Princess to Pleasure Slave Collection: The Forbidden Book of Monstrous Pleasures

by Amanda Clover

  To return with nothing but some wild fears and an abandoned camp was to admit defeat. It would be an admission that she was afraid.

  “And I’m not giving Rooman the pleasure of seeing my fear,” she said.

  The old, hawk-nosed gamekeeper still resented her for being a woman, even though two more female gamekeepers had been added over the years. He still viewed her as the bad apple. He would mock her for turning back.

  Sarana stopped and took out her map of the wood. The poachers in these parts knew Blyghtsdon almost as well as the gamekeepers. If they were being chased by an animal they would have probably run for one of the nearby streams or for the high ground to the east. The streams were closer and the poachers surely would have known they were nearby, probably using them for bathing and drinking water. She set off in that direction, veering off the path as it became necessary and into the untamed wood.

  The darkness of the forest closed in around her, giving her a claustrophobic sensation. Each snap of a twig under her mount’s hooves sent another jolt of fear through her. She took out her powder pistol and checked the flint. Even if she missed with it, the flash and sound of the crude gun would likely be enough to scare off an animal.

  She was nearly ready to check her map again to see if she had somehow missed one of the streams flowing nearby when she heard the soft burble of the water.

  “Go easy now,” she said to her horse and pulled back on the reins.

  They approached the stream as quietly as a horse could. There seemed nothing amiss at first glance; the oak trees and willows hung their branches over a winding stream that spanned no more than ten feet at its widest. The water was clear enough that Sarana made out smooth stones and beards of algae that swayed lazily in the current. There was an odd flattening of the bank a ways upstream. She urged her horse into the water and rode carefully towards the spot for a better look.

  It was a terrible mistake.

  Sarana neared the flattened spot on the bank and noticed the way smaller trees had fallen and been pressed down into the mud. She noticed the strange, looping impressions in the mud, like huge serpents had crawled through it, and she noticed the smear of blood on a rock.

  She did not notice the creature as it emerged from its warren on the opposite bank and into the whispering water of the stream. Its tentacles seized the legs of Sarana’s horse and pulled it over into the water. She fell into the shockingly cold stream and, at last, she saw her doom.

  The creature was larger than any bear and seemed a living nest of huge snakes. But no, not snakes, these grayish purple tendrils bore the pattern and sliminess of an eel or the tentacles of a squid. Sarana gasp and reached for her pistol. She pulled the trigger and it did not fire. The powder was wet and the flint gave no spark.

  There was a terrible crack and her horse stopped moving. The poor thing was dragged beneath the writhing tendrils of the beast as it drew closer. More and more of its bulk slid out of the warren, revealing that it was truly immense. It was a beast of legendary size.

  “Yimatara watch over me,” muttered Sarana, calling out to the elven goddess of the woods.

  She managed to get to her feet and draw her sword from her sheath before the tentacles reached her. They bound her arms and legs. A slimy tentacle burrowed down the collar of her quilted armor and burst it open with ease. Her large breasts heaved out into the open, pink nipples stiffened by the cold water of the stream.

  “Let me go!” she cried and desperately fought against the tentacles.

  Smaller appendages slid over her breasts and encircled and bound them. She felt something pressing at her quim and more wriggling between her buttocks and squirming at her anus. When Sarana screamed, a huge, slippery tentacle thrust into her mouth.

  She fought her fate desperately as her body was violated, but it was useless, and all the while she was being drawn towards the huge bulk of wriggling tentacles. They sucked off her boots and pulled away the last shreds of her trousers. A fat tentacle pushed into her quim and reached to her womb. Tears spilled from her eyes as a smaller tentacle curled its way into her bowels.

  The weight of many tentacles pressed down on her and coated her with slippery slime. The fishy smell of it was terrible; its body was cold and smothering. More tentacles dragged her into the slithering nest and Sarana felt the creature’s hidden mouth opening up beneath her feet. She tried to kick but she could not. She tried to scream but she could not. There was no hope of escape.

  Sarana was being swallowed alive.

  The Tale of Princess Jenevienne Dormer

  “Eels,” said Queen Eloise Dormer.

  Princess Jenevienne “Jenny” Dormer’s full lips pinched tightly together and turned down in exaggerated disgust. She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.

  “Oh, I hate it when you make that face,” said the queen. “You are too pretty to make those oafish expressions.”

  “No one likes eels,” said Kirina, Jenny’s older sister, as she sat down at the table.

  Jenny was full-busted but otherwise willowy and very feminine, with her long platinum blond hair and bewitching blue eyes. The only imperfection apparent on her face was the dark beauty mark just beside her upper lip. She wore her hair in complex braids, painted her face with expensive powders and shades, and dressed in corseted finery that emphasized her feminine charms.

  Kirina, by contrast, wore her hair chopped roughly short and kept her breasts, as plump as Jenny’s, bound so they did not interfere with her archery and sword practice. Her legs were short and her body more compact than Jenny’s, giving her a boyish appearance. She dressed in a simple tunic like a man might wear and infuriated her mother by preferring riding breeches to a dress.

  Jenny was a creature of courtly leisure, Kirina was a knight in training, yet both sisters got along well and as equals. And neither of them liked eels.

  “Your father likes eels,” said the queen. “Now be quiet. He has much on his mind.”

  King Vigtor Dormer was brooding at the head of the table. Jenny thought her father seemed smaller every day, glowering at his advisers and burdened by some secret problem that he had yet to share with his family. Today he seemed in an especially foul mood and she was certain it had something to do with that hawk-nosed old gamekeeper that had come to visit earlier.

  She was about to ask her father about the man when the servants arrived with the main course. They brought plates and bowls and spoons and three men carried a tray heaped with steaming vegetables that surrounded an enormous clay pot.

  “Ahhhhh, eel pot,” said the king. He rose from his chair to inhale the scent. “I do love eel pot.”

  Kirina jabbed her sister in the side with an elbow and whispered, “Finally, something puts a smile on his dour face, eh?”

  “Is that my Kirina, speaking ill of her beloved father?” asked the king.

  “No, father,” said Kirina.

  He shot her an annoyed glance, but he was too preoccupied with serving himself up with slithering ladlefuls of the eel stew. Jenny wanted to gag at the sight of the black eels sliding off the ladle and into her father’s bowl.

  “I will just have some of the roasted vegetables,” she said to the man offering to serve her.

  “She will have a bowl full of eels,” grumbled the king. “Do you have any idea how much these cost? They’re brought live in barrels from Tarol. And you turn up your nose.”

  “Yes, father,” said Jenny.

  “Tarol?” That perked up Kirina. “Wasn’t the queen of Tarol married to a succubus?”

  “Kirina!” hissed the queen. “Do not speak of demons at the table.”

  “She was,” said the king, almost smiling at the thought of a woman wed to a comely demoness.

  “Only a rumor,” said the queen.

  “No, no,” said the king. “I met the demoness once when I was a boy. The queen was a doddering old woman, but the succubus was still young and beautiful. They say she gave the queen children and that one of her great granddaugh
ters is causing trouble now in the south.”

  “Only a rumor,” repeated the queen.

  “Empress Jurrinus is no rumor.” The king’s darkness returned. “Her heritage may be a lie, but the woman is real, and she is real trouble.”

  Kirina looked concerned and so Jenny tried to mimic her expression. The younger princess had no idea why this Jurrinus woman vexed her father, nor even who she was. If she truly was the great granddaughter of a demoness she must be powerful.

  With a new darkness cast over the meal, they ate in silence. Jenny picked at the vegetables and less-recognizable bits of meat in her stew. Her father slurped lustily at his own bowl.

  “So, speaking of rumors,” said Kirina, “what is this I hear about some sort of creature loose in Blyghtsdon?”

  The queen nearly choked on her stew and she gulped wine from her cup. King Dormer looked at his eldest daughter and scowled.

  “Do not speak of that again,” he said. “There is no beast in the woods. No monster with snakes for arms, no beast that dwells in the streams, or anything of the sort. It’s all lies being spread by addlebrained peasant wives and drunks in taverns.”

  “I heard a gamekeeper disappeared,” said Kirina to Jenny. “Remember that woman who came to—“

  “Enough!” King Dormer pounded his fist down, causing his wine to slosh onto the table. “Speak no more of this, either of you, and stay away from Blyghtsdon Wood. I mean it, Kirina.”

  Kirina nodded and lowered her gaze.

  Jenny fought to keep an excited smile off her face. A creature loose in the woods! Snake arms! It would be perfect for her book! She had seen the basilisk the gamekeepers caught when she was a little girl. It was so small and died after only a few days in the cage, but it had thrilled her to no end. She had become obsessed with bestiaries and studies of fantastical creatures.

  Jenny had even taken to cataloging animals herself, writing about an albino Kornasi sand tiger she had seen on her travels in the far south and a two-headed condor she had nearly bought at a bazaar in Emilsh.

  This was a real monster, not some unusual example of a common beast! It sounded as if it might be a dangerous creature like the slimes, manticores, and lamias she had read about in the books she kept locked in the chest beneath her bed. She read the descriptions in those books over and over and marveled at the illustrations. She tried to copy their style for her own folio.

  She had to know more about this creature. While the others dined in awkward silence, Jenny plotted how she might learn more of the beast and its environs. She had gone riding in the Blyghtsdon a thousand times and had no fear of the woods, even at night. She resolved to take a lantern, a sword, and her sketchbook and pens and find this beast.

  After supper, she excused herself to her room at an early hour, locked the door to her bedchamber, and began searching through her many tomes of fantastic creatures. There were several possibilities for a creature that might be described as having “snake arms,” but the young princess kept returning to the entry from Bottman’s Bestiary for the so-called “Roper.”

  The illustration depicted an upright creature with an almost phallic shape, perhaps ten feet tall and as wide as a structural column. The creature in the illustration possessed a single baleful eye drawn in its face. Its wide mouth was lined with sharp teeth and drooled with saliva captured quite vividly in the illustration. It was the roper’s ten snake-like tentacles that seemed to match what little description she had. Ropers were not aquatic, so the idea of it living in a stream did not seem to match, but what if it had a lair near a stream? That could explain the association with water.

  She decided she would begin her search with the streams. She was not afraid, though she was mindful of the roper’s danger. It was a man-eater and its tentacles had an incredible reach, but the beast moved its body very slowly. So long as she stayed out of its tentacles, Jenny reasoned, she would be fine.

  Even more exciting than the idea of finding a roper was the idea that she might discover something new. To truly record the discovery of a new beast would be to add to the study of fantastic creatures. She could make a name for herself as an expert. No more worries about marrying or entertaining suitors; she would make her own fortune and name as a monster huntress and make the world safer in the process.

  Darkness fell outside her windows and young Princess Jenny knew the time had come. She gathered her pack and the sword Kirina had given her for her last birthday. She wore her saddle boots, a riding habit, and a simple bodice that contained her ample bosom. Over this ensemble she draped a dark, fur-lined cloak. She took a bullseye lantern and a flint to spark it with once she was out of sight of the castle at Maldonshire.

  Sneaking out past the castle guards was an easy task. She had grown up in the castle, after all, and had long ago memorized the routines of the maids, footmen, and guards that walked the castle ramparts. She stole through the door used by the butcher to bring meat for the kitchen and made her way to the stables. Hans, the stable boy, was glad to help her tack up her favorite stallion, Umberto. The horse was the most surefooted she had ever known and was unafraid of the woods at night.

  “Thank you, Hans,” she said as the fetching lad finished tightening Umberto’s girth strap. “How might I repay you?”

  She asked the question each time the stable boy did her a favor, always secretly hoping he would demand she fall to her knees and pleasure him like some tavern wench. She had read enough of her mother’s bawdy novels to have some idea of how to give a man what he desired under such circumstances.

  She waited for his answer. Her pulse quickened. He moistened his lips as if this might be the time he finally asked.

  “Um, a smile is reward enough from a beauty such as you, Princess Dormer,” he said, grasping his hat in his hands and bowing his head.

  “Ah, well, a smile for you then, Hans,” she grinned and climbed into the saddle. “As always, not a word to anyone about this.”

  “Of course not, my lady,” he said.

  She rode out of the barn and through the cobbled streets of the village of Maldonshire. Perhaps a thousand souls lived on the hills surrounding the castle and their village spread into the farmland carved from the dense Blyghtsdon Wood and the patchier Richtenmaier Forest. Mill wheels turned in the slow waters of the Goleth River and Umberto’s hooves clattered over the stone bridge. A single torch-bearing guard watched her pass without comment.

  Umberto galloped past the farmsteads growing wheat and barley. A few lights burned in their windows and smoke issued from their chimneys. It was unseasonably cool for a summer night and the moon was obscured by heavy clouds that threatened rain. She passed a mule cart coming into town laden with furniture from some farmer’s workshop. The man and his son watched with surprise as Jenny rode past. She heard an appreciative whistle from the farmer and a call of, “Stop and talk, lass?”

  “I’m afraid I have somewhere to be!” she called over her shoulder.

  Past Old Beyer’s farm, she turned down one of the horse paths into the Blyghtsdon Wood and was immediately swallowed up by the darkness. There was strangeness in the air. Fireflies winked in the brush and trees and unexpected gusts of wind plucked the hood back from her cloak and left her pale golden hair flying behind her.

  The darkness of the night wood grew impenetrable and Umberto refused to go any deeper.

  “Fair enough, old boy,” she said.

  She struck the flint and lit the lantern. She held it out and aimed the bullseye light ahead of them to show the way. After perhaps a quarter of the night, passing deadfalls, rustling animals in the brush, and the occasional bits of human debris, they came upon the first stream. It had no particular name, but Jenny knew it well and thought of it as the wide stream.

  She climbed down from the saddle. Umberto seemed unhappy with being made to wait. He pounded his hooves up and down, tamping the mud at the edge of the stream.

  There was a scent in the air, not unlike the scent of the eel stew or a fishm
onger’s stand on a hot day. Jenny played the light from her lantern back and forth over the brush at the edge of the stream and into the surrounding trees. Something caught her eye not far from the water’s edge. It glistened in the light from the lantern.

  “What’s this?” murmured Jenny as she knelt to investigate.

  It seemed as if a very large snail had passed over several of the leaves and stones nearby, depositing a trail of mucus. This seemed to be the source of the unpleasant odor. She was about to put this disgusting residue down to a slug when she spotted the scrap of quilted cloth. It was green on one side like the uniform worn by her father’s gamekeepers. It was soaked with the fishy-smelling jelly.

  There was something else. A garland from a girl’s hair, like a bridge might wear at her wedding, smashed and soiled with the same mucus. More disturbing, there was blood and a few crimson hairs stuck to the mud.

  “I think maybe we should leave,” Jenny whispered to Umberto.

  The horse flared its nostrils and stomped a foot as if in agreement. Jenny’s curiosity was losing out to her sense of self-preservation. Whatever lurked in these woods seem to be hunting young women. She stood up, intent on climbing into the saddle and heading back to the warmth and safety of her family’s castle.

  She got one foot into a stirrup and heard the moan. It was distant, echoing, and distinctly feminine. It was such an unreal sound that she almost convinced herself she had imagined it as she stood there breathing heavily. Then she heard it again, louder and more prolonged. It was the sound of a woman in pain.

  It was coming from twenty or thirty feet downstream on the far side of the creek. She knew the water was not very deep, so Jenny took her lantern and waded out into the water. She heard the sound again, a distinct “ooooooohhhh” that echoed strangely over the soft murmur of the stream. It sent a chill through her body and she drew the sword Kirina had given to her.