Chapter 2: The Cruel Gift
The silence after Tethys’s departure felt brittle. Valerius stared at the intricate mosaic floor, the swirling patterns blurring. Eidolon. Mortals. Dust. His own grotesque form paraded before desperate eyes. The damp patch beneath his belly felt cold now, a stark contrast to the burning shame on his face. Jocus’s words – burn you as a very confusing, very pregnant demon – echoed relentlessly. He couldn’t move.
"Right," Jocus chirped, clapping his hands together, the sound jarringly loud. The mission’s gravity seemed to slide right off him. "Subtlety. Mortal disguise. Essential." He snapped his fingers. A small, shimmering vortex appeared above his palm, resolving into… fabric. Deep brown, coarse-looking wool. "Basic peasant garb. Nothing screams 'harmless traveler' like itchy sackcloth." He tossed a bundle towards Delmon, who caught it without looking, his gaze still fixed on the hall entrance where Tethys had vanished, brow furrowed in thought.
Another vortex shimmered. Jocus produced a second bundle. "And for our burgeoning life-force incarnate…" He held it out to Valerius with a flourish. "Something… roomy."
Valerius took the rough fabric numbly. It felt abrasive against his fingers. Roomier silk? It wouldn’t hide this. Nothing could. He clutched it like a shield.
"Ah, but wait!" Jocus exclaimed, eyes gleaming with sudden inspiration. "Roominess is one thing. Control… that’s the real trick." He snapped his fingers again. This vortex was brighter, tinged with mischievous violet light. From it, he pulled an object that made Valerius’s blood run cold.
It was a corset. But unlike any mortal garment. Crafted from what looked like woven moonlight and shadow, interlaced with faintly glowing silver threads. The boning seemed forged from dark, flexible obsidian. It shimmered with contained, chaotic energy.
"For the… protuberances," Jocus explained, holding it up. It looked impossibly delicate, yet radiated a subtle power. "Enchanted, naturally. Adaptive. It’ll cinch things in, smooth the silhouette. Make you look less like you’re smuggling a prize melon under your tunic and more like… well, a slightly portly pilgrim. Maybe." He winked. "Think of it as divine shapewear. Practical and fashionable."
Valerius recoiled. "No. Absolutely not." The memory of the balcony, of Delmon’s silent interruption, flared hot and fresh. The last thing he needed was Jocus’s magic constricting him there.
"Don’t be such a prude, Val," Jocus chided, stepping closer. "It’s temporary! Mortal disguise! Delmon agrees, don’t you, Del? Essential for blending?" He glanced at Delmon, who had finally looked away from the entrance. Delmon’s dark eyes flicked from the corset to Valerius’s strained robes, then back to Jocus. He gave a single, slow nod. Pragmatic. Necessary. No hint of the curiosity Valerius sometimes imagined lurking beneath that stoic surface.
Valerius felt trapped. Delmon’s silent endorsement was a vise. Refusal would seem petulant, obstructive. Weak. He couldn’t afford weakness, not in front of Delmon, not with a mission this critical. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "Fine," he rasped. "But quickly."
"Excellent!" Jocus beamed. "Just slip off the silk robe… modesty preserved by the peasant tunic underneath, naturally… and we’ll get you trussed up."
Valerius stood on trembling legs, the chaise groaning in relief. He fumbled with the emerald silk robe, his fingers clumsy with humiliation. Beneath it, he wore a simple, loose tunic of divine linen – now stretched obscenely tight over his belly and groin. He let the robe fall to the chaise, standing exposed in the tunic that did nothing to hide his condition. He kept his gaze firmly on the floor, avoiding Delmon’s direction, feeling the weight of unseen divine stares prickling his skin.
Jocus moved behind him. Valerius felt the cool, strangely electric touch of the enchanted corset against his back. Jocus wrapped it around him, the woven moonlight-shadow fabric surprisingly cool and smooth against his heated skin. The obsidian boning felt unnervingly solid.
"Deep breath now!" Jocus instructed cheerfully.
Valerius sucked in a breath, pulling his belly in as much as physically possible. It wasn’t much. Jocus pulled the laces – not silk cords, but strands of pure, crackling violet energy – taut.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The corset didn’t flatten. It compressed. With terrifying, magical force. The enchanted fabric and obsidian bones contracted like a living thing, cinching brutally around his midsection. Valerius gasped, the breath knocked out of him. The dense swell of his belly wasn’t diminished; it was forced upwards and outwards, shoved violently against the thin linen tunic. It protruded like a hard, rounded shelf beneath his ribs, the fabric straining so tightly over it he feared it might rip. The pressure was immense, suffocating.
But worse. Far worse.
The lower edge of the corset dug mercilessly into the top of his pelvis. Below it, his already swollen genitals, trapped by the corset’s downward thrust and the linen tunic, were brutally compressed and forced forward. The sudden, agonizing pressure ignited a white-hot bolt of sensation that wasn’t entirely pain. It was sharp, electric, and terrifyingly pleasurable. Valerius cried out, a strangled sound, staggering forward a step.
"Whoa there!" Jocus chuckled, pulling the energy laces tighter still. "Holds its shape beautifully, doesn’t it? Really defines the… assets."
Another vicious tug. The corset squeezed like a serpent. Valerius’s belly jutted forward obscenely, impossibly firm and prominent. Below, the crushing pressure on his trapped erection intensified. A second wave of forced, electric pleasure ripped through him, stronger this time, radiating up his spine, making his knees buckle. He whimpered, a sound of pure, humiliated agony mixed with unwanted ecstasy. His face burned hotter than the divine forges. He could feel the dampness in his linen tunic increasing, a mortifying slickness against his skin.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus on the mosaic patterns, on Delmon’s boots, on anything but the relentless, humiliating sensations assaulting him. The corset felt alive, pulsing with Jocus’s chaotic magic, actively amplifying the pressure, triggering involuntary tremors deep within his swollen belly and sending jolts of that awful, forced pleasure through his groin with every slight movement or breath.
"Looking much more… contained!" Jocus announced brightly, giving the laces a final, sadistic jerk. Valerius choked back another gasp as another wave of intense, unwanted sensation washed over him, leaving him trembling and slick with sweat beneath the rough peasant tunic Jocus now tossed over his head.
The coarse wool settled over the obscene contours the corset had created. It didn’t hide them. It merely draped over the shelf-like belly and the pronounced bulge below, outlining them in stark, unmistakable relief. He looked less like a pilgrim and more like a crude fertility idol carved by a fevered artist.
"Perfect!" Jocus declared, stepping back to admire his handiwork. "Ready for the dusty roads of Eidolon!"
Valerius dared to glance up, tears of shame pricking his eyes. Delmon was looking directly at him. Not with amusement, not with pity. His expression was unreadable, sharp eyes taking in the distorted silhouette, the strained fabric, the tremor in Valerius’s hands. There was a flicker there – assessment, perhaps? Curiosity, definitely. But also a hard, pragmatic acceptance. The disguise, however grotesque, was functional.
Delmon nodded once, curtly. "Move." He turned towards the hall’s grand exit, his own peasant garb somehow managing to look like practical armor. "Eidolon awaits."
Valerius took a shaky step. The corset bit deeper. The pressure intensified. Another wave of that sickening, electric pleasure-pain surged through him, forcing a tiny, choked gasp from his lips. He stumbled after Delmon, every step an agony of exposure and unwanted sensation, the coarse wool scratching his skin, the enchanted corset a cruel prison tightening around his body and his dignity. Jocus’s delighted chuckle followed him out of the golden hall, into the swirling vortex that would deposit them onto the silent, dying plains.