The Ahara Chronicles, Chapter Three: The Nature of Mortality
July 17th, 2007
Three fresh young girls, as nubile and buxom as they should be, sit up against cold stone walls, to which they are tied, and tied together to prevent one from escaping at the expense of the others, in the crypt in the old cemetery. The sixth lord Beavan, attired in moth-eaten old frock-coat and black leggings, as one would expect, stands above them with finger to red lips, appraising.
“Damn that baron Skailurker.” He mutters under his breath. For he is finding it hard to choose between these three darlings. Two of them are to be made companions of, leaving the one remaining for their first meal.
He surveys them with the trained eye of one accustomed to the appraisal of potential suitors for well over a hundred years now, but still he has difficulty. Perhaps, he muses, the standard has increased in recent decades, since it was never this hard. See, regard their differences. Neophyte number one is pert, and wears her bonds well, the silken wrists by silken rope together and held out in front, the noose around the neck like lace; she looks up at him with pearly grey eyes, not pleading at all, resigned to whatever the goddess Kismet has granted her; her thin, white frame is not bony, not skeletal, her bottom exaggerated accordingly, her breasts small and firm. And then eyes follow rope along at the neck to virgin number two, an exotic beauty from across the Siriun sea, perhaps from the rich kingdom of Lirania, has a look of defiance on her face, and tugs at her ropes now and again, and her teeth have become jagged from repeated attempts at biting through those wrist-bonds; when her lord looks down at her she looks up in defiance, her black eyes speaking for her gagged mouth. Her dark brown skin gleams beautifully in the torchlight, her generous curves catching flames in the dark. And the third, she looks up wistfully from time to time, as if pleading; such a temperament is one in which the master does not delight, but she is easily the most comely of the three. Her thighs are well firmed and her calves, in his opinion, have just that right mass of muscle to give her real strength while still looking light, her back is smooth and sculpted in two by her slender spine, and the eyes, blue, blue as the sky he once gazed upon when he was alive. And she also wears her bonds well, he thinks, does not struggle but slips into them, becomes accustomed to them as if she had been fitted into them by her own personal tailor. Yes, he thinks, perhaps I shall be her own personal tailor.
