M Out of the frying pan...

Obake

Level 2
Joined
Sep 30, 2018
Messages
17
Essence
€4,207
Coin
₡500
Tokens
0
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
The world around her was dark… and cold. Really cold.

People die from blood loss, don’t they? And when they die in the movies, they always feel cold too. Or maybe she’d fallen off the side of the cruiser into the water and was drowning, haha... why did she laugh at that? Irony because she was a great swimmer?

Yeah, let’s go with that.

She hoped that she would be able to move again soon. She didn’t want to drown. Or die in any other way. She was young! She had her whole life ahead of her yet!

And what of Johanna? Had she escaped that asshole after she’d knocked the lights out of him? If her little sister got hurt because she couldn’t protect her, her life had been wasted! She couldn’t go out like that!

… well it didn’t seem like she was going to have much a choice, at any rate.

At least dying didn’t feel so bad. It was like sinking into a deep sleep. But she was really sad that she died nonetheless. She’d have liked to say goodbye to her parents, at least.

Pfah… come to think of it, she was atheistic, wasn’t she. Now was the time to find out if there really was a Heaven and Hell, and if she’d be denied entrance because she didn’t pray or go to church on Sunday. Or maybe she would be ferried past a three-headed dog, down into Hades. She wondered if she’d get to see grandma Birgit and grandpa Alfred again. Or Moritz, the family pug that had died eight years ago.

… well she’d see it when she got there.

There was a light, way off in the distance. She tried to not go there, but it came closer anyway. The dot grew into a circle, and slowly filled her field of vision.

The first thought she had was that if this was Heaven or Hell or the Underworld, then all the religious scriptures and teachings had been way off. This place looked more like a half-dozen ten-year-olds had been let loose on a 3D gamebuilding software. It was several platforms of varying shapes and sizes, linked by what looked like… tree roots and branches? And wood bridges. One had a stone path, just floating rocks in mid-air.

And every last one of those rocks had its surface covered with items that looked like they’d been pulled out of the ‘fantasy’, ‘science fiction’, ‘nature’ and ‘medieval buildings’ tabs of the game assets menu of the above-mentioned gamebuilding software. Of course though, this was no game, so there had to be a rational explanation for this, right?

Wondering if she would now wear a white tunic like an angel or something, she looked down on herself… nothing. Like there was nothing at all there, not even her torso! Not even hands! Or…? No, wait, on a closer look she saw a very translucent body. Like a ghost’s.

Wait, had she come back as a ghost? Was that because she’d thought about all her unfinished business?! But if that was the case, where was she now? This wasn’t anywhere on Earth, or anything like any place she’d ever seen. Not to mention, it made no sense… like, physically. Floating bits of rock in front of a surreal space background? Newton or whoever would be rolling in his grave seeing this.

Haaaaah… it was no use pondering this stuff forever. She was probably just dreaming or hallucinating or something. Maybe she was high on painkiller drugs while in a hospital somewhere, getting treatment for her injuries. She’d just wake up soon, find herself laying on a bed surrounded by family, they’d laugh and it’d be over then. Yeah, that sounded a lot more likely.

Now, where was she? She might as well humor this weird lucid dream while she was here. She had never had a lucid dream before, so this was kind of cool. Maybe she’d be able to dig up memories she had forgotten! Let’s see then… there was a pool of water here, on the platform where she’d landed. Maybe she should start there. Maybe she had fallen into the water around the cruise ship, yeah? It would be a drop from really high up though… hmm. Or maybe she’d fallen into the pool on the deck where the whole scuffle had taken place. It’d make sense for her most recent memories to be manifested on the ‘island’ nearest to her, right? Right. So as much as she could control this weird ghostly body, she walked closer.

Huh, this looked more like a big pond than a pool or an ocean. And what were those at the bottom? Hah, was her dream recalling those Terracotta warriors buried underwater, from her history class? … no, never mind, those figures looked way too detailed, and they were really small.

She knelt at the edge of the pond to get a closer look. Tiny little figures they were. A bunch of people with carriages… a caravan? Oh wow, there was some amazing detail in there, there even was a cage with each individual bar carved out. Like it was the real thing, shrunk down. They were kind of adorable.

“I wonder what it is you represent, underwater like that…” she murmured as she leant over a bit more and reached for them. They were just out of reach of her outstretched hand. But she wanted to get a closer look, to pull one out of the water and bring it before her eyes. Did ghosts even have eyes? She leant in a bit closer, and saw more details. There were several figurines on the ground around the caravan. Some wielding what looked like whips, others linked together with tiny chains, barely the size of a copper cable. Her fingers barely brushed against the closest figurine, one that sported weirdly big ears. The realization hit her that this was probably not, as she had first thought, a circus caravan, but likely a slaver’s one.

That was when her body, leant too far forward already, tipped over and she fell. Head first, into the pond.

Ughhhh… everything was spinning. And it was dark.

Again.

Why’d it always have to be dark?

Then she realized that her eyes were closed. Yeah, that probably was it…

A blurry landscape extended before her, slowly as the light came flooding in. Her eyes hurt a bit, but she didn’t want the darkness to set in again. Gradually, she got used to the light. Gradually, her vision sharpened and the blurry contours of trees, of the sky, and of a person sitting before her came into view. A blonde-haired man with a full beard, with a handsome rugged look to him, with only ragged brown clothes to cover him. His hands were cuffed together. Noticing that her eyes were open, he spoke.

“Hey, you. You’re finally awake.”

God. Fucking. Damnit.
 

Obake

Level 2
Joined
Sep 30, 2018
Messages
17
Essence
€4,207
Coin
₡500
Tokens
0
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
As Koa’s head cleared a little, she realized that her brain, which was probably still deep in a fever dream, had not pranked her with a stupid game reference. For one, they were not on a carriage. For two, they were not in a nordic pine-forest. And for three, the blonde-haired man sitting in front of her was not a human Nord.

The pair of big, blonde-furred ears on either side of his head were a pretty big hint at that, and the short tail that laid on the ground behind him was the second giveaway. Sure, it could have been some weirdo doing a cosplay, but that wouldn’t explain the young woman in a cage three meters behind him, who had at least ten meters of thick, scaled tail coiled up and was resting her human half on top of it, nor the child, no older than eight or nine, that sported a pair of leathery wings on its back. Folded up and with a net made of iron chains holding them together, but wings nonetheless. Those were way more than just little cosplays.

So either she had wound up in some sort of open-air hardcore furry convention’s bondage corner, or her dream was really pulling all the crazy surreal stuff. She didn’t even want to consider any third options.

“... hi”, she finally replied, greeting the dog-eared man who she’d mistaken for Ralof. Good, she could control her mouth and the words that came out… her voice sounded a bit off, but that probably was because it was a dream. Fine then, she’d bite. “Where on earth are we? What’s with all the…” She tried to motion to Not-Ralof’s bound hands on his lap, but found that she couldn’t. Her hands were tied behind her back. It felt very real. She shouldn’t feel things in a dream, right?

“Oh, these?” Not-Ralof asked and raised his hands. “They don’t like us moving about too much, even when we’re off the wagon.”

“... who’s ‘they’?” Oh god, please do not let this actually be a furry convention with weirdos that got off on tying young women up… or a cult that dressed up its human sacrifices before offering them to Nyartlohep or Baal or whatever twisted deities cults worshipped…

“You got caught in your sleep, didn’t you lass?” Not-Ralof asked as he let his hands fall back into his lap. “Well, let me tell you, you got real unlucky.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” She was almost too afraid to ask, but no. She had to know.

“Meaning you fell into the hands of slavers. Guess it could’ve been worse, but the Arcadia Exotics Trading Company ain’t known for letting their wares escape.”

Her eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “Wha-wha-w-wait WHAT?! Slavers?!”

“Quiet down lass, we don’t want them to hear you… but aye. Slavers.”

“But! Wait! That’s not…! They can’t do this! Slavery and human trafficking’s been abolished for decades!”

Not-Ralof raised an eyebrow. “Aye, it has been. Centuries ago, in fact.”

“So why are they still doing this?! There’s no way they can fly under the radar with this many-”

“Oi, you! The new girl, shut your gob before we stuff it!” That voice belonged to a very unfavorable example of a male specimen that came strutting over with an angry face. He looked like he’d been dropped as a child, then slipped out of his mom’s grip when she tried to pick him back up, and just been left laying on the ground. His nose was entirely too big and red, his receding hair looked like he washed it with motor oil, the shirt and trousers he wore were covered in dirt and spots of what she hoped was food fat, and the smell… ughhhhh, the smell. And he came right to her.

“Finally our Sleepin’ Beauty woke up, eh?” he asked with a grin that was missing at least half its teeth, and gripped her face with one hand so that his thumb pressed on her right cheek and his four other fingers on her left one, scrunching it together and forcing her to look at him. “Lovely catch, you are. Tha boss’ll love it.”

“Kho hhhuk shurshelph!” she replied. The slaver backhand-slapped her across the face so hard that she nearly fell on her side. Then he grabbed her again and pulled her back. Her cheek burned where he’d hit her, and his dirty fingers squeezing her cheeks only made it worse.

“Feisty, aren’t ya. I pegged ya as a bold one when we found ya sleepin’ in the open next t’the lake. Bwah. A fish-girl like yourself will fetch a nice price on the market, so you can count yourself lucky you got found by us. If you behave we won’t even starve you, and the better you look the more likely you’ll end up in some rich twit’s aquarium.”

“Phbbbishh gurlll?!” she exclaimed What was this guy on about?! “Pffiih’m nottt-”

“Yeah, whatever you waterbreathers call yourselves now then. Tritons or some shit. Not like the buyers will care. Now quit your whinin’ or I’ll be back with the whip.” He shoved her backwards and laughed as he walked away, taking his horrible smell with him.

What the hell was he on about? A fish-girl? She almost hesitated to, but she finally turned her eyes downwards, and looked at herself.

What she saw was blue skin on a near-naked body covered only by a two-piece swimsuit that looked very much like it was made out of fish scales, squiggly yellow and orange markings along her hips and a pair of shapely athletic legs.

Her breathing hastened. This had to be a joke but she felt that it wasn’t. Her mind desperately tried to make up excuses about this being body-paint and some elaborate prank but it made not a shred of sense that anyone would go to such lengths to pull it on her. The thought that this was still a fever dream went out the window right away - she could feel the burning pain on her cheek still. You did not feel pain in dreams. And when she tried to slow down her hyperventilation before she passed out, a new thought clicked into place: the strange realm where she had found herself in, in ghostly form. The slave caravan figurines in the pond that she had tried to touch. The fact that the caravan’s wagons were arranged exactly the same way as in the little scene she had seen. The fact that the slaves sat exactly in the same spots that she saw them in now. The fact that the figurine her fingers had touched before she’d fallen into the pond had had lines along the sides of its neck that she had thought to be scratches and now realized they were probably gills.

In the most surreal, absurd and outlandish way, the logic was there. For some unfathomable reason, she had been brought from her home into this world and been given a choice. And unknowingly, she had picked her own fate.

But if whoever had designed that place without including an instruction manual expected her to meekly accept it as ‘her fault’, they had another thing coming. But first, she was going to pay that breathing caricature of a human being back for slapping her cheek. Her position as a slave wasn’t ideal for that… or for anything, for that matter. But she’d already worked her way up a company’s ladder before, she could do it again, right? After all being a slave was like being an unpaid intern, except interns weren’t allowed to eat the company-provided lunch. And they didn’t get beaten, but that was probably only because laws existed for that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Aku

Obake

Level 2
Joined
Sep 30, 2018
Messages
17
Essence
€4,207
Coin
₡500
Tokens
0
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
“Alright, break time’s over! Get your asses back in the cages!” The sharp crack of a leather whip overhead served to underline the slaver’s words. She grunted as she pushed herself to her feet, a little hard to manage given her bound arms, and followed suit with the other prisoners. She tried to follow behind Not-Ralof but an angry callout from a slaver and a whipstrike in front of her quickly drove her away from that idea.

Where the hell did they want her to- oh. They were separated into genders, because why wouldn’t they. She’d hoped to get a little more information out of the only person she’d spoken to, but it seemed like she’d have to wait until they got off for the evening or something.

She climbed onto one of the ‘female’ cage-carriages and awkwardly smiled at the girl she sat next to, a human-looking one sporting two horns on her forehead. An Oni? The girl looked back out of empty eyes, then turned her head back to the ground. Yikes… she looked like she’d seen some shit.

“Hey, new one!” one of the slavers, a woman with a short bob of brunette hair and glaring green eyes called out.

“Uh. Yes?” The ‘new one’ could only be her, right? Judging by how the slaver’s eyes were right on her, it had to be.

“What’s your deal then?”

“I’m… sorry?”

The slaver grunted and rolled her eyes. “Off the carriage, chop chop!”

Yikes… was she gonna get a beating for climbing into the wrong carriage or something? She climbed off though. Better to be compliant for a bit than to get on these people’s shitlist on her first day. She stumbled a few steps forward after hopping off, courtesy of her hands being bound and throwing off her balance. With her eyes glued to the slaver’s footwear - fairly qualitative leather boots, caked in mud and with what looked like firewood ash on the front - she stopped before the woman, who raised her hand. Expecting a slap, she braced herself. Instead, the hand came to rest on her cheek and the slaver dragged her thumb along to the neck and over what she presumed were gills. It certainly felt weird having them touched… like they were scabs of cuts along her necks that didn’t itch.

… don’t tell me she’s interested in me? I swear, if she tries to flirt with me now…

“Your skin’s dry.”

“... it is?” That was a weird flirting attempt, if it was one.

Another grunt from the slaver. “Fuckin’ hell… just my luck to get stuck with some waterbreathin’ bitch. OI, JUNIE! COME HERE FOR A MINUTE!”

Because her eyes were still on the ground, she couldn’t see anyone coming closer, but she heard them, and heard a soft female voice asking “Yes, Dana? What is it?” That had to be ‘Junie’... so the brunette slaver in front of her was Dana.

“We’re taking the fish between us. You got your cuffs?”

“Yes, of course.”

They were going to take her ‘between’ them? “Hold on”, she said, almost immediately realizing she should probably keep her trap shut, but… in for a penny, in for a pound. “Why are you doing that?”

The slaver named Dana snarled. Her hand darted forward, pressing her up by her chin, forcing her to meet the piercing glare of her eyes. “You’re lucky to be one of the ones who’re worth more when pretty and unscarred, but don’t think you can run your pretty mouth around me because I won’t whip you. There are plenty of ways to punish an uppity slave that don’t leave a mark.” She let her go, then pulled out what looked like two links of big chains, with little locks on both. “And you’re assigned to me, so I’ll have you broken into an obedient little bitch ripe to be sold before you know it.”

She did not reply to that.

Meanwhile, Junie was already hard at work. She placed the chain-shaped cuff around her own wrist first, then put the other link on her left wrist and locked it shut, like those police officers who tied themselves to criminals in the movies. Dana did the same on her right side. Then the rope tying her hands together was removed and her hands were freed. Well, sort of.

“Good. Now we go to the river”, Dana declared and promptly began to tug the both of them along. The river? Why would she want to…

… oooh.

Her fish-person nature probably meant that she needed to be periodically submerged in water to not dry out or something, right? And that’s why they were going to stick her in the river, tied to the two of them so she couldn’t swim off? Smart!

And unfortunate for her. Not that she’d have TRIED to run away, she was way too overwhelmed by everything going on around her, but it showed that these guys were no ordinary thugs that only knew to whip people into obeying out of fear. This Dana woman was experienced at slave-handling. Frankly if it wasn’t slaves, but animals or something, and if SHE wasn’t the slave being handled, she would’ve been a little impressed.

“So, fishface, if your brain’s dried out and that’s why you can’t understand what we’re doing, I’m gonna lay it out for ya. We’re bringing you to the river and dunking you in the water before you dry out completely. Nobody’s gonna buy a wrinkled sun-dried piece of shit. And I’m expecting you to come forward and warn me next time, or you’ll get punished the same way as our hunger strikers do.”

“But Dana”, Junie remarked, “aren’t the slaves forbidden from speaking up without being asked first?”

Dana smirked. “That doesn’t sound like a Me problem, does it? Let the fishface figure it out. Speakin’ of, we’re here. Dana, you’re on the other side.”

Being flanked by the two women, she was put in the middle of the water stream. And it was COLD! Geez, weren’t fishes supposed to be able to regulate their own temperature or something? Plus, as she squatted to really submerge herself in the waist-deep stream, she could only get up to her chest before the range of her arms was exhausted. She briefly considered yanking her arms and getting the two slavers to fall into the river, but that’d probably not go over well. So she just awkwardly stood there until Dana rolled her eyes.

“Junie, move a bit deeper”, she said.

“I’m already knee-deep here, I’ll get my blouse wet if I go!”

“So?”

“I’m not drenching my clothes so the boys can ogle my body, over a fish that’s your responsibility in the first place!”

“Ugh. Fuckin’ hell…” Muttering more curses, Dana stepped further, but it didn’t help. How would it? She still couldn’t lean further. And Junie seemed to think the same, since she just opened the lock on her cuff and took it off of her arm. ‘I’ll just keep an eye on you two so she doesn’t try anything’, she said. And Dana responded with another curse.

She wondered if they were doing the good cop - bad cop routine, because it was just too blatantly obvious, while soaking her head underwater. Just short dunks though, she would learn to use those gills another day. With each soak she felt a lot better, and her skin began to shine and shimmer, looking good as new. She’d always enjoyed swimming, water parks and such, but this was a whole different thing. It felt like she was in her element.

Oh god, now I’m even starting to turn into a fish mentally! What next, will I stop remembering everything longer than five seconds ago? No, she still had clear memories of Not-Ralof, of that weird place with all the floaty items and of her life before this whole mess.

“Are you quite done?! We’re WAITING here!” Dana interrupted her train of thought.

“Yes.”

“Ugh. Finally…” she grumbled and looked at Junie, who pretended to not notice. She had already reattached the cuff onto her belt, and happily skipped ahead of them, leaving her grumpy-faced colleague to handle her.

“By the way”, Junie remarked as they walked, “did you register her yet?”

“Ah? Of course not, why the fuck would I work on our break?!”

“Then you better do it now. And get her branded.”

BRANDED? “Uhm, about that…”

Dana sharply yanked on the cuff. “Didn’t I tell you to shut your trap when you’re not asked, fishface?!”

“... yes.”

“What were you going to say?” asked Junie.

“About being branded… ah, it would really be a bad idea to…”

Dana snorted. “Yeah right. You’ll get your mark like everyone else.”

“Come on Dana, let her finish.”

“Well, uh, it would be very dangerous to burn my body with a branding iron. You see, the hydroactive cellular membranes regulating my... heat dispersion and, uhm, the osmotic pressure equalization, yeah? Those would risk being severely damaged even if the brand is small, which may lead to me suffocating, suffering heatstroke or losing my ability to swim properly.” She thanked her biology teacher for going into marine biology. Granted, she didn’t actually remember most of the stuff they’d covered, she’d just stuffed her head with knowledge, vomited it back out during exams, and made room for other subjects. Now she was just combining random big words she remembered from her textbooks, with whatever horrible symptoms she could pull out of her ass. A biologist would probably foam at the mouth hearing her, but these two seemed clueless enough as to fish-people’s anatomy. She was just going to make it sound scary and hope for the best, yeah?

Judging by their puzzled faces, it worked though.

“Ughhhh. I don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit”, Dana then said. “Whatever, we'll just let the buyer mark her before I get shit for ruining the wares again. What’s your birthname, fishface?”

“Ste-” No, hold on. That was her real name. Like hell she was going to give that to these two… uhh, but what other name could she give? That was when one last bit of knowledge snuck into her head, the most trivia of marine knowledge she had tucked away from that one aquarium visit on a school trip. That bit where that one type of tropical fish had the local name ‘Koa Moa’. Before she knew what to say, her panicking brain blurted out: “Koa.”

“Stekoa?”

“Nono. Koa. Ehhh, Sturgeonsborn is my last name.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your last name. Koa it is then.”

Yeah… Koa it is. Weirdly enough, the name felt fitting, and it was certainly better than her lame human name ‘Stephanie’. Well it’d only be a cover until she got out of this whole mess. Little did she know that her name would wind up sticking for far longer than that.
 
Top