difficult baggage

Faruzan’s mind finally crawled back into place.

The first coherent words out of her mouth were, of course, deliberately provocative.

“Is that all you can manage, Traveler? One night of mediocre effort and you leave a distinguished scholar tied up like common baggage for days? Pathetic. I expected better from the man who supposedly topples Archons.”

The entire group stopped walking.

Rosaria stared at her.

Lisa pinched the bridge of her nose.

Dehya actually blinked.

Yelan’s expression was pure disbelief.

“Girl,” Rosaria said flatly, “he already nearly killed you once. You were a drooling, non-verbal puddle for almost two full days. What is wrong with you?”

Faruzan only lifted her chin higher, cheeks already faintly flushed, eyes gleaming with that same masochistic challenge.

“And yet here I am, still not properly motivated to share the deeper routes. If you want the information, you’ll have to do better than last time.”

The tenacious, self-destructive drive for her kink was so pure and unhinged that more than one of the women exchanged glances. It reminded them — uncomfortably — of Collei’s cheerful willingness to be eaten by plants for “research.”

Aether looked at the bound scholar, then at the dark, half-collapsed entrance to the deeper ruins ahead of them, then back at Faruzan.

He had no real choice.

If they wanted accurate guidance through the dangerous lower levels, he would have to play along.

He stepped forward, grabbed her by the restraints, and dragged her toward the nearest intact stone pillar with open, dramatic intent. Faruzan’s breath hitched in pure anticipation. The rest of the pride sighed in collective resignation and formed a loose watch perimeter.

As they prepared to push deeper into the ruins, the sound of rough, punishing thrusts and Faruzan’s increasingly broken, defiant moans began to echo off the ancient walls.

Aether deliberately held back.

He had no interest in reducing Faruzan to another non-verbal puddle this deep in unknown ruins. Instead he kept her right on the edge — deep, controlled thrusts that brought her close again and again, only to slow or stop the moment she started to tip over. Every new corridor, every strange device, every half-buried installation became a negotiation. Information first. Orgasm later. Sometimes not even then.

Faruzan hated how effective it was.

By the time they pushed into a vast underground hall, she was trembling, flushed, and furiously coherent. The chamber had clearly once been a research station. Broken consoles lined the walls. Half-collapsed shelves still held ancient tools and cracked tablets. And in the exact center of the room stood a heavy, chair-like device of dark metal and faded inlay, covered in dormant script and unfamiliar mechanisms.

The group spread out to examine it.

Faruzan’s eyes locked onto the chair. Her face twisted into a wild, triumphant, and completely unhinged smirk even while she was still impaled and twitching.

“Hah! I knew it!” she spat, voice high and breathless. “You brutes finally show your true colors! You want to strap me into the mind alterer, don’t you? Forcefully rewrite me into your permanent mindless pocket pussy for good! That’s been the plan all along!”

Silence fell.

Every single member of the party — Aether included — turned to stare at her with the same flat expression of annoyance mixed with open disdain.

Lisa looked personally offended by the leap in logic. an “What the actual fuck.” came from Dahlya. Even Shenhe’s blank gaze carried a hint of judgment.

Aether stopped moving inside her completely and looked down at the scholar with pure exasperation.

“…No one was thinking that until you said it out loud.”

Faruzan blinked, still panting, still right on the edge, and suddenly seemed to realize that her dramatic accusation had landed in a room full of people who were now looking at her like she was the most exhausting person they had ever met.

Aether had finally reached his limit with Akademiya scholars.

He pulled out of Faruzan, set her down against a broken console a short distance away, and simply walked off. The rest of the group followed his lead without a word. Whatever useful guidance she still possessed could wait until she stopped being exhausting.

Faruzan did not take the sudden loss of attention well.

She immediately launched into a rising stream of insults, accusations, and deliberately provocative challenges, her voice growing louder and more frustrated with every sentence that was ignored. The pride treated her like background noise. Rosaria examined the walls. Yelan checked for structural weaknesses. Dehya tested the stability of the floor. Shenhe stood watch. No one even glanced at the bound scholar as her theatrics escalated into near-desperate attempts to get a rise out of someone — anyone.

In the center of the hall, Lisa crouched beside the strange chair and studied it with sharp, focused interest. After a moment she brushed her fingers along one of the armrests and the faded harness points, then held them up to the light.

“Residue,” she said quietly. “Not dust. Something organic and fairly fresh… three, maybe four days old at most.”

She looked up at Aether.

“Someone used this device recently. Given the timing and the direction your sister fled, it’s very likely this was Lumine.”

Aether stared at the chair in silence for a long moment.

A device that could alter minds. Brainwash. Rewrite.

He didn’t know what Lumine would want with something like that. Had it been used on her? Had she used it on one of the four men who had broken into the Forbidden Library with her? Or had she simply studied it, taken what she needed, and left? The questions sat heavy and unanswered. All he knew for certain was that the residue was only a few days old — and that his sister was already gone.

She had moved on.

Possibly while they were still making camp on the surface above these very ruins, completely unaware of how close they had been.

The trail was still warm, but it was already leading somewhere else.

Aether finally turned away from the chair.

“She’s not here anymore,” he said quietly. “We keep moving. Deeper, or back to the surface to pick up the next set of tracks — whatever gives us the best chance of catching up.”

Behind them, Faruzan’s ignored insults had finally started to lose steam, fading into frustrated, breathless muttering.