Sasha Honnekun gasped for air as she dragged herself out of the water flopping onto the beach like a clubbed fish.

Once her supply of air was secured, Sasha simply couldn’t find it in herself to drag her body further up the beach. She was too tired. The waves lapped against her senseless feet.

She glanced over her shoulder, and saw the ship, a massive pyre with several hundred souls inside, unable to escape in time.

The only reason she could get out was because her cabin had windows, as some insane individuals had locked the doors. Sasha shivered into the sand as she pictured burning and healing over and over again until she simply lost consciousness. That would’ve been a bad way to go.

Of course, most Honnuken died violently. It was part and parcel with having the ability to recover from nearly anything else. She’d already made her peace with that.

At that thought, Sasha felt a tremor of fear shoot through her body.

You’re not out of the woods yet, child, Her uncle’s voice seemed to whisper to her.

She was alone.

In Vith territory.

Such an event was beyond the scope of ‘normal’ that she had never even considered it a possibility, never been trained for it.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

If you ever become captured by the Vith, kill yourself by whatever means necessary, because what they do to you will be far worse.

Her heart started pounding in earnest now, her body rallying enough energy to push herself to her feet, stumbling across the beach in no particular direction.

Wait, no. I need a plan. Sasha looked at the rising sun to the east and decided to head towards it. The Dinamor stretch was still under control of the Honnuken, all she had to do was walk a couple hundred miles across sand to get there, then they would send her back home.

Hearing the distance in her head, the dim, rational part of her brain told her it was impossible with her flabby body, but the thrashing animal inside didn’t care, instead opting to walk hundreds of miles if it had to.

I’ll heal the fatigue, that’s what I’ll do.

Sasha took a calming breath and focused her attention inwards, sweeping her awareness over her body from head to toe, focusing most of her attention on her brain and her major muscle groups to conserve energy.

Thump. Her heart jumped in her chest as she began to use her powers on herself. She cleansed her muscles and brain of fatigue, replacing that with the vital air that they needed to carry on.

It felt as though a veil over her eyes was lifted, as Sasha’s muddied thoughts became crystal clear, her limbs felt as though she had just gotten out of bed: Fresh and ready for a long day of walking.

Which for Sasha was a couple hours, because her physique was…unimpressive.

She frowned and reigned those thoughts in.

It didn’t matter that she wasn’t an amazing specimen of physical fitness, she was a Honnuken, and she could use her abilities to outwalk anyone if she had to.

…except maybe a Vith, Sasha thought, as a group of Vith warriors emerged from the treeline onto the beach in a loose semicircle around her.

“EEEK!” Sasha gave an undignified squeal.

Unable to see any other way out, Sasha darted towards the water, but the savages had already caught up with her, grabbing her by the salt-soaked hair and yanking her painfully away from the water. A moment later, her wrists were imprisoned in the unyielding grip of a Vith warrior.

“NOOOoOOO!” Sasha thrashed and kicked as she was dragged backwards through the sand, while these demonic savages laughed cruelly, speaking with each other in their guttural tongue.

They’re probably gonna cook and eat me! No, rape, cook and eat me! NO! Torture, rape, cook, and eat me!

“NOOO!”

She tried to kick her captors, but accomplished little more than stubbing her toe against their fiendishly hard skin.

Let’s face it, this is the end of your life. Face it with some dignity. Kill yourself.

It took a supreme effort of will for a Honnuken to kill themselves, because unlike most people, who could swallow poison, slash their wrists or jump off a cliff and be done with it, a Honnuken could recover at any time, and it took a sustained act of will not to do so.

If I bite off my tongue and make sure the clot never forms, I might bleed out in a couple hours. Sasha shuddered at the thought. She knew deep in her heart though, that she wasn’t strong enough to kill herself. She didn’t like pain, and she was too much of a coward to choose death.

The savages dragged her up the beach, heedless of her thrashing. Eventually Sasha’s struggling ceased, but not because she grew tired. She saw something that gave her pause.

Is that Grant…? No. No, it isn’t him. Who on Orsoth is it and what is he doing?

A skinny man, all skin and bones and sunburn, with a large scraggly beard, who vaguely looked like Grant, with a similar height, slightly different features, and no tattoos under his sideburns, stood in front of several dozen circles drawn in black ink around the corpses of her former companions.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Who is that and what in the name of all the gods is he DOING? Sasha thought as one of the corpses began to move with an unholy approximation of life.

***Tom Graves***

“Who the heck is that?” Tom asked as Kol, Brama, and For dragged a thrashing girl past them, her silk clothes soaked in seawater and clinging to every curve of her body.

And there were plenty of them.

Tom averted his eyes, albeit a bit slower than politeness dictated.

“She’s a Honnekun,” The lead warrior spoke. “They heal. You can tell by the hair, eyes and build. They store well, difficult to kill, make good trade and excellent backup shamans in case the current one passes away.” He nudged Tom’s shoulder suggestively, and the woman’s eyes went wide with terror, most likely assuming some other meaning behind the jovial ribbing.

“Bleach you,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Where you taking her?”

“To our women to take care of her.” Brama said.

“Oh?”

“Oh yes, we could trade her for a wagon of steel tools if we wanted to, but she’s even more valuable as a member of the tribe. It works more often than you might think, too. We have the women brush their hair, clean them, feed them, dress them as one of our own, treat them good.”

Brama motioned to his skull.

“It messes with their head, because they’ve been told we’re horrifying monsters their entire lives, so when what they experience doesn’t match up with what they ‘know’, they have a small mental break, which allows us to overwrite whatever upbringing they’ve had with whatever we want. In six months, she’ll either have gone enthusiastically native or we’ll have traded her back to her family for a tidy sum.”

“That’s…incredibly calculating.”

“But it’s not cruel, is it? Even if the kindness is somewhat manufactured, it’s still kindness.”

“I can’t argue that logic,” Tom said, shaking his head.

“By the way, if she does go native, do you want her?” Brama asked.

Tom’s heart skipped a beat before it kicked into full gear.

“WHAT!?”

“None of us are really interested in a Honnuken woman as a partner, they’re…

“Lazy, undisciplined, prudish and abrasive?” For supplied, ignoring the blond girl’s renewed thrashing against his grip.

Brama snapped his fingers, pointing at For. “Yes, summed it up perfectly. It can take years for them to adjust even if they do decide to stay with us. You on the other hand, have plenty of helpers to sew, wash clothes and make food. You could claim her and keep her quite easily.”

He motioned to Tom’s zombies, who were lifting the furnace out of its sand pit.

A fluttery sensation in the pit of Tom’s stomach alerted him that another person had died, their soul processed by his crypt.

“Hold that thought,” Tom said, holding up a finger and withdrawing the crypt from his pocket.

He knelt down to the next unused summoning circle and juiced it up. A wisp of grey-brown energy slipped from the space between dimensions and entered the corpse.

Tom turned back to them, ignoring the zombie as it lurched to its feet. The spectacle of a corpse rising from the grave had somewhat lost its pizzazz tonight.

“Can I decide later on that?” Tom asked as he walked over to the next circle and waited. His entire life, he’d had a specific way of treating women drilled into his head, and now he had the opportunity to ‘claim’ one, consequence free…and he found he didn’t particularly care for the idea.

It might be crass and not truly altruistic, but the unbridled terror on the young woman’s face was a major boner-killer. That kind of thing just wasn’t in Tom’s wheelhouse.

“Actually, I’m not interested. I don’t think I could…claim a woman against her will.”

Brama sputtered. “What are you talking about!? You don’t lay with women who don’t want it! All the women in the village would turn against you, and you’d wind up like Vol!”

“Yeah,” Kol interjected.

“What a fucking weirdo.” For said.

“Gross is what he is,” Brama agreed. “Gross and uncultured. Savage even. Putting forward the idea of rape.”

“That’s the first thing you thought of?” Kol asked, disgust written across his face.

“Vol Junior, son of Vol.” For said, shaking his head as they began dragging the Honnuken woman away from there.

“Come on, let’s get this delicate flower away from the rapist.” Brama said.

“Agreed.”

“BLEACH YOU GUYS!” Tom shouted after them, giving them the Vith version of the finger as the three warriors cackled maliciously. “I healed every single one of you last night! RESPECT ME!”

They waved back at him, continuing to laugh as their captive shrieked and struggled, completely unaware of the coddling she was about to receive.

Fucking with my head, Tom thought, shaking his head as his heart came back down.

“What was that about?” Nema’s voice came from beside Tom’s elbow, causing him to jump in place.

He felt like a candle that had been doused with liquid guilt.

Never lie to someone you stick your dick in, son. It’s a good rule of thumb, because the shitstorm that happens otherwise just ain’t worth it.

“They were messing with me, saying I could claim that prisoner after she goes ‘native’.” Tom said. “I said no.” He added hastily.

Nema leaned and glanced past Tom’s elbow at the thrashing, sodden girl as she was dragged into the woods.

“Ah, the old pamper-N-tamp’er. Rich women are surprisingly susceptible to the ‘noble savage’ hagar shit.”

Tom caught himself staring at Nema, eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

“What, you thought we aren’t aware of how we’re perceived? Savages?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, my gods, you fell for the pamper-n-tamp’er, too!”

“No I didn’t,” Tom said, desperately hoping his sunburn covered his blush.

“Shhh,” Nema said, hugging him around his waist. “It’s okay that you have the same mentality as a vapid rich woman who’s been waited on hand and foot her entire life. I still like you.”

“I feel like everyone is making fun of me now that I can speak the language.” Tom muttered, sulking.

“Awww,” Nema rubbed his tummy. “We were making fun of you from the beginning. Think of it this way: Now you can join in the fun!”

“Not helping.” Tom said.

She peered up at him, tightening her full lips around the gor root as her hand slid lower.

“How about this? Would this help?”

Tom’s conflicted emotions about being teased dwindled to nothing in a matter of seconds. Tom was a simple guy.

“Yeah, okay. That would help.”

***Sasha Honnekun***

Sasha was thrown shrieking into a dim hut, fully expecting the stink of blood and butcher hooks with human meat hanging off of them, with flies buzzing around, laying eggs in the formerly sapient flesh.

Instead she fell, flailing, into a sea of soft hands.

“What, umm..” As her eyes adjusted, she made out dozens of Vith women clustered around her.

Her heart trilled with fear and more than a little confusion.

They began peeling away her clothes, eliciting an involuntary squeal as she tried to clamp her arms down and keep the silks covering her body. Each and every one of them was far stronger than her, and they effortlessly raised her arms and slipped her out of the soaked clothes, leaving her lying there, clutching her arms tight over her chest.

They cooed and whispered soft words as they began rubbing scented oils into her skin, while at least three women took on the task of combing the salt and sand out of her long gold hair, carefully avoiding snarls and massaging her scalp with the brush.

This…this actually feels really good, Sasha thought as she was gradually rendered into a boneless human-shaped jelly by the full-body massage.

Her arms eventually fell to her sides, and soon they too were set upon by those oiled hands, tenderly rubbing every inch of her body. Her legs gradually spread in a slovenly display as the smooth touches gently pushed them apart to knead her inner thighs.

Am I drooling? Did I die? What going on? I’m so confused but-

“Unh!” Sasha let out an involuntary moan as a pair of hands found a good spot, interrupting her thoughts.

It’s so hard to think. This feels amazing.

Why are they –

Sasha bit her lip as another pair of hands began to knead her temples.

This doesn’t make any sense. They’re supposed to be cannibalistic monsters, not-

“Ahn!” Sasha let out an unseemly squeak as another pair of hands found a really good spot.

What is going on!?