...Fuck.

You swallow, sour throat still hitching with the motion. The luck needed to escape would be more than you have seen in your lifetime, let alone this abysmal night. You look at the man, a boulder balanced on twin trunks that lead into flat feet that bulge between his sandal straps. You don’t suppose there’s much point in asking if she’s sure? That you heard her right? She smiles as if in response to your unasked questions and your hesitation.

“Come now sweetheart, you’re going to have to move a little quicker than that.” She moves behind the man’s bulk, her body disappearing behind his. His height is almost average, while hers keeps her face and neck clearly visible over his shoulder. Her slender hands slide up his sides and arms, while his bored eyes never stray from you. The smile she wears could almost be genuine as her hands dig into his arms and shoulders, squeezing and pulling at his fat in massaging motions, lifting and twitching his odd clothes as if eager to reveal what’s under them. The idea of touching him at all sets your teeth on edge.

“Maybe you should start with your top. It is hot in here after all.”

She’s right, it is hot; sweat beads on your brow, and your black long sleeved jumper, while thin, is plastered closely to your skin by your perspiration. It sticks to you more now than it ever did before.

With all the speed and grace of a rusty old door, you begin to take your top off, gabbing its hem at your belly and pealing upwards. You almost hear your joints creek, the hinges of your shoulders squealing, as they war between **** and acceptance. Your top passes your vision, shadowing the moment of reveal and **** indecency. It passes, and you greet a world where your breasts hang in the open air, drawing the eyes of the man and woman alike. You let the fabric fall off your wrists and out of your hands, joining your dignity in a crumpled heap on the floor.

The man’s eyes widen slightly, the non-existent eyebrows of his bald head rising as he fails to maintain the bored facade. Lust and heat starts to flicker behind his eyes. The Captain remains more judgemental, watching the show with an entertained expression, and unlike the man, her eyes return to your face when their weighing is complete. For your part, the loss of such decency is a blow, but a minor one considering what seems to be on the horizon. You’ve shared bathes with women who have much more to hide (almost all of them in fact) and the Captain renders your chest ‘boyish’ in comparison to her. Considering how she leans against him, the man is in direct contact with far more impressive specimens, so why must he stare at yours! Gods, even his own breasts are likely bigger!

Under the captains commanding gaze, you continue, inelegantly, almost losing your balance as you slip your feet out of your black pumps. You do it with feet alone, pinning the ankle and stepping free in wobbling motions. Sandals are quite popular in the Coronac summers, even among women; you had been shocked to see so many bared feet and ankles and even knees and thighs when the first hot summer rolled around, but that shock soon abated; never far enough for you to wear such things yourself, of course. The thought proves a poor distraction and you sigh, shaking slightly and feeling almost cold as the droplets of sweat fall and trace the limited curves of your form. Without being told, the jerky marionette motion of your arms pushes the hem of your black trousers over the small bump of your backside, and lets them drop to the floor. You step out as though walking to your doom, looking down so you don’t have to see them looking at you.

Your lowered gaze sees nothing impressive; a pair of pink nipples riding slopes that stand out over the shadow of your rib cage; a flat and mostly unmuscled belly leading to a tuft of black between bony hips and skinny thighs. Even your knees seems overly knobbly and your little feet are as stunted as your height. None of it is something you’ve ever found impressive. With a spark of hope, you wonder if the man might feel the same: that he may decide against the Captains idea and reject you for her. That idea is shattered by what follows. A sound brings your head up, despite not wanting to see its cause, and your eyes rest upon the rising red dress-like gown, its top undone, pulled up and over his head with the silken slick of noise, like the curtain of the world’s worst show. Fat thighs, like spilling sacks of curdled meat, lead up to a hidden member, skulking somewhere under a protruding stomach, and upon that bloated round rests wide nippled bosoms, melted in shape as if to spill over the sides of his gut. It’s all quite tanned (though his lifted arms show pale patches under his shifted folds), and oddly hairless, as though whatever the **** was that banished it from his head and eyebrows extended to his sweat sheened body as well. It makes him look like a fat disgusting baby.

You face each other, naked, taking in the sights of each other’s form; one lustful, the other full of revulsion. You can’t even be considering this, can you? All the reasons why run through your mind again; condensed into a second’s quick mantra, followed by the same a second time, repeating with increased speed until you can’t keep your eyes from flicking about the room. The Captain, the door, the man, the window, the sword.

“The bed, dear.” Those words, like a broken headsman’s block, are thrown out with such informality. They twist your insides. You turn, away from the distant window and its guardians, away from the door, now at your back, to the bed. Two shaking steps take you to the threshold, before you collapse only half intentionally to its surface. Hands and knees shuffle you further forward across its soft plateau. They feel weak beneath you, as though you a foal fresh from the womb, taking its first steps. Your bent back -a canyons swaying bridge between your shoulders and your rump- seems to leave you presented so brazenly to the now shifting shapes at your rear. You feel more a mare than a foul, locked in the hungry eyes of a bull and a wolf.

The feather bed begins to sink under your hands and knees with capsizing ****, the great weight of the man climbing aboard sending the world tipping towards him. You almost collapse, more from your own shaking than his movement, and sweat pours cold as he grows closer; grunts and jostling waves beating at you as the petite motions of his shuffling shins brings him near, stopping only when the bed between your knees sinks deeply. His belly touches you first.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. A mantra of disbelief the echoes in your mind again and again, overlapping as they bounce against the walls of your otherwise empty head. You can’t breathe. You look straight ahead, at the wall and at the headboard of the bed. What if you begged? You could do that, couldn’t you? He must know that what he’s doing was wrong. He must care, surely? Your feet shift as you try to reposition around the crater made behind you, but your toes touch him and flinch away as though burned. He breathes heavily through his mouth, as though already exhausted; the phlegm rattling wetly at the back of his throat. His hands touch you, falling over the sides of your hips, slick with a sweat that mixes with your own, forcing his grip to tighten lest you slip through his fingers.

He pushes forward, pulling you to him, but nothing happens. You realise why as you feel his protruding gut ride up your perspiring cheeks. He frees a hand to lift it, resting it slickly on your lower back with a weight that almost buckles you. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. Your teeth grit together as you shake; too numbed with fear and disbelief to think anything more. His gut was the last barrier between him and you. You’re exposed! His hand returns to your hip like a blazing cattle brand, holding you still. This can’t be happening. He pulls you. This can’t be hap-

You tense up as it touches; mentally slapped to stillness as he probes your lower lips. You flinch as he breaks through, no longer breathing at the unreality of it. Your body doesn’t want him there, and lacking any instructions from your blanked mind, it tries to squeeze out the intruder even as he pushes forward. As suddenly as he began, he stops, bulging flesh of his hips pressing against you, fully hilted between your folds. He feels strange; small but...streaching, as though he’s short and fat down there as well. An image comes to mind; one of a fat man forcing himself into an alley far too thin for his form, trapped at the entrance, with the building each side groaning under his bulk. The image shifts as the fat man pulls himself free, takes a few steps back, and charges the alley again. He’ll never get further; only ruin the alley’s entrance for others.

“Ahhhh! Yes! She’s tight one!” A Rhythm grows; jolts through you, jiggles through him. “How old are you girl? Haa?”

You don’t answer, don’t hear. He barely pulls back, only pushes forward; grinding at you with brute ****. Almost more up and down than in and out! It hurts! The alley’s entrance splinters and cracks as reason is defeated by ****. You grip the sheets with clenched fists.

“Well... answer him.” The captain’s voice cuts through the fog; its command dropping your mouth to obey, but nothing comes. What was the question? Little noises spill out in place of answers; cutoff ‘Ah’ sounds that match him hump for hump to punctuate your frantic breathing. You turn your head in her direction, looking for help, forehead slicking with sweat in the heat. A droplet forms and rolls from brow to nose before being shaken down to the sheets.

“Your age? How old are you dear?” How old are you? It’s hard to think. If he just let go; if he just stopped sawing at you, maybe...

“T-Twenty five.”

You **** the words out between your gentle cries of pain. The loose strands of hair that were pulled from you bun when your head was pushed down and impaled on the last man’s cock, starts to wet with soaking fluid, sticking to your face or swaying and bounce far more heavily. The man inside you now laughs at your answer, pausing his ride while holding you hard against him.

“Haahaha! In bitch years?! Twenty five.” He says it with in disbelief, harrumphing the sickness from his throat. “You have the tightness of a twelve year old! UGH!” His last grunt accompanies his hard renewal. It gets a broken cry from you, and more fluid runs down your face; from your eyes this time, blurring your vision. You try not to think about how you compare, or what experience his frame of reference draws from.

“It’s the principality calendar darling,” the captain purrs, still standing by, “If she were down south, she’d be about eighteen.”

“Nineteen,” he swallows mid correction, “and a half. Not- Ugh. Not had many men but...” He pauses again, blessedly, and holds you on him with one hand while reaching down your front with the other. His belly presses hard against you as he leans forward, wiping the sweat of your inner thighs and impaled fuzz with a grasping podgy hand, groping blindly. It’s a short moment, full of quick probing motions and sweeping wipes, before he brings his hand back before him for inspection.

“I’m,” he swallows, clearing his throat and considering, “-not your first.”

He takes a moment to catch his breath before returning his hand to your hips, and he begins again, hard, another sobbing noise escaping out of your open mouth.

“UGH! Who was it, ey? Ugh!” His words accompany his charges. The alley crumbles. Your legs quiver. “Who owns this pussy I’m in girl? Ahh! Eh? Some- Uff! Some unlucky hUS-band!? Haa. Oh yes. A lOVer!? Or was dAddy dEArest a naughty bOy!?”

The mention of your father flashes his face in your mind; not something you want to see, or be seen by right now, considering the position his little girl is in. What would he say if he saw his daughter being rammed by such a disgusting man?

“Oh, I don’t think so.” the captain chimes in; an observer watching from the side-lines. “I think she was taken in by the first boy to promise her everything... except to stop.”

You don’t want to think about it, yet his face flashes at the corner of your memory, lit as it was then with wide pleasure. It all swims up like sewage spilling a drain. The way he looked at you, smiling. The noises he made. How his eyebrows scrunched together with each push forward. The feel of the hand over your mouth and the red wetness running down your thigh. The smell of the blood and the alley, not thin, but crowded; the others looking on, laughing and lusting and waiting their turn. He’d been longer, struck deeper, and the pain of it gives his memory a thickness twin to the eye watering beast currently battering you. Now as then, you cry, wishing you were anywhere but where you are.

“And when she realised she was in too deep, he was in too deep.” She leans to the side, parallel to the bed, letting her look at your jumping face, streaked with sweat and tears and painted with an expression that begs for mercy. “Men can be such brutes, don’t you think?” A wide twisting smile tugs at her perfectly painted lips, while the fat dick grinds you to mush as it wreaks you precious place.

Oh Gods! You grasp for the headboard, groping air, **** for something harder than sheets to hold on to. You should have bitten the evil bitch! Done it when you had the chance! When you were down between her thunderous legs and she wore that exact same look! Bitten instead of licked; **** be dammed! Fatigued flailing arms fail to catch their target, and with his movements and the weakness they put into you, you soon flop your front to the bed, face sinking to the sheets to collect the sweat that dripped there. With his hands pinning your hips and holding them for his attention, he barely notices your collapse, though the jolts that sent you forward now drive you into the bed as he adjusts his aim to match. You let yourself be used; let yourself be pressed down, wailing your sorrows into the soft feathers and stained covers as he plunders your vaunted ‘tightness’ again and again and again. You claw at them, grip them, draw them towards you; salvation and crucible both, crumpling under your **** fingers.

He changes pace, his unhealthy body belying his physical relentlessness, and the grinding back and forth becomes a pounding. You feel him almost leave you, simply for the benefit of returning with ****. Each stroke gets a cry, and each cry rattles a wetness in the back of your throat, as though whatever cold ails him had already passed to you and taken hold. It builds, and after a few more tormenting jabs of his hard ride, you cough. The previous mans cock returns in flavour and substance; a white streak propelling from the back of your throat to hang over your bottom lip. For a shocked moment, he’s here again, shaft in your mouth and spilling too much seed to swallow; the two men using you whorishly and you, in deference to the evils of the world, in the middle, letting it happen.

The moment passes, both phantom image and cruel assaults, returning to the burning grind that stirred your pot. He has hair after all; you can feel its friction against your own. Strange that you had seen him naked, yet the part of him inside you now exists only as an image, felt to shape, in your mind. His hands slip as they grip your soft rump flesh, falling before they slap back into place and hold you wide for him as his thighs press against the backs of your own. His thick fingers squeeze across you, probing under the fat of his gut, to grip your supple presented cheeks; to pull them, to grind them and kneed them, and eventually, with a thick sweat slick thumb, penetrate between them.

Something breaks; it’s all too much! What it’s too much of, other than thick twisting anal digit, you don’t know. It smothers the pained and gasping cries that come from you with each of his thrusts, killing them with a quick cum streaked swallow, and replacing them with a contemptible mewling sound utterly foreign too you. His thumb grips nothing, yet it drives forward and curls with movement, controlling you like a puppeteer, twisting your moans and twitching your body to his will. Whatever madness or reason put you on your hands and knees and set your honour for sale, this is not it; this is new; this is him, inside you in a strange and terrible way. The pitiful tone he tweaks you too, grinds you too, is not your own. It belongs to a tool, an instrument, to the whore you’re playing; a fantasy clawing at reality, staining your will as it’s wrenched from your throat. He stabs forward, thick knuckle as far into you as it can go.

It’s the sound you make, more than the stretch, which breaks you back to normal; cracks you back to the wailing of the terribly sane. You cry as you should. For only the second time in your life, a man is inside you, using you, taking what should only be given at marriage. Are you destined to be used by evil men? Used for their own pleasure at your cost; past your obvious ****? The mattress jostles with his building eager movement, conjuring fresh tears of both relief and despair at what is inevitably to come.

Why this? You came here hoping for an opening.

“Oh yes!”

Hoping for a chance.

“Fuck!”

Hoping to get what you came for and leave.

“Uuuuuunnffuuuck!”

Hoping for a miracle.

He grips at you, bruises you, as he fills that hope with seed. At first, he pounds in quick succession, unrelenting, even as the juices begin to flow freely. The first squirt is one only dimly felt inside you as its source rides back and forth. It pushes as deep, as he does; the man at the alley reaching its end one way or the other. This is accompanied by a squeaking gasp coming from the gasping mass above you; the final squeal that grinds his movement to a stop. The rest...twitches out of him; less squirting than oozing to fill your slit; a baby looking man, looking to make... You squeeze more tears from your eyes. There is no way that this was worth it if that happens, but you know your body has already switched allegiance once to this man; to his animal grip of your animal hole. You have as little say over what is to come as what has just happened.

You flinch as he works his digit out, more to hold you tighter and to prop himself up than give you respite. It doesn’t work. A final jerk of his gasping, wheezing body, sends him tumbling forward, your slick and soiled behind slipping from his grasp, both internal and external. You fall to the bed, and a second later, his burning bloated body makes a bed of you, crushing you mightily under him. At first, you thought his slippery skin and your own wet body would shoot you out; squeezed across the room like a pea out of a pod, but the sheets and his still lifted gut hold you firm, and lets the last splash of his essence spit against your raw and widened self: a final, staining insult.

You can’t breathe with him on you, and you do so need to breathe. Your gasps are not as heavy as his, and lack his strained and wheezing quality, but he beat the breath from your lungs in cries and shameful moans before, leaving you with little spare now. You turn your head from the bed, letting your mouth sup on the humid air that bleeds down from his bulk, but it’s the bulk that stops you, holding your chest and lungs tight with weight. Your arms move sluggishly and pull weakly, gripping at long since loosened bed sheets with sweaty fingers, clawing no freedom from the now loose folds. Is this how you die? Naked? Crushed to **** by a fat man, too out of breath from his time making a whore of you? Who drained himself -his energy and essence- into you? Too tired to crawl from beneath his grotesque physic? His wheezing hitches become a coughing fit above your head, forcing him to lift bulk slightly for comfort. You breathe what you can, even as his phlegm mists on your face.

When the fit ends, he lets himself fall and presses on you again, taking his time to gain some semblance of rhythm in his lungs. His hips still crush yours, your fall splitting your thin legs and setting the resting either side his thick trunks. You don’t flinch from them, as you did before; the burning disgust is still present, if not more so, but the will is gone and the damage done. The next few minutes of shallow breath are spent in stillness, his slack mouth dripping spit into your ear as his breathing returns to its regular pace. He idles himself by reaching under you; rubbing your chest and squeezed what he can. The sheets are wet, too much to dry you, and so his groping is well lubricated by you both. No doubt he cleaned his thumb in such a move; a few wipes on your thighs and the cheeks of your hips felt more practical than lustful as well. Despite his probing, it was clear there would be no second round. He’d spent all he had on you, and when the time finally comes, he needs the captains help to rise from the bed.

Breath returns in earnest, and it now becomes your turn to gasp and cough and wheeze. You lie in the sweat soaked sheets, unmoving and exposed to the air stirred by their movements. The sweat -and other fluids- begin to cake on your body, and despite the need to breathe, you turn your face back to the bedding to hide from it all. Words bleed into your ears from voices above and from behind; from the end of the bed and bodies bracketed by your still spread legs.

“Mmmm most impressive.” The captain sounds close, inspecting where you begin to feel him seep out. “And while you’re not feeling well too. I didn’t think you had it in you; well done!” The captain compliments him like a spoiled child, and he preens in response, his gasping words revealing how much more air he still fights to reclaim.

“Not at all.” He grunts as the captain pulls his red dress down his damp body. “Best way to get rid of a sickness is to pass it on.”

A tinkling laugh comes from the captain. “I’m sure she’s grateful...

“Sooo...” The captains voice, mostly absent from the rooms recent debauchery, sounds almost sheepish now for being so transparent; she croons like girl just finished of her chores, asking for a treat she thinks she deserves. The man, ‘Mojarieal’, your sexual patron, grunts a laugh.

“I’ll see what I can do about your request. I can’t guarantee he’ll be receptive of course, but he will hear what you have to say.”

The door opens as the captain exclaims a happy “Oh wonderful...” and soon clicks closed, smothering out the stream of her further platitudes as she walks him away before he changes his mind.

They’re gone. Both of them. Faint voices still hum through the walls, but they are no longer here. You want to curl up and cry, but that would defeat the purpose. This cannot be allowed to become a waste! Breath mostly restored and strength fuelled by the heaping mess of repressed feelings you stamp down, telling yourself it can be sorted later, you stand off the bed and ignore the wetness seeping between your lower lips. The stiletto still glitters half hidden in the cloth folds, discarded and forgotten to all but you. It must be now. If memory serves, there were two more merchants waiting to see Captain Washkin; waiting for their turn. What would they do? How would they use you? The answer was simple: they wouldn’t.

You hobble over to the knife, bruised hips limping in far less lithe movements than you could not... what, maybe ten minutes before? Five? Thirty? How long was it? Longer than it had any right to be! You let the anger you stoke smother the bitter sting that comes from your probed rear as you bend down and scoop out the blade, careful not to disturb the pile too much. The sound of the Captains return comes to you; the outer door opening and orders being relayed to the men in the room beyond. Where to go? The bed. Trying anything with the door open would be suicide; she must be drawn in, and hopefully alone. You stand, wincing, with blade in hand, by the bedpost. Where can you hide the blade? The strap at your thigh still wraps your leg, empty of poison and knife both; it’s the only thing you wear. Putting it there would be obvious. On the bed? In the spoiled sheets? Parting with the blade -a hard lifeline in your hand- doesn’t sit well with you at all, but it’s not like you have some other place to put it.

Or do you?

In a moment of queer inspiration, you move the thin blade to your lower back, gripping it between the cheeks of your buttocks. You assume a somewhat ridged position as a result, but feign exhaustion by leaning against the bed post. Your heart beats too fast for real fatigue, and your hands almost shake with nerves; no doubt anyone fresh from what you just did would be acting a little odd, but you still work hard to look natural. Hopefully she will think your odd stance a result of your mistreatment instead of duplicity. Did she see what he did with his thumb? What should you do with your hands?

She walks in, alone, the flash of the door only showing the greedy eyes of one of the men for a second before closing. Naked and with hands empty, you couldn’t look less threatening. You lean one hand against the bed post as if to steady yourself. The other just hangs.

“Well, look at you. I think that was a surprise for everyone. Enjoy it, did you?”

You make a tired, non-committal grunt as she approaches, halving the distance between you.

“I knew you’d make a fine whore from the moment that tongue got to work.”

You want to tell her that you’re no whore, barely stopping yourself from protesting the insult. The situation doesn’t call for it. Neither does your freshly fucked cunt. She slinks forward, stopping just a little too far from you.

“You know, those noises you made... You’d think that-“

You don’t let her talk; her words aren’t welcome and her insights are poison. Instead you step forward, hesitantly, limping, careful to keep the blade clenched between your slight cheeks. She stops talking, watching your small naked steps towards her. You cannot see her expression, keeping your face turned down, timidly looking at the floor as you advance and giving off the air of the defeated. All you see are her feet at first, but soon her thighs and hips as you close, the cloth at her chest swelling from beneath as you get closer. You look up. As you stand before her, you see a face filled with open curiosity, as though you a creature revealing some rare nature.

She’s in reach. She’s also quite beautiful, in a frightening way; like a storm playing, for a moment, at being a breeze. It’s a strange thought to have. You still hate her. Gods but you hate her! The strange conflict wars within you, wearing at you, joining the fatigue left by your earlier encounters. Her perfectly painted lips turn up at the corners, their scarlet glow the same as when she made you suck the seed from between her legs. Her drawn and shadowed eyes crinkles with the mirth she wore as you tasted cock for the first time. Her expression, expectant and prying as when she asked your age, watching as the man she whored you too took you from behind. She was beautiful, and she was evil. The mix leaves you feeling exhausted.

You stand before her, wavering on your feet and looking into her sea blue eyes. You must look so pitiful to her; naked and tired, lips parted and face flushed; the woman she made of you. Your arm reaches forward, looking for stability, and finds her. They reach to her shoulders and her neck, gently. You pull it, pull her, down, down, to your face and to your lips. It’s an unthinking thing. Your lips press into hers in a puckered crush, straight on, nose next to nose as you look up at her. It’s her that teases your lips apart, her hands that cup your face, her tongue that gives life to your own. It’s not you; none of it is you; but gods do you let it happen! The passion that pours and flows with heat in those seconds is something that you’ve never felt; an alignment of the stars; a dance; a bounty of lust received and returned. It drags moans from you and her, like the rumble of the earth; sends her hands spilling from your face to your chest, you back, questing downward. It was, for your part, a kiss wreathed in unthinking laurels of both love and hate. Her hands grip your behind, squeezing. Your dagger sinks into her side.

Her moans, twined with yours, turned to a squeak. Her tongue, which twisted and turned on your own, fled your mouth and your lips, ending the kiss. It was your first real kiss; hot and wet and...good. You ram the stiletto into her side, digging for her heart again and again, locking your hand to her neck and holding her lips to your own to smother her noise. You pound in quick succession, unrelenting, even as the juices begin to flow freely. The first squirt is one only dimly felt as it splashes across you, its source riding back and forth. She grips at you, moans at you, claws at you as her eyes beg for mercy. You don’t stop until you’re satisfied.

Eventually, she stops her noises and her movements, and so do you, letting the beautiful, hateful woman slip to the floor and gently part your final kiss. You straddle her, and with a lovers passion, you tear her gown wide and spill her bosom outward. Her breasts seem much less impressive as she lays on her back -the last you’d really seen them from was from below, after all, where they hung heavy- but the jewel at their centre is as eye catching as ever. The amulet of Abyet sparkles blue as the centre stone catches the waning light of the room; the proof of her **** sitting atop her lifeless body. Remembering the two men in the other room, and the no doubt grisly end they would wish to impart once they find their captain, you quickly pull the necklace up over her head, past her wide, unseeing eyes, and drop it over your own shoulders to rest between your far less impressive padding. You then pad over to the pile of dark clothes you left.

Before you put them on, you look down at yourself, body streaked with blood. It was unfortunate to stain them, but better to go out as black as the night than dressed in only skin and blood. As you squat down to pick them up, a drop falls to the floor, lacking the crimson of the others as it falls from between your legs. The blood would wash off, but what of Mojarieal and your ready womb? Questions for another time, though you resolve that your business with the fat **** was far from done.

You hastily climb into them and run for the window, scanning the surroundings above and below before climbing onto the short roof that juts out from beneath it. The thud of the ground is next, then the open field of overgrown grass, and the woods beyond. Only in the shadow of the branches and the sound of undisturbed night do you permit yourself to slow to a walk.

The woods pass without incident, and you trek to the point the stars tell you is the rear of the island. 50,000 gold pieces and an island of your own rests between your breasts. Justice has been done, and you...live. Woods give way to fields and short sloping cliffs of loose stone deliver you to the sea and your guide waiting out of sight in the distance. As the cool water embraces you and cleans you the best it can, you wonder... was it worth it?

---

---

What was the coin worth, really? Security? Servants? A house big enough to haunt? If the money was worth the cost to obtain it, then spending yours on such things, on anything at all, was a tremendously frivolous exercise. What could you buy that would chase off the dreams? That would bring back your honour? What was there to set you right? Time, you fear, had made you bitter.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

The fat man interrupted your thoughts with his arrogant tone, looking down at you with a golden goblet of wine in hand. He’d recovered from his cold, of course. So had you.

“I’m sure I do...” He mused to himself from his position in the room above, looking over the hand rail into the small hexagonal room below that serve as a nexus for the three corridors joined to it. The floor was marble, the walls a panelled wood, and a small fountain trickled water nearby. Its tinkling chime merged with the rustle of chainmail and belts, worn by the two men standing before you. They’re very still, moving only when they adjust their levelled crossbows to keep you in their sights.

“I th- wait... haaa yes, Wendogo’s girl, am I right?”

You don’t respond. Being caught down here isn’t how you wanted this to go, but seeing him again, fat and repulsive as ever, leaves you little choice but to keep going.

He smiles, genuinely amused that you broke into his mansion and his island, both far further south than your last meeting, and he takes a sip before responding with mocking narrowed eyes.

“Then again, I can’t be certain. Could you strip naked and get on your hands and knees? Maybe moan like a whore? It might refresh my memory.”

His stinging words feel like nothing; nothing compared to what he did to you; what he does every night when you go to sleep and wake with the feel of him still inside. Nothing to the months that followed his diseased touch. Red Burn, and the vinegar treatments needed to cure it; the itching little ‘Reats’ bugs that had taught you why whores keep themselves shaved; Coronac sickness, with its effects you can feel even now. You even got an infection that made your piss feel like fire. The only diseases you didn’t seem to catch from him was The Rot and a child. Even hatred runs through your veins like a poison.

“No? ‘A silent woman knows her place’ ey?”

He had to die. Your health had crawled back scarred with his sickness, but only justice can sooth your mind and heal your honour and your soul. Only that could burn away your shame. That you...let him, meant nothing. His writ was not for your ****. Technically, he was a merchant engaging in illegal trade with wanted criminals. In reality, you’re here for you alone.

“Haa, you know, you were a good lay. That tight little cunny... and those noises you made, not to mention that you came back for more...”

Your clothes are black and styled for night-time utility once more. It would take a fool to truly believe you were here for anything but his life.

“I’d offer you a place amongst my girls, but...you’re still a little skinny for me.”

You look at the guards and the room; the corridor you entered in from is long and retreat down it impossible without suffering a bolt to the back.

“Still, I’ll give you another go. I know you liked it before, so you’ll enjoy another night with me, won’t you?”

You were never going to retreat. Where could you go that he wouldn’t be waiting? He bites his lips as his piggy eyes look down your body once more, probing it intently as though you were naked before him again.

“Well, you’ll enjoy it when we re-enact our little encounter... Probably not so much the time after though.” He takes another idle sip. “When I try a different way...though if my memory serves, you liked it in there as well.” He muses on you, caught in his little web. “Then I’ll have you put up in the guard house. Whether you enjoy that depends on how much of a whore you really are.”

The guards eyes widen, but not much; this arraignment had happened before for them, and more than once. He weighs up what to say next in his mind, humming as though ordering from a menu.

“Then I think I’ll watch you with the dogs. Have you ever been fucked by a dog? I had them trained for when my girls misbehave.”

With that you do the only thing left to you.

You raise your hands in surrender.

“Haaa! Guards, bring her to my second bedroom.” He downs his wine before reaching back to a table behind him and grabbing the bottle to refill his gaudy cup. The men close in, one holstering his ornately crafted weapon onto his back and pulling chained irons from a pouch at his waist; the need to restrain wayward guests evidently an expected part of his duties. Your hands stay raised, drawing to the back of your head. The guard isn’t looking at them, eyes wondering your body at the thought of his turn with you. Your hands stray over your tightly wound bun to the back of your neck. The man raises his hands to grab yours.

He doesn’t see the strike. From the back of your neck and the weapon holstered there, to his throat, you move in a blur that you’d practiced to an art. Your hands move with enough **** that you feel the blade grinding on his vertebra. With a twist of the knife and a pivot of your feet, you place the corpse between you and his college in time for the soft thud of the bolt to impact his side. You twist again, letting it slip and letting him fall, before moving forward to the next man. He screams as his last sharp sight slips through his vision with a scraping ****. As he falls, the blade almost pulls you off your feet before slipping free; it must have come out the other side of his skull. The sound of the bottle dropping above makes you look up again. Perhaps you should tell him how much you hate him.

“Guards! Guards!”

Or about your visit to the sleeping guardhouse already.

You decide not to, instead running forward, feet climbing on the wood panelling as you steadily propel yourself up the ornate wall to the balcony. He runs, squealing, but where can he go? Some things you can’t escape from. As you vault over the balcony and push onwards, the fallen bottle spills its last; pouring its blood red contents down the wall.