Tied - (Mature)

[Philomel]

Rated very much Aure

A short time ago. Beinost.
~~~


It was the silence before a fine morning.


No birds sang. They were quiet today, and not a creature was stirring - save for a lone drunkard, stumbling his way around the streets. It was still early hours, and those beasts who would have crowed were still resting, taking in the last snooze before a long day of fetching food for the young ones and feeding themselves mightily full. With the sparkling first rays of a bright spring sun just beginning to peek over the harbour horizon it looked as though it was going to be good.


In a distant inn, far from the harbour itself, a woman stirred. Finally. She had few memories of the night before.


She had come here, alone and very underdressed, with few arms save her dagger that could burst into flames - the Lover. With just a simple white shirt, a dark cloak, and a tangle of thin material around her waist she had strode into the heart of Beinost, for one thing, and that was for a quiet night. A night without the clamouring of asking voices, an evening without responsibility. Even a few hours without the need to tell someone how to live their life, without numerous knockings on her door, without endless requests to teach people how to fight - even those would be so fine and sweet.


Just a few away from her girls and a solid last month, fourteen hours a day of non-stop sailing, recruiting and saving, with so little ability to sleep due to the hundreds of voices wanting to keep her awake for just that moment longer ...


And thus she had escaped. And headed, with white shirt and a cloak to hide her horns and face from any of her Gilded Lily ladies who might see her depart in the event of an evening party and call her over. With the distraction made of the ship, and excuses given in the form of a private meeting with Vaeron the Matriarch slipped off the back of her brothel ship, and headed out into the night, alone and at peace at last, walking into what she presumed would be a well-deserved break.


That was until an hour later and being far back into the back streets of Beinost she had been spotted.


Not by anyone who knew her. Not at all. Rather, by a 'gang'. A ruthless group of men and women with darker purposes, with whom Philomel had not as yet come to loggerheads with due to her thus-far lack of influence within Beinost itself. Members saw her, caught a brief view of the curves and the hood down in the dim light of a flickering magical lamp, and set out a plan. A plan that led to one of them waiting for her in a bar, being a bartender himself, and then presenting her with a drink. A drink that otherwise - where it not this day, where she had decided to just be nice to herself and let her guard down just that little bit - she would have been alerted to perhaps in the pause of his fingers, the hint of his smile, the twinkle in his eye. Instead, the faun, carefree for just that night, took it and emptied the contents into her mouth.


Down her gullet. Down into her stomach.


Then dullness and down.


Now she awoke. And those were the memories she had. The bartender. The drink. The feeling of despair and suddenly knowing something was up and then -


Eyes blinked, body froze as she realised several things.


First the cold. Her whole body was cold. Even her furry arse. Which was not normal. Her breasts felt a chill against them and they were supposedly covered.


Then her position. She was not in a way she would usually sleep. Her arms were numb and high above her head, she noticed, and her legs - well. They were spread apart.


She yawned and tried to move as she unsteadily blinked what she assumed was morning blurriness from her eyes. She summoned energy to pull her hands down, and move her legs in, and start to get up, and head back to the ship and -


But then she stopped. And she felt a fresh chill run down her spine as things swam into view. First there was a reaction with realisation that she could not actually move her arms or legs into a more comfortable position. Instead - well. When she tried there was the dull ring of metal on metal, scrape of metal on ... something else. And there was impossibility - instead her legs were stuck there, out in front of her body in awkward angles where she sat on some sort of hard and heavy block it seemed. They were literally shackled into the ground, with large metal rings and hooks around her hooves and then backwards-facing knees keeping them still and immoveable. Her hands were stretched far above her, with manacles around the wrists, attached there to a chain that went straight up above her head where it then was hooked into a loop on the pure white ceiling, that travelled taut over to a wall, then stretched back down there to another ring and -


It was padlocked in place. Keeping her up. Leaving her to dangle there, spread out like a piece of meat. And the worst thing was this place - it was all made of some cold, white material. A sort of bond of metal, it seemed, and perhaps another stone-like substance, that created a clean dust-less space in which Philomel felt no connection, no earthliness, no love. Nothing of Drys.


Breath catching in her chest, realising now what had happened to her, and why she had been such a goddamned fool to even think she could have a night where she didn't have to expect everyone to want to kill her, Philomel finally looked down to her chest. The shirt was gone. Her breasts hung pure in the night air and there were several places where tiny holes suggested several tiny needles sticking into her body.


Obviously she had been drugged. And in the compromising way she was sitting she had either been raped, or was going to be very soon. They had arranged her perfectly well. Her dagger was nowhere to be seen and even when she tried to reach inside for the power to summon it back to her hand she felt nothing. Absolutely zilch and nada. No magic. No power. No ability.


Her connection to her magic was gone.