Relics (M+,F+,?+/F+)

[GreyLord]

I tend to avoid voting stories. This, however, is truly excellent. Will you be getting back to Pasfina?

A, by-the-way.

[RiggerTom]

Definitely A

[Coaldrone]

Thanks [mention]Tenuous[/mention] , [mention]Tapebot[/mention] , [mention]RiggerTom[/mention] and [mention]GreyLord[/mention] for your votes. I've got most of the next part drafted - this one has been a bit tougher to nail down the tone, but I think I'm getting close to something I'm happy with, should be up within a few days.

And don't worry, GreyLord, we will certainly be getting back to Pasfina. She deserves a break for now, but we'll have to see how long that break lasts.

[Coaldrone]

Well that was a long few days. Lots of rewrites on this next part, by far the longest I've done so far (not necessarily a good thing I know). Hope you enjoy.

[Coaldrone]

Part Six – Of A Bald Man On A Black Throne

Derek drew back his muscular arm and threw yet another stone with everything he had. The forest darkness eagerly swallowed the stone before it even approached the height of its parabola, but not even the darkness could stop him hearing a definitive splash, far off in the distance. Derek pumped his fist in victory. “Yuh yuh, still got it!” he cheered out loud, before cringing as if rebuked by a strict teacher. He repeated his cry of triumph, but this time in a hushed whisper and with a schoolboy grin. A mop of frizzy black hair flopped all over his face, as if trying to hide its owner’s crooked nose, sunken eyes, and double chin. He wore a black trench coat a good size too big for him, and his tunic and pants looked like they had fallen through a cheese grater factory at some point in their unabashedly long lifespan.

In front of the rickety wooden chair Derek was currently slouched in, Cudgel the Mare stood morosely, pawing at the damp undergrowth with her hoof. Every so often she huffed her displeasure at their current environment, but a click from Derek’s tongue was enough to keep things from escalating into all-out equine rebellion. “Can’t be long now, Cudgel.” Derek said in a warm, accented drawl. “A bit more’n we’ll be geein’ you up right square.”

And right then: whooooOOOOOOMPPHH. His ears popped and his hair flapped. The dead leaves on the ground trembled. At least two flocks of birds scattered to his left. Cudgel whinnied and readied herself to take Derek on a fun adventure into some nearby thorn bushes, but a single tug on the reins was enough of a discouragement. “Grip your biscuits, Cudgel, it’s just Keiri!”

In seconds, the scruffy man had flint-and-tindered a lit torch into being. He gripped it in a calloused fist as he leapt off his seat and headed on foot in the rough direction of the unnatural blast of air pressure. Derek swore like a drugged sailor as passing branches tried to start a fight with his head and/or steal his flaming torch as he pushed ahead into the woods. A light drizzle began to fall, cool and pattering. The lapping sound of the nearby Lake Ryone became slightly louder as a minute or two of travel passed by. Finally, he heard what he was really listening for – someone’s truly godawful impression of a Keltese raven. Shaking his head, Derek sprinted his way towards the squawking abomination, but his journey was soon interrupted by a short, black shadow jogging towards him. Derek slowed his pace and began waving his torch.

“Uh….” came his faltering greeting to the entity approaching him. “The clams hold swing…..sway……over the uh. The thing, the red thing….lobsters?”

The shadow-thing suddenly reached up and tore its own head off, revealing a freckled maiden with short flame-red hair underneath. “I told you before, Derek, you don’t have to say the thing anymore, I know it’s you.” Keiri whispered, reaching a gloved hand out towards his torch. “Quick, follow me.”

Without another word, Derek handed over the torch and tailed Keiri through thicket and thistle, until finally she came to a skidding halt in a particularly muddy area of the forest. “One second.” said Keiri, handing back the torch and ducking behind a nearby bristleberry bush. And from behind that bush, she heaved out something big, using the wet muck underfoot to slide it closer. As the torchlight revealed all, Derek felt his jaw try to abandon his face and seek new voyages underground.

“You didn’t say a girl.” he managed, as Keiri manhandled the young woman onto her side. Dressed in nothing but Keiri’s tight leather straps, the girl stared up at Derek, open-mouthed by decree of the huge ball gag in her mouth. The poor thing was shivering in her bonds and covered in mud, rain, and leaves. “Of course I didn’t say a girl,” Keiri muttered, carefully checking her captive’s bindings and re-buckling a couple. “Otherwise you’d be daydreaming all night and taking your mind off the job.”

“You can’t daydream at night, Keiri.” Derek riposted. “You didn’t say naked neither.”

“Yeah, same reason!” Keiri shot back, exasperation in her tone now. She stood up and gave Derek an admonishing look, her free hand on her hip. The rain was starting to come down heavier now. “Do you think there was time for me to pick out matching outfits? If the princess here can afford to stay warm enough at night to go to bed in the emperor’s new clothes, not my problem! Also, what have I told you before about no names, Mr Name-Sayer?”

Whether cowed by her tone or perplexed by her last statement, Derek lapsed into sullen silence. “Pick her up.” Keiri ordered, grabbing the torch back and donning her black hood once more. “Face up, and be careful. It’s slippery here, and so is she now. And try to keep your eyes to yourself on the way back.”

Derek nodded and stepped over to gather up the bound damsel, slipping one arm into the triangular passageway created by her chickenwinged arms, and the other into the convenient groove between her buttocks and the grimy soles of her feet, still anchored securely to her thighs. He lifted her with barely a grunt – she was so light and soft! As he turned to follow Keiri back the way they came, his passenger’s girly parts jiggled, and Derek felt a pleasant warmth fire up between his legs.

They returned to a wet, unhappy Cudgel in as good a time as could be expected. Still no sign of the inevitable dawn, but no reason to linger. Keiri nodded to Derek, who awkwardly ascended the single step at the rear of Cudgel’s crooked, stitched wagon. Feeling a slight twinge of sadness at their parting, Derek carefully placed his folded lady onto the lacquered floor of the wagon. He reached out to wipe some of her damp hair from her face, but she flinched her head away from his touch with a muffled squeak, and he withdrew in shame. He turned, slid off the rear wagon step, and began to head around to his seat up front when he felt a small hand frisk his big shoulder.

“Sorry for shouting at you earlier, big guy.” Keiri spoke in a gentle voice. “Grumpy Keiri was on the job for a while, okay?” Derek said nothing, just nodded and clambered up to his front seat. Keiri sighed, hopped up the rear step, and entered the wagon proper, closing the wooden door behind her.

Inside, Keiri ignored the soaked, shaking Therese for a minute, instead focusing on getting an old copper lantern lit in the ceiling of the wagon, which was now juddering around as Cudgel set off through the uneven woodland on Derek’s clipped command. Eventually the lantern ignited, filling the small wagon with sickly yellow light. There were no seats, so Keiri slumped herself against the side wall and pulled off her hood and mask. Her gaze jumped and frolicked amongst the stitches and stains of the wagon’s cloth roof as she slowly allowed her muscles to relax, and the adrenaline of the past hour to dissipate.

After a few minutes, the wagon’s irregular tilting and bumping evened out. Keiri assumed they had reached the forest road. She crawled over to her tied up prisoner - still covered from head to toe in dirt, leaves, and moisture - and moved into her eyeline. Therese Wrenshaw did not even lift her head to acknowledge her captor. She just stared across the floor, bubbles of drool congregating at the edges of her uncomfortable gag, her wet hair scattered onto the wood below. Keiri took out her sharp stiletto and crouched like a frog preparing to leap.

“Would you like me to remove the gag?” Keiri asked. At this, Therese tried to twist her head up to face Keiri, but the effort was apparently too great. Instead, her head dropped back to the floor and nodded sideways, a quiet whine dribbling its way past the black sphere.

Keiri continued. “Obviously if I do, screaming then becomes an option for you. I would advise against this, my lady, as I would then have to cut your throat, and this type of blade is not designed for quick cutting. My instructions are to bring you in alive if possible, and dead if not. Which of those two happens is entirely up to you at this point. Do you understand?”

Therese blinked away new tears and nodded again. Keiri couldn’t tell whether Therese believed that last part about killing her being an option, but she wanted to make sure the girl played ball. Carefully, Keiri reached over and thumbed the back of the noble’s hair, searching for the buckle buried beneath. She found it and clicked it free. The ends of the straps dangled either side of Therese’s lips, who grunted heavily. “Stop, don’t force it.” Keiri said in an almost soothing manner. She took Therese’s chin in one hand and slid her fingers partway into her mouth with the other. Keiri squeezed the black ball and pulled it gently past Theresa’s teeth until it finally came free with a hoarse gasp from its former home. Several trails of saliva flew out with the ball’s exit, briefly turning it into a kind of unpleasant black comet.

Keiri wiped the sodden gag on her leather-clad leg and placed it into her hip pouch. As she did so, her fingers brushed momentarily against the fishing hook inside, vibrating with incalculable energy from its recent use. She then sat back and tossed her blade from palm to palm while the Wrenshaw girl gathered herself. For a surprisingly long time she said nothing, electing instead to remain prone on her naked stomach, legs hammerlocked together, arms jutting out behind her. Her head was turned to the side, gazing at Keiri’s boots inches away. The gag had left faint marks at the sides of her mouth, like smudged makeup. Her heavy-lashed eyes were wide and blinked slow.

“Th…..thank you for taking that horrible thing out of my mouth.” said Therese, eventually. Her voice had the classic musical cadence of the highborn, flowing yet enunciated, but there was also an underlying tremolo caused by her constant shivering. “Did I hear correct? Your name is K….Keiri?”

Keiri caught the stiletto in her right hand and kept it there, considering her response. “You’re not really supposed to know that.” she eventually replied. “Does it change anything?” asked Therese. “Not particularly.” came the response.

Silence between the two for a while. Under different circumstances, the clocking of hooves in the rainfall outside, combined with the steady creak of the wagon wheels would have made for a lulling ambience.

“Am I being held for ransom?” Therese asked. To every question, Keiri never answered immediately, always considering the consequences of her response first. “I don’t know.” she replied. “We are not told the identity or nature of the client.”

“I s….s….suppose that makes a lot of sense.” said Therese. Her splayed hands began to softly massage her own back in what Keiri assumed to be an attempt at self-comfort. “If you were captured and interrogated, there is m…more risk of the c…client being exposed. So d..does that mean y….y….you don’t know what this ‘client’ plans t…t…t…to do with me?”

With every word of that last question, Therese’s voice lifted a half-semitone, until the concluding “me?” was almost a dog whistle. “No.” Keiri said. But if they wanted you dead, they’d have negotiated for an assassination – far cheaper and involves less logistics than this. It could be some aristocratic rape fantasy, but there are girls in the upmarket bordellos who could give you that for a hundredth of the price, or you could just catch some debutante alone during a gala for free. Slavery is out – no chance there’s any profit margin for this high-profile a caper. Ransom, sure, is the usual suspect, and violent revenge for some upper-class family insult is always a possibility. But in truth, a kidnapping like this is almost always an elitist power play above anything else. Hells, they might even let you go the moment we deliver you; a big dick flex, designed to remind your father, the GRAET Duke Wrenshaw, of his family’s place in the viper’s nest.

Keiri thought all this but did not speak it. Have to keep the quarry honest. But without herald or cause, an icy shard of doubt was starting to slip and slide through her bloodstream. From her appointment as contract deliverer to this very moment - suddenly, something felt off about all this. She started feeling nervous, and when Keiri got nervous, she got angry as part of the bargain.

“G…Gods above, I am so c…c…cold. I c…can…n…nn….not feel my arms..s..s….” Therese said, in a voice more curious than fearful. She twisted her torso slightly as if for emphasis, and her chest strap creaked. “It is like th…th…they are not even there. They are s..s…s.s…still there, are…..are they not?”

“Your arms are still there, m’lady.”

“But is it….I mean….m…must they be bound so tight?” Therese asked. The tremolo and staccato in her voice were due to more than just her cold body now. “Is this lack of f..f..f..feeling not a concern? What if there is p…p…p…permanent….?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Keiri scooted quickly forward again, grabbed Therese’s shoulder before she could finish her question and tilted her onto her side, putting her mud-caked frontal nudity on full display once more. But what truly caused Therese to fall silent was when this small but immensely intimidating woman began tracing the tip of her stiletto around her left nipple.

“Removing the gag was a great courtesy on my part, Lady Wrenshaw.” Keiri whispered, her lips inches from Therese’s. “Granted to one of such renown as yourself. But you’re all out of courtesies now, girl, and your voice is starting to get on my nerves. I’m not untying you, and I’m not loosening your bindings. Your arms are just numb. Behave yourself and maybe you’ll still have them by the end of all this.”

“Oh g…gods, I’m s….s…..s….sorry!” chattered Therese, staring wide-eyed down at the blade tip circling her breast like a shark. “I d….d…..d…..did not……m..mm.m..mm..m…..ean to……I m…mean…I d…didn’t….any………” The girl was quivering like a jelly now, flesh rolling and roiling inside the straps, teeth clacking, her brain and tongue flapping at each other in their desperation to form a socially cogent response. More tears sprang forth that she barely seemed aware of. “….any….t……tr……t……trans……..g……g……g……g….!”

Keiri stared at the young woman as she shook and shuddered inside her bondage from the chill of her damp skin, from the terror of her situation and the highborn guilt of her transgression, Pyre be damned, she’s trying to say transgression. Keiri had only ever undertaken two other kidnapping jobs previously, and both targets had been men that had glared at her like caged beasts once caught, loudly promising sadistic violations upon her and her family. A dark part of Keiri urged her to get out the ball gag again, get it back inside that chattering mouth, get some peace and quiet, get paid and get out. She was a child of the Guild, taken in as a young teenage orphan and trained in the ways of “transgression” without moral conflict. But here and now, she cursed the soft heart old Klarbik Guianne always accused her of having.

As the girl continued to stammer and shake on the floor, Keiri withdrew her weapon and scooted over to a wooden storage chest nailed to the front wall of the wagon behind the driver seat. Opening it, she sifted through useless sundries until she found a dusty white rag – barely larger than a tea towel, but it would do. Hanging just above the chest was a filled waterskin, which she also grabbed. By the time Keiri returned to her bound captive, Therese had lapsed into a full-blown panic attack. Her breathing had devolved into wheezing. Her restricted arms were pushing down her back as hard as they could, which in turn tightened the strap around her chest which, in turn, restricted her breathing even more. The tendons in her legs seemed to be a hair’s breadth from bursting out of her skin. Her eyes….Kapsize Keiri began to understand what people felt when they looked at her.

“Therese, calm down.” Keiri said, louder than she liked. She dropped the rag onto the girl’s side and started briskly rubbing the wetness from her skin, up and down, up and down. “It’s going to be alright, you just need to breathe.” Keiri laid down next to the girl, facing her. “In through the nose, Therese, look.” Keiri took a deep, loud breath. “In through the nose, out…” Exhaled. “…through the mouth.”

For a while it looked like she was going to pass out, but through hastily improvised mantras of composure, eventually Keiri managed to get Therese to focus her gaze forward, breathing in. Out. In. Keiri continued to rub the white rag around Therese’s back, shoulders, legs and belly, drying her off, creating a friction of warmth, but also providing a quantum of physical comfort and reassurance. Slowly Therese returned to herself, her breathing reedy but steady; even her shivers seem to subside to dormant levels. Keiri took time to untangle Therese’s dark wet hair from her face, and then wiped the rag over her head, squeezing out the worst of the water.

Keiri now grabbed the nearby waterskin. “Drink some water.” She urged, holding the spout to her lips. A moment’s pause, and then Therese’s mouth opened. Keiri poured the liquid with a level of care that, had Keiri been able to observe herself, she would have been almost embarrassed by given her vocation. She barely noticed that her hand remained resting on Therese’s bare shoulder throughout the process. The dawn’s sunrays were now starting to glide through the frosted window at the wagon’s rear. The rain had petered out for now. For a long while, nothing. Nothing but hooves and creaks. And then….

“Thank you.” Therese whispered, and immediately burst into tears. Not the jagged, mass-produced ones thus far born of crippling adversity. This was now raw sorrow, the ugly cry of the hopeless, complete with hitched breaths and unseemly sniffling. Keiri closed her eyes and laced her hands behind her head. Oh, fuck me rotten, she thought to herself. For a while she kept her eyes shut, trying to block out the cries of her quarry as the morning glow intensified within her rolling transport.

But when Keiri finally did open her eyes, she looked down at the sniffing and sighing Therese, and saw the thing happen. The thing that changed everything.

There was something…. growing out of Therese’s meticulously manicured pubic mound. A tattoo. A living tattoo, somehow snaking its black appendages across Therese’s inner thighs and lower belly. Keiri’s mouth fell open. Her arms dropped to their sides. Her eyes expanded into saucers. Therese’s sobs echoed a mile away as Keiri stared in morbid fascination. The black ink formed an indescribable configuration of geometry across the noble’s flesh that resembled no object, no person, no mortal motif. Then it froze into permanence, as if it had always been there.

Any person witness to this bizarre phenomenon would surely blench, but the effect it had on Keiri was tectonic. Her palms soaked themselves in instant sweat, her stomach broiled and churned, and nausea danced up and down her throat, now as dry as a desert. A new, stronger beam of sunlight illuminated her stunned expression. She almost didn’t realise that their wagon had come to a full stop at some point.

“Therese?” Keiri’s voice sounded submerged to her own ears. “You have a tattoo now.”

Therese raised her head, registering Keiri’s expression through her teary eyes. Something about that expression compelled her to share. “I’ve……had it since I was born.” she said in a surprisingly steady voice. “It only comes out at day.”

The sides of the wagon seemed to somehow move further and further and further away from Keiri, and her whole body tried to convince her to vomit. Her hand flew to her own belly and pressed down on it hard. She could hear Derek’s low voice outside the wagon, talking to someone that wasn’t Cudgel. Now it was Keiri’s voice that was infested by trembles. “T….Therese? Do you…..dream?”

“Keiri?” said Therese, blinking her tears away and squirming in her straps. “Keiri, you’ve gone white.”

“Do you dream? Tell me!”

“Yes, yes of course I do!”

“Do you…….do you dream of a bald man on a black throne? A bald man w…with big muscles, and long silver chains….”

“…coming out of his ribs?” Therese finished the words that Keiri started. Both their faces were ghost white now, staring at each other. Therese continued the dream. “He has a tattoo like mine on his chest, and his eyes are yellow, and…and they look at me like……like……”

Raised voices outside now. Derek, arguing with an unknown male, but Keiri could barely hear it through the tides of blood pumping past her ears. She struggled not to faint as one word spiralled uncontrollably through her brain: Bridesmaid. Bridesmaid. Bridesmaid. Bridesmaid.

Suddenly Keiri leaned forward and started desperately plucking at the straps around Therese’s legs. “We…..we have to get out of here.” Keiri said, and she hated how small and watery her voice sounded.

“What?” replied Therese, her eyes moving to the door of the wagon. “But I……how do you know about my dreams?” Keiri didn’t respond, except with a string of foul curse words under her breath. Her hands were shaking so much that unclipping the leg straps was proving hideously difficult. And then, to make things worse….

“Auughhh!” Derek’s cry of pain rang out, followed by the sound of his heavy body collapsing on the gravel road outside, and it nearly plunged Keiri into full flight mode; a natural instinct for when jobs went as horribly wrong as this. Summoning every ounce of raw courage she had, she finally released the last strap around Therese’s thighs, freeing her legs completely. “Get out of the wagon and run, Therese!” she ordered, her face still white and drawn.

“What?” replied Therese once more, only this time her tone was completely incredulous. “But you…..I can’t run with my arms like this!”

“You can and you fucking will!” Keiri hissed. A shadow then fell upon her face. Someone was right outside the wagon door, blocking the light of dawn. In less than a single second, Keiri swivelled her body so her feet faced the door, knees bent, her backside braced against Therese’s shoulder. She watched the handle of the door rotate down, and she kicked out her legs as if she were Cudgel herself. The door blasted outward from her impact, and the shadow disappeared with a sound of surprised pain.

In terms of body count, Keiri was not prolific among Guild members. It was a testament to her stealth skills, or so her mentors said, though many of her peers did not see it that way. She had killed in cold and hot blood, certainly, but less than a few of her missions had ever gone full “wet work”. Nevertheless, she had still taken to heart the prime directive of Guild tactics under extreme compromise: Survival > Secrecy > Service. Survive – kill anything that isn’t running directly away from you. Secrecy – kill anything that is running directly away from you. Service – if you’ve got the other two covered, finish the job.

She rushed out of the wagon, stiletto in hand. A masked man in dark clothes was on his back on the ground. His attempts to get up were stopped when Keiri rolled and stabbed him cleanly in the heart. She flipped onto her feet and immediately another attacker was on her, sword rising and ready to remove her head. With a whisker of motion, a black vial disappeared from her bandolier and splashed into the attacker’s face. She sidestepped the brute as he tumbled forwards, dropping his weapon, clutching his face, and hollering in abject agony.

Pain nibbled at Keiri’s shoulder as two separate crossbow bolts whistled past her. She turned and saw them reloading at the front of the wagon, dark clothes, eyes of the addicted. She drew back and lobbed a larger, rounder white vial at their feet, where it exploded into an opaque cloud of toxic smoke. Coughing in front of her, screaming behind, but by the Pyre here came a fifth bearing down on her, twin daggers clenched in his bruised fists. She parried and dodged and kicked, all tricks flowing into her mind as the man tried to murder her again and again.

Then both came to an involuntary ceasefire for a split second as Lady Therese Wrenshaw, unclothed and bound in leather from the waist up, staggered out of the wagon with a terrified expression on her face. Her sudden appearance was, for some reason, more difficult for Keiri’s opponent to recover from. Keiri did not waste the opportunity, sticking her stiletto deep into his distracted eye and kicking him in the groin. “Run!” she shouted, sprinting to Therese’s side, wrapping her arm around the girl’s waist, and leading her off the road into the surrounding woodland. Together they hurried as fast as they could past the trees and bushes, to a chorus of angry shouts behind them.

Their progress was slow; far too slow. Having had her legs folded up for so long, Therese ran like a new-born foal. Her bare feet were being molested by all manner of twigs, roots and branches. Combined with her arm bindings inhibiting her balance, Keiri was having to practically carry the noble forward each step. Keiri heard the thunk of another iron bolt embedding itself into a tree to their left. The shouting behind them was now louder, less angry, and more energised. After another minute of haphazard fleeing, Keiri finally dragged them both behind a huge fir tree and stopped, panting for breath, sweat dripping down their foreheads. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Keiri growled, rummaging through her side pouch.

“This is…insane!” Therese cried in between gasps for breath. “What do they want with us? What…in the godsblessed Pyre is happening to me!?”

Keiri responded only by pulling the small thing out of her pouch. The fishing hook relic. It was vibrating in her fingers, creating an ominous buzzing feeling throughout her whole arm, as if she had struck her funny bone. “Wait, that trinket!” said Therese, flinching from another bolt plunging into the opposite side of their tree. “You can use it to help us escape, like you did in my room, no?”

Therese’s inquiry, the eager hooting of the men behind them, their rapidly approaching footsteps - Keiri could barely hear any of it. The only thing she could truly hear in that moment as she stared at that trembling brass hook was the voice of Mentor Johrun inside her memories:

“When channelled by mortals using raw force of will, magic is inconsistent at best, and dangerous at worst. Relics are a more direct, tangible connection to that other realm of tantalising power. The mundanity of their physical form helps temper chaotic energies into something with a reliable function. But though they may be among the greatest treasures of this world, never forget that the realm they siphon their strength from is ruled by a trickster god; a devil that delights in subjugating mortal bodies. And with each tear you make in the Weave separating our world from his, you risk becoming a plaything of him and his minions.

Never activate a vibrating relic.”

Keiri waited for the very last moment, despite the shouts and screams from those around her. She gripped Therese’s waist in her free arm and held the hook at head height, allowing her eye to focus on an indeterminate point just beyond it, as she had been taught. Still vibrating. Then the masked man rounded their tree and went straight for her neck with his sword.

“Akh’elu.” Keiri invoked and was gone. The sword bounced off tough bark and was soon sheathed in fury. They were both gone.

(please vote)

a) Keiri and Therese teleport away successfully, but the meddlesome forces drawn upon by the overused relic cause Keiri to become trapped in tight bondage seemingly from nowhere. They discuss what just happened, but things become tense as Keiri tries to convince Therese to help her get free….

b) Keiri and Therese teleport away successfully, but the meddlesome forces drawn upon by the overused relic redirect their final destination. They end up captured in the hovel of a forest hermit who quickly demonstrates his desire for the two women to stay awhile…

c) Keiri and Therese teleport successfully, seemingly unaffected by the forbidden relic use. Keiri and Therese have an animated discussion about what just happened as they continue to travel through the forest. Therese tries and fails to convince Keiri to untie her…

d) Keiri and Therese teleport successfully, seemingly unaffected by the forbidden relic use. Keiri and Therese have an animated discussion about what just happened as they continue to travel through the forest. Therese convinces Keiri to untie her, and soon an opportunity for the captive to become captor presents itself…

e) Seeing that the author of this story had apparently taken over three days to come up with a few choices, I kindly offered another suggestion as to what could happen next… (no sarcasm, trust me!)

[Tapebot]

Oh wow, what an entry!

I vote E) Keiri and Therese teleport successfully, but the meddlesome forces drawn upon by the overused relic redirect their final destination. They end up in the trickster god's domain, in a labyrinth of tricks and traps, where they encounter other mortals who used a vibrating relic and got captured as the god's playthings.

[GreyLord]

This is wonderful fantasy. I like A

[Detectivesydney]

B seems like fun!

[Coaldrone]

Thanks [mention]Tapebot[/mention], [mention]GreyLord[/mention] and [mention]Detectivesydney[/mention] for the votes.

Good news - I'm reasonably confident I can find a way to incorporate all three of your voted-for options into the next part in some democratic fashion.

Bad news - I, er, haven't started writing it yet, so I'm posting this as a kind of cheap commitment to getting it done in due course, but I'll beg for your patience now rather than later.

[Coaldrone]

Hello. In the next hour or so, Part Seven of Relics will be up, after I've completed the increasingly mammoth task of formatting all the text and doing my usual last-minute panicked re-writes. There are few preambles however I'd like to put here though for my own peace of mind.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are the type of reader for whom any kind of preamble or spoiler just kills the mood, please feel free to ignore this entire post and wait/scroll down for the actual story when it's published.

First: Part Seven is ridiculously long. It is almost TWICE as long as Part Six - proceed with caution.

Second: Part Seven contains some quite disturbing elements (at least to me) that I have listed in the content warning below. If upon reading Part Seven, people feel I have written beyond the boundaries of TOS or anything like that, I trust you to take appropriate action. Perhaps you'll all laugh and say "dude, I've read much worse" but to be honest I'd rather look silly and naive than irresponsible.

Content Warning-

► Show Spoiler

Persistent foul and abusive language
Graphic, aggressive threats of physical and sexual violence
Momentary non-consensual digital penetration
Moderate (??????) sexual torture
Mild to extreme physical violence, against both males and females

Third: As promised, [mention]Tapebot[/mention], [mention]GreyLord[/mention] and [mention]Detectivesydney[/mention], I've mashed your three votes into a messy stew. I hope you at least enjoy the final result, even if it may not be exactly what you were expecting.

[Coaldrone]

Part Seven – Sable and Bruv

WhooooOOOOOOMPPHH.

Keiri yelled and dropped the hook. Its temperature had skyrocketed to the steel of a boiling kettle, and had nearly seared its shape into the flesh of her thumb. The tiny relic tumbled into the dark undergrowth below, out of sight. Oblivious to all else, Keiri fell to her knees and began a desperate sift through twisted twigs and roots in search of her treasure. Because of this, it was Therese that first became aware of their new surroundings, looking around with enormous, horror-filled eyes.

They were inside a forest still, but Therese’s subconscious was clawing at her skull, telling her not the same, not the same forest. The trees were more densely clustered here, and each one seemed painted with a faint crimson hue. Their branches were larger, more gnarled and elongated, with many of the larger ones diving back into the earth below as if trying to become trunks themselves. And was it imagination to believe that every tree was now somehow leaning towards them? Therese looked further up, and felt her stomach turn inside out.

The sun had, somehow, fully risen, and was now a gooseberry colour; an utterly unnatural spherical sea of roiling green vapour that presented itself no longer as a distant celestial mystery, but rather as a huge, skybound thing that was right there, nestled amongst the purple clouds wafting their way across the now dark sky. Therese’s mind tried and failed to process this vista properly, and instead wrung out her stomach a little more.

Below her, Therese heard Keiri utter one of her foul curses in a voice ragged with an emotion that somehow frightened Therese much more than the off-kilter landscape around her. Her arms flexed in their straps, and her chest heaved with a shaky breath. Keiri was getting up now - no hook to be seen - and as she did so, had to wrench her hand free of a root that had become entangled around her wrist during the search. As Keiri stood up and noticed their surroundings for the first time, Therese silently prayed that there would be a trace of recognition or understanding in her captor’s expression. As it had done in the wagon upon her tattoo’s reveal, the blood drained from Keiri’s face, and Therese’s prayer went unanswered.

Therese endured Keiri’s long, silent, bug-eyed stare into various random points in the distance for as long as she could bear. “Where are we?” she asked, and Keiri actually flinched, almost falling backwards into the forest foliage that had stolen her precious hook. Keiri looked at Therese as if she had magically appeared from nowhere, and slowly shook her head. “We weren’t supposed to do that.” said Keiri, and by the Pyre she sounded like a scared schoolgirl that had broken a classroom rule.

“Do what?” Therese asked. “Use the hook? If…..if you hadn’t, those brigands would have…..killed us, no?” Keiri did not reply. She was diverting her hyperactive gaze once more to the trees around them. Suddenly, perhaps irrationally, Therese felt her highborn pride ignite at being ignored by this foulmouthed mercenary. “Beg pardon!” she commanded, as a lady should when confronted with such a slight. “I asked you a question! What weren’t ‘we’ supposed to do?”

Keiri did in fact snap her attention back to the noble. She opened her mouth presumably to reply, but then her shifting gaze fell on Therese’s belly, where the mysterious tattoo remained daubed across her skin. She froze for a second or two, and Therese felt another pang of indignity at having her intimates directly stared at by this woman. Just as she was about to protest, however, Keiri did something inexplicable. First, she unclipped and dropped her bandolier and pouch into the forest debris below. Then she removed the remaining unused leather straps from her limbs, dropping them atop the discarded bandolier. “What are you doing!?” Therese demanded. No answer. Keiri then shoved the hilt of her stiletto into her own mouth, holding it there with her teeth.

Keiri began fiddling with some tiny fastenings at the front of her skin-tight catsuit. And then, when a certain number of these had been undone, she reached up, yanked at the black collar and began wriggling her way out of the suit. “What in the name of the Pyre are you doing!?” Therese asked frantically. She tried to take a step back from this madwoman, but something….something was wrapped around her ankle. Therese gasped and pulled her leg up as hard as she could. She overcame the resistance with relative ease, but looking down at her raised foot she could see a couple of thin, snaky brown roots entwined around her ankle. They were not unlike the invasive limbs of ivy that appeared in the less well-maintained areas of her family’s estate. Shaking her leg cast off the remainder of these, and she carefully placed her foot back down in a clearer patch of ground.

By the time Therese returned her attention to her abductor, Keiri had fully stripped herself of her own catsuit and shallow velvet shoes. Underneath, she wore a jet-black strapless bra and skimpy briefs. Unbound by her snug clothing, Keiri’s proportions remained modest but womanly, slender to the point of being skinny. It was also impossible not to notice a smattering of old scars in various locations on the petite woman’s body.

Keiri made a movement towards Therese, groaned through the hilt of the weapon still in her mouth, and hauled her leg upward, slipping free of a trail of winding, grasping roots in the process. She ran around behind Therese before she could react, and the noble breathed pure relief as she felt Keiri finally unbuckle her awful arm straps. She heard each of them fall to the ground, and as the final one fell, she pulled her arms around to her front with a moan, gazing at them like reunited childhood friends. They tingled with freedom, decorated with deep pink marks, and Therese rubbed them to life as best she could.

Keiri hurried back around to Therese’s front and held the catsuit and shoes out towards her. “Put these on.” Keiri urged; her stiletto having now found a new home wedged at the side of her briefs. Therese began to open her mouth to question, and Keiri gave her a look that suggested unimaginable consequences should she object. She shut her mouth, took the suit, and began the awkward, straining process of worming her figure inside it. Though the material of the catsuit was pliable by necessity, Therese was a good eleven inches taller than Keiri, and it took their combined effort to finally squeeze her inside the incredibly close-fitting attire. As Keiri knelt down and tore at the malicious brown tendrils trying to steal her bandolier, Therese revelled for a moment in her unbound and clothed state, a sensation she never realised she could be so grateful for.

Having retrieved her bandolier from the bizarre, aggressive flora around them, Keiri stood up and re-wrapped it around her now sparsely clad torso. Therese noticed there were only a couple of liquid vials remaining within – one yellow and one turquoise. “We need to find somewhere to hide.” Keiri said, eyes darting all around. Therese opened her mouth to speak, but Keiri got there first. “Look, I’ll try to explain later!” she snapped. “Right now….I think we need to get away from the hook, wherever it is, and then hide somewhere.”

“Hide?” Therese asked. “Hide from wh….?”

“Not now. Let’s go.”

Taking a moment to shake off yet more clinging roots from their legs, the pair set off in a direction, abandoning the lost relic forever. They passed warped tree after warped tree, each one somehow projecting an intangible air of malice and hunger. The only sounds they could hear were a flanged, oscillating wind that was offensive to their ears, and an irregular but omnipresent creaking of wood on wood. Every so often they passed circular bogs filled to the brim with murky, bubbling muck. The pair gave these pools a wide berth, and at one point Therese could have sworn she saw some kind of tentacle retreat beneath one filmy surface at their approach.

The longer they travelled, the more it became uncomfortably clear to Therese how unattuned to her body shape the catsuit was. The material did not breathe at all, and was stretched to near ripping point, making movement stiff and cumbersome. She felt like a blood sausage encased within and could already sense an unpleasant membrane of sweat beginning to coat itself around her skin, unable to escape the clothing. The noble was still struggling to come to terms with her insane situation; she had been attacked in the dead of night in her own bed, poisoned and tied up like an animal, left to shiver and drool in a state of humiliating undress, then forced to run barefoot from murderous cutthroats. Now she and her kidnapper were….somewhere, somewhere that enflamed every base survival instinct in her soul. It was not just the oppressive, alien landscape. Something deep within told her that this place, wherever it may be, was a very, very bad place for her to be.

Dressed in only her underwear now, Keiri was walking slightly ahead of Therese, her stiletto in a rigid death-grip, eyes all over the place. She was searching for threats just as much as solace from their current exposed position, surrounded by a thousand hiding places from which anything could be watching them. Finally, in the distance she spotted what looked to be a jagged, rocky overhang that, combined with a couple of rolling hills either side, made for a natural alcove of sorts that they could settle down in.

She turned back to Therese and managed to say “There…” before the trap beneath them triggered.

A huge net burst from the undergrowth and closed its coarse jaws around the two of them, sweeping them up into the air. Keiri yelled out in pain as Therese collapsed against her back, squashing her face and front against the thick, criss-crossed thread hemming them in on all sides. The panicked struggles of the two women counteracted each other, achieving nothing more than further entangling their limbs and making their dangling prison twirl around in the air. Keiri looked up and saw a huge tree branch above, holding the spinning net closed about a dozen feet above the ground.

“Oh gods, we’re trapped!” cried Therese, her anxious shifting causing her to bump and dig at Keiri’s back. “What do we do!?”

“Shut up, girl, I need to think!” Keiri hissed. She looked up once more at the anchoring branch, barely visible through the bunched netting gathered at the net’s sealed opening above them. She reached up through a larger hole in the weave of the net and tried to use her stiletto to slice through one of the anchoring threads, but as she had explained to Therese previously, hers was not a blade designed for cutting. In addition, there was barely room for one person inside the net trap, let alone two, and with Therese’s bodyweight pressed against her it was virtually impossible for her to manoeuvre her arm into a position that would allow for any kind of useful slicing motion.

For a few minutes the two women struggled, bickered and rotated in the air, expending much energy and making no progress. As seasoned as Keiri was in her profession, she was built for sprints, not marathons. Having been awake throughout the entire previous night, the duress of the last couple of hours was taking its toll on her, mentally and physically. Eventually, they both fell still inside their knotted tear-shaped cage, pressed intimately close with no room for respite.

*

For quite a while, nothing. Keiri occupied herself by continuing to use her ineffective weapon to stab and poke at the netting, to little outcome. It was almost as if the net was a living organism, endlessly renewing in response to her damage. She found herself wondering again and again how she had failed to spot such a crude mechanism designed for unwary game.

Keiri gritted her teeth as Therese once again spoke up. “Keiri,” she began. “I beg you, please tell me what has happened to us. Perhaps….perhaps I can help?”.

At this, Keiri laughed in genuine amusement, and for a surreal moment, the adversity of their situation retreated from her mind. She considered the offer. “Look, there’s not much I can tell you, m’lady.” Keiri eventually replied, scanning the nearby woods for any movement. “That hook was a gods-damned relic, one of the most valuable ever held by my…..group. You know what a relic is, right?”

“I….do not, not specifically.” said Therese. “They were not part of my studies at home. They are….magical trinkets, no?”

“Trinket is actually a better word than most.” Keiri conceded. “They’re everyday objects that are connected to a powerful otherworld. If raw magic is a….a waterfall, say, think of relics as a faucet. It’s the same water, but the flow of it is under control. At least, it is so long as you don’t twist it too far. You don’t use an overcharged relic, not ever.”

“I see.” said Therese. Keiri felt the noble’s chest expand and press into her back for a moment. She noticed that Therese’s voice was gaining composure once more – it seemed that conversation calmed her. “So, when you had to use the hook for a second time, it was overcharged?”

“You got it, princess.” Keiri sighed. She let her arm dangle idly down through a hole in the net. “Rule number one, and we broke it.”

“And so….” Therese hesitated, as if afraid of how to word her query. “The relic has taken us….somewhere else?”

“Yes.” Keiri replied, so quiet that Therese had to lean her ear closer to hear. “That otherworld we exploit for magical power? We’re in it now.”

“Oh, Pyre help us.” whispered Therese, her voice growing weepy again. Keiri could sense the noble’s head turning this way and that. “Please, Keiri, please tell me there’s some way we can go back? Back to our own…..world? I can’t st……we can’t stay here forever!”

“Look, stop your grizzling for a second, will you?” Keiri replied, turning her head to face Therese. “That’s not going to help us right now. There might, there might be a way, but right now you might have noticed we’ve got bigger problems. And also, I need…..I need to tell you about this world.”

Keiri returned her gaze to outside the net, and tried not to let her voice shake.

“This….this is the world you see in your dreams, Therese. We are in the domain of the bald man on the black throne, and he……he dreams too. He dreams of mortal females like a cat dreams of mice. His is the power of imprisonment, of bondage, slavery, of….of…..gods only know, and he has followers, servants, in this world and ours. There’s not a lot known for sure, about him or his kingdom. What I do know is that this is probably the worst place in all of creation for us to be, and we’re trapped in a gods-damned net. Whatever might come for us here, Therese, you…….you can’t let them take you. Scratch them, kick them, spit at them, whatever. Don’t let them take you.”

“What do you mean ‘them’!?” Therese piped, her voice high-pitched and soaked in terror at Keiri’s diabolical exposition. “What’s going to happen to…..?”

The net fell to earth without warning. One second of cool air passing, then Keiri’s shoulder whacked the ground hard, quickly followed by Therese’s weight from above, winding her badly. As Keiri struggled to catch her breath from the impact, the net began to roll across the forest floor, still tightly encircled around its two victims. Therese was screaming indiscriminately as their bodies twisted and spun together. The coarse netting scraped and pinched at Keiri’s exposed skin – the catsuit she had recently donated kept Therese protected from that at least, but did nothing to calm the noble’s panic as they bumped and rolled along.

Eventually the tumbling of the net evened out somewhat, but was still moving across the forest floor at a steady pace. Keiri looked through the tangled netting with blurry eyes, and now saw two hunched figures ahead, hauling their catch forward via two long ropes slung over their shoulders. They looked like men, clad in dark-greenish vagrant’s clothing, built not unlike Derek (Keiri’s heart shimmied a little – she had not spared a thought for Derek’s fate since the attack) and with wild, untamed grey hair. She had no idea how these two had approached without her noticing, but this was a world unfettered by predictability. Occasionally she could hear the smaller of them mutter to the other, but the bigger’s response was always a sharp retort of some kind that killed the conversation dead.

Keiri and Therese were dragged for what felt like a good mile in that horrible net, the level of their discomfort at any point governed by whatever random branches, rocks and other natural debris intruded upon the path of the mesh. Finally, a glow of firelight caught Keiri’s eye and she saw what they were approaching – a disfigured, vaguely rectangular cabin constructed of warped log walls and a thatched twig roof. The single front door was kicked open and the captives were squeezed through the threshold by the larger of the two men. Then they were pushed into a corner of the hovel, and at long last came to rest.

“What. A. Haul!” cheered the smaller one. He had a bulbous nose and sneering teeth. “Two in one net, and look at ‘em. Look at em’, Bruv!” He knelt close to the two of them, leering through the web of threads. A pervasive smell of body odour assaulted their nostrils. “Not a day over twenty, that one I reckon! An’ a redhead here ‘n’ all! I forgot they came in red. What’s goin’ on? Did I wake up or not?” The smaller pinched himself on the arm and whistled. “What’s goin’ on, Bruv? And ‘ere, why’s only one of them got any gear on? Not like I’m complainin’ – jeez, it’s like Baldie served ‘em up to us for dinner! But ‘ere, what’s she got wr…..”

The smaller’s enthused rambling was interrupted by a vicious slap across the back of the head by the larger, known only as ‘Bruv’ at this point. Due to his current kneeling position, the slap sent the smaller collapsing directly into the occupied net, provoking a squeal from Therese. “Call ‘im that name again, Sable, and see what you get.” Bruv growled in a throaty voice, kicking off his crusty hide boots into the opposite corner of the shack. The small man now known as Sable reached up to wipe his eyes, then pushed himself back up to his previous kneeling position, making liberal use of the women’s bodies for purchase as he did so. His expression was severe and discouraged now, drained of all its former thrill.

“I jus’ forgot, Bruv…..I forget…..he forgets that….” Sable murmured, almost as if he were addressing his captives. Then he just stared at the two of them, his eyes sweeping over their forms from toes to hair. Keiri noticed that the whites of his eyes were not white – they were pale green, a slightly lighter temperature of the sun’s gooseberry colour outside. She remained still, her arm carefully bent behind her back as if stuck there, her hidden hand clutching her stiletto in readiness. Therese was gripping Keiri’s shoulders from behind with white-knuckled hands, like a young child wanting their parent to carry them home.

Bruv now walked over to the corner congregation and stood behind Sable, his height casting the three of them in murk. His chiselled features were middle-aged, almost handsome, but with cruel narrow eyes that had the same olive hue behind the irises. “Let’s not muck around.” he said, pointing a thin finger at Therese. “Leave her ‘til last – I don’t reckon she could fight her way out a wet paper bag, but this one…” The finger drifted over to Keiri. “…this one’s a scrapper. I can tell from the eyes.”

“Eh?” Sable said, looking at Bruv in confusion. “I’ve shat things out ‘t were bigger than her. What’s she gonna do?”. Bruv folded his arms in front of him. “Alright then, boss.” he nudged. “If you’re such a big I-Am, go on then. Pull her out yourself, get her downstairs, chop-chop.”

Sable turned back to the small woman in the net, hesitating. Downstairs, thought Keiri. Her eyes flew over to a dark passageway at the back of the ramshackle room, and her heart started racing just a little quicker. “Um…..want me to bring the irons up ‘ere, Bruv?” Sable asked, evidently declining his associate’s offer.

“No.” said Bruv after a thought, wiping his humourless smile with a dirty brown sleeve. “It’s been so long since I had a scrapper. Let’s see how wild our little doe is.”

Sable and Bruv closed in and began extricating Keiri and Therese from the net. The two men’s breathing became noticeably heavier the closer they got to unwrapping their gifts. At one point, Bruv grabbed Keiri’s concealed arm and pulled it in front of her. The stiletto was gone, but the bigger man did not seem to notice anything amiss. They did, however, wrench her bandolier away with a modicum of curiosity, slinging it onto a crooked worktable near the entrance.

Eventually, the netting was suitably reconfigured to allow Keiri to be removed, and the two men dragged the redhead to her feet. Bruv took over quickly, gripping her upper arms from the front and pushing her away, further into their squalid cabin. Sable knelt back down and twisted the heaped netting back around Therese, wrapping some twine through the weave to prevent escape. Keiri stood alone and half-naked in the middle of the room, arms embraced protectively around her chest, eyes twirling and scanning like a gecko. Sable stood and joined Bruv at his side. They were both stood between her and the way out.

“Well come on, freckles!” Bruv crooned, a truly loathsome grin on his face as he wiped his mouth again. “Look at all them scars, jeez. You’re a scrapper. I know it, you know it, and Sable here knows it ‘cause I just told him. You’re not just gonna let us get away with this, are you? Show me a bit of cougar for fuck’s sake!” From her grounded viewpoint, Therese stared through the net holes at Keiri standing barefoot in this dim hovel, facing off against these two brutish, baiting ruffians. The noble’s mouth was moving of its own accord, silently begging Keiri to do something, anything to get them out of this nightmare.

Then Keiri did do something. She fell to her knees, put her hands on her thighs, and started crying. Sob after sob, her shoulders shaking and eyes spilling streams of tears down her cheeks. Therese’s mouth swung open almost wide enough to swallow the net.

“Please….” whimpered Keiri, looking up at Bruv with wet eyes. “Please don’t hurt me, begging you mister. Look, she….she’s the one you want, she’s honest, untouched by any man! I’m nothing, I’m just…..nothing. Just please……just…..just let me go and I’ll, I’ll do anything! Anything!”

Head down, body wracked with distress, the word ‘please’ on repeat. Therese could not believe her eyes and ears. As Keiri’s snivelling and begging continued, Sable folded his arms and put on a theatrically smug smirk. Bruv shook his head slowly. “This your scrapper, is it?” Sable jeered, then flinched when his compatriot cast a venomous glare in his direction. Bruv turned back to the sobbing girl below him. “After all that palaver, you got those scars from tasty ex-boyfriends an’ that’s it? That’s it? Massive. Fucking. Disappointment.”

Bruv took a step forward and reached for Keiri’s hair, and then her arm was up and the blade from nowhere was lodged in his gut. The big man roared in more shock than pain, and Keiri aimed her free fist at his groin. She had anticipated him retreating from the stab, but instead he advanced, knocking her backwards to the floor and rerouting her punch into his hip. As he began to smother her with his bulk, spewing Sable’s name in amongst the foulest of language, she drew back for a second stab before he could restrain her arm. She struck true, her blade sinking into his bicep satisfactorily, but the triumph was short-lived. Having been bundled over from a kneeling position, her legs were pinned beneath their combined bodyweight, and now Sable was here, shouting and tearing her trusty weapon out of her grip. Bruv stared down at Keiri, his hand clamped around her throat. His breathing was heavy, his eyes green and wide.

“Clever little scrapper.” he muttered. Then he drew his arm back, drove his fist into her face, and everything went black.

*

An open-handed impact exploded Keiri back into consciousness. Musty. Clinking. Stretched. Dim. Dust. Drool. Her eyes shuffled open and fell into focus. Green eyes, old face, bad breath. “Wake up, scrapper.” Bruv whispered. He was close enough to lick her cheek. “You don’t get to sleep through this.”

He moved away, and as if the motion permitted it, every other sensory detail came flooding in. Keiri couldn’t move. Her arms were being pulled directly above her head, her wrists sealed inside a fused pair of cold metal shackles suspending her whole body a good six inches above the filthy, moss-covered floor. Two more sets of shackles were clamped around each ankle and anchored down by two rusty iron rings sunk halfway into the ground either side of her. Together, these restraints were keeping her body permanently stretched from ceiling to floor, fingers to toes, in a taut inverted Y position. Wherever she was, it was dark and dingy, illuminated only by a couple of ancient sconces nailed to opposite soiled cobblestone walls.

There was something large and hard pressing into her mouth; a straight, stout rod of wood peeling back the edges of her lips like a horse bit, bound securely in place by scratchy twine tied at the back of her head. Her chin felt wet, and the rest of her face felt like it had been kicked by a moose; a swollen sensation amplified by the adrenalized blood pounding just behind it. Her black underwear was long gone – she was stripped bare for all to see.

Keiri tried to raise her head from its current downward-sagging angle, but some kind of binding was wrapped between her upper arms just behind her head, squeezing her shoulders together and preventing her from lifting her head more than an inch or two. More room details demanded her attention now. A crooked, ascending staircase in the far corner leading off to the hidden right. Downstairs, she thought once more, and once more with an acceleration of heartrate. An angled table with lassoed rope attached to each corner. Iron rings and makeshift pulleys jammed haphazardly into the ceiling. Another table flush against the side wall, covered with an abysmal assortment of rusted tools and makeshift implements, the purpose of which Keiri was left in little doubt. She writhed against the iron restraints, but the only tangible effects were a cording of her muscles and the sound of hopeless clinking. Therese and Sable were nowhere to be seen.

A pained grunt from Bruv over by the tool table caught Keiri’s attention. She turned her head slightly, and a sliver of the saliva congregating under her crowded tongue sloshed over her soaked chin. Bruv picked up a wicked-looking sickle from the buffet of torture trappings and turned his head to stare at her, eyes the colour of scraped jade. He was holding his side with the other hand. “You got me pretty good, scrapper.” he muttered, turning the sickle this way and that. “Had you clocked from day dot but, well, sometimes Sable’s twattishness flaps in my ear and pecks at the old noggin. Or maybe it’s just been too long, and I’m just a dopey old twat myself.”

He put the sickle down and picked up a different object; something resembling an elongated pestle made of smooth wood. He twirled it in his hand in a way that made Keiri’s toes curl. “Sable’s right, you know.” Bruv continued, a slight breathiness to his voice. “It’s like….he….sent you to us. Slim pickings out here, no secret.…jeez…..how many years we been fuckin’ around, sucking on scraps and bones? We caught that one doe a few years ago; was fun and games, until Sable left her in the bag for too long, what a palaver. Had that hag while back too, but blow me if she weren’t older than me an’ Sable together. Didn’t last long neither. Maybe….I dunno….maybe he’s finally auurrrggh….”.

The worrisome pestle slipped out of Bruv’s hand and caused a cascade of tinkling metal on the table. He gripped the edge of the table, his speech disintegrating into a feral snarl, his arm pushing into his injured side. Keiri wriggled like an earthworm trapped between sparrow beaks, sensing an approaching inferno, but the chains held firm. Bruv slammed his fist on the table to an encore of harsher tinkles, grabbed something off its surface and strode back to Keiri. His face came within two inches of hers, contorted with rage. This close, she could make out a faint genesis of perspiration on his dirty forehead.

“I can’t fucking believe I let a minicunt like you do me like that.” he said, green eyes blazed with hatred. “I should baste you right now, right back there….” He reached around and grabbed her buttock spitefully, allowing his middle finger to prod at her puckered opening. Keiri’s teeth dug into her stick-gag, and her breathing now became panting. “Bet you’ve never had a man up there, eh? I should have a ride on you right now, get it done with and then just fuckin’ slice bits off until the screaming stops.”

The calloused middle finger probed a quarter inch, and Keiri could feel her spine arching in response, preparing a cry she knew she would not be able to stop. Then the interloping digit was gone, and Bruv’s face morphed into a cataclysmic rictus grin. “But I know scrappers.” he whispered, and licked Keiri’s nose and forehead with his tongue, provoking a wordless outburst of revulsion from his prey. “Scrappers try to piss you off, see? Try to get you to…..hnnnphhh….make mistakes, or just finish the job early so they don’t suffer. But I’m onto you now, little doe, and you’re skull-solid if you think….if you think I’m gonna rush this. We are going to make this last. So, how about we get started?”

Suddenly, Bruv brought his clenched hand up and pressed whatever he had taken from the table against Keiri’s right breast. Before she could work out what he was doing, his other hand reached up and made a twisting motion, and Keiri howled as an unbearable pressure compacted her nipple, setting her senses aflame. Bruv took a step back, his hands by his sides, but the pain remained. Keiri bucked and strained, spraying drool like a sprinkler as she desperately tried to shake off the hideous thing biting into her tender flesh, but all her efforts were efficiently supressed by the cold metal binds. Every shallow breath was now a wheeze of hurt, and she felt hot in all the wrong places.

Keiri’s body eventually tired of the futile struggle demanded by her agitated mind, and she just hung there, limp and defeated before her nemesis. Her breathing became entirely nasal, filled with the shakes of abject discomfort. There were noises of a struggle emerging from the staircase behind Bruv, whose hand had returned to his side. Keiri looked down and could make out a small metal rectangle stuck to her chest, the longer sides of which had been screwed together to squeeze her in this cruel manner. She vocalised an open-mouthed emotion through her gag, and a fresh trail of drool fell to the earth.

“Hurts, don’t it?” Bruv agreed, and his voice actually cracked a little. “But I reckon the hurt’s only fifty percent, eh freckles? The other fifty percent is the outrage, isn’t it? The fuckin’ violation. How a rat like me ends up doing whatever he wants to a doe like you. Well, don’t you worry. I’ll get it up to a hundred percent hurt in no time, and then you won’t have to worry about anything else.”

Just then, Sable came into view down the visible steps, yanking on a rope in his hand. “Come on, nearly there!” he corralled, tugging Therese into view. She was still clad in the catsuit, but her mouth and head were harnessed with a stick gag like Keiri’s, and her wrists were shackled behind her. A noose was tied around her throat, and it was this that Sable was leveraging to drag her into the cellar. Therese looked distraught beyond anything Keiri had witnessed thus far, and was making constant wailing noises through her unconventional gag. “Got her ready, Bruv!” Sable exclaimed proudly. He noticed the dangling Keiri’s chest and frowned. “Here, you started without me? I thought we agreed that….”

As Sable spoke, Bruv turned away from Keiri to appraise the other prisoner. “Why’s she still got her gear on?” he demanded, cutting across Sable’s query. Sable flapped his jaw and looked positively embarrassed. “I, er…I….” he stammered. “I couldn’t work out how to get ‘er out of it! There’s like these clips but they’re really fiddly-arse so I just thought….”

Bruv interrupted Sable again, this time by backhanding him across the jaw, sending him staggering into the back wall. “You thought nothing, you dozy twat!” Bruv hissed, pointing at the shaking woman next to the staircase. “You let me get shanked by one scrapper and now you bring this one down here with all sorts of holes and gaps covered up!? Just fuckin’ cut it off her! What’s goin’ on? Eh? Are you tryin’ to cock this up, Sable? Eh? Are you stalling this, tryin’ to….gghhhh….get two for the price of one, you little….fuckin’…..”

“No, Bruv, I swear! I swear!” Sable cried, eyes wide. “Look, I got her in irons an’….an’ a noose an’ gag, and I gave her a talk to shit ‘er up; she’s not gonna do nothing, it’s alright! It’s alright, Bruv. It’s gonna happen, I promise.”

A long, tense silence followed. From their perspectives, Keiri could only see Sable’s expression, and Therese could only see Bruv’s expression. An unknown, unspoken narrative passed between the two men for which each woman received only half the dialogue. To Keiri’s eyes, Bruv’s posture was more hunched and animated now. “Get her hoisted.” Bruv ordered, waving a limp hand at Therese.

For the next few minutes, Sable tussled and pulled at the gargling, pleading Therese, getting her into position. He started by dragging her over to a part of the room overlooked by a pulley embedded in the ceiling. He grabbed a long coil of rope and attached one end to the centre of Therese’s wrist manacles. After mounting a desiccated old chair he had dragged over from the corner, Sable fed the other end through the ceiling pulley and started pulling it through like a marine rigger. As he did so, Therese’s cries became higher pitched and louder - her chained wrists were being towed behind her towards the ceiling.

Higher and higher they went, hoisted by Sable’s efforts, until she was forced to bend over at the waist to avoid breaking her arms. The catsuit material started ripping at the weakened armpit seams under the pressure. Still Sable continued to cruelly hoist his poor prisoner’s wrists, and Therese was forced to shuffle backwards two steps, her body configuration now resembling a lightning bolt motif and forcing her to exhibit her backside to all present. Finally, just as her arms were approaching a perpendicular angle, Sable stopped hauling, and tied the rope off using a huge nail in the nearby wall.

Meanwhile, Bruv turned back to Keiri and dispassionately attached a second clamp to her other nipple, provoking more pain, more struggling, more drooling. Then he walked behind her. Keiri heard a rusty cranking noise, and her teeth chewed deep into the wood in her mouth as her chained wrists were somehow elevated another inch. She was racked to the limit now; one more crank and her spine would start separating. Sweat poured down her body. Both women were now moaning and panting through their gags, but to Sable and Bruv, the clamouring was indistinguishable from their own warped perception of the deepest throes of female carnal passion.

Bruv walked back past Keiri to Sable, but not before Keiri caught another wince of pain in his expression. He was looking paler by the second. “Will you hurry up!?” he rasped. “Cut that stupid getup off her now!”

“I’m doing it!” Sable protested. He was indeed using a serrated dagger to cut through Therese’s catsuit, using the torn armpits for purchase, but progress was slow. Just then, a horrific realisation burst through Keiri’s pain at what was happening, but she was powerless to prevent or influence it. Without warning Bruv grabbed the blade from Sable’s hand and shoved him back. “Give it here, you fugginuurrghhh……”. As if using his pain as a foundation, Bruv yanked down on the blade with both hands and the suit was rent in twain down Therese’s left side, leaving a superficial cut down her ribcage. Therese’s continued articulations of despair echoed all around, and a quiet part of Keiri felt like joining her, trapped here in this hell.

“Th…..thanks, Bruv.” Sable murmured, shuffling back to Therese. Bruv threw his hand up in an aimless gesture and pocketed the dagger. He went back to the torture table and grabbed the big wooden pestle he had mused over before, then walked back behind Keiri. She felt his old hand curl around her breast; she shut her eyes tight. She felt his disgusting breath on the back of her neck; her shoulders erupted in gooseflesh. And then, she felt the wooden head delve between her buttocks, and she knew…..she knew she was going to start screaming….

“Bruv?”

Sable’s quiet voice, floating ignored amongst a sea of dismal sensations. Then Bruv’s whisper in her ear like a dying toad: “One hundred percent hurt coming right up…”

“Bruv!”

The hand disappeared. The wooden head disappeared. Keiri felt something spin past her head and heard a wooden thwack against the opposite wall. “Shut up you stupid twat I can’t fucking do this with your fucking carryin’ on!”. Bruv’s voice was a crackling, croaky whistle. Keiri kept her eyes shut, and for the first time in her life, seriously considered praying to the Pyre.

Sable, for a third and final time. “Bruv…….she’s a bridesmaid.”

Silence. The energy of the entire cellar seemed to sluice out of the dark, dusty corners, replaced by something inert and pressurised. Even Therese quietened. Keiri dared to open her eyes. Bruv was staggering slowly towards Sable, who was on his knees, staring at Therese’s naked torso with an expression of alien ambivalence – joy and horror, amalgamated in defiance of all laws. Bruv reached Sable and crouched awkwardly. He followed the stare, his mouth cracked open, and his eyes became almost perfectly spherical. The wrinkles and imperfections in his face seemed to deepen, to age.

“Oh god.” Bruv said, in a voice so unburdened by any of its usual rasping maturity that for a moment Keiri thought someone else had said it. For a century they both stared at the tattoo, unable to speak or think. Then Sable took a breath, sucking away the stasis with it.

“This is it, Bruv.” Sable cried, clapping his hands together. “She…..she wasn’t sent to us by Bal……by the king. She was sent……she was gifted to us, to deliver to the king! Oh, Bruv, if we take her to him, he’ll take us back too! Both of us! We…..we can go back!”

Sable was crying, hands clasped in humility. Bruv reached out a trembling hand and traced a finger across a painted motif at Therese’s belly. One solitary tear escaped the corner of his eye, slowly navigating the fractures of timeworn skin in its journey towards the dry earth. But its path was diverted as Bruv’s expression suddenly transmuted into that of pure hatred. He stood up and started taking off his frayed belt. “No one’s getting taken back anywhere.” Bruv said in a muffled, frightening whisper. “You can have the scrapper; this one’s mine.”

“WHAT!?” Sable shrieked, jumping to his feet. “You said I could have…..no fuck that, she’s a bridesmaid, a bridesmaid! This is…..this is all a sign! She got sent to us to help us go back home, Bruv! You…..you can’t do this to me again, not again! If you touch her, he’ll find out! He’ll punish us again, he’ll……he’ll……”

As Sable stammered and spat, Bruv waddled out of his pants towards Therese’s rear where her squirming backside remained on permanent display. His bloodless face was contorted by a tsunami of emotions. Oblivious to all, he reached out and began tearing the black leather at the young woman’s hip, peeling open his rightful boon.

“Stop it, Bruv!” beseeched Sable, tears cascading down his fat cheeks. “You always muck it up for me! You always take everything for yourself, just stop it! Look at where we are, look at what you’re doin’! It’s a fuckin’ bridesmaid! He’s gonna know, the king's gonna know and you’re gonna muck it all up for me again just like you always do! JUST STOP IT!”

The smaller ran at the bigger and pushed him. Hard. Consumed by his own self in the moment, Bruv was caught completely unawares, and fell back into the wall next to the staircase. An impact, then a cough. The nearby lighted sconce crashed down, its pitiable illumination extinguished forever. For a moment Bruv stood pressed against the cobblestone as if glued there, eyes bugged and still. Then he collapsed to the ground, and as he did so, his side painted a wet smear of blood on the wall. That smear ran in a wide, slanted line between the floor and a red, dripping nail sticking three inches out of the wall at waist height. Sable’s hands flew to his mouth. He ran to Bruv’s side and floundered over him, turning the bigger man onto his back. His eyes were closed.

“Bruv….” he managed to whisper before the dagger in Bruv’s hidden fist sank into Sable’s chest. Bruv opened his green eyes. The two men stared into each other’s soul. Blood trickled from both mouths in perfect synchronicity. Then Bruv’s teeth nestled into his lower lip, preparing to enunciate his final three words.

“Fuck the king.”

Sable’s body crumpled into Bruv’s, and both were still and silent in their embrace.

*

From their stretched and contorted positions, Keiri and Therese stared at the two entwined bodies for a long time, waiting in horror for one or the other or even both to rise again and resume their brutality. Neither did, and as if a starter flag had been waved, the two women began struggling with all their might.

Keiri gave up first – every one of her limbs was sealed in unyielding iron, and Bruv had made sure she had no room to manoeuvre whatsoever. Her only hope lay with Therese, who was thrashing mindlessly and twisting her arms behind her back. Keiri’s heart sank – she could see that Therese’s fingers were trying to reach the knot in the rope around her shackles pinning her in that cruel strappado stance, but it was positioned too far along her forearms. Keiri’s decorated chest seared with pain once more, and she felt a new type of despair creep in. How many days could they last down here? Three? Four?

But just then, it was time for Lady Therese Wrenshaw, Baroness of Aulderpaw, to take Dusk Guild Associate Keiri Quillian completely by surprise. The noble suddenly stopped struggling and took a deep breath. She set her wet gaze on the dagger on the floor next to Bruv’s body, an impossible distance away. Then she kicked both feet forward and let her body fall to the floor.

An empathic wince took over Keiri’s body and forced her to shut her eyes, unable to watch the impending dislocation and screams of agony. But the only things that came to her ears were an unpleasant click and a gentle huff of breath. She dared to open her eyes. Therese’s arms were still manacled, but they were now above her, not behind her. Her shoulders looked bloated and strange, but then Therese set her feet again, eyes fiery and fearful, and launched herself backwards. The bonds yanked her arms to full stretch, and with another click the shoulders were set right. Even if Keiri’s wooden gag didn’t demand it, her jaw would be hanging open anyway.

Therese turned her gaze once more to Bruv’s bloody dagger, the distance to which had just downgraded from impossible to very difficult. Moving as far as her loosened leash allowed, she stretched her right leg out with the poise of a gymnast. It took minutes and minutes of torturous poking, nudging and sliding, but at long last, with cramped, shaking toes, Therese slid the dagger beneath her.

Keiri could not help herself. She cheered through her gag with maniacal joy, sloshing herself with drool once again. The promise of freedom from this nightmare was almost too much for her heart to bear. She watched Therese lower her body, allowing the wrist manacles to bear her bodyweight. Then, after a few false starts, she scooped up the dagger between her dirty feet, and with hope’s strength, lifted herself entirely upside down with a grace that made Keiri want to cry. Therese bent her knees, and held the dagger right above her grasping hands, every one of her muscles trembling from the impromptu acrobatics. The dagger was released by the feet and caught by the hands.

The manacle rope did not last long under Therese’s frenetic sawing. It snapped, and aside from the manacles themselves, she was finally free. She brought the dagger up with both hands and slashed the gag from her face, spitting and coughing the accumulated detritus away. Then Keiri felt her heart burn and boil as Therese gripped the blade tightly, eyes blank and middling, strode over to the two men and started stabbing. Back, legs, neck. Eyes. Again, and again, and again, until the Pyre itself could not revive them. Her tattoo was drowned in blood. Then she fell upright to her feet, and looked at Keiri for the first time since Sable had called her a bridesmaid. Her expression was pale and unreadable, a tempest rendered motionless by divergent discharge.

Therese stepped forward and cut Keiri’s stick gag from her head. It fell to the floor, quickly followed by spit and splutter. Keiri gazed at Therese, and for a crazy moment wanted to kiss her. “That…..that was incredible.” she whispered, and she meant it. Therese simply held up her wrist shackles. “How do I get out of these?” she asked in a blank voice. Keiri excitedly replied. “Find my bandolier upstairs. There are two vials left – we need the yellow one.” Therese nodded and ran upstairs, remnants of her tattered catsuit trailing behind her like decorative tassels. Keiri groaned, lamenting not asking Therese to remove her nipple clamps first as they sent her ribs a fresh pulse of fire. Therese soon returned with the bandolier. She carefully fished the yellow vial out of its recess. “Now what?” she asked.

“Just pour a little of it onto the two locks.” Keiri instructed. “It reacts with metal, should melt through it quickly. I normally use it on doors and chests, but this works too. Gods, does this work too!” Therese did as instructed, pouring a dribble of the liquid into the keyhole of both shackles, and almost immediately white steam rose from the gaps, carrying with it an unpleasant aroma. “When they saw my tattoo, they called me ‘bridesmaid’. Do you know what they meant?” Therese asked.

“I do.” replied Keiri. “There’s too many details, but you’re….special, Therese. Special to the man in your dreams. Thank every god you know that those two never got to take you to….him….ow…..listen, can you take these things off my boobs?”

“Your what?” asked Therese, blinking once. Then comprehension infused her pallor slightly. “Oh. Yes.” She stood to full height, and after some tentative tinkering, succeeded in unscrewing the despised contraptions. Keiri breathed out raw gratitude. At the same time, the alchemical formula burned through the remainder of Therese’s shackle locks, and they fell off her wrists and thumped to the floor. Therese knelt down and now held the yellow vial out towards Keiri’s right ankle shackle. “You mentioned before there might be a way back to our world?” Therese asked; an inquisitive, level voice.

Sailing a wonderful palette of relief, vindication, and excitement, Keiri answered. “Yeah. You being a bridesmaid is a curse and a blessing here. In a few hours it should be night-time in this world, and I think…..I think that’s when you’ll be able to see places where the Weave is thin or torn. I don’t know exactly how it works, but bridesmaids can….sort of…..push through these gaps. They use this power to keep away……to….to keep away…...from…..uh…….”

Keiri trailed off. She was looking down at Therese, who was still kneeling by her right leg, holding the vial next to the shackle. “Therese?” Keiri asked. Her hands clenched high above her. “What’s wrong? You haven’t used all the liquid, have you?”

“No.” replied Therese. She stood up once more and faced Keiri. There were new tears in her eyes. “I haven’t used any of it.”

At first Keiri’s brow furrowed, her exultant reverie jarring with Therese’s strange words and creating confusion. But slowly, ever so slowly, the fog cleared. And with understanding, came terror.

“No.” Keiri whimpered, the most wretched timbre infecting her voice. “No, please, Therese, you can’t……”

“You took me from my bed.” Therese said, cutting the chained woman off. “You dragged me naked, and bound, and gagged through mud, and rain, and…..and…..you brought me here. You brought me to those……monsters, and they nearly…….they nearly……”

“I’m sorry!” Keiri cried, muscles winding, ribs heaving. “Gods, Therese, it’s not what I wanted! It was a fu…..it was a job! If I knew……what you were…..I’d have never taken it! Please, please…..”

“Shut up.” Therese ordered with authority born of privilege. The side of her mouth was twitching, eyes still streaming. “You hurt me. You let them hurt me. You…..you dragged me through hell. I don’t know where I am or what I’m supposed to do, but I do know one thing. You are going to stay here and rot in this hole where you belong.”

“No, please, look, this is a mistake! Wait, Therese, listen, you don’t know how I know so much about this place! Just please, please listen for a minute!”

Therese was gathering up the bandolier now, wrapping it over her shoulder. “It’s because of m…..my sister.” Keiri hurriedly jabbered. “She wa……I mean……she’s like you, she’s just like you! The Guild, look, wait listen, they told me about these things, they…..they……”

Now Therese was picking up the dagger in one hand, the half-full yellow vial in the other, unresponsive to her abductor’s staccato ravings. And then she was leaving, climbing the ancient staircase to the outside world.

“Don’t leave me here Therese!” Keiri’s scream was almost boyish in pitch. She rattled and flexed in her immovable suspension, and her cheeks were now as wet as Therese’s. “I’m sorry Therese, Therese I’m sorry! Please, gods, you can’t leave me here like this! Don’t go, don’t go, just let me out and we can no! NO!”

Bound in eternal place in this pit, Keiri dissolved into formless howls of misery that perhaps only her own mind could ever translate to a convincing argument as Therese disappeared from view up the stairs. And then, as a final demented flourish, the wax flame in the last remaining sconce sputtered and died, plunging Keiri into pitch blackness.

Lady Therese Wrenshaw looked around the cabin of death, her untrained eye searching for usefulness. Her ears registered Keiri’s ragged voice far below, but they refused to fully interpret the sound. Eventually she found a large knapsack under a rocking chair, and she filled it with things she thought should go into it. Then she headed for the front door and grabbed the handle.

She paused, and a familiar feeling came over her, one that she had first felt as a small child. A feeling of sheer, undiluted possibility, an image in her mind’s eye of a pale blue web, spiralling outwards forever and never the same pattern repeated. And she could feel him. Him reaching out and crushing those infinite lines into finite bunches with both fists, again and again and again. Beyond that, Keiri’s voice once more. Therese made out the word sister among the dissolved elocution, but that was all.

Her heart quaked and her eyes closed and her grip turned the handle halfway. And in her mind’s voice, she asked a question….

(What do I do?)

[GreyLord]

WOW! [mention]Coaldrone[/mention], This is absolutely fantastic. Your description of the bondage is detailed and clear. The plight of Keiri and Therese bring out feelings of sympathy. The ending is perfect. Who could say that Keiri does not deserve to be left by Therese. Very good work.

[Coaldrone]

Thank you [mention]GreyLord[/mention], I really appreciate the kind comment. Knowing that even one person is enjoying the story is the only thing keeping me on this so thanks again.

I've taken a little break following the wall of melodrama that was Part Seven, but I have now written a couple of tentative pages for Part Eight, and in general once I start writing at least something, things usually blossom from that. As before, this post is a pseudo-commitment from me to get it done, at least at some point.

One other thing, GreyLord:

Who could say that Keiri does not deserve to be left by Therese?

You offer an important question. I was just curious as to what your answer to it might be...

[Caesar73]

Knowing that even one person is enjoying the story is the only thing keeping me on

I've taken a little break following the wall of melodrama that was Part Seven, but I have now written a couple of tentative pages for Part Eight, and in general once I start writing at least something, things usually blossom from that. As before, this post is a pseudo-commitment from me to get it done, at least at some point.

First thing: Don´t take the lack of comments to hard. That does not mean your Story is not well recieved. A lot of people do read, but do not comment. Sad but true.

Please continue the way you have begun. This story has potential. And talking from - my not so large experience - sometimes the words just flow and sometimes not. That is just the way it it is.

[GreyLord]

One other thing, GreyLord:

Who could say that Keiri does not deserve to be left by Therese?

You offer an important question. I was just curious as to what your answer to it might be...

Breaks are often necessary. Inspiration does not follow a schedule.

To answer your question, Keiri definitely deserves to be left by Therese. But because their interactions are so interesting, karma should quickly bring them back together. Perhaps with a different dynamic between them. Could Therese capture Keiri and still get Keiri to help her? Just one option, of course.

[Coaldrone]

[mention]Caesar73[/mention], thank you for the sobering advice. I completely agree with your point regarding comments - I think part of the reason why I made this a voting story was in some way to manufacture/provoke responses, but I also think it would be more than a little hypocritical of me to get discouraged by that when I myself have never commented on anyone else's story here, despite reading and enjoying many of them. I did notice (and was a little excited) to see this tale passed 10000 views at some point, so I'm hopefully doing something right. Hello fellow silent readers! *waves*

Anyway, you're not here for paragraphs of introspection, are you? You're here for Part Eight, which I'm just about to post. It's shorter than Part Seven, but that's not really saying much is it?

[Coaldrone]

Part Eight – Hakal Hunt

Things were tense.

“I said, how many times did you use it?”

“Oh, for……I can’t remember! At least five, no more than ten, I’m pretty sure.”

“Ten!? Are you out of your godsdamned mind, girl?”

“Stop calling me….”

“Do you even know what this thing is? You follow me here with….no, go around the other way…..with damn near seven feet of muscle to steal my score and you don’t even….”

“Look, have you already forgotten how I saved your life? You’d probably….ugh….be having your skin melted off right now if it weren’t for me!”

“You have got to be kidding me. If it weren’t for you, I’d be back in Catouvin right now soaking in a herbal bath!”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Pasfina. I know it’s a relic, and I know what relics are. You gave it to me to use, and I used it to get us…..nggghh….both….out of here. Now can you let me go, please?”

“No, and quit asking. Once we’re out of here I’ll figure out what I’m going to do with you.”

Pasfina and Shana traipsed through the upper sanctums of the Althari ruin, winding their way past gigantic toppled columns and statues. Outwardly, the relic hunter looked bedraggled and destitute – her body was covered in bruises, welts, wounds, and a black eye to boot. She had torn off and repurposed the legs of her linen pants; one pant leg was wrapped around her chest, forming a makeshift boob tube to replace her lost brassiere. The other was around her waist, covering her trap wound which was now turning an unnerving dark purple colour. Her pants had now shrunk to small grey shorts as a result of the improvised tailoring.

Inwardly, she was an aching, throbbing mess, driven on by just two things by this point - belligerent defiance of the sheep manure the world seemed to be lobbing in her face recently, and the satisfying weight of the brass crown stuffed in the reclaimed dungeoneering pack slung against her back. Her throat was sandy and dry, and it hurt to swallow – it had been at least six hours since she had last drunk anything.

Walking just ahead of Pasfina, Shana was doing better than her counterpart, both in the injury and clothing arenas. Her shoes, silk pants and drape were all intact and donned. However, she did have one added item of apparel that she was not happy about. One end of a rope was looped around her wrist and knotted securely. That rope then travelled up her back, around the front of her neck, then back down her spine where the other end was knotted around her other wrist. This unwanted accessory kept her hands hauled high up behind her back, to the point where she could almost flick the ends of her own blonde hair with her thumbs. A closer look at Shana’s hair revealed the miniature horseshoe, deliberately tangled within the golden strands. It was shaking and glowing faintly, animated by forces unknown.

Inwardly, Shana was seething with frustration. No sooner had the two of them reclaimed the Last King of Sykrane’s crown under the noses of the furious but disorganised dwarven rabble, the deceitful bitch behind her had knocked her out during a moment of distraction and roped her up as she lay unconscious. Shana took light consolation from the fact that had Pasfina planned to kill her, she could have done so a thousand times over. She tried once again to shift her secured arms into a more comfortable position; their exhausting return to the surface had already taken over an hour, and her shoulders were filing new complaints every minute.

“You know what, Shana, how about we make a deal?” said Pasfina. “You tell me why you risked all manner of death and dismemberment following me down here for this crown, and I’ll cut you loose when we get outside, how does that sound?”

“I have a better deal.” replied Shana, carefully stepping over a jutting outcrop of stone. “You kill me, and I don’t have to listen to any more of your deals. Deal?”

“Don’t tempt me, girl.”

“I’m not a girl, and you’re not a killer, Ms Dejene. We’ve had our eye on you for quite a while now. As much as you might dislike it, you’re gathering something of a reputation throughout the land. Prolific. Young for a seasoned relic hunter. Female. Strong. Clever. Beautiful…”

“Hey, it’s a little late for seduction techniques, honey. Obviously I’m flattered, but something tells me I probably shouldn’t start untying you so we can make out just yet. ‘We’ve had our eye on you’? You sound like the Guild of Dusk, just with shittier cliches.”

“….but despite all those admirable qualities – your rudeness notwithstanding – you have no ties to anything. No children. No husband. No…..wife. Not even a real home. You live a nomadic existence, drifting from city to city, plying your trade, fencing your ‘scores’, then moving on when your gains start to attract the wrong sort of attention. One wonders what drove you to such a perilous vocation, such a lonely journey…”

“Wow, you’re pretty good at this. Okay, here’s one – what’s my favourite colour?”

“White or grey, if your fashion sense is anything to go by.”

“Nice. Is that whole killing you deal still on the table….hey!”

Pasfina bumped into the back of Shana, who had suddenly stopped in her tracks. Shana then quickly turned her head from left to right, swinging her adorning horseshoe to and fro. “What the hells are you stopping for? Get moving.” Pasfina demanded.

“It feels like something’s watching me.” whispered Shana, her voice betraying genuine disquiet. “I’ve felt it ever since I got out of that dwarf tent.”

“What, with my relic that you’ve been firing off like a kid’s catapult?” Pasfina said. She took another look at the bristling artifact she had wedged in Shana’s hair, then turned to peer behind her. Nothing but inky gloom. “Shit. Get moving, Shana. We need to get out of here before something happens.”

“What do you mean, someth…”

She shoved Shana forward hard enough to cause a stumble, and the edgy banter expired for the moment. Eventually, the expansive atrium funnelled into an irregular, inclined tunnel. Forced to lower her head and shoulders to avoid the low ceiling, Shana struggled to keep her balance through this final stretch. Then, having spent almost an entire day traversing ancient subterranean darkness, both women squinted as they pushed past the last few tendrils of hanging moss into the beating noonday sunlight.

All around them stood the towering palm and balsa trees of the immeasurable Hakal Jungle. The omnipresent symphony of birds, beasts, insects and rustling leaves was a familiar sensation welcomed by both women, despite the circumstances. Pasfina clamped her palms against the small of her back, pulled her shoulders back as far as they would go and arched her spine with a groan and an audible crack. Shana simply looked back at the dark, ovular opening in the dilapidated, overgrown temple they had just emerged from with a regretful expression. Pasfina adjusted her backpack, noticing the look. She let a moment hang before she spoke.

“I didn’t want to kill him.” she said, her brow low. “He came at me with his sword arm up. That must have been on your…”

“Who are you talking to, Ms Dejene?” Shana interrupted, turning to face the relic hunter. Her full red lips were pursed to thin lines. “You have me bound and at your mercy; why seek absolution from the defeated?”

“I’m not seeking…”

“What’s done is done.” Shana concluded in a way that left Pasfina at a rare loss for words. Shana’s chest expanded with a huffy breath, her silk wrap rippling around her torso. “So, what are you to do with me, crown taker?”

“You’re with me until the horseshoe regresses.” Pasfina rallied. “I’ve only seen it shake like this once before, and the experience was….anyway, forget that, we’ll head south to Catouvin and….”

“Wait, what ‘experience’ are you talking about?” Shana interrupted once again, her voice pitch starting to levitate. “Come to think of it, why have you tangled this thing in my hair? What is it going to do!?”

“Look, you rut in the bed, you lie in the juice, Shana.” Pasfina replied, her patience withering. “I thought you knew what relics were. If I’m carrying the thing when….if anything happens, then we might both get screwed….Shana, stop it!”

The younger woman had begun spinning in a futile, almost comical circle, tilting her head back and squeezing her bound hands painfully up between her shoulder blades and into her hair in a frantic effort to reach the horseshoe with wiggling fingers. “Get it off, get it off, I want it off me! Get it off!”

Pasfina moved towards Shana and grabbed her twirling shoulders. “Look, st…”

Shana’s knee flew up into Pasfina’s solar plexus. The relic hunter felt her innards scatter and burst into flames as the empty spaces they once occupied became filled with solid, suffocating smoke. A near-retching hack pummelled out of her mouth as she collapsed to the ground, followed by low pitched gasps. Her ears registered the sound of hurried, fading footsteps as her vision swam in brackish brine. The pain from the sudden blow refused to recede at all, having joined her other injuries in a kind of sensory frat party that had been getting out of hand long before the new guy arrived. The left side of Pasfina’s face flattened itself against the leafy jungle floor, her watery gaze settling on a small green mantis on a nearby twig. It twitched its ridged antennae in her direction, seemingly entertained by the show.

“Pyre, do let me know when I can catch a fucking break.” slurred Pasfina, as she once again relied on that deep core within her to fire up, dragging herself to her trembling feet and listening intently. She caught the distant sound of crushed undergrowth to her right and staggered towards it as quick as she could.

*

Shana’s shoulders were no longer filing complaints – they were beating at the door and demanding to speak to the owner this instant.

She ran with every scrap of constitution remaining, leaping over errant roots, bouncing off closed thickets of trees, and splashing through thin, snaking streams underfoot. Occasionally she tripped and crashed to the ground, but each descent was cushioned in part by the ubiquitous flora and moist earth, allowing her adrenaline to get her back on her feet after a short, armless exertion. But the pain in her arms, back and shoulders from her strict bind had intensified to agony from the relentless jostling, and every other step was now accompanied by distressed gasps. The rope at her neck was chafing ruthlessly, leaving a thick red line of scraped skin.

Please, she thought, please let me find one of them, blessed Pyre.

Then, after several gruelling minutes, Shana made out the faint sound of crashing water up ahead. Her imagination alchemized the sound into hope, and her body used that hope to purge the worst of the pain and redouble her efforts. But as she hurtled past a rocky overhang on her left and a buzzing marsh on her right, she heard unwelcome noises behind her. Snapping twigs, clomping footsteps, and a shout:

“Shana! Don’t be stupid, girl!”

Ostensibly choosing stupidity, Shana fled from the voice, continuing towards the roaring up ahead. The thick trees began to disperse, making room for smoothed rocks and moss. And there, up ahead, the pounding rim of a huge waterfall, cascading nearly eight storeys down into an immense blue lagoon. Shana heart sang. I know where I am! But in what had seemed like only a second of reverie, her pursuer now hurtled past the trees just behind her, closing the gap to a handful of yards. Shana’s panic caused a mis-step, and she fell to the earth once more, landing on her already bruised shoulder.

Pasfina skidded to a halt next to her prone captive, huffing and puffing, hands resting on her knees. Shana made a single attempt to gain her footing, slipped uselessly in the soil, and gave up. Taking more than a moment to catch her breath, Pasfina whisked her pack from her shoulders to the ground, then stepped over Shana’s squirming body, staring down at her. “If you….hhhhh…..wanted to do this the hard way, you only ha……fhhhh…..had to ask, Shana. Now let’s get….you….”

A silent arc of blue lightning pulsed from Shana’s hair into the trunk of a nearby tree and disappeared. Pasfina froze. Another arc, flashing into an indeterminate point in the sky, then gone. Pasfina took a step back and tripped over her pack, sending her sprawling. Four blue arcs at once this time, one firing into a twig just inches from her foot. She tried to gain purchase with her hands in the slippery mud underneath to no avail.

And then she flung an arm up in front of her face as Shana’s head exploded into blistering cyan radiance as now hundreds upon hundreds of newborn bolts arced here and there, some long, some short, some crooked and meandering, others straight and purposeful, each lasting the merest unit of time before being replaced by three siblings that were more energetic, more determined to escape the nexus. Many bolts pierced Pasfina’s prone body, but she felt no trace of their passing. The ethereal incandescence swelled, consuming Shana’s whole body which was somehow still kicking and wriggling.

Pasfina then threw out her favourite expletive as the overcharged relic manifested its sudden reprisal…

(please vote)

a) The relic tears open the Weave and a colossal, black, skulking arachnid crawls forth from the rupture, its eight spinnerets oozing faint green silk dripping with viscous fluid. An equal number of enormous glossy eyes scan the two women with alien, predatory exhilaration.
b) The relic’s power animates every vine, root and grass in the vicinity. The army of natural tendrils close in on Shana and Pasfina from all sides, seeking warm bodies.
c) The relic’s power attacks Pasfina directly, trapping her body in magical, inescapable bonds (feel free to include what type of restraint you’d like to see).
d) The relic’s power discharges into Shana’s body directly, transporting her into the otherworld and leaving Pasfina alone with her prized crown, but without her horseshoe.

[GreyLord]

C. The magic weaves vines into high quality rope that binds Pasfina in a hogtie. Unfortunately, Shana remains tied in her reverse prayer-like position.

[Caesar73]

C. The magic weaves vines into high quality rope that binds Pasfina in a hogtie. Unfortunately, Shana remains tied in her reverse prayer-like position.

Also C! And what [mention]GreyLord[/mention] describes here, I subscribe too as well! A very good chapter!

[Coaldrone]

Thanks [mention]Caesar73[/mention] and [mention]GreyLord[/mention] for your votes. I'm just uploading Part Nine now.

I have not included voting options at the end of this part, as in a rare moment of decisiveness I have a fairly definitive idea of where I want the next part to go in terms of narrative. Nevertheless, I am always open to freeform, spurious speculation on what might/could/should happen next. Hope you enjoy.

[Coaldrone]

Part Nine – A Relic’s Retribution

The bright bolts and their dazzling performance were suddenly sucked back into the whirling singularity of cyan light surrounding Shana. Pasfina planted her palms into the ground and prepared to push herself to her feet when a massive wave of energy pulsed out from the epicentre, accompanied by a dire, atonal klaxon of elemental resonance. The sheer volume forced Pasfina to reach up and cover her ears, causing her to fall flat on her back once more. Then, as if infected by a malignant malady, spots of olive-green colour began appearing on the surface of the round blue light. The spots grew and combined and spread with alarming speed, until the orb was completely green, roiling and spinning through some unknown engine of otherworldly force.

Run.

Pasfina staggered to her feet just as a second pulse emanated out with an equally vulgar fanfare, buzzing her ear drums even through her protective hands. She stared in horror as her surroundings began contorting and misshaping before her very eyes; trees to twisted brown bones, waterfall to black tumbling muck, clouds to virulent purple miasma. A chaotic desecration of reality itself.

Run.

Pasfina stepped backward and made a quarter-turn away from the madness of colour and nightmare, but then her eyes fell upon her upended pack on the ground. Then they focused further, onto the bronze crown just poking out from the lip of the opening.

Finally, her eyes gazed upon the horrific, phantasmic, glowing green tentacle that was slowly emerging from the spinning orb. It was smooth like molten glass, with indescribable shadow-shapes traversing up and down its length like dark currents.

It was reaching towards her pack.

Run.

In other places that were not this, other Pasfinas may have run. Other Pasfinas may have listened to their sage internal counsel and taken other, safer paths through life. But this Pasfina did not give up a score. Not this one, not any one, to anything. Ever.

She bolted forward two steps with a low-pitched roar, contesting the alien thing for the coveted prize. The tentacle reared up and angled itself to the side in an almost quizzical response. But when Pasfina skidded to one knee and swept the jagged edge of the crown into her grasp, the reaction from the tentacle required no inference whatsoever. Its flesh transformed into a colour for which the word yellow was insufficient – it was now the colour of jaundiced corpses baking under cloying summer heat. The shadows within its mass suddenly sprouted through its membrane like needle traps, turning into irregular black barbs. The tip of it flew up, then flung itself down towards Pasfina’s head.

She rolled to the left and felt something scratch her back just before the tentacle smashed into the grass beside her, crushing her pack flat. As her roll completed, her crouched knees took over, firing her legs straight by instinct and jumping her away into the air just above the tentacle’s horizontal swipe across the ground. With insufficient momentum to stick the landing, she bounced on her backside and just about managed to lift both legs up as the hostile tendril swiped back the other way, its straining tip tickling the backs of her thighs. With a shouted curse, Pasfina clumsily rolled backward, head over knees, in an effort to gain any distance she could between her and the aberrant entity.

Her head tilted up quickly enough to witness the glowing tentacle make another attempt to reach her. Its tip speared directly towards her head, the sharpest of the black spikes rotated to enable impalement of whatever they met in motion. One pointed protrusion came within an inch of her eyeball before its velocity was decapitated, the tentacle apparently unable to emerge further from the sphere. In her peripheral, Pasfina noticed that parts of the enormous radiant sphere were beginning to turn blue again, and the tentacle itself was losing its sickly lustre, regressing to its original olive-green hue.

She jumped to her feet, crown clutched in her arms, as the demonic appendage whipped back and forth with a monstrous violence, the black barbs sinking and sprouting randomly. Pasfina felt her jaw tighten and lock – the thing was slowly being dragged back into the sphere. Now the bolts of blue lightning were back, jutting and piercing and arcing like one of those incredible firecraft displays she had seen once during the Bontir City Festival.

Another pulse of energy now, but this one burst in instead of out, dragging the tentacle further back into its bright prison and sweeping Pasfina off her feet from behind. The maelstrom, completely blue now, was now generating its own force of gravity – Pasfina had to reach out and grip a nearby boulder to stop herself being pulled closer to it. As its remaining length diminished to less than two yards, the tentacle, green once more, swept itself up in one final throe of defiance, angling itself towards her sliding dungeoneering pack. A thick beam of energy blasted from its tip, enveloping the pack in a flash of momentary light. Then finally, the tentacle was sucked back into the sphere, which immediately imploded out of existence in a wink of time, with nary a sound nor signal. The blue bolts had disappeared. The jungle had returned to its mundane, earthly form. No evidence anywhere of the madness that had taken place seconds before.

Pasfina allowed herself a deep breath, then got to her feet, adrenaline still numbing her flesh and focusing her senses. She could now see Shana’s body again, still face down in the undergrowth, arms bound at her back, unmoving but seemingly unharmed. The horseshoe relic, grey and motionless, remained held in her hair. Pasfina staggered towards Shana, crown in the crook of her arm like a rugby ball. The relic hunter fell to her knees beside the younger woman and turned her face up – Shana’s eyes were closed. Pasfina pressed one hand to the side of Shana’s throat and the other to her chest. Still beating, still breathing. Pasfina took another deep breath and sat down beside the unconscious woman, surprised at how relieved she felt. As the adrenaline began to seep out, she laid on her back next to Shana, one arm behind her head, the other curled around the crown.

Pasfina Dejene was granted twenty-two seconds of peace and quiet before she heard a weird shuffling noise to her left. She angled her head to face the source but could only see her trusty backpack. She scanned the treeline just beyond, but could make out no movement, no animal eyes among the foliage. But then, animated by intelligence beyond ken, the ropes that Shana had gathered into the pack back in the dwarven hamlet started to slither their way into the open daylight like dazed slow worms.

For what felt like the hundredth time that day, Pasfina pulled herself to her feet, eyes wide and unblinking, the crown left by Shana’s limp side. She counted around eight separate lengths of rope, each one seemingly possessed of an animal comprehension as they wormed and shifted their way in random directions. She noticed that each animated cord exuded a faint green glow. And then, like a flock of birds pinwheeling in perfect unison, all eight strands rose into the air in a mockery of physics and darted straight towards Pasfina with the speed of diving kingfishers.

Unprepared and drained from her recent encounter, Pasfina simply threw her arms up in front of her face instinctively. She felt cord wrapping around one wrist. She swore and reached for her dagger tucked into her shorts as other strands attacked her body, snaking around her ankles, waist and other wrist. She grasped the hilt of her weapon, but before she could bring it up another rope looped itself between her wrist and waist bindings and cinched itself with lightning speed, trapping her hand against her side. She looked down to see two strands wrapped around each individual ankle reaching out towards each other, striving to unite as one, and she hurriedly spread her legs as far as she could while remaining standing.

As Pasfina struggled with all her might against the sentient ropes, another two loops of glowing green began their offensive. One loop curled around both her thighs and began squeezing in an attempt to force her legs together. The other loop hooked itself around her left elbow and crawled out of sight behind her, but she guessed what its intention was and stretched her free arm up as high as she could. Caught in a bizarre, almost theatrical final pose now, Pasfina focused every mote of strength into freeing her trapped weapon arm, but her efforts were sapped by the rigors of the day gone by. Pasfina was strong, agile, and fit, but she was also tired, injured, and human.

She felt the sides of her feet scrape an inch or two inwards as the enchanted thigh binding continued to squeeze, using impossible leverage to haul her upper legs closer and closer. At the same time, she watched in dumbfounded amazement as the binding on her upstretched left wrist let go and sailed down in front of her face, somehow understanding that it was not adequately contributing to the capture. The small green rope tilted itself this way and that before her eyes, as if studying her closely.

Then it flew over to her exposed left armpit, pressed its furry tip into the damp, scented flesh, and began rapidly flicking up and down.

“NOOOO! Nononononononononoooooo!” screamed Pasfina, as if she were being subjected to all the torments of the hells. Her head whipped from left to right and back again, a verbal torrent of falsetto hysteria flooding out of her mouth as tears sprang to her eyes and her raised arm began to topple from the heavens. In a spasm of motion, her right hand fumbled her dagger away, where it struck a mossy stone and came to rest a couple of yards away. Pasfina let loose another high-pitched shriek that caused her entire body to shudder, and her feet were dragged close enough for the ankle loops to finally embrace one another at the equidistance. They knotted, tensed, and yanked hard. Pasfina’s legs slammed together, and she fell forward towards the waiting ground. By instinct, she tried to use her dominant arm to break her fall, but it was still bound to her side, and so she fell face first into soil, stone, and leaves.

The fall, at least, rendered one devilish cord redundant from her armpit torment, and she felt it retreat from the forbidden zone, seeking other employment. But the blow from the clumsy descent had sealed her fate; she was out of energy, out of fight. A busted girl.

Like a patient and co-ordinated pack, the living ropes curled, split, fused and knotted around Pasfina, slowly pressing her body into the tightest of binds. They pulled her arms fully behind her at the toned lower biceps, cinching and knotting only once her elbows kissed. She felt her shoulders retreat, and her chest stretch and crackle from the strain. Her hands followed soon after; palm-to-palm, cinched and knotted, several loops in perfect alignment along the skin to distribute the pressure evenly. Her legs were secured firmly together at the ankles, knees and thighs, each one looped four to six times over the skin; a helpless, earthbound mermaid.

Pasfina turned her head to the side and watched in dim fascination as one of the green cords wove itself around a nearby vine. In a buzz of olive radiance, it merged with the natural material, becoming longer, thicker, and stronger. She watched it then slither under her bust and curl around her several times, squeezing her arms against her sore back and never letting go. Another hybrid binding wriggled itself into her right armpit from behind. Pasfina drew breath to scream, but it simply continued up behind her neck, down in between her other armpit, connected at the back of her shoulder blades, then slid down and hooked around her elbow bonds, anchoring them into position and preventing any slippage.

Another long strand snaked its way back to her body, having found and fused with another nearby vine. Pasfina felt a vague sense of doom as it wormed its way behind her, out of her field of vision. She felt it crawl onto her back and attach itself to the elbow-anchoring rope at the back of her neck. A few seconds passed, then she felt something slide between her feet. In one last act of refusal, Pasfina tensed her whole body, trying to keep her figure ramrod straight. But she could do nothing to stop the completion of the loop, and it began to slowly contract. As she felt her feet being pulled towards her head, she tried to resist, but the power of the restraint felt like she was fighting against continental drift. She grunted and groaned as her calves were rotated in a semicircle and her feet came to rest on top of her clenched fists. A fog of fear crept into her lungs as she felt the loop continue to contract, dragging her heels up to her wrists, forcing her chest to rise from the ground and her back to arch ever so slightly. Then, finally, the loop ceased its shrinking and tied itself off.

“Fuck.” Pasfina whispered as she felt the ropes around her solidify and come to rest. She wriggled quietly, performing an obligatory test of the restraints, but every single one was snug, secure, and impossible to slip free from.

Just then a thought came to her. She tilted herself onto her side and scanned the area, her eyes eventually landing on her dropped dagger. As quick as she could, she rolled over twice, committed the weapon’s location to memory, then turned her back on it and started shimmying backwards, stretching her fingers towards the blade’s estimated position.

“Oh, come on!” Pasfina cried as she abruptly felt a thin and wiry strand encircle both her thumbs and pull taut. She continued trying to find the dagger with her remaining digits, but this simply allowed a sibling strand to slalom around her exposed fingers and knot hard around them, sealing her palms flat against each other and rendering her hands completely useless. Yelling in frustration, Pasfina bucked and humped against her restraints, but only for a few seconds before a wave of exhaustion pinned her down once more. Her sideways head rested on the dirt underneath, her tangled black hair hanging down across her cheek and brow in total defeat.

Soon after, Shana began stirring and moaning her way out of unconsciousness. She rose shakily to one knee, hands still trapped behind her back, looking around with a furtive gaze, until she noticed Pasfina lying on the ground nearby. Shana stood to full height, giving her surroundings another once over, before she warily walked over to the relic hunter’s bound form, lying on her side. Pasfina looked up at Shana, squinting in the angled sunlight lancing past Shana’s frame.

“Hey.” said Pasfina. Shana looked her up and down with an expressed of bemused interest. “What happened to you?” she asked. “I got bored waiting for you to wake up.” came the drawling response. Pasfina wiggled her shoulders for emphasis. “My dagger’s just behind me, Shana.”

Shana stepped over Pasfina, spotting the weapon underfoot. Following a minute or two of reclining herself awkwardly on her back, Shana eventually managed to grasp the blade and manipulate it to slice through the rope attaching her arms to her throat. Bringing her hands to her front, she swiftly cut off the loops around her blushing wrists, sighing in relief. She then stepped back over Pasfina and turned, kneeling to get a better look at her former captor’s predicament. “Are these the ropes from the pack?” she asked. “Why are they green now? And who tied you up like this?”

“Alright, look, I’ll give you the full précis.” conceded Pasfina. “When I caught up to you, the horseshoe finally burst its bubble. It put on a pretty spectacular light show, spewed some kind of long green thing that threw a bit of a tantrum, and before it got sucked back to where it came from decided to punish me instead of you for the wanton misuse of horseshoe-shaped relics. The end. You’re welcome, by the way.”

At the mention of the horseshoe, Shana’s eyes widened, and she twisted her arms behind her head. A moment or two of fiddling, and she pulled the small relic free from the back of her blonde hair, letting it rest in the palm of her hand. “So,” began Pasfina, with uncharacteristic hesitation. “Uh, seeing as how I took the hit for you from that little trinket, I figured maybe you can help a sister out?”

Shana raised her eyebrows as something occurred to her. She turned away from Pasfina and scanned the ground. A smile cracked open her lips as she spotted the crown lying on its uneven side. She pocketed Pasfina’s dagger, then her horseshoe, then swept up the crown, walking over and shoving it back into Pasfina’s pack. Pasfina gritted her teeth in frustration as Shana hooked the pack onto her shoulders, staring out past the edge of the nearby waterfall. “Hey! You’re not seriously going to just take all my shit and leave me trussed up like this?” Pasfina demanded, lifting her head up as far as she could. “Can you at least cut me out of this hogtie? My back is….ugh….killing me.”

Shana ignored Pasfina for a while longer, her eyes focusing on seemingly specific points in the distance. Then she casually returned to the relic hunter and stood over her, hands on her hips. “Ms Dejene, your avarice for this world’s sacred symbols got you into this situation.” Shana lectured, her voice regaining some of the haughty self-assurance it had possessed when the two had first met, far below. “For too long have you engaged in glorified thievery of the priceless. Now you are finally reaping what you sow. How does it feel?”

Pasfina looked down at herself, fidgeted in her bonds a little, then shrugged as best she could. “Not great?”

“I’ll take it, I suppose.” said Shana with a smug expression that made Pasfina want to punch her in the nose. “I have to go now, Ms Dejene. You might want to find some shade – there’s still a few hours of sun to catch out here.” Shana turned and walked away, in the direction of the river leading to the waterfall’s edge.

Pasfina felt an unsettling claustrophobia settle in as she watched Shana recede into the distance, hoping against reason that this was a bluff of some kind. She soon cracked though, and called out to Shana as she writhed on the ground nervously. “Alright, Shana! You win, okay? Look, you don’t want to let me go, fine! You want to leave me here to get toasted in the sun or eaten by nightcats, whatever! But can you at least get me some water? Fill up the skin maybe? Can I at least have a fucking chance!?”

Shana’s distant form melded into the trees beyond and disappeared. Pasfina released an outburst of frustration, strained against her restraints once more, then flopped her head back down into the dirt. A songbird’s call rang out from the trees, as if in lamentation.

“Can I at least have a chance?” she whispered.

*

Pasfina’s trembling tongue danced across the scratchy surface of the fern’s low-hanging leaves, slurping what moisture it could from the bright green lamina until her muscles failed her and she crashed back to the earth, coughing and groaning. She lay on her side, still encased within her cocoon of rope, a handful of multicoloured insects now flitting on and off her exposed flesh.

It had been almost an hour since Shana had abandoned her to the mercy of the Hakal wilds. Her sandy throat felt like it had the width of a seamstress’s needle, and swallowing felt almost poisonous. She had originally tried to worm her way towards the river at the head of the lagoon waterfall in the hopes of finding a place on the riverbank where she might be able to stick her head in and drink. However, that endeavour had been quickly aborted when she realised her path to reach said bank involved traversing a stone ravine filled with razor sharp rocks – impossible in her current state. Likewise, journeying down to the lagoon itself would have been a ten-minute hike on foot at a good pace – also out of the question.

She had tried several times to escape her bindings by scraping them on various rocks, trees and spined plant life. Nothing worked; whatever the mysterious tentacle had done to her pack had somehow infused the ropes not just with intelligence, but some form of virulent vitality that allowed them to mend and regrow, negating her attempts to remove them. She had managed to roll and heave herself back under the thicker canopy of trees and out of the direct sunlight, but the effort involved had been substantial. She breathed with an open mouth now, dried sweat and salt caked on everywhere, head hot and swirling. Her body cried out for rest, for sleep, but she knew to sleep was to die.

In the face of Pasfina’s dire circumstances, one small and strange consolation had presented itself. The green hue of the ropes around her had recently started fading in and out every so often. It did not affect their tightness at all, but for whatever reason, her physical damage – her bruises, cuts, and scratches – seemed to be healing at an unnatural rate. She remained perilously thirsty and exhausted, but for whatever reason her companion restraints seemed somehow invested in maintaining her outward wellbeing.

A large bush near to her right rustled excitedly, but Pasfina no longer bothered to look. With little else to concentrate on, she had been flinching at every crunch, snap and whisper the landscape had thrown her way, but the constant convoy of false alarms had soon desensitised her to potential threats. And besides, in her current situation, there was little to be done to affect the outcome. Pasfina turned to face the orange sunglow slowly making its way down the thick trees – she guessed she had another two hours or so before dusk descended. Another two hours before the nightcats would start slinking from their nooks and burrows and begin their prowl. She shook her heavy head in a dazed gesture, heeding too closely the siren call of sleep, of sanctuary from these earthly trials.

“Alright. Maybe….maybe just ten minutes rest…” she mumbled, crusty eyelids wavering.

No.

“Shut up.”

You won’t wake up.

“Good.”

So this is it, is it? We bust out, like this? Let the house take the shirt from our back because you need a nap?

“Will you look at me, for gods’ sake? The house took my shirt hours ago. I’m cooked. Just a big rump roast now, ready to be served up to the bigtooths this evening. I can’t do shit like this, but Pyre damn me if anything’s gonna stop me catching a break for ten…..godsdamned…..minutes….what the hells?”

It was that little rope again. The same tickling devil from before, drifting into her eyeline and floating obnoxiously three inches from her nose. It could have been fevered anthropomorphising, but somehow Pasfina knew this was her arch-nemesis, the one that had exposed her heroine’s weakness during their first battle. With this abrupt appearance came the realisation that at some point, her fingers and thumbs had been released from their knots. Pasfina busily flexed her stiff hands behind her as she glared at the green woven worm peering at her in apparent curiosity.

“Oh, so you’re the one that stopped me picking my dagger up.” Pasfina growled huskily. “What do you want now, you little twit? You guys can’t possibly fuck me more than you already have.”

Could such an entity understand language? Infer meaning from expression or tone? Could it even register voices, process sound on any level? And even if it could do any of those things, could such a being then initiate a behaviour based on the input?

The little rope withdrew an inch, then floated across to Pasfina’s waist. Her brow lowered as she watched the rope coil and secure one of its ends around the centre of the other rope tied around her waist, right at the bellybutton. It tugged itself straight a couple of times, ensuring its waist knot was firmly secured.

Then it shot towards the lip of her grey shorts and wriggled its way inside her underwear.

“No what the fucking fuck no!!” Pasfina eyes expanded to cartoonish levels as she spewed forth a hoarse, dumbfounded litany of disavowal and began rolling across the undergrowth, her shoulders pistoning up and down violently. She could feel her nemesis coast across the precipice of her intimate hood, between her sweaty thighs and up through the forbidden crevice of her backside. Its touch was warm and smooth, almost effortless.

So consumed by the unprovoked infringement she was being subjected to, Pasfina barely noticed that the ropes behind her were quickly reconfiguring, unknotting and knotting, merging and fusing once more. As she continued to roll and writhe like a raving asylum inmate, a new hybrid rope was being birthed. One end attached to her bucking ankles. The other end slid under her elbow bindings, made a hairpin turn around the anchoring rope at her neck, then headed straight for the waistband of her pants at the base of her spine, out of which her nemesis was currently poking its untethered head like a furtive groundhog. The two ends touched, wound together and melded, becoming one.

Having been adequately replaced, the original hogtie rope tore itself in two of its own volition. Pasfina felt the slight drop in tension in her legs and believed for a critical moment that her struggles had somehow shaken off the hogtie. As a result, she played straight into the deception.

Pasfina summoned a new pocket of determination and tried to jerk her feet away from her hands, at which point the new, augmented hogtie rope yanked taut. Under the elbows, behind the neck, down the back, into the underwear. Pinioned at the front of her waist, the stiffened rope slid deep inside her like a warm wire into soft butter. Pasfina’s jaw collapsed, eyes rolled, cheeks combusted. “Oh…..my….gods!” came her outward gasp, heavy, vulnerable. Her body’s first response to the invasion was to haul her feet back towards her wrists, but for every inch of tension released, the rope simply shrank, remaining just as taut. Pasfina’s panicked manoeuvre had only served to draw her hogtie back to its previous strenuous position.

As she wriggled amongst the dirt like bait on a fishhook, she felt her internal vessels betray her; lifeblood surging between her legs, fired on by her accelerating heartbeat. The rope inside her was stroking and swelling, possessed of clear and unambiguous intention, and what Pasfina found the most terrible was that it did not hurt one bit. She felt her moistening walls swelling in beautiful recompense, so fast, Pyre why is this so fucking fast!? Her brain tried to load up with the fear, outrage and disgust befitting the insanity, but all was absorbed by some foreign empathic vacuum, dousing rebellion before it could make manifest.

An uncanny hypersensitivity came over her, whittling her senses to needlepoints. She could smell the perfumed fragrance of the nearby flowering shrubs, taste the steam of humidity in the air, hear the rumble of the distant waterfall as if she were showering beneath it. She tugged her feet back again to feel it, to feel the cord slide through warm and smooth, and moaned in jubilation. The burning constellation of sensations was like lightning in her veins; it felt exquisite and true, and her every fibre clamoured for more. More. More!

Panting like a bitch in heat, Pasfina felt herself tug her feet back yet again and sailed the divine heatwave of friction it sent through her. Again. Again. Again. She began hip thrusting in tandem with the tugs, neck burning, breasts heavy, tongue rising as her partner in this union fired primal, electric bliss through her melting flesh and out of her breathless lips. Her hands gripped her shins behind her back, ready to help the cause.

Stop.

She was close. It had been seconds, seconds, but by the gods she was don’t close. She could feel the retreat in preparation for climax, felt like she was stop being sliced in half, felt noble and heroic and godly. Waterfall crashing in her ears. She deserved this, yes no. This was the true prize, don’t damn the crown, damn everyone and everything and

Not for this, girl.

“SHUT UP!” she screamed in anguish, soaked and trembling and ready, ready dammit

This is what it wants.

“No.” she whispered. Hateful, uninvited cold. Another hump along the engorged wire. “I want it.”

No you don’t. It wants it. It needs it. You know where this thing comes from. Don’t. Not for this.

“I….”

Eyes closed. One tear. Sensing looming denial, it convexed deeper inside her and gently pressed against the spot, her spot. Her back concaved in reflection, a multicoloured moan crawling out of her throat.

“I….I….”

You are Pasfina Dejene, daughter of Kyle and Alicja Dejene. You are a relic hunter. And this thing does not know who it’s fucking with.

“I…..I…..I hate you so much.”

Shut up and cock block this thing already.

Eyes open. Channeling will directly from that irreducible core, Pasfina Dejene brought her grinding to an ungraceful stop. She was immediately hit with a microcosmic hangover of regret and isolation. Her body wailed why? Why can’t we have this? She could not create an answer, only decreed that it must be so. Heeding the call for aid, her mind sent reinforcements – an old memory of a half-eaten jackal rotting by a mountain path, watching her brother double over and puke on a rock from the stench. Pasfina felt the echo of revulsion seep into her, evicting the mood like an overzealous bouncer.

In an instant, her captive ropes oozed blotchy, diseased yellow, understanding what was happening. Within seconds they lost their smooth, sensual touch, becoming rough and frayed. For maybe a minute, maybe an hour, they twisted and pinched around her in dull, directionless coercion, but Pasfina understood now. Without struggle, without stimulation, they starved.

Finally, at long last, the ropes slackened to bearable levels, reverting now to their humdrum light brown colour, the lifeforce infecting them slowly disintegrating as reality purged the waning interloping energy. Pasfina lowered her weary head and watched as the shrivelled nemesis rope withdrew clumsily from her waistband and tried to unknot itself, tried to flee demise. It could not. It flicked its tip towards the face of Pasfina one last time, limp and beaten.

“I was faking.” she said, and grinned from ear to ear.

Her nemesis swayed once to the right, then fell slack against her belly. Dead.

Proud of you, girl.

“Sure.” Pasfina whispered. Then she fainted.

[roguehorseman]

Really enjoying this story, looking forward to reading more.

[Coaldrone]

Hello. I know most of the original readers of this story have probably died of old age, but I finally got off my ass to write Part Ten, with choices at the end and everything - will be posted within a few minutes. Hope anyone who picks up this meandering fable again (or for the first time) enjoys.

Minor spoiler below for the episode for people who only wanna read the good stuff:

► Show Spoiler

Pasfina's section of this Part 10 is all exposition and no bondage, but it at least lays a foundation allowing me to write future scenarios in a logically consistent manner. If it don't feel real, I don't writes it.

Hope whoever reads this is doing well.

[Coaldrone]

Part Ten - The Missing

From the perspective of the gathering crowd, the dipping sun seemed to masquerade as a bright halo around the huge, carved marble face of Seer Escrutan that ornamented the upper trim of the central palace, as if he had truly ascended into the godhood history claimed he did. The strong natural backlighting painted deep shadows upon his chiselled features – he appeared deep in thought as his ceaseless gaze angled down towards the circular arena below.

Foreigners called the city Bontir, for they found its true name unpronounceable, or so they said. It had been decades since the Hakal clans had opened up trade and diplomacy to their encroaching neighbours, following a near century of fervent bloodshed in the name of defending their homeland, and the elders were repeatedly dismayed to hear their great grandchildren refer to their home by its new, truncated moniker. The memory of the old was not enough to dissuade the impressionable youth from subscribing to the outsiders’ trivial philosophies and worship of commerce. And the more the youth migrated away to seek their fortunes, the more they returned with promises of safer, more comfortable lives away from these untamed wilds and outdated concepts.

Nonetheless, Bontir City remained for many a bastion of Hakal culture, the cradle of their civilisation, its stoic, vertical architecture dwarfing the milling outsiders and even the trees surrounding them. And there in the middle stood the literal centrepiece – the Palace. It had no name, for there was only one Palace, and so no further clarification of nomenclature was required. Beneath the lengthening shadow cast by that great building, the crowd swelled around a small arena - a simple circle of sand and dust delineated by white pebbles. But though the people shoved and jostled for a better viewing position, not one stepped inside. The oldest laws forbade it.

Two people stood opposite one another within the circle, their trespass granted by the elders, albeit wearily. On one side stood a wiry young man in his mid-twenties with tight, solid muscles, short black hair and wearing nothing but a pair of thin brown pants that terminated just above the knees. He was eyeing his fellow circle-dweller with a raised brow and a smug grin.

On the other side of the circle, his opponent. A woman of similar age stood clad in a dark cloth bikini encrusted with tiny, common gemstones and colourful tassels that swayed and jerked with her every movement. Her powerful frame and form boasted countless hours of physical training, and she danced upon her toes as if she weighed less than a mothwing. She glared across the arena at her male counterpart, her hands clenching rhythmically.

A middle-aged gentleman dressed in a garish swathe of robes then entered the arena from a parting in the crowd, and a slow quiet infused the gathering audience. He made his way between the encircled man and woman. “Witnesses,” he called out in a booming yet lackadaisical tone. “A challenge of…….honour…..has been called once more by Orlunu Ghihun, daughter of Vahlut and Jarrakis, against Kaizon Deschu, son of Luish and Binokgli. This bout has been sanctioned and blessed by the Ordained, and its participants have agreed to a victory condition of haj’za. That’s ‘humiliation’ to our visitor friends.”

The announcer then pinched the bridge of his nose before continuing. “As these two…….competitors…..are no stranger to this arena, or each other for that matter, I am blessed to be spared the duty of explaining the rules of the bout. For those of you unaccustomed to these, the crowd will no doubt educate you. Orlunu and Kaizon, you will begin when my feet leave the circle.” With a sigh, the robed man turned on his heel and strode out of the circle with more vigour than he had had entering it. The moment his trailing foot swung past the boundary of stones, the man known as Kaizon and the woman known as Orlunu rushed each other like bulls, and the crowd roared in excitement.

At the point of impact Kaizon attempted to feint left, but Orlunu was already changing trajectory to match him in an impressive display of forecasting. She speared towards his midsection and tackled him cleanly, however her superior momentum proved a disadvantage - she found herself too high up his torso as she wrapped her arms around him, allowing Kaizon to curl his knees beneath her belly as they crashed to the earth. Though the collapse popped the air from his lungs a little, Kaizon quickly pushed up with his compacted legs and hauled at Orlunu’s shoulders, flipping her off his body before she could clasp her hands around him and lock in her grip. Leaping to his feet, he dashed towards her as she recovered from the flip.

For three minutes the two combatants tussled, wrestled, swung, and pushed at each other. Though some wincing strikes were traded to the bodies (blows to the face were forbidden), both remained relatively uninjured and energetic. Separated for a moment, they circled like jackals, as their rumbling audience chanted and speculated all around them.

“Come, Lunu, are you this desperate to shame yourself again?” Kaizon sneered in that familiar baritone inflection that sent Orlunu’s jaw tightening. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Just go to your knees and beg to cry off the fight. I’ll happily offer a mercy to you, like I always do….”

“Once!” Orlunu jousted, dark eyes narrowed to blazing slits. “You…..won…..once, and only because you tossed sand in my face like the snake you are! You are going down for what you said about my brother….”

Kaizon switched stances, spitting on the ground at Orlunu’s last word. “Everything I said about that guttersnipe is true! He’s the figurehead of everything that’s rotten in your family – a herd of thieving, brawlish, bloodless bh’liriiks….!”

“AAAAAAAAAAGH!” screamed Orlunu as she rushed her rival, features awash with rage. Leaping up, she twisted horizontally, turning her body into a flying panel of flesh that slammed into Kaizon’s chest. As their perpendicular torsos collapsed to the hot sand once more, each coiled an arm around the other’s neck in a simultaneous, mutual chokehold. They writhed and rolled together on the ground, their flailing limbs kicking up a storm of dust that rendered it almost impossible for the crowd to ascertain who had the upper hand.

Orlunu hissed for breath through her crumpled larynx as she sought to secure her own headlock on Kaizon. She kept her stomach muscles tight as he landed palm after palm into her ribs, her own free hand recompensing each blow in similar fashion. The animal in her urged to lower her aim, to go for his sensitive, youthful manparts and clinch victory in the confusion of the dust cloud around them. She supressed the impulse; a snake he may be, but even the lowest snake could not be denied an honourable bout.

Kaizon then ceased his assault on Orlunu’s midriff long enough to reach up and dig deeply with his free fingers into the wrist hooked around his neck. Orlunu roared in pain and let loose a flurry of punches into his gut. Both were released from their chokes, but Orlunu recovered a fraction faster. With the speed of a scorpion she reached out and hoisted Kaizon’s right arm over his shoulder, spinning behind his back, entwining her legs around his midsection and trapping his arm above his head, his palm flat against the back of his neck. Yet Kaizon somehow managed to rise to one knee with Orlunu’s entire bodyweight wrapped around him and launch himself back, flattening Orlunu between him and the ground. The impact caused a sharp choke to expel from her chest, and her grip faltered long enough for Kaizon to worm his arm free and jab his elbows deep into her ribs. This in turn faltered her leg grip, and Kaizon squirmed free.

Orlunu refused to give up the advantage and scrambled forward to clinch with her opponent once more, but she did not set her footing well, and Kaizon was more prepared than she realised. She saw Kaizon’s foot rise up and strike out behind him in a vicious back kick, and her body rushed right into it. Her navel took the full brunt of the blind counterattack and she collapsed on her side, winded. The cloud of yellow particles born from her rough descent cascaded on her cheeks and eyelashes as now Kaizon took the initiative.

With the sudden pain guiding her hands to her chest, she did not react in time to her opponent spinning across her side, hooking her left elbow back with his and landing behind her in a spooning position. With a huge groan of effort, he managed to use all the leverage gained from the hooked elbow to swing Orlunu over his prone body and slam her into the dirt on the other side. Too late, Orlunu realised that this manoeuvre now left her other arm vulnerable as it was no longer pinned between her and the ground. Sure enough, a masculine limb snaked around her other arm, and she groaned and felt her chest stretch and pop as Kaizon hauled her hooked elbows behind her, clasping his opposite wrists together between her shoulder blades and pinning her arms tightly.

Orlunu tried to use her legs to gain a footing, but in response he hauled and dragged her entire body two feet forward, her sweaty face and gasping mouth scooping up all kinds of debris and detritus from the harsh combat terrain. She cried out in pain as Kaizon squeezed viciously, and she felt her elbows bump into each other behind her back as her arms were fully locked into the hold. Spluttering and cursing, Orlunu strained and writhed in Kaizon’s grip, facedown in the dirt, legs pinioning pointlessly, the soles of her bare feet slapping against Kaizon’s butt as he consolidated his position above her.

Shifting his bodyweight carefully, Kaizon sat himself directly on Orlunu’s spine, at the same time using one hooked arm to encircle both of Orlunu’s elbows. As her legs pumped and flailed behind him in a vain effort to gain some sort of momentum, Orlunu bit her lip in pain as Kaizon now hauled her secured arms upwards so they pointed directly at the sky overhead, at a stark right angle to the rest of her body. Her upper joints tried to contort themselves into some mystical configuration that might allow her to worm free of this hold, but Kaizon ensured no such manoeuvre existed. Another rough tug from him sent her face sliding along the dirt once more, and she roared in aimless defiance.

Then, despite the seething Bontir humidity, Orlunu felt her heart grow cold as Kaizon expertly rearranged his grip on her limbs. Now his left hand was gripping her right wrist, and his right hand her left wrist. This was how her last defeat at Kaizon’s hands had come about. Summoning every last ounce of determination and willpower, focusing every mote of energy in her flesh, she tried once more to bend her elbows and somehow break the hold. Dirty sweat dribbled down her forehead and neck, tendons and veins bulged. Her cheeks painted themselves faint crimson, her teeth clenched hard enough to ache her jaw. And for just a moment, despite her exhaustion, despite Kaizon’s superior position and vice-like grip, her arms answered the call. She felt his tight grasp weaken somewhat, and a surprised grunt issued forth above her head.

But Kaizon had his own well of determination to draw from, and he quickly adjusted his grip yet again, hooking one arm back around her elbows and gripping both her wrists with his other hand. Without hesitation or warning he pushed her arms forward eight inches, over her head, and Orlunu cried out in near agony as her shoulder joints were stressed to near tearing point. But Kaizon was careful – he was intimately aware of this woman’s physical limits, and he was more than mindful of the bout’s rules – pain was permitted, spiteful injury was not. He was not about to be forced to concede due to causing a ripped muscle or dislocated shoulder.

And so Kaizon held Orlunu dangling on a torturous sensory precipice, her strong body twitching and heaving beneath his weight, inside his grip, under his control. Minutes passed, with Kaizon increasing pressure when his opponent’s cries of discomfort fell too sparse, and decreasing it when they grew too vehement. So long did this physical ritual of contortion go on for, that many of the visitors to Bontir grew bored with the now-static bout and left to seek other sights. As a result, some of them missed the last flurry of activity to occur between Orlunu and Kaizon that day, when Kaizon, sensing Orlunu’s back softening slightly under his butt, took a gamble.

Like a sprung trap, Kaizon once again swept his hooking elbow upwards, and grabbed Orlunu’s left wrist with right hand, right wrist with left hand. He pushed back with both feet in front of him, so his backside slid onto hers. Finally, he refreshed his grip on her opposite wrists, planted a foot in between her shoulderblades and pulled hard, lifting her entire chest off the ground and arching her back to an extent that made many of the remaining spectators wince sympathetically.

With her arms crossed and locked behind her back and her upper body hoisted up, Orlunu’s body now resembled one of those ornate female figureheads she had occasionally seen decorating the more august ships that sailed past the western fishing village sometimes. Her dust-covered head was now forced to face the thinning crowd before her, as the sun slowly sank beneath the omnipresent jungle canopy that surrounded her home city. She groaned in frustration and disquiet as Kaizon meticulously adjusted his grip and position above her, forcing her body into maximum tension and severing any prospect of escape.

“I’m surprised, Lunu.” Kaizon muttered. His voice was breathy, but still full of vigour. “If you were going to have any chance of escaping from me, that was the moment. Perhaps I’m getting too good at wearing you down. Or perhaps you’re just not as good as you think you are.”

Orlunu did not reply. Her eyes were closed, preparing herself for the ordeal to come. She had stopped swinging her legs and straining her limbs in a façade of insurrection. She was caught in Kaizon’s trap now – she knew this from experience. The young man worked as a gatherer, climbing endless flora for food and fibre every day, and his grip was incontestable in this position. She felt him lean back, increasing the pressure on her spine and shoulders, and she cried out sharply. The pain was certainly there, but it was less than she let on. That was the tactic in this situation – keep your opponent wary of disqualification. Pain permitted - spiteful injury not. She squinted as a rivulet of sweat dribbled into her right eye.

The position Orlunu found herself in seemed irredeemable, but there was one single out she could play to. Had Kaizon kept her in the facedown position he had her in moments ago, his victory would have been all but assured. But now, he was having to use more physical effort to keep her suspended in this strenuous submission – torso lifted, arms twisted and useless behind her. She knew why he had done it, though; Kaizon was too arrogant to simply win via technique. No, he wanted her on display, that the crowd could see her outmatched and overpowered. He wanted them to see the distress on her face, but he also wanted her to see them. The shakes of heads, the muttered discussions, the cursed wagers. Each time he yanked on her wrists, the pain forced her eyes open. Each time her eyes opened, a few more people had left the crowd to go about their day, either apathetic to the result or believing it to be inevitable. Still she refused to submit.

An entire quarter of an hour crawled by, with both combatants remaining in their fixed positions. The sun was now an orange memory barely illuminating the surroundings. The crowd had all but dispersed, the only remaining spectators being those charged with observing and enforcing the bout rules, and a few older citizens that took the custom seriously enough to remain until conclusion. There was no more struggling, no more contest of will or power. There was now only pain, and pain endurance. Orlunu ached deeply, her muscles tingly and twitchy, her back spiky and hot, but the sound of Kaizon’s nasal huffing was feeding her, reminding her that this remained a trial for both of them. She remained primed internally, aware that at any moment Kaizon could try to readjust to a less demanding position for himself, and when he did she would break free. She had to.

Then Orlunu saw something. Kaizon currently had her faced towards the main chiselled staircase that led to the grandiose front entrance of the Palace. Though evening darkness now obscured most of the surroundings, the Temple staircase was forever lit by stone beacons. Her keen eyesight now caught a woman hurrying up the stairs, followed by a pair of male hunters. Sequined blue silk, frayed and filthy. Delicate, twinkling strides. Blonde hair, uncharacteristically unkempt. She knew the name of this woman: Shana. But if Shana had returned, then…

“Henesy? Nnngghh!”

Orlunu chewed into her lip as Kaizon pulled on her arms once more, her ribs pressed to her skin. “Ha!” chuckled Kaizon, but it was a very tired chuckle. “I thought you had fallen asleep there, Lunu. Your brother won’t get you out of this, he’s probably out stealing carp or dodging the brothel debtors.”

Such a comment from Kaizon would normally have sent Orlunu into a scorching frenzy of struggling, but his words had not penetrated. A terrible wave of portent washed through her chest and belly, and she squirmed softly in her opponent’s grip. “Let me go, Kaizon.” she said, and was alarmed. Why did her voice sound so afraid? Kaizon, in turn, seemed to pick up on this. “Had enough, have we Lunu?” he said, twisting her wrists slightly for emphasis. “You know what to do. Say the words and we’ll make your humiliation official.”

A momentary clash within her – virile animosity versus blossoming trepidation. The thought of submitting to this snake for a second time made Orlunu nauseous, but her soul could not be denied. She gulped, scrunched her eyes, and opened her mouth. “Today, I have been judged wanting. The challenged has….has….aaaaagh!”

Agony sliced across her words as Kaizon somehow dragged her arms even tighter behind her, until she was sure he planned to snap her upper joints like dry twigs, bout be damned. “Start again, you bh’liriik.” he snarled in her ear, his nonchalant pretence dissolved. “And this time, loud enough that they can hear you. The gods demand it.”

Orlunu sniffed deeply, her pride drowning in the nameless fear that now engulfed her, and raised her head to the remaining observers. The words came through a bastion of scraping teeth, but they did come: “Today, I have been judged wanting. The challenged has proved his integrity, and I have proved naught but my own folly. I have wrought shame unto my name beneath the gaze of the Seer, in the presence of our sacred Palace, and to the disfavour of the gods. I will seek salvation through trial, and wisdom through humility. Challenged, to you I….I beg mercy, and seek your fitting rebuttal.”

No cheers from the dwindled audience, only apprehensive chatter – many of them had seen this man and woman fight before, and this outcome did not align with many expectations. The middle-aged robed gentleman that had started the bout rose somewhat eagerly from his woven chair at the side of the arena and made his way toward Orlunu and Kaizon. “The challenger submits and begs mercy.” he called as he walked. “Both will stand and bow before the Seer.”

Kaizon neither stood nor bowed. Instead, he once more twisted Orlunu’s arms to provoke another outcry, then leant forward to whisper in her ear. “You’re an embarrassment to all of us. Just like your whole brood. I’ve already planned my rebuttal for you, you….”

“KAIZON!” the robed man bellowed with the force of a mastiff’s war bark. As if electrocuted, Kaizon finally released Orlunu’s wrists from his grip and rolled sideways to get to his feet as quickly as possible. Orlunu’s torso crumpled to the ground, pins and needles quickly growing inside her armpits. For a moment she stared across the dirt at the majestic foundations of the Palace. Then the image of Shana hurrying up the stairs returned, and with a sharp intake of breath Orlunu began the shaky ascent to a standing position.

The robed man now stood at Kaizon’s side, his wrinkled features rife with disdain. “I’d ask if you’ve wax in your ears, boy, but I know you don’t. The wax is in your brain, and forever shall it be so.” Kaizon turned to the man, irritated that his first reward for victory was to be a lecture. “My apologies, arbiter. I had been keeping my grip on her for so long, the tendons seized for a moment.” Kaizon explained with an obnoxious smirk.

The arbiter’s face was a sculpture. “Stand, and bow.” he ordered without further embellishment. Kaizon rolled his eyes and turned back…to see a line of fading footprints leading to a rapidly receding Orlunu in the distance, who was running as fast as she could towards the Palace.

*

With a slow, heavy blink, Pasfina returned to the world.

Still tied up, still dehydrated, still weak. Still intact.

Evening had now descended. It was late, but not late enough for the moonglow to make an appearance yet. All around her was dark. The texture and melody of the wildlife sounds had morphed completely, the natural orchestra turning the page to the next movement, more muted and guttural now. It was colder too.

Pasfina’s survivor soul reminded her that, with the invading energy expunged from her bonds, she should try fraying them against a rough surface again. But she could not. Never before had the relic hunter been so depleted of her resources. She had not the strength to even lift her head. Though she had denied the cursed rope its main course earlier, she could still feel that a deep energy had been sapped from her. She felt like she had been fed on, and the sensation repulsed her. She tried to curtail her brain from imagining what might have happened had she not resisted.

For several minutes she stared sideways through the roots and undergrowth, paralyzed by knotted restraints and alien exhaustion. She could feel her body wanting to shiver as the temperature dipped further, but weirdly unable to. A mind trapped inside a disconnected shell.

And then she saw the twinned green lights of a nightcat’s diamond eyes emerge forth from a bristlebush right in front of her, perhaps twenty paces away. She stared helplessly as it approached, taloned paws making the softest sound with each step as the eyes floated left and right. It stopped before her and sat to attention, a muscular, feline form at least five feet long with a head that was mostly jaws filled with sickle sharp teeth.

It sniffed the air once, and its eyes immediately locked on the prey before it, pupils ballooning to fill the sockets. Pasfina’s instincts rattled in their dangling cage, screaming for her to do anything to live, to live! But there was nothing to be done. Death was here now, two feet away, and the poisonous foam was already bubbling around its bared teeth. She could see the eyes identify the soft tissue of her throat, and the legs padded another foot closer. Its breath was hot and honeyed.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt, and I’m sorry…

The nightcat opened its jaws and yowled directly in Pasfina’s face at a pitch that sent her ears buzzing, and for no reason at all jumped in a half circle away from her, its serpent-like tail whipping her chin. The beast swung its great head about, seeking unseen spirits. Another yowl, lower register this time. Then two trembly steps forward, several huffy breaths. And then it collapsed, unmoving.

A tattered thread of dream logic suddenly gatecrashed: we’re some sort of god, we can’t die, it’s the rope it keeps us safe, as long as we’re tied it creates a field but we have to be quiet and…

The distended thought continued to babble and bounce inside Pasfina even as she watched two small humanoid figures creep carefully from the shadows and inspect the prone beast. Despite the darkness, Pasfina could make out a blowpipe in the taller one’s hand, and a belt of pouches swaying around the waist of the smaller one. They spoke in hushed whispers, before the taller one reached down and slashed the nightcat’s throat without pause. Together, they pushed the pile of meat and hide onto its side and turned to approach Pasfina. The pair knelt beside the relic hunter, and her skull squealed bloody murder as an obnoxious white light shone directly into her open eyes, reducing the figures in her vision to blurry silhouettes.

“You waited way too long, it almost ate her face.” whispered the shorter of the two, reaching into one of their many pouches. The voice had a feminine youthfulness to it.

“You got to wait until their focus is completely on something, Adie.” replied the taller in a hushed, unmistakeably male voice. “I seen one of these dodge a shot from a yard away, then almost eat Salfu’s face. Throat, I mean throat, they go for the throat, stop saying face.”

“I’m not saying face, Claney, I said it once.” protested the shorter - ostensibly Adie - with an anguished petulance that instantly told Pasfina these two were brother and sister. “Adie” then pulled her hand from her pouch and proceeded to sprinkle and massage a generous helping of ashlike powder over Pasfina’s body. The relic hunter recognised the texture and pungent odour – scent masking, protection from the nightcats’ strongest sense during the prowl. Pasfina split her mouth to speak:

“…..h…….help……..me………”

“Claney, she’s awake!” exclaimed Adie, softly dusting the remaining scent mask from her hands and tugging her brother’s elbow. “Quick, give her the water!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Claney said, before lifting a bulging kidney-shaped skin from around his shoulder “Hey, you want this water?”. Pasfina goggled at the sloshing sack of beauty. “…hhhhh……yyy……yyyye……”

“Okay, you’ll get water,” said the brother, a strange expression on his face. “But first, we need to get a……yeah…..a promise from y…..”

“Oh, Seer balls Claney!” groaned Adie, shoving her brother a full inch with both hands. “Shana’s stupid and bossy, why are you being…..”

“Don’t swear, you can’t swear, you’re not old enough…”

“I can, look, Seer balls! Also there’s no adults here so….”

“What’s she then idiot?”

“You’re an idiot, ‘cause you don’t know who this is, but I do!”

As the two bickered back and forth before her, the full waterskin jostling between them eight inches from her cracked lips, Pasfina’s gaze settled on the nightcat corpse behind them, and felt a twinge of envy…

“You don’t know anything, Adie, and you don’t know who….”

“Her name’s Padweiner. She’s a treasure hunter, and she’s famous! Isophel told me, and her uncle-in-law’s in the merchant navy….”

“Isophel eats her toenails. Anyway, Shana told us to, and she’s the….”

“Seer, fine! Do what your girlfriend told you to, then.”

Claney turned back to Pasfina, abruptly blinding her with his crystalline light source once more. “She is not my girlfriend.” He clarified quickly. “So you have to promise that…uh…..you won’t denigrate any more sacred places with your presents, or you’ll be cat dinner, you see? Now promise.”

Her hands were already behind her back, but try as she might, Pasfina could not muster the force to cross her fingers, so she just lied instead. “……promise……” she wheezed. Seemingly satisfied, her would-be saviours quickly lifted the precious waterskin down to her waiting mouth. Most of the initial deluge went into her eyes and nose, but a little did eventually make it into her barren throat, cool and divine as it tumbled down.

*

Pasfina would recall little of the ensuing journey. She would remember the sister, Adie, finding an older hunter that towered his shape over her. She would remember the smell of the sack, and how its rhythmic jostling eventually bludgeoned her into a sludgy void of unconsciousness. When she awoke, the first thing she saw was a flock of enormous multicoloured swifts, painted onto a white ceiling. There was a bed beneath her; the softest she had laid on in months. She was dressed in a thin but warm satin gown that wrapped snugly around her buxom frame. But the greatest gift was revealed when, at her command, her limbs moved freely, stretching all around the yellow sheets that carried a faint scent of peppermint and some floral infusion she could not identify. She was free.

For a long while, Pasfina did nothing but revel in the comfort and safety she seemed surrounded by. She felt hungry, but mercifully rested and revitalised. The injury to her side (which now seemed like a lifetime ago) still made her wince, but had had fresh bandages applied beneath her gown. Her body was clean, having at some point been washed free of its old sweat and adventuring detritus – Pasfina was ambivalent about the implications of this, but was taking what she could get at this point. Looking around, she could see she was in a reasonably large and ornate bedroom, decadent by Hakalar standards certainly. From what she knew of the culture, this was probably a space reserved for honoured guests.

She had time enough to peek through an interior door leading to an empty marble bathroom before a creak at the bedroom entrance set her on full alert. Regardless of circumstance, she was unarmed and had no idea where she was or who had taken her. She entertained a vague memory of Shana’s name being mentioned, but then how could that be a good thing?

The door to the bedroom opened, and Pasfina found herself lost for words. A slender, sharp-eyed man entered wielding a polished scimitar. He said nothing, only stepped to the side. Following him came a tall, stately woman with black hair that flowed in waves down to her thighs, strands adorned with floral ornamentation. She wore the brightest dress Pasfina had ever seen, with brilliant gems covering every seam and trim. Her features were austere but stunning, her natural beauty accented through subtle foundation, blush and a delicate golden nose ring. The lady walked towards the relic hunter with grace and poise born of ceremony and decorum, and in her hands she held a very familiar object - the crown of the Last King of Sykrane. This was Queen Maiah, tlatoana of all Hakalar, head of state to Bontir City and beyond.

Pasfina gulped. We’re in big trouble now, girl.

Queen Maiah stood before her, turning the crown this way and that. “I have been told that you are Pasfina Dejene, known relic hunter and journeyman. Do I have these details correct?”

When the Queen spoke, her faint lip gloss and slightly deep register of voice seemed to make her every word an invocation of force. “Yes.” Pasfina replied, feeling for all the world like a child ordered to the headmaster’s study. Though she guessed she was only perhaps ten or so years younger than the Queen, there was an ageless quality to the way this striking woman carried herself.

“I am Queen Maiah. I serve the interests of Hakalar and its people. I would like to speak to you about this crown, and of other matters. First, though, I would ask – how are you feeling? I understand you have been through a lot over the last two days.”

Though her expression remained severe, there was genuine concern in the sovereign’s voice. Pasfina gulped again – she could handle deadly spike pits, giant snakes and extra-dimensional tentacles, but this? “I’m….alright, Your Grace.” she began carefully. “Someone’s been looking after me while I was out.”

Queen Maiah nodded. “I apologise for the transgression, but you were in a very bad condition when you were brought here. It was deemed best to tend to you while you rested deeply. I will not mislead, Pasfina – this was also done as a show of faith which I will explain. May we sit?”. The Queen gestured to two clothed and cushioned basket chairs in the far corner of the bedroom. “Certainly.” replied Pasfina, and immediately cringed – she had never used the word ‘certainly’ in her entire life.

Maiah did not seem to notice, instead turning to the guard remaining at the door. “I would be alone, Madol.” she said, and the man nodded and left without a word, closing the door behind him. Together, the two women sat in the corner, the ancient crown resting lightly in Maiah’s lap. As Pasfina took a seat opposite, her brain said don’t say fuck. She bit her lip and tried to stop thinking, with a predictable level of success.

Queen Maiah began to ask Pasfina many questions – about her foray into the Althari ruin, the directions she had chosen and traps she had encountered, her knowledge of the Althari and ancient Hakalar in general. She in turn revealed that Shana was one of her primary handmaidens, and additionally a joint caretaker of Bontir’s extensive library of texts. She asked Pasfina about her encounter with Shana and Henesy, and their subsequent tribulations. At no point did she interrupt or contest Pasfina’s words or opinions, merely nodded or gazed to the floor in consideration.

After a while the queries elapsed, and a long but somewhat comfortable silence drew past. The Queen was deep in thought, and Pasfina was glad for the break in talking so much. What had at first seemed a polite interrogation had changed into a curious interview of sorts. Queen Maiah stood and went to the draped window, bathing in afternoon sunlight as the crown continued to turn in her fingers. “What are relics, Pasfina?”

An instinct told Pasfina to stand from the chair. She did so, turning to Maiah and folding her arms across her chest. Rhetorical question, not too much detail needed. “Objects with a mundane form and function, merged with supernatural chaos. Belief and perception is power. The more mundane an item seems, the more potent the power it can carry without risk of backlash.”

“Where does this power come from?”

“A fu….a bad place. It’s like using lava to cook your breakfast. The power comes from a dangerous otherworld that seeks to entrap and imprison the unwary. From what is known, women are especially susceptible to its influence and focus.”

“Yet here you are; a quintessence of your profession.” Maiah turned slightly from the window, one heavy-lashed eye drifting from Pasfina’s head to toes. “What drives you to do what you do, Pasfina?”

Money’s good and you don’t have to trust anyone.

But no. She couldn’t even if she wanted to – not in this presence.

“Because the dead are dead, and we spend all our time and wealth and sweat on comforts for old bones and teeth, secrets and dust. Kids die in gutters as ghosts swim around riches covered in dirt and moss, and I’m taking it back. I’m taking it all back. The dead are dead. Fuck ‘em.”

Silence. Pasfina whisked a hand up to wipe her cheek just before Queen Maiah fully turned her way. They locked eyes and did not speak for a long while. Then Maiah looked down at the crown and nodded. “I have a request for you, relic hunter, that I ask in my capacity as tlatoana. Will you hear me?”

“I will hear you, tlatoana.” Pasfina replied, her pronunciation accented but not impeded.

Queen Maiah began. “My eyes and ears reach far across coast and field, and they tell me of news most dire. The reports are mostly in isolation, but they all voice a similar chant – people are going missing. Women are going missing, throughout the lands. I have heard tell of an increase in otherworld cults, kidnappings and other more mundane rings of subjugation within societies. My eyes have seen a new flood of Dusk Guild abduction contracts, signed by names I recognise. Something is happening in the world; something is shifting. The black-throned devil is behind this; I feel it in my breast. And now this…..this….”

For the first time, a spasm of emotion shook the Queen’s face, but it was gone before Pasfina could identify its species. “What I am about to tell you is a royal secret, Pasfina. To speak of it without accord is to die. Do you accept this burden?”

It was not a question, and never would have been. Pasfina was cascading down the waterfall now, falling into a blind nadir. Her hands curled into fists. “I accept, tlatoana.”

Even with the burden accepted, Maiah hesitated. Then she set herself once more, her hazel eyes round and gleaming. “My daughter, Naeve, went missing four days ago. She was sailing with her entourage to Catouvin’s harbour when her galleon was waylaid by pirate vessels led by the knave known as Carver Craig.”

Pasfina frowned. Her extensive travels meant she knew well the reputation of Carver Craig, inarguably the most infamous pirate of the Circle Sea. Over the last decade he had become an almost mythical figure amongst seafarers, his name spoken in hushed whispers lest he and his criminal crew descend upon you. He had stolen precious cargo and military supplies from royal vessels, pillaged and destroyed developing outposts on the fringe coasts, and the countless people that fell prey to his ambushes were taken by his men, never to be heard from again.

The Queen continued: “This man – if indeed that’s what he is – is a shared blight on our trade routes and ports. Nonetheless, we have mapped his activity for many years, and at the very least his movements have always been somewhat predictable - almost ritualistic at times. But not now. Every intelligence report I have says he should have been hundreds of miles away at this time of season. harassing the eastern coast of Gracevale or even further north. This was not random happenstance, Pasfina - Craig diverted course specifically. This was planned. The Seer is with me on this, this I know.”

“I’m confused.” Pasfina interjected. “How did you come by this information? Carver Craig doesn’t leave survivors, especially during a raid at sea. Anyone who falls under his flag is either killed or enslaved. What proof do you have that it’s him, especially if it doesn’t match with his routes?”

Maiah nodded. “I have not laid foundation, you are correct. My emotions precede my words, but you are also incorrect. It is not true that Craig leaves no survivors – the people proliferate this fable because the alternative is to truly reconcile with the existence of such a creature. It is easier to muse upon a myth than acknowledge an earthly evil. One of my daughter’s personal guard was stabbed twice before being thrown overboard in the attack. His name was Gallae Hlasu. He swam for twelve miles until he reached landfall. He walked another twelve miles, then crawled perhaps another two, until he was found by a trader wagon south of here, bleeding out on the roadside. He died of his injuries minutes later, and his remains will be interred in the royal catacombs amidst the kings and queens of our nation. Some information simply does not require verification.”

Then the Queen lifted the bronze crown to her chest. “However, thanks to you, relic hunter, Gallae’s information has been verified anyway.”

She closed her eyes and whispered “Dwy’uohl”. A faint cobalt glow spread itself across the tarnished crown’s surface, and Pasfina raised an eyebrow. “This crown was known to us.” continued Maiah. “It is a cursed thing – too symbolic of import to ever be a truly safe relic - but it grants sight and sound beyond to those who discover its Word, and it has shown me Naeve. This dread pirate has my child in his clutches, Pasfina. I was granted a glimpse of the stars above his ship; he sails for the Scorned Isles. I saw a….a black tower encrusted with….what I can only describe as obsidian that moved, and robed men with chains and ropes and cudgels and….and……”

The Queen suddenly pushed the crown into Pasfina’s arms and turned her back on the relic hunter, her hands appearing on her own shoulders in a gesture of self-comfort. Pasfina looked down at the crown awkwardly – the glow had faded, and it was just a crown once more. “Your Grace,” Pasfina said slowly. “Are you asking me to find your daughter?”

A deep breath. Maiah turned back to Pasfina, having re-donned her mask of stoicism, but her large eyes were betraying her now. “You would be compensated such that you could spend the remainder of your years lying on your back and not want for material at any point.”

“I’d get fat, Your Grace. But I’m not a….I don’t even know….someone who rescues people? I raid tombs and sepulchres for artifacts. I live for myself. Why me?”

“I know myself, Pasfina Dejene. I have my flaws, but I have my strengths too, and my greatest strength has always been my judge of character, honed to completion through the diplomacy my station in life demands. Let us put aside your skillset – your physical trifecta of endurance, strength and dexterity, your survival expertise in hostile environments, your combat prowess and your knowledge of the world through both disciplined study and raw experience. I see so much more in you. Determination, focus, independence, understanding, strength….the alchemy I see before me can be distilled into an extremely rare compound element, and the name of that element is heroism. Seer will that you be here, distinguished guest. Here to consider a mother’s desperate plea.”

Pasfina had been staring at the crown in her hands throughout Queen Maiah’s litany of plaudits. Then she chuckled and shook her head, raising her gaze to meet the sovereign’s. “You’re good, Queen Maiah. Really good.”

“I challenge you to find better.” came Maiah’s reply. She did not smile, but the corners of her eyes crinkled ever so slightly. “You would not be travelling alone in this quest. What say you to the tlatoana of Hakalar, relic hunter?”

***

We leave Pasfina Dejene considering what could be the biggest score of her life, and turned our gaze outward once more, to follow a new thread, a new player….(please vote)


a) Melody floats on stage in her dark bikini, sari and veil amidst the smell of pipe smoke and sweat. She shimmies her way through a sensual dance for the usual throng of leering drunks, unaware of the terrifying abduction awaiting her later that night…

b) In room six of the Fawcett Inn, a naked Diane stands by the closed door and slowly stuffs her panties into her mouth, as ordered by her master for the night. He gestures to the creaky double bed with one hand, a coil of white rope in the other…

c) Joye yells through the tight black hood and tape covering her head as two henchmen of the biggest kingpin in Thridport shove her into the small compartment at the back of a stagecoach and lock it closed. She tosses and writhes in the dark as the goons take her away for interrogation…

d) Annah tugs nervously on her new blouse beneath the imposing frame of the mansion’s front door. The doorman nods and announces her arrival to Mr and Mrs Bouquet, whose children Annah is here to look after. What Annah does not know is that the Bouquet boys have much more planned for her tonight than she has for them…