The Feast

by Rowan Bree

  You feel the bulges below your waist begin to lengthen and the ooze push itself inside of you. Your muffled cries only sound lewd as the ooze fills and fits to your holes. When you struggle it feels like your whole body is being massaged with warm oil. The stimulation is too much, and there is no use fighting anyway. The ooze pulses inside of you. You come, your whole body shuddering inside the gelatinous mass.

  The ooze slowly seeps back down into the deck, leaving you slimy and still feeling full. Your stomach is bulging slightly. You reach down between your legs and feel something inside of you, a smooth jelly surface. You bear down and a cluster of formless gelatinous blobs plop out of you. They sit quivering on the deck, evidence of your inhuman violation.

  Hawke appears not long after. He comes to you and sees the baby jellies on the deck, your ooze-slick body, and your ruined dress.

  You collapse into his arms.

  “I heard you screaming,” he says. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

  He strokes your hair.

  “I should have kept you with me. I promised I’d keep you safe.”

  It would have happened anyway. You know how this world works.

  You ask if those things are what got his men.

  Hawke replies, “No, those things existed before all of this. Though they shouldn’t be here, not in Tyven. And not this close to shore. But what got my men was something demonic.” He shudders.

  “Are they all dead?”

  Hawke doesn’t answer.

  You hear footsteps on the gangway. You turn to see Vale step onto the deck, an evil smile plastered onto his pale face. You can see the anger boiling beneath it.

  “Kitten,” he says through gritted teeth. “You know I can’t let you leave.”

  Epilogue.

  The idea of waiting out in the open like this scares you more than the idea of what might be lurking inside the ship. More likely than not Hawke’s men decided to turn in early.

  You ask Hawke if you can go into the ship instead. He asks you if you’re sure. You tell him you are.

  “Take this with you,” he says, unbuckling his belt to give you his sword.

  You have to circle the belt around your waist twice for it to fit. “What about you?” you ask.

  He cracks his knuckles and smiles. “I’ll be fine.”

  You enter the ship through a trapdoor in the deck and climb the ladder down into a narrow passage. The ship sways a little, making the passage seem to curve as you make your way down it.

  The first door you come to leads to the galley. There are dirty pots in the sink containing the dregs of what looks like a fish stew. The wood stove is cold. No one has been here for a while.

  You exit the kitchen and check out the chief’s quarters. No one here either, though the rich silks on the bed make you want to stay. There are bookshelves on the walls with nets strung tightly across each shelf, likely to keep the books from falling in rough seas. Everything is brightly colored in yellows, blues, and greens. Curiously there is a small wooden pony in the corner, the kind that children play on. It is so worn that the paint has faded and many of the details in the carving are lost. You wonder if Hawke has a child back home.

  You leave the empty room and hurry down to the crew quarters. As soon as you step off the ladder you are hit with a feeling of dread. The very boards under your feet seem to vibrate with dark energy. You move forward slowly, cautiously down the passage.

  A low moan comes from ahead. You peek through the doorway and glimpse a man against the far wall. He is naked and lashed to the wall with heavy ropes. His tan skin gleams with sweat and blood. Scratches cover his body.

  You go to him. There is fear in his eyes.

  You say, “I’m a friend of Hawke’s. What happened?”

  The man’s voice is barely a whisper. You lean closer to hear him.

  “We caught her in the net,” he whispers. “We knew she was corrupted. Not like the others. Some of the men thought it was okay to…”

  He shakes his head, a whimpering sob escaping his trembling lips.

  “Who is she?” you ask.

  “An abomination,” he replies. “A monster.”

  “Are the others okay?”

  He shakes his head.

  “They’re dead?”

  He shakes his head more furiously. “I don’t know,” he sobs. “Please, let me go.”

  You start to untie the ropes around him. The knots are crude and easy to loosen.

  “No,” the man says. “The sword.”

  You keep at the ropes.

  The man pleads, “Please. I’ll never have peace again. You have to kill me.”

  The fear in his voice is infectious. You feel feverish, panicked. Whatever happened to him must be a horror beyond your imagination for him to be this desperate to die. What if the woman is still in the ship? You stop loosening his bonds.

  “I’ll come back for you,” you say, leaving the sobbing man half-tied to the wall. You need to warn Hawke.

  You glimpse something at the far end of the hall—a dark, thin, feminine shape. It feels like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. It stands perfectly still as you stare at it unable to move. Finally your flight response kicks in and you turn towards the exit. You hear a thumping, slithery sound behind you and make the mistake of looking over your shoulder. What you see is indeed an abomination. She has the shape of a naga but the details are all wrong. There are bony spikes, sharp teeth, and a long black serpentine tail that ends in a fishlike fin. It is as if the underworld combined all the deep sea horrors into a mockery of the divine half-snake beings.

  As you grasp the ladder you feel thin fingers on your shoulders. You turn around slowly to face the nightmare creature that terrorized Hawke’s men.

  Her face is exquisite, not at all what you expected though her teeth are deadly points as she smiles at you. Her fishy characteristics stop at her slender navel, everything except the grayish tone to her skin and row of bony spikes up her spine.

  Her bare breasts press against yours as she strokes your neck with cold fingers.

  “Shhhh, I will not hurt you my precious,” she says.

  Her eerie beauty is almost as terrifying as the rest of her. You can hear her tail sliding across the floorboards behind her.

  Not so easily deceived, you ask her about Hawke’s men.

  “You are no man. You are no threat to me,” she whispers. Her lips brush your ear. “They hurt me first. Do you want to know what they did?”

  Ask her to let you go. You are not her enemy.

  Ask what the men did to her.

  “Please let me go,” you ask her.

  She lets you go without a fight. “They will live in torment as long as they live. Mercy them or let them go mad.”

  She slithers away, and you hear the creak of a porthole opening somewhere then nothing.

  You climb back up to the deck to find Hawke with a dagger to his throat. Vale holds the pommel.

  “Kitten,” the mage smiles. “I’m so glad I found you.”

  He draws the dagger across Hawke’s neck in a fluid motion. Blood splatters the deck like rain.

  Epilogue.

  You ask her what they did.

  She smiles, the serpentine half of her body pressing closer to you. “I was tangled in their net and they hauled me onto the boat. But they didn’t cut me loose. No, once they saw what I was they decided to take out their darkest carnal urges on my helpless body.”

  A long forked tongue slithers out from between her lips and flicks against your neck. You feel tingly, aroused.

  She stops to whisper in your ear. “First they satisfied themselves, sticking their dirty fingers inside of me until I was stretched enough to take their fleshy human cocks. I cried, pleaded, begged.”

  Her serpentine body undulates against you, her tight muscles bumping against your clit through your dress.

  “Some of them pleasured themselves while they watche
d, making my body sticky and marking me with their foul male scent. But in the end each and every one of them came inside of me.”

  Her hand grasps yours, pulling it towards her. She guides your fingers into a moist slit below her navel. It is warm and sticky inside. She sighs as she pulls them out coated in cum from the men who tortured her.

  “Share with me,” she says, gathering up your skirts and pushing your hand into your panties. She forces your fingers deep inside you, making you take the men’s cum. “Perhaps if you are lucky, you will find yourself bearing a child of many fathers.”

  She takes her own fingers inside of her and they come out sticky as yours did. She smiles evilly and you cover your pussy with your hand, scared there is truth to her words. The naga forces your hands aside and hisses at you, the gills on her neck fluttering and reminding you of her infernal nature. You stop resisting. She slides her fingers into your pussy, leaving the men’s cum deep inside you. She repeats this several times, transferring their seed into you. Each time her slick fingers press against your g-spot, teasing you and coaxing your body to accept the semen deeper.

  “Please,” you beg. “No more.”

  She stops, smiles. Her razor teeth remind you she could kill you in an instant. She lowers herself down and you feel her forked tongue slither between your legs.

  You arch your back, your body overcome with the sensation of the naga’s snake tongue. Looking up you see the hatch to the top deck. Hawke is right up there. If you shout he would probably hear you.

  “Should I kill the man you came with before or after we drain all the cum from his cock?”

  You look down. The naga’s lips glisten with your juices. You can’t let her hurt him. You tell her to spare Hawke’s life.

  She laughs. “You are foolish to put your faith in men. But you are only human. May the day come that you regret your choice.”

  She flicks the fin of her serpentine tail across your face, leaving a thin cut on your cheek. Then she slithers away, disappearing through a doorway at the end of the hall. You hear a faint splash not too long after.

  You climb back up to the deck to find Hawke with a dagger to his throat. Vale holds the pommel.

  “Kitten,” the mage smiles. “I’m so glad I found you.”

  He draws the dagger across Hawke’s neck in a fluid motion. Blood splatters the deck like rain.

  Epilogue.

  PART III: A BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

  A fat full moon hangs overhead amongst the glittering stars. Your new dress feels like a second skin. From the forest through the capital you have traveled along a winding path led only by a word: Tyven. But you are confident that the night’s events will finally lead you to the answers you have been looking for.

  The city streets are almost too quiet as you make your way to the castle. As you pass one of the shuttered shops you hear a thin yelp. You peek through the keyhole into the alchemical shop beyond to see on the counter, between spilled bottles of mineral powders, a couple mid-copulation. The woman’s skirts are hiked up around her waist and the man’s trousers are nowhere to be seen.

  “Hurry up,” the woman says. “I need to get home.”

  “It’s okay,” the man pants. “Your husband can wait.”

  Keep watching.

  Move along.

  PART III: A SPECIAL KIND OF SERVICE

  The air is stale and stifling hot from bodies. The place must have once been a storeroom that has long since run out of use. There are random bits of dilapidated furniture—a chair here, a bookshelf there—but for the most part the room is void of any character. You almost miss the hustle and bustle of the kitchens.

  You sit on a long wooden bench rubbing your wrists, which are freshly sore from your most recent set of shackles. You were taken from the kitchens by the castle guards and brought here. It seems the king is rounding up all people deemed unfit for proper work in preparation for the feast and you were unlucky enough to be part of that number. Other women like you sit, stand, and pace around the room. A couple even sleep noiselessly slumped on the dusty floor.

  “Human sacrifices,” the woman beside you whispers to her neighbor. She has long, unkempt hair that must have been beautiful once. There is a single ringlet of perfect curls still untouched on the back of her head.

  “Be quiet,” the other woman hisses. “You don’t want to start a panic.”

  You turn your head slightly to follow their conversation.

  “That’s why we’re here. The king’s religion has gone bad ever since the king’s wife died. I heard he’s trying to bring her back by sacrificing women to appease the gods and pay the price of her life.”

  “Then what about all the men?”

  The next room over is full of men likewise imprisoned. You hear them on occasion when a fight breaks out or someone decides to try and get the attention of the guards. There is an iron-barred door connecting the two rooms, but someone from the women’s side has long since pushed a wardrobe in front of it. It seems the men were not content to let the women be and needed to be deterred from causing trouble.

  “It’s the Dorians,” another woman says from the floor. Her knees are drawn up to her chin and she has deep purple bruises down both legs. “They have a taste for slaves.”

  The first woman tuts. “See what I said? Human sacrifices.”

  Her friend is not convinced. “The black mages haven’t been around for decades. No one practices human sacrifice anymore, not even the Dorians.”

  “You never know.”

  You get up and stretch your legs. By now you have heard too many theories to find any of them particularly convincing. But talk of the Dorians and the black mages have been swirling around too much for you to fully dismiss the rumors.

  As you pass by the wardrobe you hear a voice from the men on the other side.

  “Almost there,” the voice says.

  There is a violent crack of splintering wood, though the wardrobe appears unharmed from the outside.

  “You bloody genius! Now we’ll be able to get at those women. Remember the one with the orange hair? She was rearin’ to go. Just have to get her into the wardrobe.”

  The wardrobe door is ajar. You open it a little further and peek inside. It appears the men have removed a large portion of the back of it. You can see their room beyond the iron bars and the backs of the two men talking. You close the door again before they see you.

  A woman notices the strange look on your face. She asks, “You all right?”

  Tell her what the men have done.

  Don’t say anything.

  PART III: AN UNFORTUNATE TURN

  “Remember what Jasper told you?” Sybil hands you a horrid tight dress that pushes your bust up to your neck and barely covers your behind. Even worse, the tasteless creation is beaded with little stones that make the garment as heavy as a sack of flour.

  “Yes, but I don’t see how these clothes are going to help.” After your misbehavior while under watch at the hideout, you have been tasked with the mission of infiltrating the secret Order party at the king’s feast. But no one said anything about dressing like a strumpet.

  Sybil stifles a snort as you pull the dress on. “The castle is looking for women to entertain the mages. Looking like that, there’s no way they will refuse you.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” you ask struggling to lace up the dress’s bodice yourself. Sybil goes to help you.

  “Let’s not think about that right now. All you need to do is figure out where in the castle the secret meeting is and get that message to Jasper in the great hall. The rest will work itself out.”

  There is a knock on the door. Eli pokes his head around the doorway. He starts to say something but, having gotten a good look at you, bursts out laughing. The color rises in your cheeks.

  “Your subtlety is impressive,” he says to Sybil.

  She glares at him. “The idiots at the castle aren’t a subtle bunch. Wave the
m a pair of tits and they’re drooling all over themselves like dogs.”

  “Don’t let Toren hear you say that. He used to be one of them.”

  Sybil goes to the door. “Come on,” she says to you. “We need to get you to the castle.”

  You follow after her struggling to pull down the hem of your dress, which you are sure isn’t covering anything it’s supposed to. Eli nods at you and you fall back, letting Sybil go ahead without you.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” the darkwood elf tells you. The lack of sarcasm catches you off-guard. “I’d still be in the castle dungeons if it wasn’t for you.”

  “It’s nothing,” you reply, fully conscious of the way your bosom heaves with every stifled breath. Sybil really pulled tight when she was lacing you up.

  Eli winks. “I also wanted to let you know how good you look right now.”

  You roll your eyes.

  “I’m not joking,” he says. “I’ve got horrible taste and I’m a sucker for a tight corset.”

  Hook up with Eli.

  Leave him.

  PART III: JUST A SERVING GIRL

  The castle is in chaos on account of the feast. You wipe your brow, taking a moment to rest atop a barrel of wine just outside the kitchen entrance. One of the serving girls spots you and hurries towards you with an overflowing platter of roasted vegetables. She shoves it at you before you can protest.

  You take the platter and head towards the great hall wishing you could have rested a bit longer. Antoinette assured you that once the main dishes are served your only job will be to stay in the hall refilling goblets of wine and ale as needed. So far, you have barely had a chance to glimpse the king and his guests.