Of Fates And Fetters Ch 2

Bit of a warning. The medieval times were a harsh, brutal, uncaring time.

A time of might makes right, where kindness was often as not thought of as weakness and those who were helpless were certainly not treated well.

The start of this chapter reflects that. I understand that this may make some people uncomfortable, but I personally don't think we need to or should shy away from accuracy.

That said. I certainly do not showcase it in a way that screams approval, nor do I think I did it in a way that is gratuitous. Hell, it's not nearly as bad as stuff I read when I was twelve. If the opening of this chapter makes you uncomfortable, I ask only that you power through, there is rhyme and reason to it.

That is all, hope you enjoy the chapter overall.

=][=

Shana grit her teeth and made no noise as the guards at Hellena shoved her roughly into a cell. Unfortunately, her resolve failed when she tripped on the uneven stone floor and she squeaked in that childish manner she couldn’t shake off as she fell, instinctively rolling into the fall the way Dart and Auntie Claire taught her.

“Hey Don! This meat is pretty agile!” One of the guards, the one who shoved her most likely, said with a cruel laugh.

“Oi, careful, you heard what Fruegel said. The cunt is not to be harmed.” The other guard said, then sneered as he continued. “Gotta keep the bruises under clothing.”

Shana got to her knees, something made difficult by the fact that her wrists were tied tightly but expertly behind her back. She’d been rushed to Hellena prison in little over two days, she suspected several horses had been killed in the effort, and in that entire time her wrists had remained tied behind her back, but she could still move her hands and fingers, indicating that her bindings did not cut off blood flow.

Shana glared at her captors, but said nothing. She refused to give them the excuse they wanted.

“Oh? Cunt has spirit?” The guard, Don, growled. “You wanna say something, meat?”

Shana grit her teeth harder, but didn’t answer.

The other guard looked out the door, before slamming it closed. “Seems to me the new meat needs a lesson in manners.”

“You know, I think you’re right.” Don snarled, stalking toward her.

Shana felt a sudden void in her stomach and shuffled backward as best she could. “W-Wait.”

Don laughed as he reached her, grabbed the front of her shirt, his fingernails scratching her breasts through her clothes. He easily dragged her to the back of the cell, slammed her back-first against the wall and began to roughly grope her. “Look, Mal, the cunt can talk! That’s a relief, wouldn’t be any fun otherwise.”

“S-Stop!” Shana whimpered, doing her best to squirm away from his touch.

“Don’t take too long, Don. I wanna turn too.” Mal said unenthusiastically.

“Fuck off, I let you go first last time!” Don snapped, his hand slipping inside Shana’s white shorts.

“Don’t!” She gasped as his fingers roughly rubbed her womanhood, his touch feeling like broken glass.

“The cunt will be quiet.” Don growled, his hand going faster, his fingers even rougher as he tried to force them painfully inside her. “Fuck this is a good pussy! This is going to be fun!”

Shana took a deep breath and managed to shout. “Stop it!”

Don let go of her collar to bury that fist in her gut, driving the air out of her in a big whoosh that made her knees weak.

“I said the cunt will be quiet!” Don hissed. “Now be a good bitch an—”

His hand was yanked out of her shorts, and with the fist no longer buried in her stomach, she lost the support keeping her upright. Shana fell to her knees and heaved, forcing herself to look up.

The man in the expensive cloak, the one that she last saw fighting Auntie Claire, was holding Don up by the neck with one hand, he then threw the burly man out of the cell.

Through the door, Shana could see Mal’s head. It wasn’t attached to the rest of his body. Its eyes were looking frantically about, its expression one of abject panic.

Don shot to his feet. “Who the fuck d’ya think y—!”

The cloaked man’s arm blurred, the sword he’d been holding glinting in the firelight of the hallway. Don looked confused, then his intestines fell out of his stomach and he started screaming.

“You, drive that head into a pike, and string the other one up by his entrails.” The cloaked man said to someone Shana couldn’t see as he pulled out a piece of cloth and cleaned his blade. “Executions will continue until the rest of you understand the meaning of the words ‘the girl is not to be harmed.’”

Not waiting for an answer, the cloaked man strode into her cell. Shana did what she could to curl up into herself.

He swung the sword once and Shana felt a slight tug on her wrists.

“Food and water will be provided regularly, behave yourself and I will allow you to place requests for books or other entertainment.” The cloaked man said, stepping outside, the door closing behind him.

Shana rubbed her freed wrists then hugged her legs and cried.

She wanted a bath, she felt dirty, soiled in a deep, visceral way, her womanhood throbbed with pain and she found herself shaking with revulsion as she remembered Don’s vile touch.

She wanted her mom and dad, she wanted to unburden herself to Auntie Claire, she always knew what to say, how to fix anything.

…She missed Dart.

She could only hope everyone in Seles was safe.

=][=

“Fuckin’ roads, fuckin’ mud, fuckin’ Sandora’s annoyingly through checkpoints.” I continued to grumble to myself, munching on some salted venison and whittling a piece of a branch I’d torn off a tree into a sharp point. “Fuckin’ forests, fuckin’ soldiers, fuckin’…”

If this were still my previous go-round, I’d already have Shana, we’d be on our way back home, and every single soldier and a number of civilians would be burnt out husks in my wake, only a few brain damaged survivors left to make a report.

Then again, if this were my previous go-round, I’d probably never have met Shana. If I’d have even ended up here at all, I’d have been the badass uncle instead of, essentially, her adopted older brother.

…It probably would have been pretty neat to be the random badass uncle.

I pictured the coltish kid I’d left behind as I set off on my martial arts journey, and wondered how she had turned out in my absence. Five years was a respectable length of time, and a lot more changed between thirteen and eighteen, than eighteen to twenty-three.

The bushes ahead of me rustled and a horndog stepped out of it, directly in my path, studying me.

A horndog was a common enough animal, it was essentially a large dog, two hundred and seventy pounds of lean muscle and fur, with a sharp bone horn growing out of its head.

I’d at first wondered what had led to such an adaptation, but then I learned that its main predator hunted by biting down on the head of their prey.

I’d seen a few domesticated ones, but they tended not to get along with dogs or livestock.

It bared its teeth at me and began growling, stalking slowly forward.

I glared into its eyes, making it pause its advance. “I don’t want to kill you.” I growled back, sheathing my bayonet and drawing my sword as I stalked forward, not the best weapon for dealing with an animal, but it was better than using one of my extremely limited supply of bullets. “So do yourself a favor, and politely fuck off.”

The horndog growled louder the closer I got, scrabbling backwards, its eyes darting from my feet to the tip of my sword, and back again. Until a limit was reached and it decided to be smart by turning tail and running.

I sheathed my sword, drew my bayonet and another piece of wood from the small sack at my waist, and continued forward through the forest as I began whittling it into a sharp point. “Fuckin’ civil war, fuckin’ thugs, fuckin’ fancy cloak asshole in particular.”

I wondered how my mom was doing. Hopefully she wasn’t pushing herself too hard with that broken arm. Hopefully the salve I applied helped, but I understandably couldn’t hang around long enough to find out.

Old Johnathan was already dead by the time I made it back to say goodbye, I hadn’t even stayed to help dig graves.

I’d dragged the thugs that had stayed behind to rape and pillage with me, left their bodies a distance away from Seles for the scavengers.

That had been almost three weeks ago.

Thankfully, unless I was wildly incorrect, I was almost at my destination.

A few more hours of marching proved me right. The forest petering out into a rocky cliff face, in the distance I could see a small island connected to the larger landmass by a narrow stone road, what looked like a huge blocky stone face jutting out of the island, belching smoke into the sky.

Huh…Hellena did actually look like a tortured demonic soul screaming in agony, whoda thunk it. The facility looked like it was carved out of a plateau, a long elongated face, two beady eyes glowing with flickering firelight, it looked like someone had crudely hacked off a man’s nose, leaving it with the ragged hole in the skull, and lips pressed tightly together in a grimace of pain. Squinting, I could make out the gates to enter the prison carved into what I would call the ‘chin’ of the agonized face carved out of black rock.

I narrowed my eyes at the damn thing. I was finally here, now how the hell do I get in?

Swimming? Wouldn’t work, I was awful at swimming. My handy sack would let me get in there with all of my equipment, but that wouldn’t help me not drown.

Frontal assault? I was fairly certain I had the technological edge, but I didn’t have the materiel to make proper use of that edge. My advantage would last up until I ran out of ammo. Then I’d be overwhelmed by numbers alone.

Bluff? I didn’t hold much stock in these people’s knowledge of information compartmentalization, but an official inspector from Imperial Sandora would have some form of token to grant them authority.

Offer to work for them? I’d taken a few jobs with Sandoran caravans before the civil war went hot, but I doubted Hellena was in need of mercenaries.

As I pondered how to fix my current predicament, the answer nearly ran me over. A man driving a cart pulled by a trihorn. The large bull-like burden animal affably bellowing a warning so I knew to get out of the way.

I dashed to the side of the road and hid, hearing the man, probably a merchant or delivery man, asking the trihorn what was wrong as the cart trundled by.

So, he’s unobservant.

I followed after the cart, catching up to it and walking in its shadow, the beast’s pondering pace making the task an easy one. Trihorns were built for power and endurance, not speed. They’d never beat a horse in a race, but they’d easily walk one to the ground.

I followed behind the cart all the way to the front gate, where it slowed to a stop.

“Oi there!” Shouted the driver of the cart. “Here with the supplies! And a day early too!”

 There was a lengthy pause before a different man asked. “What do you have today?”

“Lots of the usual, but I was able to get a few cuts of dried beef, and some preserved fish!”

“Good, good, hopefully that’ll lift Sir Fruegel’s spirits.”

The merchant sniffed. “You guys have been buying a lot recently, anything special going on?”

“It’s no business of yours, merchant! Don’t ask stupid questions!” Snarled the man I guessed was a guard here.

“Okay, okay, sorry. Was just curious is all.” The merchant muttered.

“Now be silent while I inspect the cargo!”

I had not stood idle while they’d talked. Using their conversation as a distraction, I crawled to the side of the cart, then rolled quickly under it, grabbed the undercarriage, and lifted myself off the ground and hugging the terribly unsanitary bottom of the cart.

Just remember Dart, this is for Shana. You will get your revenge on the girly little tomboy, like that time she decided that the best way to teach you swimming was to push you into the deep end of the pond and you nearly drowned.

No amount of hanging her upside-down by her ankles and shaking her up and down would be enough for this level of trihorn shit. I’d get inventive with her punishment.

The guard walked around the cart, and by the sound of it, poked a stout stick into the stuff the cart carried, at one point demanding the merchant show something he poked with the stick.

No clue what that was about, but by the lack of alarms it wasn’t another stowaway.

An interminable time later, with my arms and legs burning, the guard finished his inspection…without looking underneath the cart.

“Shipment’s clear!” The guard shouted. “Lower the bridge!”

I heard the sound of groaning wood, and moments later the cart moved forward.

I grit my teeth and waited for it to stop moving, once it did, I lowered myself gently and as quietly as I could to the floor, and rested my aching limbs, taking long, slow, deep breaths.

Infiltration successful. Now came the hard part.

I listened to the merchant putter about. It would be safest to kill him.

I rolled out from beneath the cart, bayonet already in my hand, and paused.

The portly man was talking to the trihorn in baby tones, feeding it a bushel of carrots one piece at a time, the animal looked back at him with devotion, love, and total adoration in its beady bovine eyes.

I held back a long sigh and moved quietly away from them, sheathing my bayonet, and waited for the merchant to become engrossed with emptying his cart before moving.

Hellena was hot, swelteringly so, and humid, it stank of rank fear-sweat, stale adrenaline, and a whiff of blood and excrement. It wasn’t long before I was sweating into my armor and wishing for my trusty gas mask, a world away. Hopefully I would find Shana quickly and get the hell out of this Soa-forsaken place.

As I snuck along, I came across the first of the guards I actually got to see, and paused in complete confusion.

The man was wearing a scarf, a leather hood, a leather speedo, and a lot of leather belts, from some of which hung the occasional pouch.

What.

And I cannot stress this enough.

Who designed the uniforms in this place! Kudos to the guard, he was lean enough that he almost pulled off the ‘BDSM Barbarian Chic’ look, he really needed to bulk up to pull it off well, but who in their right mind thought that was a good design!?

Then again, it was fairly airy…

The dead guy I hid in an empty barrel had suffered from some pretty bad halitosis. But I was right, this ‘uniform’ was pretty airy and while the straps proved to be surprisingly comfortable, I’d had to scrap the idea when I found the horrid state of the leather speedo.

Bright side, now that he was dead, the numerous STDs he’d suffered from were no longer a problem.

I continued to make my way through the prison, its layout labyrinthine and somewhat alien, the architectural style strange. I spotted the occasional face carved into the wall, its expression a rictus of agony and despair that seemed to writhe in the firelight.

There was a chasm that split the entire edifice down the middle, and there were no stairs to ascend between the floors, instead I was forced to use the janky-ass makeshift elevators that the guards themselves used.

Thus I made my way through the deadliest and most feared prison in Serdio. While sneaking, I had the good fortune to overhear gossip between a few guards, they talked about the incredibly beautiful captive in the northwest tower, that none of them had permission to touch or interact with.

Bingo.

Hang in there, Shana, I may be a little late, but I’m here. Just wait a little longer and I’ll get you out.

With a little luck, the corpses I hid in my wake would not be found for a few hours, giving me the time I needed t—

“Basil swine!” Came the loud cry from ahead of me.

Fuck!