Completed version of the sacrificial bride WIP I was working on for Malevoween day 25.
A gift for kalgalen, who kicked off this AU with his beautiful art!
Pairing: Arthur/King in Yellow
Rating: Explicit
Tags & Warnings: dark fantasy AU, dubcon/noncon with aphrodisiac, tentacle sex, trans or intersex Arthur, cervix/uterus penetration, pregnancy kink, mystical quasi-impregnation, bondage, captivity, dubcon/noncon exhibitionism, sex sacrifice, unwilling bride, deals with the devil, sell your soul, dubcon/noncon body modification (piercings & tattoos)
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On the day of his wedding, Arthur is roused from his restless sleep before the light of the Hyades has even begun to shift, so his attendants—attendants he certainly never asked for, and who frankly aren’t there for his benefit—can begin preparing him.
To say he shudders at the prospect doesn’t do it justice. He’s been in horrors about it ever since he was first presented to the King. He had been a glorious nightmare, inhumanly tall even where he lounged on his throne, robes of golden samite covering a body draped in ways not even remotely human with a carved mask for a face. A mask that Arthur had known instinctively, atavistically, had hidden features his mind was not made to see.
They say that the King’s brides go mad from gazing upon his uncovered face. And that it’s a terrible way to die.
Read more: Malevolent Fic: Gift to the GodsHe’s been through three days of rituals, meant to prepare and sanctify his body for the King’s enjoyment. He’s been pierced and tattooed with symbols and amulets to bind his flesh to the one he’ll pledge himself to. Their power is real; he felt them squirm on his skin and settle into him as they were etched across him.
They squirm now, seeking the one they’re meant for, while the attendants ritually bathe, anoint and dress him.
He sits still—fighting could accomplish nothing but his death and the King’s disfavor on his people—as they rub him with scented oils and wrap him in an elaborate golden body chain. It catches at his throat and spreads in a collar about his shoulders, then drapes in a web down over his chest and torso, fastening to the piercings in his nipples, belly and clit to weave beautiful designs across his abdomen and hips.
The designs it shapes over his belly and hips are sigils of fertility, and he knows the moment the first links of the chain touch his skin that it’s spelled.
“It’s blessed,” one of the attendants tells him in reverent tones, as the arousal shivers out in ripples across his skin from the places the chain brushes against him, “with the favor of our lord.” To make Arthur eager to serve him, that means. To take away his resistance.
They shift him around to suit themselves as they adorn him, and the chain tugs delicately at his piercings. The stimulation starts as a ticklish awareness, and then deepens, into a ripe arousal that has him stifling his groans in his throat each time they turn him or bump the chain so that it pulls at his nipples. With each tug, his body ripens. Grows a little more wet, a little more lush with anticipation. A new desire begins to wake in his body, not just for pleasure but conception. For the King to take him so completely that his body becomes his vessel. To fill him as thoroughly as it’s possible to be filled.
He closes his eyes and begins trembling. He’d known the form his sacrifice to the King would take. He hadn’t expected to lose even the dignity of self-possession for it.
They decorate him in bands of precious metals and bangles with tiny chiming bells around his biceps, wrists and ankles. They hang pendants of black opal from the piercings they gave him in his ears and nostril. When they fasten the little weighted drops of black opal and hematite to his nipples, he moans at the pinch and pull and pushes his chest into their touches.
They pin him down on his back and spread his legs to hang one from his clitoris. He humiliates himself, hips lifting in a desperate attempt to chase the touch of a stranger’s clinical hands on his vulva. When they let him up, he can’t look at any of them; his cheeks are hot and tight with embarrassment.
The weight between his legs is a new torment, forcing his constant awareness, bumping against him tauntingly with the sway of his body. His head is spinning. Hands everywhere, and not a goddamned one of them touching him in the way his body is begging for.
Poise is lost already. He squirms under their hands, trying to move himself so they will fucking touch him when they cinch a floor-length skirt low on his hips. It’s made of layers of tulle so fine that even multiple layers of it do little to conceal his body—or the body chain or gems, shining golden with myriad tiny chips of precious stone glinting in the light.
He would give so much if one of these devoted attendants would only defy their god, push him down and sink between his parted thighs. He’s not certain whether that’s his body talking, quivering by now on the brink of madness with the need to be fucked and fertilized, or his mind, wishing desperately for a last chance at escape from the one he’s destined for. There’s a corner of his mind that began screaming at the thought of the King’s seed catching in him, and hasn’t stopped.
Instead they bind his hands. They shackle his wristbands to each other and tie a bouquet into his hold so not even his fingers are free to let him try to chase his relief. With his consecration complete, no one may enjoy his body until the King has taken his fill of it—not even Arthur himself.
Finally they drape him with a veil that cascades from the crown of his head to sweep the floor. Beneath it, nothing can touch him. He’s trapped, locked in with this desire that’s ransacking him and unable to even touch himself.
His own body is the instrument of his torture as they walk to the ceremony. His feet are bare on the ancient smooth stone of the palace floors and the heavy teardrops of the pendants at his nipples and between his legs swing with each chiming pace. The one between his legs seems to tug all the way into the cradle of his pelvis. He tries surreptitiously to rub his wrists at any of them, seeking any kind of contact or relief. It doesn’t help at all.
The wedding is a spectacular whirl of colors and textures, sounds and scents. Arthur barely has the mind to process them. The chamber is draped in rich ornaments and swags of tapestry and it’s full of people. Their whirl of colors and adornments and noise grows brighter and richer the closer he approaches to the front. Strange, agile music fills the space, played on thin strings. The air is filled with heady, expensive scents.
The King is not an uncivilized monster. He does honor to those who are sacrificed to his appetites. And in so doing, he signals to his people that their offering is accepted, and they are safe for another cycle.
At least Arthur can face his fate knowing that he’s bought his family protection.
Clad in his own finery, the chimes of his jewelry softly marking the rhythm of his slow pace, Arthur walks down the aisle between two of the King’s guards. All eyes are on him. He would swear he can feel them pressing against his exposed skin like hands. God. God, if only. He’s never been more aware of himself. His veil brushes feather-light over his chest with each step, strokes over the curve of his ass, and between his legs his slit is throbbing so desperately that he would fingerfuck himself in front of all of them if only he could touch himself.
At the front stands the King on the dias.
His attention finds Arthur, and the torrid weight of it cuts through even the fog of arousal that’s nearly swallowed him whole. The guards and shackles become clear. Many a bride must have sought the final mercy of a quick death instead of going to him.
He stands before the altar, towering and splendid in cascades of gold, haloed in a light of his own making. There is no priest; what need does a living god need for a lesser authority? The awful majesty of him shudders out through the chamber and beats in Arthur’s body like a great fist, demanding the opening of his gates.
His gates tremble. Hidden by the filigreed strains of the music, Arthur gasps, feeling as if he’s on the cusp of opening to that harrowing demand. One of the guards has to catch him beneath an elbow as his knees nearly give out, and help him up the steps to the dais.
There, he can only look up. The King subsumes all else; Arthur’s eyes can’t be moved from him who looks down upon him. Who lifts Arthur’s face with two clawed fingers beneath his veiled chin.
“Exquisite,” the King murmurs to him alone.
On that one word, everything swings. What is exquisite? Arthur’s costume? His obedience? His fear? The desperate flush of his body, throbbing for the King alone ever since he met his eyes? He sways on his feet, pulled toward the King as if on a string.
This creature, this god, whose power clasps Arthur in a possessive embrace already, when he’s barely touched him. Arthur moans, body reaching toward him like a flower toward the sun, even while a little voice in his head reminds him beneath the swimming anticipation that this is his sentencing.
His yearning doesn’t go unmarked. The King’s pleasure is palpable, a radiant force flowing from him across the room as he lifts his deep, resonant voice. “Do you choose me?”
“Yes,” Arthur says, and manages the wherewithal to put some projection behind it because the tangled parts of his mind are clear on this much. He does choose the King. He chooses this fate, this doom, chose it when he first left his home to come here, because his sacrifice means the lives and comfort of his family and his people. For that, he’ll give whatever is required, whether what awaits him is horror or pleasure or some bone-shaking combination of both.
He begins to think it might be both when the King cups his face and pulls upward, till Arthur is on his toes and stretched as tall as his spine can go. The King keeps pulling, hand clenching, claws catching in the delicate folds of Arthur’s veil to pull it away and bare him. His heavy golden robe rustles and parts as he pushes Arthur back till his hips bump the altar with an arrhythmic, uncoordinated chiming.
The altar he’ll be married on. His wedding, consummated before this eager sea of people. And yet Arthur can’t look away from the way the robe twists and seethes as it parts. It’s alive, made of endless tendrils, all reaching for him—
They pluck at him, testing his bindings and decorations. Toying with the heavy pendants on his nipples, winding around the body chain till he’s tugged forward against that eldritch body, anchored to the King. His hands, still bound, are pushed up above his head to hold him pulled tight, nearly lifted onto his toes. They slither up beneath the fine layers of his skirt and the congregation can see, he knows. Can see the bold golden tendrils winding up his legs to stroke over his inner thighs, cup his ass, tease between his legs where he aches so badly for this being that he can’t— he can’t—
He falls into their embrace as his legs buckle entirely. They take his weight and guide him back onto the altar while he arches up, begging for their touch. He can hear his own voice begging, echoing in the stone vaults above them, taken away from his control.
“Lovely little creature.” The King’s murmur is enough to fill the room. One of those tendrils is testing at Arthur’s slit, licking at his entrance. He mewls for it, high and pathetic and completely unable to restrain himself. “You’re ready for me.”
He pushes Arthur’s skirts up; powerful claws shred the fabric out of his way like cobwebs. More tendrils curl under his hips to lift him from the soft bedding atop the altar.
Before the audience’s eyes, the King’s tentacles explore between his legs, the soft tips ruffling and probing into his sensitive folds. They watch as he’s opened layer by layer until the aching, empty hole at the center of him is revealed. He’s never been so humiliated. The burn of it is acid all over his skin. But it doesn’t do a thing to quench the ruthless need, or the throbbing relief when one of the tentacles sinks into him.
The audience breathes a collective sigh as they watch the King penetrate him. It rushes through the great chamber like a breeze, vibrating with satisfaction.
Arthur’s own breath hitches in a silent sob, caught on the knot of desperation and hate in his throat. Only the King knows. Arthur can feel his examination from behind the stillness of the mask.
What will anger him? What does he want from Arthur, besides to make him his toy?
He lifts his legs to wrap them around the King. His heels slide on rich fabric and broad flanks that aren’t still beneath the robes. Tentacles catch under the backs of his knees to pull them up and keep them clasped to the King’s sides. They stroke up his thighs like a lover’s hand while the thing buried between his legs keeps sinking deeper inside him. It seems to grow thicker with each penetration. His body thrums with excitement, waiting, hoping for it to become thick enough to satisfy him. Hoping that the King finally can sate this need that’s consuming him.
He hates this. He hates them, the audience watching him with their hungry gleeful eyes, more than he thinks he hates the King, who after all has never been anything but what he is. But those people, watching this happen to him, delighting in it!
There’s more than one monster in this chamber.
The things—tentacles, cocks—move casually inside him, surging deeper into him with each stroke without hurry or particular force, and yet there’s a toughness to them. A durability that makes Arthur aware of his own fragility. A muscular strength to them as they flex and bend inside him that highlights the delicacy of his own tissues. The King could rip him apart from the inside out if he cared to.
But it’s not just the King’s appendages inside him. With each thrust of the King’s limbs, his power impales Arthur. Over and over again, his passage is filled, his body rocking and the tiny bells of his bangles jingling, and the force of a divinity heaves into him, brimming over and forced through each fiber of his body. Till he thinks his skin must be shining with the ferocious heat and light of the King’s occupation of him.
The tattoos and piercings and body chain are focal points. The power pools in the sigils they weave around his body, burning in his flesh, branding themselves into his being till he finds himself screaming each time the King bottoms out in him. He’s never been aware of his mind and soul this way before. He’s never had them touched by another creature before, but now as the King stitches himself into them, he knows with his heart in his throat that this is the contract, being forged in his blood and bone.
Arthur’s hips jump at the shock of bright pleasure as the King’s appendage nudges against his cervix.
“Ah,” he says when it happens again. He wants to say more, wants to tell him no, or beg him to stop—wants to beg him to have mercy, to at least not bind him this way, at least let him have the dignity of signing himself away on a piece of paper—but the words tangle in his mouth when he glances up at the King’s masked face. Pure fear wedges them behind his tongue. Knowledge that if he does any of those things, the King will destroy him on the spot. It isn’t his place. Not his right, not what he’s for. The tentacles keep nudging against his cervix, that place so deep inside him, stimulating him till he’s a writhing, sobbing mess sprawled beneath the King’s looming form.
Shouldn’t he have come by now? Some corner of his mind manages the thought. Shouldn’t this have been too much for him? Pushed him over the edge? But it seems as though his capacity for pleasure is infinite at the King’s desire, because he thinks he’s going to go mad with it. His mind is cracking, further into his need than he’s ever been in his life or even knew he could be, but his orgasm still feels so far away.
“Please,” he begs. Babbles. He kicks with his legs, trying to get a grip around the King’s body, to draw him closer, hold him tighter and draw him deeper. “Please, I can’t. It’s too—I’m not made for this. Please, help me.”
The King leans forward over him. One sharply clawed, long hand reaches forth to catch his bound ones, and laces their fingers together over Arthur’s head. The other strokes up his side, pulling the chains tight across his body as he presses Arthur back and down.
The seeking tip of one of those tentacles inside him finds the opening in his cervix and wriggles into it. Arthur loses his ability to breathe.
It should hurt. Shouldn’t it? He’s sure it should. He knows, instinctively, that this isn’t how his body is meant to behave. And yet his body welcomes it almost feverishly, delirious for this new, deeper penetration. This approach toward culmination, toward satisfying the deepest hunger in him, the supplicating ache of his empty womb. At last, at last, every part of him seems to cry, except for the part that’s him.
That part of him is stabbed with terror. He thrashes, and the dissonant pealing of the bells he’s ornamented with only seem somehow to add to the spell woven around him. The King’s madness, the King’s chaos. The King holds him down, watches him with all the distant interest of a man observing a bug. Arthur is probed, stretched, filled, fucked, and all his writhing is useless. There’s no getting away from this. The King is already hooked into him.
It pierces through to the other side. His womb. The King is in his womb. He arches back, wanting distance. Not because it hurts—his entire being is crying out for it, he’s overwhelmed by the presence of a god in this space within him that’s for…for something so mortal, not this. And yet he feels so full as the King pours into him till he feels his body begin to swell to accommodate him. He feels…god, he feels, he feels bred. By the King, at once the one impregnating him and the one with whom he is impregnated. A solid, dense egg of the King’s power taking shape within him, occupying and stretching and reshaping him.
His mouth is hanging open, he knows. Gasping for air, floundering for words or sounds he can’t make. His eyes are wide, fixed solely on the King’s mask, tipped down to watch him. The King’s attention, his power permeates Arthur’s being till Arthur knows he’ll never be able to break the threads that weave them together.
In his nipples. In his clit. Replacing the ink of the tattoos that stain him to spread in pools just beneath the surface of his skin. In his sheath and cervix and womb and up his fallopian tubes to wrap around and lick at his ovaries till he thinks they’ll burst with ripeness. In his lungs, winding into them from within to twine with those he inhales. His veins and arteries, replaced with ones identical but host to the King’s liquid power, pumping through them into his heart and back out again. Gripping his left hand, wound between the fingers of it till his hand feels numb to anything but the touch of the King, too infected by his glory to be affected by anything more crude and mortal.
Wound fully into it now, he senses the King’s power, a geyser gushing into him and then fountaining out of him throughout the room as though Arthur were the pour spout of divinity. Flooding every person present in the backwash of their god’s divinity, blessing them with his secondhand presence. Even that is sufficiently terrible that moans and screams and stuttering, croaking pleas for their King’s mercy rise to Arthur’s ears.
They deserve what they get. They’re the ones who came here willingly. They asked to experience what is being taken from Arthur with no say of his in the matter.
It isn’t for their sakes when Arthur captures the King’s sunlike gaze with his own and says, with quiet and fatal calm, “Please.”
He’s asking for his release. The release that he knows will be his final binding, the King’s seal laid unbreakably upon and within him. It’s the seal that will release those he loves into safety in return for the completion of his sacrifice—his body, his mind, his soul all the King’s to do with as he likes, for as long as he chooses to keep Arthur.
The King’s laugh is dark and beautiful and pleased.
What strikes Arthur isn’t an orgasm. It feels more like a divine possession. Transported and transfixed, he’s aware of every moment of it, as a god blazes through each cell of his body and every thought in his mind.
He feels the King, divine yet unholy. Dark as he is bright, heavy in his immensity. His cruel delight at Arthur’s surrender, at Arthur’s knowledge that this is not the end but only the beginning of what the King will do to him. The knowledge that he’s bound not only by the King’s power but his own choice, with all he loves the collateral if he ever breaks his oath.
He gazes down through the King’s eyes at the congregation of witnesses. Their faces are streaked with tears and cosmetics. They writhe in their seats in their riches and finery. Some of them rend at it, shredding unspeakable wealth with thoughtless abandon in their pleasure and terror. Others throw themselves upon each other, rutting like animals under the overpowering pressure of the King’s own pleasure. A few have made it to the doorways—closed and barred—where they claw at the priceless woods and inlaid mosaics with nails that splinter under their own force. A handful sit smiling beatifically in their seats, at peace with the madness of their god’s presence within them.
The King’s eyes turn back to look at down at his own body, slender and breakable, glinting with beauties and treasures embedded in his flesh, with terror in his eyes alongside a wild, horrified ecstasy he’s trapped within like a labyrinth. And…the King cocks his head; a curious, unbending determination.
Driven by curiosity, the totality of his presence lifts somewhat from Arthur.
He draws in a panicked gasp when his lungs no longer feel crushed beneath the weight of a god’s possession. He pushes himself up to sitting, and then nearly falls back again, unable to catch himself on his bound hands.
The King’s hand at his back props him up.
Arthur stares around himself. He’s never felt so naked. He’s never felt so big. Did he just…?
“I’m…alive,” he whispers. His voice cracks, and it hurts, but no blood comes bubbling out from his lips like he expects. “I’m…” He looks back up at the King. “I’m…sane?”
The King’s deep voice hums. The note is musical and low enough to vibrate the stones of the chamber. “You appear to be. Sane enough, at any rate. How interesting.”
He reaches for Arthur, ignores his flinch, and scoops him up against his chest.
Over his shoulder, Arthur can see that only some of the congregation seems to be recovering from their brush with deity.
One of the most composed ones meets his eyes with a virulent jealousy. Arthur shudders.
The King turns languidly to follow the direction of Arthur’s engagement. “Yes. And yet here you are.”
Here he is. “Don’t we usually…?”
“Die,” the King confirms with a dismissive calm that makes Arthur’s stomach churn. “Or go irrevocably mad, your mind blasted of sentience. How curious.”
He means it. Arthur can feel his casual interest, with his soul still pressed appallingly close to something so ferociously powerful that it should destroy him on contact.
“But then the sacrifice should be over.” He speaks the words in a whisper, because he knows it isn’t over, and the unfairness of that claws at him. He should be free.
The King only laughs again, and cradles Arthur tighter against his chest. He doesn’t have to say anything, because he knows Arthur already knows. His survival isn’t freedom; it’s punishment. He agreed to be the King’s, and the King’s he is until he dies or the King releases him.
The King’s tentacles are still inside him. Arthur whimpers as they squirm complacently.
“The ceremony is completed,” the King says, to whomever has the wits to hear and understand him. The guards at least stand straight and unaffected by the doors. “Come,” this to Arthur, as if Arthur had any say in the matter, held in his arms and legs unable to bear his weight even if the King set him down. “I think I would like to explore this development further, somewhere quieter.”
Arthur shudders in his arms, and presses his face into the rich damasked cloth of the King’s shoulder.