Page 26 of The Hunchback

A strange expression I couldn’t define settled on his face still scrunched in pain. A single tear slipped down his cheek while his hand blindly reached for me. I took it, and he squeezed mine hard enough to hurt. The shadow of a trembling smile stretched his lips for a second before he winced in pain.

My poor love.

Leaning forward, I kissed the tear on his cheek, then brushed my lips against his.

“Let me take care of you, my love,” I whispered, caressing his hair. “Whatever the future holds, we’ll face it together, you and me. But you have to let me in.”

Kwazeem stopped fretting, the same powerful emotion crossing his features as he squeezed my hand again, this time in concession. Removing my hand from his grasp with much reluctance, I went back to lifting his shirt above his hump. My jaw dropped, and my breath caught in my throat at the sight it revealed.

Unlike the humps I’d seen in my research, Kwazeem’s wasn’t smooth skin on each side of his deformed spine. It was lumpy and glowed as if a constellation had been trapped beneath the skin. I couldn’t even see the vertebrae of his spine past the small of his back where his hump began. But right there, at its very base, a large lump glowed like a midnight sun. Whatever Kwazeem’s condition was, this was no normal hump.

Unable to resist, my palm reached for it. I gasped as a bolt of Divine Light exploded inside of me. Pleasure almost too unbearable to withstand coursed through me. My nipples hardened painfully, and moisture pooled between my thighs as my inner walls throbbed and contracted with need. My power surged deep within, rattling like a caged beast to pour out of me.

Kwazeem’s cry of agony snapped me out of the near orgasmic state I was teetering in. Clawing at his bedding, he clumsily attempted to crawl away from me… from my touch.

I’m hurting him!

I yanked my hand away from him and stumbled a few steps back, horrified.

“St… stop!” Kwazeem cried out. “P… Pow…”

“My power!” I exclaimed, understanding finally dawning on me. “My power is hurting you!”

Even as Kwazeem struggled to acquiesce, the imps frantically nodded their heads. I clamped down on my power, silencing my Divine Light. My man’s body immediately lost all tension, and he collapsed on the bed, shaking with pain, his feverish body drenched in sweat.

“I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize,” I rambled, feeling horrible for having increased his suffering. “I see the lump you’ve been talking about. Where is the needle to drain it out?”

Victus chirped and gestured wildly for me to follow him.

“You know where to find it?” I asked. Victus nodded vigorously and gestured again for me to follow. I turned to Kwazeem, and caressed his hair. “Victus is going to show me where to get the needle, okay?” I whispered in his ear. “I will come back soon. Hang in there for me, my love. All right?”

Kwazeem feebly nodded his head. Chest constricted, I kissed his lips and then his temple before hastening after Victus, while Lazarus resumed pushing his magic into my man. It didn’t take me long to realize the imp was taking me to Frollo’s lab. But as we approached its door on the third floor of the temple’s spire, I began to wonder how we would break into it. When we reached it, Victus gestured for me to stay put then flew away, down the balcony. As the seconds and then minutes ticked by, I grew increasingly worried that one of the Maidens or the guards would enter the temple and find me lurking outside Frollo’s lab.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the red light on the door’s digital lock turned green with a high-pitched beep, then slid open. Victus grinned his sharp teeth at me before waving me in. I realized then he had entered through one of the windows. Lucky for us, no experiment had been ongoing that might have required Frollo to put the room on lockdown, or seal it to prevent contamination, be it incoming or outgoing.

Despite my curiosity, I didn’t waste time in examining the various paraphernalia he had laid about, although the place was very clean and orderly. Victus danced around a closed case. I opened it and found a scary looking syringe with five large vials that seemed to attach to the base of the syringe. Temperature-control lids also sat next to each of the vials. Closing the case, I picked it up and turned towards the imp.

“Anything else?” I asked.

He pointed at a cooling unit by one of the counters and indicated a small jar that I immediately recognized as a potent painkiller often used as anesthetic. I picked it up as well as sterile applicators, an antiseptic solution, and some gauze.

Victus flying to the door confirmed we had everything. With him in the lead, we rushed back to Kwazeem’s cabin, relieved that the festivities were still in full swing. Despite the swelling deforming his features, the hopeful look on my man’s face when we reentered his room almost made me choke up again.

“Hang in there, sweetie. I’m going to try to do this right,” I said.

My hands shook a little as I began to clean his lower back with the antiseptic where the scars of former puncture wounds could be seen. When I applied the anesthetic, Kwazeem’s moan of relief filled my heart with both joy at helping my man and anger at Frollo for abandoning him to such torment just to make a point. The anesthetic didn’t fully relieve him of all pain, but it appeared to have numbed the main cause of his suffering.

Assembling what resembled a giant spinal tap needle proved easy enough. Under the guidance of Victus, I didn’t attach a tube to the back of the syringe right away but waited until I had inserted the needle in Kwazeem’s back. Nothing ever terrified me more. What if I hit a nerve and permanently crippled him?

However, the lump where Victus indicated for me to insert the needle only contained the fluid that had been torturing Kwazeem. As soon as I plugged the tube at the back of the needle, a silvery liquid pulsating with a constellation of stars poured into it. In the second it took me to barely manage to clamp down on my power trying to explode out of my chest again, Kwazeem’s body had stiffened from the pain I was causing him.

In seconds, the first vial was filled. I detached it from the syringe, sealed it with the temperature-controlled cork, and then placed it back inside the case. As I began to fill the second vial, my head spun from staring at what I knew beyond any doubt to be Divine Light pouring out of my mate in liquid form. It called to me with a violence that made me dizzy. By the third vial, I was holding it with the costume’s cloak wrapped around my hand to dampen the intoxicating contact.

With each vial I filled, tension drained from Kwazeem’s body and the lights glowing beneath his lumpy hump faded. However, even after using all five of the vials, I could see a bit more of the fluid remained. A sixth vial would have been required to fully rid him of what should have instead made him akin to a god.

But even as I removed the needle, cleaned the wound, and bandaged it with some gauze, the pieces of the puzzle all started to fall into place. The anger I previously felt towards Frollo’s cruel punishment now turned into blind fury. But the time for reckoning would come soon enough. I closed the case and placed it on the dresser on the opposite side of the room.

Settling back down on the bed, closer to Kwazeem’s head, I brushed his damp hair away from his face. My lips parted in shock at the sight of the swelling having already reduced by half and the purple bruising fading at record speed before my very eyes.

---