I

I Am The Bearer Of The Torch

I am the first to wake.

It is only fitting: the sun is yet to rise, but I am the bearer of the torch, needed when darkness still reigns. Lately, the nights have been especially dark, and I am needed more than ever.

My armor clinks as I step outside, into the frosty air of the morning, my trusted blade safe at my side. The sky above is beginning to pale, but Selphia still sleeps. The windows and doors are likely boarded up, as the town hides itself against the dangers of the night.

Normally, at this hour, I would conduct my patrol, go to my training field, perfect my knightly skills. A woman at arms is an uncommon sight, but my father had no choice – for a long time, I was his only heir.

By the time my brother Kiel was born, I was already trained to perfection, and beyond. Even my name – Forte – was chosen for the strength I needed to display, in order to protect those that cannot protect themselves.

It was the only way the Kingdom would tolerate a woman knight, and a heir at that. Perhaps even then, they wouldn’t, not for long.

It’s not like I wanted to be a knight, I thought to myself as I patrolled the boundaries of the town. The moniker of dragon knight itself was frankly empty, since I was tasked with protecting a god with unimaginable powers.

But I’d promised…

Unbidden, the image of my mother on her dying bed flashes before my eyes. The way she stared into my soul, begging me to inherit my father’s title…

To protect my brother Kiel.

He’s asleep, like everyone else in Selphia. It is up to me to protect them, with every ounce of strength that I possess.

I make the rounds of the town, empty street after empty street. They’re deserted, except I know I’m not alone, not really.

There is a lurking threat in this place. A bewitching predator, snatching people from their very homes, never to be seen again. The disappearances have the whole of Selphia on edge.

Hell, they have me on edge. My armored fist closes around the pommel of my sword, reflexively. I haven’t caught the perpetrators yet, but they can’t hide forever. Selphia isn’t big, and there’s only so many people you can disappear before you draw attention.

Still. I am but one person. All that stands between this town, and a fate that may well be worse than death. No ransoms have been asked. Even if that were the case, the people of Selphia have no means to pay, no riches, very few durable goods.

There aren’t many reasons why you would want to kidnap townsfolk in a tranquil place like this, and all the possibilities I consider – ritual sacrifice, human trafficking – make my skin crawl.

I am Selphia’s only hope, the bearer of the torch, thrust against the darkness. I must not fail.

I cannot.

Steps resound behind me, crunching against the gravel. I expect my mystery opponent to be stealthier than this, so this is unlikely to be a threat – probably some villager who woke up earlier than usual. Even still, I pivot in place, my sword sliding out of the scabbard and held ready as I turn to confront my opponent.

Oh.

It’s just Illuminata.

The florist stands before me in her typical black-and-gold outfit, her light blue scarf flapping in the wind of the cold morning. Similarly coloured, the flower that feathers her cap goes well with her deep, clever eyes. Her red braids drape her face like a pretty painting.

Most elves have an aloof beauty to them, but Illuminata just drives home the point. Even at this hour, she looks dignified and composed in a way that perfectly masks the playful, bubbly behaviour that’s made her a kind of mascot for Selphia.

Even still, I do know her. And my first reaction is annoyance.

Illuminata fancies herself a great detective, never mind that most of her “cases” are completely made up. She once ambushed me inside my own home, over some flimsy investigative justification! That would have been outright creepy, had it been anyone else, but Illuminata is harmless.

If she’s out here at this hour, and coming for me, that must mean she thinks she can help.

I relax my stance, sliding my sword back into the scabbard with a thud, as Illuminata bobs her head in my direction.

“Chasing shadows before the sun melts them away?” She asks, with an over-enthusiastic giggle.

I was, until you gave away my location to the whole town by being so bloody noisy, I almost say, but that would be most unkind of me. True, but unkind. I am a knight, and the people of this town are my charges. Even her.

“Illuminata,” I say, with a plain nod. “What are you doing out at this hour?”

“Oh, oh!” Illuminata says, hopping from one foot to the other. “I can assist you! I’ve come across some super duper critical information! Please let me help!!”

I stifle a groan. Here it goes again.

Still, the sun is about to rise from beyond the horizon, and if the attacker was nearby, the noise has likely driven them away. I might as well see what this is all about, and hope it actually leads to something for a change.

“Let’s head back to Carnation Flowers,” I say. “You can tell me what this is all about over a mug of your famous tea.”

That makes Illuminata’s eyes glimmer with self-satisfaction. She does love flattery, I suppose. And her tea.

“Follow me,” she says, in a tone strangely less bubbly than before. “I’ll lead the way!”

“Of course,” I say, stepping in to follow her.

I hope no one else goes missing tomorrow night, because I decided to follow a silly lead from a silly florist who actually thinks she’s a detective.

But who knows… maybe Illuminata really has found something I can use.

After all… torches exist to bring light to the least expected of places.

***

Carnation Flowers is a cozy place.

That much is always true, but the pale light of the earliest morning drives the point home even more. The wooden floorboards creak underneath my steel boots, as the very first rays of the day stream through the half-closed windows to land on the large carpet at the center.

The first floor is filled with plants, soil, and fragrant flowers. I’m not one to disregard my duty for something so trifling, but I do have to admit, it’s nice getting the shop floor to myself before opening hours.

Wooden stairs lead to the second floor, where I assume Illuminata’s assistant, Amber, is fast asleep.

I sit patiently and quietly, waiting for Illuminata to brew her tea and begin sharing whatever information she believes she has. In the meantime, my ears strain to listen.

No shouts, even as the town around us begins to wake. No shriek of despair, no sound of people running. Perhaps no one was abducted tonight. This visit to Carnation Flowers is still likely to be a waste of time, but at least no innocent person will have paid the price for my mistake.

Illuminata presents me with a mug of tea, snapping me out of my reverie.

“Thank you!” I say, watching as she sits across from me at the dark mahogany table. Her clever eyes shine with excitement. I can see why people like Illuminata. She’s very much in love with life, and for people with fewer worries than I, her enthusiasm is likely contagious.

In this instance, it seems like her entire world depends on me sipping her lovely tea. Of course, if it was terrible, I would tell her – lying would be most unknightly of me. But the first sip cements Illuminata’s reputation as a master brewer. This infusion is delicious, and doubtlessly will help stimulate me too. This might yet prove to be a productive day.

But first, I need to listen to whatever it is she has to say.

“This is wonderful,” I say, taking a long sip.

Illuminata’s smile lights up the room, and she virtually hops up and down while sitting on the chair. “Yes! So happy to hear that!”

 “So, Illuminata,” I say, in a more serious tone, “what… critical information did you have to share with me?”

Illuminata leans forward, conspirationally, her eyes theatrically darting this way and that as if to make sure we aren’t being overheard in her own shop. “I think I know who’s abducting the townsfolk!” She whispers.

I arch an eyebrow, sipping more of the tea. It is delicious, but quite warm. Combined with the cozy atmosphere, and the weight of my full armor, I’m becoming conscious of sweat pearling on my forehead.

“Go on,” I say, somewhat curtly. Illuminata’s overly dramatized delivery is getting on my nerves a little, if not to the point that it would break my knightly composure.

“They’re human traffickers,” she whispers. “They’re taking people, working them over, and selling them off for money!”

“Working them over?” I ask, my brow creasing as I try to process her words. “Selling them off to whom? Look” I say, stumbling on the words a little. Illuminata can be so confusing at times. I close my eyes, rubbing my temples, and sip more of the tea to steady myself.

“Illuminata, how do you know all this?” I ask at last, putting the mug down.

Again, Illuminata makes a show of checking her surroundings, before leaning even closer. “I know where they’re keeping the abductees!” She says, ignoring my previous two questions. Then, she points her index finger downward. “Right here, below my shop!”

That makes me sit forward, my heart beating faster. The strange warmth in the room is making it hard to think, I’m sweating and my head is pounding, but what Illuminata’s saying… she’s found the kindappers’ lair? And it’s here?

“Illuminata, what are you saying? Why would anyone set up shop… dooowwnnn heeere…?”

I blink, in confusion. The last words come out all slurry and unfocused. Something’s wrong. The day outside is cold, so why am I feeling this warm? Why is my heart racing? Why is Illuminata not sweating? All she does is look at me and smile, and smile, and smile…

Something’s very wrong.

I’m in danger.

I rise, sending the chair crashing backwards, staggering and reeling as I try to find my balance. Even the dim light of the flower shop seems impossibly bright to my eyes. My armored fist smashes the tea mug down to the floor, but it’s too late. Too late…

My hand clasps around the hilt of my sword, and I pull it out, but it’s slow, so slow, it’s like I’m moving underwater.

And Illuminata is not.

She kicks out with surprising deftness, hitting my fingers, whose hold on the sword was already loose. The weapon goes clattering to the floor.

I hadn’t even noticed Illuminata standing until she disarmed me with humiliating ease. I arch my arm backwards, trying to swing at her with my armored gauntlet, but it’s the slow parody of a punch. Illuminata elegantly side-steps it, letting me crash down to my knees under my own momentum.

I shake my head. I need to get out of here, I need… if only anyone else was here to help, Margaret, or… Selphia needs me, Kiel needs me, I can’t…

I feel pressure on my neck, and I’m uncomfortably aware that it’s the bottom of Illuminata’s shoe, pressing down, pushing me off my knees and onto the ground. I crash with a thud against the wooden floor, too weak to oppose even this purely symbolic gesture of victory.

Illuminata is standing above me like a hunter over a recently slain beast.

“You had questions for me,” Illuminata says, her voice suddenly dead-serious, devoid of all bubbly enthusiasm. “Stay down there and rest, while I answer them for you.”

Her shoe moves to my face, pressing down on my cheek. I grit my teeth against the pain – Illuminata is light, but as she leans forward, that’s still more than enough to painfully squish my face against the wooden floorboards.

“I’m trafficking the townsfolk,” she says, twisting her heel deeper into my cheek. I’d shout, but it feels so hard to move my lips…

“I drag them into my basement,” she says, counting each point with a finger. “Then, I break them. And finally, I sell them.” She looks at me with a bizarre look I can’t quite place. “Would you like to know what it means to be broken, Forte?”

Illuminata, of all people?! Why? She’s always been so friendly and bubbly and happy, always willing to help out anyone in need… The perfect cover, I realize with a shiver. She entered my own home, and played it off as a joke.

“Wha… wh…” I try, but my tongue is unresponsive, and I soon break out into a series of wordless grunts.

“Quiet,” Illuminata says, presenting the other shoe closer to my face. The tip, made of tough brown leather, presses against my lips, and humiliatingly, in my drugged condition, that’s all it takes to shut me up.

“You want to know why,” Illuminata says as she fidgets above me. With the corner of my eye I see she’s tossing her other shoe away, and then her foot wrap comes off. Squarely placing her naked foot against my cheek, she crouches down, staring into my eyes with her penetrating gaze.

I quiver in disgust at the clammy, sweaty feeling against my cheek.

Hatred rages inside me, fierce as a cleansing fire, at the mockery evident in those eyes. I’m a big, strong knight, all clad in armor, and here she is, a spindly girl keeping me pinned with a single foot.

She laughs, sadistically, and I widen my eyes in horror as she pushes the foot wraps into my mouth.

“There,” she whispers in a tone of mock-concern. “A little pacifier for our little knight.”

“Mmmph!” I moan, doing my best to spit out the foot wrap, but it’s no use. My throat muscles are literally too weak to spit, as the drugged tea saps me of all strength. The rage inside me is so thick I could choke on it.

I hate that Illuminata, this friendly girl we all thought part of our community, has pulled one on me in such a humiliating fashion. I hate having the culprit literally right next to me, and being too weak to stop her. She’s manhandling me like I’m a smoked ham, rolling me this way and that with her feet as her other shoe i salso removed.

The foot wraps taste horribly in my mouth, and soon I find myself literally milking them of Illuminata’s foot sweat with each breath. I wish I could gag and puke, but at this point, even twitching my fingers take a herculean effort out of me.

The scent soon joins the taste, as Illuminata steps lithely on my armored chest, placing her other foot flat against my nose. God, it reeks, and I don’t even have the strength it takes to squirm! Tears well up in my eyes from the stench… and from my horrible showing as a knight. I got myself drugged, like an idiot, and now Illuminata is literally rubbing her victory in my face.

“I know you’re more muscles than brains,” Illuminata says, crouching over my chest, and snaking her fingers past my lips and into my mouth. “Which, in your current state, is really saying something! But you could have figured this out in, like, ten minutes.”

“Gnnhh,” I groan, putting all my energy into trying to bite her damn fingers off. But I can barely tickle her skin, as she fishes the foot wraps out of my mouth, tossing them in the corner. “Thanks for washing them, by the way!”

I stare daggers at her, breathing more freely.

But it’s not to last.

Standing back up, Illuminata raises a foot into the air, angling the toes towards my face. I stare daggers at her, but she’s not afraid of me. Why would she be? So long as the drug is in my system, I’m at her mercy. I’m surprised she hasn’t decided to kill me yet.

Illuminata’s foot shoots downward, plunging into my unresisting mouth. The sole presses against my tongue, and the toes tickle my palate. She leans forward, until her foot is literally pointing straight down. Looking at me with a smirk of triumph, she starts methodically working her foot into my mouth, moving it back and forth, back and forth, working it in ever deeper.

I am… unsure about what is happening. Is this some weird sexual perversion? Why is Illuminata taking such a risk?

“Think about it,” she says, resuming her monologueing. “This place is a dump. Do you really think I can sustain my lifestyle with flowers alone?”

“Gggguk,” I groan, as her foot reaches the entrance to my throat. Tears stream openly down my face as Illuminata starts bobbing her foot up and down, getting a massage from my drugged throat.

“There’s nothing in this town that has any value,” she says, as her other foot snakes forward, towards my throat. So this i show the coward decides to kill me? She wants to choke me with her feet?

“Yesss,” she whispers after reaching her intended target. With one foot pressing against my throat, and the other poking at its entrance, my vision begins to dim. Adrenaline rushes through my body – not enough to counter the drug, but sufficient to make me spasm.

“The only thing that’s worth anything here,” Illuminata says from above, her eyes glowing with something that looks like arousal, “is people. Those who are worthy to the right buyers, of course.”

I convulse under Illuminata’s weight, utterly and completely powerless to push her off. Defeated by this unassuming villainess. Who will protect my poor Kiel now? Will the kingdom make him a knight?

“Lucky for you,” Illuminata whispers as my vision goes dark, “someone’s willing to pay a very high sum for you.” Her foot starts moving faster, up and down, matching the rhythm of her speech.

“And I. Never. Turn down. An opportunity. For profit!”

With a last twist, the foot that’s in my throat retreats up, until it leaves my mouth entirely. Illuminata steps off me, leaving smears of saliva on the wooden floor as she looks at me, a wheezing, coughing mess. Air rushes down my lungs so fast that it hurts.

“I won’t kill you, Forte,” Illuminata says, smearing my own saliva all over my hair, as she drags her wet foot over my scalp. “But I will break you.”

She won’t. Never. I will resist with all my might. The drug will wear off, and then I’ll cave her bloody skull in with my bare hands, if need be.

But, for the moment, all I can do is stare passively as Illuminata drags my body towards a trapdoor. She rolls me to the very edge, allowing me a moment of unfettered doubt and fear as I stare down.

It’s pitch black.

I never knew Carnation Flowers had a basement. Nobody in town knows. In my drug-addled state, I couldn’t even place where this trapdoor is in the store, exactly. Whatever lies in wait for me down below, it cannot be good.

But I must not fear. I am the bearer of the torch: I bring the light where it is most needed. As soon as my strength returns, I shall rise again, like the morning sun, to chase the night away.

For now, however, I can do nothing as Illuminata places her foot against my armored back, and pushes.

Her face is the last thing as I see as I fall, laughing and smirking at me. By the time the trapdoor closes, I’m still falling, deeper and deeper, into the darkness.

II

I Am The Last Hope

In my mind’s eye, I see Selphia’s bathhouse.

It’s a place of relaxation, safety, and warmth. I couldn’t count how many times I have let my body, sore and aching from physical practice, slide down into its steamy waters. I would always sigh in relief, as my muscles finally got to unclench and relax.

I would close my eyes, float peacefully, and let my thoughts wander.

I see it again now, and for a second, the fog of my confusion seems to morph into the water vapour, rising from the spa. I smile – it’s a happy memory, one that makes me feel good.

In the memory, I’m not alone.

Before me is Margaret. Her pointy elven ears poke out of her golden mane, and for once, there’s a genuine smile on her face. She can get a bit nosy at times, maybe downright bossy – if never unkind – but the pool can make anyone relax.

“Did you see what I did with the lute last night?” She says, in reference to her show at the eatery. “I’m really proud of how it turned out.”

“You were great!” I say, and then, stammering, “I mean, uh, the m-music was great. You were very good, is what I mean.”

God, my cheeks feel hotter than my armor does in the sun. I feel more comfortable with sword in hand than I do with small talk, sometimes.

I’m shoulders-deep in the water, with my chin dipping just beneath the surface. Margaret, conversely, sits by the pool’s edge, looking down at me.

“Safe to say you liked the show then,” she says, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “Was there anything else that you liked?”

A part of my brain – a part I can’t quite come to terms with – thinks Margaret is really, really pretty. I like how slender and long her legs look, draped one over the other, her feet bobbing up and down, splashing teasingly at the water.

She’s self-conscious about being short, but from down here, she just looks… princely, to me.

I like her subtle smile, the gentle cleverness in her eyes, which seems to suggest she knows something I don’t. Almost like she’s making fun of me, in a modest, kind-hearted way.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to deal with this playful behaviour. I am a knight. I’m at home in armour, with sword in hand. Here, in the pool, with Margaret making light fun of me, I have no idea how to behave.

Margaret extends her leg towards me, curving the ankle, so her foot is rotated in my direction, as if she’s proffering it. “If I get any better with the lute, I’ll have people kissing my feet as they beg me to play!”  

My cheeks blush so strongly and so rapidly that it’s like they’re on fire. I lower myself even further into the water, as if wanting to hide my embarassment. “Get that away from my face, please,” I say, wrinkling my nose.

“Woah, okay there! Didn’t expect you’d take it so seriously,” Margaret replies, sliding into the water with a giggle, and swimming away from me.

I shake my head, confused and slightly embarassed. But then, I blink once, twice.

All of this has, of course, already happened. It’s a memory.

But if it’s a memory…

Where am I?

Slowly, groggily, my eyes pry themselves open, to a world of utter, impenetrable darkness.

And then, all of a sudden, the memories of my defeat at Illuminata’s hands return.

They flash before me in a blur – her deception in the streets, the drug-laced tea, the creepy words on human trafficking and the value of human livestock, the question that also contained a promise…

Do you want to know what it’s like to be broken, Forte?

I shake my head, rising to my knees, feeling around with my tied hands – there’s a wall nearby, and I lean against it, climbing to my feet. I’ve been stripped of sword and armour, and the rags I’m wearing are barely enough to cover my modesty. The dark will take care of that, I suppose, but that’s not my only problem. It’s cold and damp, down here, and I find myself shivering.

Every inch of my body hurts, and my head is pounding, but the worst damage is the one inflicted to my pride. I’ve suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a wisp of a girl, and I am now her prisoner. The very human trafficking ring I was meant to stop, has taken me prisoner.

I’m angry. I should have never fallen into such an amateurish trap so easily. And what does my brain do? Start reminiscing about days with Margaret in the bathhouse? I fear that a subconscious part of me is hoping for Margaret to mount a search for me. To come rescue me.

That’s humiliating.

I’m not a damsel in distress, damn it! I’m a knight, and I don’t need saving!

If I want to get myself out of here, the first thing I need to do is assess my surroundings. Illuminata referred to this place as a basement, but to me it feels more like a cave – I feel naked rock under my hand, after all. But how large is it?

Assuming it’s an enclosed room, I should be able to walk its perimeter and count my steps – if only I can find some kind of marker to make sure I don’t walk in circles…

Before I can get started, however, a fit of cough breaks out in the cavern, wide like an explosion. I stop in my tracks, staying as still as I can.

“A new one, eh?” A voice croaks from the darkness. It’s an old, ragged voice, and a familiar one. My eyes widen in shock.

“Rolf?” I say, stupefied – he’s one of the shepherds who live in the countryside around Selphia. “Is that you?”

“Forte?” He says, sounding as incredulous as I am. But then, to my surprise, more voices break out from the darkness.

“Forte? Did you say Forte?”

“Forte’s here?”

“She here to save us?”

“No she isn’t,” Rolf replies to the other prisoners – men and women, who have been here for who knows how long. “She a captive, lads. Just like us.”

His words smart. Blood rushes to my cheeks, and my hands ball into fists. “I will save you! I’m a knight, and I’ll get you out of here!”

“You got your sword with ya, lass?” Rolf asks, with equanimity. “Your armour? I can’t see a damn thing in this darkness.”

“No,” I’m forced to admit, my voice edgy and testy.

“Then, some knight you are,” he says – not even callously, just dismissively, but the words hurt so much all the same. “You can’t help us.”

“Yes, I can!” I shout, defiantly. “I’ve sworn to protect you all, as a Dragon Knight, and that is what I intend to do. We’re going to find a way out of here.”

I realise how prideful and righteous I sound. But they should rejoice that I’m here, even if I’m a fellow prisoner. Surely, if anyone can break them out of this cursed place, I can.

“People are looking for you, right?” A woman asks, from what sounds like the far corner of this chamber.

“Yes,” I say, and it’s true, “but we’ll all be out of here before anyone will even notice I’m gone. Now, help me out, so I can help you. How big is this place?”

“’Tis a big ol’ network of tunnels. Don’t wander about, you’ll just get lost.”

“There are screams,” the woman’s voice whispers, “echoing from the tunnels… I don’t think we’re the only prisoners here.”

I nod to myself, lost in thought. It fits with Illuminata’s words, if nothing else. She’s working people over – whatever that means – and then trafficking them. So perhaps this space dug into the rock is something like… a pre-processing chamber?

In spite of myself, the thought does send a cold shiver trickling down my spine. What is happening down here? What is Illuminata doing to our villagers? How could such a bubbly, happy girl conceive of such an unspeakable horror?

No matter. I can look into her reasons after I’ve delivered her to justice. Now, I need to help these people get out of here.

“Is there anything we can use to cut away at our ropes?” I ask, out loud. “Some sharp rocks, or…”

Before I can finish, loud steps resound down the hallway – and the other captives rush to shush me into silence. I shut up immediately, and hope I haven’t been overheard.

The flickering of a torch appears from what must be one of the side tunnels. I take note of its position in my mind – the entrance must be in that direction. And sure enough, in steps Illuminata, in her familiar green and gold outfit, a scarf wrapped and thrown back over her neck, flapping in the gusts of cold air that travelled down the cavern walls.

Two armored guards flank her, gauntleted fists resting menacingly on the pommel of their swords.

The firelight gives me the first proper glimpse at this rocky chamber – longer than it is wide, barely taller than me, and carved out of the naked rock. There are eight other prisoners with me – Rolf, of course, and a young man I can’t immediately recognise, while the other six are all women I don’t personally know, all of them young.

My sword-hand balls into a fist, grasping for a pommel that is simply not there. There aren’t many reasons why human traffickers would focus so heavily on young maidens, and contemplating them sends me in a cold-blooded fury.

My gaze falls on Illuminata. Her childish demeanour is gone now, and with the torch casting a crimson, flickering light over her face, she looks positively devilish. Her smile glimmers like that of a predator, while her eyes meet mine with a challenge.

“See, I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Illuminata says to the other prisoners, while keeping her eyes firmly on me. “I brought you a knight! Surely, you’re out of the woods now!”

She must think herself the most skilled jester in Selphia. Her laughter echoes across the tunnels, but it doesn’t intimidate me. I know I’m going to rescue these people, and then I’m going to crush her.

However, Illuminata turns away from me, thrusting her torch towards the other prisoners. It’s almost as if she’s inspecting them, one by one.

“Please,” many of them mutter under their breaths. “Please not me. Please not me…”

Illuminata stops before each of them in turn, and the way they flinch and shiver and inch backwards towards the wall breaks my heart. What is she doing to these people, to terrorise them so? I strain against my restraints, impotent and enraged.

At last, Illuminata stops before the young man, eyeing him, as well as the young, slender maiden sitting right next to him.

“Nice stock,” Illuminata says, pensively, to herself. “Wide hips for her. Broad shoulders for him. Both blondes, that’s always very in vogue with the most lucrative buyers.” And then, raising her voice, “your turn now, darlings.”

Horror flickers across their faces, as Illuminata deftly slides the torch into an alcove, and grabs the ropes tied to the two victims’ necks.

“Unhand them!” I shout. But she just laughs at me, and I’m surprised at the ease with which she manhandles them to their feet, keeping them on a leash like dogs. It must be a combination of the fear and the time they’ve spent down here – they look like they can barely stand. The two guards are also a factor, of course. Their presence alone would probably make resistance truly futile.

I suppress a shiver of actual fear as I watch the two youths docilely following Illuminata down one of the side tunnels, into the darkness.

***

In the cavern, there is no day or night. The only things to mark the passage of time are the meager meals we are offered by Illuminata and her goons – sad, watery stew served in ceramic bowls with wooden spoons. Even manipulating them is difficult, with my wrists so tightly bound.

My stomach grumbles all the time, and my muscles are numb from the constant sitting, the discomfort of the jagged rocky wall and floor, and the biting cold. Sleep and wakefulness seem to blur into one another.

There is nothing to do but sit, and think, and try to ignore the screams.

I can hear them now, too. Some near, some far. Some are screams of pure agony and torment, but others sound like shrieks of pleasure, and sometimes, both intertwine, echoing across the tunnels at once.

Every now and then, Illuminata shows up – sometimes flanked by guards, sometimes alone – and announces that a new “processing chamber” has been freed.

No matter the begging, the crying, the snivelling – or my own threats. She always takes someone away. She mutters to herself as she does so, talking about desirable traits and cross-breeding, about buyer requirements, training, serving skills.

I can barely understand any of it, but I haven’t been idle through this nightmare.

I have nothing better to do with my time than press my wrists against a particularly jagged piece of rock – discreetly – and start rubbing.

The ropes are starting to lose structural integrity, I know they are. I can feel it when I test them. I’ve always managed to stop before Illuminata or the guards come down to check on us, but I need to remain vigilant. I’m almost done. Once freed, I can find the right opportunity to strike.

As I rub and rub at the ropes, I whisper to my fellow captives. Don’t worry, I tell them. I’ll set you free, I promise.

Maybe they’re even starting to believe me.

I rub and rub and rub. I can feel the rope beginning to give way, each and every day, but the sense of urgency can only build up inside me. Every day, Illuminata sells off poor innocent souls. Every day, she breaks them further in, thanks to her processing chambers. And every day, one or two new prisoners join me in this rocky hell.

There is also the matter that, between the cold and the jagged surfaces and the food, I’m growing weaker with every passing day… but I try not to dwell on that one. I’m sure I’ll be strong when it matters.

Every second I spend with my hands tied is another second where innocents suffer, a second where I fail them.

Today must be the day. The ropes are weak now, kept together by a mere thread. Ready to break at a snap of my wrists.

And, blessedly, Illuminata is alone today. No guards. Of course, I could always have stolen a sword off one of them – I would still be one against three, but with sword in hand, I am an artist, and would cut them down without issue.

At my peak, that is. And even I have to admit that I’m nowhere near that, right now. Days spent in the cold and dark, with just enough food to keep me going, have sapped me of some of my strength.

But I still have more than enough in reserve to tackle Illuminata alone. Yes, Selphia was wrong – I was wrong – in dismissing her as hopeless, childish, and harmless. But she’s no fighter, no woman-at-arms, and certainly no knight.

I can take her.

Her steps break me out of my reverie. As usual, Illuminata reserves an evil smirk for me when she makes her grand entrance into the cavern, eyes glimmering behind the firelight of her torch.

“Wondering if it’s your turn today, Forte?” She asks with a cruel giggle. “Perhaps, perhaps. I still have to decide. Don’t go anywhere!”

With a final, parting chuckle at her own joke, Illuminata turns her back to me, thrusting the torch deeper into the cavern, ready to inspect her merchandise – her livestock – for whoever she wants to process and sell next.

Except this is the last time she gets to do this in her life. She’s not dragging anybody else down to hell.

This time, I’m ready to strike.

With a quiet, sweeping motion, I rise to my feet – my muscles ache and complain all the way, but they respond. With a fluid motion, I pull my wrists in opposite directions, tugging sharply…

And the rope snaps.

The sudden thrill that goes through my body re-energises me, and I feel like a knight again. I lunge forward, racing towards Illuminata, and my shoulder collides with her lower back, sending her careening down onto the rocky wall.

Chaos erupts around us.

The torch goes spinning into the air, casting eerie firelight over every corner of the chamber. My fellow captives climb to their feet, gasp, and shout – their tied hands pointing or rising over their heads.

The torch lands against the rocky floor with a clunk, far away enough from us that I can barely make out Illuminata’s silhouette, on the floor, right next to me.

I’m planning my next move – how I’m going to immobilise her while she’s down – but she jumps to her feet with catlike reflexes. I do the same, switching to an unarmed combat stance. I scan my periphery – good, no one is thinking of intervening. I don’t want them to endanger themselves.

I’ve got this. I’ll keep them safe.

I lunge once again, seeking to tackle Illuminata to the floor, and neutralise her for good. But she side-steps me with grace, and it’s all I can do not to crash down onto the rocky floor.

I glare at her, but she counters with a smile.

“Oh, the big strong knight wants to hurt me?”

“Let them go!” I shout, resuming my stance, dancing around her. But Illuminata merely smirks.

“Make me.”

I advance again, and this time we make contact – Illuminata parries my blows, moving like flowing water, and her fist connects with my abdomen, striking against my clenched muscles.

It hurts, and forces me to take a step back. I hate the triumph in her eyes. I should be dispatching her with ease! She’s so petite and delicate she looks like one of her own flowers.

Whispers of fear and doubt trickle among the audience, which makes my cheek burn with reddened shame. This may not be swordfighting, but I should be holding my own a lot better than this!

“Oh, I’m going to love using your pride as my punching bag,” Illuminata says as I again strike in her direction. She traps my arms with hers, and sends me crashing to the floor with a sweep of her leg against mine.

The impact with the rock drives the breath out of my lungs. I roll away from her, but she doesn’t follow. Instead, she leers at me as I slowly make my way back to my feet.

“You’re no knight,” she says with a smirk. “You’re just a girly girl who fears ghosts and loves all things cute. It’d be adorable, if it weren’t pathetic. I’ll make you bake cupcakes after I enslave you.”

“That’s not true!” I shout, and I hate how petulant that sounds.

“Don’t worry, Forte,” she replies, gesturing for me to come closer. “I’ll break down all your walls, and get to the girly seed underneath. And then, you’ll get to bloom. Like all the people I cultivate here, in my wonderful garden.” She looks impossibly smug as she says this. “My true flowers.”

I roar in rage and frustration, and charge at her again. This time, Illuminata doesn’t send me falling – she stands her ground, deftly avoiding or parrying all of my strikes.

Her hands move faster than the wind. Her elbows and open palms strike at my stomach, my shoulders, my face, and the sting of humiliation is much worse than the pain. I can’t even break her guard. She’s not even sweating.

I retreat, dazed, confused.

How can this be happening? She seems to know where to place every defense. I haven’t even scratched her.

“How does it feel?” Illuminata asks.

I charge again, and this time, Illuminata takes a step backwards, turning so that her side is facing towards me.

And then, her foot flashes upward, into the air.

The impact with my chin is devastating. I see stars, and the room around me begins to spin, as the contact launches me backwards. My back hits the rocks so hard that I gasp for breath, my eyes welling with tears from the shock and pain.

Through dizzying double vision, I am remotely aware of Illuminata closing in, standing above me.

“Answer me,” she says, lowering herself until she’s crouching over my chest. “How does it feel? Your body, sculpted by so much training, rippling with muscles… and it’s being decimated under mine.”

I throw my hands upwards, trying to roll Illuminata over, but her own hands meet mine. We begin a tug of war, pushing in opposite directions. Of course, gravity is with her, and she has better leverage – but I should still win this easily.

Except, my hands begin to inch backwards. I grit my teeth, and roar, and snarl, but the inching soon gathers pace, becoming a rolling avalanche – and then I find my hands and wrists firmly pinned against the rocky floor.

I thrash underneath Illuminata like a pathetic girl, my legs splayed out and my body underneath hers. She controls me so easily. The earth-shattering humiliation is worse than the pain, a physical feeling so bad that I find myself shaking.

Then, the first strike comes.

This is no meagre punch. Illuminata’s hand balls into a formidable fist, and slams deep into my tummy, meeting the resistance of my taut muscles. I thrash beneath her – now she’s holding my wrists down with only one hand, and using the other to strike at me, so I should have more leverage.

Except illuminata’s next punch hits me square in the cheek.

The impact slams my head against the ground, and my vision flutters. The flames lick at the rocky walls of the cavern, Illuminata’s smirk swims above me in a sea of dizziness, and the pacing of her strikes accelerates.

She hurls everything she has at me. Her hands strike my face, my chest and boobs, my stomach. Fatigued and pained, even my abs begin to give way, and each new punch from my tormentor meets weaker and weaker resistance. Eventually, it just sinks in without real effort.

I’m still reeling from the blows, and she keeps piling more and more, keeping me off balance and under pressure, until one strike melts into the next. The fight feels more and more distant, as if I’m watching it from the outside.

Illuminata’s knees press against my throat, cutting off my air supply, as she belly-punches me into complete submission.

They drive into my stomach, as she slaps my face with her open palms, so many times that I lose count.

She spits in my face, kicks me in the belly with the heels and tips of her boots, grinds my face against the rock with her boot soles firmly planted on my cheeks, weight bearing entirely on me.

This is a true beatdown, but it’s not just my body she’s systematically dismantling. She was right, she is using my pride as my punching bag. Not only I couldn’t beat her, but she’s demolishing me without the slightest opposition. I try to summon what remaining ounce of strength I have to get my body to move, but I can’t even lift an arm.

She can’t win… I can’t be this weak… Worse of all, she can’t be right.

About herself… and about me, and my status as a knight.

At last, the flurry of blows begins to slow, but by this point I cannot take advantage. Every single muscle in my body hurts, the rock beneath me is as unforgiving as Illuminata above me, and I feel like I’ve been compressed between the two. Reduced to a thin sliver of a woman, barely coherent enough to keep thinking.

Illuminata rolls me so I’m face-up again, and I’m so motionless I might as well be a ragdoll in her hands. I have no time to take in her stature, towering above me – she looks so terrifyingly big from down here, and with a startle I realise that she actively scares me now – before she descends atop my body once again, sitting above my chest. The weight makes my breathing even more laboured.

I’m so vulnerable. So pathetic.

“Hahahaha, I can see the sole of my boot imprinted into your face!” She says, giggling. “That’s hilarious!”

I lick my lips, trying to muster enough coherence to utter a few words – maybe of protest or defiance, I don’t even know – but Illuminata slides forward, until my face is being nestled within her thighs. Her crotch lands squarely atop my nose and lips, shutting me up.

I try to bite her, but my teeth can’t gain any purchase over the taut, slippery surface of her trousers, and besides, my jaw muscles have taken so many punches that they barely respond.

Soon enough, her full body weight is squishing my face.

It hurts. My nose is bent over, my lips and teeth are bearing so much of her weight, my head is being pressed into the rock, and it’s a struggle to even breathe. With my hands immobilised and my legs useless, I’m not going anywhere.

Illuminata could kill me, I realise. That’s how thoroughly she’s beaten me. She could legitimately choke me under her thighs and crotch and ass, and I’d be unable to get free. Actually, she’s decimated me to such a degree, that she could probably choke me with her feet alone, if she truly wanted.

With horror, I realise that I’m just as vulnerable now, as I was when she kidnapped me. Except, back then, it was the drug that did me in.

Now, my body is drug-free. Illuminata has brought me to this state with nothing but her bare hands and feet. Removed every defence, cut me down to size, and eventually asserted her utter physical superiority over me.

My cheeks burn with unspeakable, devastating humiliation. There is no doubt that this is my darkest hour as a knight, aside from the very real danger I’m in right now. What if she does decide to traffick me? And to whom?

The sound of my laboured breathing must be music to Illuminata’s ears.

“Does anyone else here still think she’s going to rescue you?” She asks out loud, and I’m dimly aware of her face above me, scanning our surroundings. “Anyone?”

Most of my sight is blocked by her crotch luxuriantly resting on my face, like my face is just a seat for her to use at her convenience, and she can confidently expect no resistance from this particular human chair. It takes all of my willpower to even twitch my fingers right now. After the beating I’ve taken, I might even be injured.

My hearing isn’t great, either, not with Illuminata’s strong, wiry thighs pressing against my ears like a vice. But through all of this, I can still hear the dreadful silence that follows her question. It’s the answer we both need: everyone here knows I’ve tried to rescue them, and failed.

Illuminata giggles sadistically ath that. For my part, I feel a crack begin to form in my own mind.

What kind of knight gets defeated like this? How can I protect others if I can’t even protect myself?

I start moaning and whimpering into Illuminata’s crotch. It feels warm, and wet. Between the exertion of the fight, the crushing physical consequences of my defeat, and Illuminata restricting my airflow, I’m truly beginning to be in trouble. My lungs burn, tears well in my eyes, and my muscles spasm with adrenaline.

Not enough to buck her off… I can’t remove her… She… has me…

“I’ll let you breathe,” Illuminata says, “provided that you’re a very good girl. Promise. On your honour as a knight.”

There… there will be time for defiance later. I must live to fight another day. So I mumble into her crotch, as she softly humps my face, marking her territory, claiming me like a dog does with a bitch.

Illuminata stands, her boot pressing down against my cheek. The other boot sneaks up, closer and closer to my face. We’re close enough to the torch now that I’m sure my fellow slaves can see everything.

“Lick my boots,” she says, and I can sense this is a defining moment for my entire life. Illuminata has outsmarted me, captured me, outfought me. At no step of her plan to traffick me have I been able to offer any meaningful opposition so far.

I should have expected her to request something like this, after the way she abused my face with her feet when I was drugged. It goes against everything I believe in, rubs even more salt into the wound of my crushing defeat… but what choice do I have?

It’s just boots, and a tongue. It’s nothing that will do real, permanent bodily harm to me. If this is what I have to do to buy myself time, and live to fight another day, isn’t it the smart thing to do? Shouldn’t I just feign compliance, and wait for my moment to strike?

But what if I lose again, and again? What if I’m just rationalising? When does compliance cease being feigned, to become way too real?

… Is it real now?

I don’t have the luxury to think this through. I need to trade submission for time. And so, humiliatingly, I scurry to obey.

The leather feels rough and uneven under my tongue, as I lap at Illuminata’s boots like an eager dog. I run it from the tip to the ankle, then up and down. In a mockery of kindness, she lifts one boot at a time, so my tongue can snake under the soles that have beaten me into the ground, and lick them good.

She’s ground me into the dirt with these boots. Pounded me into dust. Reduced and diminished me, until I was literally physically unable to oppose them. But, to my surprise, they don’t feel too bad to the tongue.

Yes, the slightly tangy aftertaste I get after each lap is unpleasant, but… this isn’t torture. Compared to the beatdown I’ve just received, this is nothing.

Unfortunately, I’d underestimated how this would make me feel.

Each lap of the tongue against Illuminata’s boots makes me feel even more like a poor parody of a knight, snivelling at the feet of a villainous criminal like I’m her lapdog. I feel tamer, meeker, more defenceless with every passing minute spent ministrating at her boots. I feel… pacified. Subdued.

Defeated.

I’m all too aware that my standing among the slaves is destroyed. That not only am I not going to rescue them – I’m a lesser even among them. None of them have had to stoop this low, to lick Illuminata’s boots in public. Even if we were to all get out of here in one piece, how could anyone ever take me seriously again?

This cannot be undone. I’ll forever be known as Forte the wimp, Forte the bootlicker, Forte who accepted to utterly prostrate herself before an opponent just so her life could be spared. Maybe I should have gone down fighting instead.

So why didn’t I? Why am I okay being on my knees, lapping and bathing these boots in my saliva, while my mouth is parched from days of captivity and the brutality of the fight? Do I really believe this is just a strategy to get back at Illuminata down the line?

I shake my head as I lick. There’s a major crack in my self-confidence, and what I can glimpse from the other side is… troubling. 

It destroys me.

By the time Forte slips a hemp of rope around my neck, I don’t even have it in me to resist her. I docilely follow her down the tunnels, towards what I assume is into one of the processing chambers.

I don’t look behind me, at the fellow slaves I have failed. I don’t think I could bear the shame.

I don’t look at Illuminata either, this girl who has outsmarted me, outfought me, beaten me twice, and demoted to her bootlicker in the space of a handful of days.

I tell myself I can still rise from this, and fight back, I just… need some time to think this through. But for now, I have no fight left within me. And so I offer no resistance, and let Illuminata tug my leash and drag me deeper into the tunnels, and into the darkness.

III

I Am The Seed Under The Earth

A dragon knight’s training prepares you for most anything.

Sleep deprivation, cold, hunger. The weight of sword and armor, the soreness of prolonged physical exertion. Forced marches and long fights, rough sleeping and danger behind every corner. It’s a harsh life, and not without its ironies, since all this finely honed training is supposed to prepare us to protect a god that needs no protection.

Even so, I have genuinely believed, for most of my life, that there was nothing I wasn’t prepared for. Well, maybe Margaret’s behaviour in the bathhouse… her playful smile, long legs, the way she proffered her foot to me with a knowing smile.

But out in the real world, sword in hand, my training would enable me to face anything, endure any privation, and come out victorious in the end.

As such, it is devastatingly painful for me to admit it: my training never prepared me for this.

I find myself nestled deep in the heart of darkness, as deep as a person can go. After defeating me, Illuminata led me down into the depths of the tunnels, so deep that it feels like we walked forever, that I could never find my way back unaided.

I passed countless rocky alcoves, some small, some large, just briefly illuminated by my captor’s torchlight. Screams and moans alike emanated from all occupied alcoves. I don’t know what chilled me most… the screaming, or the moaning.

As for my own alcove, my own prison of earth and rock… I don’t even know what shape it is, or how large. Because Illuminata had something very special in mind for me.

I find myself buried under the ground, lying on my back. The soft, cold soil presses against me from all sides, totally restricting my movement – the most invincible form of bondage. The ground before my nostrils is relatively free, allowing me to breathe, but not to see, much less move myself.

My only connection to the outside world is a single feeding tube made from bamboo, stuck between my lips.

Whenever Illuminata sees fit to visit, I get just enough water and sustenance to keep me alive… and nothing else.

When she first buried me like this, Illuminata told me I was meant to be a seed under the earth. That my knightly shell would crack open, allowing the silly, girly maiden underneath to blossom at last. That this is her true garden, and I’m to be one of her beautiful flowers.

She’s… planted me. Surrounded by soil and fed through a tube, I definitely feel closer to a plant than I do a person.

I experience sensory deprivation on a scale that simply defies description. Time stops being a concept to me. I have no reference, no interaction with other living beings, no stimuli. I am trapped in complete darkness and silence, unable to move even a single finger from the pressure of the dirt pressing against every inch of my figure.

The lack of stimulus is slowly degrading my mind. Just randomly thinking about the unbreakable, all-encompassing darkness around me makes my heart start to race. It hammers against my ribcage, but I do all I can to calm myself down. Being agitated in here is a really bad idea, but what is the alternative?

Acceptance? Submission? Surrender?

I whimper softly in the darkness. I’m losing hope that I can extract myself out of this situation, or that people might find me. Even if other dragon knights were to storm the cave, would they ever descend this deep? Even if they did, they could pass right by this alcove, and never notice the thin bamboo tube sticking out of the soft ground, let alone the vanquished, humiliated girl underneath…

And what if Illuminata sells me?

Yes, the inquest into the human trafficking ring will continue. Maybe one day, they’ll catch her and stop her. But I could be halfway across the world by then, reduced to little more than chattel, untraceable for anyone who’s ever cared about me. Little more than a cow, or worse, depending on what Illuminata’s buyers look for in her wares…

I really have been vanquished. The lack of motion, the dampness and cold, the barely adequate nourishment are sapping my body of all its strength. My muscles, honed by countless hours of training, my pride and joy, are withering away, day after day.

I don’t even know how long I’ve been in here, but it’s long enough that I can feel my own helplessness, like a blanket. Illuminata utterly dominated me and reduced me to her foot holster when I was still strong. Right now, she’d probably be able to decimate me one-handed.

I hate the treasonous part of my brain that tells me that’s why she deserves to win, and I deserve to be sold into slavery.

When you live as a seed under the soil, everything is muffled, distant, unreachable. The only thing that comes sharply and in focus is the emotional pain, the humiliation at the comprehensive totality of my defeat. I’m being turned from a strong, proud knight into a thin, harmless girl with no strength and no independence.

It’s when I find myself perking up in excitement and happiness at the sound of Illuminata’s footsteps that I realise my training is failing me.

That she’s slowly but inexorably breaking me.

I try to emit desperate, muffled sounds around the bamboo stick, but my throat is slow to flex, unresponsive and out of practice. I feel like some grunting animal, too stupid even for words, and tears sting my eyes at Illuminata’s reaction – cruel laughter echoes above me, bouncing off the curved walls of the cavern.

Illuminata’s footsteps draw closer, until the soles of her boots come to rest exactly above me, the increasing pressure building up against my cheeks – but only slightly, as the soil around me distributes most of the actual load.

I don’t need to be able to see anything to understand the deep symbolism behind Illuminata’s gesture. I’m not even under her soles, like last time. I’m under the very ground she walks on.

I hear the slow, grinding sound of the topsoil being crunched as Illuminata crouches above me. It reminds me of my own destruction, ground to dust beneath those very soles, and it makes me shiver and whimper.

“Hello there,” Illuminata says, the voice muffled by the earth separating us. What I’d give for a glimpse of the torchlight she must be using up above…

“How is my little seedling doing? Are you ready to crack open? Are you ready to burst, and let the girl be born?”

I only answer in desperate, guttural pleas. The sad truth is, knightly concerns do not apply in this situation – I have been reduced to a much more basic level of need. Water. Nourishment. Like a desperate animal trying to stay alive, no matter what’s necessary.

She laughs above me, but I only whimper with desperate, docile joy at the trickling sound of water being fed through the tube. It’s the joy of a grateful pet, of a broken captive. Sensorily deprived, underfed, cold, weak… it takes this little to train me to respond.

And I do respond, because the water tastes like heaven, sweeter than any wine. In gratitude, I suckle at the end of the bamboo straw, gulping down as much as I can.

“You know, Forte,” Illuminata says, “you ought to really be asking yourself what I’ve laced the water with, this time.”

I don’t even flinch. I keep drinking eagerly, which elicits another cruel bout of laughing from my conqueror up above. Illuminata loves to employ her botanical knowledge against me, subjecting me to a number of nature-born substances.

I know the drugs are changing me, sapping my will, taking away my focus. The effect is subtly different each time, but I always lose any residual perception of time I might have, and worse, they have… other effects on me. Lubricating me. Bombarding my mind with visions of women’s boots and shoes and feet.

Making me relive my defeat at Illuminata’s hands over and over again, while also making my sex pulse and throb.

Unbidden, the images from the last time she did this flash before my eyes. The flicker of the torchlight, the way the flames danced across her face, her toothy grin, her cruel eyes…

Illuminata actually dug me out of the ground for the occasion of my first drugging down here. It was my one time being partially free – from the chest up at least, but my gratitude was short-lived, then.

My captor had been a vision in the tenuous firelight. The only human face I’d seen in so long, half her smile illuminated by the torchlight, as she waited for the toxins to take effect. It crushes me to admit it, but she was… beautiful.

The toxins made my skin crawl and pearl with sweat. I was so sensitive that the slightest gust of air inside the tunnel had me wiggling my upper body to try and break free. Illuminata simply laughed at my sensitivity, then closed in on me, and placed her gloved hands – rubber gloves, not to make contact with my toxin-bearing sweat – on my nipples.

What followed was a never ending, torturous massage that made me scream in pain as she pushed, pulled, pinched, and twisted. The toxins magnified my response tenfold, and Illuminata knew exactly how to exploit that to put me in my place.

A seedling girl, beneath the earth.

Eventually, and to my undying shame and shocked disbelief, I climaxed, my juices soaking the dirt that trapped me. After that, Illuminata ignored my desperate pleas for mercy, and back into my dirt prison I went. I’ve replayed that encounter countless times in my own mind, left to my own devices here, in the dark and quiet.

I’m sure that was Illuminata’s intention from the beginning. To make me marinate in my slow, agonising breakdown. In my shame, my surprise, my fear… and my newfound arousal. Drug-induced or not, it’s real. The idea of a broken heroine, crushed under the iron heel of a better woman, suddenly feels titillating.

Certainly better than the slowly gnawing horror of utter, impenetrable immobility and silence.  

That brings me back to the present, as I eagerly suckle every drop of drugged water from the bamboo tube, like a good, obedient girl. Would I be willing to go through that torture again, just to see the firelight, and the face of the villainess?

Would I humbly kiss her boots in reverence, to thank her for the privilege of having my nipples tortured? Would I gasp and just barely spread my thighs, inviting her gloved fingers to access every part of me? Would I go red in devastating, identity-killing shame as she laughed and laughed at me, the knight who whored herself for a trickle of water?

To my utter shock, the tube starts moving between my lips, and is then pulled away. I whimper and moan desperately as my only connection with the outside world is taken from me, but Illuminata only laughs above me.

Then, scraping sounds silence my dog-like whimpers. Illuminata slowly, methodically removes the packed layer of dirt resting above my face, and for the first time in who knows how long, the cool air of the cavern brushes against my cheeks.

I cough, blinking. After so long spent in pitch-black nothingness, the torch on the wall is enough to make my eyes water. At the edge of the firelight, floating above me like in a vision, is Illuminata’s face. She’s standing above me, her feet planted more or less above my chest, leering at my now-exposed face.

A knight knows no fear, but I am terrified to my very core. In fact, I will be afraid of solitude and the dark for the rest of my life. It logically follows, therefore… that I am no knight. Not anymore.

Perhaps I never was.

“I want you to lick water off my boots, little seedling,” Illuminata says. “You want to quench your thirst? This is how.”

I stare, bewildered, into her eyes. She stares, amused, into mine.

It takes my drug-addled, isolation-dimmed intellect a moment to comprehend the scope of what Illuminata is asking. The symbolism. The significance of this moment.

If I say yes to this, what will I ever say no to? I should refuse. I should find the last vestige of knighthood inside me, hold on to it, and resist.

And then what?

Get buried back beneath the earth, with no water, my agony stretching into the silence, until Illuminata makes me the same offer again, and again, and again.

Until I give.

I might as well give now… and live. It will end me as a knight, I know, but though I am too weak to save myself, there is hope, so long as I live. And so, tremulously, I nod my acquiescence, submitting fully to my captor. And the stretching of her smile fills me, in equal parts, with defeated arousal, and with dread.

Illuminata pours water all over her boots, cold droplets striking my face and my dry, cracked lips. I open my mouth in a wide, pathetic o, eagerly catching any spill. Illuminata nods approvingly, but then her fingers snap, and she points down.

“Lick my boots,” she says, and I throw myself into it willingly, my parched throat and subdued mind pathetically eager.

I lap the water from the rough and uneven leather, filling up the rocky alcove with wet, needy, slavish sounds. I know I sound like a dog, a desperate animal, lathering a pair of boots with sweat, picking up what little hydration I can from the very shoes of my conqueror… uncaring about the drugs currently being ingested into my system.

“That’s it,” Illuminata says, “lap it all up. Drug yourself for me, little seedling. Water is life, and my boots are just that to you right now. You should beg me for mercy every waking moment, lapping at my soles like the human doormat you are.”

Her words wash over me, making my conquered, drug-stimulated pussy throb. I lick from the tip to the ankle, then up and down. I lick under the soles, even though no water is to be found there – purely because I know Illuminata wants me to.

I suckle at the tip, my cheeks reddening at the shameful, lewd image it evokes – of pleasuring a man with my girly, quietened mouth. It’s all in a desperate attempt to capture one more droplet of water, but also to appease my captor. I don’t want to go back under the dirt. I don’t want to be planted again…

As always, each lap of the tongue against Illuminata’s boots makes me feel even less of a person. My captivity has rendered me tame and docile, eager for instructions. I never think of myself as able to extricate myself from this predicament anymore.

If Margaret came bursting here in shiny armor and glittering sword to save me, I’d follow her meekly back to the surface. But my strength is gone. Uncountable days spent with the cold seeping from the dirt into my body from every pore have left me like this… a simpering, powerless little girl, good only for polishing the shoes of her betters.

It doesn’t matter that nobody else is witnessing this. I am. The old Forte died up there in the caves, when I reduced myself to begging Illuminata to spare me. Whatever I am now, it’s something less than human. Something that deserves to be enslaved.

At last, Illuminata steps back, her face retreating partially away from the firelight. Pathetically, I start panting like a dog, eager for more water, for more human contact, for more… anything. Most of all, eager for air. I don’t want her to put me back down there. I try to tell her as much, but my throat is not cooperative, and words fail me.

Illuminata’s face reappears from the darkness, and now, she isn’t smiling anymore.

“I’ve found you a buyer,” she says, matter-of-fact, and it makes me skip my heart, the careless way she says it, like it’s a complete afterthought to her. She’s tossing my entire life away, but to her, I’m so meaningless that it’s like giving away a pot, or a dumb farm animal…

“I intend for you to be ready for her,” she continues, arching an eyebrow at me, wagging a finger in admonition. “A perfect, feminine, beautiful flower. And for all your progress, we still have a while to go!”

I shake my head, desperate, eyes wide with fear and pleading, but Illuminata is unmoved. She takes another step, closer to me, and her boot covers my field of vision. Moments later, it rests delicately atop my forehead. A perfect image of victory and subjugation.

Then, Illuminata leans forward, and the weight slams me back into the ground, the flat heel of the boot smashing against my lips.

“Mmmpphh!! Ngghhh!” I muffle, panicking, the best imitation of a scream of terror that I can perform, while the sole of her boot utterly masters my face. Illuminata just laughs at my fear, pushing me deeper into the ground.

“Shh, little seedling,” she says. “Get back in there.” She removes the boot as she says this, crouching to push the bamboo tube back between my trembling lips. As she does, we find ourselves face to face with one another. It’s almost… intimate.

“You’re about to have a very nice, intimate experience with the plant toxin you’ve so eagerly lapped up from my boots,” Illuminata says, her eyes so close and so big that I find myself swimming in them. “It will let you simmer… like a good soup. And then, we’ll talk a little more, and see if you’re ready for selling.”

She steps up at that, and I close my eyes, sobbing, knowing what is about to come. The immobility, the cold, the silence. The darkness.

“You better believe I’m going to be very upset if you’re not,” Illuminata says. And then, the first splash of dirt hits my face as I am shovelled back into the ground, and I know in my heart of hearts that this is the end of me, and she has won.

That my knightly façade is ready to crack…

And let the slave girl be born.

IV

I Am Chattel To Be Sold

It’s the beginning of my end.

It occurs to me – in a rare moment of lucidity, after so long spent in darkness and in silence – that the old me is dead. Irrevocably lost, gone forever, irretrievable. Gone is the strong protector of the weak, replaced by a maid with intimate knowledge of the taste of women’s boots and feet. Gone is the fearless hero, replaced by a whimpering captive that would do anything to please her female master. I was a dragon knight, but now I’m little more than a bitch in Illuminata’s kennels…

Or, I suppose, a flower in her garden.

In any case, she has tamed me. The words keep bouncing across my mind, impossible to ignore. I’m a broken filly, a domesticated little animal, a lesser woman, not a warrior but a delicate, blooming flower.

The knight is dead, and in its place, the slave girl is ready to be born.

Here in the pitch black privacy of the alcove, which gives my defeat an oddly intimate quality, there is only one possible visitor, and only one possible conversation. Illuminata has asked me that cursed question every day, for an uncountable number of days.

“Little seedling,” she would say. “Are you ready to let the seed crack open, and let the slave girl be born?”

I didn’t answer, for a time. Even so, I lapped drugged water off her boots, licked her hand like an eager dog, bathed her feet with my tongue until every drop of sweat was gone. Those were answers in and of themselves, weren’t they?

I’m not sure when I broke fully, not exactly. The word simply came to my lips one day, unbidden, like… well, I suppose, like a ripe fruit falling from the tree branch.

“Yes.”

I knew, and I know, the implications of that admission. That I would bloom in the delicate femininity Illuminata wishes to impose on me. That I would give up sword and armor in exchange for satin and collars, trade swordplay for massaging women’s feet to perfection.

That I would give up assertiveness for docile meekness, especially in the presence of my betters, like her.

Maybe most importantly… that I would do my best to look pretty for my future buyer.

I’ve been returned upstairs, to the central processing chamber. Illuminata led me here herself, on a leash, and didn’t even bother to tie my hands this time. After my ordeal, my muscles have withered, and my spirit has been broken. I’m as docile and easily led as a puppy.

The vast chamber is still dark, damp, and cold – but I’m eagerly, pathetically happy to see it again. Anything but returning to Illuminata’s garden… anything at all. Besides, there’s people here, and even just hearing their murmurs in the shadows is better than the impenetrable silence that lies below.

Although some of the whispers hurt me – and tingle me – in ways I couldn’t anticipate…

“Who’s she?” Asked one of the slaves a few days ago, when Illuminata visited to inspect the merchandise, her beautiful and cruel smile glittering in the firelight.

I didn’t recognise any of the other captives, and just thinking about that sends a cold shiver down my spine, even now. Rolf and the others I first encountered after my capture, they’re gone. Must have all been sold… or planted in the garden, waiting for the right time to bloom.

“Just another slave,” Illuminata told him. I replay the words in my head, over and over, so often and so incessably that they start to feel alien and inscrutable.

Just another slave.

It’s true, isn’t it? I’ve entered this place a knight, and now there’s nothing to my being, except my lips’ abilities to smooch and cover a foot in kisses. I guess we really have come full circle. I had pretensions to rescue these people, and now I’ve so thoroughly become one of them that we’re indistinguishable.

Hell, if I tried to tell them I’m a knight, they probably wouldn’t believe me. They’d laugh at the patent absurdity of the notion… and the fierce humiliation that courses through me at the thought sends a strange, unfamiliar feeling to my sex…

I lean my head against the naked rock, sighing. I’m just another slave. No responsibility, no burden to bear, no performance to disappoint. The people here don’t look up to me to save them. They’ve seen me licking Illuminata’s boots, and that’s what I’ll always be to them, a human doormat, and that’s okay.

Because I’m just another slave.

***

When you live in darkness, the merest glimpse of light can shine brighter than a thousand suns.

For a moment, as Illuminata thrusts her torch forth, illuminating the processing chamber with a fierce glee, I wonder if I’m hallucinating. If captivity, weakness, or drugs have finally done me in.

But now. Right next to Illuminata, standing uncertainly as she regards the chamber, is a person I know. A friend I love.

Margaret. Margaret is here.

Her pointy elven ears poke out of her golden mane, but her bubbly self isn’t on display here. She’s assessing the… merchandise, the slaves arrayed by the walls, who pretend to be engrossed by the floor, or the ceiling, or pretty much anywhere that isn’t the two gorgeous elven women standing in the middle of the room.

A thousand thoughts race through my head. Is Margaret coordinating with the Dragon Knights? Is this a clever ruse to  break me – us – out? Is she pretending to be a buyer, so she can save us?

So… she can save me?

“That’s certainly…” Margaret says, “an impressive operation you have here, Illuminata.”

The grace of Margaret’s every move reminds me how much I lost. I was always clumsy compared to her litheness, of course, and with her bossy attitude and strange flirting, she always made me blush in the most unknightly of ways…

But looking at her now is making my head spin. I’ve lost so much muscle mass that I look thinner and smaller than she does, a mousy little thing.

When did the world turn upside down? When did Margaret become the figurative knight in shining armour, and me the literal damsel in distress?

I don’t care. I may have been lessened, reduced, cut down to size… but I can be saved. I know I can be saved. I know Margaret will have a plan!

As the two elven women circle the chamber, eventually Margaret’s eyes land on me. In the tenuous firelight, the flames dancing over her face as it emerges from the darkness, it strikes me just how breath-takingly beautiful she is. It’s a silly thought to have, I know, but…

Her golden hair comes alive in the torchlight, and her eyes burn bright against the dark backdrop, like stars. She’s an angelic, almost ethereal vision, a messenger from the surface world, descended here into the depths of hell to drag me out.

My eyes spontaneously track the movements of her slender legs as she nears me. It’s funny. She was always self-conscious about being short, but now she feels like a titan to me, as I stare down, unable to meet her gaze.

Ashamed at my defeat, here slumping on the floor of this cavern, with the taste of Illuminata’s boots permanently on my tongue.

“Interesting,” Margaret says, in what is clearly feigned nonchalance, as she temporarily glances back at Illuminata. “Alright, I think I’ve seen enough.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to proceed,” Illuminata says, with a smirk on her face. “You’ve seen all the recently bloomed flowers, though I think I have a notion of which one in particular you’re interested in…”

“We’ll see about the flowers,” Margaret says, turning back to me. “I’ll be back,” she says next, in a meaningful tone, her eyes affixed on me. And then, in a single heartbeat, when Illuminata can’t see… she winks. That sets my heart racing. It’s like the relentless dark I’ve been imprisoned in for so long is blasted away, by a single point of light.

A glimmer… of hope.

***

“I’ve always loved gardening,” Illuminata says, looming over me as I lie prostrate at her feet. “It’s a… calling. Sure, it’s hard work, but moments like these are the true payoff. When I choose an ugly seedling, you see, I look past its ugly exterior. And yours was certainly ugly!”

The laughter echoes across the chamber, the other slaves looking away, pretending not to see and hear. I have no such luxury, as I place tiny, delicate kisses over every inch of Illuminata’s boots. Paying homage to my conqueror.

“But no,” she continues, “I see the potential, the beautiful simpering girl hiding underneath. Beneath all that armour and that knightly exterior, this was always the real you, Forte, waiting to be born.”

Her words travel across every inch of my defeated and lessened body like a ripple of arousal and defeat, culminating straight in my sex. I give a small yelp of surprised pleasure, devoting myself even more to the task at hand. Illuminata has slowly extinguished my old self, suffocating it under her soles. But what’s left… What’s left is in awe ofher.

And yet, I still hold on to the glimmer of hope. I know Margaret is out there, working tirelessly on a rescue plan. Once I’m out of here… we’ll see if there’s anything of the ruins of my very personhood that can be rebuilt, and reclaimed.

But until then, I do as I am told, and submit to my captor.

“I suppose it is a bit of a bittersweet moment, however,” she says, sounding oddly reflective. “Every project has an end. Every new flower is eventually sold, and I move on to the next seed. You’re about to be sold, Forte, and as much as the idea thrills me, I am going to miss the spectacular sight of you lavishing my boots with your worship. Let’s enjoy it, one last time!”

The only response to her words is the pathetic, slavish sound of my tongue lapping dutifully at her boots. I do my best to polish them to a high sheen, lathering them with the very physical evidence of my devotion, and my submission.

“Think about it,” Illuminata says, “I’m about to get rewarded. I’m going to be paid for everything I’ve subjected you to. Every torture, every hostile takeover, every time I’ve broken something within you… I’m going to be remunerated for it. And what do you get?”

She chuckles, probably revelling in the scared whimpers that spontaneously leave my throat. “Well, I suppose I shouldn’t spoil the surprise…”

I respond to my captor’s words like an animal would: with emotions and instincts. I shiver, grow aroused, feel despondency or fear, but nothing more. I’ve been simplified, since the only task I’m supposed to carry out well in life is… well, this. I lick from the boot’s tip to the ankle, then up and down. I keep soles clean.

And of course, once the boots do come off, I warm toes with my lips, bathe them with my tongue, make sure to keep them fresh and clean and perfect. It’s what my mouth was made for.

I don’t feel like a person anymore. I’m a thing, docile and responsive to instructions, a thing that Illuminata plans to sell. My only saving grace is that Margaret’s ruse is preventing Illuminata from showing me off to someone who might really want to buy me, for who knows what nefarious and demeaning uses.

Then again, if Margaret knew the truth about me, if she knew the real me, if she saw me like this… would she still plan to rescue me?

Maybe, maybe not… but either way, it’s out of my hands now. All I can do is survive down here, and wait for rescue, like all the other poor souls that have been made into human cattle down here.

Because… I’m just another slave.

***

The air pulses with anticipation, as the light of the torch pushes back the darkness of the rocky chamber once more. As always, when our captor makes her entrance, everyone huddles closer to the rock, trying to turn invisible, trying to not get picked. Everyone except me. I’ve already been below, and I’ve already been broken.

Besides, the others needn’t worry. This visit is for me.

Illuminata and Margaret appear at the entrance, their figures seeming to swim in the flickering firelight.

To people like us, people like me, captives who can barely think of themselves as people in the first place, the two elves are a vision of unattainable royalty. Their femininity is not slavish, but princely. Their litheness is not weak, but supple. They stand tall, casting large shadows against the walls of the cavern, while we huddle close to the ground, like the domesticated animals we’ve become.

The contrast fills me with such shame, with such servility.

And I’m terrified to admit I now find it hot…

There is no slow circular procession around the hall, this time. Illuminata and Margaret beeline straight for me, the former amused, the latter serious. I blink, shielding my blinded eyes as the torch is thrust against my face.

“Alright, Margaret, are you ready to take this little flower home? She’ll make for an excellent decoration!” Illuminata says, and the flame looks alive in her eyes.

There is a long moment of appraising silence, as Margaret looks me up and down. I gulp, wondering how the rescue is going to proceed from here. Will she break me out, or will she pretend to pay Illuminata? If she’s doing it with outside help, then maybe the latter. Maybe she’ll pay, get me out, and then someone will raid Carnation Flowers.

But… what about the other slaves?

I hang my head in shame, realising that with supreme selfishness, I’m thinking of saving myself, first. Forte the knight would be horrified by such craven displays, but then again… Forte the knight is no more. And Forte the slavegirl, the one who licked boots to stay alive, well… she’s a coward of the first order, and just another slave.

Eventually, the two women stand before me. Their faces swim above me, eerie and almost dreamlike in the torchlight. Two pairs of eyes scrutinise me, in all my weakness, in all my failings.

“This slave has lost muscle tone,” Margaret says, deadpan. It sends a shiver down my spine, reminding me of my physical reduction, but I tell myself I should admire her acting performance. It’s convincing, to the point of being terrifying.

“Margaret,” Illuminata says, sauntering closer to her, speaking in an alluring tone, like a siren… “We both know you’re not going to work her in the fields. You’re just going to… well, work her. Muscles are unbecoming on a pleasure servant.”

I shut my eyes, trying to block off the idea that Illuminata has been training me to provide pleasure, not to do hard labour. I honestly can’t decide if that’s more or less demeaning, if it’s a blessing or a curse. I might not be a beast of burden, but I am a sexpet. Is that any better?

“Aye,” Margaret says after another appraising silence, “but she doesn’t look like much. No real curves on her. All scrawny and scared…”

“I will admit she won’t compare to what you’d find in a pleasure house,” Illuminata says with a nod, “but we both know the real reason you want her.”

Margaret feigns being unimpressed, conspicuously inspecting her fingernails. “I bet she’s useless at most of the tasks I would use her for, though.”

There’s a terrible knot in my stomach. God, she really is a good actress, I can almost believe she’s actually here to buy me.

“Please,” Illuminata scoffs. “You’re dealing with a professional here. You’ll find no better slave when it comes to polishing boots and worshipping feet.”

“I will admit, that is an enticing vision,” Margaret concedes, and her acting seamlessly morphs from an affectation of disinterest, to one of lust. She stares at me with wide eyes, pools of desire I can feel crawling across my exposed skin. Her voice takes on a deeper tone, and she looks almost transfixed. “She’s so broken…”

“That she is,” Illuminata says. “A lot of work went into bringing out the properly feminine in her… and stomping out the knightly ugly, of course! Now, my motto is simple, Margaret. Fair wages for fair work. So what do you say?”

As she asks this, Illuminata grabs the length of rope attached to my neck, a makeshift leash that’s become second nature to me. She plaintively tugs it, jerking me towards her.

“Illuminata,” Margaret says at last, hand extended. “Fair wages for fair work.”

The leash passes into her hand.

***

It’s been days, now.

When we first left Carnation Flowers that day, tears started running down my cheeks. It was dawn, just like it was at the beginning of my ordeal. Selphia slept, and for all intents and purposes it was a morning indistinguishable from that of my search. But I was an altogether different person – I’d been planted and reborn.

In my meek and mellow state, a thousand questions passed through my head. I could have asked them all of Margaret. When are you raiding Illuminata’s operation? Who are you working with? How did you find me?

But I didn’t. I simply let her tug me by my leash, meekly following wherever she led me, in stunned and servile silence.

We crossed the length of Selphia, as the townsfolk slept. We reached the eastern district, and Margaret’s mansion, and its doors closed behind me… and they haven’t opened since.

I stare at the floor before me with almost catatonic stupor. I’m distantly and dimly aware that my knees are hurting from kneeling here for so long, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how spotless the floor looks, so much so that I can catch glimpses of my own thin, defeated reflection in the mirror.

That’s just how Mistress likes it, and she is very particular about the cleaning. And, as I’ve found, she is as proficient with the crop as she is with the lute…

Her faintest touch at the back of my head is enough to make me shiver in anticipation. I know she’s standing above me, inspecting my work. Once, I would have been able to lift her one-handed, but now I know she’s stronger than me, in every way that matters.

“Good work,” she says, and I lean into her hand like an affectionate pet at the praise. “Here, take a closer look at how well you did!”

And with that, her shoe lifts in the air, thrusts down against my face, and slams it into the marble floor I’ve only just polished. I grit my teeth against the pain – Margaret is lighter than even Illuminata, but it’s still more than enough to make me feel utterly and thoroughly pinned underfoot. And that makes me tingle all over.

“Come on,” Margaret says, taking off her shoes. One naked foot slams squarely into my cheek. “You know what I like.”

Not many words are spoken between us. None are needed. I roll over, staring up at my beautiful goddess, the golden crown of her hair, the chipped-ice of her eyes. If a stare could dominate, hers can. Knowing my duty, I gently place many devoted kisses on each toe, on the ball of her foot, on the heel.

She presses her sole into my lips, shutting me up. I think she almost gets lost in contemplating me when I worship her feet, revelling in her conquest, and how glorious it must look and feel to have the once-strong knight so obedient and foot-trained.

There are more questions still that I could ask of her. Did she happen to learn Illuminata had snatched me, and decided to profit from it? Or were they working together from the beginning? Did she commission my transformation to Illuminata? How long has she been harbouring this secret crush on me?

I think back to her playful teasing in the bathhouse, the proffered foot, the reference to “having people kiss my feet”. It all makes sense now, in a way, and so I don’t really bother to ask questions of my owner. I know she wouldn’t appreciate it, but no words are needed.

As she slightly lifts her foot, I switch from kissing to licking. I lap the whole length of her sole, letting her toes toy playfully with my lips before I once again run back down to the heel. She sighs in happiness, enjoying the tongue bath she’s getting from her new footgirl.

We used to be equals, once. A musician and a knight, one happy and outgoing, the other serious and diligent, but equals.

Before my seed cracked open, and the slave girl was born.

I’ve been cleaning the house spotless ever since I was led here. I’m Margaret’s handmaiden in all ways, waiting on her hand and foot, cooking her meals, seeing to her clothes, tending to her feet, and letting her drag my face between her thighs when she feels like it. I’ve never done it before, but the crop is a great incentive to learn fast… and Illuminata has shown me, in intimate detail, how easily I can be molded and trained in the hands of a stronger girl.

Margaret angles her foot, the toes plunging into my mouth and tickling my palate. I mumble softly as my tongue adheres to her sole with a sucking sound. Looking at me with her intense blue eyes, she starts methodically working her foot into my mouth, moving it back and forth, back and forth. Like Illuminata did that very first time, and then many others thereafter.

I do my best to remain quiet. Margaret wants me to contain my gagging and gargling sounds as she slowly lodges her foot progressively ever deeper into my servant mouth. Here, my training really shines. I can take her very deep, and massage her toes with my throat.

I won’t lie. The crushing of that last glimmer of hope hurts a lot. But when hurt and pleasure intermingle, and humiliation feels right, and subjugation is all you think about every day… it does something to your perspective.

I feel like this is where I belong. Slaving away while Margaret plays the lute, her hands deft and soft while mine grow rough and callused.

One triumphant, the other defeated. Isn’t that the history of all humanity? So what I have to complain about? I’m just one of many losers… and I’m learning to value the way my defeat makes me feel.  

Of my own volition, my free hand shoots to Margaret’s other foot, rubbing it affectionately, my thumb running across it from the ankle to the toes. She smiles at me at that, and for good measure leans forward, pushing her other foot even deeper into my mouth.

I gargle softly, not giving up the token massage I’m performing one-handed on her other foot. I recognise this for what it is. Devotion, love… and a desire to serve.

As my throat finally accommodates Margaret’s toes, my jaws hurtfully stretched around her conquering foot, I feel a strange calmness. An acceptance of what’s happened to me, and that I deserved it, and that I was right. It’s only fair for better women to rule, and weaker women to serve. I am grateful to my captor and my owner who made me see that.

I will always remember Illuminata. Mostly in my nightmares, but also as the one who broke me first.

But Margaret…

So beautiful, so radiant. The way she smiles at me as she turns me into her personal worm for her amusement means the world to me. It makes me feel like she’s right to do this to me, and that I will place my devotion at her feet for the rest of my life. Being a knight was not true to my own self. Being a maid and a footgirl, now… That is my true calling.

And so, at last… the end of my beginning.