The Great Conquest

PART ONE

~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~

Some consider it a travesty, of course. The fate of the human races pinned in stasis, demons and demiurges sat at a pinnacle never intended for their ilk, that sort of thing. True as far as it goes, but not my concern. In fact, I think there's a beauty in it. The closest to a closed causality the Center of Everything and its hundreds of Attendant Universes has ever known, the center raised above the edges, terrifying cliffs only scalable by those who can adapt to the new reality, order imposed on every world, for ever… beauty in stasis, that's more in line with my thinking. It's worked out for me personally, at least in comparison with the previous thousand years of my existence. For all the irreplaceable cultural treasures lost to pillage, some things deserved to be overturned.

And anyway, it is what it is. I've got no power other than to record my observations of the Conquest from my cage - if not a gilded one, at least one with thorns less sharp than they might be.

An observation: Oenone Able, a simple albeit winsome farm girl in the backwater of some, if you'll pardon the Earth-icism, Lord of the Rings-ass human kingdom menaced by a neighboring nation of orcs, ogres, and hobgoblins. Status quo: an uneasy peace with the occasional border raid. Then the Great Conquest found its way all the way out to this unimportant orc boondocks. The price of certain local fruits, lumbers, ores and such - and that of winsome farm girls - soared to an all-time high. Other markets were glutted. Nutritious food was readily available and onetime farmers were pushed off their land. Enchanted weapons, primitive trash to those of the Center but the peak of modern spellcraft in Oenone's world, became easy to acquire.

So soon enough, one daring band of raiders, led by the intrepid heroine Gol Ga, crosses into the kingdom by cover of night and pillages the agrarian towns of the land's soft underbelly. One morning, at the Able farm on the outskirts of Tabby Junction, Oenone goes out to feed the pigs and stumbles across a pair of hobgoblins carrying one of them off.

They drop the pig and they're on her in seconds, stuffing a wad of cloth between her teeth that tastes of sweat - it's the hob's spare undershirt. They wrench her arms behind her back and bind them together, with a loop of rope passing around the front of her neck to keep her from moving her arms under her to her front. Then one of them slings her over his shoulder and they bolt back into the hills.

The hobgoblins are strong and stocky, about five feet tall. They have huge manes of wiry black hair and beards, a wide mouth full of sharp teeth, big ears, leathery skin, beady black eyes, and big clawed paws instead of feet. They go shirtless though with some leather straps for carrying javelins on their hairy backs. They manage quite a speed even with their struggling captive.

They move their camp in the hills every few days, inching farther and farther into the kingdom's heartland, so it's all a temporary affair. The party is thirty raiders strong, with a further thirty auxiliaries guarding and working in the camp. The guards cheer when they see what the hobs have brought back.

They march cheerfully to the center of the camp and the hobgoblin shrugs Oenone off to stand before Gol Ga. She's the band's strongest fighter, but remains at the camp anyway to coordinate, evaluate, and appraise. She's on the smaller side for an ogre, but that still puts her at seven feet tall, powerfully built in a wiry way. Her pale skin is shielded from the sun by a straw hat with a wide cone shape and robes of clean white canvas. Though cloth masks her lower face, her cruel eyes are expressive enough. White hair billows from beneath her hat.

She appraises Oenone only briefly, reaching out one bony claw to cradle the girl's trembling face and pull apart her lips for a glance at her teeth. Oenone is fairly attractive, with wavy ash-blonde hair. Her breasts are small but well-formed, and her hips are plenty inviting. At a gesture from Gol Ga, the hobgoblin who brought her here holds the rope around her neck, keeping her in place while the other cuts her rough cloth housedress from her frame, leaving her in only a breechcloth, knee-high stockings, and boots. She finally manages to spit out the hob's undershirt from where it was crammed in her mouth, but only whimpers follow.

Gol Ga names a figure, an estimate of the girl's worth, which her adjutant jots down. She removes a long needle from a brazier that sits outside Gol Ga's tent, allowing it to cool before advancing on Oenone. The hobgoblin behind her holds the rope around her neck, keeping her in place as Gol Ga runs a piercing through the girl's left nipple and hangs a small metal ident tag there. Oenone screams bloody murder, which only prompts Gol Ga to bitch-slap her and shove her to her knees.

"Get her out of my sight," the ogre growls. Nodding fervently, the hobgoblins pull her uphill to the holding pen, one of them dashing back to grab his sodden shirt.

A trio of orcish support staff take her off the hobs' hands and rework her bondage, tightening a leather collar around her neck and attaching her bound arms to that instead of having the rope around her neck. She protests too much and they stick a roll of leather between her teeth, tying a cloth around her head to hold it in. They take her loincloth too, since she doesn't have her hands free to remove it when she has to piss, and then dump her into an eight-foot-deep pit in the dirt with a wicker cage laid across the top.

A half dozen others like her stare at her wide-eyed. They're not gagged, but one of the attendants is always keeping watch. If they try talking to each other he's likely to throw something at them, or piss on them, and the smell in the pit is foul enough without any more orc piss. One girl has red marks across her tits, belly, and thighs - a repeat offender, the attendant pulled her out and took his belt to her.

Each night the raiders return and, though in hostile territory, find time to blow off some steam with their captives. A few filthy sleeping pads set up by the pen, well within the watchful eye of the three attendants, serve as the raiders' brothel. Those women found with an intact hymen, by local custom, are left untouched, as are those on their period.

Oenone isn't one of these, and the pair of hobgoblins returns the first night. They take her gag out and give her food and water, first. Then one of them takes her blonde curls in hand and forces her mouth onto his cock. Inexperienced and in distress, Oenone bites him without exactly meaning to.

The hob roars with anger as his companion, laughing, kicks Oenone in the ribs. She crumples, her arms behind her back and unable to keep her from hitting her temple - luckily on the sleeping pad rather than the packed earth.

The laughing hob pulls down his own trousers and grabs Oenone's collar, yanking her to her feet. He sits on the pad and pulls her onto his lap, facing him. The offended raider, still growling, gets behind her. He straddles the other's legs and wraps his arms around Oenone from behind, one around her belly and one around her neck. She trembles at his ragged breath in her ear.

With the help of some rendered pig fat from their dinner - no one's first choice of lube, but then they are on campaign - their cocks slide into Oenone's pussy and asshole. She's real stiff, so the hob she bit places his teeth on her earlobe. She gasps and freezes at first, but as he gnaws at her she starts to squirm. He and his comrade start thrusting into her. Soon his arm tightens around her neck and he sinks his teeth into her shoulder, just shy of breaking skin. She starts screaming, but his arm gets even tighter and chokes her off. His other hand goes to her clit and the panicked jerking all that draws out of her gets the two hobs off. They take a few minutes to luxuriate before dumping her off them and into the dirt, cum spilling out of her holes.

A gang of orcs, who started watching when the hob jumped up and yelled about his dick getting bitten off, take over. They take it in turns to fuck her one at a time, all five of them. They're mostly businesslike about it, though one of them does force her to make eye contact and tugs on her nipple ring whenever she breaks it.

The orcs dump her back in the pit, covered in cum that clings to her and immediately mixes with dirt. Hair tangled, sobbing, she's a pathetic sight even before the last of the orcs pisses on her through the grate.

As the night gets cold the attendants pull a thick blanket over the grating atop the pit, though they leave a hole to watch through with a lantern hung over it. One of them is always on duty.

Days in the pit are uncomfortable and uneventful except when new captives arrive, but at least Oenone usually only gets fucked once or twice a night after that first time. Every few days the camp gets picked up and loaded onto the draft dogs and they move farther into the kingdom, sticking to the hills. On those days, the girls have their collars linked one to another in a line with sturdy ropes, with the frontmost girl tethered to one of the dogs. Those who don't keep up the pace are encouraged by the riding crops of the attendant staff.

They do usually find some creek or river to wash in on walking days. Once the raiders have washed themselves and the staff have moved on to cleaning all the spare clothes, there are plenty of volunteers to help the girls scrub off the filth they're forced to live in. They can't do it with their hands bound, after all. Oenone has the assistance of the pair of hobs that brought her in, who make sure to wash every inch of her supple skin.

By the time Oenone has been with the raiders for two weeks, the party has been on the kingdom's soil for three and have nearly forty captives. They dig a larger pit to keep the girls in each time they make camp.

One morning on a day they're on the move, one of the hobgoblin scouts runs back to the raiding party to report an advancing army, outnumbering their sixty tenfold. Gol Ga doesn't bat an eyelid; this is the inevitable end to any raid. She gives the order and the whole caravan about-faces. They can easily outrun so large a force of humans.

"But can you do it while dragging us with you…" mutters Oenone, in a rebellious mood, and a few of the women try to dig in their heels and resist. In short order Oenone is dragged out of her position toward the middle of the line by the attendant staff. They tether another draft dog to the head of the line, and a pair of dogs to the girl who was behind Oenone, and then it turns out they can pretty well keep up the pace while dragging the girls behind them if need be.

Protesting Oenone, for her trouble, is lashed across the furry back of one of the dogs pulling the second line of captives, behind the packs and bundles the dog is already carrying. She's laid face down, boots and stockings finally lost and feet roped to her bound forearms in a loose hogtie. The orcs find time to pass a thin rope of rough canvas between her legs, tying one end to the back of her collar and passing the other end through the ring at the front of the collar. Only then do they pass a cargo rope behind her legs, between them and the rope of the hogtie; they pull it against the inside of her knees, pass it under the belly of the dog, and tie the ends to the front of her collar so she's held tight against the dog's flank. A few cords hold her by the left leg and left arm to the harness that holds the dog's freight, keeping her from falling off backward. The kicker is that the cloth rope gets tied to the cargo rope quite a bit tighter than the cargo rope is tied to the collar, so as she bounces up and down against the dog's hot flesh the cord is drawn back and forth between her legs and tightens against her sensitive parts.

The whole rebellion has cost Gol Ga all of two minutes in the face of the advancing army. Assured of their lead, they march on at an even faster pace. The draft dog's driver, unamused at having been roped in with the captives, takes out his frustration with occasional slaps of his riding crop against Oenone's defenseless ass, feet, and the sides of her right thigh and breast. Not her finest hour.

They've been getting away scot free for twenty minutes when they run into a fallen tree in a valley that was unobstructed when they passed through it less than an hour ago. Suddenly, a bolt of fire shoots from up the slope and incinerates an orc wholesale. The party snaps to, looking for the threat, when a precisely-aimed rain of tiny firebursts burns away the ropes leashing the captive girls to the dog Oenone is on and to each other. Suddenly it's chaos, as a dozen and a half prisoners are on the loose. With their arms still bound, most are caught immediately, but the orcs are distracted and a few manage to break through their ranks.

"Gol Ga!" cries a woman standing on the hill opposite where the fire came from. "I challenge you to single combat!"

"Your terms?" calls Gol Ga.

"My associate will hold his fire and your troops hold while we fight. If I win, you release your slaves or I kill you and he starts shooting. If you win, he leaves you be, and you do with me what you will. Otherwise we continue picking off your men one by one."

"Agreed. Stand and fight!" Gol Ga yells, casting away her cloak and hat. Beneath she wears a loincloth and little else, that being a tradition for champions in these parts. Her skin is so pale white it's nearly see-through, despite being thick and strong enough to turn any but the sharpest knife. She hefts her poleaxe and springs toward the hero on the rise.

The hero is Twil Tuo, a wayward sickle knight, and she defends herself admirably with the weapon her order is named for, against the hulking Gol Ga. She's not quite as traditionally outfitted as the ogre, with armor covering her chest and belly; her arms and legs are bare but for strapped-on sandals and gloves, and her shock of red hair is quite distinctive. She stands barely more than five feet high, her physique powerful yet still stunningly feminine. Gol Ga puts a high price estimate on her and resolves to get paid.

Twil actually delays things to the point the human army's outriders catch up, and though her raiders kill all who stand against them, another rain of fire frees the rest of the girls; with the raiders and even most of the support column fighting off horsemen the girls all escape - except poor Oenone, bound to a dog like baggage.

Twil Tuo manages to trip up Gol Ga, only to be grabbed from behind by a pair of beefy orcs with armor enchanted to the hilt. The humans did break the terms of the dual when the fire mage attacked again, after all. Gol Ga is spitting mad, but at least she has someone on whom to work out her frustration at losing the others.

Gol Ga leans in and tears the heroine's armor from her with her bare hands and her razor-sharp claws. She bares her breasts and crotch, leaving tattered remains hanging at her waist. A snap of her fingers and her adjutant wrestles a collar on Twil and, with the help of the armored orcs, binds her arms to it, trapping her like any other slave.

The three orcs work together and bind each of Twil's ankles to her thighs, leaving plenty of loose rope to work with. They force a leather bit into Twil's mouth, securing it with straps over her nose and head and behind it, then gather her hair into a burlap hood they pull down to her collar. Gol Ga, meanwhile, is putting on a heavy leather harness from her personal belongings. It binds securely around her chest, torso, and thighs. To put it on, she removes her loincloth, revealing her enormous cock, which she strokes a few times until it's firm.

With the setup complete, Gol Ga stands straight and solid as the armored orcs pick up Twil and hold her against Gol Ga, the heroine's back to the ogre's front. The adjutant works quickly to rope together Gol Ga's harness with Twil's collar, the ropes around her arms, and those around her legs. Gol Ga reaches down to position her cock, and then nods at the guards, who release their hold.

Twil gasps with pain as Gol Ga's cock pokes at her asshole, barely avoiding sliding down any further by tensing her muscles against the ropes and bracing against the curve of Gol Ga's belly. With her prize secured safely against her belly, Gol Ga shrugs her cloak over the whole affair.

Within minutes, Twil's muscles weaken and she falls onto the ogre's cock, gasping with pain. Gol Ga grins and reaches into her cloak to give the girl's nipple a tweak. The spasm grants her a thrill of pleasure.

Perhaps the fire mage would have kept Twil from Gol Ga's hands if he'd not been nabbed himself just after his injudicious attack. The orcs mostly disarm and disable the men they overcome, or kill them if it comes to it of course, only going to the trouble of transporting fuckable women. A male elf, however, is practically as good as a human woman, and his talent for magic will drive his price up as well. Treesha Shroudleaf is a glowering young thing with locks of white-green hair hanging over his face, tall but willowy and soft without a hint of muscle in his arms or chest, and of course the big pointy ears, delicate and sensitive. He even has puffy nipples.

So Treesha gets fitted with one of the silversmithed chastity cages the raiding party is supplied with - actually quite a practical solution for taking magic-wielding prisoners, as through arcane and unimportant mechanics they prevent the channeling of magical energy. He doesn't struggle, cool in the face of defeat, as they strip him to his toeless thigh-highs and fit his undersize tackle with the cage - though he does flinch when the slender silver rod slides an inch up his urethra. The cage's cap is held very nearly flush against Treesha's body by the gut-coated silver wire locked around his scrotum. Suffice to say he'll have to beg every time he needs to piss, but it means they won't have to worry about him torching any of them - good deal, from the orcs' point of view.

The elf gets trussed up much the same as Oenone, down to the canvas rope between his legs, and lashed to another of the dogs.

With a mere three captives rather than three dozen and a few raiders down, Gol Ga retains all the rest of her loot and a good lead on the human forces. She knows when to cut her losses, and having taken only a minute or two to secure their new prizes, her troops make for the border, double-time, the three prisoners bouncing miserably with the gait of their captors.

~ 4 ~ 5 ~

It's only the next spring before the raids spill into a full-scale invasion of the human kingdom. The orcs loot what they can and burn enough of what they can't that the humans won't be swinging back anytime soon. And so Oneone Able is followed over the Trollbridge by a whole stream of farm girls - and more exotic fare as well.

The Glade of Tomberlin, in the woods at the kingdom's borders, has long been home to this world's only permanent settlement of deergirls and deertaurs. Forthlin Aer runs a kitchen there. She's a slender deergirl with short antlers growing from her forehead and big fuzzy ears, freckles dusting the skin of her face and shoulders, long straight brown hair, and a fuzzy tail.

Gol Ga, now on a real campaign with a quarter of a legion under her command, sees gold in the exotic deergirls. She surrounds the Glade and her men sweep in to take the entire population prisoner, two and four legs alike, more than three hundred in all.

They've got much better supply lines and support on this campaign than on their raid months ago, and Forthlin Aer's processing is more systematic than Oenone's was. Forthlin is stripped of her simple woven clothes and has a stock locked around her neck and wrists, a light but sturdy board with three holes in a straight line. It's stamped with the same number that gets tagged on her nipple piercing. Then a scribe jots down an entry on her in a ledger, and a thin but sturdy chain links her to the girl in front of her in a long line of her neighbors.

It's a long, slow march out of the forest with so many prisoners, but a few weeks later they reach the trunk of the invasion at the occupied city of Gatling, the closest human city to the border. At its edge, endless rows of pens, built of palisades driven into the ground and lashed together, hold those captives bound for the orc lands, each of their wrists and necks sealed in those standardized stocks.

Even Princess Fivette, the eldest daughter of the king, is fitted with an identical restraint. The wagon train transporting her from the capital arrives in Gatling about the same time as Gol Ga and Forthlin. The open-sided wagons are full of the cream of the crop, the most beautiful noblewomen of the capital, picked out by the orcs and sat on hard, narrow benches for the many miles' journey. Fivette herself is a sharp-tempered brat and tends to launch into angry tirades cut short only by rebukes from the guards. Her curtain of black hair falls elegantly across her bare breasts as she finally steps out of the wagon and into one of the dirty pens. She's nude but for a chastity belt of hardened leather, identical to those fitted to any captive the orcs determine to be a virgin.

Advance agents of various mercantile entities pace up and down the row of pens each day, making notes of lot numbers. They buy up penfulls at a time, taking them off the orcs' hands at once in exchange for a discount. The deergirls, naturally, get plenty of attention from these agents, and the bidding is steep.

Forthlin and the other girls in her pen are purchased by the Musashi Company of the grey dwarves. Many of the other deergirls are bought by Musashi, as well as by the contingent of the drow priestesshood who contract with the same company for security. Forthlin spends only a day in the cramped pen before being taken to a staging ground for a Musashi caravan. The dwarves' great carts of wood and iron are pulled by towering living armor of the same. Forthlin is packed into a cart whose wheels are taller than she is.

An even taller construct with eight legs and fire spilling from its eyes is more than enough protection from any bandits between here and the mountains to the south. The deep halls of the dwarves and the drow border the orc and human lands both. The caravan departs the next morning.

Of course, the plump princess Fivette is an even hotter commodity. The orcs will accept no bids on her until she's auctioned in their own capital city. Her noble peers, on the other hand, get bought up nearly as fast as the deergirls and many join Forthlin on the journey south.

~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 6

Far across the Trollbridge is the capital of the orc nation, Scrimshaw. Its name comes from the legions of scribes that work the halls of state and business, etching figures into sheaves of treated bone. Twil and Treesha are brought there the same day as Forthlin and Fivette reach Gatling. Travel is slow after the first snow, so they've spent the winter in an orcish border town. Though they're Gol Ga's personal pillage, she rented them out to a military brothel before leaving on her new campaign and selling them to Dael, one of the big names in the orcs' flesh trade. Now they bear his company's brand on one shoulder blade in place of the nipple tags they wore all winter. They've walked the Troll Road for a month in a long line of other prisoners to reach the gates of Scrimshaw.

Dael's auction house on the main street of the trade district is a rambling affair, not as polished as some of the other houses but with plenty of space to move a high volume of product through. Twil and Treesha spend only one night in the stinking pens of its basement.

The morning after their arrival in town, before sunrise, the Dael's staff empty the pen one by one. Twil is close to the door, so they grab her first, snapping a leash onto the wooden stock around her neck and tugging her upstairs to a stone-tiled bathroom. They stand her in a basin and a harried orc scrubs the dirt from her skin as a dozen others around her receive the same treatment. A hobgoblin stands guard while the orc unlocks the stock and takes it off her. She rubs her chafed wrists as the orc finishes washing her and combs out her tangled hair.

Ten minutes after her leaving the pen the orc pronounces her ready for sale. When the hobgoblin standing behind her moves to close a slender leather collar around her neck, she ducks it and knees him in the balls. Not a smart move, but her arms are free for the first time since Gol Ga sold her, and she has a lot of anger to vent. More guards close on her in an instant, grabbing her nicely combed out red hair and forcing her to her knees, banging her shin against the edge of the water basin; they wrench her arms in front of her and cuff her wrists, then a massive orc hauls up on the chain that links the cuffs and she's hanging with her feet off the ground, no room to kick at any of them either. She doesn't understand most of what they're saying, but threats are hard to mistake.

They put the collar on her and the big orc walks her down to the square outside. A grid of sturdy posts supports a cloth canopy that shades a broad area in front of the auction house; many of them are already occupied by other girls even as the sun is just rising. The orc locks the chain between her wrist cuffs to an anchor at the top of one of the posts, leaving her standing in front of it with her hands over her head like all the others. The orc locks a heavy chain around her ankles and passes it behind the post as well, with enough play to it that she can stand up but no more. Only a few girls put up enough of a fight to be subjected to that measure.

As Treesha is brought outside, newly clean and shivering in the morning air, the bookkeepers come around to Twil. They check her brand number against her ledger entry and assign her a starting bid, writing that alongside her number on a bone plaque and hanging it from her collar. The sales will be handled by a silent auction that will run all day - unless there's more than one bid on a girl in the last fifteen minutes before sunset, in which case she'll be sold in the live auction that takes place at midnight each night. Until then, they're all on display here.

When the sun has risen fully, the market opens for business and the customers begin to trickle in. Most are orcs and hobgoblins, with a few ogres and goblins in the mix. Many are window shoppers only - Dael's doesn't allow "free samples" like some of the less prestigious brands, but for some the chance just to feel the girls up is enough to draw them in. Then there are the drow and grey dwarf agents, the same sort as out in Gatling. And a number of visitors are human - personal slaves accompanying their owners on a shopping trip, or those trusted enough to give their owners a report on the most desirable wares.

Most of these latter sorts are garbed in simple but scanty clothing that makes their status clear even without a closer look at collars, brands, tattoos or piercings. One of these takes a particular interest in Twil, a willowy blonde in a loincloth and mantle of fine white cloth and fitted with a golden collar. She walks around where the onetime knight is bound, appreciating her from various angles, before getting a more hands-on look. She feels the heft of Twil's breasts, bouncing them in her fingers a few times, and assesses the redhead's reaction to a thorough grope at her ass. Not put off by the growl of rage that provokes, she strokes Twil's hair a few times and even manages a look at her teeth without getting bitten. She writes Twil's number down and moves on.

The parade of spectators continues through the day, and Twil, nerves worn down, eventually does bite someone. The Dael's staff strap a ball of hard black rubber between her teeth, and bids on Twil slow after that. Still, there's enough interest that she'll be at the live auction later.

Treesha generates plenty of interest herself: her magical potential is noted on the plaque at her collar, and besides, one stroke of her big sensitive elf ears and her superior sulk dissolves into knee-knocking desperation. Understandable, perhaps, when that silver chastity cage has been locked on her for months, but pathetically adorable enough that her price is driven twice Twil's even before the live bidding begins.

When the sun hits the horizon, the floor closes and the Dael's clerks are occupied with a flurry of bookkeeping. The winner of each slave is determined, identified, and summoned to the counter, and payment is demanded and recorded, and then they wait in a small but well-appointed antechamber while the clerk fetches their property. Even with four such counters working in tandem, moving from the largest lots going to one buyer down to individual purchases, the process takes chaotic hours.

Meanwhile, other staff, armed with a list of numbers slated for the live auction, lead this hot merchandise one by one back into the auction house to be prettied up. Treesha's one of the first they take down from her post, though rather than removing the sturdy leather wrist cuffs, they re-link the chain behind her back. A sturdy hobgoblin guard hurries her into the stone-tiled bathroom. It was crowded this morning with a dozen slaves and half again as many staff. Now there's only six staff working assembly-line style and six standing guard or fetching product as needed.

Treesha begs the first worker to let her piss, not having been allowed since shortly after midday. He takes her into a closet with a slick wooden grating for a floor and an acrid scent hanging in the air. The orcs dump both greywater from the baths and blackwater from the chamber pots in here, to be flushed out to the river by the city's aqueducts. The spindly orc unlocks and removes the short silver rod from Treesha's urethra. She can barely hold her bladder long enough to keep from pissing on his hand, turning and aiming through one of the large holes in the grating. The orc puts a hand on her shoulder and leans around to watch - if she were to store magic power in some object secreted on her person, she could theoretically build up enough to start slinging fire around… eventually. So she's always to be closely monitored while the grounding rod is out of place, which is also why staff couldn't find the time to take care of it earlier. The orc is impatient and his replacement of the rod is quick and rough.

Back in the main bathroom and hurrying to catch up, the spindly orc brushes out Treesha's hair, pale green and grown to shoulder length by now, and then dumps a bucketful of water on her. He goes to fill it again while the next orc in line lathers her skin and hair with soaps. The next scrubs her off anew and gives her hair a trim with a pair of shears, and the next applies an oil to her skin that has it shining in the torchlight. The last two paint her face and nails with makeup, adding a touch of rouge to her nipples as a finishing touch. "Rub that face off and you're in for a beating," is their send-off as a guard leads her downstairs to the backstage.

The house's patrons begin filtering into the house's central chamber when the doors open an hour in advance, slaves or retainers holding seats for their lieges, then the small time buyers. The riffraff is kept out with a modest entry fee, counted toward the cost of any slave bought throughout the day. Finally the truly wealthy trickle trickle in last-minute, and the hour of midnight arrives.

The auction chamber is built of hard mountain wood trimmed with heavy carpets of woven papermoss, grown in the caverns of the south. It spans two stories in height, the ceiling painted with geometric mosaics and hung with iron chandeliers suspended from heavy chains. There are several rows of comfortable chairs arranged at the front of the room; those who arrived later content themselves with the wooden pews behind, rising slightly with each row to afford each patron a view. The semi-circular stage rises comfortably to eye height for an orc sitting in one of the chairs on the floor. It's inclined more for the high-heel effect on the slaves displayed there than for visibility, being only large enough for a few people to stand on at once. It's ringed with hanging braziers, and behind it is a wide door to the backstage hung with white curtains.

Where the auction chamber is built to impress, the backstage is pure function, low lights, cheap materials, a few shelves of equipment, and enough space for the thirty or so girls going on auction. They're lined up with their backs to the wall, each having gotten the same treatment as Treesha, wrist cuffs locked to a long metal bar set into the wall. Some squat down to rest their legs, but the height of the bar doesn't really permit them to sit comfortably.

Twil was one of the last to be brought here, having waited on the emptying market floor for the staff to reach her number on their lists. It's not long before a loud gong marks midnight and the start of the auction, prefaced by the several-minute-long dance of two human girls in lingerie replete with kissing and heavy petting. Dael himself scores the performance with a rapid and rambling monologue thanking the audience for their patronage and touting the virtues of his wares.

Meanwhile, a pair of guards retrieve the first lot from her place on the wall and stand her before the curtain. When the proprietor's patter reaches a height, they push her through and the audience goes nuts.

Twil watches with dread as girl after girl is pulled to the hungry mouth and its white shroud, then pushed through, the frenzy of the audience only climbing. Treesha, one of the first to be sold, elicits a particularly rabid response. As the room in front of her empties, Twil finds herself shivering violently. But of course there's no escape, only that hideously heavy curtain. Some of the other girls try to run or fight at the last minute when the guards retrieve them. Others faint or piss on the floor. Most cry. No use. One exit.

Twil isn't crying by the time the pair of brawny orcs disconnect her wrist shackles from the wall. Each takes an arm and they frog-march her to stand behind the curtain. Even from here, the heavy curtain blocks her view of the stage, but she can hear Dael's patter as the count climbs and the patrons cheer, leer, and jeer their hearts out.

The guard on her left pinches her nipple and a surprised squeal escapes her painted mouth. "Makes them hard," the orc murmers in her ear as he rolls the other between his fingers, wiping rouge off on his sleeve. She tries to flinch away, but the other guard's hand is resting on her head and keeps her in place. He doesn't say a word as the one on her left slips his hand between her thighs and strokes her. She closes her eyes in shame and humiliation, tears finally welling up in her eyes. Worse, she feels herself become wet as the guard frictions against her - everyone will see immediately the evidence of her excitement. She takes a shuddering breath and sobs slightly but the guard takes no notice as he continues.

Finally the last girl before Twil is sold. One orc draws aside the curtain; the other places a hand between her shoulder blades and shoves her forward.

She stumbles onto the stage and, not having been prepared for it to be slanted forward as it is, nearly trips as the two dancers from the introduction catch her and slow her momentum. Now she's face to face with the crowd and she feels blood rush to her skin in a body-deep blush, knees almost buckling with the humiliation. And while she's distracted, the two dancers slip her cuffs onto a hook suspended on a wire, which is then drawn up by a hidden winch to pull her arms up behind her back in a strappado, only made more precarious by the slope.

Dael roars her starting bid over the noise of the crowd, and paddles go up as the auction proceeds apace. Although any of the buyers here who noticed Twil at the market know that she has a discipline problem, raging lust does a lot of work against that "caveat emptor" marked on every entrance to the city's trade quarter, and a couple attendees throw out tentative bids for her sight-unseen. Then a more serious bidder offers twenty percent higher. Twil doesn't understand the language very well but the lull in the bidding hangs over her like a reaper. She can't pick out the one who placed the bid.

Then one of the dancers prods her finger up Twil's asshole as the other slaps her hand hard against the girl's tit. The noise she emits is actually audible over the hoots of the crowd, and her stumble forward and subsequent wince as the strappado pulls at her arms is just adorable, but it's the ever-so-slight spray of piss that really has the crowd jumping.

Twil starts to sob in earnest as another bid is called from the back of the room. When a man on one of the padded chairs at the front of the room counters, the source of that twenty-percent-higher price earlier pulls the same move and the bidding stops. Now Twil gets a look at him through her tears. He's got a chair too, right in front of the pews, and in his lap sitting pretty as you please is the blonde with the gold collar who groped Twil an eternity earlier. One of a thousand who grabbed at her today, but the human woman stuck in her mind. Where her clothes were scanty before, now she's dressed downright scandalously - her tight red dress has her perky breasts right out on display, and the way she's sitting over the man's leg exposes her panties, the center panel covered only by a fine crimson mesh. One ankle, visible when she reclines across the huge orc's lap, has a golden bangle around it that draws the eye to her ruby slippers.

Dael declares Twil sold as she locks eyes with the satisfied-looking blonde, and a guard pulls her off the hook and half-carries her to a small room on the second floor, furnished with a bed and little else. She tenses when she sees inside, the routine familiar from her winter of bordello work. But the hob just walks her in and sits her down on the bed, then pulls the door closed and stands in front of it, watching her.

Wishing she could be alone just this once, Twil sinks to the floor and huddles in the corner, glaring at the guard out of the corner of her eye. She wishes she could cast the last dregs of her dignity aside and just howl and sob, but the guard's dour eye on her is binding enough to keep her crying to silent shakes.

Eventually she has to use the chamber pot, and at least the hob does turn away briefly as she squats over it. He sets it outside the door when she's done and resumes his watch.

Some buyers pony up and arrive at the courtesy rooms immediately, but on the whole most sit through the whole auction. Still, having been sold so close to the end, Twil doesn't have long to wait before a knock comes on the door.

The guard exits and rather than the man who bought her it's the blonde with the golden collar who steps into the room. "Come," she says in Twil's own language, "stand up. No use cowering here all day, it's no place to be at all."

It's less her reassuring tone and more whatever energy she felt just before getting dragged offstage that draws Twil to rise to her feet. The blonde unlocks her shackles with the key the guard gave her and hands her a wet cloth. "Your accident earlier, clean up and we'll get you dressed, yes?"

Twil feels the blood rush to her face at the reminder and sponges off her thighs, curt and prim as she can manage, which isn't saying much. It's as prim as she can manage, which isn't saying much. It's practically the first time she's had the chance to actually lay hands on her own body since she was at the brothel, and she feels tears spring to her eyes again at being treated like a human… or, well, like a human would treat a human.

When she's done with the washcloth the blonde hands her a bundle of white fabric. It's a dress and panties in the same avant-fetish style as the other woman is wearing, uncovered breasts and mesh panties and all, just white where her outfit is red. Twil pulls it on blushingly. As she's buckling the slippers, which are held on with a strap behind the heel to leave the heel and arch bare and the forward half of the foot protected only by the thinnest of soles and a wrapping of silk over the toes, the blonde retrieves the pisspot from the hall.

"Have to go again before we leave?" she asks Twil, who blushes again at the reminder of her most shameful moment. She shakes her head and the blonde hikes up her dress, holds the pot in place, and pisses in it herself, only she doesn't remove her panties to do it. Despite the mesh panel, the garment gets quite sodden in the process. Only when she's finished does she put down the chamber pot, pull off her panties and give herself a once over with the washcloth.

"What's your name, sweet thing?" the blonde asks as she tugs her dress back into place and steps closer to the girl.

Twil, struck dumb by the baffling act, startles and speaks. "Twil Tuo, madam. I was… a knight."

"That's fine. I'm Sext," replies the blonde, which is an hour of monastic time and also playfully contains the word sex, and has nothing to do with text messages in this context. "I'm head of my master Lord Bloodcastle's bitches, of which you're now one. Open wide."

"What?" Twil starts to ask as Sext grabs the back of her head and sticks her red panties between the redhead's gaping lips. She forces them through her teeth and holds Twil's jaw closed as she struggles reflexively.

"Hold those in your mouth until we reach our master's carriage, or you'll spend your first night at the manor in some wretched pit, and that would sour the mood of your welcoming party," Sext hisses in her ear. Twil, shocked, almost chokes before getting control of her breathing. As Sext takes her by the hand and leads her downstairs, Twil feels dizzy and queasy at the shock as well as at the taste of the other woman's piss seeping down her throat. As they approach the red-and-gold painted coach with the Bloodcastle sigil across the side, the feeling reaches a crest, and a sobbing hiccup turns into a retch and she coughs the panties out, catching a breath and swallowing down vomit. Her knees knock, but she stands, pulling out of Sext's grip, and another lord's retainer puts a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place.

"That little move will cost you," Sext sighs as she takes Twil's bicep and marches her over to the carriage, pausing to collect her fallen panties. "And me, for allowing you to do it, which will cost you more."

She opens the door of the carriage and pushes Twil inside ahead of her, and Lord Bloodcastle has a golden collar for her, and a lesson for the two of them about losing him face in front of another noble, and a variety of wretched pits at his disposal where Twill will have plenty of time to consider his teachings.

~ 5 ~ 1 ~

Weeks later, the caged-in wagon carrying Princess Fivette and the few of her peers not picked over by the southerners rolls through the border town where Twil and Treesha spent the winter. Since last autumn it's gone from a quiet hamlet around a small military outpost to a bustling junction for merchants and armies alike. The convoy stops for a few days for resupply, and they park the wagons in the courtyard of the old base, right next to the military brothel.

There Oenone Able is still turning tricks for the pleasure of the soldiers - and the profit of the contractor, Blue Moon Lounges, that bought up the building and some of the slaves the military was renting, and added a new wing, when the soldiers kept coming and the demands of running the business grew. A bog-standard winsome farm girl didn't cost them much, so here she is after Twil and Treesha went to the capital.

Having worked here so long, she actually has limited privilege to walk the grounds between the buildings of the lounge and inn, as well as several outer areas of the military base, where she's tasked with running small errands when things aren't busy. She's not allowed any clothing but a loincloth, simple sandals, and a bulky leather-and-iron collar, and her legs are always bound with metal shackles. The Blue Moon brand on her back is hardly necessary for anyone to tell what she is. But cleaning, fetching water and foodstuffs, and doing other tasks in such a state is worth it just for the pleasure of being outside the brothel. After the miserable, stifling, stinking winter, she's a fresh air addict.

One of her tasks as she gets her fix today is to fill the big metal jugs of water the prisoners in the convoy drink from. The attendant guard shows her to the empty jugs, and one by one she takes them to the little aqueduct on base and submerges them. Each one is quite a heavy load on its own on the return trip.

"Psst, girl!" comes a whisper as she brings one of the jugs by Fivette's wagon. The attendant for all the half dozen wagons is elsewhere, likely giving water to the girls in another cart, and there are no other guards Oenone has noticed, so she steps closer. "Please, please, can you get me out of here somehow?"

Oenone shakes her head and, suddenly fearful, glances around. They're still alone. "From the middle of the city? How do you think I'm going to do that?"

"Look at you, you're walking around out of a cage, you can go where you want, so just help me - I won't get the luxury of walking around where I'm going, they'll send me to some hell to get my liver ripped out or whatever they do there…"

Oenone rolls her eyes. "It's no picnic, but they're not about to kill someone as pretty as you are."

"I'm the princess, your princess, they're going to make an example of me, I know it," Fivette sobs.

"You're the princess? Princess Fivette?"

"Just look at me, you've seen the posters…" The posters only went up after Oenone was taken away, after the war properly began, propagandistic depictions of the royal family. Though she hasn't seen them, the princess' conviction reminds Oenone of her dreams of meeting the princess and befriending her when she was a little kid, and that's enough of a propaganda hit itself to put her on Fivette's side. She can tell the girl is really scared.

Alas, under the closed causality flowing from the broken vessel of the Center of Everything, no heroics are possible, and the traditions of royalty are crushed beneath the wheel of progress. Which is to say that when she returns the next day with a daringly-pilfered set of keys and gets the princess unchained and out of the wagon along with the rest of its occupants, all the escapees are caught in a matter of minutes and identify Oenone as their savior.

The day after that, the wagons depart for the capital, Fivette still in tow but leaving Oenone in a considerably less desirable position. She's in the custody of the military now, having been confiscated from Blue Moon as a criminal and held overnight in the base's jail. Now, as the day dawns and the convoy disappears over the hills, she's walked out of the base and before the Justice building at the center of town, nude and shivering in warm, light rain of morning and escorted by ten soldiers. At the center of the Justice plaza is a wide pit, twenty feet deep: the Penance Floor, where public punishments are carried out. Usually military crimes are punished on military property, but the case of a slave trying to free the human princess, they're happy to make a citywide example of her.

The reeve of the Floor, a shirtless ogre with a leather mask, sees that Oenone is locked into a pillory to await her sentencing. It's a vertical board at the rim of the Floor and looking down onto it, so she can see every punishment that takes place before hers. The reeve carefully writes the crimes she committed across her back in black paint. With her neck and wrists so enclosed, passers-by have free rein to lay hands on her - and sometimes other parts, when the guards are distracted. The paint is soon smeared, but word of mouth carries.

One side of the square Floor, closest to the Justice building, is occupied by such pillories, and of the thirty or so most fill up within the hour. The other three sides are unobstructed except by a wooden railing, for passing masses and curious watchers to edify themselves. Half the city comes through this plaza on any given morning. The Floor and the walkways around it are covered with awnings of oiled canvas against the rain, but it drips through in lines and the humid air sends wafts of steam through the torchlight. A ceremonial fire burns at the center of the Floor, symbolizing justice through penance and supposed never to be extinguished.

At morning bell, eight o'clock, the reeve bellows for attention and the judge takes his seat in the corner. Only those whose guilt is already established are here today; the judge's only role is to hand down a sentence. The reeve, with the assistance of a horde of lesser goblins who carry out his instructions to the letter, is responsible for executing those sentences.

A murderer is first on the stand, a stocky orc who glowers at the crowd as the reeve pulls him from his pillory and down the narrow staircase to the stand. The sentence is simply death, and the reeve picks up a square-ended sword and strikes the orc's head from his shoulders where he stands. Blood spatters across the stand and the goblins dispose of his body. The head they tie by the hair to a chain hanging over the floor, the blood dripping off it and swirling through the rainwater in the corner of the Floor, a grisly piece of scenery to draw in spectators and set the tone for the day.

He's the only capital offender today. About two thirds of those who take the stand are orcs or hobs guilty of violent assault against a citizen, armed robbery or banditry, or repeat offenses of thievery. Assault is punished by an approximation of the same violence committed by the perpetrator. The goblins strap them to the slanted metal grating behind the stand and the reeve sets to breaking bones or cutting skin as appropriate, binding the wounds immediately and pausing anytime the subject briefly loses consciousness. When he's taken his pound of flesh, he takes them back to the pillory to stand the remainder of the day.

Property offenses see the judge getting more creative. They aren't cutting off hands here, but thieves do receive a lashing, five to twenty strokes of a nasty whip from a very strong ogre before being returned to their pillory perch. Robbers and bandits get a more drawn out punishment - the three here today are each bound by wrist and ankle to stretching racks, which the goblins draw gradually tighter for an hour or so (though not actually to the point of dislocation) before the reeve comes around to beat them with a light club. They aren't returned to the pillory, remaining on the racks until nightfall.

The remainder of the offenders are human slaves, confiscated permanently or temporarily from their owners for the sake of setting a public example. Plenty of those passing through the plaza on business are slaves themselves, after all.

A half dozen of the women are convicted of assault, usually punished by one's owner, but Justice handles cases of particularly grievous harm or of the victim being a third party not satisfied with the punishment the owner doles out. Like the orcish offenders they're strapped to the metal grating - upside down, in their case, to ease access to their feet - and the reeve duplicates the violence they inflicted, which mostly isn't so terrible as that which can land a free man on the Floor. Then each is caned quite mercilessly across the feet, to teach respect, and receives a small brand on the bottom of one heel. Standing in the pillory the rest of the day after that treatment is slow torture in itself.

The brand takes the shape of a simple circled "X." A first serious offense by a slave is so recorded on her flesh to remind the girl of her place and to mark her out as a troublemaker to any potential buyers. A second offense earns a mark on the other heel, and if a slave with two branded heels should cause trouble… executions are rare, but she'll probably wish they weren't.

The rain hasn't let up by noon bell, so the crowds through the morning were sporadic, but it's lunchtime and the plaza is at its busiest when the judge arrives at the last five offenders: slaves who have incited escape attempts involving the property of at least one other owner. "Incitement" can be vague in definition, but it's a serious crime. The first of these to be dragged from her pillory is Oenone.

She's been castigating herself all day for her stupidity in going along with Fivette's demands, but she can't take it back. She's been pinched and groped all day by those incredulous and amused at the rumors of her offense, not to mention the dozens of dicks that have been surreptitiously rubbed against her legs and belly. Two men even started fucking her for a few moments before the guards chased them away.

When the reeve retrieves Oenone she hangs limp and uncooperative in his grip, dragging her feet on the staircase, but there's no way she can resist against someone of his size and strength. Finally she stands on the block of stone before the judge. Her offense having been against the military, it's actually a military court that decided her punishment, but the judge has a report in front of him and reads it off.

"Girl One… excuse me, Girl Wennin, you stand guilty of eighteen counts of attempted theft of military property. For this offense, you are sentenced to eighteen days on the Penance Floor. On this first day of your sentence the punishment is a hundred strokes across the belly and breasts, periodic ducking, and branding of the heels."

Oenone begins to sob fearfully, but the judge continues. "One of those you attempted to set free being the princess of your former kingdom, you are also found guilty of treason against the Nation to which you now owe your allegiance. For this most grave of crimes, after you serve your sentence here you will be pilloried for a day and a night in each town along the road to Alabaster Keep, where you will be cast into perdition. May your penance reshape you into a more perfect servant."

The reeve deftly lashes the weeping and terrified Oenone to a heavy beam of wood with thick ropes of soft rope, which he winds around her with practiced ease. The ogre prides himself on leaving only what damage on his clients he has been instructed to leave, even when they flail and lash out as this girl does. In no time flat she's got her ankles bound to her thighs and both bound to the wooden beam stuck horizontally behind them. He straps her wrists into leather sleeves that bind her hands in fists and protect her from the bite of an enormous pair of iron shackles. They're well-fitted and well-filed at the edges but very, very heavy and with only a couple links of chain between them. Next he gathers her thick blonde hair and ties it into a rough braid incorporating one of the circular anchors, a goblin winding a leather thong around the ends to keep it from unraveling as the reeve sticks a blunt hook of polished steel up her asshole. He attaches a cord to the outer end sitting at her tailbone, and then passes it through the gromet in her hair, then through a wide hole drilled through the center of the big wooden beam. He secures a piece of leather between her teeth with a tight loop of cord, for her to bite down on, and then picks up the beam by the heavy ropes tied at the ends.

Oenone is lifted up along with it, and the reeve hangs her upside down over a giant wooden barrel of rainwater. Her hands, dangling over her head, are submerged, which eases the burden of the heavy cuffs a little, and her head is therefore only the length of a forearm away from the surface. The water is cold despite the heat of the summer day, a thin cloud of steam wafting off, and swirls with dirt, grime, and oil washed off the taut canvases overhead. The reeve attaches the cord linked to her hair to a long tight spring suspended above, putting no tension on it for the moment.

He brandishes a cane and she throws up her hands to ward him off. He shrugs and nods, and a goblin throws a lever to release a coiled winch, and with no more warning than that Oenone plunges into the huge barrel, her descent only stopping when the beam splashes into the water and she's fully submerged. She writhes in sudden pain as the spring above pulls her hair and the anal hook sinks deeper in. Arching back to relieve the pressure on her hair eases the pressure, but it's not an easy position to keep up. Then that pain is forgotten when the brand, pulled from the Floor's central brazier moments ago, is pressed firmly to her unprotected and immobilized left heel. She tries to throw up and gags on water.

She's pulled quickly out of the water after only a few moments and, the tension relieved on the hair rope, slumps down and begins to cough out water. The reeve smacks his long thick cane of supple wood casually across her midsection, the first of a hundred strokes. He does it a few more times as she coughs and convulses, then aims a slap across the underside of her breasts. Gasping, she brings up her arms to block the assault. He politely gives her a few moments to recover.

"Before the hundredth stroke I'll brand your other heel, girl," he murmurs to her. Then without so much as a signal from him she's dropped back into the barrel.

She's at least able to hold her breath as she cranes her head back, when she's not surprised by a branding iron. When they pull her out again and she shields herself from the cane with her arms before the reeve even lands a blow, he drops her back in. This time long seconds pass, Oenone trying to reach at her bonds with her useless hands, before they begin to pull her out again. It's much slower this time and by the time her head crests water she's aspirated some again.

The reeve returns to methodically caning her belly from pubes upward, with an occasional shot to her pendulous breasts prompting a half-hearted swipe upward of her hands. A few times, she gets her breathing halfway under control and blocks again, getting a short respite from the blows and another quick dunk. But halfway through the hundred she tries to block a blow and finds she doesn't have the core strength to lift the heavy cuffs out of the water, abdomen quivering with effort.

Now more blows fall across marks from previous ones than not. The reeve counts every tenth stroke, and it's a couple long minutes before, panting with the effort, Oenone raises her hands before number seventy-one can land.

Oenone is very aware of the second branding that awaits her at the end, all that's shooting through her head as the reeve allows her several seconds grace before nodding his head and having her dropped into the water. The act of craning backward is difficult now too, and she's forced to leave more tension on the rope, working the anal hook tighter into her.

She knows the ogre wants her to fear the brand as long as possible, so she's not surprised it's to come so close to the end. But, she thinks as the winch is wound and she rises out of the barrel again, he'll want it to be a surprise too. So it will come soon, she thinks desperately.

She braces herself as she wards off the eighty-first stroke for a moment and loses her nerve, dropping her hands for another few strokes. By now the cane is breaking skin, and thin ribbons of blood spill into the water below. On number eighty-eight she finds the strength to block again, and prepares for the brand as she falls into the drink.

The brand doesn't come. They pull her out of the barrel and the ninetieth stroke passes her by. She blocks the ninety-third and get dunked again, and the brand doesn't come. She tries to block the ninety-fourth and ninety-fifth, managing to raise her hands against the ninety-sixth, not sure if she's trying to get the branding over with as soon as possible or hold it off. Fueled by desperation, she blocks the ninety-eighth stroke twice in a row and is dropped back in to be pulled out horribly slowly. She weakly coughs up water at the ninety-ninth stroke and, despite her limp arms, is dropped into the water again. The brand is pressed against her heel and she screams and tries to throw up some more as they pull her back out and the reeve's cane slaps wetly and perfectly horizontally across both nipples, earning a final shake and a ragged sob.

An audience ringing the Floor, having stopped to watch the spectacle, is ravenous. Perhaps the soldiers on leave or slacking on their duty recognize her from the Blue Moon. Possibly they'll go there after this and fuck some luckier whore than Oenone.

She's left hanging there as the reeve takes a single, curt bow and leaves to fetch the next girl from the pillories. Oenone blacks out a few times, but now and then, seconds or minutes apart at random, the goblins drop her into the barrel and pull her back up at their leisure. The reeve keeps an eye on them but their cruelty is generally a capable sort, and she's at little risk of injury by his judgement. It will keep her attentive and contemplative, he believes.

The second attempted slave-thief is sentenced to ride a wooden horse an hour for each she attempted to set free; with eight offenses and a rest period between each hour she'll be down here the next two afternoons as well. The third, guilty of freeing a much more valuable slave before the two were caught in the act, is strapped down on a table and forced to drink great quantities of milk and honey, which she throws up and shits out at a staggering rate. They force a tube into her throat and do it again, then lock her in a tiny cage for the remainder of the day to be harassed by flies and ants. The fourth has her hair shorn off and is forced to cum again and again by the reeve's expert hands and instruments, long past when she begs for it to stop, and the fifth, the lightest offender, receives only the same heel brand as they all have and is returned to the pillory for the rest of the day.

Over the course of two and a half weeks Oenone will be subject to all the punishments she's seen today more than once, and to a few she hasn't. Meanwhile the wagon bearing Fivette to the capital advances faster than the forced march of Twil and Treesha along the same road did, and on the day a wrecked Oenone is shipped off on her long journey to the Alabaster Keep, the princess is delivered to the capital of the orc nation.

~ 5 ~ 7 ~

Scrimshaw in the summer is a stinking mud pit, the seasonal rains always threatening to overwhelm its overtaxed sewers. The Dael's auction house in previous years, sitting on the higher ground of the trade quarter, has been free of such issues in previous years. Now, though, the rapidly swelling population of the capital has the waste-filled aqueducts lapping at Dael's basements and threatening to spill through the wooden grate of the room where Treesha was allowed to piss that one time.

The most exclusive flesh market in the city doesn't contend with such issues. It's on the same plateau where the Senate is situated, rings of mansions and parks around it, and where the ground begins to fall away sits the Pleasuredome.

The opensided wagons and their army escort proceed through the gates and up the broad thoroughfare to the Pleasuredome in a victory parade. Several senators and their retinues, those clamoring for further expansion, join the march extolling the spoils of war.

One of Senator Bloodfeast's aides goes so far as to step into the wagon in the lead, the senator waving off the soldiers. The aide stands Fivette up and holds her to the wagon's bars, an arm around her throat from behind. The crowd lining the streets clap and holler as the princess ascends to the Pleasuredome, symbolizing her kingdom's ultimate defeat.

Among the revelers is one whose good cheer is only a facade for grim determination and gut-churning anxiety. No one takes much note of Severa Armstrong, a halfling draped in a traveling cloak, her grinning face belied only by eyes like prey, darting back and forth in a search for danger. But that's not unusual in a halfling - the orcish disdain for lesser goblins (in theory the name refers to their diminutive size, but the connotations are generally felt to apply) more than extends to their children with hobgoblins.

Severa, however, is more concerned with her mission than with the possibility of street harassment from the crowing horde. Grin plastered on her face, she climbs the hill alongside the parade, and watches as the soldiers deliver their spoils of war into the gilded halls of the Pleasuredome.

Princess Fivette weeps prettily and hurts verbal barbs at the orc eunuchs that collect her from the lead wagon in the plain but well-maintained receiving courtyard behind the dome proper. They bring her to a washroom and spare no effort in beautifying her. That evening, the first of seven, Fivette is displayed for sale along with two dozen of her kingdom's most beautiful noblewomen.

There's a simplicity of stringing a girl up on a post, but the director of the Pleasuredome has notions of grandeur. The dome's sparkling interior, lush with hanging plants and carved sandstone and overlooking the trade district on one side, lends itself to a display of conquest that would, excuse the Earth-icism, have any Roman emperor creaming himself hands-free.

The largest of the Pleasuredome's fifteen cages is given over to the director's fit of vision. It's a circular stage six yards across and covered by a shell of silvery wires woven into an ornate birdcage shape, not really sturdy enough to keep someone in against their will. It's set on a huge plinth rising from a shallow pool of crystal-clear water and glass beads. The arrangement leaves the cage's floor a foot or two below the floor of the surrounding lounge, separated by a moat only a foot across and three deep - but security would be on anyone who reached over the low railing of worked iron to touch those silver wires in a heartbeat.

Tonight the cage's floorboards are draped in a plush carpet and set with furniture in the style of the human kingdom. Fivette and several of tonight's twenty-four beauties are arranged in a diorama, a scene from an imagined salon in which the plump Fivette reclines on a longchair as the noblewomen lean forward in their armchairs and chat amongst each other.

Their costumes are fitted with the help of measurements sent ahead of their caravan by fast courier days ago, arranged in advance by the director. They're a skimpy parody of styles that were in fashion among human nobility twenty years ago, but quite expertly made.

The remainder of tonight's noble merchandise is in other cages, posed in fragments of the same scene scattered around the edges of the lounge interspersed with planters of lush greenery and water features. Lady Adelia Corvair ru Grace hovers over a plate of pastries offered to her by Corinne Raingold, daughter of the merchant-lord Harmony, never quite picking out one of the bite-size confections, which have been rendered inedible in order to keep them looking fresh through the six-hour-long diorama. The duchess Quinona Roanik ru Pierce pins the lady Ygli u Albi to a longchair, the two kissing gently.

Their compliance in the spectacle is assured by means purchased by special order from the caverns of the drow, in the south. Twenty-five magical sets of a collar, wrist and ankle cuffs, and a chastity belt that finally replaced those the noblewomen were fitted with back in their own capital. The restraints are cast finely in copper, and are capable of holding fast in space. The chastity belt, obscured by their clothing and padded with thick wormleather, is additionally capable of causing quite a bit of pain to the wearer through the copper-and-lapis anal insert, administering an electric shock or even allowing remote insertion of fluids - a big cold enema is just the thing for a flagging subject. The similar urethral insert is convenient as well.

Of course the Pleasuredome's director procured the evil restraints herself, and she's the one to operate them from her seat by the largest cage. The girls on display are occasionally allowed to shift position, but if it's not in line with the director's vision, she administers a shock and the girl returns to a safe posture. Lady Corvair takes up a pastry now and then, holding it without raising it to her mouth and then discreetly replacing it on the tray after a while. The duchess Roanik engages in some light tribadism with Lady Ygli, but that's as far as it goes. Fivette shifts position frequently, straight black hair falling heavy across her shoulders, but never stands up.

This display is the backdrop to the night's eating, drinking, and fucking for many of the nation's senators and men of business. From the evening bell past midnight the revelry carries on around the frozen and often-weeping former nobles.

At two in the morning the display is carefully deconstructed, the girls led downstairs to the auction floor and sold off. Fivette, they take to the director's apartment.

Dozen El is an ogre and a powerful mage. She's taller than Gol Ga is and similarly lanky, but not so muscular as the warrior-general. She has the same almost-transparent skin and white hair as most all ogres do. Not such a concern when she rarely ventures out of the Pleasuredome.

Director El wears a slick and well-tailored suit, long hair in two neat braids, when she's on the lounge floor or overseeing the auction. Now, in the apartment behind her offices as she prepares for bed, she has her hair in a huge frizzy ponytail and her only clothing is a silk nightdress. She nods to the guards bringing her Fivette, and the two orcs help her fit the former princess with a straitjacket and gag, locking her in a padded box in one corner of the director's bedchamber.

Fivette remains locked away until noon, when the director pulls her out of the box and takes it upon herself personally to clean and dress her tenderest of prey. She dresses the girl in the same outfit she wore last night and brings her to a private room, no bed, just the longchair she's already spent so much time with. Patrons who attended the Pleasuredome are invited to meet her for five minutes apiece, a member of security standing discreetly in one corner to be sure they don't try to interfere with Fivette's chastity belt - and, she supposes, to keep her from trying to kill herself. They're quite careful about that.

Fivette, having fielded more than her fair share of cum spattered across her face, chest, and hair, is then cleaned up again in time for the night's diorama. Another twenty-four of her traveling companions join her in a boudoir scene, ladies in waiting helping her dress, and she spends the next day in a corset, slip, and stockings. The next day the scene is one of communal bathing, noble girls soaping each suggestively, large basins of water placed on stages for some of the stock to sit in. The fourth night the scenes take a turn and a few orcs join the girls on stage, unmoving in positions of seizing them by the hair or arm, furniture now broken. On the fifth night they're bound with more restraints than just the magically powered ones, and many of the girls are subjected to painful slaps or stress positions in an interrogation scene. On the sixth night, one by one the slaves receive the tiny but prestigious Pleasuredome brand on their shoulder blades right on stage, with Fivette the last to be held to the leather-topped bench.

On the seventh night Fivette's is the only auction scheduled. She stands in one of the smaller cages, nude but for her chastity belt, feet apart and arms overhead, allowing a closer look at her than in the cage at the lounge's center. Of course, all the potential buyers have already had enough time alone with her to get a plenty good look already.

The midnight bell comes and goes as a pre-auction is held, every interested party making a blind bid. At two o'clock, all but the thirty who wrote down the highest figures are to leave the room and the auction will be held among those who remain.

It's past one thirty and most of the patrons are eyeing the door when an explosive bang sounds and Severa Armstrong is suddenly on top of a table. Having dropped from a vent in the ceiling, her middle-grey skin is visible only through the rectangular eye slot of a magically armored skintight black suit. She holds a pair of crossbows, enchanted to the hilt and aimed at two of the nation's most prominent senators. In moments, ten of her compatriots, orcs and hobs and halflings armed to the teeth, pour in through the doors from the kitchen.

They start screaming demands and waving their crossbows and spears here and there, nobody moves, on the floor, and such. Severa, the leader of the cell, reads off a prepared statement before, one at a time, the agitators allow many of the room's occupants to leave.

"We now buy and sell the flesh of animals out of season with the earth raised never having known the freedom of the wild, just as the human markets have swelled… we must return to our roots as peoples of the hunt."

The remaining hostages, ironically, include all those who would have participated in the auction tonight. About fifty of the most prominent political and business leaders of the nation are sweating through their loungewear where they sit on the floor.

Severa pries open the cage of Fivette and points a crossbow at the princess as she tries to free her hands. Suddenly there's a loud crack of bone and the ten militants who invaded the room drop dead. An arm reaches around Severa to grab her throat and the girl convulses, dropping the crossbows.

"My collar, gentlemen," says Joy of Regret, who managed to discreetly touch each of the armored men and wind an invisible cord around their necks, snapping them all in a single moment. She's a blue imp from beyond the Alabaster Keep, come to the capital just for the princess' auction, a representative of an demon whose identity she's not divulged.

Severa collapses to the floor and the higher-ups of the backwater orc nation trip over themselves to thank the imp. Director El collapses into a chair in dizzied relief. Joy responds with quiet superiority, nodding and shaking the hands of senators. Fivette is crying but no one is paying attention beyond making sure she's secured in the cage, the director's cuffs holding her in place.

Nerves rattled and security on the alert, the auction goes forward as planned. The bidding is sedate compared to the drunken revelry of an hour ago, and tension is sharp. A mere one third of those bidding are orcs or ogres. Another fifteen hail from the southern caverns - drow, grey dwarves, cloud elves, and a single illicit with tendrils waving from below its heavy hood. The rest include a sphinx, a human thrall possessed by its dragon lord, and Joy of Regret.

Fivette, quite scandalized at having had a lethal weapon pointed at her, weeps and shivers as the bidding starts. Within moments it becomes clear that there are only three serious contenders at play: a lady of the drow, her lovely form shrouded in layers of gauzy spider silk; the sphinx, a huge feline form with a head and chest like a bust of an ogre-sized man chiseled from coppery stone; and Joy of Regret, not much taller than the halfling bound cruelly at her feet and with a tendency to hunch over, raptor-like eyes concealed behind glasses tinted orange, the stumpy horns over her brow a more metallic blue than the wood-like grain of her face. Her billowing black coat leaves bare only her face, framed by locks of black hair, and her legs, covered in fine black fur and ending in the paws of an animal slid into wooden sandals.

Joy only places a bid when the drow and sphinx hesitate for a few moments, letting them have it out. The sphinx soon drops out, and Joy goes head to head with the drow. She only ever counters with the minimum allowed increase to the drow's bid, no sense of drama, little affect, never hesitating in the least. Incensed, the drow places a bid she regrets a moment later when she realizes she can't pay it without going bankrupt - and is relieved a moment later when the imp counters it just as mechanically. Joy nods as her victory becomes plain, and the director invites her to her offices to discuss payment, having Fivette brought along. Joy picks up Severa as she follows, showing no strain as she shoulders a strap and hoists the halfling off the ground. The mood they leave behind is sour; quite apart from the threat to their lives the other bidders feel they were never within reach of the princess at all.

~ 4 ~ 8 ~

The Ocharein, vast tracts of fertile land subducted under drooping mountains by some arcane process of tectonics, the breadbasket of crevices worming deep into the earth and of mountains carved into grand citadels, is the northern borderland of the drow empire. A broad trade road leads across it, bridging the human and orc nations with those beneath the lofty Cloudsborne Mountains. So it's the Ocharein's lantern-lit fields, worked mostly by grey dwarves and drowmen, that were Forthlin Aer's introduction to the land of drow.

Now the Musashi Company's convoy has passed beyond this borderland into Pantermaw, a low-roofed cavern of hard stone that descends for miles in a gentle slope. The giant war construct that accompanied them thus far is abandoned in favor of a few extra contingents of Musashi guards-dwarves. The Pantermaw is at the border of the grey dwarves' territory and is itself a fairly direct route between the Ocharein and the Grand Cathedral Cavern, making it ripe for trade but also the scene of fierce military and political maneuvers whenever tensions rise between the drow and the dwarves.

The auction of Forthlin and the others she's been brought here with takes place about halfway down the Pantermaw. The Musashi Company puts on a good show, and Forthlin is sold to a traveling party of silk-wrapped nuns from an isolated bore-convent. They pay worship to a yul-tha-sog, a bore demon, summoned into the world four hundred years ago. In exchange the demon sinks gradually downward, leaving a mile-wide empty shaft and eating any trespassers other than members of its convent. However, since the demon will leave for its own world as soon as it's not bound here by worship, the drow will eventually have ample resources and real estate out of the deal. The up-front cost of the summons is rather hefty, but the operations can last for millenia, and since they're well-defended by the demon itself they require only a handful of nuns each to sustain the worship, supported by a few servants each.

Altogether the convent, suspended over the roughly octagonal shaft, holds around fifty people. It's a rambling but sturdy arrangement of cloudwood held aloft by the ferrous webbing supplied by the convent's coop of ironwatchers. They keep chickens too, only slightly larger than the spiders, and a couple of undermountain goats. They import plenty of luxuries, Forthlin included, but they cultivate enough of their own food to be self-sufficient for quite a long time if need be.

The nuns, well capable of defending themselves and their purchases, trek for days along a crevasse at the bottom of the Pantermouth, one of a fan of offshoots that are being slowly developed as the yul-tha-sogs at their termini work their way into the stone. As more and more resources are uncovered, futures in each convent sell at more and more of a premium, driving up the value of the crevasse's real estate as well as shares of the particular bore's futures, which the nuns sell off continuously to support themselves.

As the traveling party arrives at the boreshaft, elegant Sister Umi pulls forward Forthlin, arms and torso bound in silk, big fuzzy ears twitching with nerves, collared and leashed. Sister Yria comes forward too, producing a small blue-tinged jar, and Forthlin breathes a quick sigh of relief. She's been worried for Yria's purchase from the Pantermaw, picked out from a shop specializing in imported goods from the Cloudsborne Mountains above. Though rare in human lands, cloud fairies are common enough in the Mountains that the flesh markets don't even bother with them. Most people just find them annoying, but a fair number of drow enjoy subjecting them to torments in miniature.

Sister Yria opens the jar and fishes out the protesting fairy, a three inch tall woman with tangled red hair, dragonfly-like wings crumpled around her. The sister smirks as she pins the pathetic thing in one fist, ignoring its whining and the beat of its papery wings against her.

The other two nuns lower Forthlin to the floor as well. They cut one of her forearms with a sharp knife and hold it over the edge of the black pit. As drops of blood fall to the bottom, they sing an incantation that designates Forthlin a devotee of the yul-tha-sog. Her feelings on the matter don't factor into whether it will eat her as soon as she passes over this threshold, only her newly bestowed status. She doesn't understand any of their singing except for her name, which she was forced to tell them when they purchased her.

They go through the same rigamarole with the cloud fairy, holding her over the hole and extracting a tiny drop of blood. Her hollering is impressive for a being of her size. Her name, Forthlin gathers, is Eit.

The nuns stow Eit and Sister Umi leads Forthlin across a suspension bridge, the deergirl's shoulders brushing against the ironwatcher-web supports. If it was any narrower she'd have to walk sideways, and without the use of her arms she could fall - it would have to be a really awkward fall to get over the netting around the sides but she feels it could happen - and the only one holding her up would be Sister Umi, a skilled mage but a slender and delicate one…

She tries not to look down. The floor of the shaft is steeped in darkness, but there's certainly movement down there, sinuous and unsettling. She has no idea how deep it is either, the sheer scale of things and the total darkness past the lights of the convent confusing her sense for it.

The three nuns are greeted in the convent's gatehouse by each one's contingent of servants as well as the sister on watch. Sister Umi and Sister Mag have two drow servants each, and now Umi has Forthlin as well. Sister Yria keeps one drow, one harpy, and one cloud elf, plus Eit.

The returning sisters shrug off the shrouding silk in which they wrap themselves when leaving the convent. Underneath, they wear the same uniform as Sister Ruta, who's turned back to the entry bridge, keeping watch: a leotard of metallic silver cloth, high-necked but with ample cutouts at the chest and back and sitting quite high of leg as well; fingerless gloves of white leather and a heavy silver bracer on each arm; funkenwood sandals with an inch of heel, tied on with silvery ribbons; and silver ornaments in their tightly-plaited stark white hair.

The clothes of their servants are not so flashy: a silken breechcloth tied with a leather cord around the waist; wooden sandals held on with cord rather than ribbons; a flimsy silk vest open in front, not even ribcage-length, the name in drow characters of the particular sister they serve embroidered on the back; and lastly a slender collar, a simple silver loop.

Umi's other servants are excited to take Forthlin to the dormitories and get her cleaned and outfitted. They're a pair of nearly-identical drow, and perhaps the novelty of a deer-girl is refreshing when so much of their existence is routine, because they pet and exclaim over her through the whole process. The rather conservative drow of the convent, even the other servants, tend to view above-grounders as oddly-clever pets, especially those who don't speak their language, and most especially a deergirl like Forthlin, whose antlers, big ears, and fluffy tail are marks against her.

With no fairie-sized uniform on hand, Sister Yria finds a simpler solution. In her private workshop she holds Eit down with the fingers of one hand as her other wields a scalpel. She slices lines through the skin of the helpless fairie's abdomen and thighs, none-too-neatly forming the characters of Yria's name. The fairie herself did her best not to make good penmanship easy, it seems. Additionally with a curved needle and a sturdy strand of silk Yria sews along the top edge of one wing, through the skin of her center back, and to the tip of the other wing; with another pass through her back Yria ties the ends together tight enough that she can't extend her wings and any movement of them is uncomfortable for her.

Yria keeps Eit in a jar for a few days to allow her time to heal, taking her out at breakfast and suppertime to rub her wounds with a paste of herbs that encourage clean scarring as well as stinging quite badly. Once her wounds have closed, Yria takes her out and wraps cords around her ankles and wrists in a strict hogtie, suspending her by it from a braided belt she wears at her waist.

From then on she carries Eit slung beside her hip most of the time, picking her up and fidgeting with her when she's got idle hands. Since so much of fairies' respiration occurs through their wings anyway, Yria typically quiets her pet's incessant complaints by simply keeping her mouth stuffed with cotton-like fibers (occasionally soaked in drow piss if Yria's feeling particularly nasty) and wrapping her entire head in thick silk dyed black.

Forthlin's duties are, though more complex than Eit's, not much less unpleasant or humiliating. In addition to waiting on Sister Umi hand and foot and servicing her sexually, she also has more than her fair share of drudge work, tending crops and livestock and keeping the convent clean and maintained. She's slow to learn the language and Umi often gets frustrated when she can't communicate her orders

Though worship of the yul-tha-sog is the central purpose of the convent, the day-to-day prayers and rituals are the domain only of the sisters themselves. However, there is one practice, a rite of appeasement, in which the sisters include their servants.

Suspended at the center of the convent on arm-thick lines of webbing is a complex arrangement of magically-charged metalwork, hung with crystals and wrought into delicate spirals. A huge, rectangular cage, its top replete with similar curlicues, hangs beneath it, accessed by the series of suspended catwalks that connect all the convent's structures. One hair-thin line, visible only in its faint bluish shimmer, is inscribed vertically from the top of the cage, and it's this unbreakable and variably-long thread the magical circuitry above is designed to evoke.

Each fortnight, eight of the coven's fourteen sisters, along with each one's retinue, file into this sturdy elevator. Though suspended from a single filament, the cage never shakes, swings, or rotates in its steady descent into the dark pit below.

The appeasement is performed the very day after Forthlin's arrival to the coven, but neither Sister Umi nor Sister Yria participate, still weary from the road. Therefore, it's not until the start of her third week on the job that Forthlin enters the cage hung on its elevator filament, surprised at how rock-steady the contraption is even as the congregation steps inside.

Sister Umi is the first through the door and leads her three charges to stand against the far wall. She and the other sisters are still in their silver leotards, but the less privileged members of the convent leave their clothes behind. Forthlin, nude, stands huddled close to Umi and her drow servants Ime and Imit as the elevator becomes crowded. Imit - or possibly Ime, Forthlin's lost track again - places a hand on the deergirl's trembling, dark-freckled shoulder, speaking a few reassuring words in the drow tongue. Forthlin doesn't understand very well, but what she saw two weeks ago when the cageful of exhausted worshippers returned from the pit was not reassuring. She feels herself tremble.

As the iron cage drops noiselessly into the dark, the convent falls away and only one dim red orb of light fixed to the cage's ceiling illuminates the members of the coven. Forthlin, not wishing to gaze into the abyss, watches Sister Yria in the nightmarish light put Eit in her mouth from the waist down, sucking and licking and nibbling and ignoring the pathetic thing's struggles. Then Forthlin's distracted by Ime, or Imit, pulling her into an embrace. Umi amuses herself through the long, silent minutes in teasing Forthlin from behind as Ime sticks her tongue in the deergirl's mouth and gropes her ass. Forthlin surrenders and forgets her dread for a few moments.

When the cage comes to a halt the three drow finally untangle themselves from their toy and Forthlin casts a wary glance through the bars. An acrid scent hangs in the air. The cage rests on a smooth surface, but in the scant light she can't tell what kind. It's only when she finally gets out of the elevator that her hooves hit the ground and she realizes it's some kind of bone or ivory. Antlers? She shivers.

Sister Taina, face solemn, speaks an incantation and brings another globe of red-drenched light into being. It hovers midway between the cage and a circular depression several paces from its door, a couple meters wide and with wide pillars on either side, sculpted into rough ivory hands like a giant's growing from the surrounding crags of bone. The imprint into the ground is smoother than the rest, and from a black-streaked hole in the very center comes a slight waft of steam. When Sister Taina approaches it and the thirty-odd others down here keep pace, that earlier feeling of dread flies back at Forthlin full-force.

Then Taina kneels down and climbs into the hole on a ladder set into one side, and her servants follow, and then the rest of the coven after them, one at a time climbing out of sight with measured steps. In the last two weeks, Forthlin hasn't pushed back against her captors much. What could it possibly get her? She avoids conflict by nature, and has no interest in antagonizing those who hold such complete power over her fate. But there's a limit to her passivity, and that line is the lip of the bowl-shaped depression overhung by those massive hands.

As the crowd drains down the pit like sands through the hourglass, Forthlin is drawn closer in. She dares not set hoof in the shallow depression for fear she'll slip on the smooth surface right into the shaft. She can see down it for a body length or two. It's only barely wide enough that the shoulders of the girls climbing down it never touch the other wall. She doesn't know what the dark streaks up the sides are, but a heavy warmth emanates from it, smelling of eggs, not sulphurous but not pleasant either.

Sister Umi notices Forthlin's hesitation. She commands the deergirl to come, but it only causes her to freeze in place. "I can't," Forthlin says, and repeats it in the tongue she's now learning. When Umi grabs her arm and jerks her toward the hole, Forthlin's knees buckle and she sits down.

"I can't," she repeats, "my hooves." She gestures at them, then at the heavy ladder rungs set into the shaft. She can climb wooden ladders, but she doesn't like the notion of trying to scale this one without shoes. Perhaps she'd try it if she could stand back up, but her willpower simply won't carry her into the horrible opening.

Umi seems to understand and turns to issue instructions to Ime and Imit, handing them a coil of silk rope from her bag. They grin and set to trussing up Forthlin like a venison roast, and in a flash they've got a harness that can support her weight without injuring her. That's not to say without pain, because when they drag Forthlin over to the hole and lower her down, crying and shaking, the rope digs into her tender parts quite cruelly.

The streaked ivory of the narrow shaft gives way to a cavern of some softer material, the rungs of the ladder set into its shorter side. The air is warm, which should be a relief given her state of dress, except it's humid enough she breaks out in a sweat across the expanse of her bare back. Another red light bathes the space, and Forthlin feels sick at the unreal colors. The ground is slick and could be gray or red, she can't tell the difference. With trepidation she squats to touch it and shudders when she realizes it's hotter than the air itself.

The few remaining worshippers climb down into the chamber, Ime and Imit kneeling beside Forthlin to comfort her with petting and reassuring words. Umi rolls her eyes and joins the other sisters in a quiet chant, the result of which is that, with a faint groaning sound, the floor rises up on the side of the room with the ladder and seals them all in a roughly dome-shaped chamber.

Forthlin falls over when the floor pitches and scrambles to get away only for Umi to grab her by the hair and throw her to the floor. "Shut up and be still or you'll regret it," she spits. Forthlin gets the gist and huddles trembling in place.

Her fear is justified, however: the red-bathed floor and ceiling of the cavern bloom into a morass of writhing tendrils. Long and thin, short and round, stubby or pointed, they all have a common goal, or rather a score of them. Each of the nude offerings is grabbed and pulled into some compromising position, leaving only the eight sisters relatively untouched, though a few tendrils caress their ankles.

Forthlin finds herself suspended in a hogtie. The demonflesh that wraps around her, tugging at her fingers and hooves and tweaking her swollen nipples, has a texture like a slightly-fuzzy slug shrouding an inviolate core of something hard yet perfectly flexible. The point of each tendril opens into a tiny mouth, no wider than a finger and rimmed with tiny needlelike teeth. Fat twin tentacles wrap her hanging breasts and squeeze them, then turn to fasten their sucker-mouths right over her nipples. When they bite closed and begin to suck, Forthlin wails, only for another tendril to force its way past her teeth. She chokes and sobs as it closes its mouth around the end of her tongue and pulls it out of her mouth, holding it tight enough she works to keep it extended as far as she can. A few small ones lace around her hands before enrobing her pointer and little fingers up to the knuckle, gnawing gently.

Sister Yria, nearby, releases Eit from her belt and into the custody of a cluster of five tendrils. They swallow up each of her limbs and the last one slithers between her legs before enveloping her whole head, pulling it backward and simply breathing oxygen into the fairy's mouth and nose.

The sea of tendrils begins working its victims into a frenzy of pain and pleasure intermingled, while the eight sisters hit or pinch or kiss or caress their slaves, hoping to add to that overwhelming flood of sensation. Slender tongues unfurl from the mouths of the tendrils and lap at the fluids emitted by the sacrifices, trailing a slick of salty goo in their wake.

It's not until the tendrils have wrung every drop of sweat and juices out of their prey and the girls hang limp that the sisters take off their leotards and fuck each other in the center of the chamber, letting the tendrils sip at the aftermath, though they never intrude past the sisters' lips or cheeks as they so delighted in doing to the sacrifices.

Only when the sisters have all made their offerings to the mouths of the demon do the tendrils unwind from the exhausted and slime-slick sacrifices. Forthlin tries her best to get up the ladder on her own, but the demon's slippery spit only makes it harder. Ime and Imit have to pull her up as they lower her, and to add insult to injury as soon as she's out of the damp air of the demon's insides the spit hardens into a thin crust of salt over her skin and all through her hair and fur.

As the cage returns to the top of the shaft with its considerably-more-bedraggled passengers, Forthlin leans against its bars for support. She's out of tears to cry, but she also came more and harder than she ever could have imagined. The feeling of having been ravaged by a demon and covered in its weird spit is a filthy one, but it has nothing on the feeling of having, on some level, enjoyed it.

~ 5 ~ 7 ~

Joy of Regret, leading Princess Fivette and her would-be savior Severa on enchanted leashes, makes good time over the mountains. The two girls are nude aside from the ropes wound around their arms and chests, though Joy easily maintains a bubble of warm air around their caravan of three even in the chill autumn nights. On their feet are tied slippers whose careful embroidery lends the two the same lightness of step enjoyed by Joy herself, allowing them to travel as long and fast as the finest steed and to outpace any possible trouble along the road. The leashes, meanwhile, render recalcitrance impossible as the collar moves with an irresistible force whenever the holder of the leash gives it even the slightest tug. For all their dread at reaching their destination, the pair of slaves make every effort not to let the leash go taut lest they be dragged forward by the neck.

The Alabaster Keep squats in the southern foothills of the Cloudsbornes, at the borderlands of a vast empire to which the orcish nation is a barbarian backwood. The wagon road through the pass to the north is maintained by the Temphet corporation of the grey dwarves, whose oligarchy among the states north of the Keep deals most closely with the empire. This, through company towns pulling lumber, ore, and flesh out of the mountains, is the orcish trade route to the Keep. Joy of Regret has followed along it for the most part, though her little caravan can skip switchbacks by simply leaping off cliffs and landing light as a cat with the aid of her magic.

Where at last the rock of the mountains falls away, Fivette and Severa are astonished not only at the pure white of the squat cylinder that rises from within the Keep's curtain wall but at the number of wagons that throng its front gates. Colorful tents and market stalls spill down its approach.

Joy circumvents the crowd, taking her captives to a rear entrance of the keep mostly used by military patrols. Her demonhood is obvious enough to the guards there, who let her through having barely glanced at her identifying papers.

The grounds within the curtain wall hold many quartering and administration buildings, but Joy makes right for the hundred-foot-high wall of white. She digs a heavy silver key from her rucksack and brandishes it high as they approach. The white surface pulls apart to reveal a doorway set behind it, wood painted bright red.

A door to the Center of Everything.