This one – a young, strong, dark-haired man, with a smith's arms and burn scars flecking his skin – doesn't look up at all.

He's knelt by a small boulder surrounded by cairns, deep in the woods, head bowed in thought or prayer.

As the shadow passes over him, he lays a bundle of small white wildflowers on the central stone.

He doesn't normally go for boys, doesn't normally go for people whose bodies show strength instead of softness...

But he likes this one. The burns are a nice touch. Ziraga imagines pinning him down, feeling him struggle futilely... yes, that would be lovely. Exactly what he's in the mood for.

His dive is nearly silent. A whispering ripple as his feathers cut the air. Then his talons close on the young man's shoulders, piercing flesh to scrape against bone, and he's flaring his wings and climbing the sky again.

He screams — halfway moans — struggles against the eagle’s iron grip.

Struggling does interestingly painful things to his talon-skewered shoulders, but does not get him any closer to freedom. And after a few seconds they're high enough off the ground that he'd be best advised to stop trying.

Okay.

His turn to die, then.

He goes limp in the talons — the same ones he saw before, he knows it — and stares numbly down at the receding ground.

The flight back to the tower takes only a few minutes. It looms over the forest, an impossibly tall black spire glittering with ornamentation in rubies, obsidian, and gold.

The eagle deposits Seva on a balcony near the top of the tower, then lands next to him, blurring into the form of a tall man with messy black hair and strikingly bright golden eyes. If he had any remaining doubts about the identity of his kidnapper, he can let go of them now; there's only one person in the world with eyes that colour.

Lord Ziraga does not bother to conjure himself clothes after his shape-change. He's watching Seva, instead, admiring the bloody holes in his shoulders, pausing a moment to see if he does anything interesting.

His face twists.

He’s shaking with terror, but he still looks up at him, meets his eyes completely, and then spits at his feet.

...his eyebrows lift slightly in surprise, and—well, the boy's already helpfully making eye contact—

A shimmering golden haze engulfs Seva's mind, like he's falling endlessly into the wizard's eyes. And Ziraga looks to find out what in the world he can have been thinking.

An image of a smiling boy in a long dress, one Zirava might remember, although it’s colored by nostalgic love and grief.

That same boy, being carried away by an eagle, screaming and sobbing — this man chasing them down until he collapses.

Hatred-despair-fear-anger-pain. He has nothing to lose but his life and he’s losing that already, so he might as well make his feelings absolutely clear.

...you know, he can respect that.

Not enough to let him go, but an amount, certainly.

The golden waves recede. Seva is able to think and move again.

Ziraga picks him up casually with one hand around his neck and carries him through the balcony door and into the bedroom.

It's... exactly the sort of bedroom you'd expect Lord Ziraga to have. Everything is beautiful and comfortable and slightly intimidating, and there's an excessive amount of gold.

He twitches, clearly trying his best not to struggle or choke.

He doesn’t quite manage it.

He rips Seva's clothes off and tosses him onto the bed, then pounces. His fingers dig into the holes in Seva's shoulders.

The blankets are very soft and very, very red; they hardly show the blood at all.

He takes quick, shallow breaths and grits his teeth and shudders under Ziraga’s hands, clearly trying with all his might not to make a sound.

Oh, that's fun.

He licks blood from his fingers, pauses thoughtfully, and then pins Seva to the bed and ducks down to lick and bite at the wounds. His tongue explores each puncture mark with force and enthusiasm.

He’s practically hyperventilating, now, alternately squirming violently in Ziraga’s grip and going completely rigid. He lets out the occasional near-silent whimper, and every time he clenches his teeth and tries and tries not to make another sound.

It's lovely. His obvious effort to keep silent makes every little whimper into an accomplishment worth celebrating.

After a few minutes of leisurely exploration, Ziraga gives Seva's shoulder one last playful bite and sits up, humming to himself. He puts a hand to Seva's throat and casually leans on it to keep him still, then glances around the room. Something bright yellow-orange and glowing flies into his hand—

—and he drops the glowing ember into one of the deepest puncture marks, and leans his weight there too, pressing down on the wound so nothing can escape it.

He screams.

All the pent-up sound seems to escape him at once, an ear-splitting tortured sound barely quelled by the hand on his throat. He thrashes under him, tears welling up in his eyes.

(He can’t actually control whether he starts to get hard, and he can’t hide it, either.)

...oh, now that is new. New and exciting.

He lets go and moves back a little to sit on Seva's legs so he can reach down and explore these new possibilities. He's not particularly gentle about it, but not outright violent either, not yet.

One hand tries to scratch the ember out. The other flies up to cover his face.

His breath hitches as Ziraga touches him, and he digs his fingernails into his forehead, making a clipped, broken whine through his teeth that sounds awfully like he’s about to cry.

What a delicious treat he is. Ziraga is so glad he picked this one.

And speaking of delicious treats...

He shifts his fingernails to claws, the better to get a really, really solid grip on Seva's hips, and then he lowers his head and takes Seva's cock in his mouth. He's surprisingly good at this, for someone so famously, violently selfish.

He manages to dig the ember out just as Ziraga’s claws dig in and his mouth touches him.

He lets out a sharp, winded whimper like he’s been punched in the gut, and his other hand joins the first on his face, now-scorched fingertips digging into his hairline.

“Nononono—”

He’s squirming almost as hard as he did when Ziraga was holding an ember in his wound.

Ziraga makes a pleased sound and does something interesting with his tongue.

Squirm though Seva might, the wizard's hands hold him down just the same, pinning his hips conveniently in place. Iron would have more give than this.

Eventually he seems to realize that no matter how violently he squirms, it’s not going to get him anywhere.

He’s definitely close to tears, now, from the tenor of the little gasps, and clearly trying valiantly not to respond to Ziraga’s mouth. When Ziraga does that particular thing with his tongue again, he has to choke back a moan, and makes a noise of deep frustration and anguish once he has.

Those are some pretty excellent noises. Ziraga suspects he can get even better ones if he uses his teeth.

Is he right?

He can. He can get gasping and more choked moans and pleading, nonononono, and barely disguised whimpers of pleasure—

And when he comes, he sobs outright.

Mmmmm. So delicious, this boy.

Ziraga lets go of Seva's hips. Some of his claws are buried deep enough that he has to exert force to extract them; they come away with a wet sucking noise and a gush of blood. He leans down to lick it off.

He tries to scramble out from underneath him and off the bed.

Surprisingly enough, this effort actually succeeds. Ziraga makes an amused sound—

—and the next thing Seva knows, there's a heavy weight tackling him to the floor, claws gouging his back, fangs closing on the back of his neck and piercing deep. The shape on top of him is not a human shape. It's hard to tell exactly what, though, while it's pressing him face-first into the stone tile.

Fuck–

He gasps for air – it knocked the wind out of him, hitting the floor like that – and scratches at the floor trying to pull himself free. It doesn't work.

The fangs unhook from his neck. A rough tongue swipes across the fresh wounds.

There is a low, satisfied purr.

A cat, then, one of the big ones.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and stays absolutely still.

Among the many, many rumours about what Lord Ziraga does to people, there are a handful that speculate about him taking animal shapes while he does it, and not just for the hunting part. Even the people who think it happens don't think it's common, though.

Maybe Seva's just special.

Ziraga licks the back of his neck again with that sandpaper tongue, and then proves some rumours true.

Turns out, getting fucked by an enormous cat hurts a lot.

He sobs and scratches at the floor until his fingers bleed and drips onto the floor as he's torn up inside.

Ziraga in his cat-shape is forceful and violent, pinning Seva down with the weight of his body and fucking him hard enough to leave bruises where he's slammed against the floor.

But at least it doesn't go on for long. A few minutes, and then the shapechanged wizard bites the back of his neck again and delivers a few last shuddering thrusts.

He manages at least not to come.

It's a very near thing, though.

He keens miserably into the floor when Ziraga comes inside him, shuddering.

He shifts, and licks blood from the back of Seva's neck, and scoops him up to carry him back to bed, groping him roughly along the way.

There's blood dripping down the backs of his legs.

He curls up as tight as he can, trying to keep his breathing level, trying desperately not to react to Ziraga's hands.

You know what that is?

That's a challenge.

He wraps one hand around Seva's throat and the other around his cock.

He's mouthing, choking, squirming desperately – no no no no no –

Ziraga turns out to be very, very good at choking someone just enough to leave them constantly dizzy and desperate without ever letting them faint.

He's not bad at the other thing, either.

His mind goes foggy with lack of air and he's dizzy and lightheaded and he – forgets – to try to stop feeling it –

And he comes, disoriented, gasping.

Ziraga makes a sound that is a surprisingly close approximation of his cat-shape's purr.

He closes his hand tighter on Seva's neck - and then lets go completely.

He lies there and gasps for breath, temporarily dazed.

What a treat he is. What an utterly delicious little treat.

Now, does he want to... hmm. Yes.

Ziraga takes advantage of Seva's distraction to look him in the eye and hold his gaze while he recovers. He wants to know what his delicious treat is feeling.

you stupid cunt

he probably died right here and you just got off. did you even love him how are you letting him do this to you

Fear, disgust, self-loathing, pain, shame.

"You're hardly letting me," he can't help pointing out. (A little of his thoughts and emotions come through when he speaks—admiration, mostly, and enjoyment of the game of giving Seva pleasure against his will.)

get out get out GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

Violation, disgust, anger, terror.

(A little corner confused about the admiration, a little offended by it, all lost in the rest.)

"Oh, I like you," he says, amused. "It's been so long since someone tried to fight me."

 Nausea. Struggle.

"...g...et."

"Out."

It takes real strength to speak when you're caught in a wizard's eyes. Ziraga is impressed—but not surprised. He lets that thought show, carefully; and then he blinks, and his eyes are just eyes again, still bright gold but no longer all-encompassing and bottomless.

He scrambles back, tucks his knees to his chest, stares over them at Ziraga. He knows there's no point trying to get away.

He smiles. A slow, amused, predatory smile. One might fairly call it catlike.

"I might just keep you alive a while. You're interesting."

"Great," he says, in the manner of someone who is not particularly thrilled.

He laughs.

He continues to regard Ziraga suspiciously over his knees.

“I hate you.”

"I noticed."

There's an odd sort of fondness in his smile.

“I had to make sure I said it while I still have my tongue.”

"Hmm." He looks at him thoughtfully. "Come here."

He raises an eyebrow and stays put.

He laughs again, shaking his head slightly in amazement. "You're a treat. I don't know that I've met anyone else reckless enough to disobey me to my face like that, not on my own lands, not since the first couple of centuries."

“Got nothing left to lose from it.”

"That so?"

“I’m already gonna die. Don’t have anybody else you can murder. Yeah, pretty sure.”

"I'd say 'let's find out' but I think I'd actually be annoyed with myself if I successfully made you regret it."

He pounces. Holds Seva down effortlessly, bites his shoulder, moves on to an adjacent spot when he tastes blood. Seva is very biteable.

Then he’s back to taking careful, quick breaths and trying not to make a single sound.

And Ziraga is back to trying to get sounds out of him! This is such a fun game.

Honestly, though, he's not trying all that hard this time. Mostly he is just having a lot of fun covering Seva in lightly bleeding bite marks.

He ends up staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide, drifting out of his body and being brought back with a jolt and a gasp with each new bloody bite.

Ziraga is not in favour of Seva drifting out of his body.

On the other hand, he does enjoy bringing him back.

He bites harder. Heals old wounds so he can put fresh ones in their place. Grows claws again and slashes deep furrows into Seva's chest and stomach, then licks them, humming happily at the taste and the sensation of his tongue sliding into the cuts and pushing them open wider.

It’s clearly much harder for Seva to stay quiet and detached when Ziraga’s tongue is in his wounds — he’s back to nearly hyperventilating, twitching underneath him.

(He’s failed to stay soft again.)

That looks like another excellent place for Ziraga to put his tongue, then!

“No—”

He chokes on another quiet sob, tries to pull Ziraga’s head away.

He bites.

He twitches.

(And then sobs.)

Ziraga makes pleased noises and licks him again. Sucking this man's cock is an intensely rewarding enterprise.

His whole body shudders.

“Stop—”

Why would he do that? He's having so much fun!

The way Seva's voice sounds is just... amazing.

The muscles in his legs twitch and his hips shift minutely from side to side and he holds his breath and gasps for air and holds it again.

“Stop—stop stop not again—”

Beautiful, he's beautiful, precious perfect lovely heartbroken treasure—Ziraga wants to make him suffer like this for hours, bask in his rage and his pain—

He pulls his mouth away just as it's starting to feel like Seva might be about to come, and pins him to the bed and stares into his eyes.

he stopped he stopped maybe i won’t come again maybe i won’t shit on his memory again maybe he’ll just kill me next

Relief, terror, grief, panic.

Then disgust, rage, violation, misery.

and now he’s in here again you’re in here again do you not have enough ways to rape me already GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT

...oh.

Under normal circumstances, Ziraga has exquisite control over his mental contact with his human slaves, probably better control than any other wizard. He has to, because he hates it when he ends up changing something about them by accident, and it's much, much too easy to do if he's not paying close attention.

It's probably been six hundred years since the last time he did something to someone's mind that he didn't fully intend to do.

His careful self-control collapses like a paper castle in the rain.

He loves this beautiful furious terrified boy. This weak soft fragile ephemeral mortal. He doesn't even know his name—he hardly ever bothers learning names, not from people who'll last a hundred years at best if he takes good care of them—but suddenly he's the most important precious perfect thing in the world, suddenly it hurts to be hurting him, it hurts to have ever hurt him—

—he can't be in love, that's stupid—he can't be in love with a human, that's worse—he can't be in love with a human, if the other wizards ever get the faintest inkling of it they'll take his beloved mortal away and torture him to death just to be cruel, just to gain an advantage over Ziraga in the endless game—and he'll break the truce and destroy them over it but that won't solve the problem—

—he can't believe this is happening to him—he can't believe he didn't notice this happening to him—what did he think he was feeling, when he admired his strength, his courage, his anger, when he wanted to dive into his mind and wrap himself in it like a blanket—he should kill him now before the other wizards find out and use it against him—he should kill him now before Seva himself uses it against him, he's pouring his whole heart out into the mind of someone who hates him for very good reasons and it hurts and he can't stop—but he doesn't want to kill him, killing him would be terrible—

—there's probably no solving the hatred without mind control and the prospect of mind control is even more disgusting than usual, he's not doing it, he hurts even thinking about it, but maybe he could at least make the boy less miserable if he tried—it feels very important that Seva be happy and safe and have everything he wants—it's terrifying to care about anyone this much and ten times as terrifying that the person he cares about knows it and hates him—

—and there's still a part of him that wants to hold Seva down and rape him and hear the pretty sounds he makes when he's in pain, but his whole soul flinches from the horror of hurting him like that—he wants Seva to like him, to want him, so they can do beautiful things together, but he is never going to have that, even if Seva might forgive him after a few hundred years he'll be dead long before then and Lord Death does not yield his people to anyone—

All this tumbles through his mind and straight out into Seva's, a torrent of raw emotion, before he finally, finally manages to blink. He's still on top of Seva, still pinning him to the bed, but there's no force behind it anymore and he no longer looks sensual and predatory. He looks lost and sad and frightened and like he may be about to collapse.

He’s choking and shuddering like he’s been stabbed in the gut.

“Get off,” he says, and Ziraga doesn’t need to read his mind to know that he’s lost-terrified-confused-overwhelmed-hurting.

It takes a moment for it to occur to him that he could do that, for him to parse a flat imperative from a human as anything other than an absurdity—but then he does, immediately, and curls up on the other side of the bed, watching Seva in a daze of emotional agony.

...he stares at him across the bed.

Then he starts to laugh — an agonized spasm of a laugh that shakes his shoulders and wracks his body with tremors.

It’s probably a relief when the laughter turns to open sobbing.

...he doesn't... know what to do.

He hasn't felt this lost in centuries.

He wants to comfort him—but—he is not actually able to do that, there is no power over earth or sky or fire or the souls of men that will solve this problem for him—

He cries for almost half an hour straight — sobs until his eyes are dry because he doesn’t have any tears left, until he’s not making any sound anymore, just shaking.

Then he lies down and curls up on the bed, hides his face entirely in his knees.

“...not gonna let me go.”

"??"

“You’re not gonna let me go.”

It’s a little unclear, what let me go really means.

Yes, there's that, and— "I'm not sure how you think you know what I'm going to do about this when I don't have the first clue—"

A bitter laugh.

“Right. Never been in love before. Makes too much fucking sense.”

He makes a frustrated noise.

"...someone's going to find out about you and then you're going to die. And then I'm going to wreck everything taking revenge. Of course I've never been in love before; if I had, you'd know because I would've had to go to war over it."

“...why is any of this happening,” he says, dazed.

"I wish I knew!" He gestures helplessly. "You're—just—" Apparently he has no words for what Seva is just. But whatever it is, it fills him with pain and deep affection.

“A human you stole out of the woods who hates you and won’t do what you want?”

Self-consciously bewildered, plaintive, desperate: "Yes!"

“...you couldn’t bring me back if someone killed me?”

He frowns thoughtfully.

"It... hasn't been done. I'm not sure if it can't be or if no one's cared to try."

"Could you bring him back, if you tried?"

"There are reasons we don't try. And even if there's a way to do it that would work, I don't know what that way is. But... I'd try it anyway, if it was you, I'd try everything I could think of." He frowns slightly. "It would... be a bad idea, but I would."

"–why am I good enough to bring back if he's not?"

"I don't know; I've never fallen in love before. But that's not—"

He breaks off, looking distant.

"...toying with Lord Death can kill you. I assume you wouldn't mind if that happened but—it wouldn't just be me, it would be—the other wizards would tear apart everything I've built, my land, my tower, my people, just because they could. Because that's what wizards do. And I have no idea where to start and it might very well be impossible and—"

"—I want you to know that because if you ask me to I'll do it anyway."

He draws up his knees again and buries his face in them.

"...can't kill everyone else to get one person back."

Saying it is like coughing up hot coals.

Watching him be that upset is... bad.

"I'll try to think of something clever. I'm not good at clever. I'll try anyway."

“I don’t want to more people to die because of me.”

"—I don't... understand that."

This is normally the part where he'd read someone's mind, but.

“...what?”

"...I understand not wanting a person to die, I've seen that. I don't understand when it's people—when it's anyone, everyone."

"...you've never seen that?"

"Never watched someone think it, anyway, I don't know if they've been thinking it while I wasn't looking."

“...and obviously you don’t get it yourself.”

He sighs.

“Fine. Look.”

"—okay."

He doesn't move closer, but he looks into Seva's eyes.

(Revulsion. Fear. Longing.)

He tries to break it down.

First the feeling, raw and terrible agony, of losing his friend — and a lovingly rendered image of his own body, broken and mangled and dead-eyed, just in case Aryu’s death isn’t enough to really understand.

Then the awareness of that feeling multiplied by thousands — he can’t even imagine millions. Millions of people losing their oldest friend or the one they cherished the most or the person they took care of or their new love, just like him, opening that terrible void in someone a million times over, the knowledge that each one of them feels it as acutely as he does, that his pain is no more important than theirs in the end no matter what he feels. 

He imagines watching them mourn, one at a time, the icy sinking in his gut from the shame and the guilt and the anguish of knowing that he failed everyone he ever could have known as deeply as you can, the desperate sorrow just from seeing it happen even to a stranger. He imagines having to explain it to them, one by one — I’m sorry they died, all the people you love the most, but I thought that my loss was so much more important than yours. I thought that a chance for my happiness was worth killing your child.

He imagines Aryu’s face, if he learned.

He blinks, releasing him.

"Oh."

“...yeah?”

He’s hugging his knees very tightly.

He's hurt people before, made people grieve before—he's liked it, before—

But it's different, seen through Seva's eyes.

Maybe... maybe he can't fix this. Maybe they will just both be hurting forever. Until Seva dies and Ziraga is hurting by himself.

"I don't... know what to do," he whispers.

“...welcome to being human.”

He glances up at Ziraga’s face, once, just for a second.

He looks... lost and hopeless and sad. He doesn't catch his eyes.

...well, he’s hurting him. He got something he wanted.

Somehow it’s not as satisfying as he expected.

“...you really just didn’t...know.”

"I... I never felt it like that. I've hurt people but... it wasn't... it felt wrong not to? But—that's—I don't care how wrong I have to feel, for that. I don't know that there's anything I wouldn't do to—to make the world okay for you. But I don't know that there's anything I can." He sniffles slightly, rubbing his face.

"...c'mere."

—he blinks, confused.

"Come here, asshole, I need a hug."

Well now he is even more confused but also definitely (tentatively, hesitantly) hugging him.

...okay. Time to cry again. On his best friend's murderer.

This has been a fucking terrible day.

His best friend's murderer is maybe kind of crying on him right back.

He cries himself out.

He ends up slumped over him, drained, shoulders still shaking a little despite the fact that he doesn't have any tears left and he's too exhausted to keep sobbing all over him.

Ziraga slows down sooner and goes on for longer. He holds Seva like he's the most precious thing in the world and sniffles quietly into his hair.