Weak guards and hot women.

The battle for the temple is quick and easy. Amazingly, the great gates were still open although only a few supplicants still tried to talk their way past the guards. Antonius’s estimation of the guards’ skill was, if anything, overly generous. Half of them flee as soon as your **** comes into view, and the rest barely put up a fight.

“You're hurt,” Adriana says as you walk up the steps to the temple’s main doors. You see she is right: you have a small cut on your arm. It’s a minor injury, the sort you’d have a dozen of in a real battle, but Adriana tears a strip from the hem of her tunic and tenderly binds it.

You enter the temple, pushing shut its great gilded doors and locking them behind you. Once the massive Temple doors are closed you are effectively sealed into the great building with all its plunder. You lead your men through a small vestibule and step into the temple's great marble hall, it is at least forty paces long and thirty wide. Elegant pillars support a ceiling high above you, and at the far end a huge statue of Athena stands looking directly at you and your party. The goddess is long-limbed and bare breasted, and you can’t help but admire the model they used. The statue is supposed to be solid gold, but you are not so blasphemous as to consider looting it. Besides, you suspect it is merely gold plated. But there are dozens of lesser treasures for you to take in this room alone.

It’s another form of treasure that catches your eye. Dozens of beautiful young women stand before the statue. The entire temple’s population of priestesses must have gathered here to pray for deliverance from your men. That their prayers have failed is a clear sign that their goddess has abandoned them.

The women are all lovely. The priesthood of Athena selects for beauty as well as their intelligence, truly only the devotees of Aphrodite are fairer to the eye. Most of the girls are teenagers wearing the plain white robes of novices, for this temple is the world’s main training ground for the Athenian cult. But some are older women, their childish prettiness matured into an exquisite beauty. The majority are from the city states, daughters of the finest families pledged to serve the goddess, but there are other more exotic women from further afield as well. Two have the chocolate brown skin of the Nubian people of the southern continent, another lithe novice had caramel colored skin and straight black hair that fell to her hips, there were freckled red-heads, several flaxen-haired blondes with clear blue eyes, and even raven-haired beauties who must have come from the dessert sultanates of the East whose lovely breasts filled the tops of their plain white tunics.

You can tell the High Priestess by her robes. From Cassiopeia's story, you’d been expecting some withered old crone, but in fact she’s an elegant dark-harried woman who despite her position and experience looks no older than her forties, and is quite as appealing as her adolescent charges. She steps forward angrily to confront you.

“Godless pigs! You dare defile the Wise One’s temple with your presence?! She will–”

“Be silent!” you snap, and your commanding tone is enough to quiet her. “Athena has abandoned your city,” you continue, “and left it to us. Perhaps, if you had better shared Her wisdom with the city’s nobility, it would not have come to this. But now this city, and everything in it, is ours by right of conquest." Deciding that there was no point in obscuring their fate, you tell all assembled exactly what is going to happen to them. "You and your maids will serve our pleasure. Once we finally tire of your luscious bodies and only then, will you be sold as slaves.” There are gasps of dismay from the women. “This is justice,” you say firmly, “for the thousands of other women Athenapolis are subject to the same fate, many of them holy women like yourselves. But do not worry – submit, and my men will not be too cruel.”

You turn to your soldiers. “Men, time to enjoy our spoils. But remember, the virgins will be worth far more on the slavers’ block. So, this is how this is going to go. I’ll select a few women for my personal use – captain’s privilege. Then, each of you will have the chance to select a single virgin. Those who aren’t selected will remain untouched, and any man who forgoes his chance at a maidenhead will get a larger cut of the loot. Once any of these sweet things been broken in, any of you can use her, even if she’s one of mine. So, go to it, you dogs!”

There’s a cheer, and the men start busily eyeing up the novices, discussing who to pick. You, meanwhile, walk among them to make your own selections. Stunned by the sudden appearance of your men and the plain-spoken pronouncement of their fates the women cower together but do not put up a fight as you stop among the prettiest of the women cupping their breasts to assess the size and firmness or squeezing their backsides just to hear their gasps.

Suddenly, Cassiopeia hurries up to one of the pretty red-headed novices. “Erina!” she cries happily.

“Cassia?” the girl said. “Gods… I had hoped you got away, and escaped this terrible fate–”

Cassiopeia cuts her off with a deep, passionate kiss – a technique she’s probably picked up from Adriana. “Erina,” she says to the stunned novice, “it’s so good to see you! We’re going to have so much fun! This is my best friend, Erina,” she adds over her shoulder to the rest of you.

You smile, and return to examining the priestesses, wondering which ones to pick.