A standalone abbreviated version of the Marketplace and The Enchantress and the Golden Needle in the Ascension series (Chapter 10 and 11).
The slow rhythmic drip of water was the first thing Jonas sensed when consciousness finally returned. Jonas groaned, his head throbbing with a dull ache as if he had imbibed too much wine during festivities the night before. He tried to move his arms and legs, only to find them secured to the stone wall of a vast chamber, his body held taut. The chamber was poorly lit and vast, lined with stones and empty save for a large porcelain bowl resting upon a crude wooden table in the periphery.
Out of the shadows stepped Kallias, the treacherous merchant who tricked Jonas and ambushed him with multiple guards and restrained him in the prison.
“The Norse are so fond of their strength, yet they forget that the mind is a far more lethal blade than the axe. You walked into my parlor thinking yourself the predator, only to find you were merely the bait." Kallias remarked. He stopped just out of reach, his eyes gleaming with a predatory satisfaction. "The"
Beside Kallias, a second figure stepped out from the shadows. She was a vision of distant eastern opulence, draped in translucent lavender silk that clung to her curves like a second skin. The fabric clung to the swell of her supple breasts and the curve of her hips, held together by delicate gold chains and jade pendants. Her almond-shaped eyes were the same color as the iridescent violet smoke that had subdued Jonas, and her full lips were painted a deep plum.
"Meet my business partner, Huli Jing" Kallias said, his voice dripping with smugness. “Not only does she possess a keen sense for business. Her magical talents for probing into the hidden recesses of the mind, weaving illusions, and compelling obedience are also indispensable to our enterprise."
Huli Jing paused her orbit. ”It is a rare thing," she murmured, her eyes flickering back to Jonas, "to find a son of the frozen wastes drifting so far east, so far from home. Rarer still is the treasure he possesses." She tilted her head, a stray lock of midnight hair falling over her shoulder as she reached into the satchel and revealed Jonas’s treasure, Theseus’s severed member. "This phallus is imbued with divine essence, How did you manage to liberate such a beauty from its former master?"
Jonas strained against his bindings, the chain shackles biting into his wrists. He spat on the floor in defiance, his azure eyes colder than the Northern winds. "My business is my own, witch," he snarled.
Huli Jing let out a soft laugh, the sound echoing through the chamber. She stepped closer, the scent of jasmine and spice clinging to her. "Temper, Northern traveler. Such aggression is so tedious." She reached out, her finger tracing the line of Jonas’s jaw. "No matter, I will delve into your pretty head and learn your secrets.”
Huli Jing pressed her palm flat against Jonas’s forehead, her hand as soft as the silk clinging to her breasts. She closed her eyes, her expression one of serene confidence, preparing to peel back the layers of his consciousness. She expected to find a chaotic storm of Norse aggression and primal instinct but instead she felt nothing. Jonas’s mind was an impenetrable iron fortress. A sudden surge of energy radiated from his forehead to her palm sent her snapping back to her consciousness. She gasped, her iridescent eyes wide with genuine surprise.
Huli Jing rubbed her palm, the skin still tingling from the psychic backlash. A flicker of irritation crossed her features, though her smile remained, now sharpened into something more predatory. "An impenetrable shield is it? It looks like there is more than what meets the eye with you." she murmured, her voice barely concealing her malice. “While your mind may be a sanctuary of ice, your flesh is still warm, pulsing, and desperately susceptible to the language of pain. With enough of it, even your resolve and mind will shatter."
She glanced toward the four guards, who were nursing their bruised ribs and shaking off the shock of the earlier scuffle. "Strip him," she commanded. "I want him to be exposed as the day he was born."
They swarmed him and tore off furs and the weathered leather of his attire. Jonas snarled, twisting his torso in a futile effort to resist but shackles held him fast and soon he was bare.
The enchantress inspected her captive more closely. Jonas stood in chains, displaying his pale skin save for a subtle tan and the dusting of freckles across his shoulders and nose. His overall frame was more slender than sturdy though his muscles were toned and well-defined.
But what caught the enchantress's eye was the beast between Jonas’s thighs, his cock hung heavy and erect, thick and flushed. Eight inches long, veins coursing down the shaft, the head ruddy even in the dim light. His balls were drawn up tight, but full, the weight of them undeniable.
Huli Jing let out a low, melodic laugh. She leaned in close, her gaze lingered on the rigid, pulsing length of his erection."You men are so predictable," she purred. "Your body betrays you the moment a real woman enters the room. You long to plant your seed and even a powerful Norse warrior is no exception.” Jonas blushed as he gritted his teeth, embarrassed at his body's disloyalty.
Huli Jing’s gaze drifted from the proud swell of his chest down to the heavy, pulsing weight between his thighs. A bead of precum appeared on the tip of the Norse prince's phallus. She extended her tongue, gave it a slow, teasing lick, and laughed as Jonas let out an involuntary moan of pleasure.
"But I'm afraid it's business first and pleasure later." She gave a sharp nod to the nearest guard, a man whose knuckles were scarred from a lifetime of breaking bones. "You know what to do," she commanded.
The guard stepped forward, his heavy leather boot shifting as he braced himself. With a sudden, violent precision, he drove his heel upward, catching Jonas squarely in the center of his groin. The impact was a sickening, wet thud that echoed through the chamber. Jonas’s breath left him in a single, strangled gasp, his entire body arching against the chains. The blow crushed and compressed the delicate ball sack against the pelvic bone, warping them temporarily.
The guard did not stop at the initial impact; instead, he shifted his weight, grinding the heavy, iron-shod heel of his boot into Jonas’s groin with a slow, twisting pressure. HIs plums were crushed upward and outward, squeezed like grapes beneath a heavy press. The skin of the scrotum stretched to a translucent, bruising purple as capillaries burst, strained to the absolute breaking point by the sheer force of the compression. Internally, the delicate structures, the epididymis and the coiled tubules where the essence of his lineage resided, were flattened and hammered, the pressure mounting until it felt as though his very core might burst.
Yet, as the guard leaned in, putting the full weight of his muscular frame into the grind, the expected rupture never came. There was a sickening, wet sound of shifting tissue, but the structural integrity of the Titan's seed held firm. Where a mortal man’s organs would have been reduced to a pulpy mass of ruptured vessels and internal bleeding, Jonas’s anatomy fought back with a primal resilience. The tissues compressed to an impossible degree, absorbing the violence and then snapping back with a stubborn, elastic force keeping the plums their anatomical shape though more swollen.
Jonas’s head fell back against the stone. He refused to give them the satisfaction of a scream, though his breath came in ragged, shuddering hitches.
Huli Jing watched the bruised, swollen flesh of Jonas’s groin. She reached out, her fingertips barely grazing the inflamed skin, noting how the intense heat radiating from his swollen scrotum. A slow, appreciative smile curled her plum-colored lips. "Most men's manhoods would be reduced to pulp by now," she laughed. "To endure such a crushing weight and still pulse with life. As I expected, your lineage is as stubborn as the mountains that birthed you. I doubt such primeval torture would sway you."
She stepped back, her eyes dancing with a cruel luminosity. "But to sever the family jewels from the body and unman you ends the game too quickly. It's bloody, messy, and risks the subject dying too quickly." A smile of pure malice formed upon her beautiful face. "My ancestors in the East devised a more sophisticated method of breaking a man, slowly castrating in small increments and without mess."
With feline grace, Huli Jing slipped her fingers into her midnight-black hair and withdrew a long, slender golden needle. The appearance of the needle triggered a sudden, involuntary twitch in Jonas’s thighs as the Norse warrior's eyes widened.
Huli Jing gracefully glided toward a crude wooden table positioned in the dim periphery of the chamber. From the Oriental porcelain bowl she produced a single testicle, salvaged from some poor fool who crossed her. The organ was impressive, the size of a ripe lemon and almost as big as Jonas’s. Its surface a complex map of translucent veins. The skin was thick and pebbled, yet it possessed a surprising supple elasticity.
She walked back to Jonas, gonad in her palm. The organ was once a thriving tadpole factory and symbol of male virility but now just a piece of cooling meat. She held it aloft, letting the dim light catch the iridescent sheen of its surface, before bringing it closer to Jonas’s face. The scent of game meat and salt filled his nostrils.
Huli Jing leaned in, speaking softly in Jonas’s ear. “The East understands the art of the needle—how a single, precise point of contact can unravel a man more effectively than the blows of a hammer."
With a gentle push, she inserted the needle delicately into the large testicle in her hand. The needle made a small indentation on the surface of the gonad before it silently piercing through the fibrous outer membrane and into the supple flesh of the voluminous organ. She allowed the needle to travel deeper into the testicle until it was in the center.
Then, she began the stirring.
While the testicle remained fixed in Huli Jing’s left hand, the golden needle in her right hand danced as she began rotating in hypnotic, concentric circles. With every revolution, the needle sliced through the delicate seminiferous tubules, the microscopic factories of life, shredding them into a chaotic tangle of ruined fibers. The internal architecture, a marvel of the universe, began to liquify into a formless, macerated mass of testicular pulp.
Jonas watched the demonstration in horror and dread as the enchantress continued. "Every rotation will bring a fresh wave of unbearable pain through your testicle. In essence, it is a gradual castration. The longer you remain defiant, the deeper I'll sink and rotate the needle until your resolve breaks."
Huli Jing paused. With a slow, feline grace, she reached toward the belt of jade pendants encircling her waist and withdrew a slender knife. Its steel blade was small but sharp, the handle encrusted with rubies.
She gripped the macerated testicle firmly in her palm, lifting the ruined organ to the level of Jonas’s eyes. With a flick of her wrist, she drove the jeweled blade through the center of the mass, slicing it lengthwise, parting the flesh with a wet sound. From the gaping wound, liquefied, gray testicular pulp flowed between her delicate fingers, splattering on the stone floor. It was a visceral slurry of wasted genetic potential that pooled around her sandals. Yet, as she tilted the organ to evacuate the remainder of the pulp, it became clear that the areas of the testicle outside the reach of the needle remained untouched. As the cruel enchantress stated, the testicle stirring was only a partial castration. Should the captive be swift in divulging secrets, there was potential he could still sire a heir.
Huli Jing’s eyes shimmered with a predatory light as she lowered the ruined bollock, the grayish slurry slowly dripping from her fingertips. She stepped into the intimate space between Jonas’s spread thighs, her lavender silks brushing against his calves causing his painfully erect cock to release another dribble of precum. "A glimpse into your future," she whispered, her voice full of venom. "Let us see if your divine manhood is as resilient as your mind."
She firmly grasped Jonas's right testicle, preventing the sensitive, swollen organ from retreating into his body and with her other hand, she brought the golden needle forward. With a precision of an experience archer, she pierced the surface of the ball sack, then the outer testicular membrane, and finally plunged into the fertile flesh of the Norse prince's gonad. The needle caused Jonas’s body to stiffen and his face wince.
Then, Huli Jing began the stirring.
As Huli Jing began the slow, methodical rotation of the golden spike, the sensation was a radiating web of searing agony that seemed to radiate up into Jonas’s gut. Each circular movement of the needle creased a whirlpool of chunky testicular pulp of what was once Jonas’s seminiferous tubules. He felt the internal architecture of his virility being obliterated, the precise, swirling motion liquefying the tissue into a chunky, slurry of ruined nut meat.
Jonas’s reaction was primal. His back arched violently against the stone wall, his muscles locking in a spasm so intense that the iron chains groaned under the strain. A guttural sound, half-sob and half-snarl, tore from his throat, echoing through the chamber.
Jonas had known the searing bite of the blade and the sudden, jarring emptiness of where his genitals one stood. He had been unmanned by blades and sorcery during battles and challenges in the past. Each time, it was a blinding agony but Jonas had always clawed his way back to victory. Through the power ancient magical Norse incantations of healing, he has woven the severed flesh back together or reconstructed his prized organs as new as the day he was born. Those castrations had been a boundless but temporary moment of agony. But this was different.
Huli Jing’s needle was a continuous, unrelenting deletion of his manhood. By stirring the contents of his gonad while it remained attached to his living nerves, she was turning his own body into a personal torture chamber, one in which there was no end until he was broken, a pathetic shell of a man.
Huli Jing felt the tremor in his thighs and leaned closer, her eyes dancing with a sadistic curiosity. She increased the speed of the rotation, her wrist flicking with the grace of a calligrapher of the Orient. Jonas's family jewel was the mulberry paper, her needle, the master's paintbrush. "Do you feel it, warrior?" she whispered as tears steamed down Jonas's cheeks. "The sensation of being hollowed out from the inside? The slow destruction of what defines you as a man? All you need to do is let me into your mind and I’ll stop.”
The agony in Jonas's groin had reached such an intensity that his body began to tune out the frantic screams of his testicle, the desperate alarm of its slow destruction. Jonas’s body had all but abandoned the organ, as though the gonad’s survival no longer mattered. His defiance disintegrated. His mind now adrift in a sea of sensory overload, his azure eyes half opened and glazed, his body slack as a rag doll as he started slipping into unconsciousness.
Seizing the opportunity, Huli Jing left the needle in the gonad and rested her palm against his sweaty forehead. She must hurry to find the source of this divine member as pain is an old friend of Norse warriors, and one they are well-acquainted. It will not be long before he awakens.
The contact was like a lightning bolt, a surging intensity that bridged the gap between their minds. She expected to find the ruins of a broken man, but instead, Huli Jing was slammed by a torrential onslaught of imagery and an avalanche of boundless emotion. She could barely make sense of the moment she saw before being thrust into the next vision. She experienced the most intense and intimate moments of the prince's life in increasingly rapid succession. It was too much, too quick, too soon; this was not a mind a mortal was meant to breach.
Just when the enchantress felt her mind would explode, out of the nothingness, an eye opened.
It was a celestial sphere of iris and pupil cosmic proportion that spanned the entirety of her psychic horizon. It was a lens of ancient, frozen malice. She beheld the icy gaze of Jotun, King of the Frost Titans, peering across the ages through the lineage of his descendant.
She tried to scream and claw her way out but there was no sound or matter, just infinite silence and space.
Then, with the suddenness of a snapping bowstring, the connection severed. Huli Jing gasped, as she stumbled backward onto the floor, her eyes wide in terror.
Jonas, whose head had been lolling against the stone, was now wide awake. His face was dripping with sweat and grime as a slow smirk crawled across his lips, He looked at the trembling enchantress, "Did you enjoy what you saw?" Jonas asked, his voice a little too satisfied given the mortal danger he was in.
Huli Jing remained on the floor. The guards rushed in to help her up but she signaled with her hand they stopped and retreated to their positions.
"I have seen where you have obtained your treasure, traveler." Huli Jing loudly stated, trying to hide the fear in her voice. "And I believe pursuing the treasure would be a fool's errand for us. However..." She grinned, for the first time since probing Jonas's mind. "I believe you are capable of the task of obtaining another." She smoothed the rumpled lavender silk of her skirts as she looked at Jonas's bruised, swollen manhood.
"Here is my proposal: I will let you keep the phallus and fat gonads between your legs as well as the one in your satchel if you obtain another from its owner. I know he has more to spare and you are more than willing to relieve him of it. Then we will do business, the divine member for adamantine ore." Huli Jing stated.
A slow, wicked smile curved Jonas’s lips, a predatory expression. Jonas wanted Theseus's organ in his hands. The Greek demigod will be his prey and he, the hunter. The mere thought of depriving Theseus of his most prized possession when their paths crossed again stirred a deep sense of elation within him. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that after every castration, Theseus’s manhood would regenerate, allowing Jonas to harvest him over and over. He would come up with the most wicked ways to castrate him. Slicing them in half, crushing them in half until pulp ran through his fingers, maybe even using the needle trick he had just experienced.
"Deal," Jonas smirked.
Kallias suddenly blinked. This proposal was unexpected. To let this feral barbarian walk away with his treasure? Unacceptable. "Now hold on just a moment!" Kallias exploded, “This is ridiculous! We do not simply 'deal' with half-castrated livestock.”
"This is the best course of action," Huli Jing spoke, her voice devoid of its previous playfulness. "From what I have glimpsed in the depths of his mind, keeping him caged or slitting his throat will only attract disaster, likely leading to our demise. He cannot stay here."
"The best course of action?" Kallias repeated, his voice dropping to a dangerously low and malicious. "That is not for you to decide, Huli."
With a sudden, sharp snap of his fingers, the guards, who had remained as still as statues, moved with a blurred, synchronized efficiency. Before Huli Jing could explain, two of them surged forward, seizing her slender wrists and pinning them behind her back. A third guard, his face a mask of indifference, pressed the cold, keen edge of a steel dagger against her throat.
“I am the one who pays them and thus their loyalty lies with me. So much as a flick of your fingers or a whisper of Eastern magic, and they’ll slit your throat.” Kallias declared. The enchantress’s gaze hardened and was seething but careful not to utter a single word, lest her throat be slit.
Kallias turned his attention back to Jonas. ”The deal with the enchantress is void. You will give me the divine trophy and you will reveal your secrets.”
"The only thing you will get from me is the wrath I have in store for you," Jonas sneered.
"Pity," Kallias sighed. "A truly tragic waste of a fine specimen.”
The merchant stepped closer, his gaze sliding down to the bruised, mangled landscape of Jonas's groin. With a slow, deliberate movement, Kallias reached out, his fingers pinching the cold gold of the needle still embedded deep within Jonas's right testicle. He gave it a sharp, experimental flick, sending a fresh jolt of white-hot agony through Jonas’s nervous system. Kallias watched with a voyeuristic glee as Jonas’s jaw locked and the made a sudden gasp.
"I wonder," Kallias mused. Perhaps the needle simply needs to be stirred a bit more to loosen your tongue."
He prepared to rotate the golden needle with the same methodical cruelty Huli Jing had done previously. “Sometimes livestock are better off neutered.” Kallias voiced with malice. However what the merchant failed to notice was the peculiar silence that had fallen over the iron chains.
The shackles were still wrapped around Jonas’s wrists, hanging heavy and deceptive, but the internal pins had long since slid free. While everyone in the room was distracted by the enchantress’s sudden collapse. Jonas managed to unlock his restraints with a Norse incantation when no eyes were upon him. The Norse demigod remained perfectly still, keeping his arms positioned as if he were still bound.
As Kallias gripped the needle, Jonas snapped into action. The Norse prince lunged forward, his freed arms snapping out like coiled springs. His massive hand clamped around Kallias’s throat, lifting the smaller man clean off his feet. The sudden shift in momentum displaced the needle, dislodging but slicing through part of the orb and ripping the ball sack in the process. This resulted in the loss of nut pulp from the grievously injured orb onto the floor. Jonas winced at the loss of more of his fleshy nut meat but would not let it divert his unbridled fury. He slammed the merchant on the ground, rendering him unconscious.
The three guards, conditioned by years of mercenary discipline, reacted as a single battalion, their boots skidding on the stone as they surged toward the freed Norseman, weapons drawn. Jonas didn't retreat but unleashed his rage.
The first guard lunged, swinging a heavy mace aimed at Jonas’s temple. Jonas dipped his shoulder and countered with a brutal, upward drive of his knee. The blow connected with a sickening, wet thud, driving the guard’s vulnerable testicles upward against his pelvis where the outer membrane ruptured, spilling its gooey contents into his bloated swollen sack. The man’s eyes rolled back, his weapon clattering to the floor as he collapsed into a heap.
The second guard, seeing his comrade fall, attempted to grapple Jonas. Jonas let out a guttural roar, pivoting his hips with a violent, twisting force. Using the guard’s own momentum, Jonas launched a savage, open-palmed slap that landed squarely across the man's groin. Jonas felt the twin orbs warp and splatter, replaced with chunky bits of matter. The guard’s composure vanished instantly, his face contorting into a mask of pure, blinding shock as he crumpled, clutching himself in a desperate, futile attempt to hold together what had been shattered before losing consciousness.
The third guard launched a heavy, armored boot aimed squarely at Jonas’s bruised groin, but Jonas caught the leg mid-air and twisted the man’s ankle with a sickening pop. As the guard shrieked, Jonas pinned him to the cold stone floor. Jonas ripped away the guard’s leather breeches, exposing the man’s shivering, ripe nuts to the damp air of the vault. The guard’s eyes widened. Jonas didn't give him time to plead. He shifted his weight, planting his calloused heel directly onto the center of the guard's scrotum, applying a slow, agonizing pressure.
The guard’s scream was a high, thin wail that echoed through the rafters but Jonas didn't stop. He shifted his balance and brought his heel down in a sudden, in repeated stomp. The sound was visceral—a wet, popping noise, like a ripened fruit bursting under a boot; apples to apple sauce. The pressure became too much for the thin skin to contain and the crushed, macerated remains of the guard's testicles exploded outward in a spray of grayish-white pulp. The organ, once a source of pride and virility, was reduced to a formless slurry similar to cold oatmeal that splattered across the stone floor. The guard's eyes rolled back into his skull and he slipped into darkness.
The final guard stood frozen, his gaze oscillating between the unconscious heap of his comrades and the carnage unfolding at the feet of the Norse prince. The visceral sound of bursting flesh had triggered a primal sense of fear. In that heartbeat of distraction, he failed to notice Huli Jing’s lips moving as she conjured an illusion.
The transition was instantaneous and jarring. The cold, rigid metal of the dagger began to ripple, turning a sickly, iridescent green. The hilt softened into scales, and the blade tapered into a flickering, fork-tongued head. The guard shrieked as the viper, clamped its fangs into his palm. He reflexively dropped the creature, the snake dissolving back into a blade in a puff of lavender smoke the moment it hit the stone.
Huli Jing didn't waste the opening. With a guttural incantation, she channeled a surge of her psychic energy into a singular, focused point of heat precisely on the distracted guard's groin. The guard screamed as a roaring incandescent flame erupted from nothingness. The fire seared through his leather armor and skin, igniting the oils of his skin causing the man’s scrotum to blacken and curl, exposing his precious orbs. The fire incinerated the delicate epididymis and melted the seminiferous tubules into a steaming heap of pink, scrambled eggs. The man's veiny member, respectable in size, burst into flames as the fire consumed the man's entire package. Within seconds, the guard's virility was being reduced to a charred and ash. He collapsed from pain and darkness overtook him as Huli Jing laughed.
Jonas stepped over the unconscious form of the merchant. Beneath him, Kallias stirred, as consciousness returned in a surge of disorientation. The merchant blinked, his eyes focusing on the towering, blood-streaked figure of the Norse prince. The arrogance that had defined Kallias's existence vanished in an instant, replaced by a frantic, wide-eyed terror. "Please! Mercy, Norseman! Spare my life!"
Jonas looked down at him. For a split second, he hesitated. It was not like him to grant mercy. Kallias saw the opportunity. With a desperation, the merchant snatched the knife from his belt and swung his blade, aiming for the Norse prince’s manhood.
The blade was serrated and tore through the skin with a jagged, uneven rip, carving a vertical canyon through the Norse prince’s scrotum. As the tension of the skin gave way, the wound gaped open, exposing the raw, visceral interior of the sac. There, exposed and trembling in the air, hung the right testicle. It was a ruin of its former self; once a firm orb of divine potency, it now hung limp and partially deflated, the internal architecture having been liquefied into a grayish slurry by Huli Jing’s golden needle. The organ looked like a bruised, over-ripe fruit, stripped of its turgor and sagging within the open wound, a physical testament to the stirring that had hollowed out the prince's virility.
Jonas didn’t scream. He didn't even flinch. He looked down at the gaping hole in his groin, watching the slow drip of ruined tissue slide down his though. Instead of agony, a terrifyingly malicious smile appeared. Cold fury coursed through his divine veins and not even pain could divert his wrath.
Jonas’s hand slapped the hilt of the knife, sending the weapon spinning away. Then his hand slid down the proprietor's pants, gripping the merchant’s manhood with the crushing force of a tidal wave.
Kallias’s eyes bulged, his breath hitching in a surge of panic. He scrambled backward to save his manhood, but inadvertently provided the very momentum Jonas needed. Using the merchant’s own frantic, desperate recoil as a counterweight, Jonas planted his feet and yanked upward. There was a brutal sound of connective tissue tearing and ending with the sickening, wet “SNAP.” In a second, Kallias’s entire genital assembly was torn from his body in one violent, jagged rip. The merchant screamed as he stared down at the empty, bloody void between his thighs and then up at the trophy now dangling from Jonas's hand.
As Kallias collapsed, Jonas stood motionless as his exposed, hollowed-out right gonad seemed to weep leaving a trail of grayish, chunky slurry. He looked down at the leaking mess of his own manhood, the sight of his failing virility only fueling the cold fury in his veins.
Jonas didn't look at the trophy with pride. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, Jonas hurled the severed manhood against the far wall. The mangle genitals struck the ancient stone with a wet, heavy SPLAT, clinging for a precarious second to the masonry before it slowly slid downward in a streak of crimson, leaving a glistening trail of slime against the grey brickwork.
Jonas turned slowly, his gaze upon Kallias. The merchant attempted to beg for mercy but a minuscule flame instantaneously appeared directly in front of Kallias. With a distant snap, the tiny flame exploded into a wildfire, incinerating the merchant. Huli Jing smiled as she watched the disintegration of her former business partner into ash.
Jonas stood, admiring the display as his nut pulp slowly coursed down his leg. After a brief moment, his gaze shifted toward Huli Jing.
"I find it curious, enchantress. When you delved into the deepest recesses…” Jonas remarked. He didn't move to cover the gaping rent in his groin, nor did he flinch as a fresh globule of grayish, liquefied tissue slid from his scrotum and splattered onto the stone. He simply stared at her; a cold fury in his azure eyes. “You could have but chose not to divulge my secrets to the merchant."
A smile formed on the enchantress’s lips. "Knowledge can be dangerous.” she replied. “With it, he would have used you as bait to lure your lover here so we could repeatedly harvest is manhood to sell. But there are powerful and malicious enemies scouring the land in search of you and I have no desire to cross their path."
"Lover?" Jonas's eyes narrowed. He took several steps toward her, the movement jarring the open wound in his testicle and sending a fresh globule of liquefied tissue splashing onto the stone. "Theseus is a rival whose manhood is mine to take.”
As he stepped closer, his gaze dropped to the ruins of his own anatomy. The sight of his own half-castration, the grayish slurry still weeping from his now nearly hollowed-out testicle, sparked a fresh surge of adrenaline and rage. "One of my family jewels is ruined," he growled, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low rumble. "You attempted to strip the very core of my lineage while I was bound."
Huli Jing lifted her chin as a soft, melodic laugh escaped her lips, an inappropriate and unexpected response to the Norse Prince’s accusation. “Your manhood was never in any real danger. I know your healing magic.” Jonas remained indignant but silent, confirming the enchantress's suspicions.
Huli Jing sighed as she looked down at the vault floor, which was now a grotesque tapestry of charcoal ash, arterial spray, and the glistening, grayish slurry of Jonas’s gonad. "By the Gods," she muttered, her voice laced with a sudden, sharp annoyance. "The sheer lack of elegance in your methods is staggering. Now I must spend the day cleaning up the remnants of my former associates and bits of your bollocks."
Despite her irritation, she turned back to Jonas. “The terms of our arrangement remain. I am a woman of my word, even if you are a man of catastrophic temper. My offer still stands: bring me another piece of Theseus—a fresh, potent specimen of his divine virility—and you shall have the adamantine ore you crave."
"A woman of her word?!” Jonas snarled, his glacial azure eyes gazed upon the enchantress with rage. "You speak of words of honor while your fingers still smell of my nut pulp."
Huli Jing didn't flinch. She looked at the gore-streaked warrior. “I am a businesswoman, and business cannot be conducted on a foundation of lies. Besides, I can prove it to you." she voiced
She reached into the folds of her lavender robes and produced a small, heavy object wrapped in velvet: adamantine
"A single shard," she spoke. "A token of good faith, and a testament to my commitment to our agreement." Jonas cautiously reached out, his calloused hands closing around the metal.
Huli Jing watched the Norseman grip the shard. "A mere fragment, of course," she stated. "The vein lies far to the east, deep within the lands of my people. It will take time to retrieve it and haul it back. However this will give you plenty of time to secure the member of your lover." Jonas gave her a nasty scowl.
The prince gaze now shifted upon his ruined manhood, at the leaking slurry of his almost completely deflated right testicle and the jagged canyon in his scrotum. He closed his eyes, softly spoke ancient syllables and the magic slowly restored his manhood to its former glory.
Huli Jing watched the process with in fascination and smugness. "As I stated, your special man bits were never in true danger," she remarked smugly. Jonas scowled as he donned his clothes, covering up his newly regenerated, tender manhood that continued to drip precum. He snatched up his satchel containing Theseus’s manhood before his eyes met the enchantress’s gaze.
“Your customer service is abysmal, woman.” Jonas snarled. He turned to exit the chamber but paused at the threshold of the vault, glancing back at the carnage of charred ash and biological debris that now defined the room's aesthetic. "And your staff is all over the place."
Huli Jing’s laughter rang out, a sound that echoed against the cold stone walls as the wooden door slammed behind the fuming Norse prince.
