The new girl was called Sa’manatha (it was a little long, so he ended up calling her Sam, much to her apparent amusement), she apparently was supposed to teach him the language. It was strange to have a younger girl about half his size in “charge” of him. But it seemed to be the wizards or mages or whatever they called those magic people’s main intention to leave him in her hands. He had started to lose faith in the ‘humans’ (TBD) of this place until he met her. She had a large, multivolume set of books she had moved into his room which she used to teach him the language. The books were all expertly illustrated, making the process much easier. Of course that was for the simple items and things he could identify. There were a number of illustrations of things he’d never seen before.
He was supposed to study all day every day with her the language. However, he had already cast off the chains imposed on him by the lack of knowing the language before she even started to teach him. He had learned a number of crucial words that could make his intentions clear. Furthermore, while he was not a poor student, he also wasn’t made to sit in a cramped room all day. He needed to stretch his legs. The oppression of living in this cave with the close ceiling made him feel moderately cluster phobic. The fact he had to wear a handmade mask soaked in alcohol just to use the crapper, bringing yet more liquor with him to wash his feet after was no comfort. As a result, he ended up spending a fair amount of his free time working out in the large cavern that the guardsmen used for training and meeting point.
It actually took him almost 10 days to realize Sam was the same slave girl he first met in his room. She ended up telling him of course. He felt like an idiot not noticing it on his own, but the change was so drastic he thought for sure she was someone else. It only took him a couple of more days to learn that she was cleaned up special for him when they realized he wanted her clean. She wasn’t the only one who got cleaner. He noticed most of the people he interacted with on a somewhat regular basis were forced to “transform” into a cleaner version. Obviously someone here wanted him happy.
He kept his resentment at his abduction bottled up. Getting mad at Sam or even the guardsmen got him nowhere. They weren’t at fault. The wizards and the sage got the full power of his displeased glare. He made sure they saw it every time he saw them.
The dehumanizing (all too prevalent) slavery was a bit of a culture shock as well. He could turn a corner and see some bony ass pumping away on top of a filthy naked woman in chains. The first time he saw it he had to turn around and walk away. It was too much of a blow to his conscience. He felt like he had died and went to hell. It was at that point he started to call this place [HELL] in his heart. This was no purgatory; it was [hell]. In fact, the more he thought of it as hell, the more it started to match. There was a surprising lack of humanity in almost everyone he dealt with. Even Sam, when he first was speaking with her had a quasi-dead look to her face. As if she were playing a part she had been trained in, with little to no interest in the conclusion or success in said part.
He missed home badly. Even with working out to the point of exhaustion he couldn’t take away the poison of resentment that was growing daily in his heart. If things had continued in this fashion for much longer he might have done something drastic.
The change came when he finally lost his temper. For what he assumed was around 20 days Sam had slept on the cold floor of his room. Every day he would spend some time before going to sleep trying to clean the room. Mostly to work out his stress. And before the floor would even dry she would drop a blanket on the cold stones and curl up to sleep. The scene was a bit too much for his heart. He felt like he was using her like everyone else used these slaves. The more resentful to the hell he was living in he got, the more uncomfortable he got about her sleeping on the floor. So when he learned enough words to make his intentions known, he asked to speak with the sage.
The Sage made time for him, and while he had issues with most of the conversation the sage refused to answer questions about why he was brought here, though he did promise to tell him when he learned more of the language. Thwarted in one desire he asked for a bed for Sam. The sage refused on the spot. Slaves don’t get their own beds. They sleep under their master in their master’s bed or they sleep on the floor, he was told. Well it took Sam 3 times to explain it in a way he could understand. Once he understood the rejection he changed the demand. He wanted a bed 3 times bigger than his current one. His current one was far too short. It also was infested with bugs, so one without bugs would be nice too. He also wanted a larger room for the bed. Finally, he wanted the room to be clean. Cleaner than his current room.
The sage actually agreed on all demands. He only needed another 10 days to deliver on the promise. He had been in this Hell for a month when he finally got a bed free of bugs and a room clean enough he almost thought he’d risk eating off the floor. For months afterwards he regretted trading up.
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When he got the larger bed he was surprised to note that they built it new exactly as he requested, large enough for 3 of him, which of course meant his new room was large as well. The new room had been scrubbed clean even better than his first cleaning of his old room. Of course his main purpose for the large bed was to ease his conscience about the slave sleeping on the floor, so he ordered her to sleep on the bed. She happily complied when he ordered her into it, her robe dropping to the floor in a puddle before jumping in, only to stare at him puzzled when he turned his back on her and try to convince her he wanted her to SLEEP in the bed not mate with him.
The way she reacted to his attempts to convince her it was “sleep” he wanted from her, made him think she didn’t believe a word he said. So every night she would hop into bed nude and snuggle up next to him. While he would promptly lay down and turned his back to her, pretending to go to sleep.
It was much worse than he expected. The knowledge there was a nude sorta cute girl in his bed every single night, almost eroded his self-control. He found himself getting sexually frustrated. It was hard to sleep, worse would be the mornings, because every morning she would be wrapped around him, inevitably some part of her rubbing against his dick. He almost gave in a few times. The memory of his girlfriend back home almost fading from his mind. What was amazing was how objectively she wasn’t really all that attractive, she had the gangly teenage girl thing going, combined with malnourishment, skin that probably never seen the sun, and if he had seen her on earth he probably never would have even given her a second glance, but as time went on and he got more and more backed up he started to find her positively alluring. If he didn’t know better, he thought there might be some sort of magic affecting his mind. Yes, she was plain, but she had a cute butt…. Yes, she was plain but she had a pretty smile… yes she was plain but she was witty and actually sort of funny.
After she started to sleep in the bed her cold detached look faded away, and life started to return to her eyes. The change only made her look more alluring, and more human. It was easy to keep people at arms length when you doubted their humanity like he had been doing. It was a lot more difficult when they started to worm their way into your heart bit by bit. It may not have gotten so bad for him had he not already been suffering from extreme feelings of loneliness and isolation due to the language barrier. Soon he started to think of her fondly as a friend. To an outsider, they might consider the whole process to be textbook Stockholm syndrome, however his ravaged and strained mindset was such that even had it was pointed out to him, he probably wouldn't care. It had been years since he had a close friend who was a girl (and never with a girl 3 years younger than him). He grew up with a tomboy who he used to play touch football with, and he considered almost a sister, but once they reached high school they drifted apart. Remaining distant friends but nothing else. With Sam he felt like she was a close friend. Of course she was also a slave. One who was ordered to do the things she did. It was this wall (in addition to the girlfriend back home) that kept him from fully opening up to her. He suspected the friendship and advances for a baby were under orders.
Still the constant blue balls were too much, the fact she was always with him was too much. He needed some alone time with himself. It had been months since he could ‘take care of business.’ Every time he thought he had slipped away from her, she’d always seem to pop up with a big cheerful smile on her face just before he could take care of business. Almost as if she was intentionally keeping him from relieving himself. As a result, he was forced to work off the building stress with exercises, and turned to working out like he never had before.
As for the daily exercising he engaged in; at first the guardsmen would watch his workout, sit-ups, pushup, pullups, jumping jacks, sprints, even lifting with some weights he had created, and puzzle at what he was doing. Soon some would join him, eventually half the guardsmen joined him in his morning training. Some of the more competitive trying to do more than he was doing, which in turn spurred him to work even harder. He suspected had there been more protein and calories in the diet he would have put on some muscle mass. Huge muscles were a hindrance in hockey, so he usually worked out only for endurance, not weight training. Now that was over and he was in a world of armor and swords he wanted to add to his already large advantage in physical strength he had over the natives. Unfortunately, all he really managed to do was lose a few pounds of whatever remaining fat he had on him. He now sported a six-pack and very defined muscles. But he didn’t really get stronger.
His exercising took on a FRANTIC pace once he moved into the larger room. He had a lot more stress to deal with.