Chapter Text
Zefira Shadebrook is not what most people expect when they picture a Hero of Baldur’s Gate. For one thing, she’s half the height – well, slightly more, she is tall for a halfling. Her wardrobe varies in style, with dandy-cut doublet and trouser suits finding equal play with violet embroidered corsets over breeches. She listens with her whole being when she pays attention, centers the speaker in her heart and mind to comprehend them. Her fingers tend towards the sticky side, although she pointedly only takes from those who can afford her attention. She seems to truly, genuinely care for the people in her life.
And she’s fucking Lord Enver Gortash on a regular basis.
True, the general public doesn’t know his history as the former Chosen of Bane and the putative mastermind of the Absolute Plot. The commoners believe him to be their home-grown Archduke, one of their own, a strong leader who personally helped fight off the illithid invasion. The surviving families of the patriars he killed after his coronation know of his Banite connections, but if they suspected more, they kept quiet and plotted in whispers.
Zefira knows the truth. Knows that the Elder Brain of Moonrise Tower manipulated the Chosen of Bane into a mad plan to take over the world. Knows that his husband was one of his partners in that quest. Knows that she was the other side of the lanceboard in the game the Elder Brain played both sides on.
And somehow, when all was said and done, not only did she survive, and save her home, the Sword Coast, Toril, and the existence of the very gods themselves –
But she saved a certain handsome young man as well. A sudden spark of inspiration, a particular path of her misadventure changed the story. Bane’s Chosen hesitated at the wrong time, and his Lord condemned him. The Dawnbringer offered Enver survival and a new beginning, and the schemer took survival. Now, he played the reluctant penitent while planning out a different trio of deicides – this time, at Lathander's instruction. And she played his unwilling moral compass – since he’d broken down his original one for parts when he lived in the Hells.
Tonight, however, she isn't fucking Lord Enver Gortash.
Instead, in one of his workshops, Enver Gortash, Redeemed of Lathander, is going to kill her.
She manages to look at the chair only briefly before mounting it. A metal backplate, curved to fit her spine. More curved plates holding her legs apart, leaving an open space to access her naked cunt. There is metal against the back of her calves, with leather straps at her ankles and on her thighs, just above the knees. Her arms fall down behind her, leather cuffs at her wrists holding them to a frame.
"What do you think of it?" Enver stands to one side, hands held behind him, observing her. "The design is Thayan. Not an original – I made this myself, adjusted the measurements and the ratios. There aren't many halflings in Thay, and I wanted this to fit you just right."
She gives a twist – or tries to – then puts her full body into it, tugging and squirming in the bindings as Enver looks on in indulgent amusement. Eventually she goes limp, and shakes her head in defeat, and he bares his teeth in an ugly smirk.
"No escape for you, I'm afraid." He comes closer, admiring the way her curves fit into the chair, and his bare fingers caress the leather cuffs. "I did make some other small changes. These are metal in the original design – much easier to clean that way..."
"My eternal gratitude for your attention to my comfort," she deadpans.
"Anything for my precious cricket," he says as he tugs at a gauzy bit of silk which hangs loose around her collar bone. "This is custom as well. The original design uses a metal loop, which screws into a bar handle behind the neck." He pets the bottom of her chin, fondly. "My dear martyr has done so much for her home – I thought it only fair to allow her some small privilege."
"Thank you, your Grace," she says softly. She sees in him the desire to speak, to be heard, to brag. She considers the type of metal – bronze. Strong enough, but wouldn't iron be more convenient, and stronger? So she asks, "What did you make this out of?"
When his eyes light, she knows she's found the trick. "I melted down one of our old interrogation chairs to cast this new device."
She casts her mind back, thinking – the torture chairs she'd seen at Moonrise. He chained his offering to her in one of them when he gave her the life of the man who signed hers away. She recalls blood grooves and repositionable limbs for ease in breaking, cutting, crushing. Chairs that he likely designed, if not built. Created for final breaths. Adorned with the face of Bane.
An unsettling chill soaks into her from the darkness underneath her heart. Could the suffering and death of those who perished suffuse into the old chair? Had it mixed into the metal that melted in the crucible? Was that agony still here, merged with the material that now felt cold against her skin?
The Void gleefully piles on, in murmurs and whispers and echoes of agonized screams at the edges of her hearing. She fights again, in desperation this time – squirming, twisting, her breath shallow and uneven. Her skin crawls, and the blood drains from her face. Through it all, Enver watches her with pupils blown wide, eagerly devouring her terror. Goosebumps on her forearms merge with the bruises rapidly forming on her wrists. Cold sweat on her brow. A dislocation threatens.
Nothing works, of course. The pieces are precisely machined, the hinges freshly oiled, the manacles tightly bolted. There is no escape from his brutal competence. It's strangely refreshing. There's neither luck nor skill involved in what happens next. The die is cast, her death is set. At least this one, and while her mind knows that this is a test – of his new magic, of her curse – her body cannot conceive of another chance.
"The sensation is almost like opium, is it not?” He stands apart from her. Now he knows his position and not his speed. “The brain, expecting death, floods the body with chemical relief. A cessation of pain. Can one form an addiction to such release?" He considers, then directs: "You are a healer – as you love to remind me. Answer."
"Possibly," she allows.
"Not good enough," he snaps back. "Answer with conviction."
"Yes!" she spits out, and he beams at her, certain he's getting under her skin.
He twists a few knobs and levers, and some unseen mechanism moves beneath her. Something firm and slick, a rounded dull pressure that squirts oil at her rear hole before pushing forward without pause or resistance, sliding in finger-deep into twisting innards. "Another thing I wanted to experiment with. How different sources of pleasure affected your demeanor. You did seem more pliable when we fucked on my desk. What could I get you to beg for, filled like this?"
"A surprising amount," she babbles, and is rewarded with a smile as nasty as her filthy cravings.
"How fortunate," he practically crows, and switches to a different panel. "I built this out of curiosity – never finished the prototype." Something else whirs into place between her legs. He leans in to adjust the tool manually, to spread her open and aim something inside her unoccupied hole. With the press of a button, the toy extends with a hydraulic hiss, shoving to the hilt in her sopping wet hole and stays there, unmoving.
"I considered going into wider production on machines like these," he muses. "I couldn't quite get the sales pitch right. The upper classes would pull back in terror, and the lower classes wouldn't give a decent audience. While the novelty would gain customers, there are too many cheap whores as competition, and the price of cleaning and maintenance would make it difficult to break even. A disappointment, as is the end to so many brilliant plans."
The devices within her jostle slightly. The sensation overwhelms her and she whines– a high shriek which he observes with cruel delight.
"You don't have an excuse this time," he gloats. "No slip of parchment to buy off me with an amusing show."
"What's yours, then?" Her eyes flicker to her bonds, then to him. "Not a very 'new beginnings' kind of kink you're enabling, is it?"
He waves the question off. "Additional testing on your peculiar predicament. And before you challenge me further, the rods buried in your holes do have more of a purpose than your pleasure."
"Enlighten me," she demands.
His smile is – beaming undersells it, bordering on manic. "No."
"Then let me go," she commands coolly.
He holds a finger up. "Should I have told you at our first meeting that the Emperor was Balduran? Consider that, and you'll understand why I refuse to explain."
Because he was listening... She pauses, and listens to the echoing silence within herself. The Void that taunts her, the curse that has lain within her ever since childhood.
"Shall I release you?" Enver asks as he lays a finger against the wrist straps, already anticipating her response. She, much like himself, was so very practical in situations such as these. Practical, and starving for answers.
In all honesty, he didn’t need to do this. Once he was able to isolate the magical signature from the Zhentarim's Barovian artifact, he could read the same signature in Zefira herself while she was still alive. By no means was any of this necessary from a scientific standpoint. Merely a personal one.
It let him watch her die.
If someone asked him to confirm the reason for his parents' death, he could identify that, according to Fennec, there were two partially-ceremorphosed bodies pinned under the burning wreckage of Flymm’s Cobblers after the failed invasion. At Enver's command, Fennec had incinerated those remains past recognition.
Some days, when Enver felt overwhelmed by his work before the Nighttime Battle, he would imagine the miseries of Sally and Draco Flymm. Draco was easier – pain in every joint, shoulders and wrist, knee and hips. Sally – oh, she never stopped howling her anger and rage at her situation, at the unfairness of it, of how wronged she was. The rush of power invigorated him. Such thinking was flavored with righteousness. Not justice –there was no such thing – but with the knowledge that He Was Correct. And, in every imagining of his parent’s ultimate demise, he always added a personal touch to it. Not to the level Fennec would, but that he would be there to set the wheels in motion. In fact, quite a few times he dreamed of opening the door to the Bhaalist and giving the word, trusting his partner to inflict exactly what was deserved.
The pleasure of observing those death was stolen from him by his own actions. He recalls Dirge with the terrible poisoner, and he finds some satisfaction at now understanding his fiance’s rage. Of course, the target of Enver’s ire was not himself, but the instigator of the countless changes he had suffered since she flew into his rooms that fateful night.
"No." The priest breathes in deeply. "I withdraw my instruction."
It is and had always been Raphael's fatal flaw: his obsession with the unbreakable Hope. Enver vows he will not fall to the same mistakes.
Perhaps this didn't have quite the same flavor of righteousness as those prior fantasies did, but he gladly trades them for the sting of spite and heady rush of sadism, tweaked with lust. Feeling her suffer and fight under his fingertips would give him some measure of satisfaction. A bit of flavor to the dullness.
She flinches when he reaches towards her head, but it's just to comb her hair back from her face. At least he doesn't need to deal with her hair near her neck. No, that is a clean canvas, as any artist might croon. Shall he carve lines, or twist patterns, or paint bruises in the shape of his own two hands?
He's told the truth: death, in general, was a grim necessity. But here, there was an order – a precision – to the ending of life. The chair was a process: Enter a living body. Follow instructions. Exit a relatively low-mess corpse. It was an entertaining thought experiment that became reality. And it was all in his control. His word made law.
What new patterns of terror would flash into her mind? What small responses and tells would develop? How would he take her in his hold? He will know this Zefira, the one he crafts within her, better than she could ever hope to know, to understand.
The thought stirs something and his hand lowers to her throat. It would be so easy to take hold of her in one hand. But easy isn't always right, and it feels right to give her nothing short of full attention. He doesn't press in or stop her breath yet. Instead, he feels the warmth of her throat from the outside, and briefly, fondly, recalling the times he's been inside it, by her choice and without.
He's bent over her, her hips in his sightline. She tilts and rocks against the plug in her ass and thick dildo in her cunt. He has her by the neck and her body responds. He has her in his power and the small puddle on the floor is the evidence. Wetness drips from between her thighs as her abdominal muscles clench, her legs twitch and tremble, her thighs and belly ripple.
Squeezing hands. Watching as eyes pop open and her mouth widens as if it could change the constriction on the throat. Her pelvis shudders, rocking as hard as she can against the unyielding tools opening her to the world, desperate and devouring every last drop of pleasure.
He lets her go and slaps her right cheek once, sharply. "Filthy little whore," he degrades her, but his voice holds a note of strange affection. "I'll get you a ring gag to hold you open while you choke too, hmm? Do you want my little machine to fuck you while I end your life? Rather more Fennec's style, but I could be persuaded."
It takes her a moment, between gasps for breath and the ringing in her ears, before she responds. "I bow to your will, your Grace."
Interesting. He leans back towards a panel. Something hisses and her cunt feels fuller, almost uncomfortably so. Then the phallus moves in her, a shallow stroke inside her, deep and slow. Deliberate. A punishing setting.
He should stay with the plan, but his hands gravitate to her neck once again. This would be more intimate. More memorable. He kneads the skin but doesn't press. Instead, he savors the low vibrations of her moaning, the evidence of her body taking the fucking with rapacious glee. She thrusts herself on the machine as much as she can, lust-drunk, lost in the sensation. Her eyes glaze over, and he sees it in her, and he bows down to kiss her, to breathe in her desire, to consume these final moments. His fingers dig in.
A light squeeze, and her eyelids pop and her body stiffens. The harsh rasping sense of overstimulation drags on for a moment before she clamps down again, tilting her hips just right to lose herself. Her hands dig at the leather, her heels bump uselessly against the metal. She has nowhere to go. Nowhere to breathe. Enver above her, drinking in each wince and grimace and shudder of orgasmic pleasure trickling in between heartbeats; heartbeats so loud, so very red warm hot; sweat in his grip; dripping nectar sprayed; beat, red, beat, hot, dark, body shaking – Whose? Can't feel. Can't be. Mine? – over and over and over and –
Dark. Beat.
Null. Beat.
Null. Null.
Null.
Null.
Null.
One.
One.
One massive ache in her head.
She can’t bear to open her eyes, but she can open her mouth. Can breathe in, and speak. “Tell me,” she rasps. “Tell me you found what you fucking needed.”
“Shh.” That isn’t Enver. That is the Child of None, Fennec Dirj, cradling her in his arms. His hold is firm, consoling; his words soft and direct. “Or I’ll put you back to sleep.”
She clamps her mouth closed to muffle her grumble. She’s rewarded with a cup pressed to her lips, a warm tea that tingles healing down her suffering throat.
“Enver,” the man who once stood as Bhaal's Chosen speaks.
A beat. A moment of stillness before a response. “Yes?”
“What have you found?”
“Intelligence.” She hears the creak of a chair, someone leaning back. “There was a reaction. It’s not a curse. It’s a connection.”
The pain is slowly throbbing away. She feels… amused? No. No, she feels exhausted. Drained. Empty.
“What does that mean?”
She hears movement. Enver’s voice from higher up, somewhere over her. Behind her?
“It means there’s more to this than meets the eye,” he obfuscates. “But the readings should be enough to recalibrate the pearl. It shouldn’t take long.”
“You need rest as well,” Fennec reminds him.
“Nonsense. Throttling that brat has given me a second wind, as it were. I’ll be at the workshop.”
A door opens and closes, and the Redeemed of Lathander is off to a new beginning, leaving his responsibilities behind him.