wrong yet.

With a final breath, he pushed the loose dirt back over the hole, burying it back beneath the ground. Then he knelt before the summoning circle and Max took out a vial of blood from each of his pockets. It was a tiny amount from each of them. Enough to get Skuld’s attention. He held up the vials in front of his eye, examining the contents. The red blood flowed inside the vials… It was as fresh as he could get it from the captured daughters. The fresher the blood, the stronger the call would be… and probably, the more enraged Skuld would be at him.

According to the svartalf, what drove magic was primarily willpower. All of the power came from the environment or the materials, but it was the caster’s Will that built it into something… so Max blocked out all doubt, confusion, uncertainty, his sense of the ridiculous, and any bit of fear that this might not work until all that remained was his will, his need to match himself against the challenge and be triumphant. Then Max took the vial of Nicia’s blood and poured it out onto the ground in front of him.

The red liquid pooled into a small indention of dirt he had scooped out with his hands. The blood settled in the pool before he got out the next vial of blood and uncorked it. He poured the contents of that vial down into the same pool, letting them mix together. Estrid’s blood mingled with Nicia’s, coming to a rest. Lastly, he used a ritual dagger to cut a small slice into his hand to draw his own blood for the final part of the summoning. The hard part of the ritual was over. Well, maybe this was the easy part, because the hard part would be dealing with the wrath of Skuld when she appeared before him.

Confident in his abilities, Max placed both of his hands onto his lap, stroking his fingers over his thigh and knees before he inhaled sharply. “Well, here goes nothing,” he muttered to no one in particular. His eyes closed briefly before he opened them wide and started the final part of the ritual. “Skuld, Fateweaver.”

The word seemed to rebound off of every tree and leaf, far out of proportion to how loud he had spoken… echoing through the forest. It panicked birds, sending them up in a cloud of a thousand feathers throughout the forest’s canopy. Cold wind blew through, sending a slight chill across Max’s back. He inhaled again, steeling his nerves, and repeated the words. “Skuld, she who bathed in Mimir’s Well.” The wind settled down now, coming to a dead halt. Before he started saying the name, he had been able to hear plenty of wildlife in the area. With the name spoken twice, the woodland noises died off completely. It was made all the more eerie with the wind stopping. Not a single noise from leaves or even a squirrel. Far above the forest canopy, however, the clouds began to churn and whirl, forming a ring that seemed to mirror the flaming one he stood within. Max breathed deeply. “Skuld!” he howled, saying the name a third time.

Birds swarmed through the sky. The forest, silent only a second ago, burst into a wild and outrageous chorus of protesting animal sounds from beasts large and small… many of them far closer to him than he would have guessed. The air suddenly felt pregnant with moisture, and flashes of lightning churned in the clouds like sparks off of Astrid’s forge. Then, out of that cloudless expanse in the center of the ring above his head came a single, overwhelming lightning bolt that struck the ground at his feet, throwing up dirt and scattering flaming moss. Max would have expected it to send him sprawling as well, dead or stunned, but he was unmoved and there was no thunder… and when his eyes adjusted to the light and the dirt settled around him he was no longer alone in the clearing.

She was stunning. Not beautiful, though she was. It was more like the sheer presence of her was a hammer blow to the back of his skull, making him feel dizzy and overwhelmed. He had noted that her daughters were beautiful but he’d been disappointed by just how human they had been… Skuld, in contrast, was no such thing. Enormous, gossamer thin butterfly wings stretched out for ten feet to either side of her, dwarfing her armspan. They were blue and glittering and shining with internal light… a light that subtly shifted hue every few moments. Her eyes did the same, cat-slit pupils focusing on him in a maddening kaleidoscope of colors.

And she had come for a fight.

In the tradition of shield maidens, the faerie queen was prepared for battle. Her gown, if you could call it that, seemed to be woven from some kind of tiny, tight-knit silvery metal rings, so fine that it looked and flowed like knit cloth. It covered her body like skin from her ankles to the very top of her throat. She carried a spear that felt like lightning and smelted like ozone, and a shield of woven vines and roots wrapped around her other arm… and the look on her face promised pain, retribution, and destruction.

Max could imagine what she was thinking. Nicia and Estrid had been missing for long enough that Skuld had noticed, and begun to worry what had become of them. It appeared that Astrid’s guidance and copious amounts of iron surrounding his captives had been enough to block her divinations because clearly she had found no information and had time to grow frantic. A mother worries most when her children can’t be found. Thoughts turn to protection and then to self-doubt and finally they move into a state of constant worry for the safety of her children.

Then someone showed up with their blood, and she arrived back on Earth to answer the call of the foolish mortal so eager to die.

Skuld’s eyes narrowed, glaring at Max. They flitted down, taking in the circle, the magical trap, the candles, and the fire. Then they focused on the red pool of blood slowly being drunk in by the soil, and her glare turned venomous. The air around her became statically charged, Max's hair rising up on end as her hand extended out in front of her. “YOU!” she snarled. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY DAUGHTERS?!” Her voice carried like the wind as she screamed out of the demand, making the leaves of the trees rustle behind Max.

Theoretically, the circle should have held her at least a little… but Max looked on with some small degree of panic as Skuld raised one hand up and swept it to the side as quickly as if she were knocking away some cobwebs that were in her way. The air shimmered before her, showing some kind of invisible magical barrier there… and then it broke into threads, falling to the ground before disappearing.

The makeshift ritual the inexperienced Max had learned, it seemed, would be almost no protection at all. Max scrambled to his feet, backing away from Skuld. His eyes remained fixed on the goddess, not wanting to look away for fear she might kill him before he could play out his hand. The faerie’s wings flapped once, sending her floating through the air, getting closer to him. “WHAT have you done with my daughters, mortal? Speak while you still have the ability to do so! I will rip your arms from your body, split your legs from your torso, and use your tongue as fodder for the beasts of the forest unless you tell me what you have done!” Her eyes glowed a radiant red, piercing into Max. She kept her gaze fixated on his eyes, not faltering in her approach to get closer to him.

With her hand outstretched, Skuld wrapped her fingers around Max’s throat and began to squeeze. “Speak your truth mortal. Your pitiful lies will not save your life.” She hissed. Her hand gripped tight to his throat and Max felt his oxygen get cut off. She was unbelievably strong… He felt Mr. Root’s ring activate but even so he felt like he would have had better luck trying to bend away steel. Her power was truly overwhelming, just as Astrid and his patron had noted it would be.

He probably had only seconds…

Magic had failed him. The ritual, the ring, Astrid’s tools… none of it was going to help here. Left without any of his advantages, Max had to rely on what had gotten him through the rest of his life, what had earned him the reputation as the Ghost. His wits, and his planning. Pushing his hand down into his pocket, Max pulled out his phone, opened it up, and swiped to the side to open the video feed he had preloaded. He didn’t have the oxygen to bring her attention to it but thankfully Skuld noticed… and as her eyes fixed on the screen, he saw them go wide.

Max knew what she was seeing.

Estrid and Nicia were both as naked as the day that they were born. The women were bound with their hands and legs outstretched in a spread-eagle fashion. Their pussies, mouths, and even asses were stuffed with dildos, cramming them full. Their arms and legs were held by shackles and chains that burned their skin… but none of that was what caught her attention so completely. It was that the two of them were suspended over a foundry pit, and just twenty or thirty feet below them was a pool of molten iron bubbling and glowing. The orange light of the superheated metal cast their skin in bronze tones, lighting the scene through sheer heat. If either girl fell into that pit not even a faerie would be surviving it… their special qualities would give them no aid against that.

Skuld began to shake with rage.

“You can… kill me,” Max choked out past her hand. “And you’d get… your revenge… but it wouldn’t save your daughters.”

Skuld threw him to the ground. “WHERE ARE THEY!” she roared at him, and it took everything he had not to flinch. “WHERE DO YOU HAVE THEM?!”

Max pushed himself up, meeting her gaze. “You’re going to want to start being more polite,” he said firmly, narrowing his eyes even as she did the same. As long as Skuld didn’t know that he felt like pissing his pants, he was safe… so he tried to live up to the image of a sadistic psychopath with a death wish. “I don’t know where they are,” he told her truthfully. “I wouldn’t let them tell me. You can do whatever you like to me… it won’t help you find them.”

Skuld took one step towards him. “Then why shouldn't I just rip your spine out and go looking for them, you worthless maggot?” she snarled.

He smiled at her. “Because unless my friend who has them gets a call from me in the next…” He looked at his watch. “Fifty-seven minutes and 34 seconds, then they are going for a swim. Think you can find them in the next hour? Because if you could, you wouldn’t be here… would you?” Max gave a wide grin when he felt the flash of hesitation in the elder faerie’s fury. Her hand, raised to smite him, lowered away from him, and the glow of rage faded from her face. There was still hatred and anger there, and her eyes were no less filled with it, but it was less of an imminent threat than the roaring bonfire that it had been moments before.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Skuld looked at Max. She huffed as she realized that this man had played his hand correctly… she would do anything for her daughters. Inhaling deeply, she sighed and tried to bargain with him. “Okay, I know how the game is played. What is it that you want? All mortals want something. Is it money? I have plenty of that from my followers. I can make you a rich man on earth.” Her voice was a purr and it was clear she was trying to be seductive. As lovely as she was it probably would have been effective were it not for her eyes: she couldn’t quite take the hate out of them. “Or is it power? You can have that, too. I can give you the strength to control a nation if you want it.”

They were tempting offers. Max knew she would become desperate to save her daughters and be willing to bargain… it was what he was counting on. They weren’t, however, what he wanted. “Nah. Both of those sound alright to me, but I’m not really the type that desires money. I can always get more of that. As for power…” he shrugged. “That only goes so far. That kind of control over others is always an ever-increasing struggle to get more of it. Even if you gain complete control, there is always another person who is willing to do whatever it takes to steal it from you. Just more problems.”

Skuld narrowed her eyes. “So, power and money don’t tempt you, what does? Is it the touch of a woman? Want to have a literal goddess pleasure your body? Once you have me, you will never experience the same with mortal women. I can fulfill your desires completely.”

Max smirked at the offer. She was heading in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough. “I do like the sound of that. Pledge to be mine for an eternity and I will set your daughters free.”

Eternity was something she would never agree to. Skuld narrowed her eyes. “Never! I won’t do that. You have my daughters, but I won’t be in servitude for an eternity. You can forget that. I will give you one day of your mortal existence. I promise, by the end of it you will have lost track that it wasn’t an eternity… one day is more than enough for any mortal.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Max shook his head. “One day is a year too short for me. I might be a mortal, but I think you will find me more than capable. From my understanding, one year and a day is traditional.”

The faerie didn’t quite wince, but she didn’t look happy either. “One year and one day is nothing to an immortal. Your pitiful life is short enough compared to that. It is an accord.”

Skuld bowed her head to agree to the terms, but Max did not match the gesture. “Not so fast. These are the terms. You will serve me for a year and a day. You will not attempt to escape, nor to fight or cause me any harm. You will cooperate with me during that time, doing as I wish. In return, at the end of one year and a day, you and your daughters will be free to go… as long as you still want to be. Agreed?”

The faerie snorted. “If I want to be. You have a very high opinion of yourself, mortal.” She shook her head. “Your terms are unacceptable. My obedience is my own, mortal. My body is yours. My will is not. I will not resist you, but I have obligations beyond just yours.”

Well, that would make it a challenge to make her give him the worlds he needed… but a challenge was exactly what he wanted, after all. Most importantly, he could sense the frustration coming from the faerie woman. This wasn’t how she made deals, from a position of weakness like this. Even more importantly, he was rushing her… she was very well aware of the ticking seconds until her daughters died. If he gave her time, Max had little doubt that this woman would be able to think rings around him, making a deal she would be able to wriggle her way out of, or that would allow her to get him killed.

She didn’t have time to be subtle and negotiate, however… she needed to take what she could get because she was painfully aware that Max could afford to walk away and she could not. Slowly, he backed up, his feet in the stream, until he reached the buried iron. He shoved his hands down into the loose dirt. “Very well, then. Your service, if not your obedience. No escape, no harm to me or mine. In exchange, I will save your daughters, and after a year and a day, the three of you may leave.” Max smiled at her as he pulled the Muspelheim iron collar from the pit and showed it to Skuld. “If you agree, make the oath and put this on.”

Skuld clenched her teeth. “I promise I will be yours for one year and a day, serve you with my body however you wish. You want my body? Fine… you can fuck me as you wish, ravisher. I will not fight or try to escape.” Skuld took the collar from Max’s hand, practically snatching it away before she slid it around her neck and secured it in place. She winced when it touched her skin, but it didn’t burn in quite the same dramatic way that normal iron had affected her daughters… her power was evidently far more concentrated. “Now call your man off.”

Now that Skuld had made a promise to do whatever he wanted, Max wanted to see her prove that devotion to him. Putting his hands on his hips, he gazed at the strong-willed faerie. “We have plenty of time for that. I think we’ll just let them hang there for a while. Right now, I think it is time to prove yourself to me, and let me see if your body has half as much to offer as you promise.”

Skuld looked confused as she stood before him. She had already promised to do whatever he wanted. What more did this lowly mortal want from her? She inhaled sharply, looking directly at him. “You know that we can’t break our word once it is given, mortal. What do you want me to do exactly?” She wasn’t sure what a mortal could come up with, but she was sure it would be some miserable and likely lewd duty that he wanted her to perform.

“Let’s play a game… ” Max had a wide grin on his face as he approached a nearby tree and leaned his back up against it. His eyes fixed on her body and as he grinned at her. He gestured at the tent in his pants. “How about this? We have almost an hour left before I have to make a phone call. I want you to spend that hour trying to make my cock soft. If you can satisfy me, if you can utterly drain my balls, then your daughters won’t need to wait until the end of the year to go free… I’ll release them tonight. They’ll be free to go immediately.”

The faerie queen scoffed at him. “A foul and degrading game,” she growled at him.

“It’s all you deserve,” Max mocked her. “I could just order you to serve me, and for no benefit. I suppose if you refuse, though, you will get to have at least a little dignity for the next year and a day. I’m sure your daughters won’t blame you as they are my slaves alongside you.

“Bastard,” she growled. “Fine. What do you want?”

Max put a finger on his chin as if considering. “For a start… strip for me. Take it off, all of it,” he said, leaning back and waiting for her to get started with disrobing.

Annoyed, Skuld glared at him. She had clearly been expecting him to just immediately skip to taking advantage of her… probably didn’t think she would have to do anything but let him use her body like a toy. Instead, she needed to perform… She would have her revenge on him, but for the moment he had outplayed her and gotten her right where he wanted her. Skuld couldn’t really disobey here, not if she wanted her daughters to be safe.

Max held up his wrist, tapping at this watch. “Tick tock, fae. Maybe an eternal, immortal bring like you isn’t aware of it but time is passing, fairy slut. Do you want to waste my year and a day? I have time to spare… but your daughters don’t.” He saw the look of hatred on her face… he was right and she knew it. The longer she waited, the closer her daughters would come to joining her in the next year of slavery.

She let out a huff of air from her lungs, reaching her hands down to the belt that held her robe-like mail together. “Fine, you bastard,” she hissed, reaching down to her clothing, only for him to hold up a hand to stop her. “What?” she spat.

“Your rudeness isn’t really doing it for me,” he said, though the tent in his pants seemed to show that was at least a little bit untrue. Didn’t matter to him… he wasn’t the one unable to lie, after all. “You are going to address me as master. No bastard, or mortal, or child… master.”

Skuld looked like he was commanding her to swallow glass. “As you command… master.” She pulled on the end of it to undo the knot that held it in place, but she had an annoyed look on her face. She couldn’t believe that she was going to humiliate herself for a mere mortal.

Putting his hand up in a halting gesture, Max stopped her again. “No, no. Not like that. I want you to do it sexily. Don’t look so pissed. Undress like you are doing it for a lover. I want you to get into it and show me that you really want me.” He then lowered his hand back to his side and waited for Skuld to continue. “Don’t be so pathetic about it.”

Smiling for him was clearly among the very last things that Skuld wanted to do, but she had to for her daughters. Skuld curled the corners of her lips up into a smile and gave him a polite nod. “As you command… master.” She gripped the sash of her belt and started to pull on it again. She made it a slow tug, drawing the belted sash away from her waistline. She held the sash to the side, ready to drop it on the ground.

While Max did like the newest effort to please him, the motions she was going through seemed more robotic than sexy. He stopped her once more, pausing her midway through stripping. “No, you are acting like this is all clinical… come now, with as many children as you’ve had you must have had real lovers in the past.” Max rolled his eyes. “You can do better. What would a lover think of you? Make me believe you really are into this. That you want to take off your clothes for me. I want you to show me how sexy you are while you do it. Move your hips in a swaying motion. Show off your curves. You have a body, and I’m sure you know how to use it.”

The ramblings from him, the hated mortal enslaving her, were clearly beginning to piss Skuld off. Obviously regretting having promised not to harm him, she glared for a moment… but very visibly forced herself to smile again. This was for her family. Once she was freed from this man, she could hurt him. Hunt him down and kill him like the dog that he was. For now, she had to agree to his ridiculous demands and do what he wanted. She swayed her hips to an unheard tune, moving around and gyrating to the music that only she could hear moving to the rhythm of the stream and the wind. Her robe slowly started to part, revealing the soft skin of her stomach. Her skin had an almost alabaster appearance to it, like a porcelain doll.

Max continued to look on from the safety of the shade. His eyes drinking in the little bit of skin she revealed. He noticed her hand moving up to shift the robe open more and he reached out to to stop her. “No, you need to tease a little bit more! Use your body to excite your new master.”

Using the time and her daughter’s fate as a bargaining chip to get her to do what he wanted grated on Skuld’s nerves. Her fury and rage toward this man knew no bounds and she wanted to rip his throat out from his neck. Even if it wouldn’t get her daughters killed though, she couldn’t act on her wishes any longer because of the oath. She would be unable to do anything to him for a year and a day, as stated. Even living an eternity, these moments seemed to last forever for her. With her daughter’s fates in the balance, she acquiesced to the demands. She gripped her robe with both hands, slowly moving. The faerie opened the robe gently, showing off some of her skin and the cleavage inside of the robe. Her wings swayed and folded on her back as she moved, dancing to the silent rhythm, the shimmering dust on the bright blue butterfly wings glittering in the light as her hands caressed her body over the armored robe, very, very slowly splitting it open a bit more.

Max liked how she was getting into it. Her breasts were now coming into view. Pert and perky areolas with cherry blossom pink nipples resting at the center. Her robe opened up more to show her pale skin. Her slim and slender stomach along with the completely hairless mound of womanhood between her legs. The robe dropped to the ground at last. Her wings still folded onto her back. “I’m ready for you, master…” Skuld purred seductively. She moved her fingers across her stomach and looked back at Max, waiting for his response.

Max pulled the bag out of the pit along with the ritual athame knife he had buried. Putting the small bag into his pocket, Max held out the knife to Skuld, hilt first. He wasn’t too concerned with giving her a weapon… she didn’t need one to kill him if she still could, and if things were as he thought then she no longer was capable. “Not ready yet,” he told her. “I don’t want a dry old hag. I want you to take this and use it to masturbate.” Max pointed at the stream. Sit on those rocks over there, spread your legs for me, and use this on yourself.”

Skuld took the dagger from him, fingers gingerly wrapping around the leather-bound hilt. Her eyes flashed, and Max could practically see the visions she had of driving that knife into his chest. Instead she kept her mouth shut and sashayed over to the rocks that Max had indicated and sat down on it, every move as seductive as possible. Her legs spread out wide, revealing her pussy lips to him. She took the hilt of the dagger, sliding it between her legs, and rubbed it back and forth across her lips. Skuld looked back at Max’s intense stare while she pressed the pommel of the dagger into her pussy.

Max watched, smirking as the ancient and inhumanly beautiful faerie moved the pommel back and forth a couple of times to get her pussy juices to leak over the pommel and shaft of the dagger handle. She winced momentarily as the end of the knife pressed inward, spreading her pussy lips wider around it. When the pommel popped into her pussy, she let out a gasp. Her legs trembled from the sensation. The collar around her neck shifted slightly as she winced in obvious humiliation, forced to perform. He had little doubt that the last thing Skuld wanted to do was debase herself for the pleasure of her captor, but she didn’t have a choice.

The athame’s pommel went in deeper and the handle of the dagger was digging into her pussy now. She gritted her teeth, not wanting to let the human know she felt anything from this action. Max knew she could feel it, though. His eyes had been on her the whole time, always watching. He saw how she reacted when that dagger pommel pierced into her pussy. Her cunt squeezed it so tight that he would have sworn her a virgin if it weren’t for the fact that she had daughters and was centuries old.

Skuld kept pressing the dagger in until she couldn’t get a solid grip on the crossguard. To have her hand directly on the iron of the blade would hurt her so she settled on using the cross guard to move the shaft back and forth inside of her. Try as hard as she might to resist, Skuld was still in what was still fundamentally a mortal body here on Earth, and Max was getting the result he wanted… she couldn’t fully resist the pleasure that was slowly building up inside her. Her cunt was growing wetter, and her eyelids fluttered closed and she leaned back against the large stone she sat on. Her butterfly wings unfurled, showing their full wing span to Max. Her toes curled up and her head tilted back as she was forced to feel pleasure, the sensation sweeping through her body. Her pussy clenched around the dagger, sweet fae nectars gushing out over the knife and her inner thighs. She let out a pleasured moan, shaking with light tremors that rocked her body.

Max clapped his hands together at the display. “Bravo. Bravo! Very nice performance. It makes me glad that I summoned you here. Now that you have had your fun, it is time for me to have mine.” Max drew out some long needles from the bag he had pulled from the pit. His footsteps were light on the forest floor as he got closer to Skuld. He bent down next to her on the stone she sat upon, the dagger still in her cunt as he looked down on her. “From what I’ve been told,” he said slowly, “you’re almost entirely immune to harm. Injuries made by a mortal, even with iron, heal practically before they’re made…” He lifted his foot, put it on her unresisting chest, and pushed, shoving her down to the mud on the shore of the stream. The fact that she was more than strong enough to resist if she had the will to do it made it even more rewarding to see the naked fae slut pinned down.

Placing his hand on one of her butterfly wings, Max gripped it tight and stretched it out of the side, flat against the dirt. Then, determined, he pushed the sharp end of one of the needles into Skuld’s wing… straight down, driving it through the wing and into the earth beneath it.

The faerie screamed at the piercing pain, a far larger and less stoic reaction than he would have anticipated. In a flash of insight, Max realized that pain like this was genuinely a novel experience for the ancient queen of the Norns… utterly unused to being helpless or to suffering like a butterfly on an insect board. Her healing abilities would undo the damage but it didn’t mean she enjoyed pain, and the misery was all the more impactful for its rareness. Her eyes practically went bloodshot red with anger at being hurt, ready to lash out at Max, but she was unable to do anything to him. She had to grit her teeth, grinding them together while she endured the pain. Max placed another needle into one of her wings, pressing against the bony structure to sink it inward. The pain was immense, but as he watched, she forced herself to clench her teeth together, unwilling to shame herself further. She was determined not to break for him, not like this.

“I wish I could say I’m impressed with your toughness, but the truth is you’re going to make this easier than I thought,” Max said, smirking down at the faerie. “I have a lot more than just this, you know?” Max left her on the stone slab to fetch one of the summoning candles. Now that the ward had been broken, the candles were useless except for the wax and heat they could provide… and that wax could be fun. He had a few theories about how he could torment the faerie, and one of them relied on causing as persistent of harm as he could… something that left something behind. For that, the candle seemed like a good proof of concept.

He tilted the lit beeswax candle to the side, watching the flame flicker in the air. The scorching-hot wax drippings melted off from the top of the candle, splashing down across Skuld’s bare breasts. The beautiful faerie hissed at the pain, inhaling sharply. Her eyes locked on Max and her glare showed him clearly that she wanted to curse him and his entire lineage for what he was doing to her, but she didn’t say a word. More wax dripped down over her body, colliding with her stomach and then onto her smooth thighs. The crimson liquid burned as it hardened on her skin but the only reaction was some tiny whimpers at the burning heat. It clearly hurt, but she endured.

Max was nodding to himself. He figured that none of this would be particularly effective on Skuld. Her healing powers were especially strong, and even with the dampening effect of the iron collar around her neck, the norn could recover from most wounds and pain instilled upon her in a matter of moments, or maybe a few minutes if it was especially severe. “Well, I think we learned something,” he said as he pulled the knife from her cunt, turning it around and using the blade to scrape some of the wax off her breasts painfully… revealing unburned skin beneath. The needles in her wings had burned away, leaving nothing but dust to brush off. “We’ll have to go significantly harder, but as a concept, it's promising. That’s enough of that for now, though. As interesting and fun as I think this is, I still have one more thing that I want to do to you, pet.”

“I am not a pet,” Skuld hissed, clearly already hating the nickname that he had bestowed upon her. “I am not some dog to be trained.”

“Agree to disagree,” Max said as he went into the bag in his pocket and took out another set of needles. “I think you just need to be trained a little differently.” Then he grabbed onto her breast, lined the needle up with her nipple, and shoved.

Skuld screamed, louder than what she had when he used the needles on her wings even… the sound partially of pain and partially of sheer shock. The steel, having iron in it, acted just as Astrid had promised… it burned with the contact of her skin and slowed her healing’s ability to undo the damage, causing her constant pain. Then, while she was still squirming, he did it again, targeting her right breast instead. He pulled out a pair of rings next, pushing them in to replace the burning needles as they slowly dissolved away. “These are Muspelheim iron,” he told her as he pinched the first of the two rings shut. “We’ll seal them more permanently later, but I just wanted you to understand that these ones won’t be burning away.”

Skuld looked down at her nipples with horrified, wide eyes as he pushed the second ring into place and sealed it, giving them an experimental tug that brought another shriek to her lungs. “You must be joking!” she protested, raising her hands to protect her tits as if there was a place she could move the rings that wouldn’t burn at her skin. Tears streamed down her face from the pain, what Max hoped would be the first tears of many. “You can’t leave these like this!”

So worried about the pain from the nipple piercings, Skuld hadn’t even noticed that Max still held a third needle. “I think you’ll find I can,” he said as he pushed apart her spread legs, pushing down… then the steel needle was piercing through her clit, and the faerie let out a howl like a wild animal. Her legs immediately tried to close around him, but he shoved her back again, pushing a third ring through her vulnerable button while she wailed. The magical iron was hot against her skin, but it didn’t burn away, and it left Skuld to feel the constant pain of it searing against her most sensitive and intimate of places.

“Definitely worth using up some of the supply,” he said, pleased with himself as he admired the writhing faerie. “Now… let's see what else we can do…”

· · ─────── ·☽◯☾· ─────── · ·

Are you enjoying this story?

There is a lot more of it... 250,000 words of it, to be precise!

The first act will always be free, but if you're enjoying it, you can support me continuing to make high-quality erotica by purchasing the novel!

Thank you for your support!