Chosen: Chapter 18 – Merchandise

The sound of water dripping down onto the stones had been soothing for about fifteen minutes. Then it had gotten annoying… the ceaseless small splashing sounds echoing in the darkness completely impossible to ignore. That had lasted for an hour. After most of a day, it had gone from obnoxious to maddening.

Yuki sat in the dark, slowly clenching and unclenching her fist in unconscious rhythm to the dripping. Her nails cut furrows in her palms that rapidly healed but let her blood join the wet waterdrop sounds. Her blue eyes stared at nothing in particular, looking at the dark cave wall with no focus… the echo of the waterfall only a distant roar this deep inside, though the water still leaked further in. Everything hurt, deep inside. Too many pains to take account of in her mind. She’d ran, leaving Merielle and Shura behind. That didn’t trouble her too much… they weren’t in any danger or anything, except the danger of awkward questions, but it still felt like abandoning them to leave. She tried not to think about that. She also tried not to think about the frea… Seo-yun, who was probably still hunting her. Mostly, though, she tried to distract herself from the hollow, sucking feeling deep inside her where witchfire should be. She’d ruined everything.

Again.

She had almost forgotten what it felt like. How could she have done that? It had been hundreds of years like this after the Mas… the vampire… had stolen her magic and her soul from her. It had been a constant, hollow freezing feeling on the inside, an empty place that always felt like it wanted to pull the rest of her in after it to fill the hole.

She’d used almost everything she had on that blast. It was almost as little of her power left now as she’d had when she’d been a slave… she probably couldn’t bring out enough flame currently to light a candle. She was relying on pieces of her soul again, leeching the foxfire right out of it to power her illusions just like she had then, and it hurt deep down… but even so, it felt great compared to the pain of… loss.

Yuki huddled under her tails, wrapping them around herself. It would be dark soon. When it was, she could sneak back in and find Merielle. Then they could go, before that bitch Seo-yun and her phoenix partner found them again. Before anyone else could hurt them. That would be best. Yuki didn’t understand how the woman was even still alive… everything about her defied what she knew about magic and foxfire. It was enough to make her think that Seo-yun had been lying to her back at the Paradisium… but no, the nogitsune had sensed and observed what was wrong with her even then. With no foxfire and no fur, she had been a bag stretched to bursting, filled with too many souls and ripping apart at the seams. She should be dead: Instead, she was here, and filled with power and ruining what little chance Yuki had to claim a life for herself again.

Because of what you did to her.

Yuki squeezed her eyes shut and tightened her tails around her, turning viciously away from that thought… but none of the ways she had to distract herself were any better. Anytime she tried to think about anything else she was overwhelmed by the sense of loss… that she’d had something, briefly, and then it was gone.

Gods it had felt good to be home again.

For a century of wandering, Yuki had called wherever she slept home… convinced herself of it. Then, when she started making a new life for herself with Merielle, they had needed to move around several times before arriving in their current location. That had been home, she’d insisted. It had only taken a few months here to prove that that was a lie, that her heart had never left this village. Hanei had always been her home… and being back there had felt right on a level that was hard to explain.

It couldn’t have lasted. She knew that when she started. She knew she was being selfish even trying to. Even with so many people there being young, there were still enough elders and records to show that Yusika had never really been there… and only her connections to Hanabi, Shura, and literal divine intervention in the form of her sister had averted disaster until today. Even then, there had been slip ups and close calls… Shura had seen through her, and the fact that her confrontation had ended with an apprentice rather than a frenzied escape from the town had been more a matter of luck than skill. It didn’t matter how good it felt to help again, to be where she belonged, to build something again rather than destroy it. It couldn’t have been kept. It was always going to fall apart.

But it still hurt.

“Leave me alone,” she said flatly without bothering to look up. Her voice echoed in the small cavern and was answered by silence. After a few seconds she grimaced, and when she spoke again, there was more than a hint of growl to her tone. “Yes, I know you’re there. Don’t be.”

From out of nowhere came a voice, small and hesitant. “Are… are you really Yuki?”

The dark furred fox flinched; she recognized the speaker. “Yeah, that’s me,” she said, her irritation replaced by weariness. “Yuki, the exiled White Fox of Hanei. Do I live up to your nightmares, Hanabi?”

The girl’s illusory veil fell away, revealing her standing near the exit. Hanabi wore an uneasy expression, and she fidgeted in place, as though ready to bolt away at a moment’s notice. “Actually,” she said quietly, “you’re usually a little taller in my nightmares.”

Yuki barked a small, humorless laugh. “That’s me, always a disappointment. Merielle and Shura…”

“They’re fine,” Hanabi told her, and the nogitsune felt a little bit of the tension ease from her shoulders. “Shura was talking to Seo-yun about, well, about you. And Meri looked like she was about to get into a shouting match with Sam. So that just left me to go looking for you. Meri was convinced that you wouldn’t have run off very far, that you wouldn’t leave the two of them behind.” The young fox looked down at her feet. “I… I was kinda hoping she was wrong,” she admitted.

A phoenix named Sam? For some reason, that struck Yuki as being almost as absurd as everything going on with the glowing red and white fox. And she couldn’t help noticing that both names rolled off of Hanabi’s tongue with easy familiarity. “I didn’t think anyone would find me in here,” she said slowly. “They never did back when… before.”

“They never found me either,” Hanabi said. She seemed to perk up slightly as she talked, and though she remained as far away from Yuki as the space would allow, she didn’t look like she was on the verge of running away anymore. “This used to be my favorite hiding spot when I was a kit, usually after I’d done something that pissed everyone off. Even when both my dads were on the warpath, I could always come back here and be alone for a while. So it seemed as good a place as any to start searching for you. If you weren’t here, I hadn’t decided yet if I was going to look elsewhere or just hide in here myself.”

She hesitated. “Were you… ever going to tell people? About who you were? Other than Shura, I mean.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Yuki said bitterly. “Why the hell would I ever want to be Yuki when I could be Yusika instead? And I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. I’ve been here for months, and you didn’t tell me that you knew a phoenix and a… a whatever the fuck that thing is.”

Hanabi frowned. “Sam’s not a real phoenix,” she said, in the same way she might have mentioned that water was wet or the sun was bright. “And Seo-yun… I was waiting until she came back to tell you about her. You’ve talked before about how much you used to look up to Seijun, and you seemed really sad when you found out she wasn’t here anymore, so I thought it would be a nice surprise.”

Seijun…? “Wait…” Yuki said, her mouth dry. No. That couldn’t mean what it sounded like. She met Hanabi’s eyes. “What does Seijun have to do with anything…?”

“Seo-yun is her daughter,” Hanabi said simply.

Nausea rose up sharply, accompanied by hot shame and guilt, and Yuki turned her head away just in time to be violently ill. Seijun had a daughter. A daughter that had come to her for help, and she’d… she coughed and spat out more bile, then wiped a shaking hand across her mouth. Why did she always have to fuck everything up?

By the time she had her stomach under control, Hanabi was staring at her with an odd expression that she didn’t want to think too hard about. “I’ll leave,” Yuki said hoarsely. She needed to get as far away from here as possible. “Just… just let me pass a message for Red, so she can meet me outside of the village. And one for Shura… to say goodbye.” She didn’t know whether the blue haired fox would leave Hanei with her if asked, and she didn’t want to find out. Leaving with a nogitsune would mean becoming an outcast of the village, and Yuki was responsible for creating far too many of those already. Better for everyone if Shura stayed where she belonged.

She let her head sink down to look at the defiled cave floor, lost in her inner loathing, and it took her a minute to realize that Hanabi had asked her a question. Yuki lifted her head back up to give the girl a haggard look. She expected the fox to be either angry at the idea of doing her a favor or relieved at the idea of her going away, or both, but the young woman seemed to be thinking hard about something, and her face showed little outward emotion. “What?” she asked her weakly.

“How does it end?” Hanabi repeated.

“How… does what end?” Yuki asked, confused.

“Your story,” the white haired girl said. “The one you’ve been telling us on and off all this time.”

Yuki tried to shake off the darkness and think clearly again. “I… I already finished it,” she reminded her. “Inari exiled us and we left. There’s nothing after that worth talking about.”

Hanabi held her gaze. Yuki had seen that serious look in the normal buoyant girl’s eyes only a few times before, usually when she was talking about the horrors she’d experienced thanks to Paragon and the Paradisium. “But you still weren’t a nogitsune then. Not like you are now. What happened after you left Hanei?”

Yuki sighed. “Stupid decisions and terrible mistakes. What does it matter?”

“For most of my life,” Hanabi said, “I could never make up my mind whether I wanted to know every single detail about you, or forget that you’d ever existed. But I was never in the middle. You can’t leave a story half told, Yuki.”

The nogitsune’s natural reflex was to tell her to shut up and mind her own business… but she was right. This was where Yuki had vanished from history, for better or for worse. No one but her knew what had happened after that, and for five centuries there’d been no one around to tell, let alone anyone who’d care. She thought she’d been happy to keep that way, but the idea of finally getting it off her shoulders… “I tell you the rest,” Yuki said, “and then you take my messages to Merielle and Shura. Deal?” Hanabi nodded. “Alright… a few days after we were exiled, I was in Shiyomi, doing my best to drink myself to death…”

Elsewhere, Japan 1340

Yuki immediately realized what the man had meant about experiencing the pain of her ordeal. Her loins burned, every step she took aggravating the pain of her rape. It was slowly receding as she healed, but the piercings throbbed all the more with every movement. Outside it was cold, just a few hours from dawn. Yuki shivered in the chill air, her feet wet from the dew on the grass as she was pulled forward and out of town, unable to make a sound, unable to do more than moan and pull at her leash as she staggered in pain, helplessly forward. Kuro noticed her discomfort and laughed. “I’ll bet that makes your nipples hard,” he said, glancing at the cooling metal impaling them. He jerked her toward him and fondled her breasts, tweaking her erect and swollen nipples.

She winced in pain, her nipples still inflamed from the brutal piercing the man had subjected her to. Kuro chuckled. “Oh, fox… I’d like to spend more time with you, but there’s an appointment to keep.” He stepped forward, pulling her after him. The chains about her ankles clanked as she moved. Normally her long legs would have easily outpaced the man, but those chains prevented her from taking more than a half stride. Her tails were bound together and they felt like a lead weight, making her balance awkward and making taking short steps a nightmare for her. She stumbled and almost fell as the man pulled especially hard, and he had to halt while she recovered. “Clumsy bitch. I thought kitsune were supposed to be agile.”

He laughed at his joke and moved toward the road and away from the town. Staggering along in his wake and wracked with pain, Yuki tried to think ahead… to plan, to wonder where he was taking her. He had said slavers… She knew nothing of slavers operating near the town. The town’s lord was active in protecting his land from such men from outside… but apparently she was too innocent and out of touch with the darkness to be found here. It seemed that Kuro had managed to find some.

They traveled along the road for perhaps a mile, the only sound on the road the constant singing of the nightingales along the road. The sharp stones cut into Yuki’s bare feet with each step, making her long even more for her skin. Without warning the man suddenly left the road, cutting into the woods and following a narrow path through an area of large trees and dense forest.

Yuki was forced to follow, stumbling along in his wake, tripping over roots and fallen branches. The path was ill-defined and would have been hard to follow even in broad daylight; had it not been for her better-than-human eyesight she would have been at an even greater disadvantage, and would no doubt have fallen far more often. As it was the ankle chains continued to make agile movement difficult and she stumbled several times, cutting and scraping her knees. Each time Kuro jerked on the chain he held, cursing her clumsiness. For some reason, after all the time he had spent raping her. he certainly seemed to be in a hurry now.

They hurried on through the night, Kuro pulling impatiently on the chain, and Yuki staggering exhausted behind him. Finally, deep in the forest, the man slowed and came to a complete halt. “Alright, let’s get you set up, like they said.” The fox was already chained and bound, so the muscular blacksmith didn’t have too much difficulty forcing her to the ground on hands and knees. More ropes followed, wrapped around her arms and breasts and waist down to her thighs and ankles. The ends of the ropes he wrapped around a few iron stakes before hammering them into the ground on either side of the kitsune, binding her tightly to the ground.

Yuki glared up at him as he pulled the gag out of her mouth. “I’m going to kill you for this,” she growled.

“Unlikely, since you’re never going to see me again,” Kuro said with a laugh. He stroked her hair softly, brushing it out of her face for several seconds before he pulled her back by it, making her arch her back as he drew it towards her bound tails and wrapped it around one of them, knotting it off before adding a rope to solidify the tie. “Now stay quiet, slut.”

Then Kuro sat there, waiting, while the sky slowly turned from pitch black to gray. The birdsong of the nightingales continued, eerily cheerful in her misery. Slowly, Kuro turned in a complete circle, scanning the woods impatiently. “Alright, damn you. Where are you hiding? Come out… I got no time for your damned games. You have to be here by now.”

For a few seconds there was no answer, and then there was movement to one side of the small clearing where the man had stopped, and a tall figure stepped into view. “Just making sure you brought what was promised.” The newcomer wore a dark cloak with a hood pulled up to hide his features and he spoke Japanese with an accent… Chinese, Yuki thought. “I was here before you were. Cutting it a little close, smith?” He peered toward Yuki. “This is the merchandise? You could have taken better care of it…”

“She’s intact enough,” Kuro growled. “A purebred fox bitch like her will fetch a fine price anyway, touched or not.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Let me see her,” the tall figure ordered. There was a flicker of fire and a torch crackled to life. The man approached and held up the torch allowing the light to fall across her battered body. A frown came to his face as he looked over the athletic kitsune in her bondage. “You’ve treated her like a cheap whore,” the man growled. Although the light illustrated her well enough, Yuki could see nothing of the slaver’s face. “I’ll get less than half what she might have been worth.”

He stepped closer and ran his fingers over her shoulder and down one muscular arm. “Strong though,” he mused. “Might be worth something if a buyer wants to have her fight.” Yuki tried not to cringe as the slaver inspected her body like a hunk of meat, but it became especially hard when he moved his hand over her washboard stomach and up to her breasts. “Why did you pierce her nipples and cunt? And with such poor quality metal?” He flicked the metal piercings and Yuki just barely stopped herself from screaming, letting out a small, stifled moan instead. “These will have to be replaced.”

The slaver finally finished his appraisal and stepped back. “I’ll give you 25 mon and not a rice kernel more. Argue with me and you can keep her.”

“Like hell… this fox is the hottest thing in Japan!” Kuro cursed. “Look at those tits. They’re firm as ripe melons. And I can attest to the fact that her cunt and ass are as tight as a sword rusted in its sheath.”

Yuki listened in humiliation as the man and the slaver discussed her merits and tossed offers back and forth. She had no illusions that she could escape, not right now… she flexed against her bonds, pulling at them, but the knots were good and the stakes were driven in deep. After the march she was even more exhausted than before… there was absolutely no flex in her bondage. Instead, she was forced to listen with growing dread as the bargaining moved toward a conclusion.

“Seventy mon,” the slaver said, “and the secret of what you used to drug her.”

“I don’t have the recipe, but I have some leftovers,” the man replied, fishing in his pouch and producing a small packet containing ground up powder. “Burn this and make her inhale it.”

The slaver took the pouch and spilled the ground up herbs and leaves into his hand. He considered for a moment. “These will do. Seventy then.”

“Done,” Kuro replied. He grinned in satisfaction as the slaver counted the coins onto a string and laid them into his hand. “Goodbye darling. I really would have liked a longer acquaintance, but I’ve got things to do back in town now that I’m the only smith again. I hope you enjoy your new life.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness, his laughter finally dying away.

“Wretched man,” the slaver said, amused as he settled in behind Yuki. “And a fool, too. He knows very little about you foxes, does he?” The slaver’s finger slid over Yuki’s pussy, pushing its way inside and finding, to his delight, that she was just as he expected… a virgin once more. “He doesn’t know I could fuck you senseless day in and day out and still sell you for full value in Ningbo… even if there wasn’t a woman in China with a standing offer for any captive kitsune.” He snorted. “Lucky, too… I suppose I am anxious to explore your talents…”

Yuki moaned as his cock forced its way into her, his hands on her hips as he slid deeper into her pussy and popped her hymen for a second time tonight. He was trying to hold her still, let him shove forward even more viciously, but she still slid… and it put a strain on all of her limbs at once, squeezed them and her breasts as the ropes staking her to the ground tightened. It felt like a hundred hands painfully squeezing her flesh as he thrust into her, sheathing himself all the way in her body as each shove caused her agony across her skin and muscle.

“Oh, you are nice and tight,” the slaver said, groaning with pleasure. He put a foot down on one of the ropes and Yuki couldn’t help herself but cry out as he did, the ropes suddenly squeezing her so hard that they sank deep into her muscle in multiple places. Her breasts felt like they were going to pop as the cords constricted, squeezing her viciously as he rode her fast and hard in the waning night.

He didn’t take very long… it was clear that the slaver was eager as he slammed in and out as quickly as he could, fucking her like he was trying to break her with his cock. After just a few minutes, and a few of the fox’s screams, he drove himself in hard enough that it almost ripped one of the stakes out as he came, his cock pressed right up against her cervix as Yuki felt the disgusting warmth filled her, and she let out a small, exhausted growl of fury as he pulled out and spent the rest of his seed on her bare ass and her back.

The slaver panted for a few moments, his hands rhythmically squeezing her ass and hips, until he lurched to his feet. “Time to go,” he said as he checked the bonds on her wrists and tails, seeing if they were going to be able to keep her captive. He apparently found them sufficient because the next thing the large man did was take a firm hold of the leash around her neck before he began prying up the stakes. Yuki started struggling the instant the last one came out, hoping she might be able to squirm away before he was ready, but the leash was not so easily yanked out of his hands… her breath left in a rush as he pulled her back by the neck before kicking her in the stomach, sending her collapsing to the ground. “Stop that,” he growled as he pulled her back unsteadily to her feet. “And walk, slut.”

Then he tugged on the chain and led Yuki off to her new life as a slave.

“Walk in front of me, fox,” the man growled as he pushed her forward. “Follow the trail. I’ll tell you where to turn.” They walked in silence for a little while before he spoke again. “You have a name, slave? Some damned flowery mess, I expect?”

Yuki narrowed her eyes. “Go fuck yourself,” she growled, stepping over a root she spotted only at the last instant. The trail was dark; the light of the moon not nearly enough to provide decent illumination. Her eyesight, while better than human, wasn’t that much better in this form, and the trail was twisting and gnarled.

The slaver chuckled. “You have spirit. I enjoy defiance… but I enjoy most when I watch it go away, and you learn your place.” He shoved her forward again, sending her stumbling before she caught her balance again. “You are now a slave. I can, and will, do whatever I want to you. From now on you never speak another word to me unless it is accompanied by the word ‘master.’ Do you understand me?” There was a sharp jerk on the chain that almost pulled her off her feet.

Yuki was silent, but apparently he wasn’t going to accept that. The yank at her collar came again, but Yuki was prepared for it this time… she didn’t stumble or fall. Unfortunately, that just meant that she was being choked instead, as the large man didn’t stop pulling. “Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn,” he mused as he kept pulling. “If I have to drag you to the river, I will, fox… and I promise you’ll wake up feeling like I dragged you over every root and branch in the forest. Defiance will only result in punishment.”

She refused to give in, however. The man seemed like he was in a hurry, so Yuki called his bluff, even as her lips started to turn blue and her eyes bloodshot, and eventually he sighed. “I will enjoy taming you,” he mused as he kicked her again, forcing her forward once more.

Their trek through the forest resumed. Yuki responded to the orders of her master when the trail divided or it became so faint as to hardly be discernible, less to be obedient than because the only other alternative was to trip. Several times she and her captor were forced to walk through the trees and brush, the rough bark and leaves scraping against her bare skin, but the slaver seemed to know where they were going… directing her this way and that as she stumbled through the thick undergrowth.

By this time her exhaustion was returning in force. Already filthy and worn down from her treatment at the hands of Kuro, she became increasingly bedraggled and uncoordinated as she was pushed forward. Her hair had long ago unraveled from where the slaver had bound it together, leaving her white mane a tangled mass that swirled around her torso and seemed to catch on every branch of every tree. In spite of the cool temperatures of early morning the kitsune all but dripped perspiration, and her breathing became increasingly labored as she was pushed to the edge of physical collapse by abuse and the march.

At this point, it was more stubbornness that was keeping her going… an unwillingness to humiliate herself by falling over. ‘Don’t dare stop,’ Yuki thought to herself as she drifted in and out of awareness, all but sleepwalking, stepping to the rhythm of the mocking nightingale song. ‘No telling what this bastard will do if you do. While you’re at his mercy, you have to keep going. One more step. One more step. One more-’

A jerk on the chain brought her to a sudden halt, almost pulling off her feet. “Far enough,” the slaver cursed. “Are you trying to drown yourself? That would be a poor use of my investment in you…”

Yuki looked in front of her and saw that she had almost stepped off the edge of a riverbank. A dozen yards below her the dark waters of a major stream flowed past. Had she fallen in, the weight of her chains would almost certainly have taken her right to the bottom. Of course, that almost seemed preferable to what this nameless slaver had in mind for her… but Yuki was not going to give up that easily. She was going to get Kuro for this if it was the last thing she did…

But in the meantime she was the slaver’s to control. He tugged the leash to the side, directing her along the riverbank to a place where the high bluff above the river dipped… and waiting in the black water like a ghost, there was a long, black hulk floating in the river, the pitch dark shape tied up to the bank. For all her life she had never been on a boat… had never been more than thirty or forty miles from Hanei. As she staggered toward it, Yuki made out motion aboard the deck, and a few second later a low voice called out. “Feng? That you?”

“Who else?” the captor asked, continuing to direct the kitsune forward. “And I’ve got us one more passenger.”

A light flared as a shielded lantern was unshuttered, letting a thin beam fall across her. “Oh ho!” exclaimed the voice from the deck. “What have we here? So the legends are true then? A real fox bitch, just like you said… and a mighty impressive one at that.” He gave a leering, mocking laugh from the darkness. “I see you’ve got her stripped for action.”

“Indeed, Quan… we’re going to have some fun with this one. We get to enjoy her and still deliver her intact when we make it to port.” He pushed her further down the shore, the lantern following them as they walked. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re under way. In the meantime, let’s get our new guest to her quarters for later. She’s been somewhat… used up… and needs a little rest before providing us with entertainment.”

Quan appeared a little mystified by what Feng had said, but he nodded his head and lowered out a gangplank, helping escort her up the wooden board. “I’ll take her below as you suggest, Feng, and then you can tell me about your prize. She looks to be a most interesting addition to our merchandise.”

“More interesting than you can imagine,” Feng agreed with a chuckle. He watched with undisguised lust as Yuki was led away by the other man and quickly pulled out of sight.

Quan used the rope lead to direct the helpless kitsune toward the hold. Her irons clanked as she stumbled after him and he stopped just before the dark opening, pausing to examine her chains and ropes. “I suppose I’ll have to remove those,” he said, rubbing his chin. “It’ll be easier to spread those long legs of yours once they’re gone… and to get you up and down the ladder.”

Yuki said nothing. All she was thinking of was escape. If the irons were gone she might have a chance… and she meant to take it.

“You don’t talk much do you?” Quan asked, sneering as he began undoing her bonds… but to her regret, not many of them. He released her hands from behind her back but didn’t take the shackles off, leaving her still quite vulnerable. “Guess that’s not important as long as you do what I tell you. It’s certainly not your conversational skills anyone here is interested in, anyway.” He pointed to the dark opening in the deck. “Get down there and don’t try anything stupid. I’ve got the rope in my hand and I’ll haul you back up by the neck if you give me any trouble.”

Yuki growled, but she saw little option but to do as she was told. She seethed with anger at being so callously treated, but there was nothing she could do in her present state, with barely a whisper of fire, no energy, and bound limbs. She needed time to rest, to regain her strength, to recover… and more importantly she needed to be loosed from the shackles. If she was compliant enough she hoped that she might lull her captors into a false sense of security, give her a chance to show them how much more dangerous she was than they thought.

Negotiating the ladder with her hands and feet chained was not easy, but by going to her knees she was able to swing her feet into the hatchway and find the rungs of the ladder. There was just enough slack between her ankles for her feet to move from one rung to the next and she slowly and awkwardly worked her way down the ladder. As she did so, however, she became conscious of a monstrous stench. She knew at once what it was and she was almost sick at the thought of what she was getting into. The interior of the ship stank of vomit, urine, feces, sweat, cum, and the general stink of unwashed bodies. She could hear them as well: the unfortunate captives of the slavers. Some cried out for water, others cried to be released, and still others simply cried. It was a ghastly sound and an even worse smell and she had to fight hard to keep from vomiting herself.

Quan followed her into the hold, his hand still on the rope around her neck. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Yuki could make out a row of slaves on either side of the boat’s hull. The boat was not particularly large and the hapless slaves were stacked three deep by means of platforms set one above the other on either side of a walkway that ran most of the way fore and aft.

It was a horrible existence for all of the hapless captives, but much worse for those in the middle and bottom rows. They were subjected to whatever fell from those of the top and middle rows… part of the source of the stench, no doubt. There was no way any of the slaves could change his or her position… Each one was shackled by the ankle to the bulkhead by a heavy iron.

She noticed that Quan had tied a handkerchief over his nose and mouth to help filter out some of the stench. Probably he had soaked it in something to help alleviate the almost overwhelming odor, even with his merely human nose. Yuki, however, was exposed to its full force and she felt her senses reeling, struck dizzy by the stench. “We muck it out once a day once we’re moving and change the position of the slaves. Those that are on top get moved to the bottom and the other two rows move up one.”

Yuki had no idea why the slaver explained this to her. It was almost as if he was proud of the arrangement he and his companions had arranged for their pathetic victims, of the misery he kept them in. Despite herself, she wondered what level she was going to be chained on. In the dim light she was able to make out that many of the slaves were young women, though there were a few boys. All of them young, and from what she could see they appeared healthy considering the circumstances. Most of them were probably refugees… that was why they were preying on this area, no doubt.

She got her answer as he led her farther down the walkway… none of them. She saw that at the very end of the hold there was a cage with iron bars. It stood only about chest high, forcing the four nude young Japanese women inside it to crouch or sit. All of these women were young and quite attractive… definitely the most beautiful of the captives the slavers had taken. Each of them looked up with an air of resignation and fear as Yuki and Quan approached.

“Don’t worry ladies, your services are not needed right now. Perhaps tonight, so rest up and get your beauty sleep. You won’t get much rest up on deck.” Quan laughed as he said this. Yuki had the overwhelming urge to kick him in the balls and would have if it had been possible, but the chains prevented any action other than complete compliance. Reaching the cage, Quan stepped to one side, and producing a key unlocked a hatch just big enough to allow her to enter. There was no chance of any of the women in the cage escaping with Quan guarding the opening and nothing Yuki could do except drop to her knees and crawl in with the other women.

Quan slammed the cage door shut as soon as she was inside. “Later, ladies,” he chuckled as he beat a hasty retreat toward the ladder. As offhand as his remarks had been it was clear that he did not like being in the hold any longer than he had to be.

As she clambered up the ladder toward the deck Yuki inspected her prison. She quickly determined that unless she got hold of some tools she was not getting out of the cage unless the slavers let her out. She was strong and fit, but even rested she couldn’t bend inch-thick iron bars. She was relieved, however, to find that the interior of the cage was at least clean, unlike the others.

As if guessing her thoughts one of the other women spoke up. The other women stared at her ears and tails with surprise and more than a little awe through their exhaustion, but this one did not… she didn’t seem all that surprised to run into a kitsune. “One of Inari’s servants?” she asked, hopeful.

Yuki chuckled darkly… of course she would think that. She laughed without amusement, painfully aware of the bitter irony. “Not quite,” she whispered. “Not quite.”

The woman who had spoken appeared a little older than the other three and there was a trace of hardness in her face. For all that, however, she was quite pretty, with long, silky black hair that fell past her shoulders to her full breasts. She was dressed only in a rather tattered skirt that left her shapely torso bare and Yuki couldn’t help noticing that her breasts and arms were marked with bruises. The other women wore the same marks as well, attesting to the fact that they had all been harshly used. “I’m Hina,” the woman said. “You’ll be alright here, at least for a little while, honored fox. The cage is kept clean, and we’re allowed to leave it more often than the other prisoners.”

“Feng and his lot like their whores to be clean when they fuck them,” another of the girls said bitterly.

Hina continued, motioning to the young woman with tanned skin who had spoken. “This here’s Yua, and that’s Sara,” she continued, pointing to a brown-haired girl. “And finally that’s Reiko,” she said indicating another perfectly porcelain skinned, dark haired woman like herself.

The kitsune was silent for a minute. “Yuki,” she said eventually. “You can call me Yuki.”

“Can’t say I’m happy to see someone else added to the cage,” Hina remarked. “It was crowded enough as it was. But I see you’re pretty and strong and you barely seem used yet. You might take some of the strain off us.” She looked at the ground, her lip twisting. “We’ve been used pretty regular. I can tell you it ain’t no fun getting worked over by the bastards that run this boat, especially as I’m not getting paid for it.”

“Don’t include all of us in that,” Reiko said angrily. “We’re not all of us whores. I was betrothed before Feng and the rest took me from my village!”

“We’re all whores now, darling, whether we like it or not,” Hina replied. She sounded resigned to the fact rather than anything else. She certainly didn’t sound pleased for all of the fact that she had probably made a living on her back before the slavers had taken her.

“How long have you been here?” Yuki asked.

“Not long, none of us,” Hina answered. “Feng and his bunch don’t dare stay long in one place. They follow the river downstream, picking up their slave cargo as they go. They only stayed here because there were so many travelers… people still relocating from the fire, I understand. The boat is pretty full now… I doubt they’ll be staying much longer. Feng will probably hightail it for the slave markets in China.”

“Those look painful,” Yua commented. It was the first time she had spoken and her gaze was directed toward the rings piercing Yuki’s swollen areolas.

Yuki grimaced. “They are,” admitted. “The man who sold me to Feng forced them on me. I’m going to rip him to shreds when I next see him.”

“Better you focus on finding a way to escape first,” Hina cautioned. “Be honest, I don’t see any of us getting out of this mess.”

The other women seemed equally resigned to their fates. Yuki expected no more from them than that. None of them had been trained as warriors, none of them had battled monsters out of time. They couldn’t conceive of fighting their way out of their predicament. With her it was a different matter… the slavers didn’t understand what she was capable of. She had very, very, very little fire left, and without her skin she couldn’t get anymore, but she wasn’t running dry… if she could get free of her chains then she had faith that she could find some way of escaping.

Unfortunately, right now she was still very much in the chains… and that put her completely at the mercy of her captors. The best thing she could think of was to take Quan’s advice and get some rest. She needed to recover her strength and sleep seemed the best way of dealing with that.

Just as she thought that, a crew member climbed down the ladder and approached the cage. “Feng said to give you this. Figured you might be a bit thirsty.” He thrust a leather water bag through the bars. “This too,” he added tossing a few hard biscuits into the cage.

The women in the cage immediately snatched up the biscuits, but the slaver stayed by the cage and made sure that Yuki got one as well as a drink of water, then he headed back up to the deck.

“Guess it’s not all bad news having you,” Hina remarked as she chewed on her biscuit. “Food is something we don’t get as much of as we’d like.”

Yuki said nothing as she curled up in one corner of the cage, nibbling on her biscuit… hard and dry and pathetic, but she needed her strength. It was not the most comfortable arrangement, but she was exhausted. The other women settled down next to her… not like they had much choice. In the cramped confines of the cage they were almost on top of one another, but no one complained about a situation they were powerless to change.

Yuki fell asleep almost at once, and although her dreams were hardly peaceful they weren’t any worse than dreams of her sister dying. She managed to stay asleep until a shout from outside the cage awoke her. Quan stood outside along with two other slavers. “Time to wake up, girls. You’re wanted on deck.” The five women stared fearfully through the bars. Quan, however, just grinned at them. “Oh don’t worry you lot,” he said, staring at the other women. “Feng’s giving you the night off. He wants to break in the fox bitch.”

Yuki’s gut clenched at those words. She had no idea how many slavers there were, but being shared by all of them would be an ugly, ugly ordeal. However, she said nothing… every time they took her out of this cage, every time they let her back up to the deck, was just another chance to escape. Not yet, though… instead, she offered no resistance when Quan opened the cage door. There was little point in struggling when she was still chained, still beneath the deck. Being forcefully dragged from the cage would simply get her a beating. She crawled out on her hands and knees, the only real way she could fit through the low entrance, the shackles making her movements awkward.

Once outside, she was immediately pulled to her feet by two of the slavers. “Take her to Feng,” Quan ordered. “I’ll be right up as soon as I check the rest of the cargo.” By “cargo” Yuki supposed that he meant the other slaves. She knew that was all the hapless prisoners were to men like him, simply a form of merchandise to be acquired and then sold.

She was escorted to the ladder and then up to the deck. In spite of the fact that she was shackled, the two beefy slavers took no chances. One went in front of her and the other behind. Despite herself, it annoyed her that the slavers were so careful. It would have annoyed her to be underestimated… but right now that was what she needed. Come on… a single female kitsune should have presented no problem, especially one that was shackled. Just take her for granted and…

As she climbed the ladder, she felt a sharp pain in her right buttock as the man following pinched her. Yuki flushed with fury, and it took all of her self control not to kick him in the face. “She’s got a backside that could crush a walnut,” the slaver laughed. “She’s going to be one damned good fuck.”

The slaver going ahead of her answered with something that Yuki could not quite make out, but he joined his laughter to that of the man who had pinched her. Arriving on deck she found Feng waiting along with several other men. The slaver captain looked at her appraisingly. “You look a little better than when I first saw you,” he commented. “But we’re going to have to do something about those decorations the damned human gave you. I don’t want my most valuable piece of merchandise spoiled.”

“I’m not merchandise,” Yuki protested angrily. “And I never will be no matter what you do to me.”

“The huli jing bitch has a real tongue on her,” one of the other slavers commented. “She needs a lesson in manners.”

“She does at that,” Feng agreed. Without warning he lunged forward and punched Yuki in the stomach. The blow doubled her up and knocked the wind out of her. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath. “Forgotten what I told you already, slut? It’s ‘master’ to a worthless, furry, subhuman bitch like you. You’re a slave and will speak only when spoken to.” He grabbed her by the hair and wrenched her head back, glaring into her face. “Understand?”

“To hell…” Yuki gasped out, “with you…”

He punched her again, driving his fist right into her muscled abdomen. “I suspect it’s going to take you a little while to learn your place,” Feng said with a smirk, “but you will learn, and the first lesson starts tonight. But first I’m going to get rid of that hardware.”

Yuki was led to the center of the boat. It was now early evening, just a few hours from complete darkness. The slavers had chosen an isolated stretch of river to wait out the night. A heavily muscled slaver walked towards the center of the ship and her and Yuki could recognized him as a fellow smith, covered with corded muscles from working metal all day. “Gumo, remove the irons and the decorations,” Feng ordered. “Try not to damage her too much when you do it.”

Yuki was moved over to a bench set in the middle of the deck. No doubt it was usually used by the slavers to shackle their captives. However, on this occasion it was going to be used to remove her shackles instead. Gumo was good at what he did… He used a chisel to open the manacles on her wrists and then proceeded to work on her ankles. That took a little longer as she had to place each ankle on the table while still bound in ropes, but it was still only a matter of moments before the irons were removed.

It was an enormous relief to Yuki to be free of her shackles, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough… they didn’t bother removing all of the ropes, and it seemed they were aware of how dangerous her tails could be… they didn’t release them, keeping them bound tightly together and unable to be used to fight her way free. At least her arms were free, even if two of them held her in place. There were also still the painful decorations to remove from her nipples and clit. While two slavers held her torso and her arms, Gumo used a set of tongs to open the rings and pull the slivers of brass from her flesh.

It was an extremely painful process – the wounds had long since healed shut around the metal and they had to be torn free. Agony flared through Yuki but the stubborn kitsune warrior endured the pain without comment, steeling her features to show nothing… she would not give them the satisfaction. “You are strong,” Feng commented. “That is good; you will last a long time, and a long time is what I and my crew have in mind.”

It was certainly not what Yuki had in mind. Her docility had finally lulled her captors into carelessness. She was still held by her arms by a slaver on either side of her, but their grip had relaxed as Gumo had worked on her, leaning forward to watch as her nipples were pulled away by the tongs. Now she took advantage of their laxness.

With a quick twist of her body, Yuki pulled her right arm free of the man holding it. She immediately slammed her elbow into his face, putting as much muscle behind it as possible. There was a loud crunch as his nose broke and a scream of pain, and he staggered back. With one arm free, she pivoted and drove her palm into the jaw of the other man holding her, snapping his head back and sending him sprawling. Then she broke for the boat’s railing.

She would have made it easily had it not been for Feng. Although just as surprised as the rest of the slavers, he reacted much more quickly, launching into a diving tackle. She partially slipped it, but it slowed her down as she shook her way free and it was enough time for a second slaver to hit her, sending her sprawling full length upon the deck. In an instant, several of the slavers pounced on her, one of them grabbing her legs and two others pinioning her arms.

Yuki struggled frantically, heaving her body against the men who held her, but several more came to the aid of their companions, one of them with a length of rope. Within a few heartbeats her wrists were bound tightly again, her ankles secured as well.

“A bold attempt,” Feng observed, standing over her. “You have afforded me more entertainment than I expected, but you must be punished for daring to strike two of my men.”

One of them was streaming blood from his broken face. “The fox bitch broke my nose,” he said, his voice awkward and nasal as he tried to shelter his nose and spoke through his hands.

“So she did,” Feng remarked. “But it serves you right for not keeping her under control. Get it looked after while I attend to teaching her a proper lesson.” He motioned to the men who held Yuki. She stood panting in their grip as they heaved her up to her feet. “Place her in the punishment position. I shall attend to correcting her myself.”

The men holding her did not bother to untie her ankles and let her walk. Instead, they dragged her across the deck to the bench by her arms and tails. Once there, they untied her wrists while making sure they kept a tight grip on her arms. Then stretched her arms out to either side and secured her wrists with two lengths of rope, tying them to the heavy ropes that ran to the boat’s mainmast. It left her with her belly pressed against the bench and standing on the tips of her toes. They also untied her ankles and pulled her legs apart exposing the inside of her thighs and the pink lips of her nether region as they tied them once again to the legs of the bench.

“No slave touches one of her masters,” Feng proclaimed. “It is a lesson you need to learn if you are to serve us properly, and a lesson you will learn before we reach port.” He was standing directly behind her, a heavy whip in his hand. He cracked it once to send a little fear through his victim and to familiarize himself with it. “I haven’t had occasion to use it even once on this particular expedition, you see… damages most slaves too badly to get much out of them anymore, ruins their value.”

His fingers pinched her nipples, where the wounds from the rings had already closed and were most of the way to being entirely healed. “But that won’t be a problem for one of you foxes, will it?” he said with a laugh, hefting the whip up. “About time I renewed our acquaintance, old friend.”

“She doesn’t seem afraid,” one of the slavers said.

“Then she’s a fool who will learn better,” another responded.

“Nah, she knows,” a third insisted. “She’s terrified. The first touch of the lash against that soft, smooth skin will have her screaming for mercy.”

“Get on with it, you fucking cowards!” Yuki growled, sneering.

Feng chuckled again. “Oh, it’s time to get the punishment over with and show you what the rest of your life is going to be… but let’s not hurry little fox. A proper flogging is an art form. Any brute can wield a whip, but it takes an artist to do it properly.” He raised the whip, cracked it one more time for effect… and then brought it down across her back. Yuki’s body jerked as she tightened her grip on the ropes binding her wrists, and the smooth muscles of her back bunched, but she did not cry out. It burned… impossibly hard. More than mere leather would explain… she suspected there must be metal wire fibers woven into it. She could feel it as it opened up her back with a single slice, but she refused to make a sound.

A long welt now crossed her back beginning at her right shoulder blade and extending diagonally almost to her left buttock. It was a well-laid stroke. Feng struck again, this time curling the tip of the whip under her right armpit and catching her just beneath the areola of her breast.

This time the blow got the desired result. She cried out in surprise and pain. However, if he had expected her to be cowed by the painful and frightening ordeal he was utterly wrong. “Coward,” she screamed. “You’d not dare not fight me. You use whips and chains to torment those who cannot fight back, you simpering little weakling!”

It seemed her words had angered the slaver, because the next blows came quicker, striking hard and with precision. Fifteen slices. Thirty. Fifty. On the thirty second, Yuki let out her first shriek as he laid into her, trusting to her healing, unconcerned about the injuries he was inflicting on the beautiful kitsune. By the time he was finished, she could feel his hardness pressing against her… The act of whipping her had given him a huge erection and it was time to put it to work.

The slaver crew was just as eager as their captain was to have their way with the statuesque vixen beauty… Yuki could imagine how she looked to them, stretched out over the bench. Powerfully muscled but with exquisite feminine curves, she was unmistakably a warrior, but the curve of her breasts and the lines of her ass were so firm they had hardly quivered as she writhed under the lash, and her long legs begged to be parted. He moved toward her, intent on getting a taste of that perfect body, and Yuki could do nothing to stop him. She panted with pain, fear, and exhaustion, unable to hide it entirely. The whipping had, in fact, taken a good deal out of her, and to her shame, she had doubt gave the brutal slaver intense satisfaction. Now she faced an even worse ordeal: a night of entertaining Feng and his crew.

The flogging had been incredibly painful, even though she suspected that Feng might have held back the full strength of his arm. However, he had certainly known exactly where to place the whip and had lashed her back, thighs, and buttocks, and even flicked the stinging lash over her breasts and between her legs. It left her body stinging with pain; a pain that became truly agonizing as one of the slavers stepped forward and bathed her lacerations with a barrel of alcohol.

This time, Yuki couldn’t help herself – she screamed, twisting her body and trying to get out from under his liquid, but there was no way to escape his treatment. “Hold still, you screaming bitch,” he chided as she felt like he had set her body on fire. “The alcohol will prevent infection and help your cuts to heal.” Yuki knew that there was more to it than that, this his logic was horseshit. What the slavers were most interested in was washing the blood from her body. If Feng had really wanted to heal her, he could have just waited and he knew it. No doubt he wanted her to suffer the double anguish of her flogging and the violation he had promised her.

The slaver captain watched as his crew member cleaned the last of the blood from the kitsune’s wounds. He was now so stiff that he would have had considerable difficulty walking, but he wanted to ensure that his magnificent victim experienced the full pain and humiliation of being taken. Yuki glared defiantly as Feng approached her, twisting to look at him. The large bulge in his trousers was ample evidence of what he intended to do to her, but she had expected no less from the moment he had purchased her and dragged her here. “You think you’ve beaten me, human… but you’re wrong,” she declared, forcing her voice to be steady. “It takes more than any cruelty you can inflict to break the spirit of one such as me, you tiny man.” Yuki spat on the ground. “I will be avenged and you and that craven traitor will rue the day you ever laid eyes upon me.”

Something about the kitsune’s words clearly took Feng aback, sending a chill down the slaver’s spine. She was utterly at his mercy and just a few hundred heartbeats ago she had been screaming in pain as he punished her… yet now she seemed completely unbowed, vowing vengeance with complete conviction. He attempted to conceal his unease, but Yuki could see it as he stepped within arm’s length of her. “We’ll see about that,” he growled. He reached out and clamped his fingers over both breasts. They were so large that his hands could not encompass them fully and so firm his fingers barely compressed her silken flesh. He squeezed hard, at the same time pressing his thumbs into her swollen nipples. “We’ll see how tough you are soon enough…”

She grunted with pain, but refused to scream even as he increased the bruising pressure. He squeezed even harder, forcing the pliant flesh through his fingers. She moaned as he pinched her nipples between his fingers, forcing a small trickle of blood from the injured nubs. Yuki braced herself for the coming ordeal. Surviving the multiple violations the slavers had planned for her would tax her more than anything that had been done to her so far, except perhaps her first brutal introduction to depravity at the hands of Kuro. “Fuck you!” she snarled as she tried to pull her breasts away from him. “Let me go, you asshole!”

He smacked her on the back of her head. “Shut the fuck up, whore!” He grabbed her and slammed her down harder to the bench, her breasts crushed almost flat. Before she could try to fight again, several of the men stood around her and helped hold her in place.

Yuki fought anyway, trying to push them away, but they were too strong, with too much leverage. “Ohh little fox, where do you think you’re going?” one of them mocked. “You are here to stay!” He gave her a rough, loud slap on her ass. Yuki growled as the slavers laughed at her before they pulled her back and slammed her down on the bench again. It felt like they were trying to break one of her ribs, but clearly the men didn’t give a shit. Her suffering, her pain, her whimpers were like a nectar to their tongues. All the men gathered around her wanted to see her suffer in pain.

Feng approached her with something in one hand as he slapped the exposed parts of her breasts with the other. Yuki squirmed but she couldn’t get away from them as she was slapped again and again, and by the time he was finished her breasts were so red it looked like they were glowing. In the next instant, he tugged her nipples between his thumb and index finger and pulled them out brutally. Yuki screamed in pain and tried to struggle, but it only made it worse. The man kept tugging and stretching out her nipples while the crowd cheered. That was when Yuki saw what was in the slaver’s other hand.

A hammer and nails.

“Think this slut wiggles too much?” Feng asked with a smile. “I think she could use some new decorations… better decorations.”

Yuki’s eyes widened in sudden fear. She knew what was going to happen. “Fuck… NO… NO… NO… NO! Fucking stop, you bastards!” she screamed, struggling, straining against the men holding her. She couldn’t really get free, but she did move enough to sway on the bench, presenting a moving target. The large man had tortured her nipples for so long that they had become swollen and puffy by now, and they scraped against the wood painfully. “Get… the fuck… away from me…” she growled, and even as one of the men drove his fist into her side she kept fighting.

Feng slapped her ass hard, chuckling with amusement. The man then grabbed her right nipple, and tried to hold it still while Yuki kept squirming. The crowd laughed, and he released her nipple and leaned towards her, grabbing her head by the jaw, forcing her to look at him. “Listen up, whore,” he growled, holding up one of the nails. “There are two ways this can go down. You can quit your bullshit and stay still, and I’ll put one of these through your tit into the wood…”

Feng dropped one of the nail to the table, reached back into his pocket, and pulled out a significantly thicker nail, at least twice as thick. “Or you can keep fucking around and pissing us off, and we’ll beat you until you can’t move, and then I’ll drive these into your nipples instead. You get me?” Feng sneered at her. “Pick.”

Yuki grimaced. When he put it like that… she really couldn’t fight. This was a battle she couldn’t win… she needed to be preserving her strength, being more docile, letting them underestimate her. Doing the opposite was not only making it harder to escape, it was also getting her more pain. It burned her pride, but she finally nodded her agreement.

“I knew you’d see it my way,” Feng said, patting Yuki on the head as he stretched one of her breasts and put a nail down on top of it. Yuki’s eyes felt like they were bugging out as she looked at it, stunned and in disbelief. “This is gonna hurt like a bitch,” he promised as he pulled her nipples out.

Even as he raised his hammer, Yuki didn’t quite believe it. Right up until the moment it began to fall, the poor kitsune felt sure that this wasn’t really going to happen to her… but she was wrong. The hammer slammed down onto the nail, and Yuki screamed as she felt the iron skewer into her. “FUCKKKKKKKKKKKK!” Poor Yuki cried out, making the men around her cheer. The nail went through the meat of her breast an inch behind the nipple, nailing it to the wooden bench below. She couldn’t pull it off now if she tried… it throbbed with never-ending agony, and she couldn’t help but let her eyes tear up. Without even giving her a second to adjust to the pain, Feng stretched out her other breast and nailed it to the bench with one slam of the hammer. “FUCKINGGG ASSHOLE!” Yuki cried out in outrage and pain.

The men were clearly enjoying the show and her agony. With the nails in, she could not struggle anymore… she could hardly even move. If she did, it was going to rip through the meat of her breasts. He wasn’t finished yet, though… the hold was nowhere near solid enough for the slaver’s taste as he drove in two more to each breasts, almost on the edge of them… practically working to squeeze her breasts flat.

Yuki was still howling in agony and stewing in her misery as the laughing slavers were cheering and egging each other on. “Shame you aren’t going to do her nipples,” one said. “She’d look great like that.”

Feng smirked, and Yuki felt her blood run cold as he picked up the thicker nails again. “Who said I wasn’t doing her nipples?” he mocked. “Slut can’t move now, can she?”

“NOOOO… FUCK… NOOOO!” Yuki screamed as he laid the nail down against her nipple, and louder as he hammered it almost flat, nailing her nipple right to the bench.

“I already told you, bitch… you’re not fucking moving tonight!” Feng said in a mocking tone and the other men laughed.

“I don’t think she was gonna move anymore anyway,” another said with a smirk.

Feng scoffed. “Can’t be too careful,” he said as he reached into his pocket. He was right… Yuki could not even move a millimeter, otherwise she would have fled the instant the second thick nail showed up in his hand.

He took the nail and positioned it on her right nipple, leaving it there just long enough for Yuki to see it and her blue eyes to go horribly wide. Then he pounded it in. “FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMMMHMMMMMM!” Yuki screamed in pain, but she feared to gasp or pant right now. She feared that even that tiny movement might tear her nipples off. The agony was killing her and she swapped randomly between screams and curses and sobs. “You- AAAAAGH! FUCKING LIAAAAAAAAAGH!” She had to hold her body painfully still, otherwise one of the nails tore at her raw skin no matter how she moved. “YOU LYING BASTAAAAAAAGH!” Much as Yuki wanted to be brave and not to show them any reaction, it was impossible… the pain came in waves that overwhelmed her and swarmed her mind.

“Oh, you dumb little cunt… words to a whore mean nothing. You can’t negotiate with property, slave.” Feng laughed at her. “Now these are gonna hold you in place until we’re done with you.” By now her nipples were anchored securely to the wood and Yuki was helplessly holding her position. “Bitch is ready for some dick now!” the large man said as he dropped the hammer on the deck. Yuki could not move – if she did, it was going to accomplish nothing but hurting herself. She feared that it would actually rip off her nipple, so she had to hold the position. She was so angry, but she had nothing to do to fight these men. The man spat on her face again and slapped her hard, and she couldn’t fight… she just had to stay there and suffer like the world’s most worthless, pathetic whore.

“Ah, finally,” Feng moaned as he pushed inside her. The lips of her vulva parted easily and he slipped into the tight, moist warmth beyond, but only for a short distance before her tightness pressed hard against his cock, slowing further penetration. And there was still another barrier to his progress… her barrier restored once again, hymen standing in the way. It was an obstruction that Feng took great pleasure in destroying. He pushed harder and felt her tear as his blunt instrument had its way with her. Yuki gasped in pain as she was taken, struggling to stay in place on the table… each movement of his body against hers was agonizing, pulling at her nailed breasts one way or the other as he forced his way into her with brutal satisfaction.

“How do you like that, slut?” he grunted as he sank his shaft halfway into her. “There’s plenty more to come after this. I hope you enjoy the first installment.” The kitsune’s only answer was a look of pure hatred, but there were flickers of fear and dread in there as well that she couldn’t entirely hide, something that excited Feng even more. Lowering his head, he gripped onto her ass hard. Yuki whimpered in pain, then abruptly screamed as he thrust deep inside her. She bucked under him almost like a filly fighting her first rider. He rode the kitsune hard, forcing himself even deeper inside her. Her breath came in great gasps as she endured the horror of the rape, her moans and groans blending with his excited rutting.

As with the first time she had been taken, Yuki found the ordeal interminable. But this time the sense of helplessness was heightened with the agony in her breasts. With her hands bound, she had no way to keep herself up, and she was constantly slipping off the bench and pulling at the nails. It was anguish… and Feng was the first of many. As he peaked and released within her she could only hope that she could survive the ordeal that still awaited her.

“Enjoy her,” Feng said as he stroked his dick, dribbling out the last few drops of seed onto her ass and thighs. Then he backed up and the other slavers crowded around her, wicked grins on their faces.

One of them pulled off his trousers and took his thick cock into his hand. He stroked it, looking at her… seeming for all the world like a hungry wolf looking at its prey. “Open up bitch!” the man said as he slapped her face hard. Yuki cried out, the force slipping her across the bench yet again and tugging at the nail. She hated to cooperate even in the slightest, but she had no choice.

She opened her mouth and the man rammed his dick into her throat balls deep. He moved himself back and forth in her, grabbing her hair and using it like reins to take her hard and brutally. Yuki could not move, could not struggle… she could only take whatever he gave her as continued to face fuck her while the other men watched and enjoyed. The man choked her dangerously, but Yuki could not pull her head off of his length… the white-furred fox could only whimper and squirm and choke as she tried to breathe. The man completely ignored her efforts as he brutally kept her hair in his fist, shoving his thick meat right back into her hollow throat. Streams of her saliva mixed with the man’s pre-cum were dripping down her lips and he grabbed them and rubbed them all over her face. “C’mon, enjoy the bitch!” he said, inviting the others to join him. Even with her eyes closed, she could hear the approach of others.

Moments later, another man joined the one who was face fucking her. Now she had to take not one, but two cocks, her head yanked first one way and then the other, and each reversal forced her to pull at the nails. In the next moment, she felt someone fingering her pussy, shoving two rough, dirty fingers into her hard. Her rapists were brutal with both cock and hand, shoving them harder and deeper into her as she screamed on those thick dicks in her mouth. Eventually, the man who was fingering her pulled out, only to replace his fingers with a glass bottle. Yuki wanted to cry in pain as the bottle stretched her further than her pussy was ever supposed to go, but the two thick cocks in her face were not allowing her words or muffles to come out. The man rammed the bottle in hard and deep and he was fucking her with the whole thickness of the bottle base while she kept unwillingly worshiping those monsters with her throat. The men grunted and gasped like beasts as they took her, and all Yuki could do was cringe in extreme pain as she was tormented. Her cunt juice and Feng’s seed were dripping off the glass bottle from her pussy and each movement pulled at the nails, letting more blood seep free. When the sadistic asshole finally pulled the glass bottle out of her with a single yank, it hurt… but Yuki knew what was coming, even before he bellied up behind her and started rubbing his hard swollen cock up and down her wet soft opening. Another man slapped her hard on her ass while the man rubbed himself on her pussy lips.

Before he had even pushed in, both men taking turns deepthroating her had exploded inside her throat, one at a time. As they finished wiping themselves off on her lips and cheeks, another man grabbed her hair and lifted her face towards him. “How do you like some real human cocks, you subhuman creature?” He spat on her face and slapped her hard, and Yuki tried to remain still. The impact of his hand made her body move and pulled at the sun-bright agony in her nipples. Slapping her cum covered face again, the man sneered at her efforts, and he slapped his hand down on her breasts next. Yuki screamed in agony as her world went white. “Stubborn mongrel slut,” he snarled, continuing to slap her tits as he wiped his dick across her face.

All the other men laughed while he continued to slap her, making Yuki scream and cry until he gagged her with his cock. As he did so, the man behind her held her beaten ass cheeks with both hands and began to squeeze his fat cock into her smooth, tight cunt. She screamed again, and she wasn’t sure if it was more about the nipples or about her inflamed pussy being raped once again. He thrust in hard and deep giving her ass cheeks loud slaps, and each time his hips slapped against her rear it jolted her whole body, her nipples stretching and tearing. Yuki was crying in immense pain, and her suffering was clearly pleasant to both of the men inside her, her throat vibrating with her screams, her pussy clenching in the agony as she made fists over and over with her bound hands. She was helpless… she had no option but to take these dicks and worship them until all these men were done. The man who was hammering into her pussy started to rub her clit while he kept ramming in, thrusting hard enough that each movement put his whole weight on her, forcing her to bow beneath him and putting even more pressure on her nipples.

Yuki was choking on the cock inside her throat while it slowly cut off her breath. The men kept torturing her continuously, using her whole body like their paindoll plaything. The man who was deepthroating her was at the edge now. He kept going deeper and deep making her gag on the dick. The man fucking her into her was still hammering away, doing his best to destroy her dainty pussy by using his cock like a weapon. The man face fucking her rammed her throat hard and fast for several minutes before he started jerking and spasming inside her, grunting as he came directly down her neck. She was forced to swallow his seed while the man fucking her pussy exploded deep inside her. Another guy swapped with him and eagerly pumped his rock-hard cock into their slave’s cunt… but this one had another idea. “Untie her arms,” he said.

“You sure about that?” another said as the other man began to fuck her.

“Trust me, she’ll be too busy to try anything,” he promised as he continued railing into her, each slam of their bodies together causing a new scream to emerge from the tortured kitsune. With a shrug, the other men finished untying her bound wrists, and they hung momentarily limp and exhausted from her body. Yuki yearned to lash out… but where? How? She still couldn’t move… the nails in her tits ensured that. Instead, she tried to brace herself against the bench, keep herself immobile as she was raped from behind. She quickly realized that that wasn’t enough… that the thrusts were still moving her, still causing agony. Instead…

Yuki felt the man pull out of her, felt every rub of his cock as he pulled back. She waited and felt as he began to move forward again… and when he did, she flexed her arms and her back and pushed back against him. Instead of jostling her agonizing piercings, her body stayed mostly still… and it barely hurt. “That’s right,” he growled. “Fuck me back, little fox whore,” her rapist growled, pulling out again and slamming forward. Yuki matched the movement, although not quite as well… it slightly pulled her nipples because she wasn’t fast enough, but even that slight pull was agonizing. On the next thrust she was quicker, fucking back against him harder, desperate to keep herself immobile.

Yuki could prevent herself from being in pain… all she needed to do to keep it that way was to pay absolute attention to every move of her rapist’s body and humiliate herself by bringing him additional pleasure. The laughter of the slavers as they watched her thrust back against her rapist echoed in the white fox’s ears. “I think she might be in heat!” one of them laughed.

“Now she’s learning her place,” another said, slapping her ass from the side.

The man whom she was helping to fuck thrust until he pulled out, stroking his shaft until he exploded onto her back and her tails. As he left, another man came up behind her and started fucking her brains out, and Yuki needed to learn his rhythm before she could stop the pain. Once she learned it, however, he changed his pace… causing her to pull at her own piercings with her thrusts back until she figured out the new pattern once again. Shortly thereafter, a new distraction arrived when another grabbed her silky hair and started stuffing his cock past her stretched lips, making it far harder to keep up with the punishing cockthrusts from behind. She was just being used as a fuckdoll for the men now, her holes used and destroyed for their pleasure, and Yuki had no choice but to take it and please them all.

Then those men came, and others took their place. As a group, the slavers were sadistically rough while they fucked her — some choked her, some pulled her hair, and some shoved their fingers into her mouth. Sometimes these assholes fought each other as they jostled for position, fighting for their turn to bury their hard meat deep into her holes. It wasn’t a mercy to Yuki, however – the more they fought, the more savage and brutal they were with her when they took their turns, the more they ruined and raped her. The white-furred kitsune was beaten and exhausted by now, but the horny men crowding the deck of the ship were nowhere close to done yet. They kept taking turns fucking their new prize. Her tails were covered with the men’s cum as they used them as a rag for their dicks, humiliating and hurting her. Another big man squatted behind her and held her waist before mercilessly pounding his monstrous cock into her defenseless cunt as she gasped, trying to shove back against him.

He thrashed the athletic fox for several hard thrusts before he growled. “Enough of this shit. Bind her hands.”

“No!” Yuki protested, but it was too late. Hands grabbed her, dragging her exhausted wrists back together as her body rocked. “You bastards! You fucking bastards!”

“Shut the fuck up bitch,” the big man taunted. “I’m going to rip those nipples of yours right off if I can! I bet you’ll be more fun like that…” Then he began to rape her viciously once again, and she could no longer defend herself… screaming with each thrust as she pulled back and forth against the nails, and then it got even worse. While the man kept ramming into her pussy, another man positioned himself above her, crouching over the bent-over fox, and without warning he began to force his length into her asshole. Yuki screamed at the unwelcome intruder as he made progress one inch at a time, but at least there was a tiny silver lining… while the men pummeling her made their thrusts impossible for her to predict and doubled the number of them, their awkwardness meant that they were moving nowhere near as hard, that they didn’t move her as much. It wasn’t much of a comfort as the long, forceful pumps into both cunt and asshole churned her up, Yuki squeezing her eyes shut in the agony. Soon another man was hammering at her throat, clogging it with his dick. Her arms, back, hair, and tits were all streaked with cum, and Yuki felt utterly disgusted as she imagined what she must look like… but the men didn’t stop, didn’t seem to care about what kind of mess their fucktoy was.  They just kept taking turns in her holes, one after the other.

“The bitch isn’t so tough with her nips nailed like this, is she?” one of her rapists laughed.

“I love this version of her the most,” another agreed as he relentlessly pumped her wrecked cunt with her muscular legs spread apart.

“Nah,” said one to the side. “I liked the eager slut better. I’m gunna untie her hands again when it’s my turn.”

“I don’t care,” another said as he stood by her face, looking down the length of her body while he stretched her throat with his fat cock. “She’s a great facefuck either way.”

Another man climbed on her and squished her round ass cheeks and thrust his dick into her ass, stuffing her airtight once again. She was completely incoherent by now, grunting and grinding like a savage whore as they spat on her, slapped her, beat her, and abused her tight holes. The captive kitsune was their slave and they used her as they wanted. Her arms were untied, tied, and untied again as men took the exhausted fox in the manner they desired, rapidly hammering her hard and fast enough that her pussy and ass leaked the cum of the men who fucked her earlier. The latest man was forcing her to shove herself back against him as he jammed his harden rod deep into her asshole, making her squirm beneath him as he blasted her guts apart and Yuki had to help him do it. Some of the men spat on her, while others cheered and even a few took turns stepping on her face with their feet as she took the brutal anal fuck. After several minutes, another large man pulled her face up by the hair and shoved his whole shaft deep into her sore throat. The two monsters double pumped into their helpless slave with the full length and girth of their combined cocks as she grunted begging them to stop with her arms bound behind her back. When they pulled out, drools of cum came oozing out of both her anus and mouth as she gasped for air.

Another man took control of her dripping asshole. He pushed in, his thick shaft balls deep, and continued to ram into her. Her weight was on her nipples every time he thrust deep and it was nothing but torture to her. It pulled her nipples out and almost ripped them apart. Yuki cried and tried her hardest to find a rhythm to push back against him, to stop the pain, but he just kept changing his rhythm every thrust or two, meaning that Yuki needed to guess… and when she guessed wrong, she yanked at the nails herself.

The men had been raping her for hours now. Her whole body felt so numb ad lifeless because of the same position she’d held for hours. Her holes were irritated and they burned like the abyss itself, but no one showed her any kind of mercy. At last, another man stepped up. “Hmmm,” he wondered while his fingers idly stroked Yuki’s clit. “Your opinion. Is it better to let the bitch fuck back like this? Or is it better to hang her weight from her tits and feel her squirm?”

There were several opinions coming from the crowd. “It’s better to make her humiliate herself,” he said. “She fucks like a hellion when you make her.”

“Nah, I love it the other way,” another said. “This way, bitch can’t move even if we ruin her holes!”

“She does suffer more bound,” another agreed.

“But she’s even more helpless untied,” another protested. “There is only one thing she can do, and she needs to help with it!”

“You know,” the man fingering her said. “I think we might be missing an opportunity.” Yuki barely knew what was going on… the exhausted, abused kitsune lay there almost ragdoll limp. She had to hold herself up, otherwise she would be hanging from her nipples, but doing so required every bit of focus and effort and endurance she had left. Yuki barely knew what the man was doing as he grabbed onto her legs and started lifting her, but she was sure she was about to be fucked again. She would have to-

Yuki’s eyes went wide and she screamed as the man lifted and shoved, sending her toppling over the bench in the other way. He was flipping her onto her back with the legs on the other side of the bench… but her nipples were nailed in place and couldn’t move, keeping her breasts immobile. So, instead of shifting, they had to stretch. The kitsune shrieked in anguish as her tits were pulled harder than they were ever meant to be, feeling like her own weight and the nail were conspiring to rip them off… but they just barely held. “AAAAAGH!” she screamed as she felt some of her skin rip along the puncture. Her tits just barely held on against them being torn off her body or the nails ripping their way free, and Yuki wasn’t even sure that was a mercy. “No! Stop it you son of a bitch! Aaaagh!”

The man who had flipped her casually walked around to the other side, put one hand down on her belly to hold her back to the bench, and pressed his dick against her pussy. “Now let’s see if this is better…” he growled, and thrust his way into her squirming, tight, agonized sex. While he destroyed her pussy, Yuki was in tears. Her will might not quite be broken yet, but her body was being destroyed and the men didn’t seem to give a shit, using her like a disposable sex toy for their lusts. The man fucking her grabbed her by the back of her neck and pulled her closed to him, staring between her painfully stretched breasts right into her pain-filled eyes as he pummeled her cunt. Yuki was nearly mindless with pain, but there was nothing she could do… she couldn’t even feel hatred for the men who did this to her because she was too lost in agony. The cruel slaver held her so he could look into her eyes while he destroyed her pussy and ripped her breasts until her eyes were more red than white due to the hours of crying.

His grunting, at last, signaled that he was close… not that Yuki could pay much attention. He pushed her down to the bench and actually grabbed onto her stretched breasts, squeezing them like handles as he kept going. The kitsune screamed and screamed and screamed and he kept squeezing and squeezing her breasts and finally he came inside her. “Yeah, this way was better!” he said as he pulled away.

Yuki hung there… no pressure on her body anymore but she was unable to flip herself, unable to take any of the pressure off her nailed tits. Her body felt on fire with pain yet, even as her mind felt numb… Yuki was abused, destroyed, beaten; she was a cum-soaked, exhausted wreck. Even so, she heard the discussion as the slavers cheered. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” one said.

“That does look like the most fun,” another agreed.

“Can’t wait to fuck her again and give it a try.”

“Not yet… it’s my turn. Let’s see if we can fuck her hard enough those nails rip right out!”

A single tear slipped down Yuki’s cheek, half of pain and half of frustration as the men lined up to fuck her again, eager to try this new method. Her nipples already felt like they were going to rip all the way off… and there were going to be more than a dozen more. Yuki wanted to scream… but instead, all she could do was suffer through the rest of a long, long night.