...open wide, looking to bite or perhaps threaten too.

His is the only tool you have to work with. You don’t care what that makes you, as long as it makes you free.

You lick your lips before opening your mouth; a position he takes immediate advantage of. The tip that stared you down a second before crashes onto your tongue; a boat grounding itself on a sandy shore. It scrapes along every one of your taste buds, depositing everything its odour promised and more as it spears its way inside. You try to track its progress; watch cross-eyed as the shaft disappears and the wall of wiry hair gets closer. The bell shaped head turns to shaft on your tongue, and the end in question carried up by the man’s curve to scrape the roof of your mouth. When he stops, it’s only for a moment; with a brief withdraw enough for hope to bloom, a second, longer thrust takes him further than you ever anticipated. You almost hear the thud as he hits the back of your throat, its natural angle suddenly sending him down your gullet.

A new and unknown reality dawns. One in which the tip of your nose is tickled by warm, sweat stained hairs, and your throat gorges with phallic intrusion. He pulls back, and your own plan for attack is routed into a hasty defence as you have to quickly swallow, gulping down the sudden influx of saliva that precedes a vomiting rejection. The taste of bile is unavoidable, and the knowledge of his foul lack of hygiene being carried inside you is poor sauce for your returning meal. You swallow and swallow, locking your lips around him to help and focusing on calming your stomach.

“Ahhhh, that it.” He leans back, pulling your lips out with him till only that bulbous head remains. You can just see him, looking down at you, towering over your taut lips, your swallowing, and your pallid sweating brow. You can’t handle anther thrust like that; it would surely set you heaving. Even now, it’s hard to keep your mostly empty stomach under control. You need to bite, yet doing so would net you nothing! Perhaps you could...hold him hostage? His hands move from your head to the stocks frame, and it creaks under his grip as he prepares for another thrust. You see the edge of his grin; the predatory thrill. This is going to be bad.

You intercept him, pressing your tongue against the smooth head in your mouth, halting its advance. You can’t have him...humping your face like some mad dog. If you’re going to try and barter with his manhood, you need to position him so your teeth can get a grip before he pulls out, yet not so deep that your too busy throwing up to try. His grip on the frame loosens as he looks down at you.

“Wha-“

You move your tongue, circling the bulbous cap in your mouth, probing and licking, cleaning and tasting. It’s all you can do to stop him, and it’s utterly foul, and it utterly works.

“Ohhhhh, yeah.”

The pale sweat on your face gives way to a red flare of embarrassment as you pleasure him. Your try and view it more from a practical perspective; your actions are simply...taking control of it; stopping him from moving as he pleases. Now you simply need to draw him in gently. To that end, you do the only logical thing you can think of.

You suck.

“Ohhhhhhfffffuuuuck.”

Your cheeks hollow with the pressure as you run your tongue over the head and move under it. You try to lick underneath, drawing it in with teasing strokes. The motion is repeated with your hands; palms up, fingers curling inward as you gesture him forward. It takes a moment before he sees and moves his hands from the wooden fame to grip them. You let your small hands be swallowed by his, griping what you can of him for what’s to come. He gets the message, sliding forward to lay more meat on your palette.

As the tip moves, it...pops, like a boil; spattering a small glop of its foul contents on your tongue. Your nose wrinkles at it: his seed? The salty, earthy bitterness is foreign to you. Pleasing him too much was not something you considered! It only seems a small amount, yet it spreads to coat you both as your tongue resumes it’s circling of his tip, to keep him from moving further.

“Ahhhhhhyyer-gooood, you are so fuckin goooood!”

He rests close to the back of your throat, twitching with little thrusts, as though **** to proceed. It takes real effort to keep him there, working your tongue over every available part of his length. It starts to ache, along with your jaw, unused to being held open for so long.

Time to strike.

You rest your teeth on him, lightly at first, before pressing down hard.

“OhhhahhhHHH! Whatthefuck!”

You grip his hands, pinning them, and bite harder when reflex sends his hips back.

“ON’T OOVE!” You say the words with as much authority as you can considering there’s a dick in your mouth. It seems to work as the man is paralysed into stillness.

“oh-oh-okay okay okay! N-n-no need to do nothin rash there miss! Gods sake! D-dontneedadonothin!”

His sudden babbling fear gets the point across. So far, so good. First things first, you need to escape this stock. You consider what to say before saying with deliberate slowness.

“Ow-en a ock” The ‘k’ sound brings the back of your throat uncomfortably close to him and sets your eyes streaming slightly. You use a few fingers of your hand to point to the lock so he gets the message, before you let go of one of his hands.

“Okay, all right, okay, no problem there. Give me a second.”

You feel his hips push close as he leans over to the other side of the wooden stock. You hear the bolt snap and clunk as it’s moved to the open position.

You push the stocks up with your free hand and quickly shuffle your neck and arm out of it, careful to keep the bastard trapped in your mouth. You let go of his hand and kneel before him, reaching behind you to the rope binding your ankles.

“You an’t a whore, are you.” It’s not a question, and he mutters it with nervous clarity.

As you kneel before the man you were sucking on, his rod still in your mouth, you decide to debate the answer later.

The rope is covered by your fallen trousers and it’s impossible to work out without turning your head to look. He pulls back slightly, forcing you to grab his hips and hold him still. The other woman catches your eye. Didn’t ‘Maxy’ call her an assassin? She even seemed to have some fight left in her. From the sound of her ordeal, you hope she has some sanity as well. Not that you can be choosy for friends right now.

You look up at him, holding his hips, teeth bared and bending his length down. His sack comes to rest on your chin before you see his eyes.

“Oove ack.” Again, the ‘k’ pulls him to the back of your throat and you’re **** to make a loud slurping noise to stop your saliva from escaping down your chin. You shuffle forward on your knees, towards the woman, and he gets the message, shuffling in time with your movements until your kneeling in front of the other stock.

“Ow-en.”

He hesitates, “B-but-“

Another sucking slurp rips the air, swallowing down what you hope is only your own spit.

“OW-EN!” You increate your bite for emphasis.

“Oh-oh-oh okay, okay!” He leans back and again, the latch clicks. The dark skinned woman lifts the wooden arm of the stocks off her with shaking hands, gripping the fame to stop from falling over. How long was she in there?

You try to lick your dry lips and succeed only in licking him, still hard but wilting fast. You’re **** to take him in a little more and get closer, moving his ever limper self past your lips, needing to slurp to keep him drawn.

She holds the stocks and forces herself to stand, her legs shaking like some new born foal, and you begin your instructions to the poor girl, hoping she has the strength to follow them.

“Ow, oo-“

She moved like bottled lighting let loose, travelling the small distance to the man in the blink of an eye and wrapping her arms around his neck. You hear a snap and find yourself pulled forwards as he falls backward before you let go of him. He crashes to the ground; twitching, but very much dead.

She leans heavily against the stocks like nothing unusual had occurred, staring down at the man with a blank expression.

When she looks at you, you flinch.

Her eyes are as deep brown as her skin, and from either her experiences in the stock or something far before, they carry a hardness to them; the kind of hardness that never goes away. You can’t meet those eyes. Not right now. You look down and quickly wish you hadn’t. Below her dark breasts and even darker nipples, below her hard stomach muscles, lies bare hips. You can’t see the bruises, her skin is too dark, but the flaking layers of dry white streaks stand stark on her skin. They seem to stream down her thighs like foamy water from a mountain brook, sourced from her womanhood; a nauseating mess of an open wound, healed into the parody of a gaping vagina. Had she given birth an hour before, it would not look so used. A thin strand of white slime begins to pour out of her broken flower as you watch, shaken loose by her standing posture and thickening by the second. You feel sick. How many men would it take to do that? What must yours look like?

You collapse forward, catching yourself with your hands and kneeling over the feet of the dead man. The image of what could have been your fate assails you, and you fight the fresh wave of dizzying sickness and rising bile. The old bastards seed burns within you, seeping down and brining wetness to places it doesn’t belong. What he did to you was awful -both unforgivable and unforgettable- but he was still only one man...

“What you did was smart.” You look back up at the woman. She still leans heavily on the stocks, but she smiles down at you. It doesn’t come anywhere near her eyes. Her legs shake only slightly now, as if to fool you into thinking she didn’t just kill a man with her bare hands, but still, she looks weak. She looks like she needs your help. That gives you some strength.

Reaching behind you, you tug at the rope around your legs with both hands, twisting to look as you work at the knot. After a few struggling seconds, the black skinned woman drops to her knees and starts to help.

“Thanks.” Your voice sounds raw, and your eyes glance at the soft reason why- glistening with your dignity. The rope falls away and you pull up your trousers before getting back on your feet. When you do, you help the other woman up, but she barely seems to needs it; you can almost see the strength returning to her, and she immediately begins to walk, unsteady steps solidifying into purposeful strides as she hobbles about her stocks, working out the stiffness from her imprisonment.

For your part, you move to grip your stock, cricking your back and feeling your upright position hasten the slow fall inside you, seeping free the torrent one man can bring.

“We need to leave.” It’s all you can think to say, obvious as it is. If Captain Washkin comes now, you’d both be right back in the stocks before the order left her mouth.

The woman walks over to the fallen man and squats over him, wobbling only slightly in the process. She feels about him for half a moment, but stands when she finds no weapons or useful things. She turns and asks in a thick southern accent, “it is dark out?”

You nod, looking about the windowless room, wondering again how long she had been here.

“Are you alright?”

Did she just ask you that? The woman whose hips resemble a stormed city gate? You must look truly pathetic. While you were no doubt **** most recently, there is an undeniable absurdity to it. You stand up a little straighter, taking in the sight of the other woman.

Standing in the light, her skin is no less dark. She has large lips and a wide nose, along with a shoulder length black wire hair, all of which is common from what you know of the south. She also stands quite a bit taller than you, despite your attempt to stand straight, levelling her comparable chest at your eye level. Taught muscles, not large, but shaped almost harshly, seem to cover her body and she stands as though ready for anything.

Somehow, you know this woman could take you in a fight, even on your best day and her worst; and that’s as she is now, beaten and **** to oblivion. It’s a realisation that leaves your heart on a knifes edge; with one side wanting to wallow in your own pitiful weakness, and the other challenged to be strong, like she is.

“I…Yes, I’m alright.” You’re not, but you’ll be better when you get out of here.

You walk to the door and open it, looking out and down a dingy corridor. Moans both real and fake can be heard, making clear the type of building you’re in, and knowing that it was a whorehouse in which you were seeded and in which you sucked dick, does nothing for your mood or self-confidence.

The tavern this brothel is attached to still sings and cheers as much as before, keeping many men distracted with drink, but this part of the building at least seems vacant. A room in the distance spills candle light, but also enough noise to know that its occupants are…distracted. You hope she gets paid extra for making a noise like that.

The doorway to the alley is slightly ajar, and after a quick look back to make sure your cellmate is ready, you slip out, dark shadow at your back, into the alleyway and the moonlight.

Many gaping doorways and dark abandoned buildings line the narrow street, and while you were in no position to chart your own course last time you were here, you’re fairly sure going right is going back to the hill path and the beach.

Do you want to go back?

Yes.

No.

You want to go home.

You want the white bearded man to die, along with his captain.

Perhaps this was always a task beyond your abilities. Captured in the first few moments and ****, and that was before everyone knew you’re here. How long before the man returns…with his captain. You think for a moment, but then dismiss it; what would you even attack them with?

“There!”

A man, pointing, rushes towards you, leaving the dark building that hid him. Another follows, both burly and brutal looking, one carrying an iron mace, the other a simple hand axe. The path right is now blocked, and you look around, searching for your fellow escapee so you can flee together.

But she’s gone, as though never there; lost in the night.

One of the men runs to you, while the other runs to the left end of the alley, blocking you in before you can take two steps. Too slow. Why did you think you could do this? Even the lowliest deckhand of the woman’s crew can outmatch you, and you thought you’d come here and kill her on your own? The door to the whore house is open, like a waiting mouth ready to swallow you once more. There is no escape that way, yet they back you into its maw. You were too slow. Much too slow.

Your mask is down and your face bared. They like what they see, smirking to each other as they advance slowly, ready to catch you when you bolt.

The man with the axe falls.

Both you and the mace wielder look at him, shocked as the axe clatters on the cobbles. The night is alive on him, straddling and striking in human form, and you hear grunts of impacts, of fists in flesh, and whimpers of shocked pain and fear. The mace man charges, and so do you, wrapping your arms about his torso and throwing your meagre weight into his stride. You both fall, and the mace thuds into dry mud as he rolls onto his back, looking down himself at you, and you look to the noise and the handle of the weapon in the dirt before you throw yourself forward to it, **** to reach it before he does. But his hand doesn’t reach for the weapon; instead, thick fingers tighten on your throat, squeezing it as he yanks you back, before slamming you down in the dirt. The air fly’s from you, and, weapon forgotten, a thick fist falls, dizzying your world.

It falls again, and possibly again. If it falls a fourth time, you could not possibly say. Instead, you open your eyes to three maces and four or five axes, each glittering with a different flavour of moonlight. They all fall, and darkness returns.

---

He’s inside you. It’s the first thing you feel, sliding back and forth between furred lips, grunting with impassioned appreciation. His hips meet yours, his thighs against your thighs, pounding away as he hammers your guts. You’re bent over, of course, presented with nowhere to go, and he slams into you relentlessly, rhythmically. It hurts: continuous relentless punches to the gut. His breathing is heavy and laboured and feminine. Is that your breathing? Your breast hurts as its crushed flat.

“What is with assassins and small tits anyway?”

Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound.

You wake up.

Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound.

The punches continue, your stomach a raw nerve, and the ground shifts as it fly’s by. Legs tread it, and you follow them up to white trousers and a white top, separated by a red sash that holds both an axe and a mace. Further up, you see the shoulders you are laid upon -carried like a sack of grain- and a dark hand holding you steady. Each step punches those shoulders into your stomach, and your bosom is not soft enough to keep the same treatment from your chest.

Grass and leaves and roots turn to sand and stones and sea air, and the pace shifts direction as it runs toward or away from something unseen. You look up. It’s the sea line, with waves lapping sands without a care in the world.

You’re lifted and dropped, carefully, but clearly hurried. You try to focus your eyes on what you’re seeing.

The dark skinned woman seems to be destroying some wooden structure, yanking out large pieces of wood and kicking them clear when they wouldn’t cooperate. The structures roof begins to list, before a final kick to what could generously be called a wall (but may more accurately be considered a stack of driftwood) causes the whole thing to tumble.

As if by magic, the dark skinned woman reaches into the wreckage, and pulls a boat from it.

You groggily try to stand, and you throw your weight into the back of the boat as she starts to push it towards the water. You don’t know if you’re helping, but after a moment, you feel a hand on your clothes, lifting you up and tipping you into the vessel. It begins to rock with the waves, and dreams assail you once more.

---

---

That’s all you remember of the island, come to think of it. So much is blurred or lost or frustratingly out of reach. Things like your name, you have. The faces of your parents. The number of steps leading up to the… very important building. How to dress yourself. How to boil eggs. How many miles between Losh and Fixden. All accounted for.

Other things, like if you have any siblings, you have no clue. Not even a vague inkling. What did your home look like? Who was your first love? Some memories you feel like you could almost reach out and touch them, claiming them back from the ether, but they slip outside your grasp every time, and further away with each passing moment.

You finger the small scar at your brow, rubbing sweat from it. Sadly, most such things relating to your past are not something your friend, Vush, can help with. She was…informative, about the island. Not why or how you were there, but still, you may not have remembered any of it if not for her, and you’re damn sure you wouldn’t have escaped it. When she first listened to your dream, she shed remarkable and horrifying light on what it meant. You wish she hadn’t been so detailed, but she had a front row seat and first-hand experience of it herself, so you can hardly blame her. You haven’t spoken much of your memories after that; as she said ‘make new memories.’

And, as you both made your way south, you did. It was a hard journey for both of you, injured, dressed oddly, and penniless. You had to work as a waitress in a tavern at first, for coin, clothes, and passage. That first month had been difficult. Medicine was a luxury you couldn’t afford, and when you were both late… well, Vush could hit like a beaching boat and you soon blead again, but her stomach was like iron. She had to teach you to punch before you could beat out the new life growing inside her.

The second month and the second island you bore passage to -the last disreputable port before the empire proper- had been…trying, as well. Vush’s contact was not there, and as it was his word that sent her to the island, his absence spoke of further betrayal. Her position as a Mikalocia, which she had explained was akin to a guard for the royalty of the empire (though it sounded more like assassin), left her with few friends in the corrupt backwater, and your presence -a pale skinned woman so far south- did not help you blend in. The bounty may have been unlawful, but word of mouth meant you had to leave fast, and gathering enough coin in a single night to barter passage was not easy.

That night.

Your friend had apologised profusely for what she had dragged you into, and you had accepted it. Stealing the money had been tempting, but on such a miserable island, even the poorest beggar kept a tight grip on his coin, and those who could spare it hired more guards than even Vush could handle. It took only four men to raise the funds, and you shared the burden between you. The pitiful coppers your friend could manage were nothing to the silvers your rare colour could bring in. The first and last night you earned coin on your back, at least that you remember.

It got you to the empire proper, where Vush’s authority meant something, and the medicine was more than a punched stomach. By that point, the north was so far away…

Instead, you remained here, in the south, helping your friend to find the lost royal that she seeks. Barely a royal, as she says; a woman traceable to nobility as the cousin of a cousin’s cousin. Barely enough to send a single Mikalocia. However, such low level royalty make for prized slaves in the underworld; a dangerous display of bravado and power, considering its illegality. The royal authority sent their token response, lest the common criminal beings to get uppity; no one wants a Mikalocia knocking on their door just for owning a ****.

Not that there _are _any slaves in the central empire, technically. Debtor’s papers would often be fabricated to excuse the unpaid labour, which was a loophole the authorities were in no rush to close. Anti-slavery laws were only popular among the working classes, and they were only passed to keep discontent at by, as you understand it. **** owning is a crass act, according to the upper crust, while debt management was a responsibility. The result was an empire built on debts and debtors.

However, the empire is also vast; perhaps bigger than its own authority. The outer edges operate more like city states in their own right, following their own laws and customs, though Vush insists they still answer to the reigning empress. Here, in the burning far west of the southern empire, where your trail ends, the farce is revealed as three **** auctions bellowed their wears to the streets, only one speaking of ‘buying debts’.

Vush remained silent in the face of such disregard for the law, though you know her enough to tell she was disgusted by it. Not slavery itself though, as the merchant shouting assurances that the debt of a small boy, squirming in her hands, was worth his potential, drew an approving nod. You’d been debating with her throughout the day.

Even in these back county areas, the empire is somehow more advanced than the principalities. You don’t know much about agriculture and irrigation, but the crops here are flourishing, despite the land generally looking more like a barren desert. Thugs and shawled peasants all look ignorantly at your pale skin, now more tanned than ever, yet you passed more book shops here than you’ve seen even in the central city of Losh, and contraptions that would decorate a nobles shelf are sold on street corners here. There are fewer joiners (and fewer wooden furniture as a result) but stone craft is a refined practice and even shanty huts look built to last. Jade also shows it’s richness, beating gold and silver on statues and building ornaments, if not the necks and fingers of its wealthy residents.

That said, the straight bricked roads you followed to get here only lasted half the distance, and the accents had changed to near incomprehensibility. The gap between rich and poor was less here, not in distance, but fluidity; the **** and the criminal have more power to move those from the top to the bottom, and vice versa. Compared to the other places you passed through in the previous months, it feels isolated, a strange land _within _a strange land, and for all Vush’s words, you doubt the people here hold much love for any empress beyond their own pocket books.

By the evening, your arguments against slavery rung hollow as your plan was implemented. You raise your hand again, fixing eyes with the auctioneer.

“50 to de Nordener!”

A man in a resplendent robe raises his hand, grin on his dark face, clearly enjoying himself.

“60 to de Man from Gran!”

You raise your hand, and so does he, back and forth and back and forth. 70 85 100 150 200. You can’t afford it, but you’re an unknown quantity from the north; a mysterious lady from the principalities and the wealth of its colonies in Coronac.

The man wavers at 350; a ludicrous price for a noble so insignificant. Fortunately, being from the north means you can get away with being ignorant of such things.

“400!”

There is a gasp from someone in the crowd, and you find that you really are enjoying yourself as well. You can’t help but smirk at the man you bested.

The auctioneer; an excited scrawny man, sweating far too much for someone born in such a hot place, congratulates you on your victory. You smile and move to collect your winnings.

They won’t let you of course, but you can kick up enough fuss at least to send your ‘girl’ to go and confirm that the goods are looked after and are as they seem. That ‘girl’, who is actually older than you, has three throwing knives at her ankle, a push knife at the small of her back, and fists that can break stone (or so she says). She is also your best and only friend. When she returns, assuring you and the room that the woman is what they claim her to be, you’ll go and ‘get the money’ from your expensive and ‘definitely real’ hotel lockbox, preferably before they find the bodies.

Once more, you consider returning north when this is done and finding some answers to the holes in your memory, but somewhere over the last few months, you stopped asking the questions. Perhaps you’ve outgrown the north? You’ve certainly changed while in the south.

Not for the first time, you decide to put it off until later, opting instead enjoying the journey with your friend. You may be different, and you may not remember much, but you know that no one her equal is waiting for you beyond the northern border.

As the auctioneer grows anxious at your behaviour, your shadow grows and you offer your friends services, smiling as he leads her away. You’ll never see him again, all being well, and his business should flounder without him.

Being in the south can be quite satisfying sometimes.