Chapter Text
"Are you ready to repent?" the inquisitor asks.
A choked scream is his only answer as the wooden phallus sinks deeper into Starling's cunt. She shudders through the wave of pain and blinks tears from her eyes before turning to glare balefully at the robed figure before her. She's known far and wide for her immense beauty and wisdom, but right now her face is a blotchy shade of red and twisted into an ugly grimace: her usual cool poise and detached gentleness replaced with pure, burning hate.
The inquisitor sighs and shakes his head, reaching for the winch again. Starling chokes on a sob that she can't quite hold down, then grits her teeth, preparing herself for the pain—there's nothing else she can do. She's bound tightly, hanging from the ceiling with ropes, a wooden pole under her arms and another behind her knees, keeping her legs spread. The only part of her that's touching down on anything is her cunt, but that's not the relief it should be, for she's cruelly impaled on a thick, wooden phallus, which is fixed on top of a wooden pole—tall enough that it would reach her chest, were she standing next to it. As the inquisitor carefully begins to turn the winch, the mechanism slowly lowers Starling's body down, forcing her to take the phallus deeper, until it's practically splitting her open.
"Aah, fuck, fuck!" Starling shouts. Her stomach convulses helplessly around the intrusion, which only makes the pain worse. The phallus isn't really that much thicker than an actual human penis—albeit a large one—but the phallus is not flesh and blood, and the hard, unyielding wood forces its way ruthlessly into Starling's body, pushing through her aching muscles and tender flesh.
The inquisitor pauses the winch's movement, letting Starling shake and moan on the phallus for a moment, the immense pain pulsating through her whole body: then he turns the winch again, but backwards this time, which causes the mechanism to lift Starling up. The ache in her cunt goes down to a more tolerable level, and she sobs with relief, though she knows very well that it's only a moment's respite. Indeed, the inquisitor chuckles and turns the winch back, in the other direction, and down Starling goes again, her cunt brutally forced to open around the wooden phallus.
The pain isn't the worst thing about the arrangement. There's the constant threat of the wooden pole right under Starling, and the way there are only the ropes supporting her body. If the mechanism fails… if the inquisitor's hands slip… Starling chokes on another sob and squeezes her eyes shut, but that only makes her more aware of the ropes biting into her flesh and the wooden poles keeping her limbs fixed into such a humiliating, helpless position.
"Are you ready to repent?" the inquisitor asks again and turns the winch slowly. His hands are steady and sure, the muscles in his bare arms bulging as he pauses to hold the winch in place. His face is hidden behind a black, featureless mask: only his eyes are visible. They are a startlingly pale shade of blue, as cold and unreadable as the winter sky as he observes Starling's suffering, adding more to it every time it looks like she might be getting too comfortable.
"F-fuck you," Starling spits out, a furious snarl replacing the despair on her face for a moment. "I will never… a-aah! Fuck, fuck! You m-monster!"
The inquisitor had suddenly let her drop down a few inches, further impaling her on the phallus. Her chest heaves as she pants and sobs, and as she throws her head back, the tangled strands of her bright red hair stick to her sweaty back, joining the equally red whip marks that are crisscrossing her skin.
"Foolish woman," the inquisitor says regretfully, clicking his tongue. "So willful and proud, and for what? So you can cling to your wicked ways and foul practices? Repent! Repent now, and this will all be over." He turns the winch again, and Starling is lifted up, her cunt clenching and fluttering as the pressure eases—and immediately lowered back, the wood rubbing against her insides and making pain and heat pulsate through her midsection. Up again—then down—and now the inquitor is obviously just toying with her, slowly bouncing her up and down on the wooden phallus, fucking her with it. And she can't do anything but take it, sobbing and shuddering as her cunt is thoroughly violated, the hard wood pummeling her insides over and over again.
"How stubborn you are, my little witch!" the inquisitor says after this has gone on for a while, his deep voice laced with amusement.The cadende of his words is just as measured and precise as it was in the beginning, while Starling is sobbing and whimpering so hard that her whole body is shaking with it, no longer able to even spit curses at the man. "How fortunate that I appreciate a challenge. A less patient man would just skewer you like a pig, and you might even deserve it… but I don't give up so easily."
He turns the winch again, then locks it into position, leaving Starling impaled on the phallus—not too deep, just enough that she can feel the stretch. Starling moans and lets her chin drop down to her chest while she tries to ride the waves of agony that wrack her body. At least she's stationary for now: the wood is no longer rubbing her insides raw. She's so lost in the pain that she doesn't notice the inquisitor before he's already standing behind her and reaching around her to grab her tits.
"D-don't you dare," Starling wheezes and jerks her chest back, but it only makes the phallus dig painfully into another spot inside her, and she half screams, half sobs and slumps in her restraints.
The inquisitor doesn't bother replying. Starling's tits are so small that the man's hands cover them entirely, and he immediately takes advantage of it, squeezing them hard enough that Starling's vision goes white with pain. She gasps and whines, spluttering half-formed words that might be pleas for mercy, were they understandable in any way. A beat too late she realizes that she's fallen back on her native language, and the man wouldn't understand her anyway, but by then, the inquisitor has already let go.
"Are you ready to repent?" he says, murmuring the words directly into Starling's ear and making her skin tingle as his breath hits the sweaty skin of her neck. "No? Ah, my poor child, you should know better than to cling uselessly to your pride. Very well."
When his hands return, they don't go back to crushing her tits: instead, he takes her left nipple between his fingers, pinching and stretching it until Starling lets out a choked moan—which turns into a shrill scream as something much harder than fingers clamp around her nipple in a flash of fiery, bright pain.
The inquisitor lets go, and Starling screams again as something pulls at her nipple. She manages to squint through the sheen of tears and sees a metal clamp around her nipple—and a round weight attached to it, stretching her nipple until she fears that it will be torn right off. "Ah, ff…" she moans, her face spasming into a grimace as the pain grows and grows. Finally it plateaus into a low, steady hum of agony, and Starling's head falls down again, her chest heaving with stuttering gasps of air.
In the midst of it all, she completely manages to forget about her other nipple: it's only when the inquisitor's fingers are already closing around it that she realizes it's not over yet.
"No! Don't, don't—" Her frantic words break down into a scream as the metal clamp tightens around her nipple and the weight starts to pull at it, joining the other nipple in the chorus of agony. "Oh, oh, hnh," she pants and wheezes, shaking her head as if that would alleviate the pain.
While she's squirming with pain, the inquisitor walks around her in a slow circle, admiring his handiwork, before finally stopping to stand in front of her. He reaches for her face with one gloved hand, grabbing her chin and forcing her to meet his eyes.
"You can stop this any time, child," the man says in a softer tone of voice, rubbing his thumb soothingly over Starling's tearstained cheek. "Give up your foolish pride. Repent. All will be forgiven, if you just—"
A glob of spit hits his chest. Well, Starling had been aiming for his face, but she doesn't have the strength for it right now. Either way, it seems to work: the inquisitor falls silent and just stares at her, expression unreadable behind his mask.
"You wretched murderer," she snarls, taking comfort in the sharp edges of her native language. "May your ancestors forget your name, that you never find them in the Underworld, and your descendants piss on your—ah!"
"Silence, witch!" the inquisitor commands and delivers another slap to her other cheek, making her cry out again. "You can't use your wicked spells on me, for I am a holy man."
"You… are a murderer," Starling rasps through the pain. "Nothing more."
The inquisitor only laughs quietly, shaking his head, and turns to walk away. As she stares at his retreating back, Starling is hit with the nauseating idea that the man is going to just leave her here, tied up and alone, the cruel restraints and the weighted clamps and the wooden phallus slowly destroying her body. She squeezes her eyes shut and grits her teeth against the despair that roils in her stomach, and the agony that pulsates through every part of her body: her aching limbs, her tortured nipples—and most of all her cunt, stretched obscenely wide around the hard, unforgiving shape of the wooden phallus.
The immense pain fills her mind with white noise, blurring her senses so thoroughly that she doesn't even notice the inquisitor's return, before he's already grabbing her face and shaking it, forcing her to open her eyes.
What she sees makes her let out an unguarded sound of alarm, because there, sitting on the man's palm, incongrously small and fragile-looking, is a small glass jar. A very familiar-looking jar.
"Yes, I believe you know what this is," the inquisitor says, standing so close that Starling can see clearly how his eyes crinkle with a knowing smile. "After all, you're the one who made this foul poison. Don't even try to deny it: we already got a confession from the poor, misguided woman who bought it from you."
It's not a poison, Starling wants to scream, but her throat has closed up: she can barely keep breathing. She croaks something incomprehensible and struggles futilely in her restraints. She can only watch, her eyes wide with horror, as the man carefully uncorks the jar and peeks curiously at the contents. A crisp, herbal scent immediately fills the space around them, making Starling's eyes sting. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it's a strong one, and Starling, already in a weakened state, starts to feel light-headed from just one mouthful of it.
"N-no," she chokes out, shaking her head. "You can't, you—"
"I wonder…" the inquisitor continues thoughtfully. "If even you, the one who made it, is so terrified of it… what exactly does it do?" As he speaks, he dips a finger into the jar, scooping up a generous dollop of the pale, creamy unguent. He bends his head to carefully sniff it, then coughs and shakes his head. "Potent stuff! But we already knew you were a powerful witch."
But for all he pretends ignorance, his hands are sure as he reaches for Starling's cunt and proceeds to rub the unguent liberally over her clitoris and around the stretched rim of her hole, paying no heed to her shrill cries of pain as he massages her bruised folds.
The effect isn't instantaneous. At first, it's almost pleasant: the way the unguent creates a thin, greasy film over Starling's skin, soothing away the worst of the sting and burn in her abused flesh. Indeed, as a wise woman, Starling has prepared many healing balms, usually for simple cuts and burns: but sometimes for people who have been subjected to a fate similar to hers, who have been so thoroughly and violently raped that most healers would just turn them away as lost causes. Not Starling, though: in this, the inquisitor is right. She is powerful. Perhaps the most powerful of her kin.
But never has she regretted her powers before, because this is not a healing balm. And it was never meant to be used like this, slathered over someone's skin so liberally—and certainly not to be used on someone who's already in pain. Who's being tortured.
At first, she manages to use the pain as a shield, focusing on the burn in her nipples and the feel of the rigid wood violating her cunt. Manages to convince herself that the heat seeping into her flesh is just an after-effect of the whipping she had received earlier, and that the way her heart speeds up and her skin breaks out in sweat is due to the horror of being tortured and violated. That the unexpected slickness of her cunt is probably just blood—nevermind that there isn't even a hint of the familiar smell, and though her cunt aches, the pain isn't the sharp bite of broken flesh.
"Is it working?" the inquisitor murmurs and twists his fingers into Starling's hair, tugging her head back in a swift movement that makes her scream—and then she just keeps screaming, bleating like an animal with her mouth hanging open, because now the man has gone back to torturing her nipples. It shouldn't be so bad: he's just moving his finger in a tiny circle over the small, tight nub that's sticking out from between the jaws of the clamp, but even such a small movement is causing sharp flashes of pain to pierce her already abused flesh. "Ah yes. There we go. You're almost ready…" Still murmuring softly, he switches to the other nipple, teasing the point in a similar way before going back to the first nipple: back and forth, repeating the cycle of agony until Starling can barely see through her tears.
It takes an embarrassingly long time for Starling to realize that the inquisitor isn't simply toying with her—his actions have a much more insidious purpose, because with every swirl of his fingers, he's actually spreading the unguent right over the abused flesh of her nipples.
"Oh g-gods, no, no," she chokes out, but the familiar heat is already blooming in her nipples, joining the cacophony of sensation that's wracking the rest of her body. Pain and heat and pleasure so strong it might as well be pain—it's in her nipples, in her cunt, filling her lungs with fire and her eyes with tears. "No, stop it, stop—"
"Are you ready to repent?" the inquisitor asks gently, his face so close that he's breathing the words directly into Starling's open, gasping mouth. "I can make it stop, just say the words. But if you won't…"
He lets his hand slide down, over Starling's twitching, trembling stomach, until it slips between her legs. His touch is sure and steady as he takes Starling's clit between his fingers and squeezes it firmly. The lance of agony and heat that follows is enough to make Starling choke on her next breath, and she's still spluttering and coughing, whole body shaking with the force of it, when there's a small clink of metal. She doesn't even grasp the meaning of the sound before something cold and hard is already closing around the tender little nub of her clit—and when the man lets go, there's a bright lance of pain as a heavy weight starts pulling at her clit, just like the ones on her nipples, and she screams and writhes and screams again as the weights move with her, as every spasm and twitch of her body causes a new burst of white-hot agony.