One Light in the Darkness – Chapter 7

There was an art to killing someone… a lost, forgotten beauty, like an oil painting built up layer after layer. Despite that, however, people kept getting lost in the details. The problem was how high-stakes the whole thing was. How unforgiving it was of mistakes, and how every little detail mattered. It made it hard to enjoy the artistry.

First of all, and most importantly, you needed to find them. You couldn’t kill a man if you didn’t know where they were, and nothing fun could happen to an unknown target. All the intelligence in the world, all the promises of contacts, the words of drunks, the information of bribed guards, and the secrets of stolen letters weren’t the same thing as seeing them with your own eyes. People had an annoying habit of trying to keep themselves from being killed – they stayed in safe places, and around safe people, and they kept their own schedules, moving unpredictably. If you couldn’t find them, you couldn’t kill them.

After they were dead, the next most important part happened – make sure you didn’t end up the same way. That meant escape. Evasion. Stealth. The target might have friends, or allies, or annoying nannies who screamed when they saw blood. There were guards that patrolled the streets, that watched the walls, that checked covered wagons and ship’s cargo holds. Even if no one of those people could catch an assassin, just dying inconveniently was often enough to draw the attention of more guards, and no one wanted to stay by a hornet’s nest after it had been kicked. People had an annoying habit of trying to keep themselves from being killed – they had powerful friends or relied on guards. They lived in secure buildings almost as hard to get out of as they were to get into. If you couldn’t escape from the act alive, you shouldn’t kill them.

Most victims wouldn’t go down without a fight. They would struggle. They would make a mess. Make noise. Try to kill you, instead. People had an annoying habit of trying to keep themselves from being killed… they trained, screamed, fought, and tried to draw attention to themselves. Tried to get help. If you couldn’t manage to defeat your target, you wouldn’t kill them.

There were plenty of obstacles to overcome in order to be a master assassin. It was just a shame the answers to all of these problems were just so boring.

To find your target, you needed to do work. To find someone, there was no replacement for looking. Finding a target that often didn’t want to be found, and you were limited in the questions you could ask. As an assassin, you did a lot of looking and not finding. The cure for this, unfortunately, was more looking. It was boring… but there was no great secret to it, no great art. You bribed, sneaked, threatened, cajoled, and killed your way to the information you needed. Then you had your target.

To escape, you needed to do work. Plan out your route. Preset your escape, and be aware of what could go wrong, and what you would do if it did. You needed to already know where all the dark places were, where the holes were – which guard had the drinking problem, which lanterns burned out early each night, who the smugglers were who you could pay to get you out of the city… or stow away on their ships and be sure they were going to bribe their own way past inspection. That kind of homework might be important, but it was boring… there was no great secret to it, no great art. You made a plan and looked for holes in it. Then you filled them. Then you made another plan and did the same. You greased the right palms, destroyed the right wards and alarms. Then you had your escape.

To fight, you needed to train. To be the best. In order to kill a man, you needed to be better than them… or, more likely, you needed to take them by surprise… to be the knife in the dark. You needed to have an ambush. You needed to know where the dark places were, to have the poison ready. If you did it right, they would be helpless almost before it started. For some people, this process was fun. For a warrior, there was a thrill in overcoming adversity, in matching yourself against another foe, and knowing that only one could come out on top. They yearned for a fair fight. Idiots. Even if she sometimes longed to be one of them, she couldn’t be… an assassin had responsibilities. For an assassin, a fair fight was no fight at all. There was nothing to enjoy, nothing to take pride in, and that made the whole thing so impossibly boring. There was no secret to killing from the shadows, no great art. You took them by surprise, and the fight was over before it began.

Then they were helpless.

Then the fun part could begin.

For Katarina, it was all about savoring the little things. The way a line of blood dripped down a face and into the hollow of someone’s throat. The wild look in someone’s eyes after their throat was cut and they realized they were going to die but their body hadn’t caught up yet, still trying to survive. The tears that rolled down their face as they realized that this was it… that this was the end. That way it made them shake and tremble. The terror.

It was what she lived for.

That was the art. Katarina would have long grown disgusted with her work if the boring grind of it was all there was to it. When people were yours to do with as they pleased, when their life belonged to you, they revealed themselves in that moment. They let go of their pride, her honor, their glory… their dignity. They would do anything to survive, and she could do anything she wanted with them. She could play around in all that raw, terrified emotion that gathered up right before the end.

It was part of what made it so frustrating when the puppy had escaped.

When she had been given the assignment to watch after the blonde Demancian whore, the task had been a dream. There was a lot that Katarina didn’t know, even when the assassin made it her job to know more than she should about the people holding her reins. LeBlanc was… someone important. Katarina didn’t know all the details, and the disgraced assassin probably never would, not after she had lost all status in Noxus. When her father had cast her out, it had been humiliating, but also motivating… in Noxus, strength was everything, and the scarlet-haired murderess knew that if she proved herself, if she lived up to the expectations that he had for her, she’d be able to work her way back. It was a test, one that she was able to surpass and overcome.

When her father had been suddenly killed, however, and her family lost all status… that had been an entirely different kind of problem. She was an assassin, and her father had been part of the Noxian nobility – she had made plenty of enemies of her own, and inherited his, and now the aegis that had protected her had been stripped away. She was every bit as hunted as her prey had ever been.

She had needed to find a way to protect herself once again, and it was after about a year of that that she had found the sorceress LeBlanc… or more accurately, the Mistress of the Black Rose had found her. The fact that the secret society operating inside of Noxus was, in fact, illegal and forbidden didn’t matter to Katarina… all that mattered was that they had powerful members, and their reputations could keep her from being killed in her sleep or hunted like a dog. The fact that LeBlanc often had her do some tasks that qualified as… odd… was fine with her.

She didn’t really know much of why the sorceress cared about Luxanna Crownguard. She just knew that LeBlanc had uses for her powers, but was worried they might go out of control… and if the woman’s powers started acting up, Katarina was to cut her throat. Before then, she could indulge herself in any way she chose.

And oh how Katarina had indulged herself.

As much as she liked to play it was rare for an assassin to have quite that much time… and she used it to full effect. She had played and played and played and played with that slut-puppy, and had managed to make a good number of her fantasies come true… before the insufferable blonde had managed to escape. LeBlanc had not been happy about that, no… she had immediately sent Katarina to hunt her down, to bring her back… or, failing that, to eliminate her, and bring back the book she had stolen.

Katarina had hunted Lux and that damned eagle and whomever her partner had been through the mountains, but they had made frustratingly swift and stealthy progress through the wilderness… whomever Lux had helping her was better than Katarina was at surviving in the wild. They got away, not only from Katarina but from LeBlanc’s soldiers as well. It was frustrating, but it didn’t really matter – because Katarina knew where her blonde pet was going. Luxanna would be returning to her family home, to Demacia. There, Katarina could make contact with her target again. Reacquire her. Then she could get back to the busy task of making the rest of her fantasies a reality.

So the red-haired assassin had come into the belly of the beast looking for her prey.

The first few weeks had been spent simply enough… just determining which of the major cities she was in. If she had made it back to the capital, or if she was in one of the military camps with the rest of the Vanguard. After learning that Luxanna Crownguard was in the capital, however, her real work began.

Reestablishing yourself with old contracts took time. Greasing the right palms took time. Finding out the right questions to ask, and the right people to ask them to, took time. It was so boring, but Katarina tided herself over by reminding herself that when the boring part ended she was going to have so much fun with the little slut she wouldn’t even remember this drudgery. She just kept working, and kept preparing.

So it was incredibly frustrating when all of her plans went to hell.

The sudden coup inside Demacia had been shocking and completely unexpected… if LeBlanc had caught any inkling of it developing then she hadn’t told her assassin about it. It only took a few hours of looking into things, however, for Katarina to smell a rat. The sudden takeover was too sudden, too complete. People cared too little about it. This was precisely what LeBlanc had been so worried about… that the vacant little whore was too stupid, weak, and vacuous to be anything but a door for whatever monster Luxanna had lurking inside of her. It was getting out.

Katarina hated that all her boring work had been wasted. She hated that this meant she needed to do it all over again. She hated that it put her in danger. Most of all, however, she hated that it probably meant she wasn’t going to get a chance to have her fun. That Lux was too dangerous to keep alive for long, just like LeBlanc had worried. Katarina could forgive the boring work

But for ruining her fantasies of what she wanted to do with that blonde girl between her legs, her death was going to be painful.

And most frustrating of all?

After Katarina did the rest of the work over again? After she made her plans? After she was ready to sneak into the castle and find the little whore of a “queen?” A fucking dragon attacked the castle out of nowhere and Lux fled, and made all that work pointless again… the stupid slattern was running down the street barely five hundred feet from Katarina wearing a silk dress that a whore would have blushed to wear. It might have been white, but from the way it clung to her body the assassin wondered if it might not be the cum making it look that way.

Katarina leaped between roofs, moving quickly… keeping up with the blonde Demacian as she fled away from the rampaging dragon and the guards that were fighting it. Rooftop after rooftop she scrambled, launching herself from roof to roof in fast pursuit of the fleeing woman. She was not going to let the bitch get away, not after this much trouble… this ended today.

The longer she chased the more she realized that this was going to be easy. She had thought that the woman would be going for help, would be running to someone for assistance. She wasn’t. She was just running for the city walls as quickly as she could. The mageling didn’t even have her staff… she was going to be all but helpless to Katarina. As the redhead, perched atop a building, watched Lux run through the broken gate that the Red Dragon had attacked just a few minutes ago and away from all safety while a dark cloud of a coming storm gathered in the sky. She almost felt bad for the poor, helpless, stupid thing as she ran, unarmed and half naked, into the coming storm all alone.

But not bad enough to stop.

Wordlessly, the assassin backed off, then ran for the roof edge, launching herself for one of Demacia’s walls. She dropped from the roof to the wall, hitting with a roll, and immediately letting her momentum carry her into another long leap. It was a long, long fall to the ground but that didn’t worry the assassin… she had no great gift for magic but anyone could learn a little if they had the discipline to apply themselves and Katarina had never lacked motivation to be a better killer. She reached into herself, found the small well of magic inside her, and pushed it through her. Katarina vanished into a flash of darkness and a pop of displaced air before she reappeared on the ground, still at a full run.

Katarina thought that a scrawny blonde thing like Luxanna, shoeless and dressed only in a ripped dress, would be slow and awkward. She expected that she would have caught up to the woman within a few minutes. The Crownguard brat, however, ran like she had a demon biting at her heels… her flight was far quicker than the assassin could have guessed, managing to stay ahead of the leather-clad woman despite the repeated uses of her magic to skip through any rough spots. It was all the more impressive because, as far as Katarina could tell, Lux didn’t have the slightest idea that the Noxian was pursuing her. Still, she clearly felt like she was being chased by something… her flight was that of a deer, a manic run of desperation, leading to an inevitable violent ending.

The storm gathered around her, and it started to rain down on her. Katarina ran harder, trying to catch up to the Luxanna before they reached the thickness of Demacia’s sacred petricite forest. Despite her efforts, however, despite her athleticism and dexterity, despite how much stronger and more agile she was than the young mageling, despite the fact that her shadow steps kept her moving faster than anyone should have been able to run, she wasn’t able to do it. It was like the foliage itself was against her… seeking to trip her up, getting in the way. Most of the time she had to use her shunpo just to extricate herself from the latest snag and not to make up any distance on the fleeing blonde. The darkness as the sun went down didn’t help either… more than once she needed to stop and scan the view, trying to find where the fleeing blonde had run. It all made her slow.

Too slow.

Despite that, Katarina’s heart beat wild with the thrill. Inside, she had been afraid this would be too easy. That it would be simple, not take any effort. That it would be boring. This, however, was fun… the assassin ran with a smile stretched across her face. There was no chance of the blonde getting away from her… not alone, not dressed like that. Her fate was sealed, but the game to make it stick… well, that was where the art came in.

The rain was pouring down by the time they reached the forest, and by then her shadow step stopped working… when she reached into that small well of power inside her it felt like she was trying to grab onto a tiny greased rock and it kept slipping away. This, she knew, was the petricite… this whole dead forest that surrounded Demacia was made of the precious wood, flash-petrified in an instant by some magical calamity during the ancient Rune Wars. The forest now sucked up magic energy like a very dry sponge. This was why Demacia was kept so safe from both Noxian armies and marauding monsters… the stone surrounding the great city meant that the vast majority of any magical energy put into a spell nearby got absorbed. For Katarina, it meant that with her meager talent for magic she couldn’t really manage anything… but that was more than a fair trade to the assassin. Lux would be similarly handicapped, and without her magic the blonde was little more than a sexy piece of fuckmeat no more dangerous than a kitten while Katarina’s knives grew no duller.

By entering these woods, Luxanna had sealed her fate. Now Katarina just needed to reach her… and she was making up distance with every stride, scrabbling over rain-slick stones while the sky opened up over them in the darkness.

The redhead felt it the moment the tenor of the chase changed. The moment that Luxanna noticed that someone was behind her. She could all but feel the panic… not through any preternatural sense but through long experience. Her path through the forest, already frantic, became erratic, and Katarina angled inside each turn she made, shaving off precious feet between Lux and her death with each ill-chosen move.

The smile never left Katarina’s face as the scarred redhead reached down to one of the bandoliers of knives on her thigh. She never broke stride as she drew her arm back, the sharp dagger point pinched between two fingers. As she approached a fallen log, Katarina hesitated half a step to get the timing right, then hit the log and used it as a springboard to launch herself up into the air. At the mercy of gravity, her steps no longer disrupted her aim, and the assassin’s attention focused with lethal intensity. She saw it the moment Lux’s right leg lifted in another desperate running step, and saw where it would plant back down. The redhead’s right arm pumped forward as she fell, and the black knife practically leaped from her fingers in a tight spin.

The assassin’s momentum turned her, and she hit the ground shoulder first. She tucked her head on impact and let her abdomen fold and compress, turning the landing into a roll, and by the time her feet were back under her she had lost no more than a handful of strides, and the sound of Luxanna’s cry of pain had just begun. As Katarina had planned, the knife took her in the back of her knee just as that foot took the blonde’s weight, and it had failed… sending her sprawling to the ground in a roll that was nowhere near as graceful as the assassin’s had been. She tumbled until she fetched up against one of the stone trees with a meaty, painful-sounding impact. Despite that, however, Katarina hadn’t come more than a dozen steps closer before light began to flare from the prone mage’s body.

The redhead threw herself to the side, turning her sprint into a dodge just as a blade of concentrated light flashed for her. The hem of her pants and one of her dangling belts caught fire in the intense heat of that light, and Katarina dragged both against the ground as she rolled, putting out the flames. Finally, she came to a stop behind one of the trees, putting it between her and Luxanna.

That had been unexpected. Peeking out from her shelter, she saw the very, very small mark in one of the other stone trees behind where Katarina had been running… the blade had disappeared as it struck one of the stone trees behind her instead of burning through, but even managing to conjure it up in the first place was impressive.

“Little lightning bug’s got some flare left,” Katarina mocked, her back to the petricite tree. “But still just a bug.”

“Get… get away from me!” Lux choked out. The panic in her voice was sad and frantic, and it sent pleasurable shivers down the redhead’s spine. “You… you should just leave me alone! You don’t want to do this!”

“Oh, I assure you I do…” Katarina purred, a grin on her face. She listened to the way the blonde panted heavily, the signs of her exhaustion and weakening body. She brushed a rain-soaked lock of hair out of her eyes. “Tired, puppy? I bet you are!” Katarina ended her sentence by kicking off the tree and launching herself sideways. Three knives flung from her fingers as in the brief time she moved between one tree and the next, all of them aiming for the center of Lux’s chest. It would be a shame to fill those perfect breasts of hers with steel… but such was life.

Luckily, the mageling impressed again. Unarmed and without her staff, she still managed to summon a barrier of hard light between her and the assassin. It was a weak barrier – it deflected the first two knives, but the third broke through, and Luxanna weakly fell to the side, letting it pass just over her with a cry. It cut a long, crimson line across her right arm and shoulder as she raised her arm, barely deflecting it from her torso.

Katarina knew the magic was coming even before the Demacian Crownguard raised her glowing hand. She ducked behind another of the magic-absorbing trees, hiding completely from the flash of bright light Luxanna summoned as retaliation. “Too slow…” she purred, chuckling darkly. “That’s you, puppy. Too slow, too weak, too stupid to be good for anything other than tickling my clit with your tongue.”

She lunged out of cover again, flinging another pair of knives. This time, the shield was weak enough that they both made it through, but it still ruined the perfect arc of her throw, deflecting them just enough off-point that one missed and the other struck her chin pommel first, drawing a new cry of pain from the stung girl. Her answering counterattack was even slower than last time, and her panting breaths were louder than the crack of heated air that accompanied it. “Tiring, isn’t it?” Katarina mocked. “It’s the petricite, I think. How does it feel, puppy?” She leaned out and threw another knife then doubled back. She didn’t see what happened to the blade, but she heard the thump of impact and the cry of pain, and saw the flash of light as Luxanna tried to preempt the obvious pattern. The gasping took on a more pained tone. “How does it feel to know that the pride and joy of your nation is killing you, little mageling? Draining you away, one drop at a time… just like one of the mages your filthy, weak people keep captive. How many more spells do you have in you, Luxanna?”

“Please…” Lux begged, her voice a pained wheeze. “Just… you have to… have to stay away from me!”

“I love it when they beg,” the redhead chuckled.

“Lux!” someone screamed, a feminine voice coming closer through the rain. “Luxanna! Where are you!”

“Quinn, stay away!” the blonde screamed.

“Ah, it’s your little friend with the bird,” Katarina said with a dark laugh. “Perfect. I’ve been meaning to thank her for the new scratches.” The redhead snorted. “I don’t like being made a fool of, but I like leaving loose ends even less.” Katarina’s heart was racing, and she was starting to pant just like Lux was… though with excitement, not with exertion. A manic grin crossed her face, showing most of her teeth as she curled up her lip.

“Lux!” the person called again. The assassin drew three more knives.

“Quinn, please,” Luxanna gasped. “You can’t be here, you have to run, or-”

Quinn, her armor in disarray, came into view. Even exhausted in a forest of petricite Lux glowed like a beacon in the darkness of the storm, and the scout followed it right towards her through the night. She never even saw the assassin as she slid in behind her. The way her skin parted for the knife, the way it drove into her back… it was just too easy. “No!” Lux screamed as Quinn dropped to the ground with a soft choking noise, the smiling assassin rising up behind her.

“I don’t like to share,” Katarina said with a grim grin, then ducked as Lux’s hands glowed brighter still. “Careful… don’t want to burn your friend alive, do you? I think she’s still breathing!” Katarina finished her sentence with the flick of a knife and then a charge. She dashed left and right, making Lux’s panicked blast of energy go wide of her. The snare of hard light that lashed out from her, however, did not. The magic was pathetically weak, the forest sapping her of almost all the strength and frantic fear destroying the rest of it. It just barely slowed her, enough for the blonde to scramble away just out of reach of the long knife that the redhead swung. A second later, she was glowing like the sun, building up for a blast, so the assassin dodged out of the way, flinging herself behind another of the trees, diving away from the blast.

The redhead hit the petrified stone of the tree hard enough that her vision went black for a second, almost losing consciousness before she shook her head clear. “I think it’s cute that you wanted to involve your friend,” Katarina purred as she grabbed onto one of the notches in the tree and began to climb, raising herself up, and preparing to come at her from a new angle. “I really am going to miss you, puppy.”

Katarina drew one of her long knives, spinning it in her right hand. Quickly she stuck the blade into the tree and twisted, freeing a tiny spear of petricite and holding it in her other hand as she balanced, coiling her legs. “But all good things… have to come to an end.” And Katarina launched herself at Lux from above.

The blonde saw her coming just an instant before, and she met the assassin’s eyes… wide and dark and filled with terror. This was what Katarina lived for, savoring the little things. The way blood welled from the wound as the bled out. The despair and panic and resignation of the dying. She raised one hand desperately, summoning some light up between them in a shimmering barrier… which met the thrown chunk of petricite the assassin had tossed. The shield shimmered and collapsed in the instant before Katarina passed through it with no more resistance than mist would have provided. Then her knife found vulnerable flesh and sank in.

Lux gasped and then crumpled.

The blonde lay on the ground, rainwater falling down on her. Her hand reached up towards Katarina, as if reaching for help… like the redhead was going to help her. “I… can’t… stop it…” she whispered.

The assassin smirked. “I know you can’t, puppy,” she said, a delighted rumble in her throat. “Now…” she said as she stepped forward, putting her foot on Lux’s neck and slowly shifting her weight down, strangling the bleeding girl by degrees. “Now… I believe we had some unfinished business, didn’t we? And I think we have a little bit of time…”

---

The dark rain clouds engulfed the moon and shrouded the stars, creating the kind of unholy dark night only a professional could truly love as Katarina dragged her barely living captive out of the forest and towards the farmhouse in the distance. She was more than prepared to cut the throats of anyone she found in her eagerness to get out of the rain, but for once in this damned trip it seemed like luck was on her side… they must have fled from the chaos engulfing the city.

Perfect.

As Katarina dragged the unconscious Lux into the farmhouse, her heart beat with giddy enthusiasm. For how long now had this blonde whore been supposed to be dead already? Was it months at this point? She had clearly lost complete control of her power… LeBlanc definitely wanted her dead. Lux had been lucky to escape once… but she wouldn’t be again. Now that Kat had tracked her down, she was hers.

Of course, an idiot like this took no precautions and saw no problem with losing control and possibly unleashing a demon that could destroy the world. Katarina had expected it might be a little difficult to take her out, given that she must’ve known she was being hunted by a professional assassin. It was like the helpless little thing was almost begging to be the victim.

And now here she was, sweet and pure and innocent, blonde little Lux, who was soon going to enter a world of pain before finally being delivered to Kindred. Had she been a good little puppy dog and stayed in Noxus like she was told then maybe she could have survived… maybe LeBlanc could have kept her under control and then Katarina could have kept her for a while. It was not to be, tho. Now the only question was how much fun Kat could have before she bled out.

The red-haired assassin let her backpack drop heavily to the ground before she turned and slammed the doors to the barn shut behind her. Then she started looking around, finding some options for herself before she gathered up a few ropes hanging from some nails. A chair rested against the wall… that would do nice. Now that Katarina had some time she could do this properly – she picked the limp blonde off the ground and pushed her down into the chair. Then she went to work with the ropes… beginning to wrap her up. Hands and ankles were tied to the chair, binding her tightly in place. Here she couldn’t budge.

She opened her bag, setting it by a table the farmers no doubt used for gathering milk. One by one the scarred, athletic woman began to pull several of the things she had prepared out, putting them on the table with eagerness… and with each thing she put down she imagined its use, fantasizing about the fun that was to come.

Satisfied, the assassin drew back and then slapped the weak mageling across her face. The blonde snapped to consciousness with a gasp, her eyes going wide as she tried to make sense of what was happening, and her beautiful blue eyes focused on the assassin’s scarred eyes. Katarina smirked. “Wakey wakey puppy. That’s right, you bitch… it’s time for us to wrap this up together.”

Lux strained against her bonds, her toes flexing as she pushed against the ground. She gasped as she took in startled breath after breath, her eyes racing with confusion and fear… it was just about the hottest thing Katarina could imagine. “W-Why? Why are you doing this? Please, I need to get away from everyone. You can’t be around me, you have to-”

“Shhhhhhh,” Katarina said, a smirk on her face. “I know, puppy, I know. And you’re right… So long as that thing is inside of you no one is safe. I might love to kill people, but do you think I’m doing it for fun?” She grinned wickedly. “Well, only for fun, that is…” Katarina pressed one finger against her nose. “Nope nope. But I do have to admit… now that you’ve put me through all this trouble, I will enjoy this, and I plan to have every bit as much fun as I can before this is over.”

Terrified as she was, Lux’s gaze swept across the rundown barn. The only thing illuminating the dim interior was a large wax candle that Kat had set burning on the table… and it drew her eyes right to the toys that the assassin had pulled out of the bag.

Katarina admired the way her throat gulped, the way her eyes widened. She looked at them with her. Dozens of needles and knives. Carved wooden phalluses. Piercing clamps and a branding iron. A gag. Lux, staring at them, couldn’t help but imagine exactly what they were for… and for once Katarina was precisely in the same state of mind. She couldn’t stop anticipating the exact same thing.

“Which ones do you like?” asked Katarina. She sashayed over, showing off her silken red locks, then ran her fingers over the long sharp needles, the elegant knife set, and the brutish nipple clamps still stained with blood. The only thing lacking a clear purpose was a long iron rod. “Any place in particular you want me to start?”

She followed the blonde’s eyes to the rod, and grinned. “This?” Katarina asked, lifting it up to show off. “This does sound perfect. I agree. Wonderful choice, puppy!”

Lux did not say anything, but she could not look away. A film of sweat formed on her forehead.

“Mmm. That one is one of my favorite toys. But I think we shouldn’t start with that one. You’ll ruin so many things that could come before it. First…” Katarina picked up one of the knives and approached Lux. “I think it’s time we ready you up, don’t you think?”

Katarina reached back, and then she slammed the hilt of her longknife against the center of the mage’s breastplate with so much force that it knocked the wind out of the blonde. Tears flooded her blue eyes but Katarina ignored the reaction as she rained down blow after blow, methodically pounding on the armor with all her force, pouring into the blows the pent-up anger of all the frustrations this hunt had included. The knife’s hilt wasn’t flat… it was pointed into an armor-breaking piton tip designed to direct the force of the impact into a single, shattering point to allow her to assassinate someone in heavy armor. Luxanna’s barely qualified – it meant that her knives were more than up to the task. “What kind of vain idiots,” she mocked as she continued battering her for fun, “curves armor around your breasts? Don’t you… know… that just… weakens… the armor?”

With a crack of metal the piton finally broke through, and when it did the fissure it opened was huge… Lux sobbed, and Katarina grinned at her. “See? Told you, puppy.” She continued hammering a few more times, breaking it apart piece by piece, tearing it away, and tossing the scrap pieces of metal onto the ground. “Pathetic,” she said with a smirk.

She flipped the knife deftly in her hand, then brought the tip of the blade point to Lux’s throat. There was a pinprick of blood where they touched, but then the assassin slowly lowered the blade down her torso, opening her up for business as the astoundingly sharp blade cut through Lux’s protective layers of clothing as effortlessly as if it were moving through the air. Luxanna gasped as her full breasts spilled out, and the blonde’s tears fell upon them. “There you go, puppy. A good pet shouldn’t be covering herself up, no no no.”

“Please…” Lux begged. “You don’t have to do this!” Her voice held a note of exasperation.

Katarina didn’t answer. She just kept cutting, pulling at the fabric till there was nothing holding it together anymore and it simply fell away, leaving Lux’s upper body completely exposed. “Please… we can end this. I know what I have to do to end this!” Lux sobbed, obviously wanting nothing more than to cover up but with the ropes around her she couldn’t exactly move.

“Don’t worry about that,” Katarina said as she reached down and flicked one of the metal piercings in her nipples, the ones that LeBlanc had put there to help control the out-of-control mageling. Then she put her knife in between it and her skin and began to pry the seam apart. “It will be over,” Katarina said as she pulled the first piercing out of her tits and tossed it to the side. “I won’t lie to you and say that it will be over soon, but it will be over.”

With her nice soft tits hanging out, all that was left were the blonde’s pants, and the assassin made sure to let the blade scrape along her pussy as it sliced through them, ripping the white fabric of her skirt to ribbons she did. Lux froze, avoiding the possibility of a deep cut, so terrified to move that it allowed the redhead to do away with them as well.

Now, with the pants cut and her most valuable assets on full display, wrapped in bondage and helpless, her lewd and sexy body was defenseless to the assassin.

“Please…” Lux said. “Why are you doing this… Not again. Just kill me if you’re going to kill me!”

Katarina dropped the knife with disinterest back on the table and began to finger through them, smiling as she picked up several long steel needles. “Oh, I will puppy. I just intend to take my time. You see, I’ve wasted countless days and nights I won’t get back chasing you down after you were rude enough to run away. You’ve inconvenienced me a great deal. And you owe me for that.”

She approached Lux as she spoke, then grabbed the blonde’s left nipple. The cold in the barn had made it harden, which was good. With the cold expertise of a trained psychopath, Katarina brought the point of the needle up against the nipple. “And we are going to make up for lost time little miss Crownguard.”

Lux gasped as the cold metal pressed against her sensitive nipple. “Please, don’t,” she begged for one last time, hot tears streaming down her face. “Please, I’ll do anything. Please?…” One of the tears had coursed down her cheek, along her chin, then dropped down to her breast and had flowed all the way down to her nipple to wet Katarina’s fingers with its warmth.

The assassin smiled. Then she plunged the needle in brutally and ran it through the hardened nipple in one swift motion.

Lux shrieked at the top of her lungs… she jerked in the chair but it was heavy and barely moved… the ropes flexed but held without trouble. but there was no real struggle. She knew there was nowhere to go. Her feet gave way for a moment and Katarina stepped back, watching her choke for a couple of seconds before she found her footing again. Hot blood dripped from the nipple, but the tip of the needle had gone through so fast it remained shiny and practically spotless.

“Isn’t that nice?” said Katarina. “Doesn’t it feel good? That’s how I felt every time I checked a stupid little section of forest or a boring little nothing town only to realize I would have to renew my search the next day. Day after day that I could have spent playing with my puppy, and instead I had to sleep alone.” Her grin was ferocious. “It was very rude.”

She prepared a second needle and attacked the right nipple. This time, Lux gave no reaction except to close her eyes and sob. “You’re getting used to the pain already, are you?” Katarina drawled teasingly. She giggled darkly. “Don’t feel let down. There’s a lot higher we can go. I have more than this in store for you. After all, I have so many more needles…”

The assassin crouched on her heels, lowering herself to take a good look at the blonde sorceress’s tight little pussy. There was a tiny tuft of golden hair just above her virginal-looking lips, neatly trimmed and groomed… something that surprised Katarina. “You trimmed this. Thinking someone would be looking at it again so soon? Quite slutty and lewd for the innocent girl you play yourself off as, aren’t you?”

Katarina stroked the blonde fur on her groin with the back of her fingers and felt the unconscious shiver that accompanied the touch, the rush of unwanted sensation that came from the sensitive places. She would keep it under control… the last thing she wanted was to give her rebellious little bitch of a captive any satisfaction before the end. Instead, she turned her attention to Lux’s pink little clit, untouched, exposed, and begging to be taught a lesson. Katarina nudged it with her thumb, wondering if that would get a moan out of the broken blonde, but there was no luck on that front. Her pussy was as dry as could be. “At least I know you aren’t enjoying yourself, puppy,” Katarina teased. “Not a closet masochist… at least not yet. If I had a few months with you, dear… the things I could train you to do. The things I could train you to be. You wouldn’t even recognize yourself when I was done.” The assassin licked her lips. What a shame things had to go down like this. She wouldn’t have minded spending the next year or two or three with a slave in her bed, making her nights more interesting as she made use of Lux’s body in the proper ways. Too bad about that demon. “Alas, you ruined that for me.”

Katarina raised the third needle against the blonde’s clit. “All the more reason you deserve every little bit of what I’m going to do to you.”

The needle pierced the tender flesh of her clit with effortless ease, slicing into her as easily as any one of the assassin’s sharp knives would have. It cleanly exited the other side of the nub before the pain even reached Luxanna’s mind… but when it did the reaction was everything the redhead could have hoped for. The Demacian noble’s shrieks were almost bestial, and Katarina’s cool demeanor was replaced by a cruel, almost demonic giggle as she looked up into her wide, tear-filled blue eyes “My my, puppy… you’re so sensitive. I had no idea. Does this hurt too?” She pulled the needle part of the way out before sliding it back in, leading to extra shrieks as it slightly tugged at the bleeding hole she had made with the tiny motions. Again she pulled out and pushed back in, gleefully fucking the tiniest hole in her new slave with the sharp steel for sure sadistic pleasure. “You are sensitive. Well, maybe we need to take care of that?”

She unsheathed one of her knives. Before Lux could do more but stutter out an incoherent protest she had flipped the thing in her hand with a deft, practiced flip of her wrist, and then, gripping the blade hard, she slammed the hilt of it against Lux’s unprotected cunt. She was tight and dry and unprepared to be penetrated, but it didn’t much matter… Katarina had aimed right, and struck with enough force that it didn’t matter if she was stabbed with the blade or the handle – they each parted her opening with equal violence and ease. Luxanna screamed again as the first of many things tonight penetrated inside her vulnerable holes, so tight that Katarina could barely fit the whole thing in. She shook in her bondage, the whole chair rocking as her body shook with anguish, and Katarina laughed.

---

The assassin slapped a hand down on Lux’s ass, holding her firmly, driving the hilt all the way in with merciless abandon. “This right here, princess? This is what you’re made for. Taking whatever someone wants to give you right up your fucking cunt!”

Lux’s vulnerable pussy didn’t want to take the knife, but it accepted it just fine… especially now that it was deep enough that Katarina noted the slime in her pussy that it was pushing out of the way. “Gross,” the assassin mocked her. “Letting a man defile this precious little slit. Guess what I’m not letting my tongue anywhere near.”

With her thighs parted her twat really didn’t put up much of a fight, but that didn’t stop Lux from crying inconsolably. “Please… please!” she begged, the silly blonde slut pathetically weak. “Puh-puh-puhleashee sthaaphh!”

Katarina raised a hand up to the blonde’s face and stroked the tears away from her cheeks as they leaked down. “Shhh, puppy. Don’t cry. We’re not even at any of the best parts yet. So why would you cry so early?” The assassin bent down and nibbled on her exposed neck. “That just makes me angry, little girl… and you don’t want to see me angry. Do you understand? You want to see me happy. A happy mistress means you die quickly. An angry mistress will make this last. Now tell me you understand.”

Lux sobbed and seemed not to be listening, so Katarina pulled another of the needles from her table and, slowly, pushed it into the soft meat of Luxanna’s breast while she screeched. “Listen to me, sweetie,” the assassin purred. “Katarina brought her thumb down to the blonde’s lower lip and stroked it suggestively, pulling on it to reveal her perfect white teeth. “Say. You. Understand. Or I’m going to get annoyed. And then we can start cheering me up by pulling these out one by one.”

“I understand!” Lux cried. “I understand!”

Katarina smirked. “Wonderful!” she said cheerfully. “Now that we’re being such good, cooperative friends, why don’t I show you that surprise I had for you?”

She went back to the table and picked up the iron rod, then smacked it playfully against Lux’s body with a solid thumb. Lux grunted. Kat didn’t swing it very hard, but it was heavy… it hurt regardless. “Do you want to guess? And no… it’s not a cluuuub…”

She struck the blonde a few more times, but Lux seemed too panicked to offer much sport at the moment. Katarina sighed deeply. “Fine, fine, I’ll just tell you.” She tossed back the lush red locks cascading down her chest and pushed her tits forward. Right above them, strapped to a belt that went just over her cleavage, was a metal insignia. “See this?”

Her fingers pulled on the insignia and released it. The back had a screw notch, and it was easy to connect the socket right to the iron rod. “Now, do you have an idea what this is for?”

As the beginning of horrified realization dawned across Luxanna’s face, Katarina giggled darkly and stepped outside of the stall in the barn where she had set the fire to heat herself up from the rain. There the hot embers were still burning and ready for her. She fanned them back to life before she plunged the branding iron into them, and waited.

As she enjoyed the warmth she looked through the open doors of the barn and watched Lux struggling to find a way out, desperately wiggling to find any kind of free room to maneuver in the tight ropes. Alas, there would be none. Katarina was no amateur, and this was far from her first time.

Sometimes, it was best to let the anticipation build. Let the tiny drops of blood well up from the needles, let the sting of her easy injuries seep deep into her muscle and mind both. Let first her imagination torment her as she tried to escape, and last her humiliated hopelessness as she failed. At last, though, the iron was hot. She pulled the trapped handle of the nearly incandescent branding iron out of the hot embers and walked back to Lux slowly, taking her time so the blonde had plenty of time to hear her coming and begin to struggle again. “No, no!” the blonde pleaded. “You can’t! Get that away from me!”

“After I went through all the trouble of getting it nice and hot?” teased Katarina, brandishing the iron. “That would make you a bit of clit-tease, wouldn’t it, Luxanna? Don’t pretend like what you want matters anymore, princess. You’re about to be marked… and you should thank me for it. Be grateful. This way, when your husband-to-be finds your corpse in a few days, he’ll know who got to you.”

Lux had given up hope and no longer cried for help. She just bawled uncontrollably for the most part, though every so often a flare of indignation would cause her to strain against the ropes with all her strength, hoping against hope that she could still get away. The redhead watched for a moment, the way her struggles made her breasts sway enticingly as she brought the brand close, letting her flinch away from it and squeal before drawing it back away and putting it elsewhere… spelling the faint reek of burning hair as the tiny hairs on her body burned from mere proximity to the heat. She did this four or five or six times, and each time Lux’s panicked reaction was wonderfully panicked, already tiring. Then, lunging like a striking snake, Katarina sank the branding iron right onto her mound, just above her pussy between her splayed legs.

Lux’s scream was the thing of legends. The sound of sizzling flesh was always good, but the sounds of Lux’s tortured shrieks along with the smoke of flesh that came up intoxicated the morally depraved assassin. That’s right, thought Katarina, feeling her hardened nipples chafe against her tight leathers. You’re just a piece of meat now.

Lux hadn’t even stopped shrieking by the time the iron had grown cool enough that Katarina could pull it from her skin. She bent down, examining the pretty picture she had burned into her victim… the face of a cat to mark her killer. By then, Lux’s screams were starting to get on her nerves. “Oh shut up,” she growled, lifting the still-hot branding iron and striking Luxanna across the face with it, hard. Her head flung hard to the side, and a tooth popped out of her mouth, vanishing in the straw under their feet as the blonde sorceress’s screams were abruptly transformed into dazed, pained moans. “I can’t hear myself think, you stupid slut!”

Katarina turned back to her toys and came back with an iron bar and a leather strap. A bridle, for an animal bitch. She stuffed it in her captive’s limp mouth, parting her bruised and possibly broken jaw with no real effort, and pulled back as far as she could… until the barely conscious slut was gagging before she took up the leather cord and tied it off tightly behind her head. That should keep her a bit more quiet.

---

Katarina dropped the spent iron with disinterest and walked around to the front, snapping her fingers before Lux’s eyes to try to get her attention. “Quit being lazy. Wake up,” she spat. The sorceress, however, didn’t respond… her blue eyes were open but they swam, unfocused, and Kat didn’t think she was even seeing anything behind her tears right now. “Really? Your mind goes already? You’re so boring, puppy! Wake up. Wake up!”

The assassin slapped her a couple of times across her darkening face but there was no reaction. The stupid bitch was determined to ruin all her fun. Annoyed, Katarina put a foot up on Lux’s chest, just beneath her breasts, and pushed until the chair tipped over and sent the blonde falling down heavily to the ground on her back.

Luxanna was being difficult, but maybe this was some trick, a play for mercy… Katarina wanted the reaction after all. Or maybe her mind really had drifted. Either way, Katarina had ideas on how she could bring her plaything back.

The redhead grabbed a handful of her beloved needles before she stepped forward, straddling Lux’s body, sitting down on her abdomen, and winding her legs through the gaps in the armholes. Her half-gloved hands moved toward to massage, squeeze, slap, and otherwise molest the sorceress’s perfect tits for a final time before she ruined them, then she placed one of the several dozen needs she had picked up against the bottom of Lux’s fleshing underboob.

She didn’t drive the point in quickly. Katarina took her time, making sure to stab through the flesh as slowly as she possibly could, determined to make the blonde feel as much pain as possible. Then, when the needles were so far in that Katarina could barely see it anymore, and she wasn’t sure that she would even be able to pull it out if she tried, she abandoned that one, grabbed a second needle, and started over in another place.

Lux started squirming with the second needle. She started making pathetic, moaning noises with the fourth. It took until the seventh needle vanished into her swollen, soft tits, never to come out again, before the blonde woke up screaming. The gag muffled most of it, turning her ear-piercings shriek into sexy sounds of suffering, accompanied by a chorus of creaking ropes as the Demacian noble’s sexy toy body helplessly struggled to rip itself free. “Welcome back,” Katarina said with an almost loving smile, bending down to kiss the wide-eyed sorceress on her lips where they stretched over the gag. “I missed you. But you’re not going anywhere, I’m afraid…” She licked some of Lux’s tears up across her cheek. “Nowhere at all…”

Lux’s eyes were focused now, awake and paying full attention… but that didn’t mean Katarina was inclined to stop. Quite the opposite – instead, as one hand reached down to the knife buried in the bound girl’s twat and began to fuck her with the hilt, her other hand took up the next needle and continued her work… and while Lux tossed her head back and screamed in horror before the needle had made it halfway in it didn’t stop the redhaired assassin. Katarina buried the shining steel inside her flesh the whole way, and then when Lux was whimpering and panting she immediately reached for another and did it again. While the blonde’s slutty cunt gripped onto her knife for dear life she turned the whore’s perfect little tits into a pincushion, burying needle after needle inside of them, destroying them in a way that must have been inconceivable to Lux just hours ago.

By the time Katarina was out of needles, Lux was still awake, but the blonde had lost all her energy. She no longer struggled… she barely even jerked at new needles. Instead, she just sobbed weakly and stared through her tears, a completely broken wreck. At this point, the vain little princess slut might be convinced it would be worse to live and have to deal with the consequences of what Katarina had done to her than it would be to die tonight. A total of twenty needles had been pushed into each of her swollen, bleeding fuckbags, inserted into her from every direction, stuffing her pillowy tits so full of needles that she sometimes needed to pull back and find a new place to stick one because she ran into too many others inside of her. The tiny wounds were too small to bleed much, but trickles of blood seeped from every hole regardless, and with forty of them it was significant… turning her tits slowly into the color of Katarina’s hair.

It was so beautiful. The glistening sight made the assassin lick her lips with a feverish frenzy.

“I’m going to collect the set, finally,” she purred as she leaned down over the sobbing blonde. Katarina actually needed to be careful as she grabbed fistfuls of her pierced tits and squeezed them like fruit, proving that Lux could still scream after all. “I thought when they had me kill the king that it was the greatest thing I’d ever done,” Katarina admitted, a smug tone to her voice. “But now I got the next queen as well, and I have to say I enjoyed it even more.” Katarina licked one of Lux’s pierced nipples, tasting the blood and sweat and terror that covered it and shuddering with pleasure. “That’s right. It was me. You have no idea how long I’ve waited to tell a Demacian that. I’m glad that you get to be the first, puppy.”

Lux, she saw, was starting to fade. The crying girl, already injured from the fight, didn’t have much left in her after all the torture, and while all the injuries Katarina had added were small the blood loss was adding up. She wasn’t going to last much longer. Sighing, Katarina undid her pants, pulling the leather down over her tight ass to mid-thigh, and ran her fingers between her legs, beginning to finger herself as the sadistic assassin watched her victim slowly bleed to death.

It wasn’t just Lux she was killing. It was Demacian hope. The daughter of their first house, the woman arranged to marry the king and be the next Queen of Demacia. She wasn’t ending a life, or a family… Katarina was doing the next best thing to snuffing out a whole dynasty, the hopes and dreams of a country, and watching that weak, pathetic hope bleed out through her tits made the assassin’s pussy throb.

Something was missing though… as pretty as she looked with studs of silver sticking out of her while Katarina fucked herself with one hand and fucked Lux with the other, it looked incomplete. “Ah, yes… we do have to add these, don’t we?” she purred, reaching hard, straining herself, unwilling to rise from Lux before the end as she reached up to the table and pulled down two metal rings with screws. “Can’t forget the piercings.”

In the time that still remained before Lux’s light would fade forever, she clamped the metal down on her nipples, working around the sharp steel embedded in her. These were no pleasurable clamps, no toy for adventurous lovers… these were heavy, brutal things powered by screws, less intent on increasing sensation to a nipple than they were on simply crushing them.

The way it squeezed them, squeezed additional blood from them, was so hot… Lux’s face contorted in different grimaces as she fought to deal with the pain, but her body barely even moved. These were the final grim moments, when her body was so thoroughly broken that no will to live remained. There was only the unbearable, agonizing, burning anguish of the end. Katarina reached up, unbuckled her top, and let it drop down enough that one of her breasts hung out. She played her fingers over her nipple at the same time her other hand did the same to Lux’s agonized one. Then, for a few precious seconds more, she resumed fingering herself on the dying girl’s body.

“Shhh,” whispered Katarina with a fiendishly friendly smile. She leaned almost all the way down, looking into Lux’s face. As the blood dribbled out of her pin-cushion breasts, Katarina pulled the knife out of the blonde’s greedy cunt and began to introduce her to it in earnest… sliding it along thighs and stomach, cutting small, shallow patterns that the thought looked good. Lux’s body was a canvas, her blood was paint, and Katarina was a master artist… and she made art with her beautiful victim.

There was an art to killing someone. A lost, forgotten beauty, like blood welling up from a tiny wound, agony built up layer after layer. Every little detail mattered in the last moments… and in the end, Katarina was closer to the girl than anyone else had ever been, so intimately connected she knew her like she knew herself.

As Lux trembled in her arms like a dying animal Katarina kissed her lovingly on the head. “Shhh, it’s almost over, you stupid puppy. It’s almost over. You were a good bitch in the end. I just hope it hurts, still,” she whispered. “I hope it hurts until the final moment.”

As the body weakened further, and her heartbeat against Katarina’s bare chest began to slow, Lux began to shake uncontrollably. She trembled in the final gasping moments of life. “Die for me, princess,” whispered Katarina. She brought the tip of the knife to the blonde’s pussy, and this time sank the blade in instead… pushing deep. She fucked her, and her body offered little resistance to the razor-sharp murder weapon. “Good bye, Demacian…”

By the time she pulled the knife out, Lux was already dead. Her blue eyes stared but saw nothing.

And just like that, Katarina was bored. Disgusted. A dying woman was erotic. Precious. Beautiful. A corpse was just so much discarded, worthless meat. The assassin pushed herself off the body of her victim with resigned disgust. “Well, it wasn’t everything I hoped,” she said easily, “but at least you gave me a good time at the end, puppy. And you could have been more pathetic, I guess. At least you didn’t piss yourse-”

A burning pain hit the back of her skull with so much force that it knocked her off her feet and blinded her. “Ahhhh! AAGH!” Katarina shrieked as loudly as Lux had beforehand, but she could neither see nor hear anymore, and it was little different than screaming into the void. What? What was going on? What was happening to her!

Her limbs first went completely numb, then it felt like they were being crushed, getting squeezed through a meat grinder. Her whole body growing smaller and more painful, building to a crescendo. And then…

Nothing.

“Huh?” the assassin muttered, her head aching. Eye wide and wild, Katarina looked around and found herself back in the barn, right where she had left off… but something was off.

Very, very off.

Because standing in front of her she could see herself, and looking down, she could see…

A red-haired assassin with a scar covering one eye standing in front of her, a malicious smile across the woman’s… her… face. What? she wondered, her mind sent reeling… completely confused, horrifically unable to process what had just happened.

What the hell was going on here?