…stay and try to learn more.

You choose to stay, for now. Whatever further hedonism that’s about to occur is no stranger to you. You owe it to the men and women trapped down here to finish what you started, but you can’t do that if you’re caught or killed. Tonight cannot be a night for rashness.

An ill feeling washes through you. You’re not...putting it off are you? You examine the thought, safe in your dark spot. No; you don’t relish the idea of taking on the most dangerous pirate in the world, but you will, and soon. As long as you remain undetected, time is your ally. It’s simply your responsibility to use it correctly.

A new sound grabs your attention; laughter. Your head snaps to the stairs and you duck behind your crates, heart picking up the pace at the unexpected newness. A person soon enters, walking down them and into the room with easy confidence. It’s a bald man with a thin face and stocky body. He wears a small yellow vest, white trousers and a red cloth belt, the first two of which tells you he is not of Captain Washkin’s crew. Are the original three men allied the same? It’s impossible to tell while they’re naked.

“Yes! Finally!” he yells gleefully, seeing the group at the far end before quickly throwing off his jacket and undoing his belt. You jump as the jacket lands directly on the crate you’re hiding behind. He pulls off the red cloth belt and lets his trousers fall before walking forwards, stepping out of them and embracing his nakedness. Two other forms appear from the stairs as well, a man and a woman, and they have a similarity to them; brother and sister perhaps? They’re both tall, have a mess of long brown hair, and are well built, which looks strange on a woman. In fact, you’d even wager that she is the stronger of the two. The bald man walks forward, towards the group at the back of the room, passing the well-muscled man you saw before without looking at him. The huge and very naked man quickly walks up to the woman.

“Vanessa! I didn’t expect to see you down here.” He moves to embrace her but she stops him with a hand on his chest. She’s smaller than him, but not by much, wearing big boots and a long loose white shirt, almost dress like, that covers her hips and the top of her bare legs.

“Did you?” You’re not sure what she means by that. From her tone, it doesn’t relate to what he said. You quickly catch on when he looks back at the group and then his naked self.

“Uh, only the guy, so it doesn’t count” he lies. Taking her hand, he pulls her in your direction, giving you a moment of panic as the two freakishly tall people approach your own short self. You stay very still in the darkness, crouched on the floor behind the box you were looking over. “You know I’d never. Come here skyshine.”

You hear the sound of them kissing; the wet crackle of lips on lips. She sighs in a far more girlish way than her powerful form would suggest her capable of. “You better not.” From this close, her voice has quiet quality; raw and breathless, as though not often exercised. The sound of kissing comes again.

You feel an unusual embarrassment at the display of shared intimacy. The lying **** and the quiet barbarian sharing a lovers kiss in the dark. Hearing them over the sound of renewed debauchery in the room beyond just highlights the natural tenderness between them. You slowly hold your hand out in front of your face, relaxing as you realise that you can’t see it in the darkness. You slowly sit up and look over the crate, letting it guide you.

On the other side of the box, the man and woman are almost silhouetted by the dimly flickering light from the far end of the room. He stands before her, kissing her, arms under her shirt to fondle her small breasts. Her back is to you, the shirt lifted by his arms and revealing the small pair of red shorts that hug her backside tightly. They’re so close. To you and each other. You freeze again; surely they must be able to see you, or sense you. You’re mostly behind the crates and remain in almost perfect darkness, but still! You look up between her powerful thighs and see him slowly grow with arousal, his nakedness hiding nothing.

Their kiss ends and you hear her quiet voice, “You’ll have to make it up to me anyway.”

With them in the way, you can’t look around at the rest of the room. You can’t listen to the other conversations. You can’t even move, lest you attract their attention. You watch as her red shorts bulge and distort between her legs as one if his hands leaves her breasts, reaching down for her womanhood.

“All night long if I have to” he says with a rumble you can almost feel in your bones. She gasps and kisses him as he pushes up inside, the shorts so small that you can almost see the action taking place. The wet noises of swapped saliva above gain a twin below, unfamiliar to you, yet of a source that reddens your face deeply to think about. His other hand comes down and the shorts slip over her thighs and drop to the floor. You look up and see it all, both on display and lit by far light, as though caught in a sunset. He’s fully erect, recovered from his earlier **** of the girl in the stocks. Hers looks different to yours, you think; wider and wetter under firm buttocks. You look away, here to spy, not to peek.

He moves her further along, so her back faces one of the taller crates pressed firmly against the wall. You hear him enter her; a sound similar to his fingers yet somehow quieter and more decisive. The wood of the crate groans as he pushes against her. You feel the box next to you move slightly.

She gasps in pleasure before she yelps in pain. “Ah!”

“What?”

“Splinters.”

There’s silence between the two before they giggle with laughter. He pulls her towards him, fondling her rear with both hands. “Aww. An’t nothing going into my girls arse but me.”

That stifles her giggles. She puts on an affronted air. “Humf, fuck the traitor again if you want that.”

He laughs. “I’m joking! Look, I know a place where I can go sit down...” They kiss, eager to recapture their mood. “...and when I sit down I know a place you can sit down.” They kiss again and she giggles impishly throughout. You don’t get it. Typically a gentleman would find a seat for a lady first, then he would sit down. They move off and you chalk it up to an in joke between themselves, feeling hot in the face. You didn’t expect to see any of that.

You look around the crates to the end of the room again and finally see what’s happening down there. The man with the greasy black hair who previously had his back turned has now officially replaced the old man. You wish he hadn’t turned around. His face holds an ugly scar that pulls up the side of his mouth in a permanent teeth showing sneer. It’s a serene sneer at the moment as he gently takes the man in the stocks from behind, who doesn’t move, silently taking the slow and steady violation with downward cast eyes. The majority of the noise and attention was now on the woman. The bald man had wasted no time and is currently holding one of her legs up to rest across his chest and shoulder like a quarter staff. Her head and hands are still locked in place, but her body is twisted and her foot hangs limply upwards as he hugs her thigh to his chest. Her other foot is still on the ground and he takes advantage of her openness, pounding into her womanhood with a reckless frenzy that sends jolts through her razed thigh. You didn’t even know that a man could take a woman like that. Her loose hair jumps and shakes with each thrust and her fingers return to clenched fists. You didn’t want to know.

The group watches and laughs when the bald man stops with a sudden cry. He hugs the leg like a long lost love as he rests himself inside her, his expression as joyful as when he entered the room. After a moment, he start stroking her; her thigh, her calf, her belly, her buttocks, all caressed appreciatively.

“Ahhhhh, that’s how you do it...” he tells the old man and the other mop headed newcomer. The two giants had disappeared, likely into some other room hidden at the end of your long line of boxes, while the scarred man isn’t listening, looking like he’s in his own world, his victim an unwilling guest.

The bald man strokes and lightly kisses her razed leg, “How was it for you lass?” She looks up slightly and you see from her expression that fatigue has set in. Her hair drips slightly with sweat but her eyes still bare a seething hatred. He pulls out of her and drops the leg, taking the time to wipe himself on it and catch his breath. “Not very talkative are you.”

The bald man walks away and the man with wild brown hair stands up. He’s the only one down here that hasn’t...taken part, voluntarily or involuntarily, and it looks like he’s eager to correct that. He marches behind the now vacant woman, drops his red and white trousers and lines himself up. Your about to look away when her eyes go wide with shock and her gagged mouth gives a sudden muffled cry. He seems to struggle to fit himself inside her, pushing forward with none of the ease of the last two, and it takes several thrusts, all with her accompanying cries and writhes from her before he has any kind of rhythm.

“Talks enough for me.” His voice is flat and would be completely monotone if not for the slight strain of his efforts. The bald man takes his seat and responds jovially.

“That’s cheating. Gods gave her a cunt for a reason.” He has to talk over her distress. “What’s their deal anyway? I get her but why him?”

He directs the question to the room but his replacement responds. “Tried to fuck the captain. Now we fuck them.” His voice sends shivers through you. It’s so...passionless, totally at odd with what he’s doing to her.

The older man, recovered from his earlier work, elaborates. “We all knew they was fuckin and in love and all that bollocks. Captain allowed it. Sad they was good for each other. Good woman our captain. Then they fucking betrayed her, now didn’t they?” The last part was directed at her and a particularly violent set of thrusts gets her yelping around her gag in response.

“What did they do?” the bald man asks his more talkative neighbour. They sit with their backs to you, watching the show, talking loudly to be heard.

“Tried to steal shit and run. Start a new life. And that they did. You two enjoyin your new lives yet?” He laughs and leans back, lifting his bare foot to her face and brushing aside her hair. She looks paler; more disgusted and pained, lacking much of her previous defiance. The bald man muses on her expression. “I don’t think so... What’s the matter bitch? Hum? You want him to stop?” Tears shine on her face and her teeth are bared around the bit. She makes another loud noise before nodding her head wearily. “Your man’s getting the same but you don’t hear him complaining.” They look over to the other two men. The one in the stocks was still being used by the man with the scarred face, but now that man had reached under and was...grabbing the other mans member, stroking it as he pounds him. What possible reason...?

You look away, having gained nothing from the eaves dropping save some bad memories. You think of the temple of Juik and their dealings with love and marriage. A story of leaving a life of crime for love would stir such passionate priests to action, and more so the unhappy ending these two received because of it. You sigh quietly. Your chosen gods are not in the pantheon of love but in the pantheon of order. Brother Rahama would say that when criminals turn on criminals, all you can do is clean up the mess. There’s a lull in the conversation again. Time to refocus.

You could continue listening. These people are sick and you’re not sure how much longer you can stand to be down here, but the conversation flows as readily as the ****. The more you know, the better off you will be, but you can’t stay down here forever. You look to the stairs and thank the gods you didn’t go up them when you did. If you had, maybe it would be you sobbing around a wooden bit, a man behind you, mocking you as he resized your... You shake the unhelpful imagery out of your head.

You will have to leave sooner or later and the path looks as clear as ever. Sneaking out should work. The men at the far end of the room are certainly distracted enough. From there you can explore the house above. It won’t be easy as its lantern lit corridors won’t be as dark as the night or your current underground hiding spot, and the people who came down tell you its far from unoccupied up there, but you saw many unlit rooms from outside and you could stick to those as you investigate.

You consider if there are any other options, but ‘wait or go’ seem to be the lot of them. You peek around the boxes to see if anything has changed and something catches your eye. A small bundle of cloth on the floor. Two separate bundles actually, about a pace apart. One is just below the boxes you’re looking over; a pair of small red shorts. The other is an equally small yellow jacket thrown from the bald man. Both are within reach and shadowed enough to be taken without notice.

You consider the implications. Moving around the mansion would be easier in a disguise, yet the clothes look, well...small. The idea of getting naked to change into them down here, in darkness both moral and physical, doesn’t appeal too much either. Still, you waited for something you can use…

You sigh quietly; sneak out now, keep listening, or try the disguise. You rub your eyes, wishing not for the first time that you could see the future. Once again, you sense the pace quickening in the distance, the slapping of hips on cheeks becoming horribly familiar to you. A distraction is coming. It’s time to choose.