Never Surrender! (The Valiant Hero's Capture)
#1 of Never Surrender!
Never Surrender!
The Cat leapt backwards, swinging his sword in a wide horizontal arc. It made the pathetic Dogs stop in their tracks, or wish they had.
So easy, the Feline thought to himself. I should have come to the Southern Continent months ago! I don't even need a band behind me!
He swung his sword again and hissed, forcing even some of the snarling Dogs to back up some more. Surprise, Dogs, he smirked with glee, you're all right where I want you!
He dropped his sword and raised one paw, fingers splayed. "Now I'll show you what the True Power of Aetroziythus can do!" he shouted out mockingly, and quickly focused his mind onto his desired effect: a blast of flame that would scorch the fur and burn the flesh of all his foes at once. He felt his will flow so mightily, that reality would have no choice but to bring his minor influence in heat energy about. He raised his other paw and gave a brazen laugh at his foolish targets.
The searing burst of flame failed to materialize. The Dogs leapt forward and knocked him to the ground.
He woke up later, in a mild daze. Since the pain he was feeling wasn't the kind that came with his celebratory alcohol, it only left one conclusion, as horrible as it seemed:
He had lost.
"Wh-where am I?" he asked, to the room in general. When the pain in his head began to clear, his vision started to focus and adapt to the low light. He found himself in a small room, lit by a lantern and two small windows, with a large door across from him.
"I've broken out of places like this before," The Feline smirked. He instinctively leapt up to search the trash can for clues or keys to the chest of drawers, but was disappointed several times over: there was no chest of drawers, there was no trash can, and, his paws being chained to a wall, couldn't even leap up.
"Ah, awake at last..." He turned his head around, but couldn't see who was speaking. All he could hear was the soft sound of her feet on the stone floor, and her light, mocking voice. "Attacking a group of more or less defenceless Canines in the wilderness with a large, ungainly weapon... You should thank us with all your will that your captors brought you here, instead of leaving a corpse to rot on the plains."
"What, 'us?' Where am I? What have you done with my sword? My stuff? My clothes??"
"Be silent!" The Dog, (he was sure of it) hit him across the face with some kind of strap. He hissed out and tried to spit on her, but had used up most of his saliva in the hiss. Instead, he shouted out, "I will never surrender! Let me out of here!"
The Dog gave a theatrical sigh. "You really don't know where you are, do you? You are in the dungeons of Ca'vul, the most prosperous city on the Southern Continent. You aren't going to leave with an attitude like that: you must learn some manners, or we will teach them to you."
She leaned down to whisper softly in his ear, "And it looks like we have much to teach you."
The Cat smirked at the Dog's threat. "Hah," he spat, "when I get my sword back, I'll teach you somAAkth!"
The Dog gave a well-aimed slap to his testicles, sending a searing pain through his loins.
"If all goes well, you will never see your sword again. For all your acts of violence, you now lie before me, an untrained slave, fit for nothing but the worst punishments that our cruellest minds can envision. If you show us that you're better than that, we will be gentler to you, and might even sell you of to an Owner. If not..." She ended the sentence with another harsh slap, turning the Feline's hiss of defiance into another loud scream.
The Dog stepped back to come full into his view: very light brown fur, turning to white nearer to her body's line of symmetry. She had a light garment of transparent silk over a tight mass of straps and buckles. Resting atop her head was a black headband, made to look like some mockery of a crown or tiara.
With a sudden, horrible chill, he realized he couldn't take his sights off of her, even though she was the focus of all his current hatred.
"Yes. I, a female, have power over you. Why not give up and enjoy yourself? There is no one to rescue you; the best you can hope for is someone to take you in and order you about."
He didn't dare hiss again, but still shouted out, "I am an Aetroziythun! I follow the ideal of True Power, and never surrender! My name is-"
"Your name is slave, toy, or whatever your Mistress decides!" the Dog interrupted. "For now, you don't deserve a name; perhaps, when your training is finished, your Owner will see fit to give you a new one. But that won't be for a while."
There was a soft knock at the door. "But then, all this resistance and whatever you mentioned must have made you hungry. After all, you haven't eaten for a while. Let me show you what you will be like after you learn to give yourself up, or after we have broken you."
She opened the door, and a male Feline tottered in. He couldn't see much of his face, as it was covered by a black mask, concealing everything but his vision straight ahead; the mask was crowned by a white, frilly headband. His body was wrapped in a black and white straitjacket, and a tray with a plate of fruit and a glass of water was secured to his body with leashes and ropes. Because of his garb, which included platform-heels, each step he took required deliberate care. The Dog leaned over the tray and looked it over carefully, then nodded in approval.
Meanwhile, the Cat tied to the table just looked on in confused terror. The Dog - the Torturer, he thought to himself - can force this on someone? His mouth hung open as the Torturer took the glass of water off the tray and gave her slave a patronizing pat on the head.
"I see you've learned to hold your tongue," the Torturer commented. (She must be using a mind-control spell on him he thought. How else would she get a Feline like that, or a male to dress as a female for that matter?) "If you keep up that good behaviour, I might let you sample one of these." She took a green, ovoid fruit off of the tray, and took a quick, savage bite out of one end. "The Ymi fruit needs plenty of water and a steady, temperate climate," she explained after swallowing. "It therefore grows only in the central areas of the Southern continent and both tastes and feels just like the flesh I'm sure you've feasted upon before now."
"I-I don't want your fruit," he distractedly responded, not taking his eyes off the once-proud Feline, reduced to some kind of mobile furniture!
"Ah, now here is an automatic refusal, brought on by an acquired inability to take orders. You will get no fruit until you learn to beg for it." The Dog raised a paw and gave a snap; the Feline in the restrictive getup strode carefully toward her, but stopped abruptly when she held her outstretched paw in front of his face. He stopped so abruptly that one of the grapes on the plate tumbled off it, bounced over the side of the tray, and dropped to the floor of the chamber.
The Torturer tore the tray away from the slave, scattering food all over the floor. "Awful, naughty slave!" she scolded. "Clumsy? In front of your Mistress? How dare you!"
The bound Feline stumbled to the floor, quaking with fear. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" The Torturer pulled the zipper on his mask open.
"Please, Mistress, I didn't mean to- I don't deserve-"
"Don't tell me what you don't deserve!" She turned away and pulled a bench out into the center of the chamber, beckoning her slave over to it.
The slave fell down on his knees over the bench, mewling pitifully. The Dog reached over to one wall and picked up something long and straight.
"First of all, you deserve a caning. Our new arrival will be so kind as to suggest how much punishment you will receive. Hmm?" She put a paw theatrically up to her ear.
"No!" he shouted, after thinking his response through. "I do not want you to hurt this Cat. This whole system is sick, and I want out now!"
She nodded thoughtfully and said, "Ah, thank you. That was twenty words right there? A useful, usual number. Twenty strokes, slave; start counting!"
SMACK
"One! Th-thank you..."
SMACK
"Agh! Two! Thank... you..."
SMACK
The Aetroziythun Feline tried to look away, but could not. He had seen death before, but not torture, and found it terrifying and somewhat depraved. The swish of the cane, the loud noise it made, and the sound of the slave being hit over and over again: he could imagine himself shouting for the cruel Canine to stop, but he never really could.
SMACK
Aaagh! T-t-wen...ty... Uhgh... Th-thank you! Thank you Mistress, please stop!"
The Dog gave a mockery of a loving smile. "Have you learned your lesson, slave?" she asked as she ran her paw around his hips.
"Ooh yes, Mistress, yes." The Cat got off the bench, knelt on the floor, and nuzzled against the Torturer's feet. "Is there any way I can redeem myself?"
"Hmm, I think you already know the answer to that..." She slowly walked circles around her slave, reaching around her garb as she did so. "Lift that skirt and raise that tail, slave, and I'll mount you like the little bitch you are."
"Whazza-wha?" He grumbled to himself, but looked on in confused fear: the Dog pulled out a long, black phallus, and affixed it securely to her garb. To his further astonishment, her subservient thrall lifted up his tail to expose his bare hips, revealing the angry red-and-purple stripes on the Cat's orange fur.
"Mmm, please, Mistress..." the slave whimpered like a frightened female.
"Say it," she ordered.
The slave shivered for a second. "Fight it," the chained Feline thought to himself, "I can feel your True Power, even here! Don't give yourself up; she gets power from subjugating you! Don't... Don't..."
"Please, Mistress, yiff me like a bitch in heat! Oh, please!"
The Dog let out a triumphant laugh, pushing the slick, varnished shlong deep inside her slave. She repeated the process, slowly and deliberately for the Feline's viewing pleasure. Despite the erection he felt beginning, he sank to his knees, still chained to the wall, his stomach and other organs quivering. The Canine began to scream out profanities at her slave, who still held his rear up high.
He had never comprehended anything in the scene before him, and had trouble comprehending it as he saw it. The slave began to moan, his tail twitching in the air, and gasped out, "M-mistress! I-I-I'm close!"
Quickly, with grace he'd never seen on a Canine, she flipped her slave over, sitting against her thighs, jamming the dildo as far into him as it could go, facing the chained Feline with his penis up in the air. "Now cum, slave!" she barked.
Her slave's face wore an expression of fear, of pain, as if his current treatment was as bad as the caning; still, his white, creamy seminal load came forth in small gouts. Though it seemed to be aimed towards him, most of the gooey fluid landed on the floor, and on the slave's body. As an afterthought, the Torturer pummelled her phallus into him a few more times, then unhinged it from her garb and stood up.
"I have further business to attend to now," she stated. "You must keep our new acquisition company, while cleaning up that mess you made. If I see my toy on the floor when I return, instead of in you, you shall not get another climax for a fortnight!"
She stormed out of the room and closed the door with a loud slam, leaving both Cats in the perpetual twilight. That horrible Canine gone, he could finally close his eyes and groan out his disgust.
After a few seconds of silence, an odd sound nagged at his ears. He slowly opened his eyes, catching sight of the slave Cat, licking up his mess with his tongue. "Say, would you please lick up what I got on myself? I can't reach it, and I don't want to get beaten again."
"Wh-why?"
"Mistress uses me as her cleaning maid; she beats me if I fail in my duties."
The Feline slowly drew on the hope, the confidence, the _over_confidence that was Aetroziythun True Power, focusing it on the Cat next to him. He would show the Cat the True Power of friendship, showing him the truth of things. Once he had broken the spell, they could escape together. "Can't you see?" he plead. "That Canine has taken control of your mind. I can help you be free, be rid of her. Who is she?"
The slave started to laugh. "Mistress has power over my body; I gave her my mind many years ago, and in all that time, hasn't told me her real name. Torturers rarely do, so she is Mistress to me. She thinks an orange Cat is boring, so she makes me wear these," he said proudly, showing off his mask and straitjacket.
He felt the dread begin to grow within him again. "G-gave? Well, she will not break my resolve as easily."
"Break? Oh no, this is Ca'vul! Having anything shattered is a sign of disrespect. Torturers merely bend their slaves, most usually into the positions where they belong. Besides," he added contemptuously, "killing unarmed Canines is a way of breaking them beyond repair; be thankful you're here, so that you can learn some respect for life."
"But I never killed any of them! I follow the ideals of True Power, I don't kill unprovoked! But when I get my sword back..."
"Hee hee! Wait until Mistress hears your plans! I meant you need to respect the lives of others as well! They never kill or render useless: you'll just be bent and controlled until you're even more pathetic than I am! Mistress loves me because I obey her without fuss. She left me with you so you could learn from me. Besides, don't try tempting me because you're bad at it. Maybe, when they're through with you, we can please Mistress together!"
He struggled at his bonds, trying not to believe what this deranged slave was saying. "No! I'm sane and you won't stop me! Let me out! Let me out! I'll kill yo-what?!"
The Cat began to laugh again: that skin-crawling, mocking laugh. "Oh, Mistress is sane; I'm sane; you're not! I'm healthy, I'm aware, I'm property of Mistress: you're violent, you want to injure Mistress! She won't just beat you, she'll take away everything you have! Then you'll have no choice but to love her like I do, and we'll be happy together! Be sane with me!"
The slave broke into laughter again, but was nearly drowned out in the soundproofed room by a frustrated scream.
The Dog slammed the door behind her, and fantasized dreamily about the day she'd toss her slave on her cushion, do away with all that difficult restraining equipment, and snuggle with him all night. "Ahh, I love my work!"
"Oh," she stopped herself, "I'd better report my findings to Irel-"
"And you had better be thorough," a contemptuous voice snapped.
The Dog gulped and gave a long, customary bow in the presence of a senior Torturer, thus admitting supplication. "Pardon, Keeper," she said, "it is as you suspected: Aetroziythun. He said so himself, and muttered something about 'True Power'. Is there anything else we should take into account?"
The imperious figure laughed a low, mocking laugh. "In Aetroziythus, the purposes to which their occultism can be put to are dichotomous; 'True Power' is the platitude used by those who want to appear amicable, whereas 'Real Power' is employed by those who are without manners or social graces; a pity, though. He would have been slightly different than the noble idealists I've had to deal with lately."
"Understood, Keeper. Is there any chance he might use it here?"
"No: it is a feature of most of the Northern Continent that the natives have made use of, nothing more. Without it, he has but empty rhetoric and threats." The Dog could almost hear the Keeper of Woe think, but dared not ask.
Finally, the Torturer came to a decision. "Prepare Chamber #14, then let Dunstan out of his cage. Round up a few slaves and prisoners, it doesn't matter who they are, and tell them they are to be the collective entertainment for Ireline, Keeper of Woe."
The Dog gave another bow. "As you wish, Keeper." She hurried on her way, leaving the dimly lit figure alone.
"Aetroziythun..." Ireline, the Keeper of Woe savoured each syllable. "Lost in a seductive bed of depravity, the valiant hero emerges victorious... What a time he shall have!"
Ends the First