Into the darkness

Shaking her head at her own silliness, Liz jogged into the darkness. How bad could giggling be?

In the dim light, she soon found her path blocked by a door, and with mummified hands, she was unable to turn its knob. Hearing the giggling again, Liz to the direction it had come from. There was a small square opening at the pirates feet. It looked like a tunnel of some sort blocked by a metal grate. With nimble work of her feet, she was able to remove this obstacle, then Liz squatted at the small opening. The little passage was far too small for a human to walk through, maybe it was for dogs or imps. Her bowels shifted around the thing inside her aft cove. She would have to remove it once her hands were free.

There was a cool breeze as Liz crawled into the tight shaft. It had a darkness to rival midnight; as such the pirate probed with a hand while crawling. That said, her quick scuttling routinely delivered a face full of cobweb. Each time this discomfort was slapped upon her, her face scrunched in disgust at the clingy strings.

The more she crawled, the more Liz became frustrated. In a moment of weakness, she wished she could have lived her life differently. If only she had been well behaved, Liz could have stayed loyal to that wealthy merchant and reaped the rewards from his trade. When **** came for her at the end of a long life, she would have made her way to paradise.

In place, she had died young and been banished to this filthy place, to crawl through darkness eating dusty spiderwebs perpetually. And it would probably get worse. What eternity of punishments would befall her?

As if to answer, a series of slits on her right revealed a terrifying visage. The room, its furnishings, and lit fireplace were odd but acceptable to the pirates mind. It was the creature filling the fireplace that made her head spin. All she could see was its hand, a hand that was the size of the wide-eyed pirate if not larger. Five red, gnarled fingers worked with a thumb to perfectly pile wood in a burning pit. These manipulators were long, longer even than they should be for a hand that size, and the monstrous hand ignored the flames trickling up its knobby fingers like so much water.

The disconcerted pirate crawled as fast as her knees would let her, putting the warped image out of her mind lest the thing hunt her by thought alone.

The square tunnel was covered in a layer of grime that gratted against her knees, getting her attention back to her current frustrations, Under her breath, she muttered "damn it all, If one more of these blasted webs--" She was cut off. One such blasted web had just filled her mouth and left her sputtering like a fuze.

"What will you do?" asked an unseen woman farther down the shaft.

"Yeah we're all waiting," mocked another voice, deeper but still female.

Were they talking to Liz? Forgetting her furry, the curious woman cautiously continued her trek forward.

A third voice answered "fuck, I'll call," so high pitched she might've been a mouse.

There was another slatted opening ahead that the voices had drifted through. Peering through the slits, Liz saw a much less daunting sight. four people, three women and a man, were playing cards.

The gentleman in dress wore a simple well fitted suit. More to Liz's excitement, the women were all in states of undress. One, a beauty of the far east, wore only tiny scraps of fur over her loins and breasts. More furs, armor plates, and rough boots were neatly piled beside her. "That is no good for me, Rho." Her english wasn't broken, but she spoke with a deliberate and ponderous tone. "I'll keep what I have."

On her right was another sexy lass, her back to the pirate. She responded by saying "Come on Nara take some risks." This beauty, presumably named Rho, was more clothed. She had a metal V trailing from her shoulders and disappearing between her full cheeks and hip boots made from a smooth armor. Angelic wings had been tattooed across her dimpled back. Her blonde hair was cut like that of the Mowhawk people with a small braid hanging to the nape of her neck.

Beside this armored maiden and opposite the fur clad oriental, a pale woman sat wearing not but sleeves detached from a dress. Sparkling make-up adorned her face, and she had wavey hair of nearly white blonde hanging to cover her bare chest. The damsel's slender legs were crossed, but it was clear that she wore not a stitch more than sleeves. "Two fours with a king," she nervously said while laying down her hand of cards.

"Ha, full house," boasted the armored player. "'I don't know why you saved your sleeves for last but now they're comin' off. I guess we know who is gonna be using her tongue tonight. Do you want to keep playing James, maybe win another--"

"What's that?" interrupted the copper toned foreigner in fur, pointing across the table. When the princess-looking woman had removed the last of her clothes, a card had tumbled to the ground.

"Celeste! You cheating little shit!" The short-haired Rho stood giving Liz a damned fine view of her sculpted arse.

"I, uh," Celeste stumbled back, knocking over her stool as she did so. "Well you see." Her legs were still crossed for modesty: as such, it was hard to walk backwards. "I never actually used that card--."

"But you did use others didn't ya," her far larger accuser scolded, advancing faster than the not-so-holy angel could back away. "And you were thinking to use that too. Not very angle-like."

The third scantily clad women stayed were she was but wagged her finger. "Naughty angel. We are going to have to fix this."