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The Price of Gratitude	By : Mayamahal Category: +S through Z > World of Warcraft Views: 6057 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Blizzard or World of Warcraft. I make no profit or money for writing this.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
The light of false dawn prickled the crusted lashes of Maia's eyes. She blinked blearily at the horizon, realizing then that she was no longer alone. It would be sad to admit it as a relief, but the little bit of sanity she still clung to chastized her for it.

Masked priests stood around her, fifteen in number, each facade a different emotion, a different loa. Strange mud coated them from head to toe, glistening with the freshness of it, reeking of rot and strange essences.

Maia tried to will herself to just not be there.

They never touched her. Their chanting was low, intoned in breathless pleas and anxious, angry words. They wrote sigils on her skin with cool charcoal tipped sticks, dusted her with fine powders from a feather fan, and she slowly began to catch the meaning of their rites and rituals.

She was intended as a concubine to their bloody god, a powerful mage, a vessel capable of carrying his mortal avatar to birth for him to claim with his angry spirit. They sought to invoke him in physical form, to bring down his essence to fill her with his seed.

That panic that rose in her chest came. Came, and then went.

The fear was exhausting, and she was just too tired.

She dozed throughout the day as they chanted and moved around her, blessed her and cleansed her again and again. Her back was beginning to hurt, other things too; she tried not to thing of the image she made, hacked hair and flowing 'tail', naked, drained. It was easier to ignore it, to pretend this was all some nightmare, a dream from too much mead and not enough food.

By the time the sun had begun to set again, the fifteen priests were slowing in their chants and prayers. Her skin felt caked with filth and writing and bad magicks. When the last sliver of light fell beneath the horizon, the sky red and angry, the torches were lit and each priest knelt around the altar.

Jul'Kazor hefted a sword with jagged edges, it's blade made of gleaming stone, and one by one felled each priest with a single stroke to the neck.

Fifteen heads were mounted on pikes around the platform.

Fifteen severed necks dripped blood into elaborate trenches carved into the stone around Maia's body.

Beyond her feet, hands out in the direction of the rising blood moon, Jul'Kazor began his invocation.

She willed herself not to cry, gritting her teeth and gazing defiantly upward.

Five masked attendants came forward, dressed in the same mud as the priests, only like their's, in the end, it was dry and cracking around their joints, flaking off on her flesh as they approached her, two on either side of her torso, and one leaning over her legs.

Her grace began to tremble.

Four sets of hands speckled mud and dust over her hips and abdomen, fingers hovering above her skin, one attendant stood between her open thighs, hands spread in the air above her pelvis.

A gong sounded.

The hands descended, rested on her skin.

Another note on the gong.

Four sets of hands lifted. The one on her hips remained.

Another note rang into the air. Jul'Kazor raised his voice. The moon was beginning to rise.

The four sets of hands returned, each palm cupping amber-tinged oil. When the gong rang again, the hands turned, dumped their contents on her flesh. Another toll, and they rubbed it into her skin.

Enduring pain, torture, these are things one would expect when bound to an altar, at the center of a heathen ritual to a blood-thirsty god. Disembowlment, flesh-cutting, blood-letting... it was what Maia was preparing herself for. So it was completely mind-bending when, as the oil was massaged into her flesh, a blissful, euphoric wave of sensual warmth spread through her limbs.

This scared her far worse than anything they'd done so far.

The fifth pair of hands belonging to the attendant between her thighs scooped handfuls of the oozing liquid, rubbing down her hips, annointing her belly and running slowly down the insides of her thighs.

Maia's back arched above the altar, gasping at the hateful heat that was unfurling through her.

This was worse than pain, she'd decided.

When the fifth attendant's fingers touched her aching flesh between her legs, she began to beg for her freedom.

The gong sounded.

Four attendands stepped back.

Jul'Kazor hefted his sword and stood before one. The attendant bowed his head.

His head rolled across the floor.

The second bowed when it was his turn.

Thunk.

And so it went until only the fifth remained, rubbing at the apex of her body with slow, even strokes, coaxing hateful shudders and whimpers from the drained mage.

Jul'Kazor stood at her head, facing away from her body and the moon, calling the spirits to witness. He began to disrobe.

Thick fingers slid into her.

Maia felt herself clench around them.

"Stop," she croaked, eyes snapping open wide to stare at the Troll that touched her, searching for the eyes behind the mask, the soul beyond the filth. "Stop, please stop-" she begged.

His hands didn't stop; worse, they were slow and gentle and insistent.

It made her think of Koda.

Violently, she shook her head, unwilling to defile his memory by summoning him to mind here. "Stop!" she said again, voice breaking. "Stop, stop, STOP-!"

Jul'Kazor ignored her; his voice rose into the night.

The attendant ignored her too, hunched over, the long, pointed end of his mask hovering above her belly. His hands kept working.

The heat of the oil was powerful, the perfume of it masking the odors that permeated the night and the ritual. It hung over her like a thick blanket, smothering her sense with stupor, making her more vulnerable to her terror, even as the pleasure in her body mounted and mounted.

Yes, this was so much worse than pain.

When she came to that inevitable point, Jul'Kazor's voice droning in the background, she bit her lip, refusing to cry out. But the mask of the attendant hovered closer.

"Don't hold back," the voice said, so soft she almost missed it. "It won't work if you hold back."

She was losing her mind. The voice was worming it's way inward, just like those thick fingers.

"Don't stay silent. Shout it." Two fingers pushed deep, hard.

He leaned closer.

"Trust me... Maia."

Her eyes snapped open again, head lifting to stare into the eyes of Kodakai gazing back at her through the elaborate mask, fierce and hard. His fingers curled up within her.

She threw her head back and screamed her release.

And then all hell broke loose.

ooo

There was a commotion on the steps below the temple, a shrieking hiss followed by the terrified screams of people caught unawares. Crashing, thrashing, flapping chaos, and above the din there was Jul'Kazor, screaming his head off for order, sounding more frightened than any of them, his voice shrill and full of panic.

Koda's oil slick hands pulled at her bindings and slice them with a sharp knife as the priest's attention remains arrested by the antics far below. The hunter hisses an apology when he nicks her ankle, helping her down to almost collapse on her shaking legs.

He crouched low, pressing into her, pushing a heavy canteen into her trembling hands. "Drink, Maia, we don't have much time."

His words were as intoxicating as the oil that still burned her skin and dulled her senses. She dropped the waterskin and reached beneath the mask, disbelieving, too terrified to feel relief. His hands closed around her wrists, guided her hands to the canteen again.

"Please... please, my love, you need to drink-"

"No," she breathed. "No, I need to see. Please let me see... I want to know it's you, and not... not some final vision sent to torture me..."

He paused, gazing at her. Then, with an upward glance to make sure the priest was still distracted, Koda exhaled slowly and drew back the mask.

His proud nose was flanked on either side by cheeks wet with tears, his beautiful face the only part of him not covered in stinking mud. His eyes were fierce but wet, gazing at her with a dozen different emotions flitting through his expressive features. A body made rigid with these same feelings, he quivered, poised like an arrow on a taut string when her trembling hands cupped his jaw.

"You're here," she whispered, fingers straying across his lips.

His lips curved in the echo of a smile, and then he was pressing the canteen back into her hands. "Please, Maia, drink-"

There was a howl of rage, and a large two-toed foot invaded her vision and smashed into the side of Koda's head, sending the Zandalari sprawling.

"NO! SHE IS MINE!"came the raw, throat-scorching scream from the Atal'ai priest.

Maia had a moment to steal a swallow of water before he wrenched the skin from her hands, grabbing her by the back of her cropped hair to yank her upward and throw her over the altar. She was gasping for air, hand pushing back against his shoulder as he leaned over her, kicking her thighs open.

His skin smelled foul, broke the spell of the warming oil and sent sharp, energizing fear through her. She bucked and shrieked, legs clamping shut when she felt the tip of him brush the curve of her buttocks.

He swore loud, angry, and gripped the base of the tail that hung down the back of her hips, pushing it hard and sudden and forward. Maia yelped in pain and thrashed forward away from his grip. She saw his savage grin in the corner of her eye, and then Koda was there, throwing himself forward and tackling Jul'Kazor.

She heard their scuffle as she clung to the surface beneath her, praying for the pain to subside so she could move. The pair thrashed and fought, tossed one and then the other, scattering jars, pikes, and severed heads, bloody marks from the floor following them wherever they went. One of them was pinned at the edge of the platform, and then there was a twist and they each wrestled to get their legs under them. It was torture not knowing which was who while she fought the exhaustion and agony, willing herself to breathe,and lower herself to the ground and off the altar.

Seconds stretched like years, and when she finally managed to stand on her own two feet, she looked over just in time to see the Atal'ai grab the braids on either side of the Zandalari's head and jerk him downward, Jul'Kazor's knee connecting to Koda's jaw with a loud crack.

Koda fell back, dazed, one arm dangling over the edge, his other flopping uselessly by his head.

Jul'Kazor raised his arms, roaring his triumph. Below, something roared too, and it made the priest jump in fear. He stared down the side of the temple, eyes wide, pupils closing to points as terror made him pale and stink of anxiety.

Maia stood on shaking legs, gauging the distance between them, steel growing through her nerves as an idea bloomed, making her straighten and lift her chin. She felt the trickle of mana, just a little from her only desperate swallow of water; it was still the most she'd had at her fingertips in days.

When he turned his gaze back to Koda prone on the ground, the priest's lip curled in a snarl as his hand closed around the hilt of his stone sword, the weapon propped up against a pike nearby. He was raising it above his head when Maia spat his name.

He jerked and looked up her, wild eyes meeting her's.

She bared her teeth at him and took a step backward.

His snarl became a leer.

Gods, she hated him.

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. He laughed, eyes wide in disbelief and triumph.

"Ya have barely enough power to light a candle, silly soft skin." His grin was crazed, yellowed, rotting teeth glistening and wet in the torchlight. "What are ya gonna do?" He turned his head to spit, eyes never leaving her face. "Freeze me with that glare o' yours?"

He seemed to find that image especially funny. He threw his head back a laughed maniacally at the rising scarlet moon.

Maia's eyes narrowed, counting the feet from him to where she stood.

She took a deep breath...

-then another half step back, tensed, and then blinked across the distance, shoving her arms out at the last minute.

She used the push against Jul'Kazor's chest to hurtle backwards, feeling the edge of the platform beneath her toes-

-too close too close TOO CLOSE-

-and falling back on her hips so she didn't land quite on the horrible tail plug.

The priest's startled expression as he fell back, arms flailing out, was a balm to her eroding sanity. She lifted her chin as she heard his wail interrupted by the neck snap on the first step he hit, looking down to watch him sprawl and land on the ground far, far below.

She could see, now, what was causing the noise and chaos; a white, glowing windserpent, the largest she'd ever seen, had manifested at the base of the temple, tinged red, aura snapping bright with power. It shrieked and lunged, snapping limbs off fleeing Atal'ai worshippers, tossing his head and throwing them aside. There were bodies everywhere, the serpent's great, flapping wings snuffing fires, the villagers much fewer than Maia remembered. Soon, the survivors dove into the water and swam desperately for shore, their cries of horror going with them.

Silence, save for the stroking of scaled, feathered wings through the warm swamp air. She didn't recognize the creatures beads and colors until the wrath spell ended, and the windserpent shrank to a more normal size.

He coiled as he flew, still near three times the size of his master, tail whipping and head lashing about. He looked up, forked tongue darting forward, and voiced a soft cry to the mage above him.

Maia raised a weak, trembling hand, then turned to look at the hunter sprawled nearby.

Koda was groaning, sitting up slowly and rubbing at his jaw, swearing under his breath. Limp with relief and exhaustion, she leaned backwards on her elbows, taking the pressure off her ass and settling it on her lower back. He looked over at her, curling forward slowly to stand and make his way to her.

When she stood up, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close, until her toes left the ground and her arms were wound tight about his neck. She whimpered his name, shaking, gratitude and love pouring from her to him.

"Yes, Maia?" he answered, tightening his hold on her.

She wiped her eyes on her arm, pulling her head back to look at him and meet his gaze.

She lifted her chin, anger flaring deep within her chest. "Make him eat the monster," she whispered fiercely.

Koda blinked at her, then leaned over a little to look at the sprawled body of her tormentor below. His eyes flicked back to her, and he nodded.

His lips pulled back as he gave a piercing whistle, and Maia pressed her face into his neck as the sound of breaking bones and wrenching flesh comforted the last of her madness.

Author here. Whew.

There's still more. I wrap my happy endings up in a nice, sticky little bow.
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- 19
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The Price of Gratitude