Being kidnapped was not something I had ever expected to experience, but compared to being artificially reincarnated in another world, I couldn’t exactly say that the odds of it happening were low.
Honestly, it was one of the coolest things that had ever happened to me. There’s nothing like being kidnapped to confirm your delusions of grandeur.
Now, my only question was, “How am I supposed to react to this?”
This should have been a frightening thing, but instead I felt like I was on a roller coaster. I should have been scared, and in a way I was, but I couldn’t see this ending in any way other than me laughing it off.
Really? What was the worst that could happen? They hadn’t tried to kill me, which was nice. They obviously wanted me alive, which meant I was expected to survive this encounter. They hadn’t even tried to beat me into submission. As far as kidnappings went, they were being downright polite.
As the three men gently manhandled me out of the building, I actually started to pity them. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They had grabbed the tail of a tiger, thinking it was a kitten, and the tiger that they had actually grabbed had turned out to be a dragon.
“How far can I go before I end up being the bad guy here? Is this stockholm syndrome? Am I already sympathizing with the people holding me captive? Usually when I daydream about this sort of thing, I’d be chopping heads off left and right.”
I was still in a state that could best be described as “wasted,” and the fact that I knew I was wasted only made the decision making process harder.
“Do I end this now, or do I see where it goes?”
I didn’t have time to be getting kidnapped. I had an oncoming hangover to sleep off.
“And if these assholes don’t stop shaking me around, I swear I’m gonna puke onto every single one of them. Note to Self: Remove gag before attempting to projectile vomit.”
I gave up on making any tough decisions about potential injuries, and how I could add insult to said injuries. For now, I’d just have to see where this led, and improvise from there.
“Hey Freid,” one of them said. “Are we the bad guys here?”
“No,” another, probably Fried, responded. “Why would we be?”
“Well,” the first continued, “We just broke into a girl’s bedroom and stuffed her into a sack. In any other context, that would make us sound pretty bad, wouldn’t it?”
“Seriously?” I thought. “You’re having this conversation now?”
“Yes, yes. In any other context yes.” The one I assumed to be Freid explained. “But she’s got an open bounty on her. This is all above the board.”
“Yeah I know,” the first said again. “But she’s still just a girl. Don’t you think this is a bit… low for us? We’re supposed to be out catching people that have broken the law. And the bounty didn’t say she had done anything wrong.”
“Okay. First of all. Fuck you. My lack of a penis is entirely voluntary, and shouldn’t be the deciding factor on whether or not kidnapping someone is wrong. Hell, I grew one barely an hour ago, and the mage girls certainly weren’t complaining! Don’t be mad at me just because my pseudodick is bigger than yours! And thirdly… or secondly… Yeah. Secondly… Where was I going with this?”
While getting me out of the inn, they had spoken like I was a piece of furniture to be maneuvered around the stairs. Now, they were talking like I couldn’t hear them. I wasn't particularly fond of either.
“The guild approved the bounty, alright? That means it’s legal, alright?”
“It still doesn’t feel all that right, alright?” the one carrying me butted in.
“She’ll be fine!” Freid rebutted, and I assumed he was the leader of the bunch. “They wanted her alive and unharmed. She’s alive, and we haven’t harmed her! She’ll be fine. This will be the biggest bounty we’ve ever collected! After this, we’ll be able to choose what jobs we take instead of racing for whatever’s available. Hells, we’ll be able to spend an entire year not working and still have money left over.
The other two kept quite after that, but my inner monologue was pissed.
“Dammit. You just had to give some context, didn’t you?”
If this had been an unplanned kidnapping, I would have tormented them as I made a great show of deciding which of their bones to break. I was fine art! I wasn’t something that could be easily sold if a buyer wasn’t prepared in advance. I still thought of them as a group of random asshats, but I’d probably have to dial things down from “horror movie monster” to a more wholesome “Ransom of Red Chief” level.
“And how the fuck, of all the proper nouns I can’t remember, that’s one that I can?!”
“Haah aahh iou hekeh heh” I asked though the gag.
It was the first time I had spoken since being bagged, and I felt their pace shift in surprise. Had they really thought that I’d be quiet for the entire ride?
“What did she say?” the one first one asked.
“I dunno,” Fried answered.
The one carrying my shrugged, and my alcohol filled stomach lurched.
“Heh ahho, harhho wuh iuh goo!”
Really, it was their own fault if they couldn’t understand me, and I wasn’t about to take the blame if they ended up covered in bile.
“Oh, wait. My hands are untied. I don’t even need telekinesis to get the gag out. Pfft. And these people talk like they’re professionals. I’m almost embarrassed to say that they got the drop on me in the first place.”
After several stops, starts, and quick dashes that threated to upset my stomach, I felt them carry me up a short flight of stairs, and heard them let out a few relieved breaths. Wherever we were, we had reached our destination.
The journey had been relatively quiet, given the continued festivities of the city around us, and I was surprised when they took me into a building filled with raucous noise, and a sound of general merriment.
I had expected something quieter. Something shadier. But I made do with what I had. Could this be the legendary thieves guild? Or even better, the assassins? I could accept an underground gang. The lair of a local mafia boss would work out well too.
“Oh wait… They said this was a legal abduction.”
So where was I? Through the burlap sack that held me, I could see little more than movement and changes in the light.
The anticipation was killing me. I, me of all people, had been kidnapped, and when I wasn’t keeping myself from filling the bag with several hours’ worth of predrunk booze, I was trying not to let myself fangirl over the turn of events. I had to remind myself that being shoved into a sack was a bad thing, and that I shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as I was.
“We are here to claim a bounty!” Freid announced, both loudly and proudly.
The clamor of the room lowered slightly, as the attention was drawn to ourselves.
“Here it comes, here it comes! Get ready Indigo! It’s time to make a grand entrance.”
I was placed down rather heavily, and the bag was pulled off from around me.
I was… in a bar? I blinked as I took in my surroundings.
“No. Oh gods, no.”
There were tables, filled with people drinking and eating. There was the bar, the source of the food and drink. But there, on the wall, was a board covered in papers. And there, in front of me, was a counter with a pretty receptionist type lady sitting behind it.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
I was in an adventurers guild. I was in a goddamn adventurers guild!
I couldn’t take it any more.
I pulled the gag out of my mouth, and expelled the contents of my stomach onto the floor.
“I am a bounty here to be claimed.” I told the receptionist when I had stopped heaving. “And I’d appreciate it if you could direct me to the nearest bathroom. I think there may be more where that came from.”
I hiccupped, showing that I was willing to make good on that threat.
“This is the homunculus?” the receptionist asked.
“Yes!” I said, interrupting anything Freid or the others might say. “I’m the homo-thing. Are you the one I’m here to service?”
The woman’s eyes bulged, and I heard several snickers coming from the rest of the room.
One of the men clapped his hand over my mouth.
“We caught her when she was drunk. Off guard,” Freid explained. “She’s definitely the homunculus. She matches the description perfectly.”
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I bit into one of the fingers gagging me, and was released with a yelp.
“Oi! I don’t do BDSM shit with first timers. I don’t mind a bit of candle wax, but I prefer to keep the rough stuff to clients I’m familiar with! You want homo-thing, I’ll do homo-thing. But ropes cost extra!”
I winked at the receptionist.
“Might make an exception for you though. You can tie me down all you want.”
The cloth gag was shoved back into my mouth, more firmly than before. Freid was looking nervous as he glanced between me and the receptionist.
“Get the bounty paper,” he said, “Check what it says. It’s her. It has to be her. How many other girls with horns can there be in this city?”
“Heh iou wheh air wa wor. Iou a’a weh ia wa muo iack eh.”
The receptionist looked down at me and hesitated before walking to the board of post-it notes and coming back with a rather large parchment. She read a line, looked at me, read another line, and looked at me again before finally putting it down.
She reached forward, and gave a slight tug on one of my horns.
It detached perfectly, leaving nothing but smooth skin in its place.
She looked down at it. The three men around me looked down at it. I glared at all of them.
“I’m gonna be needing that back, if you don’t mind.” I said, when the hand holding the cloth around my face lost its grip.
I snatched the dark piece of keratin out of her hand, returned it to its rightful place on my forehead, and resisted the urge to sigh as I felt the bone reknit to my skull. Not having both of my horns just felt… weird.
“Someone wants a homo-thing, someone gets a homo thing. Please don’t break my character. I don’t get paid to break character.”
I looked around and tried not to grin as the argument exploded.
The adventurers insisted that I was the bounty target. The receptionist insisted that I was a drunken prostitute. I, silently, insisted that this was the funniest thing that I had ever witnessed.
“No, no. I’m the girl!” I butted in. “They really caught me. The put me in a bag and everything.”
In the end, the woman had to call on the help of the other adventurers to remove the trio from the building. Part of me felt a little bad for them. I was the correct person, but their reputation was going to suffer anyway. I took a little solace in the fact that they were probably at least smart enough to learn their lesson, and not stoop to kidnappings in the future. With a little luck, they could rise back up and get over this.
Speaking of which…
“So how much was my bounty?” I asked the receptionist.
I had been largely forgotten in the moment, and she looked at me as if I had come out of nowhere.
“You can leave now,” she said dismissively.
“Yeah, but the thing is,” I continued, “I probably am the person they were after. I mean, there can’t be two homunculi in the city. So how much was my bounty? If it’s enough, I may just claim it myself. And who placed it, by the way?”
I glanced down and read as much of the bounty paper as I could before she noticed my gaze and pulled it away.
“A hundred twenty crowns!”
If my memory and math served correctly, that really was enough to live on for a couple years. The three stooges hadn’t been kidding when they said I was a big haul.
“You can leave now,” I was told again.
“No, really, I’m the homunculus. Give another tug on my horn. The same one. I’ll even settle for half the bounty if you tell me who placed it.”
She glared at me, but pulled on my horn anyway, and flinched when my head twisted with every movement of her hand. I hadn’t shapeshifted it off this time, and my whole body moved in sync.”
“You… But… They…”
“I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of catching me. Really, I just want to know who placed the bounty, because I’m sure it can’t be legitimate. I can only think of one person assholish enough to try. Honestly, I thought better of him. After, you know, Father Gregor and Knight-Paladin Damfeld declared me a person, I expected that I’d be left alone. Normally, that should be enough to establish my personhood, right?”
The receptionist gawped like a fish out of water as I dropped names.
“Now if you were to tell me that it was someone from the mages guild, I wouldn’t be mad. Not at you at least. Archmage Verdis was told, in no unspecific terms, to keep his hands off me. But at the same time, I’m not surprised that he’s trying anyway.”
She stammered, still taking in my sudden change in persona.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” I told her. It wasn’t a question. Nobody else in the city knew about me, wanted me, and could have offered such a large reward for my capture. Not this quickly.
“Really Verdis, I thought better of you. At this rate, you’re just going to end up as a mustache twirling villain.”
“I… I’m sorry, but I can’t disclose that information.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Let whoever placed the bounty know that you’ve got me. I can wait. You guys still get paid, right? If not, then… uh, just say it was those three from earlier. They did bring me here after all.”
She waved over the other receptionist. Together they inspected both me and the paper with my bounty. After much deliberation, the second one ran off.
“So when does your shift end?” I asked, leaning forward on the counter. I didn’t have much in the way of cleavage, but I presented as much as I could. “I wasn’t joking when I said I’d let you tie me down.”
The woman stared down at me again. I was still only wearing a bra and panties, but the pile of vomit near my feet probably didn’t help my chances of getting laid twice in the same night.
“I’m married,” she said, with a hint of a blush.
“Damn. Lucky him.” I said before getting back to business. “I assume this is a “your people contact their people” sort of thing? Where should I wait?”
“Um... Over there should be fine. Just stay where we can see you,” she said, pointing to an empty bench on the side of the room.
“No problem,” I said, adding in a wink. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
* * *
I was the center of attention within a minute of standing down. Despite the hedonism from the festival outside, half naked women probably weren’t a common sight in Orlis.
Within ten minutes, my bra had, hopefully, been shoved into my storage space, and my maybe-a-guitar had been pulled out. Even though I had only learned the basics of two or three songs, the adventurers weren’t going to complain about how badly the music sounded when it was played by a topless, and if I do say so myself, beautiful woman.
If anything, my lack of skill only added to the effect, and I had more than a few people offering to give me “private lessons." I turned them all down, but didn’t feel too bad about it. The decreasing number of shirts being worn by both men and women told me that at least some of my audience would be getting lucky tonight.
Somehow, despite the imminent debauchery that I knew I was bringing down upon the building, I actually managed to get some decent advice out of them, and was able to make my way through a few simple rhythms for them to sing to.
A gold coin bounced off my chest and fell neatly into the guitar case, followed shortly after by a yell of, “take it off!”
Who was I to ignore my adoring fans? It hadn’t been long since my last drink, or my last puff, and now, I was drunk on the attention. Even had I been sober, I probably would have acted the same way.
I made a great show of thumbing my panties, revealing the slight tuft of hair between my legs, and showing off everything I had as I pulled the cloth down.
Was I debasing myself? Probably. But who cared? I was having fun. Everyone in the room was having fun. I was cheered on by both men and women, and my nudity meant nothing to me. I had sculpted myself into a work of art, and the lustful stares I received only meant that I had good taste.
If anyone had tried to stop me, they would have had to make their way through a veritable army who would stand in my defense.
I may have had my standards, but I still knew I was a slut. I’d bend over and take it from anyone who piqued my interest. Tonight, I was a sex goddess, and I felt no shame. I was a sonorous aphrodisiac, and the people in the room were ready to worship at my badly tuned strings.
I strummed out an attempt at Seven Nation Army and only half wondered why the names of music and stories were things I could actually remember. If anyone from my old life had heard me, they probably would have plugged their ears and left the building. Instead, the few people that did leave went in pairs, or even threes, either out the door together, or up the stairs to where they had likely rented rooms.
The doors of the guild hall burst open and two men entered. My discordant music faltered. Every eye in the room followed mine towards the pair that had entered.
Verdis.
If I had an arch-nemesis, it would be him. There he was, standing in the entrance like his shit didn’t stink. And as if to blaspheme against my newfound temple, he was fully clothed as well. Damn him.
“Archmage Verdis!” I shouted, holding my hands wide, and exposing as much of myself as was possible. “I didn’t think you’d make it to the party. You know there’s a dress code tonight, right? And I’m afraid that you’re wearing way too much!”
He looked my way out of the corner of his eyes, but largely ignored me as he made his way to the counter. He handed over a small pouch and received a paper, probably a receipt, in return.
A bigger asshat, I couldn’t imagine. He just looked the part. He had on the same scarlet robes that I had first seen him in, and his salt and pepper hair was sleeked back like a cartoon villain. Maybe this world just didn’t have the stereotypes that I was used to, but to me, he looked shady as fuck. Even his beard and mustache screamed, “Allow me to monologue while I tell you all about my plans!”
“It’s over,” he said, locking eyes with me. “You’ve had you fun, but it’s time to come to where you belong.”
He received a round of boos from the adventurers, but did a good job of pretending that he couldn’t hear them.
“So I’m yours?” I asked loudly.
“You belong to the guild,” he stated, his stance as firm as possible.
“So you’re saying that I’m your responsibility, right?”
“You are ours.” He said again, but I could see him wavering, suddenly usure of how this confrontation would go.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I yelled to everyone that could hear me, “but if this man says I belong to him, that means he has to be held accountable for my actions! Right?!”
The adventurers were confused. Whatever it was they actually did, be it monster hunting, protecting caravans, or just picking fancy flowers, this wasn’t something they were used to dealing with. Still, I heard murmurs of agreement, and pressed on.
“So, Mr. Archmage. What do you think it would look like if everyone in Orlis knew that you couldn’t control a simple homunculus? How do you think it would reflect on your abilities if I were to repeat what I did back when we left Peninsula? If I were to start wrecking everything in sight, how would your guild explain that? I’m their responsibility, your responsibility, right?”
He glared at me, shaken, but not stirred.
“You used up your mana crystals. You can do nothing that we can’t prevent.”
I waved my hand, pulling out the four glass batteries that I had managed to refill during the trip to Orlis.
“Fucking try me!” I declared, not holding back the destruction that my glare threatened. “I told you before. I survived two years in that city, and you don’t scare me. I saw you in the necropolis, and I must say that I’m unimpressed. You. Do. Not. Scare. Me. If you want a war, I will give you a war. So go ahead. Give me a reason to scour you from existence.”
He looked at me. He looked at the four brightly glowing crystals that floated behind my back. Around us, I could see dozens of fighters, hands on their weapons, ready to dive into whatever melee might start. They had no idea what was going on, but they liked me more than the other guy, and that was all that mattered.
Archmage Verdis may have been an idiot for placing my bounty in the first place, but he wasn’t a complete dumbass. I may have been naked, but he could see that I wasn’t defenseless.
“This isn’t over, homunculus!” he declared before leaving the room, his crony going with him.
“Yeah, yeah. Like I haven’t heard that before.”
I hadn’t, but my point still stood. Anyone who thought they could make me their slave was getting in over their head. And anyone who thought they controlled me deserved whatever was coming to them. Anyone who thought I’d be so easily taken was just fucking dumb.
“I rule me. Nobody else.”
I looked around the room, and was met with silence as everyone else did the same.
“Fucking party crashers, am I right?!” I shouted before I grabbed a mug from the nearest table, downed it, and returned to my badly tuned excuse for music.
My confrontation with Verdis felt… anticlimactic. There should have been more to it. A battle on the rooftops? A duel in an alleyway? What sort antagonist just leaves when you flip them the middle finger?
My victory felt hollow. Rather than using my mana batteries to blast the living daylights out of an archmage, they were now serving as backlights to my sorry excuse for a performance. But as much as I thought the adventurers guild was a stupid thing, the adventurers themselves were great people, and I was soon swept back up into the mood.
When the three stooges reentered the building, I cheered for them, and the rest of the room took up the cry. When I personally paid to get everyone as drunk as possible, they celebrated. When I was carried up the stairs by a group of “who cares what gender,” I didn’t bother to think about anything beyond the oncoming pleasure.
Tonight, I was a hedonistic demigod, and if they could keep up with me, they were more than welcome.
I was Indigo, and I was queen of the world.