MAGE 15
By "Heck"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN


LON HAD BEEN part of Brenhya's life for several years, now, and had seen her
run the gamut of emotions. He had seen her distressed, depressed, and angry.
He had seen her in joyous laughter and in tears. He had seen her in splendid,
glorious action, and had witnessed her capacity for terrible, explosive
violence, countered by her infinite capacity for tender compassion. But he had
never seen her like this.

And he was scared.

It was like facing a maddened, ravening animal, and the furnace of lust that
burned in her eyes barely concealed the fires of hell. Lips drawn back from
her strong, white teeth in a silent snarl that was almost an insane grin,
breath hissing through clenched teeth, hands extended with fingers like hooked
claws, and every muscle as tense as an over-wound spring, she slowly advanced
toward the young apprentice.

"Brenhya?" Lon's voice was tremulous as he backed away from her. "It's me.
It's Lon. What're you doing?" Behind her, he heard Drosklyn Chaithe's wicked
laughter. "What've you done to her, you bastard?! Why is she acting like
this?"

"My dear boy!" Chaithe's rich voice was full of amusement. "You should be
thanking me! I have filled her with desire. In fact, right now, she is nothing
but desire. And it's all for you, what? She is a living, breathing example of
lust incarnate, eh? She can think of nothing but you, nothing but her lust.
Now, isn't that just what you've always wanted? Isn't that your deepest
desire, just as I promised?" And his laughter now had a megalomaniacal ring to
it.

"You madman!", Lon yelled. Tears began to well from his eyes as it dawned on
him what the wizard had done to the woman he adored. Still backing away, he
shook an impotent fist in rage and frustration at the other man. "You've
ruined her! She was perfect, and you've ruined her!"

"No, no, not at all", Chaithe replied, totally missing Lon's point. "The
ritual calls for the granting of a deepest desire by a perfect human.
Physically perfect, doncher know. It says nothing about the, ah, mental state,
what? I suggest you enjoy the experience. It's unlikely that you will be able
to again. Hah! Assuming you survive, of course".

"I never desired her like this!"

"Tut. Irrelevant, young man, totally irrelevant. Your deepest desire is to
have her, and you know it. Well, you're going to have her. Or, rather",
Chaithe chuckled, as if he had made a very good joke. "She is going to have
you! What?"

Brenhya lunged at him, and he just managed to dodge her grasp. "You're
mistaken!", he shouted, "Brenhya would never hurt me!"

"Have you learned nothing?" Chaithe snapped. He seemed genuinely angry, for a
second. "You should know that magic can be more powerful than the self. She
cannot see you as her friend, just now. You are merely an object, upon which
she is driven to vent her needs. Needs that are far stronger than she is". The
magician spoke now like a raconteur. "Oh, I'm sure she will regret it
afterwards, when she sees what she has done to you. But for now ..."

"Brenhya!" An edge of panic crept into his words as Lon danced out of the
reach of her long, powerful arms. "Brenhya! Snap out of it! You can beat this!
Don't do this, please!"

Brenhya's twisted expression showed real frustration, now, and a daemonic
determination that filled her prey with dread. Giving in to fear, he spun on
his toes, and sprinted away across the cavernous space, sobbing as he realised
that Brenhya was right on his heels. Chaithe's laughter followed him.

"Go on, boy! Try and get away! You'll only make her wilder, but that's all
right. You know she's much stronger and faster than you; you can't outrun her!
But try, boy! Try!"

Like a coursed hare, Lon zigzagged over the flags. It seemed that, however
hard and far he ran, the far wall came no closer, and Brenhya was right
behind, keeping pace with him, apparently without effort. Gasping for air, he
stopped, turning to face the woman, moving backwards with arms outstretched as
if he thought he could fend her off.

"Brenhya, please! Not this way! Not like this!"

The warrior seemed not to hear him. She was breathing normally, and had hardly
broken sweat [other than the sweat of lust], and just kept coming forward. She
let out a low growl, ripping the leather skirt and halter from her body like
tissue, as if they suddenly irritated her, and stripped her brief undergarment
from her.

Even in the throes of near-panic, Lon could not help but gasp in admiration of
the magnificent naked body that advanced upon him. The hard lines of her
muscular shape spoke of nothing but real feminine strength and power, and now
he knew how her enemies had felt at the sight of her coming at them.

Lon feinted left, and ducked to the right. He had not thought he could escape
her, and he was right. Her muscled hand shot out with the speed of a striking
snake, and caught him by the collar of his jerkin.

"Oh, shit!" Lon knew his cause was lost. He struggled desperately in her iron
grasp, with about as much success as a three-year-old struggling against an
irate mother. In a last, hopeless attempt to snap her out of it, he swung his
open hand hard, right across her cheek. It landed with a loud smack.

He might as well have slapped a rock. She hardly seemed to notice the blow.

Brenhya pulled him close, slamming his body against hers, driving the wind
from his lungs with the impact. Her other hand took the opposite collar of his
leather jerkin and she threw her hands wide, ripping the garment down the
centre seam. His arms flew up as the two halves parted company and the jacket
was torn from him. He cried out in pain as the tough material was stripped
from his arms, and sobbed convulsively as his shirt and pants were subjected
to similar treatment.

Lon wept. His face crumpled and tears coursed down his cheeks as he cried
unashamedly.

He wept as much for the terrible state in which the best friend he had ever
had in his entire life now found herself, as he did for the pain and fear. He
wept for a beautiful woman, reduced to a lust-crazed animal. He wept for the
life he had before being taken into apprenticeship on this gods damned island.
He wept for the brutal treatment he knew was coming. And in his nakedness, he
wept for the world, bereft of a great heroine and likely to be subject to
Drosklyn Chaithe's tyrannical rule.

But his tears has no effect on Brenhya. Her powerful hands closed painfully
tight around Lon's stringy biceps, holding his nakedness helplessly against
her, rubbing her groin hard against his. Her buried his face in her tangled
mane, trying to hide his eyes from the sight of her savage face. Her firm
breasts with hardened, erect nipples, crushed against his thin chest, and she
continued to grind her hips against him.

He could feel the hot wetness at her crotch, coupled with the rasping of her
tight chestnut curls amongst his brown ones, and felt an urgent tightening in
his own loins. Despite his fear, despite his pain, and despite his desperately
willing it not to be so, he could feel his manhood rising.

Now, Lon was not unimpressive in that department, although he had had little
opportunity to test the opinion of others. In fact, save for some clumsy
fumblings with a couple of village girls, he was very naive in the ways of
physical love and, indeed, had never experienced full penetrative sex.

He could have thought of better ways to lose his virginity.

Brenhya gave an animal grunt of satisfaction as she felt his surprisingly
large phallus pressing against her. She straddled her legs, two immovable
pillars of iron, and adjusted Lon's position so his penis rubbed the length of
her vulva, stimulating her engorged clitoris. Briefly, she released her grasp
in his arms and, convulsively, he tried to twist away. She snarled a lupine
snarl, and grabbed him by the back of the neck with one hand. The other hand
seized his buttocks, pinching the skin agonisingly between her grappling hook
fingers as she manoeuvred him into position betwixt her thighs.

Lon's first waking vision of Brenhya had been one of her exerting a little of
her tremendous strength when, years before, her had opened his eyes in her
arms as she carried him away from where she had found his unconscious body.
Since then, he had witnessed her power in action on innumerable occasions. So
often, in fact, that, although still terrifically impressed by it, he had
become almost blasé about it. It filled him with trust in her, and had made
him feel safe.

This was different.

Even now, insanely motivated as she was, he knew she was not exerting herself
to her full capacity. She twisted and manipulated him like a rag doll, placing
him where she needed him, without any regard for his dignity. For the first
time, he was experiencing Brenhya's strength from the wrong side. He was
feeling it being used against him, and felt utterly, utterly helpless in her
hands.

This was terrifying.

His legs, turned to jelly by fear, flailed impotently beneath her, trying to
gain some purchase. He felt her positioning his manhood without much care for
his physical comfort, with the result that, from time to time, the tip of his
fully erect penis was jammed painfully against her thigh or pudenda. He
pounded uselessly with his fists against the thick, oak-hard muscles of her
back and shoulders, yelling her name in the vain hope of reaching her.

But Brenhya was well past being reachable. Her mad eyes flew wide, and she let
out a little yelp as she finally achieved her goal and rammed Lon's phallus
deep within her wet tunnel. Even Lon, panicked as her was, could not help but
react as the warm, tight moistness engulfed him, and let out an involuntary
gasp, almost as if of pleasure.

The hand on his neck held him firmly, while the one on his buttocks slammed
his groin against hers, sliding his member in and out of her rhythmically. He
was violently jerked up and down, to the accompaniment of soft grunts
originating deep in Brenhya's chest. His head bobbed with every stroke, no
longer able to support itself against the movement. He wrapped his hands
tightly in her thick red hair, trying to counter the slamming, jerking action
to which he was being subjected.

Usually, a young man in his first sexual encounter finds it very difficult to
hold back, and the whole thing is normally finished in a few strokes. However,
Lon was paralysed with fear, and his mind, inasmuch as it was capable of
rational thought, was anywhere but on physical pleasure. So, although his
penis was fully tumescent, he did not come to climax as quickly as might
otherwise have been the case. Which was unfortunate.

Bending her knees and spreading her thighs even further, Brenhya was able to
drive Lon's rod even deeper into her eager vagina, bruising his groin with the
force of her thrusts. Her lips were stretched back from teeth dripping with
saliva, her tongue lolling and her eyes full of a wild light. His body flopped
around in her hands as he lost his grip in her hair, unable now to maintain
any pretence of control.

And still his ordeal went on. And on. He was incapable of noticing it, but
Brenhya's insane expression was now overlaid by one of grim determination. Her
hair hung in rat's tails, strands of it plastered to her face with sweat, and
her body was glowing with a sheen of perspiration as she drew her breath
through her open mouth in hard pants. Sweating and panting through mad lust,
slamming his manhood deeper and harder and faster.

At long last, Lon's physiology gave in to the inevitable. Like a bubbling
cauldron, the tension built in his loins as a tremendous, explosive orgasm
built within him. His body tightened, and he became rigid in her hands as
Brenhya continued to drive him up inside her. He convulsed and cried out as
his semen pumped out of him in wave after wave of cruel, painful ecstasy.
Seeming not to notice, Brenhya still pulled him against her as if trying to
milk every last drop of his juice from him, and he yelled out on every stroke.
Meaningless sounds that nonetheless held every ounce of his distress, pain,
and pleasure.

Finally, the waves subsided and Lon's body and phallus began to relax.

Sensing his orgasm was over and, thus, her compulsion, Brenhya let go of his
body. He fell to the ground with a thump, smacking the back of his head
against the flags. Still filled with dread, Lon twisted away from her and
curled up protectively, in a foetal position on the floor.

Brenhya looked down on him, not knowing why he lay there, as the madness fled
her eyes. And just as it began to dawn on her, her eyes rolled up in her head
and her knees crumpled under her. Slowly and gracefully, she folded to the
floor as her senses left her.

Lon lay shivering on the floor, his back to the fallen warrior, sobbing
through tightly pressed lips and eyelids. But he twisted his head to see where
the slow, approaching handclaps were coming from.

"Congratulations, boy!". Drosklyn Chaithe strolled casually over the cavern
floor toward them. "You lived, what?! Well done!" He gave a short, humourless
laugh. "Oh, don't worry about her. She'll be fine. Eventually. Eh?"

Lon looked as though Brenhya's well-being was the last thing on his mind at
that precise moment. He huddled in a wretched heap, the fear plain in his
eyes.

"What are you going to do now?"

"To you? Nothing. You and she have served your purpose, doncher know? You have
set the stage, as it were, eh? So now, I leave you to, um, catch your breath,
what? And you need not be afraid of her. She'll be good for nothing for hours.
Heh!"

Without another word, Chaithe crossed his arms over his chest, closed his
eyes, and inclined his head. Like a man disappearing through the wrong end of
a telescope, he seemed to diminish before Lon's dazed eyes. The young man
didn't know whether he was getting smaller, or suddenly far, far away. Either
way, the effect was the same, and he dwindled from sight, leaving the two
alone.

Lon was sore. His body had been used and abused, and he felt like there was no
strength in his limbs. He curled up in a trembling, miserable heap on the
hard, unforgiving flagstones, his mind unable to accept any suggestion of
action. And as so often happens when a mind is overloaded, it retreated from
the real world and Lon fell into a light sleep.

Brenhya lay sprawled on her back, arms outflung and legs folded under her. The
reason for her unconsciousness was, in a way, similar to Lon's. Her mind, her
will, had been taken over by a powerful magic, and she had really been
operating as an automaton, subject to the will of the magus. When the glamour
had fled her, and took the madness with it, it had left her brain momentarily
empty and void of function. Thus, she had lapsed into unconsciousness as her
mind struggled to regain its control and re- establish her personality.

The human brain is a marvellous and powerful engine, and it did not take more
than a few minutes for it to reconnect its pathways. Brenhya moaned softly as
she began to stir, raising a hand to her head as the first signs of what would
become a pounding headache began to make itself felt. She lifted herself onto
an elbow as she open her eyes just a crack, and tried to take in her
surroundings. Her brows furrowed in pain as the headache gripped her, and she
made out a vague shape lying on the floor before her.

"Lon?"

It took a supreme effort to bring herself to her knees, and she crawled
forward. Lon's body was still and flaccid, and she could see livid bruising
around his arms and over his groin, buttocks, and the back of his neck.

Like a battering ram, the memory of what had occurred smashed into her head.
In her mind's eye, she saw it all in livid, horrifying detail, and it stopped
her dead in mid-crawl.

"Oh, Goddess! Lon!" There was real anxiety in her cry. Brenhya's own tears
began to flow. "Goddess, don't let me have killed him! Lon!". And she reached
out a hand, touching him lightly on the thigh.

Lon reacted as if stung. He flung her hand away, and recoiled from her in
horror, retreating as far as he could before the wall stopped him. He huddled
against it, cringing away from her, making himself as small as he could.

"Get away from me! Leave me alone! Get away!"

Brenhya sat on her own feet, hands lying limply in her lap. The horror and
disgust in Lon's eyes was like a slap in the face to her, and she stared at
him with tears streaming down her stricken face, hardly able to comprehend the
enormity of what she had done to her very best friend. They had shared so many
adventures together, had laughed and cried together on uncountable occasions,
had become so close, that his reaction all but ripped the beating heart from
her. She raised an impotent hand and reached for him, helplessly.

"Lon? Please. I'm sorry. Please, don't be afraid of me. Oh, Goddess, I'm so
sorry".

His only reaction was to tuck his head into his raised knees.

"Oh, Lon". Tentatively, she began to move slowly toward him, shuffling on her
backside. "Saying sorry is so ...lame. I can't tell you how bad I feel about
this. I wouldn't hurt you for the world. You've got to know, it was out of my
control. I'd give anything to be able to take it all back. Lon? Please?"

He didn't know whether it was the tone of her voice, or the sincerity in the
words she spoke.

But for whatever reason, he lifted his head and looked upon her dirty, tear
streaked face. He swallowed hard, and set his face in what he thought was grim
determination.

"You feel bad? You feel bad?! How the hells d'you think I feel? Brenhya? You
abused me!"

"I ..."

"Don't tell me you're sorry! Don't you think I know that! I know you weren't
acting under your own volition, but, hells, Brenhya!" His fear was replaced by
a towering, righteous rage, the first time he had ever showed or felt anger
toward her. "It's the violence! The violence has always been in you! And there
have been times, yes, I admit, there have been times when I've been glad of
it. But, you see, if the violence wasn't in you, Chaithe wouldn't have been
able to make you do that! Shit! He might have been able to make you have sex
with me, but he wouldn't have been able to make you rape me!"

His mouth fell open, and Brenhya's eyes grew wide, at the enormity of what he
had just said. His voice became very quiet.

"You raped me, Brenhya".

Brenhya was left speechless. He was right, of course. That was exactly what
she had done. What she had been made to do. There were no words left.

Lon looked at Brenhya. Brenhya looked at Lon. Soundlessly, her lips formed the
word 'please'.

And Lon could see that, behind the tears, was the Brenhya he knew. The Brenhya
he loved. His face softened, and he held out his arms to her.

Like the biggest, strongest, most dangerous, frightened little girl in the
world, Brenhya crawled into his arms and snuggled up to his chest.