Chapter Text
Once there was a son born to a family, swaddled in purple silks as he wept. The seventh child in the noble family of a great empire, he was born sickly, and grew sicker still as he aged. He was frail, with skin that broke easily and eyes which were quick to well with tears. A profound shortness of breath haunted him in all athletic pursuits, and his pale skin was ill suited to the sun of his homeland. All martial skill seemed to flee from him, and one by one, even his brothers gave up on trying to teach him the ways of war. He would attempt to master a pursuit befitting of his birth, and with great effort, he proved himself inept at them all. His heart was too kind for courtly intrigue, his hands were ill suited to the arts, and he was so far removed from his father’s station that no worthy family would arrange a betrothal with him based on bloodline alone. The son of course, had many great qualities, for it was clear that he would grow into a man of great beauty, was blessed with a muse’s voice, and possessed a tenderness that engendered trust in everyone who spoke with him. Though he did not know it, the qualities which he was most proud of would seal his fate.
His father was a kindly man, and his mother also held no ill will towards any of their children, but both recognized the unfortunate position of their son, even if he did not. He had after all, been born into a large family, with not just brothers, but uncles, and cousins who all had the right to assert their right to claim to the throne once his father had passed. Both recognized that this was a threat to their stability and power, as while their chosen heir was respected and beloved by family and vassals alike, it would take but one snake to send the whole family spiraling into chaos and bloodshed. A seventh son would father his own children in time, children who could grow to be jealous of their cousins or siblings, children who could grow to scheme against their own family, and children who could plunge even their great house into ruin in hopes of becoming the ruler over what remained. It was a risk too great to be taken for such an underwhelming son. The father did not want to make what he knew to be the right choice, for he feared for his son's safety, and was paralyzed by the guilt he would feel if his son was killed by his own decree. Ever the proactive woman, the mother would travel to the capital, and visit all the greatest schools in the empire, eventually finding a surgeon of great renown, who she brought back to the estate. The father, upon learning of the man’s past and reputation, was overjoyed, and with his fear overcome, he gave the order before becoming overwhelmed with relief and retiring to his chambers.
In the coming week, the son was celebrating the fourteenth day of his birth, and the normally sullen lad was delighted to be surrounded by his family and friends. His parents would encourage him to drink far more wine than he would have on his own, and he was made to dance until he was exhausted. Eventually, he was led away from the festivities, barely awake and unable to realize what was happening. The surgeon gave him a draught, laid the son upon a table, and waited for sleep to take him. By the time the son awoke, it was another day, and a shooting, burning pain kept him shivering on the table, unwilling to move. He realized that he was naked, and dreaded the scent of burning flesh that tainted the air around him. With great effort, he tried to rise, and fell from the table, startling the surgeon, who said something in a foreign language and ran to his side. For reasons he could not understand, the surgeon began to rub his hands alongside the inside of his thighs, and sighed a sigh of relief when they came back clean. Now slumped against the table, and prompted by the touch of the doctor, he turned his gaze to his lower half, and froze.
Where there was once flesh, sat a scar. The eunuch no longer had the strength to cry or scream, and fell back into the tender arms of sleep.
The surgeon placed his charge back upon the table, disinterestedly observing his patient and ensuring that no complications snuffed him out in this great moment of vulnerability. He had struck off the eunuch’s twins and the pouch that contained them with a single blow from a burning iron, ensuring that his patient did not bleed to death in the aftermath of the surgery. After disposing of the resulting waste, he would then apply an ointment to the freshly burnt flesh, preventing infection, and tended to his body until it was certain that the eunuch was in a stable condition. The surgeon would then turn the boy over to some servants, who hurried the unconscious eunuch back to his chambers, and collected his fees before returning home. He would almost immediately forget what he had done, as the memories of that particular surgery melted away into the hundreds of others he had performed over the years.
The eunuch would spend the next months of his life weeping and refusing to meet with any of his family. He would go so far as to throw himself out of a window when his father tried to force his way into his room, and from that point on, they respected his wishes. Gradually, the pain from his mutilation faded, but the pain of betrayal did not. He would rarely take food or drink, and out of fear for his life, his eldest brother would break into his room as he slept, restraining the eunuch and forcing him to drink broth and water. After this, the eunuch would gradually forgive his brothers as one by one they secretly revealed they had no part in what had been done, and resented their parents for forcing such cruelty upon him. But he would never grow as close to them as he once was. To voice dissent against the decrees of their father would be unseemly, and jeopardize their own place in the family. To treat one cut out of the family as a brother would likewise be seen as an act of defiance, and so his brothers all grew to fear him, in their own way. The eunuch became a reminder of their own fragility, and what might be done to them if they were deemed a threat to the family. Eventually, excuses turned to blunt rejection, as all but one of his brothers refused to be seen in public with him. He was too young and of too high a station to be seen as their servant, and they could not risk him being seen as their brother, and so would not be seen with him at all. His parents would often reach out, attempting to justify what they had done by claiming it was all for his own good, but it was all hollow. They never even met him to relay the lies themselves, they sent their servants to do so, and these servants would soon be one of the few people that the eunuch met with regularly. After a while, they too stopped coming, as his parents had long since given up on turning the eunuch into a productive servant, and cut their losses. The eunuch did not know if he should be happy or despondent at their absence, and took to hiding in old, decrepit sections of the estate, where he would spend his days alone in the dark. On some days, the eldest son would find him, and force him to break bread and talk. While he had once played the part of the gleaming, impeccable heir, worry now wrinkled his face, and a darkness followed him wherever he went. He would try and speak to the eunuch, but his words always melted away into monologues as the eunuch ate. The eunuch, isolated from the rest of the estate and never one for intrigue, understood little of what was said, as his brother spouted out names he did not know and spoke of a wider world the eunuch had never truly seen.
One word he did understand, and a word that his brother said often, was cruelty. Everyone around him had revealed their true faces, and the eldest was terrified by what he had seen. His brothers had abandoned a child to starve to death in the dark, out of fear and indifference. His parents, unwilling to take responsibility for what had happened, told the eldest that this had been done for his own safety, rattling off a list of potential threats that might have crawled out of his brother's loins if they remained intact. It was not their fault, they said, that their youngest was unable to cope with his duties to his house. One night, he told the eunuch that he would always love him, even if it became impossible for them to meet. He had the eunuch swear an oath, demanding that he would feed himself and live, if only to spite his enemies. His words soon degraded as they always did, but this time into a constant stream of apologies. The eunuch, simply happy to be spoken to, let the words wash over him, and realized what the apologies were for only after the act had been committed.
That night, the eldest would kill three of his brothers as they slept, leaving only the sixth son alive. He carved their heads from their shoulders, weeping as he worked. The father, still awake in his study, would be torn from his readings as his son and heir ripped open his study door and threw a sack at his feet. As its contents spilled out, the father recognized the faces of his sons, and wept, begging to know what had happened. The eldest son, laughing as he spoke, told his father what he had done, waving the blade that had shattered their house in the air. Not content to give his father the satisfaction of a clean succession, the eldest son would commit one final act of spite. Instead of killing his father and taking his throne, he plunged his blade into his own stomach, and slashed his belly open in a single motion. He would spill forth onto the floor and die shortly afterwards, and his last act would be trying to keep his father from cradling him in his arms as he died. The father wept not for his sons, but for the doom of his house.
Left utterly alone by the death of his eldest brother, the eunuch would spend the rest of his youth sinking deeper into silence and despair. He grew too despondent even to sneak into the courtyards and listen to music, horrified at what the singers he had once idolized would think of him. His hair had long since become greasy and wild, his nails chipped and uncut, and much to his horror, he remained clean shaven. Rumours began to swirl that he had died during his castration, and that he now haunted the estate as a malicious spirit. It was a pair of his cousins, visiting the estate one summer, who finally came to his aid. They followed the sound of his weeping, and found him huddled in an abandoned kitchen, hoping that if he hid himself well enough, that he would disappear from the world entirely. The cousins picked him up, and carried him off the estate and into a nearby bathhouse, which they paid handsomely to ensure was empty, so that the eunuch would not suffer the stares of strangers. They cleaned him, tended to his hair, and as they worked, they began to tell him their story. Their own younger brother had suffered a similar fate, but had bled to death on the table due to incompetence of the surgeon who had cut him. Infuriated that their brother's life had been cut short simply because he had become inconvenient for their family, they had poisoned the surgeon, their parents, and helped one of their uncles seize power, in order to spite the ghost of their father. Though they had never met the eunuch before this day, the mere image of another member of their family rotting away because of such wanton cruelty infuriated them, and they had vowed to help him. They begged him not to let the callousness of his parents be the end of him, to not let what they had done prevent him from filling his soul and living a happy life. As their hands restored his appearance, their words restored his spirit, and while he cried a great deal that day, he left the bathhouse filled with a newfound hope. After this, with the prompting of his cousins, he would spend a month visiting their estate, and celebrate the coming of his adulthood far away from those who had hurt him.
Over the course of that month, the cousins sought to ensure that his newfound hope and confidence would not be dashed as soon as he was away from them, and thus sought to make him feel comfortable appearing in public, so that he might find new companions and enjoy the many pleasures of life. First they would reverse the many ravages that had been forced upon him, ensuring that no condition of the body would sabotage the healing of his mind. They ensured he ate regularly and often, made him sleep for a sufficient amount at the proper hours, and ensured he did all the little tasks needed to keep himself presentable. In time, the bags beneath his eyes faded, flesh that had melted away in the face of hunger returned, and his hair went from a tangled mess to a well weaved tapestry. As his body grew softer and more kempt, his mind began to harden, and habits long forgotten were chiseled back into place. Soon, he did not need to be prompted to eat, and began to take care of himself. He began to spend time outdoors, soaking in the beauty of garden and nature alike, and spent his nights reading instead of weeping.
The eunuch, with his condition hidden by fine cloth and the anonymity offered by an unfamiliar community, once again began to feel the comfort that came with the presence of people who treated him as just another person, and not some grim portent or wailing madman. People began to recognize him, learn his name, and went out of their way to speak to him when they met in public, and it was all that the eunuch could do not to break into tears of joy every time he was shown such small kindnesses. For the first time since he was cut, he would wake up without dreading the day that laid before him. The cousins revelled in his newfound happiness, but knew that he would have to endure further discomfort to truly live independently of them.
It was considered improper for a eunuch to hide their status by covering what they lacked, and the eunuch’s parents would never allow him to disgrace their family in such a manner. At most, they would allow him to wear some jewelry and trinkets to display his noble status, and permit him to wear shoes when going outdoors. While the cousins had allowed him to hide his wound, and the confidence this had granted him had proved to be invaluable, they knew that if he was only comfortable when clothed, his parents would once again force him into a position where he was never to be comfortable. They spoke to him about this, and while he hated what they said, he knew that their words were true. Still, he would not do it of his own accord, and as he was due to return home soon, drastic action needed to be taken. His cousins, clever as ever, quickly devised a way to ensure that he was forced to face this inevitably. They took him to the outskirts of town, before tearing off his clothing and burning it. Even if the eunuch escaped their gaze and retreated back to their estate, he would have to go through town to do so. As he walked to the city, dread filled him, and every step felt like a little agony in his chest, waiting to jump out and tear him apart. But then, something he would have never expected happened. He stumbled upon an old woman he had grown fond of, an accomplished baker who had called him handsome when they had first met, and sweet when he had complimented her pastries. At first, she was surprised, and perhaps a little excited to see him naked, before realizing what he was. But instead of mocking him or pushing him away, she invited him into the shop as normal. While his skin prickled as she made a joke about him being a eunuch being the reason he was so pretty, the conversation continued as normal, and she was as pleasant to him as always. Their conversation came to an end as naturally as any other, and both of them moved on. To the old lady, it was a typical day, to the eunuch, it felt as if it was the beginning of something wonderful.
While many of the people he met, the men especially, looked surprised and a little uneasy when they first saw that the eunuch had been cut, most moved on quickly, with some simply not caring at all. Sometimes, there was a pity in their voice, or a stifled laugh, and these moments ate away at the eunuch’s very soul, but the blows were trifling in comparison to the countless other pleasant interactions. In particular, the singers he had met were utterly indifferent to the fact. They told him that unlike other men, a eunuch's voice would often not change as he aged, allowing him to sing as he had as a youth for the entirety of his life, so it was common for a eunuch to devote himself to song. A few of the singers revealed that they themselves were eunuchs, but wore clothing as they worked to preserve the wholesome nature of their performance and prevent the crowd from becoming unruly. Other singers showed interest for less respectable reasons. One, a younger man who had just joined the group, stammered out the words
“You’re beautiful.”
Before running off, clearly embarrassed, although the eunuch had no idea why. The other singers laughed, and one approached him, eager to make conversation.
“Pay him no mind, he is young and romance flees from him like a startled cat. I fear that with the whole of your body exposed, you overwhelmed the poor lad, and drowned him in a tide of lust.”
“Lust?”
“Aye, lust. Had things gone as he wished, you’d be following him to his bed right now, where you’d soon be enjoying the touch of an inexperienced lover fumbling with your body like a lump of clay in the dark, while mounting you with all the grace of a dying dog.”
The eunuch’s head span. Ever since he had been cut, he had always imagined himself as something that had been reduced and made sterile. The very source of his desire had been cut off and burned to ash, and the remaining remnant was stunted, an inch of flesh at most. He had been told that he would never marry, never be bound to another in the eyes of the gods, and that it was his place to be a passionless servant of his house. Filled with confusion, and another, less familiar feeling, the eunuch began to prod further.
“Why would he have desired one such as I?”
Once again, the singer laughed.
“Oh, it is a mystery as to why the most beautiful man most will ever see would stir up passion in one’s heart. Not even the wisdom of a thousand philosophers could help one fathom why the smile of a doe-eyed, naked lad with a fat ass might lead someone to desire the taste of his lips and feel the warmth of his body.”
A newfound intensity burned within the singer's eyes, the eunuch realized what was happening all at once. Something stirred within the eunuch as well, a bubbling feeling that he could not suppress in spite of his best efforts. All at once, he realized how handsome the singer was, the way his beard framed his face and the way his muscles gave him the body of a statue. Nervous, he began to play with his hair as his body trembled beneath him.
“Do you wish to feel my warmth?”
With that, the singer placed a kiss upon the eunuch's cheek and took his hand, leading him forward towards the singer’s home, and the bed that waited within.
When he woke up and realized what had happened, the eunuch cried. Devoid of passion, his mind was filled with a horrible clarity. Becoming a eunuch had obviously rendered him lesser, cutting him out of his family and leaving him incapable of marrying, but he felt that in this moment, some crucial remnant of his dignity had finally been stripped away. To a remain virgin was one thing, the castration had forced upon him, but he had willingly given up his manhood this time. Another, real man had taken him, and turned him into nothing but an impotent toy, a momentary pleasure that could be discarded whenever it was convenient.
The singer came to comfort him, but the eunuch recoiled from his touch. The singer, still eager to comfort the eunuch, drew back, and began to prepare a meal for the young man. Soon, a bowl of honeyed oats and a glass of warm milk sat steaming before the eunuch, and he slinked towards the meal like a cat, famished from last night’s escapades. As he ate, he began to regain his wits and steady himself. He was still distraught, tears still stained his cheeks and shame still clouded his eyes, but he was well enough to let the singer know what was happening.
“Do you think of me as a woman?”
“Why would I?”
“I am no man, not after what was done to me. There is nothing but a scar beneath my cock. I’m not even a woman, I’m just a hole that can be used up and thrown away without consequences. Maybe you are kind enough to shield me from this fact, to make me feel special and worthwhile, but I will live forever under the gaze of those who would see me as naught but a toy, and I know now that the hollow lust within me will drive them me into their arms.”
“Don’t degrade yourself like that man. Many people in this world suffer injuries and injustices that scar them forever, but they are not lesser for it. Neither are you. You will never be a thing, a momentary pleasure for someone else.”
“Such comforting words, but they ring hollow. I can not climb atop you and take you as you took me. I am doomed to play the role of passivity, and those who do not ignore me will seek only to devour me.
The singer stopped, lost in thought, his beautiful voice failing him as he failed to provide it with the right words.
“I’ve fucked intact men, and intact men have fucked me. It is only natural for men to lust for beauty, wherever they may find it. Many will find you attractive, that I’m sure of, but I would wager that very few of them want you because you’re some inferior, disposable being. You are kind, devoted to your craft, and warm. In less than a week, you had men you’d just met calling you a friend and singing your praises. I do not know your story, but it must be tragic for you to be seeing yourself like this. Just know that it is not how the world sees you, not how your friends will see you. It isn’t how I see you.”
There was a long pause. The eunuch took the opportunity to speak.
“Would you have bedded me before learning what I was?”
“I would have bedded you the day we met if you had asked.”
The eunuch still cried, but he took the singer into his arms, and held him for a long while. In turn, the singer would return the embrace, and both spent many an hour in each other's arms.
After this, the singer would draw for the eunuch a bath, so that he might wash the sweat and semen from his body. They were both still naked, and the eunuch’s mind turned towards mischief. When the bath was full, the eunuch would push the singer into it, creating a mighty splash and leaving the singer splayed out on the bottom of the tub. Before he could protest, the eunuch slinked into the tub and sat atop the singer, beaming a smug little smile as he towered over the lover beneath him. He began to grind against the singer, who began to mewl slightly in response to the eunuch’s teasing. When the singer had grown hard, the eunuch wasted no time, and gently guided the singer’s cock into him, content to soak in the warmth that radiated out of the singer’s body for a few moments. Then of course, he began to ride the singer as if he was a warrior riding a stallion into battle. Warm water splashed and spilled out of the tub as the eunuch worked over his partner, and the bath was half empty by the time the eunuch had emptied the singer. Reluctantly, the eunuch allowed the singer to slide out of him, and laid upon his chest, giddy with delight as he felt the singer trying to catch his breath. Eventually, when the singer had regained his senses, he pushed the self-satisfied eunuch off of him and stood up from the bath. The eunuch looked up at him like a cat lounging in the sun, and began to speak in a voice that was almost song.
“Seems like you were right, I’m not that passive after all.”
The singer’s look was one of both satisfaction and exasperation.
“Aye, seems like you’re good at taking charge of things. Too good at it, even, you worked me so hard we spoiled the whole bath.”
“Spoiled it? I feel like we used it quite well.”
“See that’s the problem, we didn’t use it as a bath. Now we’re both covered in my semen again, and that wonderful little romp of yours used up all the hot water.”
A sudden look of horror washed over the eunuch's face as he began to grasp the implication of what the singer had just said.
After the two had finished their second bath, which the eunuch had often and loudly compared to the icy waters of Barents Sea, they left the singer’s house. It was a mild day, and the eunuch looked like a wet cat as he sopped over the cobbles, naked and shivering. Eventually, the singer had to carry him, warming the shivering beast in his arms, as the eunuch tried his very best to hide how much he was enjoying being held.
The cousins were delighted when the eunuch returned to them in the arms of a “friend”, freshly bathed and as they correctly assumed, freshly fucked. They did not prod at him about his night, but they clearly celebrated it, bringing out the fine vintage and ordering a veritable feast to be prepared for their conquering hero. When the trio couldn’t finish it, the cousins let their servants sample what was left, until every bottle was empty and every plate was cleaned. At this point, the impromptu feast had well and truly become a party, but the eunuch would not partake in it. He was tired, and still haunted by memories of the cold as he curled up in his bed and drifted to sleep.
Eventually, the eunuch was comfortable not just in his own skin, but when clad in nothing but his own skin, and his cousins, obligated by social customs and familial bonds, brought the eunuch back to the estate of his parents. It was worse than it had been when he lived with his cousins, being back beneath the worried stares of his brother and separated from those who had done so much to help him, but he quickly found himself new companions. The singers he had once thought would scorn him were happy to see him emerge from his chambers, and soon he would begin to sing alongside them, spending his days rehearsing and his nights upon the stage. Most surprising was the reaction of the younger women who staffed much of the estate, many of whom were intrigued by his beauty and hardly dissuaded by the sorry state of his manhood. They would poke and prod at each other, until a sufficiently goaded servant was convinced to arrange a rendezvous with the eunuch. She would wait outside his room, and ask her to meet him in the estate’s least popular bathhouse, for what she assured him was an urgent matter. She stammered and stuttered just as the young musician had, but eunuch, unaware that a woman would desire him, took no notice of this. Neither of the two were particularly prepared for what the encounter would entail, and without thinking, the servant spoke.
“Can I see you?”
The eunuch almost laughed, taken aback by the absurdity of the request. The servant, for her part, was mortified about how badly she had fumbled their introduction. As she tried to right her mistake, her words became even more muddled, and her next attempt was even less coherent. Words were indeed leaving her mouth, but not only where they were ill-suited to the current situation, they were also in the wrong order. Desperate, the servant began to disrobe, and the eunuch was taken aback, having completely lost the plot at this point. Her movements were frantic and clumsy, and it was not long until she had slipped and fallen into the water. Worried for her safety, the eunuch quickly followed, and it was not long until they were both naked in the warm water, as the eunuch held onto the servant to ensure her head was above the water. Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around him as well, leant into him, and kissed him as they embraced. The sensation of her flesh against his had already robbed the eunuch of coherent thought, and the kiss had only intensified everything he was feeling. Confusion, lust, and horror all jostled for space in his head, and in his stupor he failed to react to the sudden weight of the serving girl pressing down upon him, sending them both careening into the water for a second time. After a period of panicked splashing, they righted themselves, and the servant began to speak in earnest, her apprehension having long since been overcome.
“My lord, take me as your own.”
“But I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can't?”
The eunuch blushed and stammered, not really knowing how to inform her of the obvious answer to her question.
“You have seen my body, you’ve even felt it. I am bereft. Seedless.”
“There’s no need to play the part of the chaste eunuch with me my lord. This is a private place, where you and I can do many private things.”
The eunuch was now exasperated, but felt a flutter in his chest as the serving girl spoke. It was flattering to have someone, a woman no less, flirting with him so directly. It was a shame that he would have to let her down so bluntly, but it was a choice that the knife had made for him.
“I’m hardly playing a part, my testicles have been cut off. I can’t bed you, or any other woman for that matter. I am sorry to disappoint you, you seem lovely, but I can not in good conscience lead you along a path which would yield you no fruit.”
She smiled coyly.
“My lord, do you not still have a tongue?”
The meaning of this comment was lost on the eunuch. The next half hour of conversation would reveal the full scope of the eunuch’s ignorance, and the serving girl grew far too frustrated to handle him on her own. She would lead him by the hand to the servants quarters, both of them still naked and sopping as they wandered the halls of the estate.
At once, the other servants began to fawn over the eunuch, examining every inch of his flesh and twirling his hair in their fingers. The eunuch was a stammering mess, both paralyzed and enthralled. Horrified, he realized that what was left of his manhood began to twitch and leak a clear substance, and prayed that nobody would take notice. Naturally, the servants did indeed take notice, pinching and stroking that most tender piece of flesh until the eunuch let out a chorus of little moans. The serving girl, having become possessive of her prize, put an end to the servant’s “inquiries”, and explained why she had brought the eunuch before them.
Over the next couple of days, the eunuch was taught more about sex than he thought he would have learnt in a lifetime. In particular, the servant girls taught him all the various ways one with no cock could pleasure a woman, often providing visual demonstrations of the methods they described, taking great pleasure in how flustered the eunuch became during these lessons. When the time came for him to demonstrate what he had learnt, they worked him like a race horse.
(This section is currently unfinished. Hetrosexual sex will be added later.)
After this grand display of aptitude, the eunuch would spend a lot of time being passed around the various beds and barracks of the estate, often finding himself scooped up and carried off by some of the more physically adept servants. For his part, he enjoyed the attention and the sex, but would eventually confess to the serving girl that it felt hollow. People, it seemed flocked to him only because he was pretty and easily available, and he noted with tears in his eyes that many of those he had slept with didn’t even seem to know his name. He did not expect the solution to his plight to be so simple.
He would once again visit the various beds and barracks of the estate, but this time in the daylight, when the servants took their breaks and suppers. Though he was nervous, he soon found himself among friends, clever and thoughtful women who laughed at his jokes and listened to his stories. Soon, they began to call for him, not only for sex, but simply to talk and enjoy his company. Indeed, the serving girl had become one of his most treasured companions in the whole world, and they would hold each other's hands in the night as they shared their sorrows and wept in tandem.
Between the singers and the servants, the eunuch had long since moved past his days of isolation, and having long since proven himself beneath the notice of his parents, he would let his newfound friendships carry him through life. The singers introduced him to other types of artist, and the servants would often introduce him to their friends and brothers, letting him lay down roots outside the walls that had once dominated his life. He would spend evenings in the cafes of the city, speaking with various philosophers and dilettantes about the nature of the world and of mankind’s place in it. He would spend morning and night alike in the woods and lakes, having friends teach him the various tricks and techniques that could enable a man to live in relative comfort amid the wilds and brambles. He proved adept at fishing, fire lighting, and foraging, and could turn almost any environs into a suitable campsite. He also possessed a remarkable talent for luring men to these campsites, and likewise possessed a truly prodigal ability for compelling those men to fuck him silly beneath the stars.
Still, a man who spends his days naked save for a pair of sandals would often find himself poorly suited to the wilderness. Having earned wages as a singer and actor, the eunuch had the funds to rent himself an apartment, and could often get away with living in the city for days at a time. He was ever mindful of what his parents might think if some spy of theirs spotted him slinking around the city without their knowledge, and worried about the various punishments that their paranoid minds might conjure. However, this was not enough to dissuade the eunuch from deciding to throw a party with his friends on one faithful day.
He did not know it, but it had not been carelessness or passivity that had blinded his parents to the eunuch’s actions. Noble houses have obligations, in both blood and blood. The sons who they had promised to other houses were dead, the sons that should have been sent to win battles and glory for the empire were now dead, the sons who should have been educated in the capital so that they might solidify the bond between the house and the priesthoods were now dead. A single night had revealed both the weakness of their house, and alienated them from all but their most loyal allies, and one’s most loyal friends are rarely their strongest friends. Under normal circumstances, perhaps they would have eventually taken the eunuch aside, threatened him into remaining within the estate, and then have him punished harshly for his transgressions, which would have been a stain upon the reputation of the house. But in these circumstances, with their spies overstretched and their reputation already in shambles, it not only wasn’t worth it, such an act would be counterproductive. Instead of warding away future scandal, they would give their enemies a story about how even the familial eunuch was openly flouting the authority of his dying house. Indeed, even acknowledging that they had castrated one of their sons made the house look fraudulent in the wake of losing almost all of their children. Furthermore, they were aware enough of his actions to realize that he was not involved in any plot or schemes, and frankly, this would almost certainly cease to be the case if they gave the eunuch even the slightest motivation to work against them. It also helped that the eunuch was either having affairs with, or a good friend of many of the servants within the estate, sometimes both at the same time. Many of these servants had double lives as informants, and could feed the eunuch’s parents honeyed words about his goings ons in the rare instances they asked about him.
They obviously could have had the eunuch killed, which would have resolved the entire issue then and there. However, such a blatant act of fratricide so soon after the loss of one third of the family to not just infighting, but their own chosen heir going mad and killing both almost all of his brothers and himself, would invoke the ire of many. In particular, such a breaking of norms might prompt the Emperor to act against them outright, using their incompetence as justification for stripping a once powerful house of its possessions so he could go about redistributing them to his allies. He was likely already trying to find an excuse to do this, just one of the vultures circling around a sickly and dying thing, waiting to make a charnel feast of the strongest thing the eunuch had ever known.
The eunuch willfully ignorant to all this, instead working at something much more important to him. He invited the various singers and actors that he had worked with to a party, which was to celebrate the day furthest away on the calendar from his birth. He also invited many of his good friends, and a few local notables, and guests were allowed to bring guests of their own. For three days, the festivities raged, wine flowed freely and people of all sorts danced with carefree abandon. The landlady, furious with the noise, attempted to put a stop to this pandemonium, only to be seduced by a young athlete from Milos and join the partygoers herself. The eunuch would play a starring role in all this, posing as a model for a famous sculptor, who wanted to use the exquisite lad as a reference for a sculpture of some minor god. By the second day, overwhelmed with lust, the sculptor instead propositioned the eunuch, who eagerly agreed to his advances. The crowd cheered them on as they fucked, enraptured by the spectacle of the two lads losing themselves in eachother’s supple flesh. By the end of the third day, all his guests, save for the sculptor, had gone home, and the exhausted lovers would spend the rest of the evening staring into each other's eyes and smiling.
He did not know at the time, but in organizing this gathering, the eunuch had narrowly cheated death. For on the second day of the party, when the eunuch was too busy playing the part of a whore to care much about what was happening in the wider world, his family’s estate had been razed to the ground. An alliance of opportunists, jilted allies, and sellswords had taken advantage of his family's weakness, hiring agents to infiltrate the estates staff and open the gates during the dead of night. As soon as the gate swung open, waiting bands of cutthroats and brigands poured into the estate, burning and slaughtering all that they encountered. His father and mother both were butchered, having their heads hacked off and mounted onto pikes, and rumour has it that the sixth son was cleaved in half by a giant barbarian who wore nothing but leather breeches and buckskin shoes. The eunuch, a man who had been rendered sterile and impotent by his parents in order to save their family, was now its last surviving member.
The eunuch was horrified, for he had befriended many of the servants and functionaries who lived within the estate, and all of them had almost certainly perished. He also took no satisfaction in the death of the sixth son who had been little more than a terrified youth when the eunuch had been castrated and ostracized. However, he took a strange contentment in the death of his parents, and the extinction of his house. They had done more than anyone else to ruin his life, ordering him mutilated and abandoning him to starve when he didn’t thank them for it. They had made him a eunuch in some foolish attempt to save their house, and now it was his status as a eunuch that ensured that house’s extinction. Furthermore, his eldest brother, the only one of his kin who had ever truly loved him, would have taken great satisfaction in the events of that night, for it was him who had set them into motion.
An unfortunate consequence of the estate’s destruction was that the eunuch would be forced to leave the town he had grown to call home behind, for his own safety. There had doubtlessly been many conspirators in the plot that brought down the house of Komnenos, and all it would take was for one of them to decide that even a castrated scion of the house was too dangerous to be left alive, and the eunuch would soon be snuffed out by some hidden blade or wicked poison. The sculptor would paint the eunuch white and pass him off as a statue, allowing him to leave undetected, and at least for the meantime, slip out of the annals of history.
He would settle in a small village far away from the ruined estate, where nobody knew him and his accent was an exotic dialect. The sculptor would say his farewells, though he occasionally visited the eunuch when he passed through the region, using him as a model for his statues and continuing their affair. The eunuch would find employment at various local shrines, his river song voice singing about local gremlins and powerful gods alike. For two years, he lived according to this routine, breaking his isolation only once, when he mailed a letter to let his cousins know that he was still alive. Eventually, he would befriend a local hermit, a druid who had once been of some renown before his faith was censured and his eyes grew white. The eunuch would bring the druid his groceries, and sing for the blind man, at first in exchange for various draughts and remedies, and eventually simply to spend time with a friend. The eunuch would learn the secrets of various roots and mushrooms in this time, and soon he could fashion them into various useful reagents and trinkets.
Most notably, he could refine various plants into paints which he used on his face, shadowing his eyes and perking his lashes. Most notably, he had found a way to paint his lips green, and those who he associated with often bore green marks upon their face and clothing. The eunuch would also take the time to paint the faces of the local children whenever they were engaged in some sporting competition with the children of nearby villages, giving the village children the visages of dread beasts as they tore across the field and defeated their crying adversaries.
Life was simple, at least before the dreams started.