Barrel of a Gun

Three days. That was how long it had been since they'd brought the little Eorzean bitch to Meridianum, and that was how long Livia had been personally overseeing her interrogation. Three days, with no results. It was a long time for Livia, who prided herself on efficiency. Three days without rest -- she'd kept the Eorzean awake for the most part, of course, but Livia had barely slept herself as she puzzled how to wring something of use out of her. She was tight-lipped about her companions, which Livia had anticipated, but her strange abilities also refused to yield themselves up to scientific inquiry. Garlean science, of course, was far more advanced than the dirt-scrabbling and superstition the Eorzeans called learning, so she had been certain that their camp engineers and doctors would turn up something, at least. But no. It had been like trying to listen to music with a telescope -- Livia had the distinct impression that their methods were so fundamentally flawed that they would have to rebuild their entire methodology from the ground up just to begin the inquiry on the right foot.

And on top of all that, the woman was damnably stoic. For someone who was not a soldier, nor even someone who had seen much combat at all as far as Livia knew, she seemed unfazed by blows that nearly knocked her senseless. Minfilia would stagger, fall, and then silently look up at Livia with her bloodied face wearing an expression that looked almost like pity. Insults and curses would have been less offensive, and crying and begging would have been more satisfying.

Minfilia was perhaps the most high-profile prisoner Livia had ever taken, and also the most frustrating. It was like to drive her mad.

At the end of the third day of Minfilia's stay in Castrum Meridianum, Livia paid a surprise visit to her cell. She was asleep when Livia entered -- and she must have been exhausted, because otherwise there was no way she could get any rest in her current position. Stripped mostly naked for another scientific examination and left that way, she must have been freezing in her underground cell, and Livia was pleased to see her underlings had obeyed her request that they dig up a pillory. At the moment, her prisoner was locked into the antiquated wood device, wrists and neck fixed in place and bent over almost double. It must be dreadfully uncomfortable, and its only saving grace was that it was low enough that she could almost kneel instead of being forced standing. She was currently slumped against the pillory, legs tucked under her, head drooping to one side with her dirty, unbound hair hiding her face.

Livia strode up to the pillory and kicked it, hard, with her armored foot. The resulting bang of metal and wood was almost deafening in the tiny barren room, and Minfilia startled awake violently. With her head in the pillory she could not turn her head to see who had awakened her, but the clang of heavy armor certainly showed it must be Livia. None of the other commanders ever took the time to visit her personally.

"Did someone tell you that you were allowed to sleep?" Livia said. She rattled the pillory again, just to make sure her prisoner was jarred fully out of rest. "One of my subordinates, perhaps? I knew I should have been more strict with them." Minfilia looked up as much as her restraint would allow.

"Your subordinates," she replied, her tone even but her voice ragged and hoarse from thirst and abuse, "have executed your orders admirably. No need to punish them, I promise."

"Still playing the merciful martyr," Livia sneered. She could already feel her patience starting to crack. Something about this woman simply drove her mad. "Clearly they haven't done their work properly if you aren't cursing the name of every living Garlean yet." Livia brought her armored knee up into Minfilia's exposed side to punctuate her point, striking her already visibly bruised ribs; the blow would have brought her to the ground if the pillory hadn't propped her up. Minfilia squeezed her eyes shut, choked back a cry, and then fell silent again.

Livia watched Minfilia's reaction closely for any sign of weakness she could exploit, anything that might leave a scratch on that gentle facade. She ached to leave a permanent mark, and though it would be detrimental to their war effort to simply kill the woman, Livia was quite prepared to make full use of the wide array of options at her fingertips that stopped short of execution.

There must be something she could do to leave a scar. Physical or mental. Preferably both.

Minfilia's hips twisted as she was struck, thighs crossing over in an apparent attempt to keep her bare backside out of Livia's gaze, underneath the ragged skirt that was all that was left of her clothes. Behind her mask, Livia's lip twitched into the ghost of a smile.

"Modest little bitch, aren't you," she hissed, leaving aside the beating for the moment to instead grab and knead one of Minfilia's drooping breasts, squeezing down on the tight nipple between her iron-clad fingers until she heard Minfilia's breath catch in her throat and holding it there, letting her feel the spreading numbness as blood was forced out of the tortured nub. Having firmly caught her, Livia nudged her prisoner's legs with the tip of her boot. "Go on. Stick your arse out for me."

Minfilia closed her eyes, and she did not say anything, but something about her manner told Livia she had struck a nerve. She slapped Minfilia on the upper thigh -- a playful, lover-like swat, or it would have been had she not been wearing armored gloves on that hand. Metal struck flesh, the edges splitting skin and drawing thin lines of blood. "That wasn't a request."

Slowly, with a hesitation that was not entirely borne of exhaustion and pain, Minfilia straightened her legs and arched her back. Livia hooked one finger under the scrap of cloth that still passed for a skirt and tore it from her in one smooth motion, leaving her utterly exposed; Livia laid her hand on Minfilia's spine to feel the shiver run through her before releasing her death grip on the woman's breast, relishing the hiss as it brought not relief but the fresh pain of sensation rushing back into nerveless flesh.

Livia wasted no time -- she was nothing if not efficient. With a rough shove to spread Minfilia's legs apart, she thrust three of her armored fingers inside her prisoner's bared cunt without ceremony or warning. Unable to see what was happening behind her, Minfilia was fully unprepared, and certainly not aroused -- she jerked involuntarily at the pain and sudden, stabbing violation. Smiling, Livia twisted her hand, feeling the ridges and interlocking plates of her gauntlet scrape at Minfilia's insides.

"Please," Minfilia said, her voice still infuriatingly soft, as though she was talking to a child. "What is it that you want?" Livia jammed her fingers up into her, as deep as they would go, making Minfilia yelp. "You haven't even...asked me any questions."

"You've proven yourself uncooperative," she said. "Think of this as another medical exam, if you like. I'm going to pry a few answers out of you whether or not you start talking." She scissored her fingers back and forth, wide as she could go, jabbing bruisingly deep into the sides of her cunt. Minfilia's knees wobbled, and she choked a little -- the first noise Livia had heard her make that sounded not like an involuntary outburst of momentary pain but actual distress. Moving inside her was starting to be a little easier, her body slicking up in self-defense; Livia ripped her fingers out and paused to admire the smear of pinkish, diluted blood on the white enamel before thrusting back inside just as roughly, this time with her armored thumb pressed directly up against her clit.

This had to be agonizing, as well as humiliating. Livia pumped her fingers in and out, putting painful pressure on every sensitive part she could seek out, listening with a surgeon's care to every hitch of breath and tremble she pulled out of Minfilia. When she spread her fingers wide enough that she could see deep into her prisoner's red, raw interior through the gap between them, her thumb toying with her bared clit enough to make her cunt spasm, Livia felt almost giddy.

Minfilia's head hung against the pillory, eyes closed, her hair stuck with sweat and her mouth slack and panting. Her hands, by contrast, were clenched into fists, nails digging into her palms. She was starting to be the very picture of suffering, Livia thought, with a hint of self-satisfaction. Maybe she ought to have started with this, rather than leaving the woman's interrogation to underlings who had no stomach for it.

"Do you understand your position a touch better now, Eorzean savage?" Livia spat.

Minfilia was silent for a long moment, save for her labored and pained breathing as she tried to keep her legs from collapsing underneath her. Then, in a brief moment of respite when Livia drew back to assess the damage, she said quietly, "It matters little."

"What was that?" Livia demanded, grabbing the pillory and shaking it until Minfilia's head struck the wood with a loud, painful bang. "I couldn't quite hear you."

"You seek answers, but you are hardly asking...the right questions..." Minfilia closed her eyes, letting her head droop, her knees slack a bit now that Livia wasn't tormenting her from behind. "Do you think doing this to me will get you any closer to what you want, Praefectus? Do you...have any idea what...you're even fighting for?"

Livia's face curled into a snarl; she tore her helmet off and discarded it on the ground before striking Minfilia with her open palm across the back of her legs. The impact was bone-deep, with a solid thud, and Minfilia's legs finally gave out -- her knees buckled, and she was forced to contort her body painfully to avoid the edge of the pillory digging into her throat and throttling her slowly.

The bitch still had the nerve to taunt her. What was she fighting for? She had everything she wanted.

Her fingers twitched, muscle memory easily finding the internal trigger for her gauntlets. The blades slid out of their sheaths and snapped into their place in front of her knuckles, solid and sure. Deep inside the mechanism on her wrist, she felt the chamber of the gun spin, click, ready itself.

Livia was prodding at the entrance to Minfilia's cunt almost before she realized what she was doing, as though Minfilia had bypassed her rational thoughts and engaged some pure sadistic instinct. For a heartbeat she hesitated -- she could kill Minfilia like this, and she was far too precious a prisoner to lose, and besides, this was against even her own lax regulations on treatment of Eorzean captives.

Her hesitation lasted merely that heartbeat, and as she pushed forward and slid the tip of her blade into Minfilia's already ravaged cunt, she felt more than satisfied by her decision.

That caught her attention. Her eyes flew open in shock, unable to stifle a choking gasp as the edge bit into her flesh. Red blood welled around the blade, thick and hot. It pooled in the hollow of her cunt before sliding down the bayonet in crimson rivulets, dripping onto Livia's gauntleted fist. As tempting as it was to slam the entire length inside her all at once, impaling her down to the hilt on her weapon and feeling the point pierce straight up into her womb, to see the Eorzean savage who yielded no secrets spill her very literal guts upon the floor of her cell -- Livia instead held herself back. She wanted to let her feel every single ilm of this in excruciating detail.

Minfilia let out a ragged, choking sob as the blade cut deeper. It was wider as it went down, and she was tight around it -- the razor edge parted her flesh in a clean, bloody line. Livia watched her thighs and arse helplessly twitch, as though somehow forcing herself to relax would lessen the agony, with growing sense of satisfaction.

Experimentally, Livia slid the blade out an ilm or two before sliding it back in deeper -- thrusting in and out like she was fucking Minfilia instead of mutilating her. In, out, in again, out again, twisting the blade slightly to catch a new angle each time, though by the second stroke Minfilia's cunt is a slimy, undifferentiated mess of blood and ruined flesh. At its widest part, the blade was as broad as her palm; If Livia pressed side to side with it, like she had done with her fingers, would she eventually feel the hard arch of Minfilia's pelvis pressing back? Could she fuck her captive directly down to the bone like this? The thought excited Livia more than almost any notion she'd had since coming to this wretched continent. From the other side of the pillory, Livia could hear Minfilia's barely human cries -- choking, tortured noises halfway between a sob and a gag, as though she cannot even manage a true scream.

When Minfilia's legs finally gave out, Livia caught her around the waist and held her up. It wouldn't do to have her cleave herself in half when her full weight landed on the blade, after all. Minfilia's torso twitched against her arm -- struggling not to vomit, perhaps -- and Livia took the opportunity to shuck off her other gauntlet. She let the barrel of her gun come to rest against Minfilia's heaving belly, cold and unyielding and carrying the promise of a slow and gruesome death, should the thought cross Livia's mind. And with the bare fingers of her other hand, she began to explore Minfilia's lacerated cunt.

A pair of un-armored fingers was nothing compared to what she had already taken, but the feeling of real human skin on her shredded flesh finally pushed Minfilia over the edge; she gagged, stomach revolting, and would have vomited if she had eaten in days. Instead, she merely streaked the already filthy floor with bile. Livia teased her mutilated insides like she would a lover's, sliding her fingers along every curve and lacerated edge, fingertips pumping into open meat as though it was an erogenous zone. Everything -- Minfilia's entire back and legs, the floor below them, Livia's front and arms and weapons -- glowed crimson in the lamplight. It was as if Minfilia was all gore below the waist.

"Is the ever-stoic leader of the Scions going to beg for me now?" Livia hissed, and received no reply. The cell was silent as a tomb, save for the steady drip of blood and the sound of Minfilia's labored breathing. After a moment, Livia realized her prisoner had passed out, and no begging or pleading would be forthcoming.

With a snarl, Livia let her drop. Gathering her gauntlet and helm, she left Minfilia with her legs splayed out and blood pooling beneath her, slammed the door behind her, and went to look for an Eorzean conscript chirurgeons -- someone who could heal wounds with magic and wasn't stupid enough to ask questions.

All of that, and Livia still walked away from the savage's cell ultimately feeling as unfulfilled as ever.