Chapter Text
The next week plays out for Essek similar to the party. True to his word, Caleb had gotten Essek new clothes the morning after the party. They’re nothing like Essek’s preferred attire of course, but it’s enough-- a simple dark red tunic and a pair of thin black leggings. His feet stay bare and the metal collar is around his neck at all times, though the mantle-like ornamentation has been removed now. The members of the Assembly not present at the Martinet’s party are still eager to see the results of Essek’s ‘training’, so the two of them spend the week being paraded around. Cruel words are thrown at Essek left and right while Caleb-- or, Bren, rather, is praised. Essek has begun to separate them subconsciously, even though he knows logically that they are one and the same. Bren is the one who walks him around on a leash, the one who fucks him with a harness and fake cock over the edge of a table and leaves him there untouched with trembling knees, the one who calls him ‘whore’ and ‘toy’ and assumedly worse things in Zemnian. Caleb is the one who apologizes and rubs his sore shoulders in the privacy of their room, the one who strokes Essek’s hair as he drifts into trance, the one who kisses his forehead when he needs to be reminded that he isn’t an object to be used and discarded. Were it not for these soft moments, Essek would have a mind to be afraid. Caleb plays the part of Bren well, is cruel and indifferent when he needs to be, so much so that the softness he displays afterward feels uncanny. Essek feels, sometimes, like he is getting a glimpse into another timeline, one where Caleb never broke, and it frightens him more than he cares to admit.
Today, at the goading of Vess Derogna, Bren had chained him to a pillar and whipped him near bloody, making him count the lashes until he could not speak from hoarseness and then releasing the chains and fucking him into the floor until his entire body ached. In the private of their room, Caleb is frenzied, near tears making sure he is alright, offering a balm since he has no healing spells at his disposal. Essek’s brain feels fuzzy but he manages to refuse.
“It would make no sense,” he reminds Caleb, rubbing his shoulder gently.
“ Ja , I know. I am sorry, I know you are probably very sore. I wish I did not need to be so rough, but you know it would be obvious if I were to hold back.” Essek huffs out a quiet breath and feels his chest ache. This is just as painful for Caleb as it is for him. Perhaps not physically, but being unkind like this is not in Caleb’s nature, and Essek cannot imagine what it must be doing to his already damaged psyche.
“Are you any closer to finding what the Cobalt Soul needs?” Essek asks, and Caleb’s face darkens a little.
“Not really,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate.
---
Jester messages him. It’s been about two and a half weeks now and he is sitting alone in his and Bren’s room, bruised and exhausted. Bren has been gone about two hours, off discussing something with his former classmates, he’s unsure what. Perhaps they’re just catching up. He’s tracing his fingers in glyph patterns when he feels a soft hum in his subconscious, a clear sign he’s receiving a Sending spell message.
“Hi Essek! Uhhhm. Just figured we should check in since Caleb said it would take him about two weeks. Do you know if he's ready?” The constraints of the spell cut her off, or he suspects she would have more to say.
“Hello, Jester. Thank you, but no, I do not think Br-- ah-- Caleb has what he needs yet. Feel free to check in again soon.” He swallows and tries to ignore the voice in his head that tells him that was a chance to cry for help and he squandered it
---
Caleb is more distant now. There are still some days, after Bren has been particularly rough, that he will be tender and kind with Essek afterward, but these times become few and far between. He’s busy, often pulled away by other mages after he’s used Essek. He leaves Essek chained to the wall in his room more often than not. Essek craves those moments now, finds himself yearning for that kindness on days when his body and heart are both left aching and raw. Sometimes these moments now end in sex, slow and gentle, but sex nonetheless, and Essek isn’t sure when Bren and Caleb bled together in his mind. Sometimes when Caleb kisses him he feels his stomach drop and sometimes when Bren kisses him he’s sure he’s in love. It’s a funny thing, to realize how afraid he is, and yet how unwilling he is to do a single thing about it.
---
Sometimes when they have sex, Bren will ask him if he wants him to be gentle or rough. Essek always says rough because he knows (he knows, he knows and it aches) that if he says gentle, it will remind him of Caleb and he will break, just a little.
---
Bren fucks him into the bed and holds his hair in his fist.
“You’re mine,” he whispers, kissing Essek’s shoulder.
“Yours,” Essek croaks as tears slip from his eyes. Caleb releases his hair and strokes it gently as his thrusts slow to a grind that leaves Essek breathless and presses the leather of Bren’s harness against the back of his thighs. “I love you,” Essek whispers into the bedsheets. Bren doesn’t respond, but Caleb kisses his shoulder again.
---
Further into his time at the Cerberus Assembly, Essek learns by visceral example that slaves are quite common in the Assembly, and mainly disposable. He and Bren are sitting in on a magical demonstration led by a younger mage whom Essek has never interacted with. The mage seems cruel in his eagerness to please his peers as he gestures to a young man spread on a sort of operating table in the center of the room.
“Dunamancy, the magic from the Dynasty, was once out of the scope of our control. However, we now have access to more information about it through the Luxon beacons and the dutiful research done on them.” Essek’s heart is pounding and there’s blood rushing loudly in his ears. “Some of the research conducted has been quite useful in developing more elegant torture methods-- with time and space under your manipulation, you can expand one moment to feel like hours or make a second repeat over and over.” No, no, no, no, no, no . “So if, for example, I stab my pet here...” The slave on the table is sobbing but there’s a gag shoved in his mouth so all Essek can hear is panicked huffs of breath. The young mage is holding a dagger now, and with it he cuts lines into the slave’s torso before plunging it just to the left of the heart. There’s a noise as the mage casts something and Essek is stuck staring at the young slave on the table struggling for breath as pinkish blood bubbles from the wounds in his chest. His lung is ruined, he’s breathing all wrong, he’s going to die, and Essek’s ears are ringing. The spell seems to not work, the mage too inexperienced with Dunamancy, perhaps, or maybe he was just overzealous.
The slave is choking and sobbing now, desperately trying to stay conscious while blood and precious oxygen escape his body too fast, too fast.
“Our grasp of Dunamancy is much better, isn’t it, Liebling ?” Bren asks with a smirk. No acknowledgement of the man dying in front of them. Essek feels sick.
“They used the research on the beacons to do this.” He whispers, horrified. “My actions allowed for this to happen.”
Bren doesn’t respond.
When the presentation is over and the slave’s body is carted away, assumedly to be disposed of (or experimented on, but Essek tries not to think about that), the young mage walks over to the two of them. Essek is sitting at Bren’s feet, following him on hands and knees whenever he moves to engage in conversation. Bren sips his drink and regards the mage calmly.
“Something I can help you with?” He asks impassively.
“You are Ermendrud, right?” The mage asks, a wicked glint in his eyes. Bren nods. “And this is your pet, is that right? The Dynasty defector brought to his knees.” Bren laughs and pets Essek’s hair.
“He certainly is, and a lovely pet at that.” The mage laughs, taking a glass of his own and taking a long drink.
“Ah, you are too gentle with him. Pets need a rough hand sometimes, remind them why they’re here.” Bren’s smile grows sardonic, twitching with annoyance at the corner of his lip.
“What are you suggesting, Kraus? That I give my pet the same end as yours?”
“ Nein ,” the mage, Kraus, laughs again, waving his free hand in a careless fashion, “he was cheap and disposable to begin with. You have a rare gift here. All I am saying is that there are plenty of clerics here, and the Assembly keeps a stock of diamonds available for such occurrences. Worst case scenario, he’s more replaceable than you realize, crick or no.” Essek isn’t expecting the fist, which tells him Kraus wasn’t either. Bren’s fist connects with the other mage’s jaw, sending him sprawling, but almost as quick, Bren grabs Kraus’ collar and holds him at eye level. Kraus’ glass is shattered on the floor, sending a spill of dark red wine spattered across the tiles. There’s blood trickling from Kraus’ mouth, bright red and thinned with saliva. The look on Bren’s face is murderous.
“If you think I would waste months of hard work on a whim for a moment of sadistic pleasure, you don’t understand me at all. You should reconsider yourself and the man you work for. Another word from you on this subject and your fate will be worse than a simple blow to the face.” He releases Kraus’ collar and turns on his heel. “Come, pet.” He says.
That night, Caleb is back. There’s no sex, no roughness, instead Caleb pulls Essek into his arms and cries, stroking his hair and kissing every place he can reach with a tenderness Bren is incapable of.
“I am so sorry,” Caleb whispers, “I am trying so hard to keep it together. I try to follow their whims to keep us alive, but you know I would never harm you so permanently, right? I would never trade your life like that. Do you trust me? Do you trust me, Essek?” Essek’s mind flashes to the slave sprawled on the table, soaked in blood and begging for his life, and Bren’s teasing at Kraus’ lack of control over Dunamancy.
And he does. He does, he does, he does.
---
Weeks quickly become a month (though he only knows that for sure when Jester tells him), and Jester messages him again. He’s alone in Bren’s room again, waiting for him to return from research with other mages. Essek wishes he could sit in on that sort of thing, even barring the chance it might include Dunamancy again. The back of his skull hums, and he hears Jester’s voice like a drink of ice water, shockingly intense, but deeply soothing.
“Hi, Essek! Checking in again because it's been like, a month now. Do you know if Caleb is any closer? Also are you two okay?” He stifles a deep sigh.
“Hello again, Jester. Yes, we are fine. I do not know how close Caleb is to finding what he needs. My apologies.”
The door swings open. Bren is holding a collar in his hands that thrums with arcane energy and Essek feels a pit in his stomach.
“Who were you talking to, pet?” He muses, a soft smile on his face. “Perhaps we should take care of that?”
“What do you mean?” He asks, quiet but panicked. “What are you going to do?” Bren sets the arcane collar aside and begins to undo the clasps of Essek’s usual collar.
“I just thought you were due for an upgrade,” Bren says, “this collar is the result of careful research, it is similar to one the Mighty Nein found in the Archmage’s Bane. Or the-- ah-- Happy Fun Ball , as they called it.” Essek is trying to process-- Bren has verbally separated himself from the Mighty Nein, but also, anything that comes from something called the Archmage’s Bane can’t be good.
“What does it do?” He asks softly, afraid. Bren smiles.
“See for yourself.” The collar clicks around his neck and he tries to ask again but his words are blocked. He blinks up at Bren, panicked, and tries to speak again but his mouth hangs open and the words don’t come. He tries to beg but the words are blocked, it’s like the vibrations die in his throat. Bren’s eyes glint. “It works perfectly, I see. Lovely.”
They find later, as Bren fucks Essek hard and fast, that the collar allows him to make noises, but never full words. Bren seems pleased with this and tells him how lovely he sounds as Essek sobs quietly and wordlessly under him.
---
Bren may not be willing to kill him for simple pleasure, but it seems he is still curious about the research that’s already been done. Curious to see it for himself, perhaps. This is how Essek finds himself laid out on an operating table similar to the one from the presentation ( the one that other man died on , his brain supplies) with his arms and legs restrained, naked and terrified. Bren is hovering over him holding a small, sharp knife. He’s still silenced by the collar, though he occasionally releases small wounded noises like a trapped animal. In a way, he thinks, he sort of is.
“Where do you think I should start, pet?” Bren asks in a quiet, awful voice.
An hour later Essek has screamed himself hoarse and Bren’s hands are soaked with Essek’s blood. It seems the beacon experiments have succeeded-- in the sense that Essek was never once close to death in all of Bren’s vivisecting. The extracted dunamis had held his body in stasis as Bren had cut into him, spread his ribs open and pulled his organs from his body with the meticulous care that he once admired in Caleb. Despite his own research on the beacons, he isn’t sure he understands it. It is, admittedly, a little difficult to think clearly when Bren is standing over him holding his heart in one hand while his other hand fishes around inside his chest cavity. Bren spends a few minutes tracing a glyph inside Essek’s chest before he grows bored. He leans over to kiss Essek instead. Essek sobs into his mouth and struggles against the bindings. His entire body burns with pain and he wishes Bren would let him die. Bren shushes him gently.
“You are so beautiful,” Caleb murmurs. Bren examines his heart slowly, turning to organ over in his hand as his other hand strays to Essek’s cunt. Essek whines loudly as Bren’s blood-slick fingers ghost over his hole and clit, eyes locked on his. He buries two fingers in Essek’s cunt, a little dry but helped by the blood, and lifts Essek’s heart to his mouth to kiss it. Essek makes a noise that’s half disgust, half arousal and tries to squirm away from his fingers. Bren smiles and slowly licks Essek’s heart, the tip of his tongue tracing the vena cava as his fingers scissor inside Essek. He twists his fingers and presses his thumb hard against Essek’s clit and Essek comes, his thighs shaking around Bren’s wrist. It makes excitement and disgust and fear and shame all bubble together in Essek’s stomach and he whimpers and writhes as tears pour down his cheeks. Bren’s expression turns sorrowful. “Oh, that simply will not do, Kätzchen .” He replaces the heart carefully in Essek’s chest and removes his fingers and steps back. Another mage enters and casts something, and Essek feels the pain recede, but it isn’t exactly like being healed. It’s more like he loops back through the pain, like his body is shifting back an hour in time. His broken ribs knit back together, quietly snapping into place, and all the blood that had poured out of him fills back in and his veins sew themselves shut. The sensations all blend together: the searing pain of being cut into, the pleasure of orgasm, the shame and the fear. It’s like vertigo and it leaves his entire body tingling and his head fuzzy. He realizes that Bren is quietly counting in Zemnian to his left.
“ Sechs, sieben, acht, neun… ah, and it looks like you are back to us.” Bren’s smile is calculating, predatory. “How did that feel?” Essek glares at him. “Go on, liebe , answer me.” The small smile grows to a full grin and Bren steps forward to cup his face and kiss him. Essek tries to squirm away, gasping and crying quietly. “You are incredible, Essek,” he murmurs, “so good for me.”
He wishes he could hear that in another context, that it could mean what he wants it to, but there’s still the phantom pain of a blade in his sternum, and he aches.
---
Time becomes blurry. Once, in a brief moment when the collar is off, he asks Bren how long they’ve been here. Bren just smiles.
“How long do you think it’s been?” Bren asks. Essek doesn’t answer, he doesn’t know how. His grasp of time is so fuzzy that he could not even guess. He hopes that it hasn’t been too long (has the Mighty Nein given up or are the messages directed to Bren now?), but he isn’t sure. He shakes his head and Bren raises an eyebrow. “Five months,” Bren says. Essek’s stomach sinks. He nods and curls in on himself as the collar is put back on.
---
Bren adds manacles to the collar and Essek spends his days with his hands held behind his back. They have runes carved into them that pulse with magic but Bren refuses to tell him what they do. He supposes he’ll find out eventually.
Bren decides to test them one day when he’s bored. He’d been reading on the bed previously while Essek had sat slung forward in the most comfortable position he could find, his fingers tracing glyphs idly against the floor lest he forget. He can’t afford to forget, not when this is all he has. He doesn’t know if Bren notices him tracing glyphs or he’s simply bored. He supposes it doesn’t matter.
“ Versengen ,” Bren says. The manacles send pain shooting up Essek’s arms, burning into his skin like brands. He screams and struggles against them. Bren smiles. “ Spannen. ” The pain stops, but the manacles tighten, pulling his arms so hard that his shoulders creak in protest. He groans quietly, trying to angle his body to give his arms as much space as possible. “ Gefühllos .” The manacles loosen, but all of a sudden he can’t feel his hands. He attempts to wiggle his fingers, to move his wrists inside the confines of the manacles, but nothing. He sobs quietly.
“ Halt .” Bren says, seeming satisfied. “What do you think of those, pet?” Essek hisses out a quiet breath of exhaustion and pain and Bren beams. “I like them too,” he says, leaning over to ruffle Essek’s hair. Despite himself, Essek leans into the touch, covets it, until it’s pulled away and he’s left alone again.
---
Bren rarely takes him out anymore either-- he’s taken to keeping him locked up, alternating between spending time with him and leaving him alone for long intervals. Bren has taken to threatening him randomly, and he must do it for the fun and the fear it incites and little else. It’s not necessary to threaten Essek to comply-- he doesn’t have it in him to refuse or fight against anything at this point. Today Essek is naked, sprawled on the bed on his front with his hands still chained behind his back, and there’s a beautiful steel dagger hovering inches from his cunt. Bren is kissing his shoulder and the knife is held in a thickly gloved hand.
“Do you think I would do it, meine kleines Spielzeug ?” He asks, his tone far too cheerful. “More importantly, do you think you would deserve it?” Essek isn’t sure anymore. He sobs and shakes his head. There’s a small shift of movement and then cold metal is pressing against his folds. He sobs and tries to writhe away, but it isn’t sharp. It’s still cold metal, surely, still the dagger, but it’s blunt. The handle, then. There is still a wicked sharp blade hovering near his cunt and thighs. He spreads his legs as best he can as Bren slowly, slowly fucks him with the handle of the dagger. Admittedly, it feels nice, if only because it’s Bren and he’s being fucked so slowly and so gently. He buries his face into the bedspread and moans as Bren’s free hand dips below to rub at his clit. Bren laughs softly.
“You’re turned on by this?” He asks, twisting the dagger handle inside Essek. He pulls it out, suddenly. “Turn over.” Essek does, with a significant struggle, and this new position finds his arms pinned painfully under his body. “Spread your legs,” Bren says, smiling wickedly, “and try not to move too much.” The handle presses back into him and then Bren is kissing him and fucking him gently with it. Bren pulls away and ducks down to survey his work. He watches with fascination, his face turning a beautiful shade of pink that reminds Essek of Caleb. Bren watches with rapt attention how Essek opens up around the handle and leans down to carefully suck Essek’s clit into his mouth. Essek moans softly and tries not to squirm. The dagger is fucking him again, a little faster now, and with Bren’s mouth on his clit it doesn’t take long for him to come. “Incredible,” Bren breathes. Thankfully, he doesn’t leave the knife in, but he does leave Essek laying on his hands for a while. When he comes back with the dagger clean, Essek’s arms have fallen asleep.
---
“I love you,” Bren tells him one day as he’s fucking him slow and careful. Essek is sore all over after having been used roughly the day before and Bren has treated him kindly today. Essek shakes his head vigorously and tries to pull away. He mouths “no, no, no, no”, fighting against the collar, and tears stream down his face as he tries to twist out of Caleb’s grasp but he’s stuck still as Caleb finishes and leans down to kiss him.
He cries harder that night than he has in all his life.
---
Bren must learn new spells at some point, because one day he’s studying in their room when Trent Ikithon knocks on the door to call him away. Essek doesn’t like how Trent’s hand settles on Bren’s shoulder, doesn’t like the low tone he speaks in to avoid being heard. Bren looks up at him as he leaves and smiles warmly.
“Herr Ikithon, it seems my pet is a bit jealous. Give me just a moment.” Bren steps back inside the room and leans down to press a careful kiss to Essek’s forehead. “Essek,” he murmurs. Essek looks up at him, confused and concerned. “Do not trance and do not fall asleep.”
He feels the charm spell take effect but it doesn’t register to him exactly which spell it must be until Bren leaves. It’s late and he should be trancing now, but Bren told him not to. Yet, he doesn’t feel compelled to stay awake. The realization dawns on him and makes his blood run cold. Caleb didn’t know this spell, which means Bren has been training with Ikithon and others like him. He knew it, logically, but to have such blatant proof-- to have that proof be used on him-- is another matter entirely.
He drifts toward trance and does his best to stay awake, but as it tugs him down, he feels a sudden jolt of pain go through his body. He sobs loudly. He should be able to trance now, the spell triggers once a day, and he knows that, but trancing seems far from his mind now.
He stays awake another two hours before he finally finds himself trancing restlessly.
This continues for the next few days and he finds that he forgets how long this particular spell lasts.
---
He still has no gauge of time, but it must be some time later that Jester’s third message comes through. He’s alone in his and Bren’s room, collared and manacled with bruises all over his body. The base of his skull thrums and he fights back a sob of relief.
“Hi Essek! We're getting really worried about you guys. It's been a little over two months now. Should we come get you? Are you okay?” He feels a stab of guilt that he can’t respond verbally, that young, naive Jester will have to be on the receiving end of this, but he gathers all the energy he can and responds with the most clear sob he can muster.
He hopes desperately that it will be enough.