"Do you want mercy now?"

She shakes her head.

"All right," he says, winding his fingers in her hair to hold her head still so he can kiss her cheek. "Let's see how much you can take."

At first she just thinks he's going to keep fucking her like this until she begs him to stop, but then he slows it down, and she realizes she can feel the stone swelling inside her. She whimpers. It pushes slowly into her womb, and pulls slowly out again, and there is absolutely nothing she can do to stop it. Her cunt splits and tears, ripped apart by the slow press of stone. The next time it enters her womb, she thinks she can feel that ripping too. She nearly faints from the pain.

"Mercy?" he asks softly, stroking her hair.

She shakes her head again.

He smiles. He keeps going.

Her imagination is starting to fail her; she has no idea what her insides look like right now, except bad. She can't see the huge stone cock, only feel it fucking her, growing steadily larger, stretching her until she breaks and then growing some more.

Then she hears - and feels - the crack of breaking bone. A sob of pain escapes her. Another bone gives way. It keeps fucking her, slowly crushing her hips to splinters against the stone that holds her in place.

The Emperor holds her in his arms, pets her hair, kisses her tearstained cheeks.

"Much more of this and not even I can keep you alive," he says. "Would you enjoy being fucked to death?"

"Yes, my lord," she sobs.

"My treasure." He kisses her. The stone flows away, sinking back into the floor, leaving her empty and unsupported. He gathers her into his arms and heals her completely.

She presses her face against his chest, whimpering at the absence of pain.

A few seconds to catch her breath, and -

"Does that mean I win the game, my lord?"

...he laughs.

She smiles, leaning on him in exhausted contentment.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you it's dangerous to win a game against your Emperor?"

"What are you going to do, torture me?"

He laughs. He kisses her. "I think you've had enough for now."

"Maybe so."

She smiles slightly.

"I was right. That was much better than my favourite kind of gang-rape."

He kisses her. He puts her down. "Out of my sight before you tempt me into keeping you here all day."

"Yes, my lord," she says, and she hurries back to her room.

Her very own room. With her very own wonderfully comfortable bed, her very own desk, her very own calligraphy supplies. She settles in and starts writing, copying out a fragment of a poem she likes from memory, then embellishing it to a ridiculous degree and starting again on a new page. It's wonderfully soothing. Easy to lose herself in.

An excellent distraction from how much she wants to sneak back into the Emperor's blank room and touch herself while she thinks about being fucked to death by illusory stone. He'd probably have her gang-raped again. She doesn't fear pain much anymore, but she still fears humiliation, and the chance that the man who hates her will lose his temper and crack her head open and she'll be gone before the Emperor can fix it.

The words and phrases she's writing start to tend in... a direction. She sighs. She abandons a half-finished 'violence' and starts planning a serious piece, a verse of poetry about dragons, arranged and coloured so that the end result will look like the Emperor's eyes. It takes her several hours and successfully gets her to stop thinking about how much she wants him to torture her again.

He comes into her room just as she's examining the finished piece.

"That's beautiful," he says, petting her hair. "I didn't know you were such an artist."

"I don't often get the chance," she says, closing her eyes and leaning into his hand with a contented sigh.

"You're lovely." He kisses the top of her head. "My Niamira."

After a moment, he stops petting her hair. His hands settle on her shoulders and a weight settles between them, an illusion given form. He scoops her up and carries her to a mirror so she can see it.

It's a necklace.

Dozens of hair-thin silver chains twist into a rope lying across the back of her neck, then spread apart into individual hanging loops strung with gleaming blue-black gems that lie on her chest like dark stars. Whatever they are, she's sure they're real. She could buy herself ten times over with this thing. It's a priceless work of art, an Imperial original, probably not reproducible by any means other than exquisitely detailed permanent conjuration, and he made it for her because he felt like it.

"It's beautiful," she breathes, staring into the mirror with unfeigned awe.

"I'm glad you like it." He squeezes her shoulders. "You should have a dress to go with it..."

Dark grey silk, a shade lighter than her hair, layers and layers of it draping over her body, fluttering when she moves. The kind of dress an elven noblewoman might wear.

"How's that?"