Eowyn: The Cage - Ch. 13

"For I'm desperate, Théo. I crave sex, perhaps more than is typical or even healthy, but it doesn't assuage the pain within. That pain is selfish, greedy, and all-consuming. Elfi's heart has a limitless capacity to give and share love because it's filled with the infinite surety of love, and maybe yours does too. Mine does not, for it's a black void of emptiness that knows only rejection and loneliness. It would devour your love and all who share it to feed its raging hunger, and that I cannot do...to you or Elfi. If I'm ever healed, perhaps things would be different and we could come together without consequence. But not now. I'm too broken...and though you may not realize it, you're too fragile. Too vulnerable."

Now it was his turn to well with tears, for despite the impossibility of their union a future with Elfi was one he would never be able to accept. "I...Éowyn, I...."

Embracing him as lovingly as possible, she placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, then an even softer one on his lips. "Do you understand, now?"

He nodded, but Éowyn was distracted in her attempt to comfort; his rigid shaft prodded her stomach, showing no sign of flagging despite her weighty words and the heavy emotions of the moment. Théo reddened, muttering, "I should go," though he didn't break their embrace.

She looked deep into his eyes, her sadness lightened by a growing bemusement. He's been incredibly patient and understanding, and deserves some sort of reward for what he's given up. And I really shouldn't let him leave like this, for unlike me he can't easily retreat somewhere private and take care of his problem.

"Before you do...."

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"Now I really don't understand."

Her eyebrow lifted flirtatiously. "It's true I'd rather this wasn't necessary, because it's much, much harder on me than it will be for you." His own eyebrow elevated at the innuendo. "However, my love for you and Elfi encompasses a desire for your wellbeing. Based on our encounter the other night, I'm not convinced of your ability to control yourself in precarious situations...and as the coauthor of several such situations, I believe I speak with experience. I can't let you return to her in this state."

He looked down. Her long fingers were wrapped around his cock, stroking his veined shaft while he urgently thrust through her hand. Gradually, she picked up the pace.

"Éowyn, please, I...." He moved to kiss her, but she stopped him.

"Théo, we can't. I'm already straining the limits of my control as it is. A kiss would spark renewed intimacy, and that's the quickest path to my capitulation. This has to be strictly physical."

Tell him another one, you liar. You're ten times more turned on than you were when he was groping you! Pushing aside her hectoring internal scold, she stroked harder. This must be for him, not me.

He gave up all resistance, and their long-building erotic tension quickly brought him to the brink of release. Damn my impulsiveness, she remonstrated, realizing what was about to happen. His ejaculate is going to spray everywhere, and I've nothing with which to clean it save my clothes. Those are stains I'd rather not explain. I guess there's only one alternative.

She dropped to her knees and opened her mouth wide, pointing his cock directly at her outstretched tongue, barely clinging to her determination to avoid moving closer and fellating him. I can't wrap my lips around his shaft. Once I start, I'll....

Streams of ejaculate shot like crossbow bolts from the tip of his rod, flying into her maw as she pumped. She was unable to repress her groan as the delicious cream spread across her tongue. He shuddered with ecstasy, frequently missing the mark and lacing her lips, nose, chin, and cheeks with his thick nectar. His load was far from prodigious, for the stimulation had been brief, yet it was more than enough to make a mess of her face.

Well...better me than the floor or the bedding, she mused, squeezing the last drops from his softening pillar and swiping them free with a finger. Efficiently, almost matter-of-factly, she swallowed. When she looked up, she realized he was gaping at her in awe.

"I'm sorry, Théo...you probably wanted me to make more of a show of that, didn't you?" There was an uncharacteristic twinkle in her eyes — the first true moment of levity since he'd burst into her quarters — and despite his dazed expression, he managed a grin as he tucked his shrinking organ back into his pants.

She stood, still rather obscenely decorated by his seed and showing no immediate inclination to remove it, and they stared at each other for a long while, neither quite knowing what to say. With a sigh she broke the impasse.

"Goodbye, Théo. I hope just for now. I don't know what will happen the next time we see each other, but...."

"Éowyn, I'll never...." His voice caught.

She smiled, though there was immense sadness in it. "I know. Nor will I."

With one final glance he turned to leave. Wistfully, she studied the air he'd abandoned, then crossed to her small washbasin and cleansed herself, checking her image in a glass to see if she'd gotten it all.

Thanks to that diversion, I think I'm at last ready to face my people, she told herself, finally donning her abandoned armor and girding herself with a sword. And also to face what little future remains to me.

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Théoden's return was a whirlwind of activity; exhausting for everyone, but even more so for her due to the heavy emotional cost of fending off what she perceived as accusatory stares and interrogations from her brother Éomer and her uncle the King. While she doubted they had any inkling of her physical dalliances and depravities, they seemed to intuitively discern exactly how matters stood between her and Aragorn. To her shame she found she could hide neither the outline of events nor the significance of her feelings from their keen eyes and keener hearts.

Cautioned by Éomer to catch what few hours of sleep she could — the better to aid their departure the next morning — she nonetheless seethed with resentment at the order to stay behind, excluded and abandoned. Still, there was short-term wisdom in the advice, and with the practiced techniques of a warrior she fell quickly to sleep. Her final conscious hope was that her dreams would allow her a rest more restorative than the previous night's.

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Éowyn awoke in blackness. Fell noises swirled through the air, building from distant echoes until they hissed directly into her ears. She stumbled blindly forward, flailing, grasping for anything tactile to which she could anchor her formless existence.

Suddenly, the echoes receded and a cold wind arose from all directions. She concluded that she'd wandered into a large, open space. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness she perceived a faint, funereal glow in the distance. Gradually, the timid illumination coalesced the otherwise impenetrable blackness into vague forms: rocky outcroppings, high cliffs, sheer drops...all reeking of millennia of decay, as if the very soul of this horrible landscape was long dead. The chill penetrated to her bones and she shivered uncontrollably.

Drawing her sword, she crept cautiously forward. Searching...though for what she didn't know...and quivering with an unfocused but growing fear.

Bony hands clutched at her arms. She whirled and slashed, but her blade passed through empty air. She crouched, readying herself for battle, and when the sharp fingers made contact a second time her sword carved a dizzying blizzard of helixes designed to decapitate or disembowel any within reach.

But there was nothing to hit. Am I only imagining my assailants? What's going on? Wherever I am, I have to get out of here! Confused, breathless, and increasingly terrified, she plunged forward. Invisible hands gripped her waist; this time, her desperate counterstroke met unyielding rock. Her sword flew from her hand, ringing at the impact and clattering to the ground. The shock exploded in her arm and she cried out in agony, her forearm temporarily rendered useless by pain intense enough that she feared it might be broken. Panicked, she scrabbled for her weapon — she could, at need, fight with either hand — but it was nowhere to be found. Claw-like fingers poked her flesh and wrapped around her limbs, yet in the pale light there was no one to be seen.

Bracing for physical combat despite being deprived of her right arm, she prepared to defend herself to the last of her strength. But no matter which way she turned or how she lashed out, she couldn't make contact with anyone or anything. I'm losing my mind!

As if encouraged by her futility, even more invisible hands joined in effecting her imprisonment. Escaping their clutches became difficult, then impossible, and when she finally lost control and fell to the ground the impact amplified the searing pain in her arm. She felt herself being dragged along the hard ground, and though she struggled...flailing, punching, and kicking...there was no freeing herself. She tried to scream for help, but her voice wouldn't materialize. She was lost, helpless, and — for the first time in her life — paralyzingly afraid.

Her armor was torn from her body and the rest of her garments were rent and tossed aside. Naked and shivering, the icy angularity of the hands that mauled her was more apparent then ever. In desperate fury she twisted and writhed, but it was of no more use than before. She couldn't get away from assailants that didn't exist in physical form.

Chilly palms squeezed her breasts, freezing her turgid nipples in the tight pinch of razor-sharp nails. Her legs were roughly yanked apart, her ankles held in place by invisible hands. Bony fingers probed her resisting sex, then withdrew. A smooth, deathly cold pillar took their place, pushing into her unwilling depths, spreading its frigid blackness through the walls of her pussy. It was as if she'd been penetrated by a phallus made of ice, and she felt the weight of an invisible body atop hers, its breath frosting her face as an unseen cock plunged in and out of her cunt. He bore the horrible smell, the touch, the feeling of death, and she found she couldn't even cry out in protest, for her tongue seemed frozen in place.

The phantom fucked her with unrelenting strokes until her sex numbed. An explosion of ice burst deep within her — was that his climax? — and her channel was abandoned, only to be filled by another brittle spear that precisely mimicked the monotonous pistoning of the first.

While she was all too aware that she was being violated, she felt a strange lack of fury at the assault. Oddly, she perceived neither malice nor anger on the part of those who were molesting her; it felt instead like the cold desperation of brutality demanded rather than desired. While she was obviously deriving no pleasure from the act, she was convinced that neither — save the inevitable ejaculations — were they. The ritual to which she was being subjected was, despite its sexual form, entirely asexual, and the cold indifference of it somehow seemed to diminish the threat to anything other than her body. In a way, this is less nonconsensual than the degradations Wormtongue visited upon my flesh. This feels more like a test. A process to be endured, in which the only sensation is the very opposite of feeling.

But while she may not have been experiencing the fullest potential horror of the assault she was enduring, in its place she felt a growing hopelessness. Despair. Death. With each frigid cock that stabbed into her, with every icy release, she felt a little more of herself die.

One ghastly prick after another — so many that their count ran into the hundreds — spread her cunt open and rutted back and for for a time, filling her with a rush of frozen ejaculate and then withdrawing to allow another to take its place. Other than occasional tugs and pinches at her nipples, no other part of her was touched. Even the hands that held her legs apart were long gone, for her growing lethargy deprived her of any will to resist. Thus, it took her a while to notice when the endless penetrations finally stopped.

A low chant issued from deep chasms, echoing from the walls, growing closer until its evil rhythm throbbed like a drum within her tortured mind. Though she had no idea how, she knew it to be a litany resurrected from a long-dead past. And while she couldn't decipher the words, she bore little doubt that they presaged her final fate.

From bluish-grey mists at the very limits of her sight a broad-shouldered figure emerged. Out of the void, fell voices intoned the shadow's title. "King of the Dead...King of the Dead...King of the Dead...."

Beneath a brittle, tarnished crown he was otherwise entirely naked; a magnificent specimen of masculinity seemingly carved from luminescent ice. His cock, however, was living flesh; indescribably enormous and powerfully erect. It radiated dominance and torrid sexual heat, and the steam that rose from its length wreathed and obscured his face.

The man drew closer, and Éowyn cried out in surprise and terror; the first time since she'd broken her arm that she'd been able to make her voice manifest. For she knew the approaching form.

"Aragorn!"

"Prepare her." It was his voice, yet somehow not. At close range he was eerily translucent, his eyes cold, unfocused, and empty. His body emanated a chill beyond any she'd known, despite the mighty phallus that radiated fire. The others rolled her over, pressing her face to the ground and raising her ass in the air. Deathly hands pulled her legs wide. Cruel fingers pried open her frigid hole in preparation for his entry, frozen ejaculate spilling from her abused channel like a hail of ice crystals; sharp bites that slashed her ravaged tissues.

She trembled with overwhelming fear, begging for respite. "No. No. Please, Aragorn, no! Please don't do this to me! Please...."

He offered no acknowledgement. Pressing his massive crown to her opening, he pushed. Relentlessly. Forcefully. Stretching her far beyond reason, reawakening her long-numbed capacity for pain as his towering cock punched its way into her cunt. Her protests became screams of agony. As soon as he was fully rooted he pulled back and began pumping. Uncaring. Unfeeling. Yet with more vigor and purpose than any who'd previously taken her, brutalizing her helpless sex with savage thrusts.

Her tears froze as they fell to the ground.

One of his enormous hands gripped her by the hair, pulling it taut like reins on a horse, steadying her against his pounding. The other wrapped around her shoulder, freezing skin, muscle, and bone in its terrible grip. She opened her eyes to look at it, and through her weeping noticed that he bore an uncharacteristically elegant ring crowned by a ghostly jewel. Despite all her suffering and dread, she turned her head to take one final look at the evil she'd once loved.

Whoever he was, he was not Aragorn. Not anymore. The space his body occupied was a black emptiness. Fear radiated from every invisible pore, and though his immense cock still sawed in and out of her pussy, it was that fear — born of limitless cruelty — that was the true assault on her mind and soul.

His volcanic orgasm erupted deep within her womb. It was ice, and it was fire, and it was pain. Most of all, it was horror. A terror that blossomed, seeking the last inviolate essence of her womanhood, fertilizing a monster that would consume her flesh until she was a hollow shell and emerge to wreak depravity and misery upon the world. Despair and death suffused her body and her mind drifted away, seeking release from bondage and failure. Yet even as she died, she clung to a single thread of hope.

Revenge! Whether in this world or in some nameless realm of the Outer Void, I will have my revenge. He — and whatever unholiness is born of this evil union — will die upon my sword. This I swear!

Her vow complete, she passed into darkness inescapable.

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Éowyn snapped awake, consumed by terror, grief, and loss. Confusion set in as her surroundings coalesced into reality.

She was in bed, nightdress bunched around her neck, skin riddled with goosebumps despite the pool of sweat in which she lay. Why am I unclothed? And what was the meaning of that nightmare?

Reaching between her legs, she found clear evidence that she'd again been self-pleasuring in her sleep. The thought sickened her, given the horror and violence of her dream, but as she restored her clothing and cocooned as tightly as possible in a dry blanket, her mind worked furiously.

Was that what may be, or what will be? I've experienced prophetic dreams, especially of late, but usually they've been amalgamations of that which is and that which isn't yet, conflating people, places, and events in unpredictable ways. Surely I'd never be so unwise as to expose myself to such terrible danger alone. Would I?

The darkness...the ghosts...obviously represent the Paths of the Dead and those who haunt them. The chanting made that clear. Despite my hopes, perhaps it was a reminder that Aragorn's road is not mine. But has he succumbed to evil along the way? Is that why I saw him as I did? The sudden urge to follow him anyway, despite the obvious warning of her nightmare, came and passed in the blink of an eye. No, there's no point to that worry. Were I to pursue him now, I'd be as alone as I was in that dream, with the likely consequences exactly as I foresaw. I'm not strong enough to face the Dead by myself.

So: my path leads elsewhere. Even if the dream wasn't about Aragorn, maybe it was a warning that I have my own unconquerable darkness to face. The last of her hope began to wither. If that's to be my fate, then so be it. Perhaps, before I die, I'll even achieve some version of the vengeance I vowed, and in that moment do some small good for those with the will and the purpose to live on.

But unless all else falls into ruin I can't achieve that here. So where can I go? The answer was obvious. All now ride to war. A war without hope of victory, with no outcome but darkness. A ride to honor and death. As it is still within my diminished power to achieve both, my destination is clear.

In any case, I know I can't stay here any longer. Even if last night's dream hadn't driven home its own lesson, today's encounter with Théo made it all too clear. I can't yet control my raging sexual urges, and that inability will eventually bring woe and destruction to those I love. I must leave, and that means I must do so in contravention of King Théoden's command.

Strangely, she felt little regret at her sudden determination to abandon her people. She felt only relief and a grim satisfaction that her future at last had form.

I even have a plan, of sorts.

With that thought, sleep once again took her. There were no more dreams.

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The camp buzzed with activity. Théoden and Éomer were distracted, attempting to impose order on a ride she would not be allowed to join. Well, it doesn't matter anymore. Given what I'm about to do, I'm happy to be ignored. Under these heavy, gloom-laden skies, who would bother to take heed of those being left behind?