A hollow ache had become the new metronome of Damask's existence.
It was a rhythm of hunger, a grinding emptiness that gnawed at his gut. The void felt like a cock thrusting into a loose, unresponsive hole—no grip, no heat, no power. It was a constant, humiliating reminder of his own pathetic, solid-state mortality.
For two days, they had subsisted on gritty moss and the small rabbit Damask had killed with an expertly flung stone. Petunia had skinned and prepared it with a reverent efficiency, but it wasn't enough. The meager sustenance was a cruel tease, like squeezing the last, unsatisfying drops from a milk-heavy breast only to find it did nothing to sate a desperate thirst.
The constant expenditure of his nascent mana, combined with the gnawing hunger, had left him feral. A raw, animalistic edge scraped at the inside of his skull. He could still think, still command, but it was a battle to keep the baser, more violent inhibitions from taking over.
The world outside their sanctuary was in a powered-down state. The constant, oppressive weight of the Grove—a pressure like a great cock pressing down on the skin, an invasive feeling that one was always a step away from being penetrated and violated—was gone. The air, scrubbed clean of the Grove's illusion, was shown in brutal honesty. The blood-red flowers were withered husks, their aphrodisiacal poison gone, leaving only the scent of rot. The grasping vines were limp and dead. It was a desert of stone, rock, and sand.
It was a land violated, used up, and left to die. In its barrenness, Damask saw a terrifying reflection of his own ruined state.
Petunia, ever the devoted shadow, moved with a quiet, desperate efficiency. He offered Damask water in a cup fashioned from a broad, waxy leaf. Damask drank, the cool liquid a brief, inadequate relief.
He looked at the femslut. Dark circles hung under his wide, luminous eyes. His slender frame seemed even more fragile. The slut was starving.
The planes of Damask's face seemed to shift, the last vestiges of the noble heir hardening into the gruff, sharp lines of a predator.
A starving tool was a useless tool.
On the third day, pushing deeper into the skeletal forest, they saw it. A flicker of vibrant, impossible life in the grey-brown landscape.
It was a Nectar Weeper, a creature of docile, bovine beauty. Its fleshy, polyp-covered body wept a constant, slow drip of sweet, life-giving nectar. The scent was a siren's call in the dead air. It was a walking feast, a promise of salvation.
Hope, a fragile, stupid thing, bloomed hot in Damask's chest. He could hunt it. Take it down himself, a crude imitation of a Bitch's work. He could feel the sweet, potent energy of it, and a flicker of something soft, something dangerously close to kindness, stirred in him. He would process the energy himself, and he would feed the purest part of it to Pet, to see the light return to those wide, devoted eyes.
It was a hope instantly, brutally extinguished.
From the shadows of a petrified grove, another creature emerged. It was a horror, a grotesque parody of life. A Spike Hound, one of the Grove Mother's corrupted children. It was a weakened thing, its power lessened without the constant influence of its mother, but it had not vanished with her. It remained, a scavenger haunting its fallen kingdom.
It was a monstrous, wolf-like beast, its flesh twisted, its eyes burning with a cold, intelligent malice. From its groin sprouted an externalized, thorny cockwomb, a slashing, piercing weapon that pulsed with a sick, green light.
It was stalking the Weeper, its movements a silent, deadly ballet of predatory intent.
Petunia let out a small, choked gasp. Damask pulled him back behind the petrified trunk of a massive, dead tree, his own heart hammering against his ribs.
His tactical mind, a cold engine running on pure adrenaline, kicked into overdrive.
Threat assessment, the old, familiar voice of the Sovereign whispered. One Spike Hound. K-Pot 5, at least. Corrupted. Fast. Lethal. Us? A crippled Dom, barely Tier 3. A C-Apt 5 femslut with no combat training. We are not hunters. We are meat.
He could feel the pathetic handful of Gristle Seeds he had so painstakingly forged. They felt like a child's pebbles against a fortress wall. His golem was a shattered wreck. They had nothing.
No. Not nothing. What a fool he had been. That flicker of softness, that sentimental thought of playing the provider for his pet… it was a weakness, a distraction that could have gotten them both killed. Survival was the only thing that mattered. Compassion could come later, a luxury to be enjoyed after the war was won. He would not make that mistake again. He would use the tool he had.
He looked at Petunia. At the sweet, intoxicating nectar-scent that clung to the femslut like a second skin. He looked at the Spike Hound, at the way its nostrils flared, its head turning, catching a faint whisper of that scent on the wind.
A plan, cold and brutal and utterly, beautifully pragmatic, began to form in the ashes of his despair. The Testament was clear: a Dom's pridemates were not his companions. They were his tools. His forge. His weapons.
And he had the finest weapon of all.
"Pet," he said, his voice a low, unfamiliar rasp. The femslut looked up, his eyes wide with terror. "I need your nectar. All of it."
The ritual was not performed in a chamber of silks, but in the grime and dirt of the forest floor. It was not an act of lust, but of brutal, functional necessity.
Damask pushed Petunia to his knees, his touch no longer fumbling, but the cold, precise grip of a tyrant reforging his crown.
"Open, slut," he commanded.
And Petunia obeyed. His body was a trembling wreck of terror and a deep, soul-shattering devotion. He turned, his hands fumbling with his pilgrim's robes, baring his pale, perfect ass to the cold air.
Damask's hands were not gentle. They were instruments of extraction. One hand tangled in Petunia's hair, yanking his head back. The other found his small, useless cocklet. But his primary weapon was the hand that clamped around Petunia's throat.
It was a biological quirk of the highest-grade Fems, a desperate defense mechanism. When held in a death grip, especially by a Dom, their bodies would sometimes flood their systems with hormones, forcing a massive, panicked secretion of their most potent nectar. It was a final, pathetic offering: Don't dust me. Don't damage me. I am more valuable to you whole. Damask's fingers tightened, a cold, clinical pressure on the carotid artery.
The grip was rough, a blacksmith's hold on a piece of recalcitrant metal. He began to stroke the small cock, a hard, fast, punishing rhythm designed not for pleasure, but for production.
Petunia cried out, a sharp, choked sound of pain and a horrifying, burgeoning pleasure. The violation was so direct, so impersonal, it bypassed his mind and went straight to his core. His C-Apt 5 body, a finely tuned instrument of pleasure, was being played by a master, but the song was one of pure, agonizing utility.
His own small testicles ached, his nectar-producing glands working furiously, trying to meet the brutal, unrelenting demand. His biology and his protective instincts were screaming. He knew, with a certainty that was both innocent and deeply ingrained, that his Dom would never truly hurt him. This was just a necessary violence, a way to provoke his body's response for their survival.
Damask felt the slut's body respond, felt the first, thick, sweet drops of nectar begin to weep from the abused flesh. He ignored the choked sobs, the tears that streamed down Petunia's face. This was not an act of love; it was a savage plunder, a Dom taking what was his by right of will.
He was no longer seeing the devoted pet who had pulled him from the abyss. He saw only a living forge, a C-Apt 5 tool of exquisite, unparalleled utility.
He would use it until it was spent.
He worked him with a cold, clinical precision, his thumb grinding against the sensitive head of the cock, his fingers squeezing, milking every last drop. His grip on Petunia's neck never wavered, a constant, terrifying pressure. He lost himself in the act, the pain he was inflicting becoming a strange, distorted measure of the nectar required to save them.
He collected the fluid in a hollowed-out gourd, the shimmering, golden liquid a stark contrast to the grim reality of its acquisition.
When Petunia's body was finally, utterly spent, when his nectar flowed in a thin, watery trickle, Damask released him. The femslut collapsed, a boneless, sobbing heap on the forest floor. His body was a wreck of conflicting sensations—the searing pain of being used, the deep, soul-deep satisfaction of having served, and the terrifying, humiliating ghost of an orgasm that had been brutally, clinically extracted from him. He was still caught in the false impression that his Dom had done this out of a desperate, shared necessity, not from the cold, savage nature of a master using his tool.
Damask looked at the gourd, at the life-saving fluid within. A small, cruel smirk touched his lips. A chilling twinge of satisfaction. This femslut was his, a creature he could push to the absolute edge of extremity for their survival, and the slut would thank him for it.
His grief had not been healed; it had calcified, hardening his heart into a diamond of pure, unyielding resolve.
With the nectar, he laid the trap. A false trail, leading away from their position, a sweet, irresistible lure for the corrupted beast. Then, they waited.
The Spike Hound took the bait. It followed the scent, its movements a blur of predatory grace. As it passed their hiding place, its attention fixed on the false trail, Damask gave the signal.
Petunia, his face a mask of pale, terrified determination, screamed. The sound, high and thin and full of pure, unadulterated terror, was the perfect distraction. The Spike Hound froze, its head snapping toward the sound, its body tensing for a new attack.
It was the only opening Damask needed. He lunged from the shadows, not with the overwhelming power of a Dom, but with the desperate, feral cunning of a cornered animal. He didn't aim for the beast's hardened carapace, or its thorny, slashing cockwomb.
He aimed for its eyes. He poured every ounce of his Half-Stage Solid mana into his hands, the flesh hardening to the density of rock and metal, and unleashed it in a single, explosive, pinpoint strike sharpened to a needle's point.
The fight was a blur of brutal, close-quarters violence. But the outcome was never in doubt. The beast, blinded and disoriented, was no match for a creature whose entire world had been forged in the fires of absolute, unyielding will.
In the aftermath, they stood over the two carcasses—the hunter and the prey. They were no longer the hunted. They were the survivors.
As Damask looked down at Petunia, at the small, trembling, and utterly, completely devoted tool at his side, he knew. This was only the beginning. "Come here, slut, and open your cheeks. You're going to consume all this mana from the kill, and I'm going to pump enough enzymes into you until you filter and process it all inside that femslut body of yours."
Petunia, still dazed, understood. He crawled over on his hands and knees.
Damask wasn't watching the display of submission. His focus was internal, his balls already churning, brewing the genetic data for the enzymes and breakdown chemicals he would need. He gripped his cock with one hand and stroked fast. A chemical brewed. He ejaculated the dissolving formula over the two carcasses. The flesh of the Nectar Weeper began to break apart, dissolving into shimmering sparkles of light.
"Well, femslut, what are you doing wasting the mana?" Damask snapped. "Quick, hurry and collect it."
The femslut crawled to the dissolving carcass and placed a hand on it. Using a skill unique to his caste, he began to absorb the raw energy through his skin.
Damask watched, slowly stroking his cock. He knew what came next. He would have the femslut use his hands and mouth to help produce the next batch of the formula. Then, after the second carcass was dissolved and its mana absorbed, he would fuck Pet all night, using the femslut's body as a living refinery to turn the raw, chaotic energy into something pure and usable. They were in danger, and Damask would fuck Pet however he wanted, for as long as he needed, to get them out. He didn't even realize that the softness he'd felt just an hour ago, the compassion, had been scoured from him, rubbed away by the brutal necessities of this new, savage world.
Petunia, his task complete, turned and pointed his ass toward Damask, getting himself ready to be penetrated.
For Damask, the road back to his throne would be paved with the broken bodies of his enemies, and the exquisite, willing sacrifice of his pride.