Hi FFN. Here's my first attempt at writing MTG smut.
You guys probably read "Liliana's Indignation," the official MTG story posted on the Wizards website a couple months ago (if you haven't, go Google it, this will make a lot more sense). Well, here's my reimagining of the aftermath of that showdown, in which Liliana uses the tools at her disposal to make sure Jace ain't going anywhere. I mean, come on, couldn't she have tried just a little bit harder in the original story?
This was intended to be a one-shot, but if enough people like it I might write more. I'm also open to requests.
***Note: Made one minor revision based on Celevoir's review, removing the reference to Jace as Vryn's Prodigy. I'm pretty new to MTG lore and really only started completely following the story with SOI, so it's very helpful to me for people to point out when I make a goof like that. I want to stay within canon as much as possible, so if anyone notices any other mistakes, please feel free to point them out to me. And thanks so much for your review, Celevoir! I guess I did kind of end on a cliffhanger...Well, expect another chapter sometime soon. :)
Jace was going to get himself killed, gallavanting off to Thraben to seek out the homicidal archangel Avacyn alone. He knew it, and Liliana knew it, but while he didn't seem to care - what the hell was going on in his head? - she was frantically wracking her brain for anything, any piece of information she could exploit to compel him to stay here, with her. It was obvious that whatever madness was consuming this plane had started affecting him too, and the only way to keep him safe was to keep him here.
That was the first step. Convince him to stay.
She considered everything he had told her - the structure at the drownyard in Nephalia, the cryptoliths twisting up out of the ground, the angels circling overhead, hordes of zombies tending to their mindless task...
Zombies. Hordes of them.
A name surfaced in Liliana's mind - a ghoulcaller widely known amongst Liliana's confidants on Innistrad for her role in the siege on Thraben not long ago. Gisa, wasn't it? If there existed any necromancer on this plane with powers rivaling Liliana's own, it was Gisa, and if Jace's description of what he had seen was accurate, it would have taken a powerful necromancer indeed to assemble the undead force at work at the drownyard.
But then again, Gisa had been captured, hadn't she? No way she could have a hand in this mess if she was still rotting away in a prison cell, or worse, executed.
Nonetheless, it was a lead, and maybe a lead was all Liliana needed right now.
"Jace," she called out, one arm outstretched as if to grab him by the sleeve and pull him back to her. But he was already halfway out the door when he turned his head to look back at her over his shoulder.
"Wait."
He stopped, one hand on the door and the other gripping the side of his hood, but didn't reply.
"I think..." She paused. Confidence was power. The more certainty she conveyed, the more likely he would be to listen, to stay. "I know someone who's involved with what's happening at the drownyard. The stone structure, the zombies. I know who raised those corpses."
Jace narrowed his eyes. "You said you had no idea about any of this."
"In the heat of battle, I didn't," she replied. "You were assaulting my mind, after all. But now, after hearing everything you had to say, and thinking about it - I remember. I remember her name."
Jace was silent, but Liliana could practically see his mind racing. Then she felt it - that familiar pulsing inside her skull, just behind her temples.
"No!" she shouted, conjuring a bolt of necromantic energy in the palm of her hand and aiming it at Jace. Not enough to cause him any real harm, but it did send him staggering back a few paces, breaking his concentration.
"I swear to Ormendahl, Jace Beleren," she huffed, collapsing backward into the throne-like chair in the center of the room with one hand pressed to her forehead and her eyes squeezed shut. "If you try to probe my mind one more time, you will deeply regret it."
"If you're not going to give me any information -"
"What makes you think I won't?" Liliana shot back, agitated. "I wouldn't have bothered bringing it up if I wasn't willing to share. But I'll be sharing that information on my own terms, thank you."
"Fine," Jace sighed, spreading his arms in supplication. "What do you want from me?"
She'd managed to arouse his curiosity, to the point that he was prepared to barter for the information she was withholding. Step one complete. Step two: keep him here, by any means necessary.
Any. Means. Necessary.
Liliana cracked a devilish smile. "Only your complete and total obedience, Beleren."
Jace ran a gloved hand across his face in exasperation. "Lili, I don't have time for games."
"This is no game," she rebuffed, her eyes stern despite the teasing grin still drawing up the corner of her mouth. "Do you want to know what I know, or not?"
Jace sighed. "Yes. I would very much like to know what you know."
"On your knees, then."
"What?"
"You heard me, Beleren." Liliana made a grand, sweeping gesture at the floor in front of her. "On your knees."
Jace hesitantly complied, slowly lowering himself to the hard stone floor and casting Liliana a quizzical look all the while.
"Now, off with those robes. Gloves too."
"Lili, what -"
Liliana clicked her tongue to cut him off as a pair of zombies shambled forward, one at each side of Jace, and began tearing his robes from his body.
"'Lili' is a nickname, a pet name," she told him, watching gleefully as he struggled to fight back the zombies while remaining on his knees before her. "I am not 'Lili' to you, not tonight. You may address me as 'Mistress' or 'Miss Vess.' Any violation of this rule will result in swift punishment. Understood?"
Jace's mind was reeling. This was all happening too fast, too suddenly. Five minutes ago they had been dueling, and now - this? With his thoughts being pulled in so many directions, and still weakened from his confrontation with Liliana, he had already given up the fight to keep his clothes on. He watched for a brief moment as the two apathetic ghouls shuffled away with his torn robes in hand, then turned back to Liliana, nude from the waist up.
What was he supposed to say? This information, this name that Liliana supposedly intended to share with him - was it worth this denigration? Worth giving up any power he might have previously held in this back and forth game of will-they-or-won't-they that they always seemed to be playing? How was he to know whether she was even telling the truth, or just playing with him?
Jace managed to center his scattered mind long enough to consider two facts. First, Liliana clearly had him beaten, physically, at this point in time. Second, he currently had no evidence to pursue in his quest to unravel Innistrad's secrets other than "find Avacyn," which, admittedly, was foolhardy. He stood to gain little by leaving now, and only his dignity to lose by staying - and he'd already given up most of that when he'd attacked Liliana with false accusations anyway.
"Alright," he said finally. "Understood."
"Understood...?" Liliana repeated, letting the word trail off to make it clear that his answer was incomplete.
"Understood, Miss Vess," Jace grumbled, lingering a bit too long on the last consonant so that her name seemed to end in a hiss.
"Fantastic," Liliana smiled, ignoring the acrimony in his tone and leaning back in her chair. "Now then. Before we go any farther, I want to make it clear to you that you won't be leaving here tonight, and that you may very well be getting fucked, possibly in more ways than one. Do you accept?"
A tingle ran up Jace's spine at her words, something he hadn't felt in quite a while. Suddenly, he forgot about the drownyard and the zombies and that damned journal. None of it mattered right now. Nothing mattered except her.
He didn't even hesitate to reply.
"Yes, Miss Vess."
"Good boy," Liliana gushed, clearly pleased at how quickly he was taking to his new role. "Alright, Beleren. All the way down now - forehead against the floor. Hands behind your back."
Jace could not explain why he so eagerly followed Liliana's orders in that moment, why the cold, rough stone of the chamber floor against his forehead felt so soothing, or why the very act of moving his hands behind his back - leaving him vulnerable, unstable - felt so freeing. All he knew was Liliana. She had burrowed into his mind and under his skin so quickly, so efficiently, that he wondered whether she might have some telepathic abilities of her own.
Or maybe he was just that weak to a domineering woman as beautiful, as shamelessly seductive as Liliana Vess.
Or maybe, he admitted to himself, maybe it had just been way too fucking long since he'd last gotten laid.
"Jace Beleren." He heard the swish of fabric as she rose to her feet and the clicking of her heels against stone as she began making slow, deliberate circles around his prone form. "You know I've heard all of the names you've earned for yourself throughout the Multiverse. Hell, I'm pretty sure I've even screamed some of them in the throes of passion."
Jace's face flushed with the heat of those memories. Good memories. Despite the darkness Liliana always seemed to dwell in, and despite how often they seemed to be at odds with one another, sex with Liliana was always, always, the most mind-blowing experience imaginable - which was saying something, coming from a blue mage of Jace's caliber.
Liliana continued circling him, her fingertips brushing against his back every now and again as she listed off his titles one by one. "The Mind Sculptor. The Living Guildpact. Memory Adept. Architect of Thought. Telepath Unbound." She paused and chuckled. "I'm going to make that last one a bit of a misnomer, if you catch my drift."
Jace's heart skipped a beat when she said that. He didn't reply as a muddled mixture of anticipation and apprehension washed over him. Liliana's footsteps resumed as she completed another circle around him, then came to a stop behind him.
"But tonight, Jace Beleren," she whispered, leaning over him with her hands on his shoulders and her lips tantalizingly close to his left ear, "your title is Liliana's Plaything. I suggest keeping that epithet firmly in mind if you expect me to hold up my end of the bargain."
"Lili -" Jace started and immediately realized his mistake, but no sooner had her name left his lips than her hand was at the back of his head, fingers interlacing with a handful of his hair to pull him off the floor and back onto his knees.
"Pardon?" she smiled, the word cool but laced with venom.
"Miss Vess," Jace corrected himself, but her grip didn't loosen.
"Yes?"
Jace paused. What had he wanted to say? His body yearned to know what she was going to do to him, but his brain knew it would be pointless to ask. The torment of not knowing, that had to be part of her plan, right? After all, this was Liliana.
He settled on the next question that came to mind, one he was certain she'd entertain.
"If I submit," he said, "and I do everything you ask of me...you will help me, right?"
"Jace, you know me well enough," Liliana replied. As she spoke, she took hold of his wrists, still crossed behind his back, and Jace didn't resist as she begain winding a length of rope around and between them. He had no idea where she'd produced the rope from - for all he knew, she kept it in her bodice for just such occasions. "I might have sold my soul to a bunch of demons, but that doesn't mean I go back on promises. Not between friends, at least. I have few enough as it stands."
Friends was not the word Jace had expected her to use, but it did set his mind at ease, or at least as close as it was going to get as she finished binding his wrists with an expertly crafted series of knots.
"Any other questions?" Liliana asked him, inspecting her handiwork with an artist's eye to detail. "Last chance." Jace could hear Liliana's heels clicking once more as she walked away from him to retrieve something from a sturdy old armoire on the other side of the room. He didn't turn his gaze to follow her, looking only at the floor in front of him out of some strange deference that he couldn't account for.
"No, Miss Vess, I'm - wait, what do you mean by 'last chance'?" He could hear her footsteps returning now, until she was once again standing behind him.
"This." Without further explanation or the slightest hint of ceremony, Liliana leaned down and slipped a thick rubber ball gag between Jace's lips, then set to work fastening the strap behind his head.
"Hngth!" Jace protested as Liliana gave a final tug on the strap, pulling it tight around his face and forcing the rubber ball deep into his mouth. Then, one by one, she assembled an array of additional straps connected to the gag, which criss-crossed his face and the sides of his head as Liliana fastened them to a metal ring at the top, forming a harness of sorts.
"This," Liliana told him as she worked, "is my own invention, something I'll admit I'm rather proud of. In addition to its efficacy in keeping your objections at bay, the straps that make up the rest of this apparatus have been warded against mental magic."
"Hnnth?" Jace nearly choked on the gag. She couldn't mean...?
"That's right, Beleren," Liliana continued. "This device completely prevents the wearer from using blue mana. These kinds of wards aren't really my specialty, but I had some help from a geistmage I know." Liliana had finished securing Jace's harness. She walked around to face him and squatted down so that she was at eye level with him. She was smiling broadly as she took his chin in one hand. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't design this toy with you in mind."
Jace wasn't sure how to feel about that. He tried to clear his mind and focus on penetrating Liliana's to determine how much of what she was telling him was true. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn't seem to get a bead on her. Which could only mean...
Liliana wasn't lying. She wasn't lying. Oh, shit, she wasn't lying.
Up until now, Jace had been so willing, so eager to give himself to her because he was confident in the knowledge that if anything should go wrong - if she was trying to trap or trick him - he had his telepathic powers to fall back on. Even with his wrists bound behind him, he could fight, using only his mind, if it came to that.
Now, he had nothing. Now, he was fully hers.
Liliana's smile broadened as she watched Jace's expression shift from surprise to helpless resignation. Step two, done and done (perhaps by means beyond what was necessary, but who was keeping track, anyway?).
Step three...What was step three? Bed rest, medical attention, a mind-unfucking? All things he probably could use right now, but all a lot less fun than what she wanted to do to him.
"I recognize that look on your face," she told Jace. "I've seen it on so many others before, in so many different situations. The recognition that you are powerless before me, completely in my control. Isn't that right?"
Jace shifted, his knees throbbing and his jaw already beginning to ache. Physically and mentally restrained, he was fully under her control, but he didn't want to admit what she already knew. He was Jace, the Mind Sculptor. He was Jace, Architect of Thought. And he had never felt so powerless in his life.
Liliana tightened her grip on his chin and leaned in closer until he could feel her breath against his face. Liliana decided that step three was for white mages.
"Isn't that right?" she repeated, and Jace nodded despite himself. He was Jace, Liliana's Plaything. He was Jace, Telepath Bound.
And - fuck it - it felt good.