You head to the mansion.

Face empty of expression, you stand and walk up the path. The gravel crunches with each step, and each step brings a pain, and each pain is ignored as the building comes closer and closer. This is madness, but you don’t care. There is an almost trance like unreality to the building and the walk towards it. Never before have you done the same.

When you reach the split in the path, one a familiar tread to the front of the building and the other leading through bushes, snaking about the back, you look between them with no more emotion than choosing a wine; white or red, front or back, it all tastes the same to you. The front, you recall with vague and clouded memory, had already been tried before, the wall of a guard barring passage to a supposedly sleeping captain. You walk the path to the back.

A strange acceptance had washed over you at some point. You don’t want to die, but you don’t want to live, and nor do you want everything that happened to have been for nothing. It’s an emotionless state, but not serene; more like some icy primordial waters, you some cold blooded thing of nature, operating on instinct, to feast or fall and treat both the same. You’re still sane, you think, despite the insanity of what you’re doing. You know your limitations, _terribly _well of late. You lack a weapon. You lack the poison you brought. You’re injured, sore, tired. You even look a mess. They each matter, and they each don’t matter. The feeling is quite unexplainable.

The bushes that encroach upon the path relent and the back entrance is revealed, showing the familiar sight of the near asleep guard. His head had fallen lower, the lantern behind a little dimmer, but stepping close has him lifting his head with the same weary alertness as before.

“The fuck?” He looks you up and down, his folded arms coming undone, though stopping short of hefting the bat resting behind him.

He’s tall and thin, but retains the appearance of a suitable guard; his arms are thick with knotted muscles, many tattooed with vague and drunk images of winged creatures, and his body bears scars that lend him an experienced air. He’s slightly older than you, with short brown hair and several ear piercings that dangle and catch the limited light. He wears red and white, naturally, with a punk air and conceited face, currently twisted in confusion.

Standing in the dim light from the door, you waylay his next follow up question, raising your hands to your jacket and flicking the button at its centre. You draw it wide, presenting your chest to him.

“Oh.”

He looks about with suspicion, and finding nothing to suspect, he turns that suspicion onto you, licking his lips and stepping forward cautiously. He stops his hand before it can touch you.

“Errr, I shouldnnnn… well,” he licks his lips, “I should probably search you and that.”

You raise your arms, palms open and inviting.

For his part, he does a thorough job, and not simply to satisfy himself. He checks your jacket, reaches about your back and neck, and even into the cascade of your hair. He pats your hips and your buttocks, and down your legs in a manner that would have definitely seen your dagger found were it not ripped from you. He would have found even the leather strap. He doesn’t see the marks about your wrists.

After traveling down your body, he returns to your hips, slipping his hand below tied hem and over your cheeks. You don’t react to his squeeze. You remain impassive even as his hand moves you your front, his fingers slipping in.

“Gods, you’re wet as fuck.”

You step closer to him, your voice a low rumble.

“Take me to a bed.”

His fingers move, and you step wider in your stance to accommodate, resting a hand on his chest, repeating yourself.

“Take me to a bed.”

“Ffuck. I mean, fuck, they’re all upstairs. Why not out here? We got the stars an-“

You step closer still, pressing your body against his, straining your neck to look up at him, catching his eyes and holding them through the vail of your hair.

“Don’t you want to fuck me?” You watch his mouth open and close. “Take me. To. A bed.”

You leave the whispered words in his ear, slipping from his grip and walking past him into the building. Though a small atrium lies a grand kitchen made for a small army of servants to bustle through. Hooks empty of pans suggest it has been looted long ago, but a foody smell remains, tinged with more recent and simpler meals, and there are cupboards and draws aplenty. Your first thoughts to see them are simple: one of those must contain the knives.

The man trots in behind you, carrying the bat more like a favoured toy than a weapon held in threat, and after looking about, he steps near.

“Look…”

You look at him, watching him impassively, tracking his eyes as they glance up at the ceiling for a moment, mentally debating with himself. He licks his lips.

“…fine.”

Hefting his bat and holding it by the middle, he scoops up the dim lanterns handle with a few free fingers, grabbing your hand with his other and pulling you towards a door. It swings open without latch, fit for servants laden with plates and trays, and you walk the threadbare route they must have taken many times in the past, when this place was owned by the reputable. You travel down a very dim hall, many of its wall mounted lanterns put out for the night, winding past a kink before taking a right and a left. By your reckoning, you are being whisked off to the right wing of the building, which looked the most deserted from the treeline, far away from the path which split at the mansions other side. After a distance into that wing and about several turns in the corridor, you come to a door and are led through without ceremony.

“Slept here once or twice. It’ll do for a bed.”

The room looks like a lounging parlour, with a fine long chair, as long as a bed, with one end raised in a padded slope, yet backed with a padded board, like an armchair. The rooms other feature was a large vase with a series of pipes and tubes attached, like some giant curled up spider dead in the corner. It’s the kind found in smokers lounges, burning wyvern; you’ve never partaken yourself, but you recognise the lingering smell from a guard house raid near a year ago. A life time ago.

He sets the lantern on the floor in the carpeted empty middle of the room, and puts his bat near the chair, finally letting go of your hand to return and close the door. He steps closer, finally alone with you.

What you do next, you struggle to care. You plan, such as it was, was to get him to take you to a bed, which would usually be where people in this place sleep, including his captain. From there you’d do whatever, only now, ‘whatever’ had come here instead, to the quiet secluded part of this place. You let your open jacket slide to the floor.

Perhaps for the lingering sourness on your breath, the first place his kisses in your neck, brushing your hair aside and riding sucking little kisses from your ear to you collar. His hands play with your bosom below. For your part, you slip your hands onto his chest, past the white low collared top and onto his bronzed skin, feeling over his muscles before pulling the material up.

What are you doing? The question fall on your deaf mind, your impassive face looking on as he lets go of you, hauling his top up and off and onto the floor. You step out of your shoes. When his hands return to you, they slip below the band of your final garment, encouraging their drop and leaving you exposed fully to his wondering attentions. You step back, to the long padded chair, keeping his eyes fixed on yours, breaking only when you turn your head. You climb to your knees, shuffling forward slightly, holding the padded backboard. He steps behind you, between your legs.

What are you doing?

Taking control.

He wastes little time, holding you steady, holding himself steady, and stepping forward. With a little push and a bend of your arms, the familiar feeling of cock riding selfishly up your soar puss blossoms again, this time without the steady panting exertion blowing wetly against your face. The room fills with the quiet noise of it: his moans and the soft wet sound of churned leftovers. The feel of seed being pushed in and dragged out, your passage cleared to make way for more, is a sensation you are ignorably acquainted with, and so you let him continue.

What should you do next? How do you kill him? Thinking is hard, the old state of mind creeping back in. Will he go when he is done? Like the others? The shape and textures of the wall, the light and shadow play of the lantern, the feel of use, all _will _you into the familiar rut: look ahead; don’t think. Will he throw you out? Will he stay, like the hook nosed man? Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like control anymore.

His palming hands feel your curves, your waist, your buttocks, holding you still as he rocks his hips, palming your cheeks wide. The steady thrusting stops, your rear revealed.

“Busy night?” It’s a momentary pause. He begins again. “Ugh. I’m not paying you, if you’re here for that.”

He picks up the pace, the soft clap of hip to hip ringing a faster applause. You know this stroke. You stand, pushing against him as you put your feet back on the floor, and he steps back reluctantly. A grim expression paints his face, clearly put out by your apparent retreat at his unaccepted terms and no doubt considering ways to keep you as he wants you. The scrunched brow and twisted mouth both widen as you move, grabbing his arms at the shoulders and pushing him down in a turn, throwing him to the high-backed long chair. He lands upon his back and you climb aboard, throwing a leg over and aiming him before sitting. The speed shuts him up. The roll of your hips feels like control.

You hold the back of the chair as you begin to bounce. Your knees immediately ache, but he holds your hips as they rise and fall, enjoying himself, and you look about with lidded eyes, switching your gaze between his slack jawed face and the dark corners of the room. There must be something you can use against him.

Before you find it, you try to grip him with all the strength you’ve got, straining muscles you didn’t know you had, all while resting your hands lightly on his chest. The result is a moan from him, his head falling back. The pipes? Too fragile. The lantern? Too small. The-

“Ohh, you fucking whore.”

You ignore the whispered words; you’ve been called worse and in greater throws of passion. You keep your ride, squeezing from base to tip and shaping him inside you. His hands slip up to your bared chest, doing some squeezing of his own. From his panting, it won’t be long now.

Perhaps-

“I-I’m cumming!”

His hands return to your hips, pulling you down and pinning you while his body arches, forcing the connection and its depth. You don’t even feel it; too deep, or more likely, to richly sauced already for any sensation to matter.

After the first few spasms of his body, your moment comes. You push off him, quickly climbing free and kneeling down by the long chair, leaning over before his sad whimper and groping hands understand what just happened. A spirt catches you on the thigh in the manoeuvre, and another on your cheek, before you manage to prop him up and place him in your mouth. You ride your lips down the cock, feeling the last leak from its end dribble to your tongue and push its way to your throat.

“Oooooh fuck!” A few free hairs from his bush tickle your nose, the rest matted in sweat and other men’s seed. You suck. Hard. “Ahhhh! Ok! Ok!” You suck again, hard, reaching down. “Nnnn! Ok! Okokok. Stop. Now. I’m done.” You suck again, straining yourself, drawing the last dregs out of him as he tickles your throat. “Get off!”

His hand pulls you off by the wild hair, and you keep your cheeks hollow until they pop free, spilling his cum across your bottom lip. You stagger back, hands full, moving to edge of the chair where your ride rests his head.

“Gods! You…” He catches his breath, oblivious. “You are fuckin cray-“

Crack. You bring the bat he had dropped by the chair down on his head, swinging it like a wood cutters axe. The bat bounces, and uncaring for his suddenly silent reaction to it, you ride the bounce, bringing it up high and down again. This impact is meatier, soft, with the feel of things giving way.

Panting, you look at him, naked and laid out with use, and you wipe your mouth and cheek before collecting your clothes. You watch him as you dress. That he doesn’t watch you back is telling enough.

You leave the top unbuttoned, hanging loose about your sore bosom, and pull the already wet middle of your trousers to your crotch. His cock is still erect, shining with your saliva, and the sight of it brings wild and unproductive thoughts about where you could stick the bat you still hold. Unproductive, and he would have to be alive for it to matter. You lick the cum off your teeth and leave, tracing your way through the empty corridors to the kitchen, bat on shoulder and lantern brazenly in hand.

You encounter no one.

In the kitchen, you have to stop yourself from banging the draws as you open and close them. Do you want to be caught? No, but you find yourself in no mood to sneak. When you find the knives, even less so.

You leave the bat near the back door, like a macabre headstone. A dish cloth under your trousers wipes away an intrepid falling drop, ending its distracting journey from thigh to knee, and just like that, all trace of the man is gone from your mind: an irrelevance discarded. You hold the knife upward, hiding the blade behind your wrist, and move out of the kitchen via the same door you entered by.

You walk the corridor as though you own it, with every right to be there as the houses current claimant. Not taking the split to the dark and unoccupied part of the building, you continue on, down the corridor, which ends in a door pushed half closed and leading into a darkness far more complete than any of the dimly lit hallways. You push through, lantern first, and see a room of boxes. Perhaps it was a ballroom once, with its tall vaulted windows looking out to the front of the building and its wide long grandeur. Now it is a storage room, packed with wooden boxes full of who knows what. You can see where they have deeply scratched the floor. Ignoring it all, the nearby arch leads straight into a large foyer that bleeds its flickering light to the room, and you obey its call, moving there with a bored curiosity. From what you saw when you were in the woods, and that hazy time, the front door guard should just outside, past a large wood door. You look at it, not really sure why. Are you tempted to open it? You think so, if only to kill the guard.

It’s not his behemoth size that put you off the notion, but the practicality of it. He doesn’t matter. Just another man. You look away and shake your head; when did you get such blood lust?

A long set of stairs cascade into the room, leading to a landing balcony and the upper floor, and you decide to go up them, knife in hand, looking for a sleeping woman to ****.

At the top of the stairs, a set of double doors waits, right in the middle. The corridors stretch into true darkness on both sides, lost to nothing outside the light of the foyer. If she’s asleep, she should be upstairs. Clearly, this is the most important room. You shrug, having to start somewhere, and you open the double doors, pulling them wide and slipping through.

The room beyond is a small antechamber with only a single one of its lanterns still flickering, which looks a permanent need for the rooms lack of windows. It’s dominated by a wide low table strewn with maps and charts and papers, and you’re glad to see another door on its other side, proving another chance for your target. Rather than shuffle around it, the table is low enough to step up and you do so, walking across its surface and stepping down to open the far door.

Darkness, full of heavy breathing. The sound of rest; of peaceful, untroubled sleep. The audacity of her, to sleep so peacefully after everything her and her men have done. You no longer hide the knife behind your wrist.

You walk over to her. You don’t sneak, your pace fit for walking across any room, adding to the sense of apathetic abnormality you feel. The room gives a sense of itself, even in the darkness, retaining an open feel perhaps from the unfettered tap of your steps, and keeping with the theme of grand, old, and tarnished that permeates the whole building. The offensive breathing comes from dead ahead, and some instinct has you put your hand out when you near, catching a bedpost before you walk into it and letting it guide you around to the side.

The breathing loses its sleep laden quality.

You bring the stolen knife down, to where the breathing was, and the tug or resistance weighs upon your wrist, giving with the push and the tear and the sudden smell of blood. A breath destined for a scream or cry of help turns to cough and gurgle, a spray misting to your face telling of the strike to her neck. Another cough gives heavy droplets, forcing you to blink as they land on you.

Her hands flail against you in confusion, and before the knife can rise and fall a second time, they knock it from your grip. You grab the hands. Where’s the knife? Did it fall? You don’t recall the tell-tale sound of metal on floor boards. It must be on the bed! The hands pull and tug, tossing and striking at you as hold the wrists and ride their movements. You hop up, onto the bed, bearing down on the sound of the gurgling breaths and wet bloody coughs, each smothered as though drowning, and you know that you got her. It’s instinct. You cannot see her in the dark, but you know. You lay upon her, feeling her body with your own as you push up with your toes, keeping her pinned as her legs kick weakly either side of yours. The combined effort pushes away and crumples the thin sheet she had placed over her, leaving her feeling bear to you and spreading the pooling blood over you both. She is taller, and likely stronger, her bleeding and confusion the only things stopping her from tossing you away, but slowly the hands buck you less, **** to hold her neck instead. You keep them away, keep them pinned, sinking into the pillow at her head. Another cough sprays you, her hips rolling, her legs kicking and twisting. You keep her pinned, keep her close, feeling the strength die out of her bit by bit. She tries to lift her head, to strike you with it, but it’s too weak, missing even in your closeness. She stills for a second, slowly dragging in her last breath through her nose, and with a half lung of air, most lost through a bubbling her at her neck, she spits a mouthful of blood into your face, your eyes, your mouth and nose.

Her fight becomes like a fading heartbeat, twitching through her in weaker pulls, until she pulls no more. You keep her pinned though, well within your grasp, breathing hard with the effort out of your mouth. The move leaves you pressed close to her, feeling her unfaded warmth against you. With your top still unbuttoned and hers what feels like an open dressing gown of light silk, your small bosom is pressed against her more ample selection, soft and slick with blood, slipping with each breath you take and each one she doesn’t. Your faces are close enough that you rest your exhausted brow upon hers, letting the sweat there mix as it wills while you breathe heavy into her bloody mouth. Your hands are numb, your toes still pushing you up. Were you a man, you would be fully hilted between her wide hips like this. You find the position dizzyingly familiar.

The energy goes from you, fading like her life **** and leaving you resting heavy on her, spent in your efforts. Your faces press close, your nose to the side of hers. Your lips brush. You taste blood.

‘What are you doing?’ the rational part of you asks. The irrational part doesn’t answer, continuing to kiss the dead woman, first lightly with a brush of the lips, then heavy, licking her limp tongue and asserting yourself upon her, controlling her, doing whatever you want. She takes it as you took it, unresisting, unwilling, letting them do as they please. She’s lucky you have nothing worse than a tongue to stick down her throat.

You break the kiss, feeling the drop of red lined spittle at your parting, and your hand finally lets go of her wrist, turning to her belly and sliding up. Your hand fills, squeezed into the space between you and her with slick ease, pushing her flattened self into a shaming mound. Small breasts are no defence against a man’s attentions, you know very well, and as her nipple traces your palm and falls free, you do the second insane whim that comes to mind. You move your head down and put it to your mouth.

You suck the blood free, relishing the nauseating copper taste as it washes clear the last dregs of cum. Why would the men do this? Her bosom is far greater than yours, and with it, the nub of the nipple. You bite. No reaction.

You let your other hand release as well, the fight truly gone from her, and you feel up about her neck for what you know is there. Swamped in blood and caught in the wound, you find the chain, and from that, like a pulled anchor, you find the jewel at its centre. The Amulet of Abyet. Worn by only one person, it filled the redundant task of confirming your mark. Its worth is of little consequence to you now.

You stand, pulling the chain until it snaps, then tying it back about your neck in a knot that leaves it resting against your throat. A quick search brings the knife back into your hands, which was about her knee all along, and after a moment straddling her as you did with the man before, fingers full of dull aching need against her nakedness, you stand and walk out the room without a second glance, **** to escape yourself.

You cross the table and descend the stairs, the light of the foyer highlighting your blood soaked state for no eyes but your own. The path you walked before is as empty now as it was then, and you walk it like a bloody murderer, knife in hand, with no care at all for who you might encounter. When you reach the kitchen unchallenged, you’re almost disappointed.

You walk free into the night, crossing the grass to the treeline, pausing halfway. You look back at the building, silent and still, what happened inside a memory for you to bear.

Was that it?

At the same time, what _was _that?

The prospect of just walking away is not one you find appealing, nor is jumping for joy at your ‘victory’.

Did you want to die after all?

As you examine your emotions, you note the whirlwind within is a mix of all; satisfaction and despair, misery and righteousness, purpose and hollow disgust, aimed without and within. You view it all from the periphery, untouched and corrupted without care, like a corpse watching as the flies consume it.

You stand before your targets den, soaked in her blood, proof of her **** and tremendous bounty around your neck. After a short swim to your waiting guide, you’ll be one of the richest women in all western world.

You wish you never came here. God’s but you wish you hadn’t.

Feeling every ache on your body and on your soul, you turn and walk to the treeline, letting its darkness swallow you.