Better head down further; start with the lower floor.

Ground floor it is; it only makes sense to start in the middle when sniffing out the trail of your target. You go down the nearby stairs, descending deeper into the decrepit building until you reach the bottom. Darkness coats the room, though you sense it to be a little more open thanks to the stairs coming down only one side of the cubby hole. Further decent is replaced by hard floorboards and storage space below the stairs. A door silhouettes itself with a thin flickering frame standing yellow in the darkness, lighting nothing but the way forward, and you listen first to its call and then at its frame as you try to glean sounds of any life beyond its substance. Nothing. No sounds to give you worry, and with that, you open the door and look out into its comparatively bright hallway.

It’s carpeted thinly with a faded path, not bleached by sunlight in this windowless corridor, but instead by the trample of uncaring boots and unkind years. To your right, the corridor ends in a three way junction, joining another corridor that runs straight past. To your left the corridor continues down for some distance, lit by intermittent lanterns not common enough for true light, yet not dark enough that a shadow wrapped assassin would go unnoticed. You go to the T junction and look both ways, it being the closest thing to investigate.

Predictably, the corridor leads to just that: more corridors, lined with doors but not with people, and capped by final doors at each far end. One of said ends, now to your right, catches you eye as it oozes light around its frame, which seems eager to turn thanks to its lack of a handle or latch. Only a flat face is present, like a kitchen door made to be pushed open by laden staff and swing back and forth at a touch. It seems a likely source of life, but also a risky one as you’d have no warning should someone come upon you. The other end, to your left, is darker and more fit for your exploration, but would still leave you in sight of the swinging door and sours your inclination for it.

You turn back and explore the corridor you came from, and as you do so, you notice an odd pattern on the floor. Droplets form a path of diminishing size, leading down the corridor as they grow smaller and more spacious. As you follow them down the corridor, they end near its other T junction, before a closed door, and looking back up the thickening line, you’d guess they originated from the direction of the kitchen. You listen at the door, and the first thing you hear is the sound of the latch lifting.

It opens.

You find yourself staring, not a little shocked, at a plump looking girl. She’s rounded in a way most men would likely find attractive, and bests you in height, though only by a little. She’s also wearing a maid’s uniform: brown skirt covered by a practical but stained white cleaning pinny, ending at the knees, which themselves look weathered and bruised from work. Adding to the image, she also carries a bucket that sloshes with water and is no doubt the source of the trail of drips you followed. Her face has the tan of the archipelago life, but her hair is too light for its heritage, plated along both side of her head in thick dirty-blond ropes. Finally, the last thing you take in is her shocked expression; eyes and mouth as round as her face.

You’re no better, though dressed in black and masked across the nose, your shock is likely less visible. You regain your senses a little faster than she does, sending your hand into the slit of your trouser pocket and removing the blade from the sheath about your thigh in record time. You don’t know what you’re going to do with it, but you know you’ll be better off with it in your hands. Seeing your sudden movement, or perhaps the reveal of your blade, she reacts a step behind you, but already armed. The bucket in her hands fly’s up by instinct, its effect is as ready as a master combatant, intercepting your blade and knocking it free from your grasp by catching it at an awkward angle. Cold water drenches both of you, ricocheting in the space between before joining your knife somewhere on the floor. Finally, from sudden soaking cold or your less than friendly attire, she screams.

The sound reverberates in the corridor; crushed and condensed in the small space to a deafening roar. By a similar stroke of unchecked instinct, you move to cover her mouth, but it’s all too late; you don’t have the power to cram each and every last decibel back down her throat. Even ebbing the torrent that comes proves impossible, and rising panic sets you looking over the floor for your dropped stopper of such things. The knife is by her feet, which are oddly small and encased in brown shoes that have little bows on them.

Looking away from her proves to be a mistake.

She shoves you back with a strength only witnessed by stubborn stains, sending you sprawling across the floor after a quick impact with the wall. It’s dazing, but not much -a surprised push that caught you of guard- and you quickly look up at her to not repeat your mistake. She looks at you. You look at the blade. She looks at the blade. You look at her before scrabbling forward, diving for the metal. Besting her is meaningless and you know it; that scream could have woken the dead and you have no illusions that someone will be on their way. You just want your blade to better the odd of escape and survival, though in your frantic unthinking state, escape with the blade could even mean regrouping and trying again. It’s a hope that’s dashed when she slams her foot down upon the knife, hoof kicking it backwards to slide into the room she’s still on the cusp of.

Abandoning the blade, you try to stand, which is met by her fall; a wild intercept that tangles with your person and drags you both to the floor. She’s heavy, and strong, and despite your relative professions, she’s likely the better wrestler as well. You push her away; you try and grab her and turn her off you; you scratch at her tough skin and soft flesh, and even throw some punches into her padding, all the while she screams for help. You land a solid blow, turning her jaw and shutting her up with a bitten tongue, and you kick at her legs as she kneels, half to throw her and half to propel yourself away. She grabs at you, feral, with reinforcements forgotten. An attempt to scratch your eyes pulls down your mask. You pull her hair, using one of her thick ropes as a handle. It’s petty, but you just want her off you.

It doesn’t work and a slap turns your head for it. You knee her in the side and roll, atop her, but still held in her grip. You snatch her pinny apron, twisting the cloth tight where it hooks about her neck, trying to cut off her supply. It breaks, or unravels at some unseen knot, and the result is being left with two lengths of cloth in hand and an opening in you attack, which she uses to roll on top of you and pin your wrists. You twist them, slowly pulling at her iron grip until it breaks.

Footsteps you didn’t even hear come to a stop just before your scuffle, and your opponent wraps her hands about your throat, giving you more to worry about than the jubilant shout of the new observer.

“Yeah! Catfight!”

So absurd are the words that even if you could breathe you wouldn’t take them in. Several others are present, hidden by the body of the woman above.

“Get em Samia! Kick his arse!” The sound of a woman, though deep enough for it to be a man pretending to be a woman.

“Her… Who _is _she?” The ‘is’ of the man’s words are the only part of his monotone that has any life in it.

You pull at the hands, easing their grip enough for **** breaths to pass, while still slamming you knee into any part of her you can reach. She jumps up, planting her own knee on your stomach and kicking the breath from you, but it slips shortly after on your wet top, sending her legs either side of you and pulling the material flat.

Further footfalls come, more than doubling your audience and crowding the already busy hallway. They are all on one side, with the other escape still open. If you could just shake her!

The newer comers, Hidden behind the woman above and silent on seeing you, finally speak as you buck your hips, trying and failing to once more knee her.

“Five gold pieces on the one with the hips.” The murmurs and negotiations that follow this are beyond your hearing.

You take a deep breath and let go of her wrists, letting her grip tighten on your neck. Hands freed, you grab her top and try the pull her up, leveraging her with your knees and legs to try and throw her over your head. It would place her between you and freedom, but it should get her off your neck. Pops begin to sound, and with her apron undone you see the buttons near your gripping hands begin to snap off and rattle away against the floor. You opt to grab the material about her waist for a more stable grip, heaving her up while pushing with your knees. She rides it, flailing with her legs as they begin to lift and shifting her weight to keep her down. Only the dress in your hands makes progress, shuffling up her form with each **** tug.

The murmuring goes quiet, before the man sounding woman pipes up.

“Samia, er… you always go no'neath with skirts?”

The woman above freezes, the redness of her exertions deepening to shade of crimson reserved for far paler skin. You take advantage, finally throwing her up and over, for which she crashes down in an ungainly way. Unfortunately, she still grips you by the collar; one hand only, with the other desperately pulling down her skirt and positioning her behind away from the crowd. You finally see them, and pale as you quickly start counting.

There is a man with a bald head, a very tall woman, a man with a mop of messy black hair that could be the woman’s twin, and behind them are at least four ugly men dressed in tasteless finery. You begin to run from them, towards the woman, who had turned to lie on her front in the process of getting back on her feet. Indeed, bare thighs show up to the buttocks -paler than any other part of her- with one hand keeping it that way. Typically, such attire _would _require bloomers at the very least, though in hot Coronac, undershorts would probably be substituted. Incidentally, those who wear trousers need no such extra protection, saving time and ache on laundry day.

You twist free of her grip and leap over her before the others can react, running towards the long length of empty corridor. Unfortunately, her lost dignity proves less important to her than keeping you from escaping, and her other hand lets go of her skirt to intercept your legs, not catching them per se, but simply interrupting their flow with a wild swipe. You fall, unable to take your first step beyond her, and clatter to the ground, turning quickly as you sense her hurrying to clamber back atop you. This time, she rushes to the other side so her backside remains hidden from the group. You once more push her back and she tries to grip your arms, looking to pin you, and the whooping sounds of the crowd begins again, not to cheer her fight, but more likely the part of her spilling from one side of her tops torn buttons. Were she not trying to get you killed, you’d feel sympathy for the poor girl.

Instead, you roll her to the side and punch her in the mouth, your sudden jab too much for her to keep your arms back. She lets go of your arms and starts a frantic and ungainly struggle for who grips who and where, that leaves you, somehow, slapped several times and left in a very unfavourable position. With her goal to pin and yours to escape, your focus on the fight was not to win but to get free, and so advantage went to the one with the more immediate goal. It’s a conflict that leaves you turned with your back to her and her thick work hardened arm about your throat, **** you by the crook of its elbow. She rolls to her back, leaving you in the air atop her, looking at the group and the ceiling as you push back with your legs and try to elbow her with your arms. While she grunts with each strike, it doesn’t seem to work, and the noose of her grip only tightens as you kick.

The crowd watching begin to blacken and fade, along with the rest of the world. They look not at your purpling face, but at your body in a frightening way, and you become acutely aware of the water that soaked it, leaving the black material clinging to your every bump and groove to shap them for the group. Your heart hammers, and in desperation, you kick for the last time, attempting to do to you what you did for her; flipping yourself over her grip.

You push on her enough to turn your world upside down, looking back down the empty path to freedom. But now, it is not empty. A man, tall, thin, and muscled, carries a bat as he walks towards you, with the air of an executioner, and you dimly feel you’ve seen him before. It clicks unhelpfully; the back door guard.

“What are you layabouts doing!?” he roars, “What the fuck are you doing!? Raise the fucking alarm! Get searching! What’s the matter with you!?”

If the men run to task or not, you don’t know. Despite your fighting, your air runs out and the darkness that creeped now pounces, swallowing you whole.

“Uff, uff, ugh, fuck!”

You feel jolts running up your body, hammered there by steady impacts.

“Hey, hand her over.”

“This bitch is so wet.” The men argue over you. Your hands are tied behind your back. “She’s soaking me. Hey, get back!”

The darkness begins to fade, like an ebbing tide leaving confused flotsam over the shores of consciousness. You don’t want it to go; you feel like something far worse is lingering in the light of reality.

“Go on, right back! Uff, ugh. Give me some fucking room!”

The impacts hammer at your hips, reaching up to your stomach and making you feel sick. Like the darkness’s approach, its leaving is just as implacable, and consciousness returns as grudgingly as it left. Oddly enough, the sight that replaces the darkness is…more darkness, but this time with the tentative light and half formed shapes of reality. It moves and jolts in your vision as you are moved and jolted; strange edges bouncing up and down in sickening waves as you watch them. The warmth of a man is on you, touching your skin all across your front, and rough hands caress your thighs. The smell of his sweat invades your nose.

Light suddenly strikes your eyes, and you close them in pain and fear. Some of the confusion goes and your last moments of light returns to you as well. The maid, the hallways, the crowd, the man with the bat. You try to follow what came after, but the path of memory ends in a gulf that leads here.

You open your eyes in a squint.

Behind you, as you look up, are a set of stone stairs, with their bottom lit with the light of a lantern. It’s far less bright now that its suddenness is gone. Looking back down, you see a bottom, tucked into loose red trousers and partially covered by a white top. It’s born by a man, and the moving feet it’s connected to helps you orientate yourself and the pounding your guts are taking. Evidently, you are slung over his shoulder, feet first and head behind, with bound arms at your back, bent on his bones at your waist. He grunts with exertion.

Another man comes about, evidently to help him with his load now that he has descended the precarious stairs, and you close your eyes, looking to fake unconsciousness, feeling rough hands handling you with all the care of a sack of grain.

“Why’s she wet?”

“Don’t know, but my bloody top has soaked it up. Better not be piss or something.”

Bars clang, and you risk a peek to see a barred cell of metal, with each strut crudely mortared into the floor. You tumble inside, landing on your right arm, and a half step behind you comes your carrier and a rough slap cracking across your face, stinging your cheek, but limited by the small space to swing.

“Hey! Wake up!” You open your eyes and look at him, saving yourself from another slap. “Is this piss?”

He gestures to himself, where his white top is darkened along the shoulder he carried you on. You don’t answer, but a scathing look twists your face all the same and he backs away, mumbling to himself.

“Better not be piss.”

The door swings shut and the lock upon it rattles before the key is thrown onto a nearby box. The bald man from before steps into the light, freshly descended from the stairs, and you see him at the same moment the jailor does, who turns to address him.

“Why aren’t you searching!? We’ve got assassins, arsehole!” He points at you without looking, for emphasis.

The other man, meanwhile, looks at nothing but you. He even blows a kiss when your eyes meet. “Your captains house, your captain’s assassin,” he turns to the other man, “You search.”

The bald man wares a small yellow top and a pair of white trousers, separated by a red cloth belt that is more coincidental than referential. It’s juxtaposed by the other man and his white and red attire, clearly marking them as from different crews.

The guard, who you note is the taller of the two, though equal in tightly knotted slim muscle, bristles.

“_My _captain is your captain’s captain. Which makes me _your _captain. Search!”

The bald man is unimpressed. “You want me to tell my captain you said that?” He asks it quietly, threateningly. “Think _your _captain would like that?”

The taller man’s mood darkens, and he looms with all his height threateningly, but the other man holds his ground, confident, or making a good show of it.

“Fine.” The guard steps back, evidently losing jurisdiction. He looks to another man in the back of the room, hidden by his form, “Ref!” he gestures between the bald man and you with his bat, “You watch both these cunts. As for you two-” -evidently there are more unseen people at the end of the room than ‘Ref’- “We got to search. Come on.”

There is a flurry of activity, and as the man steps away toward the stairs, you see the people at the other end of the room he was talking to. You’re heart sinks.

The far end of the room, lit by a couple of flickering lanterns, holds several sets of stocks, their wooden frames built with holes for both arms and neck and positioned low to bend the prisoner forward. Two of them are occupied -one by a man and one by a woman- while a third is nearby and ominously empty. Your eyes linger on both prisoners as they are clearly naked, and bitted like a horse so their teeth clamp on the wood and their lips twist about it in an ugly sneer. Adding to the horror of the scene, three free men are naked, through two of them hurry to dress themselves. One is a huge giant in width, built like a circus strongman and not lacking in height, while the other looks like a greasy eel with a mop of black hair and a face twisted by one of the ugliest scars you’ve ever seen. The final man, ‘Ref’ no doubt, stands naked by the stocks, his body and face withered by age, yet standing strong with a firm stance and hard expression. You sympathise with the woman as none of them look gentle, and were they not hurrying to leave you would have trouble containing your rising panic.

The keys rattle as they’re picked up, turning the retreating form of the man who tossed them there.

“What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?”

The bald man, keys in hand, turn to him, sniffing unconcernedly. “Putting her in stocks. No reason I can’t have a piece, while you’re searching like.”

Your chest tightens and breathing becomes difficult. Cold shudders roll up and down you and an idle unthinking hand stretches in their bindings and confirms the blade at your thigh is still missing; of course they wouldn’t return it to you; that would be stupid. Another twisting reaching pat tells you that the poison is also missing. They must have searched you and taken it while you were ****. You hope that’s all they did. You shake the distracting thought from your head and begin to twist at the rope.

“Oh no you fuckin don’t you bald headed bastard.” Your hope rallies at the defence, stemming from the man who locked you up. It’s an odd source to find rescue from, but you’ll take all you can get. “_My _captain’s direct and standing orders are to do nothing to captured or surrendered assassins, thieves, or bounty hunting bastards.” The smile on his face is one of savage victory, clearly taking joy in exercising his authority, and he closes on the other man with his bat waving before him like a teachers pointing stick. “Your dick goes in that bitch, and this bat goes up your fucking nose, and it ain’t gonna stop till it comes out the back of that shiny. Fucking. Head.”

As he closes, he clearly wants to put his bat under the bald man’s nose for emphasis, but the effect is spoiled as the other man backs away, snorting and smiling before turning to the others.

“Before you say something-“ the big slab of muscle retorts “he’s right.”

The bald man’s smile falls and turns to an angry petulant expression. “You think I give a fuck what that two penny whore thinks?”

The other men’s looks turn dangerous, with the two men pausing in their dress; red and white clothes stalled on arms and legs. Even the still naked man manages to fit further hardness into his face. Evidently, the bald man is alone in such sentiments.

A loud slap sounds, echoing off the stone walls, floor, and ceiling. All eyes turn to the older naked man, his hand on the rump of the rooms only other woman. He smiles in a placating way, keeping a fatherly hardness to his expression.

“Come on lad. Plenty of Tamana to go round. Isn’t that right Tamana?”

The bitted woman doesn’t respond, and nor does the bald man at first. Slowly, he backs away from the bars and the others, towards the stocks, dropping the keys where he found them. The rest of the men all smile at each other before departing together, the big man still straining to fit a small red shirt on himself as he ascends the stairs.

The bald man throws down his jacket and you look away from him and the remaining man by the stocks. When he arrives, he has to grunt with exaggerated effort, moaning loudly and obnoxiously to make sure you know what he’s doing. Tamana, for her part, stays silent.

The old man begins to grunt as well, which burns you with enough curiosity to sneak a look. Shockingly, you see that he’s behind the man, in the same way the bald one is behind the woman, thrusting with lust as his hands dig into the rump before him. Bizarre; you’ve never considered that a man can be so… well, he’s not ‘equipped’ for such things, surely…unless...

You look away, sickened by the sodomy and shamed at your own momentary confusion. Of course such animals would not be beneath that! At the same time, you feel a conflicted…something; some part of you purring in a self-satisfied manner, while asking ‘well, why should only women suffer such things?’ The man being **** whimpers more than the woman, and the goodness in your heart wins through, bleeding sympathy for both victims in equal measure.

You stop thinking about it, instead focusing on your situation and what the future has in store for you. After a deep breath, you shift your position into a more comfortable one, and with no easy way out, you prepare for the long haul. Needless to say, the steady pounding rhythm beaten not a stone’s throw away does not fill you with hope.