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It was the height of arrogance, really.
Xie Lian had thought, given the endless praise he'd received since he was barely old enough to hold a sword, that it would be - if not easy - doable. He'd thought it would be a long and harsh battle, surely, but that he would come out triumphant. He'd never even considered any other outcome.
Truly, the absolute height of naïve arrogance. Who was he? A prince? A hunter? A boy beloved by all his people? A boy who'd been spoiled throughout his entire life, had never wanted for anything, had never known hunger or hurt or discomfort. And what was that, in the face of such a monster?
Jun Wu was the epitome, the goal all hunters set their sights on, the monster feared even by other monsters. He was a King, a Calamity, a being so ancient that no one knew for sure where he'd even come from. Stories of his reign of terror dated back thousands of years, to the very dawn of their time. He was always there, always in the shadows, always leaving behind bodies drained of their very life essence.
And Xie Lian, barely an adult even by the most generous of standards, had thought himself capable of killing him.
Instead, he found himself on his knees before the very thing he'd come to kill, head bowed in defeat. Every inch of him ached, his robes were but scrapes left clinging to his bruised and battered body. Already a puddle of his blood was forming beneath him.
"Such a waste," the ageless being spoke, voice a deep gravel that seemed to vibrate in his very bones. "Will you give up, young Prince? Will you kneel here and accept your defeat? Your death?"
"I won't!" Xie Lian barked back, using the last of his energy to lift his head, to glare with all the hatred he could muster. He was going to die here, he knew, there wasn't much he could do about that now. His blade had been knocked aside, lost amongst the rubble, and he didn't think he could even lift himself all the way to his feet at this point. Still, he wouldn't just lay down and take it. He'd spit and yell and howl and claw until his very last breath if he had to. "Do your worst, demon! I won't submit to you!"
"Won't submit, eh?" And that was amusement in those red eyes, now, amusement and something... darker, something Xie Lian couldn't name. "Well. If you won't submit to me, maybe you'll submit to them."
"What - ?"
But the world had already gone black.
Xie Lian awoke in chains.
This wasn't surprising, beyond the fact that he was awakening at all.
What was surprising was that, besides the shackles binding his ankle and the collar encircling his neck, he seemed to be in laying on a bed in an empty room. And it was a nice bed, comparable to one found in the palace, and the room around him was decorated opulently with dark, sturdy wood furniture and intricate artworks and tapestries hung on the walls. This clearly was no prison cell, not by even the most absurd stretch of the imagination.
So, what was he doing here?
It was only as he began trying to work his way to his feet that he noticed how he himself looked.
His tattered robes were gone, replaced by a long black dress and white, frilly apron. His feet were covered in stark white stockings that seemed to run all the way up his thighs. And, now that he was aware of it, he could tell by feel that even his underthings had been changed for something else, something that fit his manhood snuggly and covered little else.
He could feel his face inflaming at the thought of anyone changing his clothes, let alone dressing him in such shameless things. He'd known from the start that Jun Wu was a monster but this? He hadn't even thought to fear something like this!
A quick search of the room revealed there were no other clothes he could change into, not that he'd held much hope. He was just debating with himself which was worse, staying dressed like this or stripping and wrapping himself up into a blanket instead, when the door to the room unlatched and swung open.
Xie Lian was prepared for a lot of things, in that moment. What he was not prepared for was -
"...Children?" He asked, bewildered.
And indeed, there were two kids standing in the open doorway and staring back at him. Two completely identical children, but for the way one wore an eye patch over his right eye and the other over the left.
They looked young, maybe ten at the most, and were dressed smartly in button up vests. Their wild hair curled about their ears, even as they'd clearly tried to tame it into ponytails at the base of their necks. He'd think they were nothing more than regular children, sons of some well-off noble, if not for their pointed ears, their sharpened teeth, and their eyes glowing in the color of old blood.
Xie Lian felt staggered by the sight of them. He'd seen some truly horrendous things while hunting and had heard many worse, but this... this was cruel. Beyond cruel. Turning children like this, stealing away not only their life but any chance they may have had to be reborn after. These two boys would never grow old, would never marry or have a family, would never pass on into the afterlife to greet those who'd gone before them. All they'd ever have would be this ageless life and then, when they were one day slain, nothing.
For the very first time since he'd realized he lost, Xie Lian wanted to cry.
"Gege?" The child on the left, with the covered right eye, called out to him softly. When Xie Lian made himself meet his gaze, he lifted a large book up into view. "Master said you're our gege now and that you were gonna take care of us."
"Yeah, gege!" The other chirped, bouncing in place. "We're so bored! You'll play with us, right? Right?"
"Uh, well..." He couldn't really say no in this instance, could he? There wasn't much he could do right now besides go along with it. "I... will. I'll play with you."
"Yay!" The boy on the right cheered. It was becoming clear that, while they looked almost identical, they had very different personalities. "I'm E-Ming, gege!"
"And I'm Hua Cheng," the other greeted, and he was so soft-spoken comparatively, though his stare was so much more intense.
"Oh, uh... I'm... Xie Lian."
"Nice to meet you, gege! Come on, come on, let's play!"
Days passed and Xie Lian found himself falling into something of a routine.
He'd been brought to some kind of manor, tucked away in the mountains, and though he'd taken the boys on a few 'strolls' of the grounds, he'd been unable to find any kind of recognizable landmark yet. He'd also yet to find any other people. As far as he could tell, the three of them were the only ones on the entire property. Maybe on the entire mountain.
It just didn't make sense. Why would Jun Wu do this? Why would the man - the monster - bring Xie Lian here and then leave? Sure, the clothes he was forced to wear were humiliating, but he hadn't been hurt once since he'd woken here. He'd been kept well fed, warm and comfortable. It was a bit galling, going from being worshipped as the crown prince to becoming a glorified nanny who passed the days doing housework and entertaining a pair of children, but it wasn't torture, not by a long shot.
And the boys were good, regardless of the obviousness of their inhumanity. They were so well behaved, always willing to help with chores, and they followed him around calling "gege, gege" like little ducklings. He found himself charmed by them quickly. They were so very young and none of this was their fault. He couldn't be angry at them for being a tool in whatever convoluted plan Jun Wu had.
And so that was how the time passed, until a week had passed, and then two. The boys stayed glued to him more and more, became less worried about personal boundaries. The moment Xie Lian sat down, he had one twin in his lap and the other curled into his side. Both began touching him more and more often, tugging on his skirts or holding his hands or playing idly with his hair.
And Xie Lian should stop it, knew that he should stop it, but there really was no one else. How long had these two been kept here on their own? When was the last time anyone had touched them with kindness, had held them close in comfort? The two of them ate it up, like flowers blossoming in the sun.
There didn't seem to be much harm in it. After all, they were only children.
That was his first mistake.
About sixteen days after he'd awoken here, things changed.
It took a few hours to put his finger on what, exactly, was wrong. The air felt charged, somehow, like a calm before a storm, and all the instincts Xie Lian had built over his time hunting were practically screaming at him to run, to get away.
He kept his guard up as he went about his day, fixing breakfast and doing chores. He swept the entry hall - not that it ever saw much traffic - and had just moved on to dusting the wall of windows in the hall when he felt two twin tugs on his skirts.
The boys had been quiet all morning, faces paler than usual and energy seemingly gone. Looking down at them both now, he wondered if maybe this was what was wrong. Was he just anxious because of them? Or were they unwell because of whatever tension Xie Lian was sensing?
"Are you two all right?" He asked, placing his duster onto the floor so that he could kneel down before them, putting himself at their eye-level. It wasn't an easy thing to accomplish, what with the way his ankles were still bound, but he was beginning to grow used to maneuvering around that.
He tried not to think about how well he'd begun adjusting to this new life.
Instead he reached out a hand to place on both of their foreheads. They were cold, of course, as they always were. But colder, he thought, maybe. Their skin wasn't just chilled. It felt like ice.
"Are you sick? You're frightfully pale."
"Sick, gege," E-Ming agreed, with none of his usual cheer. Hua Cheng nodded solemnly beside him and oh, but how the sight of them broke his heart. "Will you read to us?"
"Of course," he agreed immediately, anything that might help them feel better. "Do you want anything? Tea? Congee? Something to warm you up?"
"Want gege," Hua Chang informed him, fist tightening in his skirt.
"Want gege," E-Ming agreed, copying the motion and, well, how could he possibly say no to that?
He tried to steer them towards their room so they could rest comfortably but the both of them were stubborn, even more so than usual, and it didn't take long for them to arrive back at Xie Lian's room instead. The boys made themselves right at home, scurrying up onto his bed and settling in with just enough room for him left between them. He wanted to be annoyed at their audacity but felt only fond amusement.
Xie Lian really couldn't help it. The both of them were adorable.
And so it went for the rest of the evening, him reading stories from the large tome the two of them seemed to carry wherever they went, while they kept him nice and trapped between them. They only seemed to grow more pale as time passed, plastering themselves closer and closer to him. He was concerned, because what was there that he could even do if they were sick? He hadn't the first clue how to help normal children, let alone those that had been turned.
The hours passed, night set in, and Xie Lian fell asleep still bracketed by both twins and feeling helpless all the while.
He wakes to pain.
It's not a lot, is barely a pinch, but it's enough to jolt him back towards awareness, enough to send his heart pounding.
There's a moan by his ear, high pitched and shot-through with pure ecstasy, and it's then that he realizes the pin-prick of pain is coming from his neck and that there's a small body plastered to him all along his back.
"Hua Cheng?" He asks, hesitant, unsure. The boy only moans in response and then sucks. Whatever more Xie Lian had been about to say is lost for the moment to the tide of hot pleasure that crashes right into his gut.
"HuaHua, you gotta share!" E-Ming whines from in front of him, sounding like he's speaking from miles away. There's a ringing in Xie Lian's ears and his brain isn't working as fast as it should, like it's padded in cotton. "I want some, too!"
If Hua Cheng answers, Xie Lian doesn't hear it. But he feels it when small hands caress his jaw and tilt his head back, baring more of his neck.
The collared shackle around it is gone, but he doesn't really have much presence of mind to question it before there's another small pin-prick, like kitten claws digging in, and then there's a second tiny mouth latching itself on to Xie Lian's neck and sucking deep.
They're feeding from him, Xie Lian realizes, and of course they are. Much as he might fool himself at times, he's always known that they weren't human. They might eat food and sleep at night but they weren't human. No wonder they were so pale, so cold, so tired. If he was their only option, if they'd left him untouched this whole time, the both of them had to be starving.
That leaves him in bit of a bind, though. He should put a stop to this immediately. Not only because no hunter worth anything would willingly let a monster feed on them but, more importantly, because these were children. And Xie Lian had heard stories before, of those who'd been fed from and had survived. They were all in agreement that it didn't hurt, it never hurt. In fact it felt good, so good that most spent the rest of their lives seeking out others to feed from them.
Better then the best sex, it had been described to him once in a bar, and vulgar as it was, it had gotten the point across.
They were starving and had no choice but they were children.
Truly, Jun Wu was a monster. The cruelest, the ugliest, the most morally bankrupt he'd ever heard of, to do something as sick as this.
He remembered the last words he'd spoken, before Xie Lian had passed out and awoken here. 'Maybe you'll submit to them.'
Submit, or let the children you've grown so attached to starve to death. No one would blame him. If he killed these boys here and now and left, he'd never be held accountable. If anything, he'd be commended. After all, he was only putting down threats to humanity. He was only doing the work he'd been born for.
But how could he? How could he live on, knowing he'd snuffed out two bright, beautiful boys full of so much potential, so much life? He couldn't. He couldn't kill them, he couldn't let them die.
And so he did what Jun Wu must have always known he'd do.
He submitted.
With each pull of his blood, the mouths on him grew wetter, grew warmer, and the heat in his belly pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He was hard already, hips rocking senselessly into nothing, and he couldn't stop the wrecked noise that left him when he felt Hua Cheng's hips stutter into his back, felt that tiny little outline grind itself into him. E-Ming, not one to be outdone by his brother, hooked his leg around Xie Lian's hip and rutted into his stomach, never once loosening his hold on his neck.
They must have made quite the sorry, obcsene state, Xie Lian mused in a distant part of his mind. They were all just undulating together now, Xie Lian rocking back into Hua Cheng and then forward into E-Ming, and both boys were making sounds like he'd never heard before, desperate and hungry. Over and over he felt those fangs sink into his neck, never more than the barest spark of pain before more pleasure flowed through him while his very life blood flowed out. The boys were humping into him like mindless dogs in heat, dragging their underdeveloped cocks across him in search of any friction they could find, and Xie Lian was losing his mind, had to be losing his mind, because he'd never been more turned on in his life.
He'd never been more frustrated, either, as his own hips continued to rock into open air, neither boy tall enough to give him something to rub his own erection into. It was so hard and heavy, straining at his skirt, the laughable excuse for underwear not nearly enough to keep it contained. He needed to come, he needed to, it hurt so bad at this point, he needed -
He curled his legs up, grabbed at E-Ming's hips, and thrust into the boy's backside with all of his strength. The boy wailed in response, digging his teeth in deeper, and twitched against him erratically. Xie Lian payed it no attention, couldn't, not when he finally had something to rut into. His cock dragged against fabric and, in any other state, it'd be too rough, too uncomfortable, but as it was it felt fantastic, felt better than anything he'd ever done on his own before.
Hua Cheng mewled behind him, movements becoming desperate, and then he, too, was biting down harder than he had yet and, with an answering wail, ground himself into Xie Lian's back.
The pain was enough to set him off, and it only two more harsh thrusts before Xie Lian was climaxing himself, painting the insides of his stupid dress with his own spend.
They laid together like that for a long time afterwards, all of them panting like they'd run miles, and it wasn't until E-Ming started to wriggle about in discomfort that it really hit Xie Lian what had just happened.
He'd just had sex with two children. He'd just let them rub themselves off on him, all while he used one of them to get off himself. He'd come while pressed against two children no older than ten, no matter the fact that they'd been turned into something inhuman.
Shame crashed over him, deep and dark, and for the first time he wished Jun Wu had just killed him that day, like he'd done to every hunter that had gone after him before. Why? Why had Jun Wu done this? What could he possibly get out of any of this?
He could pass judgement all he wanted but, after this, was Xie Lian even human, himself, anymore?
A pattern started, after that.
Xie Lian tried to be strict, tried to say no, but even holding them off for days, he couldn't hold them off indefinitely. The boys had to feed. It was the reason he'd caved in the first place. He couldn't just sit back and let them both starve.
It took a week until the next time they came to him, pale and ice cold, eyes pleading, and he sighed and knelt down and let them have equal access to his throat. He spent the next hour with a lapful of rutting children, both of them trying their best to fuck into his hips, and no matter how determined he was to keep himself in check he soon found himself urging them on with hands cupping their asses, dragging them up and down against his thighs, sighing in absolute bliss as their knees knocked into his cock and gave him the friction he needed.
It happened again a week later, and again four days after that, and again, and again, and again.
Xie Lian awoke to harsh movement and warmth.
He was sweating, he realized, and gasping like he couldn't catch his breath, and his cock was rubbing into the sheets below him with each jerking movement of his body, and he didn't know what was happening.
The twins had woken him in the night a few times, desperate to feed, but this wasn't that. There were no little mouths attached to his throat. There was a body at his back, the size of a child, but it was much further down, tiny arms wrapped around Xie Lian's abdomen instead of his shoulders, and slowly, slowly, the reality of the situation was dawning on him.
Xie Lian was laid out on his bed on his stomach, face smashed into his pillow while his hips arched into the open air, skirt pooling down to show off his shamelessly bare skin. And, worse, he could feel that this wasn't a recent development. Couldn't be. Because one of the twins was already inside of him and rutting mindlessly.
"What - " He scrabbled up, or tried to, before tiny hands pushed him back down by the back of the neck. His breath left him in harsh bursts, his body jolting with each wild thrust, and there was no venom in his system right now, no bite at his neck filling him with mindless pleasure, and yet still, still he found himself painfully hard. "What - are you - "
"Shh, gege," and that was Hua Cheng, sweet, quiet little Hua Cheng, holding him down with one hand and caressing his face with the other. "It's okay. We weren't hungry but we wanted to feel good anyway. Don't you want to, gege? You feel good with us, don't you?"
"Can't - " Xie Lian gasped. "Can't - do this! Please!"
"It's okay," Hua Cheng assured again, and then he was lifting Xie Lian's head up and Xie Lian was realizing for the first time that the boy was completely naked, little cock hard and throbbing right in front of him. "Shh, gege, it's okay."
And then, before he could protest further, Xie Lian was having his mouth stuffed. The children weren't big, not really - not a surprise since they'd been turned so young. But the both of them felt big. Xie Lian had never had anything in him like this before, had never gone beyond using his own hand to relieve himself in the past. Hua Cheng barely tickled the back of his throat and still it felt like a mouthful, like if he wasn't careful he'd choke.
The boy moaned, loud and unrestrained, and then took hold of Xie Lian's hair and moved. In and out, in and out, both boys set a rhythm, in sync with each other in this like they were in all things, and Xie Lian soon lost himself in the mindlessness of it.
What could he do, after all? He could fight them, couldn't hurt them, couldn't leave them like this. And was this so bad, really? After all they'd done already, weren't they destined to reach this point eventually? Xie Lian had probably been naïve to think that they wouldn't. And they were so young, so very young, it was unlikely they even knew what they were actually doing right now. They probably just knew that it felt good, and so why shouldn't they do it?
Xie Lian was the adult, here. Xie Lian was the one who should put a stop to all of this.
But he couldn't.
"So good, gege, feels so good, you're so warm," E-Ming babbled behind him, wrapping himself around Xie Lian's lower back. His hips stuttered, and Xie Lian was sure he felt the warmth of the boy's release empty out into him, and yet still he didn't stop or even slow for a moment. "So good, so good."
Xie Lian gasped at the feeling of fangs entering his skin, E-Ming having bit into his back, and in response Hua Cheng growled out a 'gege!' and then was holding Xie Lian fast against his pelvis, giving him no retreat as he emptied himself down his throat.
And then kept thrusting, never growing soft.
This hadn't happened before. Even high on feeding, all it had ever taken to calm down before was once. And now the both of them were moaning and moving like they hadn't come at all.
Xie Lian whined, a helpless noise, and felt his own release eclipse, blacking out his vision for a moment. He came back to himself to find that nothing had changed beyond the growing wet spot under him, both boy still using him however they wanted, and all he could do was take it.
What else could he do?
Dawn found him stuffed full and leaking cum, both boys content and curled around him, and barely any blood lost to show for it.
It had been the height of arrogance, Xie Lian knew.
Jun Wu was a monster that terrified other monsters. Jun Wu was a monster that killed without remorse, without reason, without hesitation. Xie Lian thought he was strong enough, righteous enough, to be the one to kill him. Had blinded himself to the truth, urged on by endless praise from his parents, his teachers, his citizens. He was the Crowned Prince Who'd Pleased the Gods, surely if anyone could kill such a Calamity, it would be him?
He'd been arrogant, and he'd been naïve, and he'd lost.
As he found himself on all fours on the floor in the entry hall, E-Ming's small cock pistoning in and out of him, harsh and fast, while Hua Cheng lay beneath him and suckled from the bite he'd made around his nipple, he couldn't help but wonder how he'd come to this. Couldn't help but wonder how things might have been different, if he hadn't been so absolutely full of himself. Would he still be out there, fighting the good fight, protecting his people from the darkness of the night?
Or would he have always ended up here, being pounded into by a child turned monster and finding pleasure in every moment of it?
The sound of approaching footsteps had him freezing, gaze snapping up to meet glowing red eyes shinning with amusement and... lust. He recognized it now. That darkness was lust.
"Oh? So, XianLe can submit, after all."