Mutilated love

Gift & Sacrifice (GodEmpress!Reader) (Part 1)

The rumbling of an unseen instruments baseline was what woke up the teenager, suspended in a human sized bird cage.

The throbbing of the music beating in sync with the migraine in his head. He cringed and raised his hands to nurse his headache and shield his ears from the glutteral music that seemed to come from everywhere--disappointed to find he didn't have enough hands to do both.

Once the pulse against his eyes subsided somewhat, he finally began to notice his surroundings.

He was laying on a metal floor that seemed to be a gold alloy of some sort, from its luminescent color, which was probably why all the heat seemed to be seeping out of him. The golden floor was connected to golden bars, arranged in an intricate but jailing pattern that peaked into a curl: attached to a clamp contraption that held him in the air. How high? He didn't know.

Above the mechanism was a silk drape knotted loosely but securely, allowing the swaths of fabric to flow over the entire outside of his prison before converging again into another knot, rendering him blind to his whereabouts beyond the cover. The whole display of it was disturbing in a way that made him feel like a delicate bird meant to symbolize his owners wealth. Hoping that that was not the case, he resigned to wait for something to happen and curled up into a comfortable but warm position that put his body into the least amount of contact with the freezing metal he could.

After what he guessed to be several hours, cheers and excitement was heard beneath him, and before the sand could completely leave his eyes, they were assaulted by strobing golden light. The curtain was removed in one fluttering movement, the light miraculously shimmering as it lost its color-- turning to glass. He could see straight to the floor, which was more than 40 feet below, making it hard to swallow as his legs threatened to quit on him.

Below him, he could clearly see a woman, standing apart from her clinging subjects and children who were significantly smaller than her. She looked up at him with a expectant and excited face one would give a child who was trying to prove themselves. She was gorgeous beyond description, in a way that only poets or madness could attempt to convey. But given his current predicament, and her opinion of it, he loathed her. She was one of the monarchs, who roamed the earth without a second thought to their actions and strikes, kidnapping children and conquering nations, just for the hell of war.

Face drawn back into a sneer he screamed down at her, demanding why he was trapped in this frivolous cage, but was visibly ignored when she turned toward one of her chattering children- clearly disinterested in his discomfort. She was no longer adjacent to the cage though, he noticed, but rather directly beneath him thanks to the vying children who fought to get a better look at him. Then an idea came to him.

He would rather die than be given to this woman as a gifted bird, and so he deigned to take this tyrant and her offspring with him if he could. Jumping to catch one of the loops on the detailing of the bars, he climbed quickly to the to of his cage, and reached for the clamping mechanism. Sounds of shock cracked the excited conversations below, but did not change to warnings fast enough to render his suicide useless. Pulling hard on the lever he hung on, the cage came loose and plummeted to the floor.

The sense of malicious victory lasted less than a second before he struck the ground, but not nearly as hard as he should have and not as sharply. He expected glass to be shattered and screaming and wailing along with the cracking of skulls.

But there was only stunned silence. The kamikaze bird opened his eyes as he lifted himself off his stomach, and was met directly with the same malicious eyes as before- unfazed and unharmed- glittering (e/c).

She had caught the cage with her splayed palms, her powerful limbs absorbing 40 feet of kinetic energy effortlessly. The little heirs giddy with confidence and smug complexions. Not one was as surprised as he was.

"That's definitely new. My guest was not lying when he said you were different," she said. The words took a minute to reach him, past his enrapture with her voice-- smooth with a lithe trim to her consonants, dimensional in a way that made him want to listen to her say every word she knew endlessly while he listened. Those simple sentences felt like gifts of art, and they were burned into his mind before he ever was given a say.

When the meaning of her comment hit him, he snapped back to reality, and attempted to rise further and say what he though of this godforsaken party. But he wasn't given the chance before the cage vanished, leaving him to fall into the queens arms.

"But this has been a wonderful example of why I can't keep you with me during my celebrations, so please sleep."

And the world was a stranger to him once again.