ElyriasEcstasy (2 page)

Not that he got anxious anymore, he told himself as he
reached up and loosened his blindfold in a single, smooth motion. The fabric
fell from his eyes to settle around his neck. He blinked his eyes back into a
state of sightfulness, and as he did his other senses faded, resuming a state
he guessed was close to human normalcy. It was one more thing he couldn’t be
wholly sure of, though. After all, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d been
normal
.
Couldn’t remember much at all of his past, really. The recent years were clear,
his time as a Shadowflash to Urna’s Weapon. Yes, that was crystal clear. But
before that, only a muddle of vague adolescence, a smear of boyhood, perhaps
not even that…

Urna, the fall of his boots heavy, attained the final
crumbling cement stair and stepped out onto the roof. He still had his bloodied
sword unsheathed and paused now to shake the black drops of Passenger fluids
from it, speckling the rooftop. Rune wondered if it was meant to remind him
that he hadn’t participated in the actual killing of the enemy. He didn’t like
even the possibility of Urna making fun of him. In fact, the mere thought lit
an anger inside him.

Yet despite it all, he felt glad to see the silver-haired
male. Very glad. It was always a relief when he returned unharmed from a
mission, though the two of them still had to wing their way back to the Safe.
That meant strapping on those harnesses again, firing up the engines, leaping
off this tower into the twilit air.

Perhaps that could wait for a little while.

“You stepped on glass,” Rune said. He didn’t mean it to
sound accusatory, but it came out that way nonetheless. With all else that lay
between them, there was this too—that tireless contention, a friction that
wasn’t quite hostility. Making the statement worse, Rune added, “You should’ve saved
it. An intact piece of glass.”

“I’m not a scavenger,” Urna said curtly. His hand moved as
if to touch a pocket within his loose black clothes, then it dropped again to
his side. He had wiped his sword and sheathed it. “If the Lux wants glass it
can manufacture it itself, or send some dumb bastard salvage crew into
someplace like this to look for artifacts.” He waved dismissively.

He was right, Rune knew. There were others who came to the
Unsafe besides official salvaging crews, the Passengers and other Weapon/Shadowflash
teams. There were the
un
official human salvagers, the underground, the
resistance, those opposed to the rule of the Lux. Mages. Or people who called
themselves mages. The very word made Rune’s flesh crawl. The human race had
two
enemies—the Passengers from the Black Ship and the goddamned mages.

He grunted a barely audible laugh to himself. Seemed he was
picking up some of Urna’s obsolete profanities. Mages, though, were a problem
for the Guard, the Lux’s domestic police force.

“Something funny?” Urna wanted to know. He had taken several
steps toward Rune. Dark-blue eyes glinted in the Shiplight.

The same color as Rune’s eyes. For some reason that sent a
tingle across his skin, where a moment before revulsion for the
magic-practicing rebels had squirmed. There was no saying sometimes what could
raise an excitation in him. This time, it seemed, it was the mere sight of this
Weapon’s eyes.

He said, “I was just trying to imagine something.”

“What’s that?” A small curl of a smile touched the silver-haired
man’s mouth.

“I was trying to see you as the Shadowflash.”

“And you as the Weapon?”

Rune listened for mockery, heard none. He took a step toward
Urna so that the two lithe males stood boot tips to boot tips. Feeling a
tremble in his hands, Rune lifted the loose strip of fabric from around his
neck, the swath that covered his eyes when he was working. “It’d be easier to
picture it if you wore this…” His voice was suddenly hoarse.

Urna blinked those dark-blue eyes, set wide in a lean, elfin
face. So many ways this might play out, Rune realized. So many times the two of
them had teased and sniped and followed through or spurned the advances of the
other. A constant dance, an endless, circular chase.

Finally, a sudden huskiness in his voice as well, Urna said,
“Yeah. Put it on me.”

Rune paused to pull the rest of the fabric from his own
head, feeling the chill air work through his long hair. His was a dense
blue-black, almost the photonegative of Urna’s silvery locks. He laid the strip
of black over Urna’s eyes. As he leaned forward to tie the knot at the back of
Urna’s skull, his lips came near the other male’s mouth. He felt Urna’s breath.
Then their lips did touch, just a grazing, a softness heavy with promises.

A shudder went through Rune so that his mouth quivered a
moment atop Urna’s. Urna grinned, which broke the burgeoning kiss. He said,
“Sixty degrees to your left. Here comes one!”

Rune jerked back a step and tried to smoothly draw his
firearm from its holster. He got it out quickly, but not nearly as fast as Urna
would’ve drawn his. Not fast enough to handle the Passenger. But he fired
anyway at the imaginary target on his left. The discharge was loud and the kick
of the gun surprised him, same as it had those two other times. But it felt good.
He didn’t even care just now about wasting a bullet.

“Got him!” Urna crowed triumphantly. He could have said
something biting, something casually cruel, but today he was being kind, it
seemed. “My magnificent Weapon! My brave killer!” He continued grinning,
standing there blindfolded.

Rune holstered the smoking firearm. He stepped up to Urna
again and murmured, “My beautiful blind Shadowflash…” Then he took the male’s
face in both his hands and crushed his mouth onto his. It was a violent,
violating kiss. Rune’s tongue plunged through Urna’s lips. He tangled with
Urna’s tongue. He poured his heated breath into Urna’s mouth.

His body pressed against the blindfolded man’s. Rune felt
the hardness at Urna’s crotch and ground himself against it. Fire grew within.
Blood was pumping hard in his veins, thumping on his eardrums. He kissed his
companion (colleague, lover) all the more vehemently, fingers sliding into the
silver hair, gripping it at the roots. His tongue slavered inside that mouth
while Urna thrust his groin back against Rune’s.

After a moment Rune staggered back. His cock throbbed
needfully. Urna was so beautiful. The Weapon lifted his hands as if helplessly
searching for where his ravisher had gone—and that made him all the more
desirable. Rune, his excitement a fever now, stepped toward him yet again, this
time to strip the black clothing from Urna’s body. The blindfold-wearing Weapon
neither helped nor hindered. He just stood there, head turning from side to
side, as though he had never experienced a moment of sightlessness before in
his life.

Rune threw aside the clothes and weapons, leaving Urna
wearing only blindfold and boots. Right now the danger didn’t matter. Their
excitement was more important. Besides, the Shadowflash would still hear any
approaching Passengers.

His breath caught. Urna’s form was like sculpture, like pale
stone. His musculature was lean but exquisitely defined. He was utterly
hairless below the jaw, without even a whisper of pubic curls to distract from
the luscious length of his engorged cock. Though Rune’s memories were as vague
as he knew Urna’s to be, he did have one nebulous remembrance of their shared
boyhood, their mutual pubescence. When Rune had started growing dark, wiry
hairs, he’d thought himself superior to his comrade. More of a man. It had
turned out to an untrue fancy of his, of course.

He didn’t even know Urna’s age, but whatever it was, Rune
was that age as well. They both might be as young as twenty. Surely no older
than twenty-five. But Rune was certain they had grown up in tandem. However
murky and muddled their pasts were, he believed with absolute certainty that
they had started their lives at a mutual, perhaps simultaneous, moment.

Urna’s chest rose and fell. The chilly air had sharpened his
nipples to tiny points. Not questioning the urge, Rune reached out and took one
of these buds between his thumb and forefinger. The Weapon jumped at the
contact.

He couldn’t perceive as Rune perceived, he told himself with
some satisfaction. Blindfolded, Urna was merely blind. His other senses didn’t
awaken like Rune’s did.

But Rune didn’t possess this man’s reflexes, his skills with
weaponry. That thought, moving through Rune’s overheating mind, translated
somehow as an increasing pressure on Urna’s nipple. The silver-haired male
sucked in a sharp breath, then released it as a soft, pained moan. The sound
excited a darker thrill inside Rune. An uncharacteristic grin cut his own lean
features.

He twisted the nipple harder, breathing, “My sweet, helpless
Weapon.”

Urna could end it at any instant if he wanted. Rune knew
this. In half a heartbeat Urna could whip off the blindfold and wrench Rune’s
arm into a hammerlock, or strike him a blow across the face, or do even worse
violence. But instead, Urna was submitting, plainly enjoying himself. So many
games the two of them had played over the years.

Rune’s other hand took hold of Urna’s cock. The shaft felt
warm in his grasp. He tightened that grip, applying an almost uncomfortable
pressure. Urna moaned piteously again, his trimly muscular body starting to
squirm. Rune dipped his head and licked a trail up the other male’s throat,
from the hollow above his sternum, on a curving, ascending course across his
carotid to the lobe of his left ear. Here Rune’s teeth caught him.

The Weapon cried out. The sound echoed away from the
rooftop, out into the wasteland of the ancient city.

Rune’s teeth released the earlobe. “I will fuck you!” he
declared with a formal pomposity that didn’t, somehow, feel false to him. He
let go of Urna’s cock and nipple, then grappled him violently to the cool stone
of the roof. Urna’s boots scraped the surface. He was on hands and knees. The
blindfold remained in place. Strands of silver were caught in the knot at the
back of his head, Rune saw now as he moved in behind him. Urna’s ass was as
finely molded as the rest of his body, taut, a gorgeous inviting shape.

Hastily, Rune wet two fingers then smeared them around and
over and just inside the waiting hole. Urna gasped at the touch. Fumbling now,
eagerness becoming a headlong urgency, Rune at last freed his cock from his
loose trousers, not even bothering to strip off the rest of his black garb. His
organ throbbed mightily, poised above Urna’s vulnerability. Already a thin
drizzle dangled from the tip of his cock, the glistening gossamer string
alighting on a globe of Urna’s perfect ass.

Rune set the swollen cock head against his lover’s hole and
slid himself inside.

He was not slow about it. He wasn’t gentle. Urna, he felt
with that same total certainty, didn’t want gentleness now. Rune gripped his
hips, marveling as he always did at how male bodies seemed designed by nature
for just this act. He thrust himself deep into his lover. He felt and heard the
slap of his balls against the tight hemispheres of Urna’s ass.

Urna’s channel gripped him fiercely. Rune felt the internal
heat all along his veined shaft. He looked down to see his cock disappearing
again and again, with each speeding lunge, into the sweet, grasping hole. Urna
bucked beneath him. He cried out repeatedly. His head whipped from side to
side. Rune watched his backbone undulate and the muscles tighten between his
finely honed shoulder blades.

Beautiful, so beautiful…

Rune fucked him all the harder. He felt the impacts of their
smacking bodies. Orgasmic bliss was racing toward him, as implacable a mass and
force as the Black Ship hovering above them in the twilight. Sweat stinging his
eyes, Rune found his head falling back, found himself looking up at the
impossibly vast shape that hung above ninety-five percent of this planet. What
was it? Was the Ship alive? Overhead, it slowly writhed, formless and
undeniable.

He didn’t care. Not now. Not as he savaged his lover’s ass,
pounding him, his cock a weapon as powerful as anything Urna wielded, or so it
felt to him just now. Urna, fingers clawing and boots scratching the stone, was
apparently thundering toward a come of his own. Amazing. Without even any
direct contact with his own cock. It was only Rune’s thrusts sending him toward
his ecstasy.

It was that realization, perhaps, that tripped the final
response from Rune. His balls tightened and his impaling cock spasmed, and the
carnal rapture took hold of him. He loosed his fiery jets deep inside Urna’s
clutching canal, even as he felt the writhing finale of Urna’s own orgasm. The
two almost disengaged from each other, their mutually timed comes were so
turbulent.

But Rune was held by Urna’s cinching hole and he poured the
full measure of his pearly juices into the other male’s body. Urna’s seed
spattered the roof’s surface.

After a moment Rune reached down and gently loosened the
knot of the blindfold. It was the only ceremonial moment between the two men.
Following that, Urna dressed and Rune neatened himself. Neither Shadowflash nor
Weapon spoke a word. They merely strapped on their wings and flew away.

Chapter Two

“This concludes the eighty-third conclave of the 182nd Year
of the Order of Lux.” And with the dispersing tendrils of incense and a great
rustling of ornamental costumes, the gathering
did
, at long last, end.

Aphael Chav, Toplux, felt relief streaming through his aged,
though still wiry, body. He’d had enough of this pomp and pomposity. The
endless rituals, the recitations, the chanting—oh, the awful chanting. It was
necessary, he knew, though not for the reasons most of the conclave’s attendees
believed. Those haughty decorative beings milled about the broad marble-floored
chamber, still abuzz with the ceremonial ecstasy of the past hours. They
thought what they did important, crucial. They were wrong. The conclaves were
busywork, numbing rituals for lesser minds meant to celebrate the significance
of all who attended, a self-congratulatory exercise steeped in the mystique of
arcane liturgies and grave decorum.

All who were gathered today in this pillared, ornate chamber
would call the conclave a success, a reaffirmation of the principles of the
Order of Lux.

The truth was, however, that none of these fops with their
supercilious titles and proud airs had any idea what the Lux stood for. Aphael
Chav knew. He understood it all perfectly. That was why he was ruling the Safe,
why he was Toplux. Because he knew the truth of things.

It was necessary also to mingle a bit afterward, and Aphael
did this.

“A marvelous conclave,” one dandy said.

“The grandest in my memory,” said another.

The Toplux contributed as well, saying, “A fine assertion of
our principles.”

Blather. All of it.

It was perhaps most annoying to him that most of these
creatures had inherited their positions of power. They were complacent, smug,
self-satisfied, though they’d done little with their lives. They owned
industries and held valuable property. But it was their predecessors who had
achieved the original accomplishments.

The Order of Lux, long ago, had been the first major power
to assert itself in the chaotic wake of the Black Ship’s arrival on Elyria. All
had been uproar and panic then, history said. The Ship had settled over this
world, blocking out all but a fraction of the sunlight, and the Passengers had
poured out to slaughter untold millions.

Only the Safe was spared. And only the Lux had risen to the
occasion, providing stability and authority when all other forms of governance
fractured and failed. The first Order of Lux had been a consortium of
industrialists and engineers, those with the technological knowledge to adapt
to the new conditions. They had seen that the Safe’s unique access to the sun
could supply all the power the survivors needed.

Thus this centermost city of the Safe had been born, the
seat of the Lux, the point of ultimate command and power. Literal power. The
solar arrays that the original engineering chiefs had constructed gave power to
the inhabitants. Electricity flowed. The people had lights again, after the
Ship’s arrival and ensuing chaos had wrecked all the former power systems.

Technology had saved everything. It had restored
civilization when the Safe, the final remaining place of human dominion, might
instead have plunged into permanent barbarity. It had also given the Lux a
position of absolute, immutable control.

Aphael Chav socialized a brief while longer with the effete
descendants of those original technicians, who had been men and women of true
intelligence and foresight, active people, achievers. Little had they known
that they would spawn a society of wealthy, lazy degenerates.

Finally, with the pleasantries done, the bailiffs finished
herding the last of the council out through the broad double doors. Aphael at
last stood alone, relishing the solitude a moment, stretching out his arms,
turning his white-haired head until his neck gave a satisfying pop. He started
shedding the elaborate outer garments he’d had to wear for today’s interminable
function. His was a strong face, with heavy jaw and piercing eyes. But he was
capable of disarming smiles, of seemingly sympathetic expressions.

He would adopt one of those expressions for his next
audience, he’d already decided. Conclave or not, he had a full working day
scheduled, refusing to lose ground to the meaningless rituals of the Order. The
council was a part of his power structure. The people—most of them, anyway—saw
the council as a check against the foreboding might of the Toplux. Without that
august panel of fancily dressed ministers Aphael might seize total control of
the Safe, rule it with totalitarian cruelty.

What people—again,
most
people—didn’t understand was
that he already had absolute sway over these lands of the Lux. His word was
law. The Order could do nothing whatsoever to restrict any of his ambitions. He
could do as he liked.

But he was no fool. He was smart, he
knew
. And
therefore the council got to enact its rituals, and the conclaves were convened
regularly so that they could espouse the same old tired precepts. Technology
was good! Magic was evil! It wasn’t too much more complicated than that, which
was as it should be. Give the people simplicities to believe in. Whip up a few
slogans, incite a few causes. Provide them the distraction of the Shadowflash
and Weapon raids into the Unsafe to butcher Passengers. Make them believe that a
war was underway against the creatures and that it was somehow winnable. He was
a master at this game, had played it for many years now without a serious loss.

“Bring me something cool to drink,” Aphael Chav called,
having stripped himself down to a practical outfit of black trousers and ivory
waistcoat. He didn’t wholly abide by the strictly black color code of most of
the Lux. “And send her in, in a few more moments.”

His next audience. He’d ordered her brought in to the
Citadel at the start of the conclave this morning and kept her waiting all this
time. The ploy was purposeful, meant to inconvenience her and demonstrate that
her time was his to waste. But there was, perhaps, also a certain puerile
element to it—if he had to squander all those hours, he wanted her to suffer
the same.

Servants had already swept through the chamber, removing the
braziers and the extra furniture and all the cluttering accoutrements of the
conclave. Aphael walked its length, listening to the steady fall of his boot
heels, letting the sound calm him, pushing away all the accumulated annoyance
of the past hours. He felt his mind regaining its natural, fierce focus. He
drained the brass cup that had been brought to him. The liquid refreshed him.
Even the final traces of that horrid incense were all but gone.

The Toplux strode to his throne-like seat at the head of the
room and sat. Above was a circular skylight, the panes clear, allowing in the
spill of the sun. It was a bright day in the Safe. Aphael appreciated the
beauty, as well as the power, of that sunlight.

Taking a long, cleansing breath, he gestured. The doors were
opened once more, this time to usher in the woman who had been waiting on his
pleasure for several hours now.

Virge Temple entered and immediately Aphael felt a twinge of
disappointment. The sturdy, attractive chemist showed no obvious signs of
aggravation over her long, tedious wait. Well, the Toplux thought as he put on
an expression of geniality, he could falsify his apparent feelings as well.

The bailiff started to announce her but Aphael waved that
off from his high, ornate seat. “Virge,” he said, the chamber’s acoustics
carrying his voice easily. “How nice to have you at the Citadel once again.
It’s been some while.”

Her hair was that color where pale brown is fading to blond
or blondish darkening toward dun. The shade made a contrast to the darker hue
of her skin. She had an abundance of hair draping about her shoulders. Even
from the far end of the chamber, her dark-brown eyes sparkled with the
intensity of volcanic rock. She wore red leggings that displayed her finely
molded calves and thighs. Her simple shirt hung loose on her, revealing enough
of her bosom to confirm that her breasts were still quite firm. She was roughly
half of Aphael Chav’s sixty years but she could exude the antic energy of an
adolescent when she had a mind to.

At the moment she offered a smile and a somewhat shallow
bow, acknowledging the Toplux’s pleasantry.

“You may approach,” Aphael said after a pause that was just
long enough to punctuate the moment, let her know she could move only on his
command.

Virge’s stride toward the throne-chair was similar to
Aphael’s own, a confident gait, heels beating a slow, crisp tempo across the
pink marble. Her nicely arranged features betrayed no fear, not even a hint of
anxiety. But that nervousness had to be there, inside her, the Toplux promised
himself. She had to know why she’d been summoned. If she didn’t she was a fool.
And Virge Temple, an eminent chemist whose work benefited the Lux, was no fool.

Aphael leaned out a little from the high vantage of his
sun-bathed chair. The light was a reminder—to him, to others—that the sun
represented unadulterated power. It fell upon the Safe and nowhere else on
Elyria.

His fingertips drummed his knees. Finally he said, “Your
work lately has been quite good.”

“Lately, my Toplux?” She gave the words the mildest droll
edge, as if to wonder why he was questioning all the chemical work she had done
earlier. “Your words are kind.”

She was smart. She was quick. She was also a pain, one
Aphael had tolerated for some while—and would probably go on tolerating for
some longer while, despite her attitude, despite even her illegal activities.
Her work was simply too valuable. Her concoctions helped to keep the Shadowflash/Weapon
program going. Where would all those Lux doctors be without their drugs and
dopes? They needed to control the members of the operation, those manufactured
teams of Passenger killers who were so crucial to the government, so important
for the morale of the populace. Statistics on the ongoing slaughter of those
creatures out there in the Unsafe were wildly popular among the people. They
followed such things the way some ancient texts claimed citizenries used to
follow athletic competitions.

Still, Virge’s status didn’t mean the Toplux couldn’t
agitate one of his best chemists now and then, especially after such a bold
infraction as she’d committed—or at least after her involvement in the
activity. The Guard was sure she’d had
some
thing to do with the crime.

“Tell me, Virge,” he said, reaching for the flier crumpled
on an arm of the throne, “what I’m supposed to make of this.” Without unballing
it, he tossed it to her.

Her hand flashed up and snatched it, her right hand,
revealing the sterilization tattoo on the tight, corded inner flesh of her
forearm. Lustrous brown eyes made a casual study. “It’s paper, isn’t it?”

Smart. Quick. A pain. But he could handle her. With a subtle
shifting of tone he said, “Smooth it out. Take a look.” He wove a threat into
the words without being blatant about it. He didn’t need to remind her of his
power. This was, after all, the Citadel, a monument to the Safe’s power, and he
was the government’s ultimate authority. She knew that better than most people
did. He had personally mandated her sterilization, in fact. Such was his
privilege. Government programs carried out many such infertility treatments,
seeing to it—for the people’s own good—that the population remained stable,
that needs did not outstrip resources.

Aphael Chav nurtured a quiet self-satisfaction over his
personal decision to sterilize this woman. Virge didn’t know his name had been
on the order. One day, perhaps he would tell her.

Taking her time, Virge uncrumpled the sheet. She fussed a
bit with the corners then finally gazed fully at it. Her brown eyes gradually
widened in innocent surprise.

“It’s satire, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Satire. Propaganda. Treason. There are a number of things
one might call it.”

“It’s a cartoon.” She turned it to show him, as if he hadn’t
already seen the caricature of himself surrounded by his council—only those
members were depicted as clucking hens and he was drawn to resemble a wolf. Not
that anyone had seen a wolf in years.

It wasn’t unfunny. Aphael had a sense of humor, even about
himself at times. But he simply couldn’t allow himself to be the butt of any
joke, especially one so seditious.

“A cartoon,” said the Toplux. “And what’s written beneath?”

Virge made a show of studying the flier anew, this time
squinting at the poorly printed words along the foot. After a moment she said,
conclusively, “‘Tyrant’ is misspelled.”

He nearly sighed aloud but maintained his demeanor. There
were very few who could play this verbal feint and parry with him. He had a
certain admiration for this female, something beyond her extraordinary talent
with chemistry. She was a strong individual. She would have made a fine
addition to his government.

Only she would never have agreed to serve. As a chemist she
enjoyed a certain freelance liberty, though the vast amount of the materials
she produced were used by Lux doctors. And anyway, Aphael Chav didn’t want
co-rulers, not even a Vicelux. He would rule the Safe as he saw fit until the
day he died.

“That paper it’s printed on,” he said now, slouching back into
his seat. “Paper is rare, you know. Expensive to manufacture. We’ve a limited
number of trees.” He called for the bailiffs. “The Guard Detectives who
collected that shoddy pamphlet and quite a few others like it tell me the paper
is from a batch earmarked for your laboratory.” He lifted a hand to stop her
words, as a flash of gratifying fear at last appeared in her eyes. “No need to
explain to me. Tell it to the Interrogators. They’ll want to hear, I assure
you.” With the same hand, he made a dismissing gesture just as the bailiffs
came to haul her away.