In the evening, the cliffside was peaceful, smelling of salt and warm earth. Teru could hear all the life below him, blind to the higher world. Fading sunlight filtered through a layer of scraggly clouds, settling over the earth. Beneath the light, everything was awash with warm, sensitive colors. Above them both, the peak of their tent unfolded into a shadow in the shape of a knife.
Even through the blood pounding in Teru’s ears, against the strain of Volo’s calloused hands around his neck, the world was full of peace. Everything made perfect sense.
Volo's fingers tightened down against Teru’s throat, effortlessly gliding over his arteries, bending them beneath his superior will. Ten seconds to unconsciousness. Maybe less; there had always been something strange about Teru's lungs. It was like he sometimes forgot how to take in air, like his body had been raised to be oxygen-starved—like he was waiting for someone to tell him how he was meant to breathe.
For a moment, even though Teru now knew what kind of man Volo was, he had still trusted that they could talk things over—that they could grow to understand each other. That Volo could change—that maybe they could both change.
Volo did not share his optimism.
Even through the endless, throbbing blood, Teru could still hear the winding river chattering below them. This was, he loosely recognized, the end. It came both exactly as how he imagined it would and not at all, still at the hands of a superior being but for all the wrong reasons.
Five seconds.
“Volo—” Teru's protests tumbled clumsily from his lips. “Volo, please, I—!”
“No,” Volo growled, cutting him off with a snarl. “Shut up. There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.”
Far and away, detached in the back of his mind, Teru faded beneath Volo's rough hands. He struggled to summon what he needed to say, but he couldn't think. As Volo overpowered him, he withered between his own mind and body, overpowered by them as well.
As though sensing this internal battle, Volo leaned just a little bit closer.
“Any last words, Teru?”
Volo seemed like he was ready to laugh. Like he was confident enough in Teru’s inability to speak that it could be the punchline to a joke only he knew.
“Please,” Teru gasped, his voice raspy and thin under the pressure. He reflexively struggled against Volo’s superior body. “Please,” he said again, not thinking about his words. “If you’re going to—” he swallowed, gagging under the force of Volo’s hands, “if you’re going to kill me, then please—!”
Volo raised an eyebrow. Careful not to show his intrigue, he let his hands go slack, just slack enough to let Teru speak.
“Don’t waste my time,” Volo muttered. “Spit it out.”
Teru coughed, his voice pained and guttural beneath Volo’s punishing fingers. Air surged back into his lungs, coloring the world.
For a moment, he didn't speak, a sudden pulse of shame overwhelming him. What gave him, a failed and lower life form, the authority to waste Volo's time?
Volo’s hands tightened like a vise—a warning of his impatience, a promise of indifference.
“...Fuck me,” Teru whimpered, self-loathing churning inside him as he heard himself speak. “If you’re going to kill me, please… use my body first. Use me every way you possibly can.”
For only a moment, Volo was silent, but it wasn’t long before he couldn’t hold back his laughter. “Are you serious? You—”
He paused, incredulous, searching Teru’s face for signs of trickery, hands tightening against his throat once more. He found none.
“...Yes,” Teru said, as though Volo’s silence gave him permission to speak. “I need you to kill me.” His lashes fluttered under the pressure of Volo's hands. “I want that too. But please. Please,” he looked up into Volo’s frenzied eyes. “Please use me first. Anything you want. Please.”
A moment passed, and then Volo’s face twisted into a savage grin. “You’re not going to fight me?” He leaned down, so close that Teru could feel his breath against his cheeks. “You actually want this?”
Did he want this? Teru hadn’t stopped to wonder. All he knew was that it was the right thing, the conscientious thing to offer Volo as a creature who could offer nothing else. He was inhuman, a slave created to do a job, to fulfill a role. That role, by Sinnoh-sama’s grace, had burgeoned and changed into something different, something he had wished and prayed for all his life but dared not think of as more. His body, though far from its prime, had something left in it yet.
His purpose became twofold. For the first time, after everything, Teru had taken his first true breath, lived his first months of human life; he had roamed the hills and prairies; he had filled the wilds with himself, with his hands and his feet and all of his innumerable actions. He had felt real— if only for a moment, through the endless seas of time, the purple sands that passed him by.
Now, as he had grown and as Sinnoh-sama had dismissed him from his post, both of Teru’s missions had reached their respective ends. With the invitation he had extended to Volo, Teru’s final poor decision, so too did he finally pull the trigger on his worthless, expendable life, expelling the empty casing that was his body.
Teru felt old—but in such oldness, he felt deeply perceptive. He felt the wisdom that he was sure came only with age, a strange sort of knowing, a kind of sixth sense. Teru could feel, through this sixth sense, the wetness inside of his body, all the organ meat that had turned within him and begun to rot. One by one, piece by piece, all according to the commands that powered his perfectly arranged mind, he was losing himself. Vicious like a tumor, his expiration date chased him madly, darkening his flesh from peach into yellow and from yellow into black. The colors twisted into dirty rainbows veiled in his tender skin, crystallizing and falling silent at every place the human eye could not reach to save him.
He would die. He knew he would. He knew he had to. Something beautiful and lifelong and deeper than he could fathom, something hideous and depraved and vile, had given him one last indelible gift—his third and final mission.
Teru would die. It was only a matter of when. But a purposeless death would be the greatest pain of all—an inexcusable sin for which he knew he could not stand.
“Please,” Teru whispered. Cloudy tears rose into his eyes like breath across a mirror. “This is all I have left.”
I want you to crush it. I want you to steal it.
A knowing sort of look crested over Volo's mouth.
“Well,” he pretended to think it over. “You certainly aren’t her, but…” He looked Teru up and down, savoring the fresh lines and edges of his pubescent body. “I guess you’ll do,” Volo said cheerily, pinning him to the ground with one hand. “I think if you were a little bit younger, you'd almost look like her. Such a shame.”
Teru winced as Volo withdrew his hands, at how Volo knew the words to pick that would hurt him most. “Thank you,” his voice scraped as it opened up his throat. “I really don't deserve you.”
Volo made a sound that Teru couldn't parse, something between sublime pleasure and total revulsion. “Teru,” he brushed Teru’s hair out of his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”
Volo’s smile didn’t leave his face. It was the same innocent smile that he always wore, an innocuous and permanent fixture of deceptive warmth. Only now, after everything that had happened, did Teru realize that Volo had always been baring his teeth. “I’m really asking. Come on,” Volo leaned down, clearly starting to enjoy himself. “If you want me to entertain this…” he paused as though hunting for the right word, “this sickness of yours, then tell me. Why are you like this?”
Before Teru could answer, an enlightened look rose into Volo’s face. “Oh,” Volo smiled, something dark and excited flashing across his eyes. “I understand.”
“What?”
Volo gazed down into his soft face, appraising Teru's gentle lips. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you? Although…” Volo slid one of his knees between Teru’s thighs, pretending it was accidental. “I suppose it isn’t really proper to call you people.”
Teru felt sick. He felt right. His body was already dead; his mind was the only thing left alive in him, ripe and fat with decay. And yet—his mind had been excised from him long ago, so long before the day that he had learned his own name; his body was all that was left of him, and it would soon be a corpse.
“Tell me,” Volo scowled. The smile left his face as soon as it appeared. “If you want me to honor your final wish, then tell me what they did to you. Tell me what happened to make you like this.”
An unspoken It gets me hard thickened the air, clattering down the cliffs like stone.
“...They,” Teru said, as though the word was from another language, another world. It felt foreign in his mouth, as though it could never belong to him. Teru struggled with the way Volo’s words rang in his ears. They felt sticky, salty. How could his tongue confess that which had shaped him into such an abomination? The mere premise of Volo’s demand was faulty—how could Teru have become something that he was designed to be before he was even born?
The hazy tortures that veiled his absent memories defied language. The pain used to train him into his present shape was unspeakable, beyond human vocabulary. He couldn’t give Volo what he wanted. Defeated, his uselessness only ate at him more, just as it had ever since he had first been thrown away.
“Hm,” Volo took Teru’s chin in his hands. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected so much of you.” He tilted his head, leering down at Teru with a condescending smile. “You’re just a body, after all, aren’t you?”
Teru’s eyelids twitched. He blinked, the cold, thin air rushing into his throat at long last. How, his body wondered, could Volo know the exact words that would twist him up in knots?
His mind didn’t bother asking questions, draining away into the hollow cliffs below, ready to be eaten.
Volo stared down into Teru's face, appreciating the newness he found there, the familiar disorientation. “Come on, then.” He laced his fingers into Teru’s golden hair. “Admit it.”
“I’m just a body,” he repeated, eyes glazing over. His stomach twisted, but the lurching discomfort quickly melted into the growing heat between his legs.
“And what is a body for?”
“This,” Teru whispered, his small, soft hands finding the tent in Volo’s pants as though by instinct. “It’s for you.” He stroked the outline of Volo's cock as though entranced by it. Had he really been this hard since he first put his hands around Teru’s throat?
“Good answer.” Volo wrapped his spare hand over Teru's wrist, savoring how slight and weak it felt next to his own. “I’m surprised.”
“I'm here to serve you… You always look so sad. I just want to make you feel better.” he murmured softly. “You should use me to clean your cock.”
“Mm,” Volo rocked his hips into Teru’s trembling hands. “Wow. I never knew you had such a foul mouth.” He leaned closer, his wet, red mouth hot above Teru’s vulnerable face. “You pathetic freak.”
Teru nodded, accepting the abuse, inviting it closer. He rolled his hips into Volo’s groin, enticing him, enraging him, inspiring him to be cruel.
“Open your mouth, Teru,” Volo grinned down at him with cold eyes. “I want to get a closer look at that filthy tongue of yours.”
Teru listened, bowing to Volo’s lascivious smile. He stuck his tongue out, his eyes fluttering halfway closed.
Volo's fingers slid into the gentle groove of Teru's tongue, admiring how small it was, how soft. Experimentally, he pressed the rough tips of his fingers hard into the base of Teru's tongue, playing with the back of his throat, curious about how much pressure it would take to make him gag. When he didn’t react, silently opening his throat for more, Volo withdrew his fingers, scrubbing them clean against Teru’s soft cheeks.
“Keep it open,” he murmured, dipping his face to meet Teru’s.
Teru’s heart pounded. Was Volo going to kiss him? The thought made him tremble in anticipation. It had been such a long time since anyone had kissed him, affectionately or otherwise. He couldn't begin to conceptualize how a kiss from someone like Volo might feel, how it might taste when stripped out of a narrative, a scene, a lie. Teru panted softly, fingers twitching in anticipation as Volo descended upon him.
Volo paused, his lips hovering a hair's breadth above Teru’s, and spat into the back of his throat.
Before Teru could protest, before he could react at all, Volo pushed his jaw closed, catching his tongue between the gentle rows of his teeth. He held Teru’s mouth shut, watching his throat to see if he'd swallow. He didn't have to wait for long; Teru swallowed what he gave him without thought, without hesitation, a dreamy look spreading across his distant features like a wine stain through a clean rag.
“Unbelievable,” Volo said, his voice tinged with a faint, twisted eroticism. “You'll take anything I have to give, won't you?”
Teru nodded, unsure if he was permitted to speak. He opened his mouth again, displaying his tongue once more. He bound himself to it like a whipping post for all of Volo’s rage, a pliant, pink altar for him to lay out all his offerings, to stake through with a knife.
Volo freed his cock from his pants, dropping it on Teru’s face. Teru licked at it hopelessly, soft moans fluttering from his lips as he kissed and huffed the sides, tracing his tongue along the veins. Finally, he sighed as he took the head into his mouth, yes, finally, yes.
It slid down his throat so easily. Volo hummed a soft, malicious sound of pleasure, testing Teru, waiting for him to fail. He pressed in as deep as he could go, wondering how long it would take Teru to gag and struggle around his cock—it was certainly more impressive in size than his fingers. But Teru took it all, accepting every possible inch of abuse that Volo was kind enough to give him. He groaned as Volo fucked his throat. Volo hoped that the act of pulling partway out would work, that fucking him hard and fast would surprise him enough to make him choke. Even when he hilted himself inside and pressed his balls into Teru’s soft, hairless face, Teru reacted with nothing but plastic enthusiasm—with joy.
Volo loved it. He hated it even more.
“Enough,” Volo growled, pulling out much too quickly, leaving him wanting. “Take off your pants, slut. Don’t expect me to do it for you.”
Teru followed each order as it was given, stripping himself weakly. The pressure of Volo's hands still lingered on his throat, a reminder of what would come later if he did his job well.
“You're hard?” Volo bared his teeth again. “That's hilarious.”
Volo took his place between Teru's thighs as he spread his knees apart, splaying his legs out to accommodate the shape of Volo's body. He peeled off his underwear, trembling as he exposed himself, tears threatening to spill as he felt Volo's cruel, relentless eyes rake over him. He remembered the soft, new hairs that grew around the base of his cock, how they spoiled his youthful flesh, and he fought to smother his tears.
“I don’t want your cock,” Volo snapped. “Didn’t they teach you anything on that stupid breeding farm?” He seized Teru by the hair, jerking him closer. “You know what I want. I know you’re stupid too, but don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Yes,” Teru nodded vigorously as though making some sort of apology. “I'm stupid,” he repeated, but he obeyed. He drew his knees up to his chest, wriggling in the dirt until his ass was better positioned for Volo's cock, exposed. He cupped himself gently, drawing his modest balls away from his ass, wincing as his cock smeared precum into his trembling hand.
“That's better.”
Volo turned Teru's free palm up to face the sky and spat into his hand. “Go on,” he smiled, pressing the head of his own cock into his spit. “This is all you get to have, so make it count.”
Teru smothered the grimace that threatened to creep into his face as his palm brushed against the thick, sticky saliva that coated Volo’s cock. It felt like a sadistic joke; Teru knew where this was headed, but his hand was so much more dry than what it was supposed to be keeping wet. The slick from his throat rubbed off into his fingers like they were terry cloth, soft and doing everything that he didn’t want them to do. He stroked Volo’s cock, petting it, lavishing it with timid, innocent affection until it was torn away from him, finding its true home between his legs.
As soon as the head of Volo's dick split him open, Teru felt all his blood rush to fill his own cock. This always happened to him, whether he thought he wanted it or not; like the punishing rush of fluids from the barrel of a syringe, his arousal pumped through him, making him dizzy and weak, sending his mind spinning. He hardened against his own hand, painfully obvious about how much he enjoyed the feeling, how badly he needed it.
Still, it had been a long time, and Teru winced as Volo tore him, his uncaring cock sliding all the way to the base.
“Oh, don't tell me you're complaining,” Volo warned. “You’re lucky I’m even looking at you, you pathetic sow.”
Teru moaned at the nasty sound of his words, thrashing wordlessly as Volo’s cock twitched inside him. Even through the pain, Teru's ass squeezed Volo impossibly hard, sucking him deeper, hugging him closer in utter desperation.
“The only reason you’re on your back is because I want to watch you die,” Volo’s face twisted into something that made Teru shudder. “Do you understand?”
“I—” Teru gagged, tears spilling down his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed, “just use me! Please, Volo, I—” He cried, his hysterics jumbling his words. “I need you to kill me. I need you to use me for what I am.”
The look on Volo’s face only grew more strange. Somehow, Teru thought, it was both foreign and intimately familiar. It looked all wrong for Volo the merchant, the man that he thought he knew before, but it made sense for the Volo he had met at Sinnoh-sama’s ruined temple, the Volo that hid behind only one eye.
The sensation that Volo’s expression kindled Teru’s chest was intimate, familial. It made him feel so relaxed, like he had finally returned home. After such a long, arduous journey through a land in which he did not belong, it made sense. The pain and the leaden weight between his legs all made so much sense.
“Are you sorry, Teru?” Volo’s cold voice began to warm with arousal. “You should be really sorry, you know.”
Teru moaned, shivering around Volo's cock, language escaping him again.
“Yes,” Volo lowered his voice, “or no? I won't kill you until you answer me, but I'm only giving you one chance.”
“Yes!” Teru wailed, writhing under Volo’s body. “I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry!”
“For what,” Volo growled, eyes smoldering darkly in his face. “What are you sorry for?”
“For—” Teru's tears caught in the back of his mouth. “For everything I’ve done to you, Volo,” he moaned, “for ruining all of your plans, for deluding myself into thinking I could be important. And for being such a—” he cried as Volo fucked him, “—a freak. You shouldn’t have to look at me. I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as you, so please—” Teru’s chest heaved, “—please, please kill me. Please.”
The good felt bad, and only the bad felt good. Teru groaned and sobbed beneath Volo’s practiced body, drooling and shaking in fear, in pain, in ecstasy.
“Tell me,” Volo stared down into Teru’s eyes. “Do you really want to die?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Yes. I really do. Really, really bad.”
“And why is that?”
For a moment, Teru wasn’t sure how to answer. The details of his mission were confidential, not to be shared with his outgroup. A meaningful death also meant an organic one, a purposeful and authentic exit. Teru did the best that he could.
“...Everything hurts,” he finally whispered, feebly shaking his head. “And, my life, it—it offends you.”
Volo gently rocked his hips into the most sensitive part of Teru’s ass, pleased to have found it so soon. “Keep going.”
“It’s too late for me. It’s already too late.” Admitting it out loud, finally making it real, burned him. For a moment, Teru thought it might be easier to swallow nails. “If I was a person, I think I would want to live. But I’m not. I never will be. I can’t be more than this.” He trembled under Volo’s deep strength, under his intimate, violating curiosity. “And I don’t want to be. Not if I can serve you the way I am now.”
“If you’re not a person,” Volo’s fangs flashed in the dimming light, “then what are you, Teru?”
“...I’m cattle,” Teru said. “And I’m an object,” he whimpered. “So please,” he looked up at Volo with dewy, teary eyes. “Use me like one.”
Volo made a pleased sound, listening as Teru debased himself for Volo’s pleasure. “Wow,” he finally said. “You’re so much less human that I thought you were. It’s amazing how you could deceive anyone for so long, really.” For a moment, his mind seemed to wander. “But, then again, so could I.”
“We…” Teru hesitated. “We aren’t the same. You’re so much better than me.”
“Oh, I don’t need you to tell me that.” Volo smiled again, the sun filtering through his hair. “And even if I couldn’t place it, I always knew there was something wrong with you.” He rolled his hips into Teru’s, shocking him, relishing the way he tightened down around the sudden intrusion. “You’re a bad liar, Teru. And you’re bad at this.”
Again, Volo knew exactly what to say to hurt him to his core, to twist the knife of all his failures. Teru wanted to protest, to try harder, to prove that all of his training had meant something—but Volo didn't give him the chance.
“You wanted this, didn't you?” He ran a finger down Teru’s red cheeks, tracing the outline of a tear, mocking his weakness. “Isn't that why you invited me out here, even though you know better? Even though you know how I really feel about you?”
“I—” Teru’s throat clenched, shocked that Volo would touch his face so gently, barely holding back his tears. “I really didn't know. I swear, Volo, I—”
“Admit it.” Volo didn't waver. He sank inside Teru again, pressing against the most tender point inside of him. “Admit that this is your fault.”
“I…” Teru's voice was so small in the bottom of his mouth. “I…”
Somewhere inside the sea of fragmented thoughts and feelings and roles that made up his body, Teru really had believed in Volo. Through all of the processing and conditioning that had taken place over his life, a demure, innocent piece of him had survived, a shallow derivative of his childhood self that had been trained to be dirtied and exploited. To such a stunted, amnesiac slice of Teru's mind, every new betrayal was its first. Its faith had never been blemished, never could be blemished; it would deliver him into the jaws of humiliation and defeat every time, all to the simple melody of ‘you-can-trust-me.’
Unable to hold himself together, Teru collapsed. “I wanted you to kill me,” he sobbed, “and I wanted this. Just once, I wanted to know how you’d feel inside me.”
“Good job.” Volo said it like it was a curse, something he would say only to what he hated most. “Now tell me which one you really wanted.”
Teru's tears crept soundlessly down his cheeks, submissive beneath the radiance of Volo's limitless thirst for pain.
“Death,” he whispered. “I wanted death. I wanted you to kill me. I’m so stupid, but I still knew how this would end. I’m so sorry.”
Volo pried himself out of Teru’s ass, arousal and disgust both written all over his face. He looked like he couldn’t stand the desperate way that Teru sucked him back in, the way he moaned as if begging him to stay—but he liked it. Even though he hadn't cum yet, he had to like it.
“I’m so sorry, Volo. I’m so sorry.” Though repetitious like prayer, the words never dulled of ardor on Teru’s tongue. “I never should have made you get your hands so dirty. I'll never be able to forgive myself for this. I don't deserve forgiveness.” He gazed up into Volo's stony face. “I don't deserve you.”
Volo looked away for a moment, up and into the distance toward the invisible eye of the Temple of Sinnoh. “Then it's good that such forgiveness isn’t yours to give,” he said. “But you won’t have to worry about that where you’re going anyway.”
Under the orange mountain shadow, something cold punched through the center of Teru’s stomach. In the glinting, twisting, fading light, it looked more like a screw or a nail, too thick to be either one and so sharp it went right through him. Its details, its history, all the beauty of such a cruel, intricate blade—such things were lost on Teru, who could only think of it as a knife. The ignorant had no place in Volo’s vision, his new order, the world dream that he had yet to give up on despite all pretenses of defeat; but, worse than being ignorant, Teru was useless now, a novelty that Volo already tired of. Boredom, too, would not survive the paradise he would create when all his errands were done.
But everything would come in due time. He still had a chance to make things interesting.
Volo jerked his arm in a grand, horizontal slice. The ritual weapon tore through Teru’s flesh with senseless ease, its tip carving a perfect, thin line through the reddening earth below. Something sick turned inside Teru’s stomach as the blade ground against bone deep inside of him. Again, watching himself bleed out, he forgot how to breathe.
Before Teru could even react, Volo was on top of him, smiling innocently down into his ruined face. The head of his cock, still tacky and angry from how it had forced its way into Teru the first time, nudged at the seeping edge of the wound, licking it, tasting it.
“What are you…” Teru slurred his words, reeling beneath the sludgy haze of shock. “What are you doing…?”
Volo didn't answer. He pressed his hips down into Teru's belly, pinning Teru's wrists to the soiled ground.
Everything stopped. In only an instant, all of Teru’s higher senses reverted to crazed animal fear. He wailed—shrieking, begging, please please please- ing, his voice and his body shattering along a divide that could not be mended. He wasn’t sure what he was asking Volo to do or not do. He had lost all sense of language, of time, of thought.
The broken spiral of his guts resisted Volo initially, but it quickly surrendered, cleaving to the thickness of Volo’s cock, slicking it with dark, empty blood. He made a deeply familiar sound, the same sound that Teru always heard him make at dinner after days without a proper meal. It settled into what was left inside of Teru’s mind, filling him, intoxicating him, marking him for slaughter.
“Well?” Volo couldn’t hold back the pure satisfaction layered into his voice. He didn’t try to. “How does it feel, Teru? Is this what you meant when you said you wanted me inside you?”
Somehow, after all that Teru had been through, this was the worst abuse his body had ever suffered. He knew it was the end. For all his pain and all his fear, arousal still consumed him, whipping his breath into frenzied circles, thin and looping and heavy with pain. All at once, reality visited him with a kiss—he was going to die. It was real. It was going to happen; there was no coming back from the damage he’d sustained. Teru had watched things much stronger than himself fall to far less. It was over.
Teru moaned aloud as the realization coursed through his brain, heating the fluid and steel around it until it was numb, killing the nerves it found. Something sick coiled between Teru’s thighs, thick in the cold place from which his hand had long since fallen. The burning sensation within him tightened his body into a perfect, undoable knot; at once, as he remembered all the sounds Volo had made, he understood the feeling. It crashed over him like a wave, like the sunset, like his death. Distantly, through the indescribable pleasure of such a realization, he thought he heard himself laugh. It was over. It was finally, finally over.
His brain melted under the strange, absent feeling of Volo pressing through his insides. Weakly, he shifted beneath the act, roiling under the whipping heat of the pain, helpless to all of its depravity.
Volo groaned above Teru, a vicious and terrifying sound. He drew back just enough to grab the base of his cock, still slick with Teru’s ugly blood, and he came into the clean-cut folds of Teru’s flesh, marking the exposed layers of Teru’s skin with a thick, cloudy white. It burned. Somehow, above all his other pains, Teru felt it sear into his torn flesh, so hot he felt like it might cauterize. Volo growled as he wrung himself dry, the head of his cock pressing so deep into Teru’s wounds, into parts of his body that were never meant to kiss the open air. It was over so quickly; it was over forever.
Dimly, Teru took it all in, but it screamed right past him, escaping what was left of his mind. He did nothing to fight Volo, nothing to protest his fate.
“Thank you, Volo,” Teru’s voice cracked. “Thank you for using me.”
Having had his fun, Volo steadied himself onto the balls of his feet, humming in affirmation. He brushed his hair out of his eyes, smearing his face with blood. He looked at his fingers as though contemplating how Teru’s blood might taste; instead of licking them, he pulled a rag out of his back pocket, cleaning his hands and wiping his cock idly.
“Of course, you were made to take cock, but… what you really want is for your body to be put to use again after you die. Isn't that right?”
Teru nodded, a black daze creeping into the edges of his vision.
“I know,” Volo sighed, tucking himself back into his pants. “Your kind are all so predictable. But, ah, what a shame… In this weather, you really won’t keep for long.”
The meaning of Volo’s words was lost on Teru. He looked up expectantly with vealy blue eyes, unflinching, like livestock that had watched its comrades all fall to the knife and patiently waited its turn.
Volo wiped his hands, slowly cleaning Teru’s blood off of him. He studied the ridges of his fingers as though he regretted not wearing gloves. “I’m not interested. Maybe you would have tasted better if you were a few years younger, but I guess we’ll never know.”
Teru’s world stopped. All remaining color drained down and away, bleeding over the cliffside in a fine curtain until everything was empty.
“No, I—” Teru weakly furrowed his brow, blinking slowly as he bled into the dirt. “I don’t understand. I thought you wanted me. I thought you—”
“My, my,” Volo shook his head as he stood, feigning disappointment. “Even after all I’ve done for you, you can’t help but assume the worst of me. What makes you think I actually enjoyed any of this?”
No matter what Teru tried to say, Volo pretended that he couldn’t hear him. Teru’s dying body twitched and clenched, aching with contrition, offering fragmented apologies that fell on deaf ears.
“You've taken all the charity I had left in me to give.” Volo pressed the muddy toe of his boot into Teru’s wound. “I could have been done with you ages ago. I could be on my way right now if I hadn’t stopped to give you this.”
Again, Teru begged. He begged without language as Volo crouched over him, straddling the mess of blood at his waist, letting it smear into the lovely white of his clothes. Again, Volo didn’t listen.
“It’s too bad,” Volo hummed, hands finding Teru’s neck once more. Teru whined as Volo’s nails dug into his tender flesh, but Volo just smiled. “You really were made to be eaten. But I only like girls, Teru.”
“Wh—” Teru froze under Volo's hands. “What?”
“Really? Are you such a masochist that you want to hear me say it again?” Volo met his eyes, all the false compassion gone from his face. “I don't want your meat. I don't want your body. I'm done with you.”
“Please,” Teru begged, useless tears streaking his face. “Please!” He sobbed, his body seizing, limbs thrashing through the dirt as he choked on his own voice.
“Mm,” Volo hummed, smiling as he pressed his thumbs into just the right spots on Teru’s neck. “I’m really not hungry right now,” he said, “but, as my last act as your master, I’ll grant the wish I promised you.”
Teru coughed, but it stuck in his neck, pinned beneath Volo's untouchable hands. They felt so purely sexual against his fragile throat, far more than Volo’s cock could ever hope to feel. The only thing those hands could compare to was Volo’s knife; the wound in Teru's abdomen throbbed, spitting blood between them both, still stinging with Volo's cum.
He looked up into Volo’s hazel eyes and saw lust reflected back—the same lust for death that he had seen in so many others above him, the same lust that he had brought into his own heart.
Volo smiled. The recognition in Teru’s eyes made it all the better.
“Goodbye, Teru. You can rest now.”
Volo’s hands smeared Teru’s own blood into his neck, and death rushed up to meet him before his last tears could race down his cheeks. It was so soft. So quiet. The pain that Teru felt as Volo crushed his neck was unbearable. His lips parted into a silent scream, weak fingers pathetically clawing at Volo’s thick, tenacious hands. They continued, unflinching, perfectly still against Teru’s frail throat. Volo watched his prey suffer, watched as it very quickly lost itself, finally succumbing to its most worshipful master.
Teru’s body, still severed from his mind, struggled against the shame that came with such abject worthlessness, writhing against the broken promise of Volo’s white hands; but in the face of death, Teru's mind painted his pallid face with relief, with gratitude, with a quiet, childish adoration. Finally, after a lifetime of grief, his final mission was over.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
Volo held fast and still, glaring down into Teru’s dying body, smiling only with the corners of his mouth. Even as all the life spiraled out of Teru’s face, Volo didn’t stop. He held himself there, hands frozen like perfect marble, steely and cold against Teru’s still-warm body. Volo panted—not from exertion, but from the thick, leaden thrill rising from his stomach. He was really doing it. Finally, finally, Volo laughed, things were going as planned!
At long last, the work had begun. Volo reveled in the act of purging such a foul creature from his world, in fully expunging its name, in wiping it from the land of his people—the stolen land that should have been his birthright. He swallowed Teru’s dirty spirit, processing it, purifying it, transmuting it to nourish his own higher flesh, eating it like it was cake. And as Teru’s pulse fell silent, no longer so frenetic and evil beneath Volo’s enormous strength,Volo relaxed, ever the surviving man, finally satiated.
He didn’t know how long he had held position; the shadow of the cliff above them had drawn down like a curtain over both of their bodies, turning orange into purple. Experience had taught him that it had been long enough. Teru’s flesh was paler than it had been, pale enough for Volo to let him go. He knew he wouldn’t get up again.
The look of peace on Teru’s face sickened him. Volo turned away, regretting any mercy he had shown. Immediately, the need to dispose of Teru consumed him. It wouldn’t take long for him to melt into rot—Teru’s body already shimmered with decay inside. His hands had both had their fill of him; Volo turned Teru over with the tip of his boot, first once, then twice, then one more time until his corpse straddled the edge of the cliff, the final border between rest and freefall, two equal arms of death.
He thought of offering Teru a eulogy. Volo knew that no one would find him, but he couldn’t imagine how anyone would care. With Akari gone, Teru, the second-most unusual child of Hisui, had fast become the village scapegoat. Even those who had looked on him with pity would be glad to forget he had come to Jubilife. In time, their selective memories would exile him completely, and—perhaps sooner—Volo would blot out each of their names from history. He would wipe away every tear from their eyes; there would be no more suffering or iniquities across the earth, for the old order of things would pass away.
Silence, he thought, was good enough. Even in life, it was more than Teru ever deserved. With a gentle, oblique tilt of his boot, Teru was gone, sailing down the cliffs, crunching into crumbly pieces of red stone until Volo could hear him no more.
With a final compassionate prayer, beckoning the wilds toward their encampment, Volo saw to it that Teru’s body would be put to use. With a final amen, he turned and left it all behind, looking toward the Temple as he went.