Vargas touched the collar around his throat. Every single memory of his life was rushing past his eyes. The day his service to the gods of his homeland was confirmed. The day he was found to have an aptitude for martial arts that let him learn them twice as fast as others. The pride of his acceptance in training for the covert operations units. ‘Gods… the great gods… I was told they had blessed me. So my parents believed…”
He was standing outside his house… ‘No, it isn’t my house… I am a slave, my… my wife’s house. I’ve been working so hard lately I haven’t had time to come back, what has it been? Two months since she was set free?’
His eyes shut as he recalled the mobilization years before, ‘Right, the great heretic, the grand apostate. The demon of the west… her armies, we all went to fight her… she had a bitter hatred for us, for our gods. Her obsession with freeing the elves… didn’t she know that elves were just created to be slaves?’
He asked that question a thousand times around the fires with the other elites, the demon’s motivations… ‘So strange… never made a damn bit of sense, who gave that much of a damn about an inferior race of slaves…?’ He touched his collar again as he recalled the question, outside the door of the house in which his free elven wife stood working.
Other memories followed, ‘The day I died, or thought I had… a few inches difference… gods, the hatred in those eyes… a demon inside that body… the travel by ship with my rescuer… settling in Komestra… meeting her… how did I end up like this?’ Sergeant Vargas asked himself as he took a step closer to the door.
‘Slave to an elf… I fought to free an elf… I loved an elf… didn’t I? Do I?’ Sergeant Vargas ran his hand over his face and forced himself to look happy, ironically recalling the wedding night with his wife who was just beyond the door, helping him keep back his troubled mind long enough to open it.
He didn’t even get a chance to speak her name before she kissed him, the door of their little home squeaked as he took the final step within. Her hair was cut short, still ragged from prior mistreatment, but it had been slowly growing out. She’d also trimmed it even. It wasn’t as bad as before at least. “I’ve missed you…” She whispered hungrily and went down to her knees.
He forgot his troubles when she showed how much she’d missed him. The warmth of her lips on his member, he reached down to caress her long ears and he felt her entire body shiver with pleasure.
It brought back the memories of how they’d mutilated her kind in his homeland, cropping their sensitive ears short took on new meaning now that he understood how sensitive they were to stimulation.
Her mouth moved back and forth along his length, her eyes were wide and staring up at him, they were almost worshipful, her eyes, ‘Given how she got her freedom…’ The thought ran through the mind of the member of the former human supremacist nation, and it was a bitter one. He took her hair in his hand, running his fingers through the strands until he was at her scalp, he squeezed and became forceful.
She seemed briefly surprised, seemingly as eager as he, and carried on, her fingers clawing into his backside until she took what she craved. The lewd sound of her gulping was the only one in the room after his savage grunt.
When she had taken every drop from him, she stood up slowly as his fingers released their hold, she wiped her mouth on the gold colored sleeve of her shirt and smiled archly. “I heard a tavern girl once say that’s the difference between like and love. I have no idea if she’s right… because I have only ever loved you.” The lewd humor turned romantic verbal play was followed by her hand on his as she drew him into the little home.
“You can have me next but first… dinner. You probably haven’t had a home cooked meal in… how long? A month, two?” She asked.
Vargas tried to reconcile everything, and found he couldn’t, her face was so innocent, soft, small, she was lithe and beautiful to him. “Ah, no… not since, well… before.” He stammered, glad that her back was to him as she drew him over to the table.
She still had her back to him when she leaned over the pot that hung over the fireplace. Already the rich aroma of stew was filling the room. A Komestran recipe. ‘Maybe only elves back home were inferior… maybe the ones here are different…?’ He thought to himself as she hummed a tune they used to dance to, her hips swayed happily in time to the music.
‘But then what about her? My… owner, she came from the west. If she is inferior… what am I? And she gave me back my wife…’ He clenched his eyes to keep from watching his mate work.
“Husband… is… something wrong?” She asked.
“Can I… can I ask you something, Ta’lea?” Vargas replied in a quiet, thoughtful voice.
“Anything.” She said with conviction as she fetched a pair of bowls for them both.
“Why did you… why did you change your name, after she set you free? You didn’t have to do that, did she force you, as a condition of your freedom?” He asked, ‘It would be a vile thing to do that to someone, to take away their identity…’
Ta’lea dipped the cheap wooden ladle into the cast iron pot, “No, don’t be silly Vargas. I did it to honor her customs. After I heard that the girl, Veena, became ‘Veema’ when she got her freedom, well it seemed the right thing to do. I think it’s a nice custom, nobody who leaves… that, behind, wants to carry it with them. So… new life, new freedom, and a new name to go with it. Besides, I like the name, and I got to choose it.” She set the simple wooden bowl in front of him and reached out to fill her own.
“No… that makes sense.” Vargas sighed, “Listen, I’m… I’m going to go away soon. We’ve worked like dogs, but now it’s time for us to be put to the test. Everybody knows that contract offers have been pouring in, she’s going to take us to fight.”
Ta’lea froze for just a moment, then set the ladle down and went to sit beside him. She took his hand and folded it in hers, “Vargas… please, when you go out there… don’t try to win your freedom.”
For a moment he felt his outrage rising, ‘An elf wants to keep a human slave!’ But that was brought up short by the shaking of her palms around his hand.
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“Please, I only want you to come home alive! I don’t care if you’re free, or a slave, or anything as long as y-you, come back to me!” Her high pitched voice gained another octave and she brought her head down to rest on his shoulder. “My champion… my hero… I’m the luckiest… luckiest woman in the world… just come back safe… and I’ll wait, and wait, and wait in between those times.” She whispered as much to herself as to him.
Vargas felt his heart race faster when she’d welcomed him home, ‘How long had she planned ‘that’ welcome?’ He wondered and felt the affectionate humor welling up against his intention. She nuzzled her cheek on his shoulder, ‘Of course she’s eager, elves love to serve humans.’ The indoctrination of his youth came back to him immediately.
Her loving sigh created a stab of guilt at the thought, and they ate slowly and in relative quiet with the crackling of the fire being noise enough, along with the low sound of chewing and swallowing. When they were done, she stood up and took his hand again, “My turn… I’ve missed a few other things myself…”
A few minutes later, she was waking the neighbors as he rocked beneath her. Her wild ears twitched and spasmed in bliss as she raked her hands over his bare chest. She kept calling out his name… “Vargas… harder! Harder, Vargas!” She arched herself and thrust out her chest, moaning as his hands explored them as if they were new and novel.
‘It’s like she’s trying to prove the wantonness of elves, like so many others…’ He handled her roughly then, driving into her as hard as he could, she brought herself down over him suddenly and kissed him passionately. Her tongue delving past his lips, their moans mingled as the space between, and when the kiss broke, she shivered with her climax, that was followed by his own. As he felt her body receive his desire, she whispered into his ear, “I love you…” And meant every word of it. “And you know what else, husband?”
“What…” Vargas asked when she flopped beside him and his arm went over his forehead.
She took his hand and put it to her belly, “So will the baby.” She smiled blissfully at him.
Ta’lea waited, searching his face, searching some more, and then more, and was forced to wonder as he continued to just stare up at the ceiling. ‘Why? Why isn’t he smiling back?’
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Tir sat quietly on the bench while a leather clad service girl attended to her. ‘At least the bathing facility is nice.’ She thought with mild annoyance. ‘Quite frankly I should feel more than a little insulted, two days in a row and my reserve price hasn’t even been met yet. It’s… humiliating, being put on display like that. How am I supposed to begin if I can’t get into a house?’ The feel of the slave scrubbing her was barely noticeable, but when the woman dumped warm water over Tir’s head and drenched her to wash away the soap, that was impossible not to notice.
It distracted her from her vengeful thoughts at least, before they could truly rear their head. “How long have you worked here?” Tir asked the brown haired girl who was wiping away remaining soap from skin with a bare hand.
“I don’t know. How long ago did Prince Rasgen take the throne?” The girl replied with a little salt in her voice.
“Right… quite some time then. Ah, do you know how many have had a reserve price like mine?” Tir asked and bit her lip, “How long does it usually take before someone priced like me, you know… sells?”
The short brown haired woman was not even slightly thrown off by the question, “The highest I’ve ever seen at a public auction was several platinum coins… but that was a special case, I heard she taunted the crowd, and the richest house in the city bought her just to make a point. Before that, there was a private sale, the same house, several platinum coins. But that was part of a bulk buy. For just you by yourself, no, I’ve never seen a reserve price for a whore set as high as you. A master craftsman may go for that. So I’m not sure how long it will be before you can expect to leave this place. Even if I knew though? Well, those no longer really apply, the whole market is a mess right now.”
Tir nodded, ‘Right… the Duchessa’s meddling, her inordinately pure platinum coins, of course the market is a mess. Great job, Tir, great job. You should have just put up with your father, scrubbed his floors, bowed and scraped to the new Steward, and waited. Maybe the house of Aiwenor, or even Rasgen, got my letters and looked for me. If I hadn’t done this, I might be safe now. But noooo, you just had to be impatient again, didn’t you? Now they almost certainly think you’re dead, nobody will look for you… and quite frankly…’ A fragment of her earlier sense of being insulted became arrogant as she considered the state of the city, ‘Not many can afford you.’ It was a twisted comfort, and she knew it, but it was all she had as one day ran into the next day, then ran into the following day, and she was prepared and shown again, and again, and again.
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Sado charged forward like the dull brute he was playing at, and when he saw the faux knife dropped and the real one produced, all he could do was keep going. ‘One step more, just one step more until my last one.’ The would-be savior of the city states had nothing left to lose, and he attacked like it.
Before four small pairs of curious eyes, the monster that had lashed his back and acted as the guiding hand of his mistress, smiled. It was a smile befitting of a monster who savored human pain, spread out too far for a human face to permit.
He moved like flowing water, his double handed grip on his sword, even as a brute, a thing of beauty worked by a master of the craft. She adroitly dodged his slash again, and again, and again. If his motion was flowing water, then she was the moonlight over it, easily avoiding every blow he sought to land.
The woosh of air was his only reward, other than the beautiful sight of her flowing golden curls bouncing, dancinging as she moved and weaved around him.
He gritted his teeth with desperate urgency and activated one martial skill after another, boosting his speed, again and again.
The smile never left her face.
‘He reminds me of a certain demon in human skin, not a bad performance for an inferior life form.’ Solution could not help but critique his efforts, ‘He has improved, though this was ‘supposed’ to be a simple exercise, if he wants it drawn out, then I’ll let them see what skill looks like before the basics. I wonder if Raymond could have taken him?’ Idle thoughts flowed through her mind as he entered his battle frenzy, reaching the mindless state where there was only motion following motion. Sweat fell from his body to the floor, and it acted as a map for their performance around the practice hall that even a novice could follow.
She could feel the little eyes on them both, transfixed with awe, ‘Now to put him down.’ Solution decided, and her knife flashed out. Blood began to spatter and mingle with the sweat, the smell of both blended into something more powerful than either alone.
Still Sado came on, relentless, driven, and Solution drew him on, blood outpaced sweat as the dominant fluid on the floor, and his movements gradually became slower and more clumsy, his hands were so slick with his own blood that he found it difficult to hold the smooth wood of the practice blade… and finally she had the knife at his throat, having gotten inside his guard, and held it there. “Drop it, or drop forever.” Solution ordered through dancing bright blue eyes.
He let the sword fall from fingers that barely had the nerve to hold it anymore anyway. ‘I can barely feel anything.’ Sado thought, and felt his body fall backwards at her feet.
Solution flipped the knife in hand casually, reached out to Number Four, and wiped the blood on her hair. “Always take care of your weapons.” She instructed casually and looked behind where Sado bled on the floor. “Even the practice ones. Veema, go get a potion to heal him, and be quick about it. Or a healer, I don’t care which, preferably a healer though.”
Veema scrambled to her feet and ran for the exit.
“That’s how you take down a very skilled opponent, assuming of course… you’re more skilled than they are. I dragged that out a bit, as inferior beings go, he’s actually not bad. He reminds me of someone I used to know, but… different.” Solution smirked and kept the rest of her thoughts to herself, and when Veema returned with a healer in tow, practically dragging him by the hand, the man gasped at the bleeding mess that was once Sado.
Solution explained it as only she could, “He put up quite a fight.”
“But…” She leveled the knife at the four as Veema resumed her place in line and the healer mutely began to intone his healing spell, “that is your other lesson.”
“What is?” Number Four asked innocently.
“That fair fights are stupid. He came on with a practice sword. I had a real knife, as soon as he saw that, he should have withdrawn if he suspected I was better or even close to better than he. There is your third lesson.” Solution raised a finger, “Never let them know all your tools, he came in expecting a fake knife, I had the real one hidden. Whatever they expect you to have, have something else. Or at least something else hidden. Being an assassin means to always be prepared. That’s the difference between the one who goes home alive, and the one who dies in the darkness.” Solution crouched down and moved to make eye contact with each of the little girls, one after the other. When she reached the last of them, she asked one question.
“Do you understand, my little Pain Children?”
As Sado began to groan and get to his feet, four little united voices answered and addressed her as she had instructed them.
“Yes, Lady Solution.”
“And who do you act for?” Solution asked, borrowing the prim voice of one of her sisters for the prompting question.
“The God of Death and the House of Aiwenor.” They answered again in unison.
That made her monstrous smile, quite genuine.