Katarina stared, eyes wide, her brain struggling to process the sudden change in fortune. She tried to get up, to back away and get into a fighting stance… but she couldn’t. She was restricted… bound in place. In fact, she was bound exactly the same way she had tied up the Demacian princess. Just ahead of her, the red-haired doppelganger was going over the torture tool on the table. “Which ones do you like?” the other woman asked as she ran her fingers over the long sharp needles, the elegant knife set, and then last of all over the large, sharp, and wicked-looking nipple clamps that still had crimson stains on them, the blood of a previous victim. “Any place in particular you want me to start?” she asked as her eyes flicked to the long, iron rod… the branding iron.
The tray wasn’t… precisely… the same, however. All the same things were there as before, but there were a few new things. There was a steel plug with a tail attached to it, and some triangular ears on a band… those hadn’t been there, as far as Katarina could remember. Despite these small differences, however, this whole experience was more than enough to leave the bound Katarina with a strange and awkward sense of déjà vu… this was almost exactly the way she had gone over them, in the same order. She even said the same things. The key difference this time, however, was that her perspective was reversed. This time, she was the one in the chair, the one without control.
What the hell was this? It couldn’t be a dream. It felt far, far too real for that. This was happening… but how? How was this even possible?
The demon… it had to be. Katarina shuddered, suddenly and painfully aware of how much danger she was in. LeBlanc had been afraid enough of this thing getting loose and getting inside of her that she had not only made those piercings to contain it but assigned Katarina to kill Lux the moment she even got a hint of an outbreak. Now… now it seemed like she was pulled into the same nightmare that had swallowed Demacia. “Hey, hey you!” she called out with all the strength she could. “Hey, Katarina… listen to me.”
The copy stopped, her gaze even. Then, slowly, she quirked one amused eyebrow… exactly how Katarina would have herself. “Yes, puppy? What is it?”
Katarina swallowed. “You need to listen to me, right now. I know this sounds crazy, but…” The words sounded insane even in her own head as she looked at the redhead, looking at her with blithe amusement. Gods, did she always look so bitchy and smug? “But I’m not Lux. Something’s wrong here, you have the wrong person.”
Slowly, the other Katarina blinked. Then she smirked. “Ah. I see. Of course not. I’ll just let you go then.” She flicked the chair-bound redhead on her forehead. “Silly me.”
“Listen to me!” she snapped. “Just listen! I know things. Things only you should know, and she shouldn’t. I know how you got Luxanna here, because I did it. Or… or…” Beads of sweat trickled down her face as she considered what to say. No, those wouldn’t work. The blonde Demacian would have known those too. Surely there was some memory she could appeal to. Something only she would know. She just had to-”
Her thought process cut off as the other Katarina took up her knife and slowly, gradually, started to push the point into her nipple through the clothing. Pain lanced her mind the moment the leather over her breasts parted beneath the blade. “First thing is first,” the other woman said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “My name isn’t Katarina, or Hey You. Not to you. It’s Mistress, puppy… when I permit you to speak at all.” She brought her other hand over, grabbed onto Katarina’s other breast right through the top, and squeezed like she was trying to crush it. The confused woman’s thoughts ended in an unwilling scream. “And second, don’t waste your breath like nonsense like that… you’ll need to it scream, puppy.”
The look in her eyes suddenly became playful, and she drew back the knife at the same time she stopped smashing her tit. The blade flicked between her fingers as she twirled it. “I can’t say I had a very high opinion of your intelligence… no matter your breeding, you are only some kind of Demacian mutt after all. Even so, I thought you would think of a better ploy than this.”
“I’m not! Listen… Listen to me! Remember when we were young? How you -we – how mother’s cat clawed us, and she told us it was our fault, so we put poison in its food? And after it died, we were so afraid Father would figure it out that he took him outside of the city in a bag to bury him? And they assumed he ran off? It’s me, Katarina! Please, listen to me!”
Katarina hoped that the story would prove the reality of what she was saying, no matter how insane. She was certain it would at least make her suspicious if she were in the clone’s place. She wouldn’t be certain, but she would at least react with surprise, and a desire to understand, to make sure she wasn’t being duped. This should work.
Instead, the other woman who looked so much like her just grimaced. “What nonsense is this?” she growled. “What has the demon been feeding you, princess?”
“I’m not Lux. I’m you. You need to listen to me Katarina, I-”
Suddenly, the assassin’s hand lashed out and grabbed her by the hair, pulling it tight enough to make her yelp. This… This black-hearted Katarina shook her head so hard that the room began to spin. “I told you, it’s Mistress,” she growled. “I can’t believe you think I’d fall for such an obvious ruse. If I didn’t already think so little of you I might actually be offended.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “You know what? I am offended.” The grin spread across her dark doppelganger’s face. “You know what, princess? I was going to take it easy on you. I was going to make this quick. But you know what? I think I’ve changed my mind. I have some annoyance to work out.”
“You need to understand, I’m not ly-”
The elbow smashed into her face with so much force that her sight blackened for a moment. The pretty assassin’s nose broke with a spray of blood even as her senses screamed all at once. Her lip cut against her teeth and she thought she might have felt something behind of her cheeks crack. Her teeth felt loose in her jaw as the other woman pushed the dazed Katarina’s mouth open and pushed a gag into it, staring at her mercilessly and without any understanding as she tightened it around her head.
“I was going to take mercy on you,” said Black Katarina. “Treat you with some degree of empathy. But I can see now that was a mistake.”
This can’t be me, thought Katarina. It can’t be. I wouldn’t react like this… it’s not real.
Then Black Kat brought up the knife between her breasts and began to cut, and it became clear that it didn’t matter if it was real or not… it hurt.
The tip broke through her skin with effortless ease, parting nearly as easily as water would have beneath the razor-sharp edge. Slowly, but moving with deliberate care, the amused assassin began to circle it around the first of her swollen breasts, cutting through the leather as she went until it hung free. “So pretty…” she muttered. “Isn’t it pretty, the way you bleed Luxanna?” As the blood dripped from the thin, savagely burning cut, Dark Kat moved onto the second of her breasts, the new line of cruel agony making her cry out into the gag. It hurt… she thought. It hurts so much…
As the knife worked its way further South, something horrible finally occurred to Katarina. Despite everything she had been through, everything she had done – all the torture sessions she had with others, all of the battles and injuries she’d been through, the scars she carried – she had no experience in being tortured herself. Some spies and agents, she knew, went through training for this… military spies learned to resist interrogation and torture and practiced at it. Katarina would have never permitted that for herself. She would have cut the throat of anyone who tried to “teach” her by hurting her. The end result, however, was that she had no experience with being tortured herself, with being in any kind of persistent pain where she was helpless to fight back. Of course, she had been hit plenty of times, and even stabbed on occasion. She had her scar from the most memorable failure of assassination she’d ever had.
None of that, however, was anything like this. In the thrill of combat, the adrenaline of the moment made all the pain disappear. Once the battle was won, she could just close her eyes and drift off until she awoke again under Smokeleaf or healing potions. This time, however, there was no adrenaline. There was no fighting back. There was no battle, no resistance. Her body didn’t feel hot and alive, her blood pumping… instead, she felt cold and vulnerable and almost dead. ‘Am I Lux?’ a part of her wondered. ‘Is this what it feels like to be a helpless victim like that dumb puppy slut?’
“Does it hurt?” Dark Kat said with a small, satisfied smirk, the knife dragging its way downward. “Or are you such a dirty painslut with that demon in your head that you enjoy this by now? Just admit you’re sorry, little thing… keep trying to apologize to me, and maybe I’ll believe you, take that gag out, and let you prove it. Admit it, apologize, and I’ll put you out of your misery you wretched thing.”
Katarina simply moaned and shuddered, her lips trembling against the gag. The other woman, however, looked uncaring, cold, merciless… she was going to kill her. She was going to kill her and she was going to make every second of it hurt… Katarina knew it, recognized it, because she’d been there.
Slowly, her hand returned to the table and came back with some of the needles. The sight of that made the bound redhead jerk in her bonds, moving the chair about an inch with her frantic effort. This can’t be real this can’t be real, she can’t be doing this to her… this was some kind of black, horrible nightmare that she would wake up from. Lux was dead. She had killed her. She had already won, banishing the demon. It was over. This wasn’t real.
But it didn’t feel that way.
Katarina felt like she had taken her time abusing Lux. This doppelganger of hers, despite her promises to the contrary, seemed to have no such patience… when she came back with the first of the needles in her hand she immediately slammed her hand against Katarina’s breasts, driving it so far in that the long skewer vanished into the meat of her tit. The agony of that was enough to make her screech. It was a humiliating, debasing thing to be done to a person, she knew that… she had just never cared when it was happening to someone beneath her when she was the one holding the needles. Now, to have it done to herself…
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Black Kat asked happily. “I know it does, bitch. I know it does. But only for the moment… I promise you that. We’re just getting started you pretty little thing. I’m going to redefine what exactly you consider pain, and by the end, you’ll be wishing for something that feels as sweet as this.” She smirked and then slapped around Katarina’s tits, including the one that had the nipple driven through. It stressed the cuts that she had made, but that was nothing compared to what the needle fully impaled in the flesh of her breast felt like… every movement seemed to make the needle go deeper, finding some new untouched nerve to light on fire, flooding her with so much pain that she could see nothing through the tears.
“Cooome oooon,” drawled the cruel woman, brushing away a trail of her tears and licking the finger. “Crying already, princess? You aren’t that much of a coward, are you?”
She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to kill her. She wanted to scream in frustration. Katarina, however, felt very unlike herself… helpless and weak. She was a strong woman, a cold-hearted killer, an assassin who could do anything and overcome anyone. This wasn’t her. “Mmm mouu!” Katarina sniffled out through the gag. “Mmm mooing mis mough moufelf!”
“Silly thing. You need to think of a better lie. I’m not you… that’s why you’re in pain, and I’m not.” The grinning assassin brought up another needle and slowly, teasingly, brought the tip against the helpless “blonde’s” nipple. “Now… apologize for the obvious lie, or this is going in.”
Katarina struggled to think of what answer to give. After all, she should’ve been able to read this woman. It was herself she was interacting with! And yet… She gasped as the needle pricked her. “Sff ehhh!” she cried out.
Black Kat bit her lip with arousal. “No, I don’t think I will. I think you like this, you dumb, masochistic bitch… So I’m going to help you out, puppy.” She began to push the needle through her, and Katarina screamed. “Yessss… that’s what you needed, wasn’t it?”
The electrifying pain that followed was debilitating, and Katarina shook like a leaf, her whole body trembling as she tensed and strained against each and every bond. She couldn’t even think. This was the kind of burning agony that couldn’t help but make a mind shut down entirely, locked in nothing but a never-ending cloud of misery and suffering. The worst of the excruciating agony only lasted a few seconds, but that was more than enough to wipe every other thought out of her head, and when Katarina finally recovered enough to blink away the tears that had accumulated in the meantime she only could see the glint of another needle as her clone descended with it. Katarina strained against everything in her mind, reaching into the depths of the tiny magic she knew, trying to shadow step away… and once again finding nothing but the tears, and terror, and the agony as a third needle joined the second in her tits in a display of cruelty so unreal that she could not fathom how something so unfair could be done to her.
Black Kat giggled with delight while the bound assassin bawled, and she scooped up the nipple clamps… the heavy, cruel steel things bouncing in her palms. “I think it’s time we take this up a notch,” she promised as she raised one hand up to “Luxanna’s” tortured nipple. “Do you know what these are? Well, wait, of course you do… since you’re me, after all. Since you know so much about everything, why don’t you tell me… which nipple should I do? The fresh one? Or the one that already has a needle deep inside of it?”
Katarina could barely breathe around the gag, and it was a huge relief when her captor loosened it enough to let it slip from her numb jaw. “P-Please,” she stammered. “It’s me… Kat… I’m you, I promise. Just… just try to believe me, for a second. Give me half an hour to talk to you, and I’ll prove it. It’s over already. I’ve already done this. Lux is dead. I think it’s the demon that-”
The redhaired assassin sighed and slapped her tits, driving the needles in again. “I have an idea,” the other woman said, speaking as if none of Katarina’s words even reached her ears. “Since you are too excited to decide, I think we’ll just do both.” And with those grim words, she lifted the first of them, opened it, and settled the circular thing down on Katarina’s right, and still yet untouched, nipple.
The moment the bring slammed shut it felt like she was being pinched in a vice, and Katarina cried out. That, however, was just the start… the spring alone was nothing. The assassin began to twist them, rotating them around her nipple, and with each rotation of the ring around the springs, it grew tighter, and tighter, and tighter, working to crush the sensitive bud flat. At last, unable to hold it any longer, Katarina screamed, and the other woman shuddered in ecstasy. “Yes… scream for me. Just like that. That’s what makes it all worth it,” she purred as she finished tightening it, and raised her other hand… towards the left nipple.
The first one had hurt. The second one, however, was far, far beyond mere main. As the spring clamped it shut, it squeezed not only against the nipple and itself but also against the needle impaling it, an exponential increase in the pain. Katarina opened her mouth to scream yet again but this time she could not even make a sound… her mouth yawned open, her lips trembled, but barely even a choked whimper made it out. Her eyes rolled back in pain and goosebumps rose up all over her flesh. Her back arched away from the chair at the same second she flinched as hard as she could, trying desperately – and futilely, to get her tits as far away from her tormentor as she could.
The other woman, however, was just getting started. As the nipple clamps tightened and crushed Katarina’s delicate nipples she came back with more needles, and Katarina realized to her horror that she had been mistaken earlier. The assassin, in naïve hopefulness, had thought that the dark doppelganger was going too fast, that she wasn’t savoring it the way Katarina was. That wasn’t true… she just intended to go much further, hurt her much worse than she could have imagined… and the build-up required growing some momentum on the way.
The evil redhead inserted one needle after another into the captive assassin’s helpless tits, going deep into the meat of her breast before coming out the other side, and she could do little but weep. She was already in so much pain that it was hard to process every part of the torture, but each of them made her flinch away… and that, in turn, pulled agonizingly on the clamps. Needle after needle sank into her beautiful, perfect set of tits, running through them from every direction, mutilating them for her captor’s amusement, and Katarina could only watch in mute horror from her open but silent mouth.
Even Black Katarina seemed a bit taken aback by the excessive brutality once she finished. She was panting, almost orgasmically, by the time she had run out of needles “And to think, we’ve only gone through less than half of the thing I have to play with,” the aroused tormentor said with a grin. “And it looks like I need to remind you how to scream once again.”
She needed to do no such thing. The agony of what had been done to her competed only with the horror of it, scarring her mind with its intensity. Though the deed had already been done, it felt closer to what she imagined being burned alive might be like than what cuts and needles should be. Death seemed honestly preferable. “Pleaseee!” she whispered. Pleaheeheeeaseeee!~”
Black Katarina grimaced, but there was a smirk that accompanied it. “Ugh, you’re hurting my ears, you whiny bitch. Maybe no more screams for now, after all. I think we need to teach you to be quiet for a while first… and I know just the method.”
The grinning assassin casually kicked first one leg and then the second, kicking off her leather boots. The tight pants followed next as she wriggled out of them, exposing bare skin and the complete lack of anything else covering her up. Katarina stared, eyes wide, her mind refusing to process what she was seeing. The thought that someone could do this to her, that she would do this to her…
She thought she was so unworthy of respect that she was only good to be treated as a toy. A simple plaything. Nothing to be ashamed of… Why would anyone feel shame in front of a plaything?
The doppelganger smiled as she shimmied back and forth, her pussy glistening as her silky lips were drenched. One of her fingers slipped inside of herself with a wet, slurping noise. “You’ve made me all wet with your tears and your screaming, and you’ve also hurt my head. Now I guess I’m going to have to punish you for that.” She reached down, ripped Katarina’s panties off, and shoved them into the bound redhead’s mouth by force, meeting with a miserable, muffled gag from her victim as she choked. Apparently pleased by the makeshift gag, Black Katarina smiled. “Now, wait here. I have a surprise for you.”
Still bound in her chair, Katarina could taste her own juices in her mouth as her shadowy self opened the heavy wooden door of the cellar and then disappeared. The assassin’s wide, green, tear-filled eyes watched her go, her mind reeling in horror. barn door and disappeared. She’s getting the branding iron hot. No… I can’t take it, I can’t take it!
As she suffered, she was overwhelmed simultaneously but conflicting feelings of shame, despair, and regret. Regret, because she wished she did not have to be in this situation, and now all the things that she had inflicted on Lux were being returned to her. Despair, because there seemed to be no way out of this hell now. Most piercing of all, however, was the shame… shame, because she never imagined herself to be this weak. This unprepared to deal with any kind of pain. I am so pathetic, she thought. To her great embarrassment, it seemed that even Luxanna, that blonde bimbo slut, seemed to have taken things with more bravery than her when she tortured her.
She shook her head. No… she refused to accept that. That wasn’t true. She was Katarina. She was going to get out of this. If the other woman wasn’t going to believe her, then she was going to find another way out. In retrospect, she wished now that she hadn’t said anything. She should have acted stupid, and waited for an opening, and now…
“In here boys!” her own voice yelled from out of the room. Then she whistled. “Come get her!”
Katarina froze. What… what was that? She had thought that her shadow self had gone to get the branding iron, but that was not what she was hearing now. What she heard now… was barking.
And that terrified her even more.
One by one, large, black hounds poured into the room, surrounding her… Noxian hunting hounds, swarming her. The furious hounds licked at her skin, lapping up the blood that stained her skin, and she stared with horror. Was this other Katarina crazy? Noxian hounds were vicious. Give them a taste of human blood, and they’d be all but berserk, completely bloodthirsty for human life.
Black Katarina giggled. “Look at you. You look so scared. Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on letting them eat you, if that’s what you were thinking. No, I had a way better idea than that…” The amused assassin kicked the chair over and let Katarina fall to the ground still bound to the chair. Immediately the dogs were on top of her, and Katarina shrieked into her panties as she struggled, doing her best to wriggle her way out of the ropes. Unfortunately, it seemed as destined to fail as it had been for Lux beforehand. She had been the one to tie these ropes, after all… the glum thought wiggled against some type of dark cosmic justice.
The hounds licked at her damaged tits and her blood-covered stomach, and with the latter one getting dangerously close to bringing his tongue to her pussy. Katarina did her best to squeeze her bound legs shut, and the doppelganger clicked her tongue at her. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. I thought you were supposed to be me. Is that how we treat our beloved hounds? I don’t think so. Now. Let me show you what we do instead.”
Black Katarina grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the floor, moving her closer to the table. To Katarina’s surprise, she cut the ropes around her body and set her free. This was it… this had to be her moment… but the hounds were still circling around her feet, and she knew what that meant. Any wrong move to run, any move to attack the other woman, and the slavering beasts wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to tear her apart. It was what they were for, what they were trained to do… to hunt, to guard, to kill, and to guard her.
The other woman casually hopped up on the table and spread her legs, then put one of her hands at her pussy… two fingers opening her glistening pussy with offhand ease. “So, little weakling, this is how it’s going to be. Do as I say, princess, or I promise you this… I’ll cut away at what you have that passes for limbs and laugh as I feed them to the hounds, one scrap at a time. Do we understand one another?”
Katarina should have fought. She should have struggled. She should have died. Instead, she nodded numbly. The panties were still in her mouth, gagging her, but she was so afraid to make the wrong move and anger her torturer that she let them stay there. Gods she felt pathetic.
“Good girl,” said Black Katarina. “Now, hands on the table, and spread your fucking legs for me. Spread them… wide!”
She placed her palms on the table and spread her legs as instructed, all while her abused, needle-stuffed tits dangled painfully from her torso, still dripping with blood. How long would it take for her to just bleed to death? The pain would be a bitch. But it might not be as bad as whatever was planned for her now. There was nothing more humiliating than to follow these orders, but what choice was there? She couldn’t go like this. She couldn’t…
She wouldn’t.
With the panties gagging her, it took Dark Katarina several long moments to realize that something was horribly wrong with her little torture victim. It was only when she fell to the ground, screaming wordlessly through her gag, that the cruel redhead seemed to catch on. She quickly ripped the panties out of her mouth, and the redhead’s tongue came with them… severed by her teeth and fierce determination to die before submitting. She was not like that weak Demacian princess. She was an assassin, a killer… and she could die like one.
Katarina was having difficulty breathing, and she knew why. The blood loss wasn’t going to kill her… not fast enough, anyway. She was going to drown in her own blood, first. Her lungs hacked and coughed, trying to preserve her life against the inevitable that Katarina knew was coming… but she wasn’t going to be some dog-raped slut. She wasn’t going to be a meek little torture victim. She was going to die with dignity.
Suddenly the other assassin’s weight landed on her, pinning her to the ground. A hand was on her chin, directing it, and she met her torturer’s eyes… and for the first time noted a difference there. She could see blackness around the edges, an inhuman kind of blackness lurking in those eyes. The same kind of darkness she had seen in the gazes of some of the men around Demacia after everything had gone to help. “You think you can escape that easily?” the voice mocked in Katarina’s voice. There was no amusement in it now… the voice was soulless and cold and determined. “No. I’m not done with you yet.”
The darkness was closing in. Her lungs were still trying to keep her alive but they were failing, her body tiring of the fight. And still, the assassin met her gaze, a small smile on her lips that didn’t touch either her voice or her eyes. “Not even close to done yet. No escape for you…”
Darkness swallowed everything.
Katarina woke up in the dark.
Everything hurt. Her hands batted at her body as she flinched in half a dozen directions at once, painfully aware of every injury that had been inflicted on her. Each injury that her doppelganger of a captor had inflicted on her still burned. Her hands rushed protectively up, trying to caress her breasts and shield them from further harm… harm that didn’t exist. There were no needles. There were no clamps. As far as Katarina could tell she had no injuries anymore at all… but everything still hurt.
Slowly, Katarina pushed herself to her feet. Where was she? It was pitch black and she could barely see her hands in front of her face… She was outside, though. The only thing she could see was the dim moon in the sky, mostly hidden by the heavy rain clouds that had chased her indoors… and it revealed the forest all around her in barely visible shades of grey.
Katarina turned and looked around, left and right, and almost stumbled over the table full of torture implements… still right in front of her. Still filled with all the same implements. The needles. The branding iron. The clamps. The dildos. That stupid tail and ears. None of her knives. Nothing useful unless she was trying to poke someone’s eyes out.
The howl that cut through the trees made her whirl, her heartbeat screaming in her ears as it pounded. Those howls… she knew them all too well. Those were the howls of Noxian Wolfhounds… she could still feel their tongues and teeth on her from before she had… had…
Katarina didn’t even realize she was backing up until her rear bumped into the table. The torture implements, along with the tail and ears, tumbled to the ground as she stumbled. Then she turned and began to run, as quickly as she could.
Her breath hammered as she pumped her arms and legs, running as quickly as she could as the hunting howls and ferocious barks followed her… and despite the athletic assassin giving it all she had they kept getting closer, and closer, and closer. She should have been able to keep ahead of them. She had kept ahead of hunters and dogs in the woods before… but now they were right on her heels. Maybe it was the injuries, the pain of which still followed her. Maybe it was the darkness and the building fear. Whatever it was she could all but feel their breath on her ankles, and she could definitely hear the scratch of their nails against the dirt behind her as they ran after her.
Desperate, the red-haired assassin charged through the woods. The dim moonlight barely let her see, and her leather clothing seemed to cover pathetically little. Branches scraped her arms, ripping into her as she pushed her way through the underbrush, and Katarina felt a hundred other small injuries join her phantom ones. She was sure she was bleeding, but it didn’t matter… she didn’t have time to bleed. They weren’t far behind. She could hear their howls and barks, could hear them crashing through the undergrowth. The Noxian Wolfhounds were coming.
She wasn’t going to escape them. She was going to die.
When the teeth sank into her calf, ripping at her hamstring, Kat was too breathless to scream… but she tried anyway. The teeth tore something away from her and she wobbled on a leg that suddenly wouldn’t support her weight anymore, her body still trying to run even when she knew it was hopeless.
The assassin, however, only got a few steps before one of the wolves behind her hurtled onto her, sending her flying face-first into the mud on the ground. The baying of the hounds behind her seemed to go wild as the other animals saw her fall, and Katarina, eyes wide, turned to watch with horror as the rest of the pack came bounding into the clearing; huge, snarling, slavering, black and grey beasts. Their burning yellow eyes seemed to shine in the night as they looked at her, and their fearsome jaws slavered around a maw full of dagger-like teeth.
Moments later, the dogs set upon her from all angles. Katarina struggled, desperately alternating between reaching for knives that weren’t there or slapping away the wolves… neither helped. The assassin screamed in raw terror, trying to squirm away as she felt their mouths on her, a slender canine muzzle shoving between her thighs. The wolves surrounding her snarled and snapped at her each time she moved, and she felt a big, strong canine paw on her belly press down hard as the wolfhound leaned in, sniffing enthusiastically at…
At her pussy through her pants.
Horrified realization shot through the redhead all at once. The doppelganger had been speaking true. The beasts surrounded her utterly, crouched and ready to pounce, all eyeing her helpless, bleeding body with predatory desire… and from her position beneath the pack Katarina couldn’t help but see what lurked between the legs of each shaggy animal. A long, thick, and furry sheath from which protruded a bright red and drooling spear tip.
The horror was almost too much to take. These predatory hunters were beasts… but they were here to satiate the lust in their loins, not the hunger in their bellies.
Katarina, in frenzied desperation, fought even harder. She would rather have been eaten alive than subjected to this.
The hounds, however, didn’t care. No matter how much she felt like prey, the animals had more important things in mind than eating her.
Their mouths worked over her and she shrieked and screamed and cried out and punched and kicked and flailed and none of it made any difference… they were just too big, too strong. The wolfhounds on top of her continued to hold her down through raw ferocity and strength until Katarina felt like she was drowning in the scent of their fur and thick musk, having to gulp and gag to even breathe through it. Claws dug hard into her exposed skin, scratching her, and even as they did she felt jaws closing around the edges of her clothing. The animals seemed like they were in a frenzy, tugging hard at her pants and her leather top and her boots like they were ripping meat off of a bone. Then, with a savage ripping noise, her leather pants gave out and one of the wolfhounds tore them away with his enormous jaws, her dark leathers hanging from the mouth of the apex predator.
It was like it was a signal. Everything stopped. No one licked her, or bit her, or tugged at her clothing. There was silence for a moment… Katarina couldn’t even hear the sound of the animals breathing anymore.
And then chaos.
The wolves who’d been tugging and pawing at her clothes seemed to dive for Katarina’s exposed crotch all at once, snapping and snarling at each other as they jostled for position. Her underwear was torn away in an instant, and the assassin swore she felt her heart stop for a moment at the sensation of sharp teeth just scraping her most sensitive skin. They fought over Katarina’s body like a piece of meat thrown to starving dogs, thick claws scratching at her even as her top finally gave away. Their slavering jaws dripped their searing drool all over her nakedness, the smell of the ferocious animals assaulting her nose. While multiple of the wolves fought for position between her thighs, two others went for her newly exposed tits. Katarina screamed anew, put a hand on one of their muzzles, and tried to push them away.
Fang snapped.
Katarina heard the crunching of bone, the squishy sound that came from pierced flesh. Only afterward did the pain hit her, and the wolf’s jaws came away from her hand suddenly less three fingers. The assassin could only stare in horror at her maimed right hand, the tool of her trade as a killer, and the scream that bubbled up out of her throat was something savage, crazed, and tinged with madness.
The sound of her primal fear seemed only to energize the predators. The wolfhounds redoubled their efforts… even the one who had just eaten her fingers returned to her tits, lashing at her swollen breasts in a frenzy. Their teeth scraped against her along with their tongues, and more and more claws scratched her abdomen and thighs as the wolfhounds fought for position. Other dogs were between her legs, snarling and biting at each other as they fought for access to her exposed sex. Katarina tried to close her legs, but they would not be denied… and it was only the fact that her struggles were so ineffective that kept one of them but locking teeth around her thighs to teach her a lesson about what happened when prey struggled with its predator. Pain tore through her torso as the blood began to trickle down her contours in the few places their tongues did not immediately lick it away.
Katarina screamed again as the pack crowded her, holding her helpless, attacked by dozens of claws and teeth and lashing, swollen, thick tongues on her exposed body. One snarling brute was right in her face, forcing his snout in through her open lips as she tried to scream. Her hands were crippled and tangled against others of the struggling wolves, leaving Katarina with little to do but pathetically try to push the mutt out of her with her own tongue. His larger and stronger tongue, unsurprisingly, won that battle, and soon he was lashing away inside of her screaming mouth, his bestial slobber, hot breath, and snarls all disappearing down the assassin’s throat. He tasted like rotten meat, and death, and more of the pervasive animal musk that swallowed everything.
While the first of the hounds to violate Katarina tongue-raped her mouth, the others all but fed upon her body. Their tongue made her shiver with disgust at the laps of their thick lickers on tender skin, and then, finally, the challenge between her legs had a winner. One of the wolves had reached her cunt, his snout pressing against it, and now her exposed sex was being ravaged by that sloppy tongue as the beast ran his long, soaked muscle all the way between pussy and ass, managing to violate both of her holes with each vile lap.
With two wolves all but latched onto her tits, one kissing her so ferociously that she was gagging on it, and a fourth with his tongue between her legs, that should have been enough. Instead, the rest of the pack – gods, how many of them were there? – moved around her sides, pawing at and licking against whatever they could. It felt like the skin could have been licked right off her body so brutal were these beasts in their mass assault with their long, canine lickers. Katarina screamed and screamed and screamed but she couldn’t even hear it herself, the sound of her gagged terror swallowed among the deafening din of the pack’s violent excitement.
Before she knew what was happening, the dogs were suddenly off her, and Katarina tried to seize her moment… desperately crawling away, trying to get free. The agony as one of the dogs sank his teeth into her ankle and began to drag her back to them was almost nothing compared to the raw despair as she was pulled across the ground, her ass in the air. Then one of the wolfhounds leaped atop the assassin, his drool raining onto her neck, his hot panting breath hammering against her ears as he wrapped his legs around her. It was almost like his paws were hands, squeezing down against her breasts like a man would. His hind legs scrambled as he desperately tried to find her opening, and Katarina struggled as hard as she could, unwilling to allow this to happen as she felt the swollen, sickeningly slick spear tip brush over her lips again and again.
“No, don’t, get off of me you mangy muyeeeeaaaaaaaaaargh!”
The wolfhound finally found a place where he had locked in. Unfortunately for Katarina, he had found the wrong hole.
For a human, forcing a cock lubed only with precum up dry, resisting virgin asshole would have been nearly impossible or at the least horribly painful. The wolfhound, however, was far stronger, his hips like the hammering of a train, and he had no such problem. The pointed tip of his canine cock skewered the assassin’s clenched asshole in a second, and Katarina felt any remaining decency she felt be destroyed at that moment by his raping shaft as it stretched her walls agonizingly apart, driving deeper and deeper as the swollen head sought ever deeper into her guts.
Katarina screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed furiously and nonstop as the wolfhound frenziedly humped against her, every thrust of his lupine hips a weapon delivering a new spike of pain, humiliation, and revulsion deep through her whole body. She frantically clawed at the dirt, her remaining fingers scratching furrows in the dirt. Her face contorted in agony and humiliation as the wolfhound raped her ass like she was the last bitch he’d ever get to mount. Thick, swollen canine balls slapped against her exposed, slobber-soaked pussy as he fucked the shrieking assassin down into the mud, panting and snarling as he continued to ram his massive cock up Katarina’s bleeding asshole.
It felt like he was going to split her in half. Katarina had been in the process of being tortured to death by her doppelganger and she had never felt anything that hurt as badly as this did. She howled her lungs out until her throat was raw, her agonized shrieks bouncing off of the trees and the canopy. Her body thrashed and struggled, hopelessly pinned beneath the wolfhound’s weight as he drove his cock deep up her tight back entrance, brutally sodomizing the sobbing and squealing killer as she shrieked for him to stop. The pack’s only response to her howling, however, was to grow more enthusiastic… to lick at her harder, to bite her more. They fed off her pain and misery and returned it to her as excitement… maybe they took Katarina bucking and jerking and thrashing beneath her as an exciting game, or maybe their lust and urge to conquer, claim, and dominate was too overwhelming and they actually took some animal pride in crushing her down into the mud as Katarina had her ass stuffed full of wolf-cock. Either way, his unnaturally huge cock was ramming up the redhead’s ass faster and rougher with each passing second as she was turned into little else but a dog-dick cocksleeve.
“Oh Gods, just kill me!” Katarina screamed, only for her cries to be silenced – The wolfhound’s paws pressed down on the back of her head, shoving her face down into the mud as he rapidly pounded his cock into her tight rear. She couldn’t breathe… the cold, wet earth clogged her mouth and nostrils, and it took all her strength to occasionally force her head far enough up to gasp in a breath of air. The earth in front of her looked almost like a plowed field as Katarina continued to claw and scratch at the ground as if trying to drag herself away from the brutal ass rape.
Around her, the other dogs were barking furiously – their sheaths with the red spear tips poking out rigid between their hind legs as they awaited their turn, and occasionally they brushed her with them, making her horribly aware that she was surrounded by a swarm of hard, bestial cocks primed to rape her.
It was the worst pain yet, like a thick and flaming skewer had just been jammed up her rectum. The wolfhound went berserk on her shithole, pulverizing her with his bestial meat-stick and fucking her so hard she thought he was going to fuck right through her ass and into her cunt after all. He just kept getting faster, and faster…
When it happened, it happened without warning. Her ass was already in so much pain that the increased spike of anguish in her bleeding, stretched hole faded into the background. It was only when it started hurting way, way, way more that Katarina realized that something was wrong… and when it hit her, it hit her all at once, and she screamed. Her horror and hatred of her defilement, however, didn’t stop the knot from continuing to grow to its full side inside of her. She’d never felt anything so huge inside her before, and as she panicked, eyes wide with horrific pain, the wolf on her back shoved his hips forward, knot swelling rapidly inside her. It should have locked them together. Instead, the brutal wolfhound simply overpowered her weak and savaged sphincter, and Katarina felt it rip around the bulge as he slammed the knot in and out and in and out and in and out of her ravaged hole. She completely lost the ability to speak then… her mouth hung open in a silent sound of agony and not a single sound came out. All she could do was jerk and squirm like a skewered worm on a hook, her face twisted in utter agony. She couldn’t hold onto a single thought in her head past the white-hot agony radiating away from her ass. Searing, brain-breaking pain washed over her and forced her to let out choking gasping noises through her voiceless mouth like a mad animal as she went into a spastic fit of thrashing and shivering before collapsing beneath the wolfhound’s weight.
Then, eyes fluttering, she felt him explode in her ass. Stream after hot stream of his canine cum sprayed against her ass walls. He must have had a veritable ocean of spunk stored in those sacs of his because it just kept coming and coming without end. Katarina drooled and shuddered, mouth slack as the wolfhound pumped more cum up her tight shitter. She was being used like a wolf jizz dumpster, a worthless chew toy for the wolfhound to shoot its load into as long as it wanted, and she could do nothing but lay there twitching and knotted, unable to do much but softly moan in disgust and horror at the fact she was being used by a violent hound came deep up her ass.
Katarina sobbed, shaking in disbelief as she felt the hot, virile cum spurting inside of her, the throbbing piece of meat shooting load after load into her foreign asshole. “Ohhh Godssss,” she whimpered, tensing all over, jerking every time she felt another hot squirt filling her up. The pressure inside from the knot hurt so badly and Katarina could do little but shiver as her tired, aching guts unwillingly milked the male on her back. Panting, grunting in pain, and wincing as her sphincter clenched rhythmically around the base of the cock buried inside her, Katarina’s muscles tried to repel the fist-sized invader, but there was no escape. He was locked in.
Katarina wasn’t sure how long she lay there squirming before he began to pull out, wedging his paws against her and scraping her skin as he began to withdraw. The knot didn’t come out easily… it fought for every inch and made the claws draw more blood from scratches all over Katarina’s back and sides as he whined and growled and worked his way free. When he finally popped out, it was with a sickening squelching noise, and immediately her ass started to overflow… the juices fell down the back of her legs. Looking underneath her, Katarina could see the disgusting white puddle spreading across the mud beneath her. She stared at it, feeling numb. Barely feeling human any longer.
The wolfhound who had just finished raping her abandoned her like rotting meat. He didn’t even give her a goodbye lick or look back at her once as he slinked off to carefully lick his shining red cock clear, wiping away the stains that had been deposited on the thing from their unwilling copulation. More of his seed dripped out of her, to the ground, and Katarina let herself completely collapse into the puddle of mud and cum that made up the ground beneath her, incapable of feeling any lower.
And then the next dog mounted her, and her new hell started all over again.
The only warning she got was when the wolfhound’s jaws tightened on another part of her pants and ripped them off her shapely, pale ass. The ripping sound as the flimsy fabric was shredded brought her momentarily out of her daze. Then one of his thick, dark paws planted itself on the back of her head and shoved her dazed head back down into the mud, pinning her against the mud beneath the drooling beast.
“No, no no no no,” Katarina began, only for the lustful predator to thrust forward and slam every inch of his massive canine cock up Katarina’s asshole. The hound didn’t even have to struggle – her asshole was still gaping open, and while it had swollen up inside and grown momentarily even tighter the damaged sphincter and copious lube from wolf-cum made it pathetically easy for him to force his way inside. The assassin moaned in agony as the new, colossal dog cock rammed up her ass. The dog violently raped her up her ass in the mud, making the redhead let out high-pitched wails of horror. It felt like the wolfhound had managed to stuff himself all the way up to her belly button in one go with absolutely no pause, battering through what little resistance her body was still capable of delivering.
Katarina had nothing left. She couldn’t even bring herself to continue trying to crawl away. She could do little but sob and squeal in agony as she found herself getting brutally assraped, her hips bouncing and jerking against her will as they were hammered by the predator claiming her. He didn’t even give her a second to try and adjust or cope. As Katarina cried and suffered, one of the dogs clenched his jaws around her neck, using it to press her face back down into the mud again, driving the assassin’s head into the filth beneath them. It was a testament to how much pain she was in that the terror of having the wolf’s teeth around her throat barely even registered to her.
The wolfhound slammed his prey harder and harder, using the destroyed assassin as a piece of fuckmeat. No protests that Katarina could have made would have mattered – the Noxian hunting hound continued to rut in and out of her viciously while she moaned in anguish. Katarina shook and twitched uncontrollably as her whole body convulsed in pain, feeling like she was being ripped apart. The teeth sinking into the back of her neck grew even tighter as the wolf began to flood her ass with cum, holding her down while his packmate began to flood her ass with cum, holding her down as he pumped a load of thick rape seed deep up her sphincter.
It seemed to take forever for him to finish cumming inside of her, and by the time he was finished, her belly felt so swollen it hurt… like she had just finished a feast day meal and eaten far, far too much. Her stomach, however, was empty… it was her guts that were full. The wolf pulled out of her with animal contempt, growling at her petulantly as it walked over the broken, naked, and humiliated assassin to stand over her face. Katarina’s long red hair was plastered to her muddy, dirt-stained face and her eyes were unfocused and hazy, her tongue hanging half out of her mouth.
“Kill me…” Katarina brokenly moaned out, too weak to move. “Please. Just… kill me…” Instead, as her eyes focused, she noticed the wolf lifting one leg. Katarina only had a second for the horror to dawn before the wolf began pissing all over her face, his stinking animal piss soaking her hair to her scalp and streaming all over her defeated face as she lay there beneath him, his urine dripping down her chin and making the mud drool down her face.
And then the next dog was in her.
And then the next one.
And then the next one.
Her world was a blur of teeth, tongues, thrusts, pain, choking, cum, tears, sound, and burning. Dog after dog ramming into her asshole… filling it first with their knots and then their cum. Not one of them deigned to even touch her pussy. Her misery was abject, utter, and complete… hopeless as could be. She didn’t even notice when one of the dogs holding down her throat bit down hard enough to open it. She didn’t even notice when her blood, crimson as her hair, seeped down to mingle with the sweat and blood and tears and cum and piss that soaked the mud. She didn’t even notice when her vision started going black and the hollow pain of the dick up her ass became something distant, like it was happening to some other worthless red-haired assassin slut. She didn’t even notice when she died.
But if she had noticed any of that, she would have been grateful for it.
“Am I boring you?”
Katarina came back to wakefulness with a jerk, snapping awake. The phantom pain in her throat was horrible… she might not have noticed the injury when it happened but she certainly felt it now. Everything, absolutely everything, hurt. The old injuries like the needles in her breasts and the clamps still burned sullenly. It was joined by hundreds of other new ones… the pain of the scratches from wolfhound claws, the pounding in her head from when she was pressed down, the pain in her asshole…
No.
That wasn’t a phantom pain. That was real and recent, and new.
Katarina turned her head, looking over her shoulder, and to her horror, she caught a glimpse of her dirty, sweat-soaked, blonde hair. She was back in Lux’s body, hair, ripped clothing, wooden phallus stuffed into her asshole and all. It was stained with her shit and blood and gods knew what else, only held inside her ravaged hole by its sheer and overwhelming size. It stank like burned meat, and she was soaked with sweat, and-
“I said…”
The slap rocked her brain back and forth inside of her skull, sending her whole body swaying from side to side. Her teeth clicked together on her tongue, biting it in a macabre parody of how she had escaped her torture before. Her vision swam and the edges of it went dark as her brain reeled.
“Am I boring you, Luxanna?”
The woman in front of her slowly came into focus. Katarina. It was Katarina again, the same cruel doppelganger. It was hard to notice the redhead in front of her, however, when the red-hot brand hovered right in front of her face. “I guess we’ll have to fix that.”
She pressed the brand forward, and Katarina screamed… but it never touched her. The heat seared against her skin, and she could smell it as some of the tiny hairs on her face singed from how close it was. The fact that she didn’t press it into her didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Katarina flinched away, of course… but the ropes caught her as she jerked away.
And then rebounded her right back towards it.
Her own motion pressed the hot branding iron directly against her face. The metal seared into the delicate visage, and it didn’t take much imagination for her to visualize Lux’s pretty little noble, Crownguard face blackening and searing as it kissed her… she could visualize it even through the screaming agony. Katarina tried to pull away but her skin stuck to the burning metal, and her tormenter responded by pressing the brand against her harder, making the ropes that held her flex and tighten, making the hot metal dig deeper into her features. The smell of burned hair and smoking fat and flesh overwhelmed her senses. Katarina screamed and screamed and screamed and she could just barely make out her dark clone’s laughter as she did, entertaining her while Katarina suffered.
When she finally pulled the brand away, the red-haired torturer needed to fight to make it come free. The metal had dug furrows into “Lux’s” once pretty features and it didn’t want to pull back… it had embedded into her flesh and needed to be ripped free, further maiming her face.
“Ah, now the inside matches the outside. Black and burned and ugly,” Dark Katarina said with a smirk. She moved to the side and Katarina realized she was looking right into a mirror… and the moment she realized that she wished to god she was looking at anything else. Seeing herself in Lux’s body would have been bad enough, but the burned scars across her face in the shape of a cat made it so much worse… the scorched ruin of her face staring back at her. It wasn’t the only one, either. There were copies of the brand on the back of one shoulder, on the top of the opposite breast, on one of her thighs… the source of that reek of burned meat that lingered in the air.
“Oh, quit crying,” Dark Katarina said with an airy kind of indifference as she stuck the iron back into the burning brazier resting on the ground. “I’m almost done decorating you. Then we can invite the dogs in… I know you are looking forward to that!”
Katarina couldn’t say anything. Any words, any excuses, any explanations she could have even tried to make all turned into blubbering through her burned, seared sears, and raw throat. She wanted to threaten, to explain, even to beg. Instead, she just stared in wide-eyed horror as the branding iron once again grew to red hot.
The sadistic torturer pulled the brand from the flames, twirling the base of it between her fingers with all the strength she had gained from years and years of practice with knifework. “Where should we put this…” she purred, her voice a slithering rasp of amusement. “What about… here?” She raised the branding iron to her hip and brought it close, and “Lux” flinched away from the heat, trying to get away from it. Just like before, she stopped short of actually pressing it against her, but this time there was no elastic effect pulling her back into it. Instead, it just kept her squirming for several long seconds before the assassin pulled the brand back.
“No… not there,” Dark Katarina said in the same playful tone. “That one’s not flat enough. It won’t be pretty enough. How about…” The brand slowly came down again, and Katarina felt the heat against an existing burn on her ass as it descended. It just barely kissed her skin and it still burned like she had sat down on the sun before the assassin pulled back and left just the heat singing the hair off her rear. “Yes. This is much better.”
Then her world vanished back into the pain. The first time, on her face, had been unexpected and she had been lost in the shock and dismay of it. This time, however, she was fully capable of experiencing every second of the soul-devouring pain. Almost immediately she felt like she was going to black out as the searing pain erupted again, overwhelming and complete… the brand pressed down, and a new symbol was seared onto the skin of her ass as her brain instantly began to lose the struggle against madness. Her body spasmed and her bladder released, piss splashing down onto the floor beneath her as she screamed, and her doppelganger laughed, and Katarina suffered and suffered and suffered as she burned.
Dimly, Katarina remembered what she’d thought about Luxanna. How at least she hadn’t pissed on her. How at least she’d had that much dignity in the end. Katarina couldn’t even live up to that standard.
The words slowly came to her, drifting through the haze of pain and bringing her slowly back to reality as a pair of ruby-red lips pressed to her ear and spoke softly. “You’ll look so much prettier when I’m done with you,” Dark Katarina purred into her ear. “I’ll leave behind such a pretty corpse that says everything there is to say to anyone who knows how to look about who did this. Who’s the one that ended your threat. Who’s the one who killed the Princess of Demacia…” She dropped the branding iron back to the brazier with casual regard, the clink of metal on coals ringing through the room as she slid up to the bound “Lux” and perched on the table in front of her. She spread her legs, and Katarina stared at her glistening, wet pussy in stunned dismay. “…Just like I killed your King.”
The cruel assassin’s hands caressed her burn-scarred face, fingers sliding into her singed blonde hair. “And when you die… it’s not going to be as a princess, or as some grim demonic threat. It’s going to be as a plaything. My toy. Exactly where you belong.” With a sharp tug and a sudden gasp of pleasure, Dark Katarina ground the bound woman’s face against her crotch. Katarina gagged as musky odors and slick skin rubbed against her burned mouth, nose, and cheeks.
As the burns and scars stung and the musk filled her nose, Katarina gagged and immediately began to struggle, trying to turn her head away from her rapist… but Dark Katarina’s firm grip was unbreakable. The assassin’s strong legs wrapped around her head, and Katarina could no longer see anything except for the occasional flash of pale skin. The captive killer’s world narrowed down the pain and humiliation of being used like a sex toy, the feel of her captor’s pussy on her face, the scent of her as she smeared it all over her wounded face, and the way those juices stung.
Katarina’s head swam, and her lungs ached as she strangled on her torturer’s wet cunt. It was like her pussy was a mask perfectly formed to muffle “Lux’s” cries and steal her air. Occasionally, she allowed just enough time for a few gasping breaths, but they were never long enough to be comfortable and then she was surrounded by her conqueror again. She wasn’t licking but it didn’t matter… the redhead didn’t need her tongue to satisfy herself. Her thighs, slick with the assassin’s juices and Katarina’s tears, locked her head in place as she savagely ground her labia against Katarina, leaving smears of thick fluid behind.
Her musky scent was all she could smell, and the tart taste of her pussy was the only thing she could taste. Slick and wet, she ground against Katarina’s scarred face, and it felt like the captive killer’s mind was splitting under her sadistic assault. Part of her mind felt lost, confused, and terrified. She was drowning in another woman’s crotch. That part babbled to itself. Everything was too insane to even process… trapped in another person’s body, a dead woman’s body. Killed, and more than once. The rest of her, however, just wanted to survive, to survive and escape… even if it didn’t seem possible. That part of her heard the assassin’s mounting pleasure, the urgency of the other woman’s approaching orgasm… her need.
Dark Katarina ground her crotch against her captive’s burn scars again, and again, and again, harder and harder. Her moans grew, and her legs squeezed harder, and then she froze in place… her body trembling with pleasure, muscles locked with the ecstasy of her orgasm and holding her tightly against her body.
After several long heartbeats, she began to relax and slide back. Katarina closed her eyes, unwilling to look at the only thing that she could see. She gasped in now that she could finally breathe, letting helpless tears escape down her cheeks.
In time, Dark Katarina’s breathing slowed down into deep, relaxed breaths. With a contented sigh, she slid off the table, stroking fingers through the dysphoric blonde hair that framed her face, and Katarina flinched away from each finger. “You are so delicious, princess,” the scarred redhead grinned, leaning close and inhaling deeply through her nose. Her tongue licked up her scarred cheek, savoring the taste. “Your tears and my cum. The taste of your pain mixed with my pleasure… it’s the perfect combination.”
Katarina cried, and fresh tears fell down her cheek. The assassin licked them away… one tear at a time.
“Alright then… it’s time to bring out the puppies.”
And just like that, Katarina’s world changed again. It wasn’t obvious at first… her vision was only a small part of her reality at the moment. Pain felt like it was the majority of her reality now, and that didn’t change when the environment did. Instead, it took more of a minute to realize that she was now lying on the dirt-and-pine-needle-strewn forest ground, unbound. She blinked, trying to shake the cobwebs from her head.
Slowly, Katarina pushed herself up, and her legs kicked against something… the same table, filled with torture implements. The needles. The clamps. The dildos. All of the things she had brought to use on Lux, to punish her toy for escaping her… and then had used on her.
And now she was the toy.
The only thing on the table that she had not brought with her were the headband with the pointed ears, and the tail attached to the plug. The last time she had been here, she had been puzzled by them. This time, though, she had a sinking suspicion of what they were doing here. She was supposed to put them on. Be the good little prey animal for the hounds. Submit.
The realization made her sick. What made her far sicker, however, was the fact that the cold-blooded assassin actually felt a little tempted.
She knew these woods. She had been here before. The hounds would be here again. She hadn’t been able to escape them last time, and she had been less injured then. She wasn’t going to escape them. Was submission actually the best option? Should she give up?
The thought was as repellant and toxic as it was contagious. It haunted her like intrusive thoughts, tempting her in a direction she never thought she would ever want to go. She felt lost… lost in the woods, alone and helpless. The weakness was like a bleeding wound, leeching the rest of her strength and ability to resist, one doubting thought at a time. How had Katarina gotten herself so lost? Why was the thought even tempting?
Katarina froze as she heard the low howl of the wolfhounds she knew were coming in the distance. Even though it sounded far away, it still sent a shiver of fear down Katarina’s spine… three echoing howls from 3 points of the compass. Surrounding her. Herding her. Giving her only one direction to run. Her breathing began to quicken. Gulping, Katarina slowly backed up, one step at a time. She moved faster, eyes darting left the right, leaves and twigs crunching under her feet. She could hear noises in the nearby trees, and the next time she heard the yowling cry of one of the wolves she swore it was much closer.
Then she turned to run.
It was like a repeat of last time. Her entire world narrowed to a dim tunnel, clogged with low-hanging branches she needed to swat out of her way and cut bloody scratches across her arms. The dim forest didn’t seem to let her move through it. Instead, it seemed to materialize out of the gloom and then sweep past her, faster than thought. She caught glimpses of shakes moving in the undergrowth, black shadows that raced past her, around her. She swore she could see snapping white teeth and glowing, hungry eyes.
Last time she had been snapped at by wolves. This time, distracted and exhausted, Katarina didn’t even need to wait for them to catch up with her. She didn’t notice the root in her path. When she tripped, it was sudden… she snagged her leather pants as she fell. One leg was ripped open, and Katarina gasped with stinging pain as pinpricks of blood appeared on her hands and knees where she’d crashed into the stone-covered forest floor.
Moments later, Katarina watched with growing panic as more of the huge black shapes slipped out of the darkness and into the dim light of the woods. The wolfhounds’ eyes shone bright as they looked Katarina over. Several had their ears back. One licked his lips.
Unsteadily, Katarina lifted herself onto her hands and knees, watching the leader of the pack the whole time. Her movement caused a ripple of aggression to run through the Noxian hunting hounds in front of her, and she froze, swallowing as they curled their lips and narrowed their eyes. Katarina began to shuffle slowly backward, but to her horror, the wolfhounds kept pace with her, taking a step forward for every inch she managed to retreat. They were so near now that Katarina could smell their animalistic musk, see their thick black claws, their enormous paws inches away from her own hands.
This couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t. This nightmare had to end, it had to!
She had barely gotten two feet away from them when the wolfhound at the front reached out and put his massive front paw on top of her head. Katarina muffled the gasp that wanted to escape, her breath caught in her throat as sheer terror raced through her veins, feeling the ends of his claws digging into her scalp. Breathing hard and erratically through her nose, Katarina tried in vain to struggle against the big, shaggy black form as he pushed her head down. She managed to avoid being forced downwards for a few moments… Then one of the wolfhounds to her side leaned in, snapping and snarling at her in irritation.
Katarina flinched and gave a surprised cry, and the weakness of that flinch gave the wolfhound an opportunity to overwhelm her. The wolfhound forced her down, hard, her mouth still open…
And a moment later, it was invaded by the tip of his throbbing, crimson erection.
The salty, musky taste and scent hit Katarina like a truck, and in a smooth movement, the pack leader’s paw shoved her down harder, his slippery, pointed cock shoving its way eagerly down Katarina’s throat. With a soft huff, the wolf mounted Katarina backward, strong paws gripping her head, holding her in place so he could use her as a fucktoy in the most humiliating way the assassin could imagine.
“Nggh! NGGH!” Katarina groaned, thrashing her head from side to side, but the wolf only pinned her head tighter in place. She gagged and coughed on the invading length, throat burning. She was getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen, stealing snorts of air through her flared nostrils, every breath tinged with the stink of the horny male animal.
While the panting, drooling animal on top of Katarina dug his claws into her upper neck and shoved her head back and forth even as his canine hips thrust in and out, using her spasming, agonized throat to massage his swollen red cock, Katarina could sense the other savage beasts circling her, sniffing her. She squealed in protest, trying to squirm away as she felt a slender canine muzzle shoving between her thighs. The wolfhounds surrounding her snarled and snapped at her once more, and she felt a big, strong canine paw on her lower back as the next biggest hound leaned in, sniffing at her through the pants.
The huge black dog fucking Katarina in the mouth continued desperately hunching his hips, shoving his dripping shaft down her throat. The raped assassin groaned, feeling like she was drowning in watery, salty precum as she had to gulp and gag on it as it flooded her throat.
The wolfhound’s knot was beginning to swell, his movements desperate and erratic, claws digging in harder and harder to Katarina’s scalp. As the other animals began tugging at her clothing once again just like they had the last time, Katarina felt the leader slam his hips forward hard, and she screamed as his pointy red cock rammed down her spasming throat. The knot continued to swell and, with each pulse of blood into the growing mass of flesh it forced Katarina’s mouth wider and wider until her jaws ached, her lips stretched obscenely around the beast’s furry sheath. It hurt… and it was still growing, and growing.
With a low howl of pleasure, the dominant wolfhound humped eagerly at Katarina’s face as he blasted hot cum down her throat. The dominated assassin’s squeals were muffled as she gulped and gasped desperately, swallowing every spurt in the hopes it would be the last one.
As her stomach was unwillingly pumped full of cum, Katarina’s overwhelmed body and brain realized something horrible – She couldn’t breathe! With her nose pressed firmly up against the wolf’s furry crotch and the knot so completely swollen she couldn’t so much as gasp in a whisper of oxygen, eyes teary and nostrils flaring as she was used for a vicious animal’s pleasure. Her hands came up, pressing against the wolf, and all that came of it was that she felt pressure against her teeth… the swollen knot didn’t so much as budge.
Was this how she was going to die? Suffocating to death on one of her homeland’s vicious hound’s crimson cock? Drowning in his musk and cum? The animal seemed to be beginning to try to pull out himself but he wasn’t anymore able to do it than she was… his claws raked at her body as he pushed, cutting dull, painful furrows in her dirty skin, but the cock didn’t budge, and the pressure on her teeth only grew.
Then, just as Katarina was seconds from blacking out, something gave – and with a blinding flash of pain and a taste of blood, the wolfhound’s thick cock yanked roughly out of her spasming throat with a wet, glurk-ing noise, taking several of her teeth with it. One last spurt of watery semen shot Katarina in the chin as the wolfhound walked backward, and left Katarina panting on the forest floor, groaning at the sickening taste of animal cum on her tongue and lips and staring down at the bright white teeth that stuck to the mud just beside her sprawled body.
It was amazing how she could consistently feel more and more humiliated. How much worse it could get, from second to second. She felt disgusted with what had just happened to her… but the assassin remembered the last time she had been thrown into this canine nightmare, and knew that this was barely even beginning.
Multiple members of the pack got their mouths around her limbs, tugging at her like they wanted to rip her apart… holding her to the ground like she was a carcass they were tearing at. Soon, however, she didn’t have much time to worry about that as another wolf mounted her face. She gasped, feeling his thick claws scratching her neck as he scrambled for position, his tail wagging eagerly behind him as he shoved his own massive cock down into her unwilling mouth.
Her throat was already strained and aching to its limit, but it didn’t matter to the second hound – he wasted no time in thrusting his cock deep in and out, whimpering with pleasure as his hips pumped erratically and more of that thin, nasty fluid spilling down into her belly.
Apparently the pack had worked out who would be fucking her first – Katarina felt strong claws gripping her lower back, the enormous beast tugging himself forward and looming right over her. She sobbed, helplessly, feeling the slender tip of the canine cock pressing, once again, against her asshole. It began to push, growing thicker and thicker as it moved further inside of her, and Katarina couldn’t even scream properly as her mouth was brutally used by another wolfhound shoving his cock down her throat. She could only gurgle in agony as the wolfhound on her back slammed his cock home, panting, drooling onto her neck. Katarina’s scream filled the night air as the wolfhound’s raping staff ripped her ass apart, the tip piercing her.
It burned like nothing else, her newly bleeding asshole squeezing and cramping urgently, trying to force the invader out of her once-again virgin asshole. The blood of her desecration dripped down from the violating tool inside of her, running off his furry balls. The wolfhound’s cock began to pound her like it was a hammer driving nails, and Katarina could tell it was only swelling more and more.
Stuck between two swollen canine cocks plunging into her from both ends, Katarina’s face was screwed up in a sobbing expression of agony as the wolf in front of her yanked and humped his way down her tender throat. The agonizing pain between her legs made her sob, her howls of discomfort lost in the thick canine cock plowing her esophagus. The enthusiastic motions of the animal on her back grew quicker and quicker, slamming his massive erection in and out of poor Katarina’s painfully stretched hole. She felt helpless. She felt like prey. She felt like she was being torn apart, violated by slavering beasts in the woods in some nightmare fantasy where nobody would find her.
The swelling at the base of the second wolf’s cock was getting bigger and bigger, and Katarina began to shriek every time it was yanked out of her and forced back in. The vibration of her squealing traveled quickly down to the base of the wolf in front’s throbbing length, and he snarled in vicious, predatory pleasure as she shoved his swollen knot hard enough against Katarina’s lips that they started to bruise.
She could feel the veins throbbing against her lips as another hot jet of cum spilled down her throat. Eyes burning with tears, Katarina gagged in pain as she was forced to swallow every drop of canine cum as it flooded her mouth and ran down to her stomach. At least this time she could breathe… but the humiliation hit a new peak as this time she was forced to choose between swallowing and drowning.
Outside her asshole, the knot had finally swollen so much the wolfhound could no longer push it inside of her. He growled, pumping his hips several times, the huge mass of flesh banging at her sphincter… but then he drew his hips back, and –
Katarina screamed, the long canine cock dropping from her mouth and spilling a torrent of cum onto the dirt as the knot, already fully expanded, forced her asshole’s sphincter wide open, tearing it apart even more violently than it had been the last time she had been thrown to the pack. If anything, this knot seemed even larger than any she had taken before… she had never felt anything so huge inside of her. She panicked, eyes wide with the horrific pain, and the growls of the hounds rose and peaked.
The wolf on her back shoved his hips forward, the knot swelling rapidly inside her and growing larger. Katarina sobbed, shaking in disbelief as she felt the hot, virile cum of a filthy animal spurting inside of her, the throbbing, scarlet shaft unloading a flood of cum so deep up her asshole that it might never come out. “Ohhh gods,” she whimpered, tensing all over, jerking every time she felt another hot squirt filling her up. The pressure inside from the knot hurt so much, and she stared down at the ground in abject misery.
“Aww, what’s the matter Puppy?”
Katarina looked up and, shockingly, saw the dark doppelganger sitting on a fallen log, elbow resting on her knee and propping up her amused face as she watched her captive get raped by a pack of Noxian hunting hounds. She was smiling, clearly amused as she watched her captive suffer.
Katarina was still trying to process the sudden appearance of her tormentor when another hound leaped onto her back, his paws digging harshly into her hips. He brought his slimy canine dick up to her asshole, trying to pierce her, but he was having difficulty getting back inside of her… her asshole, instead of gaping, had become a swollen, bleeding socket leaking cum and almost impossible to get through. “Having trouble boy? I can help with that…” Black Katarina rose and grabbed his shaft herself, then talked to him softly as she guided it inside, all but purring into his pointed ear. “There we go… Now fuck this bitch. Fuck her to your heart’s content!”
A part of Katarina’s mind that still considered herself a human being with a destiny, a soul, and some degree of dignity, was repulsed at the thought that a doppelganger who looked just like her was willing to touch that canine cock… it was almost as disgusting as that it was being pushed into her, stretching her, filling her. She could hear and feel him breathing hotly against her back and jumped each time his drool came down to her flesh, and it was all because she wanted it.
Black Katarina watched and seemed to have given into her arousal in the most debased way possible. She was biting her lip and moaning as she fingered herself, watching as her victim… Lux?… was mounted by a dog. Was this really who Katarina was? Was this what she would’ve wanted as well? How could it not be, when it was herself she was looking at? It was growing increasingly hard to think of the other tattooed redhead as being herself. It was partly that she seemed so cruel, so cold, so disbelieving… but it was also that she felt so weak and pathetic that it was hard to think of herself as being anything like the confident, lithe killer settling into place in front of her. That woman would never allow anything like this to happen to her. That woman would never be defeated, never be raped, never be so humiliated. So what gross, pathetic, lowly thing was she?
With each thrust, the wolfhound swelled up bigger and bigger, hurting more and more while Dark Katarina fingered herself, showing her pleasure as her wide, lust-filled eyes watched the captive suffer. After a few minutes of hideous discomfort, the pain began to increase sharply as his cock grew to the point he couldn’t even pull out again… knotting her once again, Katarina realized to both her fear and disgust. As her tight, bleeding asshole sent waves of pain spiking up through her spine, each thrust entered her brain like a needle being stabbed into her. “Careful, princess,” the dream doppelganger said with a smirk. “Don’t you try anything to get out of this?”
She wasn’t trying anything! She wasn’t even trying to get away anymore. She was just letting this happen like a pathetic little whore and suffering… and yet when she slipped a third time the other assassin didn’t bother to speak again. Instead, she grabbed one of the knives off her hip and without even pausing to taunt her victim she slammed it down through one of the other woman’s palms and down into the earth beneath them, pinning her in place.
Katarina screamed and flinched and almost fell… but the assassin had anticipated it. Knowing the risk, Black Katarina quickly grabbed her and held her still for the hound. “Easy there,” she said. “I told you to stay still, didn’t I? You should have listened puppy.”
At this point, Katarina could tell that her shadowy self had become so aroused that she could barely control herself. Though she had done nothing wrong, she lifted the second knife and brought the tip down to her other hand, watching like a hawk for any slip-up. “I warned you, but you? You can’t listen. You can’t follow instructions. Dogs can follow instructions, but you can’t you aren’t a puppy at all, are you?”
As the hound pounded her with bestial fury, his huge cock hit an extremely raw and sensitive spot inside of her asshole and forced the faux princess to move again. Black Katarina grinned and brought down the second knife. Katarina wailed in despair… the dog raping her asshole was only the second worst thing happening to her right now. “Why…” she whimpered, and Katarina hated how weak she sounded, how long she had been brought. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“What did I tell you?” the other assassin asked, her eyes momentarily flashing darkly as she caressed the other woman’s dysphorically blonde hair. “What did I tell you would happen if you moved? A puppy would have known… but you aren’t a puppy, are you pet?”
She leaned forward, her lips pressed against her ear as she choked and sobbed and suffered her way through a wolfhound’s rape. “You’re just a stubborn, rebellious kitten.”
At her words the pain spiked even harder, and Katarina could no longer hold on. Her legs folded under her without control, dragging her down to the ground. She couldn’t slide, not with the knives in her hands, but her legs simply couldn’t support her anymore… the agony that washed over her body was such that its overwhelming, almost otherworldly quality, silenced her.
Then, she could feel something hot inside of her. Blood? He wasn’t cumming inside of her, not yet. The knot wasn’t pulsing… and how humiliating it was that she was such an expert now in what it felt like when one of the Noxian wolfhounds bred her. No, it had ripped something inside of her with his thickness… she was bleeding, and bleeding a lot. She was dying, literally being raped to death by a beast. Not death in battle. Not execution by her enemies. No dignified suicide. Not even death at the teeth of the predators. No, instead she was meeting her end just due to the cock inside of her, killing her.
There was no more barrier to cross now. Her humiliation and dehumanization was complete.
Black Katarina understood this as well, that there was nothing more to be gained here. When she stood up, Katarina’s dazed eyes saw her hand head to her belt and come out with a third shining knife between her fingers. From where she slumped, Katarina could look at her shadow self’s pussy and saw just how wet she was. Dripping with dirty, unrestrained arousal, in the same way that she wept with impossible-to-understand pain.
Am I… this monster? she thought numbly.
The blade that entered her throat provided the answer. And it did not cut her elegantly from left to right to drain her of her blood, but entered her throat from front to back, like a final metal cock meant to assault and degrade her body, sending her straight down into hell.
“Die, you disgusting, dog-fucking pig,” the assassin mocked, and spit on her for good measure.
Death came almost instantly after that.
Katarina’s pain-soaked mind drifted off through the darkness as she died… but instead of falling down to the pit of hell that her darkest imagination thought was waiting for her Katarina woke up again… the same as before. Tied up. In the chair in the barn. Everything hurt, even though her body was untouched. And, just as before, an amused, cruel version of herself stood in front of her, just as she had before.
The temptation, even after everything, was still to scream and protest, to plead that she didn’t understand, that she was Katarina… but the captive redhead knew that that wouldn’t work. She wasn’t even sure she could convince herself of that anymore. She wouldn’t try to convince her she was anything but a blonde, Demacian fucktoy here to be tormented… but she couldn’t control the beating of her terrified heart or the film of sweat that appeared over her face as she looked at her torture and eventual death standing just in front of her.
“Ahh, what the matter kitten?” asked Black Katarina. “Don’t be scared. I’m not entirely without mercy… I can make this good for you, I promise…”
As Katarina’s agonized mind struggled its way back to a shred of sanity, however, she noticed that not everything was quite the same. They were no longer alone. In the darkness around the barn, Katarina could catch a glimpse of a few shadowy figures standing just outside the range of candlelight. Though she couldn’t make out for certain, she could swear those were all men and that they were all… were all jerking themselves off.
“Hey!” snapped her scarred, redheaded tormentor. “Don’t look at them, look at me.”
This made no sense at all! Why were they there? This wasn’t how it had happened. She hadn’t had anyone with her, had she? This made no sense. None at all…
“You know, you’re lucky, needy kitten,” she went on. “I was going to use you all by myself tonight, but my friends wanted to have a taste of you. So I figured, hell, you’re not going to survive the night, so what the hell? So long as the job gets done. After all, they were all helpful in tracking you down.” The assassin’s fingers drifted down to the table and closed on several needles, lifting them up until they gleamed in the candlelight. “However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to just leave you to them without taking anything for myself…”
With the gleaming needles in hand, Black Katarina took a step closer. By now Katarina knew what was coming, and she wished to hell that she had done something else to Luxanna when she had her chance… the cold-hearted killer pierced each one of Katarina’s nipples in turn, smirking with satisfaction as she did so. It hurt just as badly as it ever had, a flash of pain that was brief but so piercing that it erased all other thoughts from her head. Then the sharp, obliterating pain dipped into a dull throb that burned sullenly, and the thoughts that returned showed that all the men in the shadow had taken a few steps forward.
“Mmmm. Heinrik…” Black Katarina purred. “I think you should be first. Come up here… and bring the toy.”
As she said the words, a burly man covered in graying chest hair appeared at her side, handing her over the white-hot branding iron. The fact that he seemed to have materialized out of nothing was all the confirmation Katarina needed to be certain of what she suspected… this wasn’t some arcane prison or another realm… this place wasn’t real. She needed to escape, somehow. And yet…
And yet, it couldn’t be a dream either. Not a real dream. Dreams didn’t feel this visceral. Dreams didn’t nest inside one another over and over again like this. Dreams didn’t hurt this much…
And when you died in a dream, you woke up.
Then she was pulled out of her thoughts as the doppelganger brought the crimson iron down right into the top of her breast. The flesh burned and sizzled, and all around the room Katarina could hear men groaning in pleasure as she cried out in pain and teared up. Black Katarina savored her suffering and licked her lips, looking as aroused as before.
This can’t be happening, she told herself again. I want to wake up! I want to wake up!
…BUT YOU ARE NOT SLEEPING…
The voice seemed to come from everywhere all at once but also from nowhere. No one responded to it but her. No one seemed to as much as twitch. The words, however, hit her with the impact of a fist, seeming to shake the ground and made her bones vibrate.
The demon? Was it the demon who said that? Who was doing this? Was this what LeBlanc had been worried about? Is this why she hadn’t gone after Luxanna herself and sent Katarina? Had she fallen into the same shadow that had claimed Demacia in Lux’s wake?
“Stop it!” Katarina screamed at the voice, her eyes looking around. “Stop doing this!”
Black Katarina caressed her face with the hand holding her knife. “No… no, I don’t think I will,” she almost purred, one lip curling up in a cruel smirk. “You see how pretty she is, boys? Our perfect little angelic princess… the very image of Demacia’s Winged Protector herself. What a shame she has to die.” The imposter assassin sighed. “I almost wish you could stay with us longer than tonight, kitten. Unfortunately…”
Katarina cried out as the tip of the blade cut into the skin just above her breasts and began to slowly drag, cutting a line of burning fire across her chest. “…that’s not going to be possible.” Black Katarina smiled as she continued to drag the knife through the skin just beneath her victim’s collarbone and sometimes down as far as the top of her burned breasts, drawing a pattern in bloody wounds for as long as she wished. When finally she backed away, looking on with pride at what she had accomplished. Katarina’s dangling, exhausted head finally was allowed to drop far enough to see what she had marked her with.
A simple bit of words. “ONE USE SLUT.”
Dark Katarina smirked. Then she kicked the chair over, sending Katarina heavily to the ground as she stepped forward, her boots on either side of her head and stalking on the false blonde hair her strange body had. As she looked up at her dark copy’s crotch, the red-haired assassin brought the red-stripping knife down to her leather pants and slowly, casually, sliced open an opening right through them. Katarina felt a few drops of her own blood land on her face… then the assassin was dropping down onto “Lux’s” face and enveloping her with her pussy.
“Stick your tongue out,” she ordered, grinding herself down. When the stunned captive was slow to react, the cruel assassin reached down with both hands, grabbed onto two fistfuls of her slave’s hair, and used them to lift her head painfully up before slamming it even more painfully back to the ground. “I said, stick your fucking tongue out, kitten!”
Her entire world had exploded into stars. The once-proud assassin didn’t even consciously think about what she was doing… when her mind returned and her vision cleared she found her tongue was already out and buried inside the copy of herself. After all, what else could Katarina do but obey? Even though it was her own pussy she was being forced to lick, the juices she had tasted on her own fingers now soaking her tongue and lips and chin, she pushed her tongue in with all the desperate enthusiasm she could muster as she let the doppelganger ride her.
They weren’t alone here. She was painfully aware of that… she could hear the men in the shadows, could hear the heaving breaths and skin of skin as they masturbated to her misery. Even that was lesser, however, to when Katarina noticed what they were… several of the “men” had stepped far enough out of the shadows to let her see them, and they were no true men at all – rather they were disfigured, hideous monsters, all naked with inhuman features, animals heads or animal limbs, all stroking the monstrous dicks dangling between their legs. Not Vastaya… those would have at least made sense. These looked like someone had stitched wild beasts to the bones of men and gave them inhuman lusts to rule them.
Katarina’s world vanished as her rapist clone lifted her by the hair again and once again slammed her head down. Her skull felt like it was going to split it hurt so bad, and she couldn’t feel anything else for several seconds as the other woman ground her lust off against “Luxanna’s” face. “Don’t look at them…” Black Katarina ordered. “Focus on what you’re doing. Look at me.”
Katarina squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe if she made her other self feel good, then all of this could be stopped? It felt like a dismal, far-away hope, but it was the only thing she felt like she had left anymore. Where was the pride? Where was the confidence and competence? Why did she feel so helpless… how could she have let herself be reduced so far?
Crying in humiliation, Katarina threw herself into pleasing the woman who planned on being her executioner. She fought to ignore the pain of her pierced nipples, fought to ignore the monsters that were now wheezing and grunting all around them, fought to ignore that she was going to die, and instead used her tongue to lick inside of the other assassin’s sloppy, eager pussy… dedicating herself completely to that service. Maybe if she did it well enough the pain might stop, if only for a few minutes… or maybe, to whisper of a tiny hope, she might gain some opportunity for escape. Certainly, resistance was gaining her nothing.
She didn’t know if her goals were possible, and she couldn’t know… but she was doing a good job of pleasing her rapist. She could tell that Black Katarina was enjoying the feel of her tongue because her juices were overflowing and pouring all over Katarina’s face. More than that, the heat of her pussy intensified and seemed to throb in response to the slavish lapping.
“Mmm, Luxanna…” the assassin purred. “The kitten is learning her place.” Taking control again she began to move back and forth, no longer content with Katarina eating her out but choosing instead to ride her tongue almost like a dick. Her battered head hurt with each impact of her hips and thighs down across her face. “Come on, kitty cat… get your milk.”
Throbbing impact after throbbing impact rattled her brain in her skull as Dark Katarina rode her. The pace at which she rocked picked up speed until it rapidly became frenzied, and Katarina simply blinked numbly as her evil twin fucked her face with her slippery cunt, sometimes moving so fast that the lips left her tongue altogether and trailed up all the way to her eyes, leaving cunt-slime smears all across her face as she went.
This assault continued for several minutes, and near the end Black Katarina herself began to touch her pussy, rubbing it out as she stroked her clit with violent passion. “Fuuuck!” she hissed, her eyes rolling back in pleasure. Then she cried out and her juices cascaded out of her and over “Luxanna’s” face, humiliating her yet again in ways that Katarina never thought twice about inflicting on another but never imagined she would suffer herself.
Black Katarina seemed to lose control as she orgasmed and almost fell… but as she wobbled, one of the deformed monsters with a wolf-head perched on his shoulders – the same wolf-headed the alpha who had been the first rape her had had. He offered the cruel assassin a hand as gentleman might and she took it, rising as the monster lifted her up off of Katarina.
As she looked at the monstrous beings surrounding her, Katarina couldn’t help but see the cocks surrounding her, growing, pulsing, swelling all around her and pointing at her. Some of them had the wolfhound dicks that she was all too familiar with. Others were bulbous things with multiple bulging boils along their lengths that would make getting fucked by them feel like being dragged over cobblestones by horses. Still other cocks seemed to end in needles that looked just as wickedly sharp and dangerous as the ones she still had in her tits. All of them looked like dangerous weapons, every bit as dangerous as the long claws like knives at the ends of their fingers.
As she looked at them, forced to think about all of the things that were going to happen to her and that she could do nothing to prevent, something inside Katarina snapped. “No,” she whispered… no, whimpered, and turned her eyes away. Just like a little girl trying to hide from the world. Like a little girl trying to cower from a bad dream. “No, please, no more… No more…”
THERE WILL NEVER BE NO MORE…
Once again, the voice came from nowhere and from everywhere. And Katarina, blind with panic, forgot her pain. She forgot her exhaustion and her caution and playing it smart, and she just ran. One of the demons tried to grab her, but she slipped past him, somehow… How, she had no idea, because these things were faster than she was, and stronger, and she had been tied up about two seconds ago, but suddenly the ropes were gone. She made it past demon after demon, somehow avoiding their grabs… but not entirely. As each demon missed grabbing her with clawed hands, at least one nail on each hand raked her skin, each one cutting her as she slid by even as they failed to grab hold of her squirming body.
“What are you waiting for? Catch her!” yelled Black Katarina. “We’re not done, kitty. We’re not even close to done!”
YOU WILL NEVER BE DONE HERE, KITTY KITTY KITTY…
The crowd of monsters surrounding her seemed to go on forever. The room’s walls seemed to get no closer as she ran past more and more of them, pushing through the crowd of bestial things, crying in frustrated terror as she became more and more surrounded, the claws getting more and more of a grip on her until she, at last, came to a full, painful stop… sharp nails digging through vulnerable soft skin and into muscle, lifting her wildly kicking legs off the ground as the captured kitten screamed and screamed.
“Please!” she begged as the demons slowly dragged her back toward her grim doppelganger. The huffing, barking laughter of the demons all around her felt like a smothering blanket as she was carried through the darkness. “Please, demon! If you can hear me, take me away from here. Send me back! I’ll do anything! I’ll let Luxanna live. I’ll break her for you! I’ll do anything, anything at all! Please! Please! Please…”
Kitty never even saw the branding iron coming before the reek of burned flesh filled her nose and the blinding pain erupted from directly over her pussy… the branding iron pushed against her pink lips. It didn’t even hesitate, ripping itself away from her body and pressing to it again, and again, and again… on her groin, across her ass, beneath her breast, on her side… so fast it all felt like it was happening at the same time. To Kitty, it seemed like the pain was a physical thing, an ocean that was swallowing her and dragging her down – when her mouth opened, it was not a loud shriek that left her lips but the tortured mewling of a weak, completely broken woman. When her eyes looked down at the scarred flesh, it was not her own brand that she saw, but an alien and unfamiliar one… burned across the flesh that also looked alien and unfamiliar. Certainly not hers, it couldn’t be… nothing on her could be burned and cut and bruised and worthless…
YOU WILL BE MINE FOREVER… YOU WILL BE A WILLING SERVANT.
“No, please! PLEASEE!!! I’m willing now! Please! Please!” Kitty begged and begged, but the hound-faced men ignored her crying completely. Even as she continued to be burned they brought her back to Katarina, the real Katarina who was still strong and proud and capable and not nearly as pathetic as the mangled lump of flesh that Kitty was. The redhead was pulling her leather top off over her tits with sensual slowness, cupping one of her breasts as she brought it up to Kitty’s face. “Welcome back, Kitty… want some milk?” she asked as her fingers lowered and pushed another needle through Kitty’s tits.
WEAK…
“Nooohhh!~ Pleashee-” Her begging cut off as the nipple was pushed into her mouth. A moment later, one of the demons holding her brought a gigantic wolf-cock into line and slammed it inside of her, thrusting all the way into her asshole in a second.
WEAK…
It began to grow inside of her, expanding so quickly that Kitty felt sure it would break her apart by the time he knotted inside her properly. He would destroy her. She’d die merely for his pleasure, her body giving out… and there was nothing she could do about it. There was no mercy for her.
SO WEAK…
She wasn’t going to die again as a result of cruelty, or malice. It was going to be a simple result of her not being able to survive them seeking their own pleasure. If she wanted mercy, real mercy, the only mercy she could earn… it would only come from Kitty finding other ways to satisfy them.
THAT’S RIGHT…
As the horrible realization of the rest of her life dawned over her, Katarina tilted Kitty’s limp head up by force. The doppleganger, her once-familiar features so achingly comfortable and confident, looked down at Kitty like she always did… but gone were the green eyes. They had been replaced by inky black pits that, even from a glimpse, Kitty felt she might fall inside and never escape from.
“Your mistress sacrifices you,” said the voice… not echoing from everywhere any longer. It came from Katarina’s crimson-painted lips as she smirked. “You were never meant to succeed.”
“Savh mgh…” Kitty mumbled around Katarina’s knife as she pushed past her lips and with aching slowly cut the tongue from her mouth.
“She will not come for you. You have been discarded.” The black-eyed demon tossed her tongue casually away, and Kitty swore she saw one of the hound-faced men snap it up and swallow it down. “She comes herself now… to follow the one whose will will one day break. Just as yours has.”
Kitty felt something rip inside her ass. She was growing cold…
“You were just a sacrifice… but fear not. We are still going to have so much fun for the eternity we have to wait for Luxanna to free me…”
When she woke next on the pine-needle-strewn forest floor, it took her several minutes to move at all. Her limbs wouldn’t pull her up… her mind no longer saw the point in running again. Instead, she just sat there, unmoving, and sobbed.
She didn’t move when she heard the howls of approaching wolf-hounds.
She didn’t move when she heard the rustle of the nearby foliage.
She didn’t move when she heard the soft padding of clawed feet, moving at her across the dirt and put.
It was only when she felt their cold noses and hot tongues on her body that she moved. Not a flinch, or a twitch. There was no recoiling from the dangerous animals… there was no point in that, and she was just too tired. Instead, moving slowly but purposefully, she reached for the leg of the table that was, once again, still beside her.
It fell to the floor easily.
The red-haired woman ignored all of the needles. The toys. The branding iron. None of that mattered anymore. None of it was for her. Instead, she grabbed the headband. Her tangled red hair caught as she pushed the band into place, two black, pointed ears emerging from the messy knots. The tail came next. Once, it would have been impossible for Katarina to push that butt plug inside herself without hesitation, without lube. This body she found herself in hurt like hell still but it was physically fresh… virginal. It hurt just beginning to push her starfish open. Katarina would never have managed to break open her own virgin asshole painfully, and certainly not quickly enough to satisfy the wolfhounds.
But Kitty had felt so much worse, and she had no problem.
Her asshole bled as she stuffed it full. That was fine. That was just the price of doing business. There was an art to submission, and like all art it required sacrifice… and Kitty was very well motivated to submit. A slave so desperate that she would do anything for just a few scraps of mercy, a few moments longer life, had a desperate, forlorn beauty, like an oil painting built up carefully layer after layer and then cut to ribbons with the knife. The destruction, the desecration of something beautiful, was a part of the art… and every detail mattered.
First, Kitty pushed herself up, rising up off the ground and onto her knees. It wasn’t enough to just look the part… she needed to live it. A victim lying unmoving on the ground wasn’t a pet… she was just a piece of meat. If they had no purpose, they ought to suffer.
Second, Kitty put her head down… pushing her cheek down into the pine needles and dirt. Her large, swollen tits brushed the round ground as they swayed back and forth with the rapid beating of her head. A victim who didn’t know her place wasn’t a pet… she was prey. Prey to hunt, to break, to punish. If they were defiant, they would suffer.
Lastly, Kitty spread her legs as far as she could. Then she reached back, grabbed onto the cheeks of her ass, and pulled. She was vicious about it. Her fingernails dug into her skin as she struggled to maintain her grip, and more trickles of blood joined the one leaking from her asshole… but her pussy spread wide open, and the scent of her musk filled the air. Most victims were too stupid to go down without a fight. They would struggle. They would make a mess. Make noise. Try to escape, or kill their hunter. Prey 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. Kitty was too smart for that now. If she resisted, she deserved to suffer.
Then she was helpless and waiting for them. Their perfect, fuckable kitten.
For her new masters, it was all about savoring the little things. The way the lines of blood could be licked off her legs, or her ass. The muffled, animal sounds she made as a hound’s weight landed on her and his paws scraped at the kitten’s back. The way her tail swayed back and forth as the animal tried to line himself up with her, her now-clogged asshole burning with the feeling of the plug. The desperate look in her eyes as, for a second, she considered fighting once more, that their body hadn’t caught up to how hopeless it was… and the tears that rolled down her scarred face as she realized that this was it. That this was the end. The way it made Kitty shake and tremble. The terror.
It was all that her life was now.
The first of the wolfhounds rammed a cock into her pussy for the first time. Ramming all the way into its new home. And the woman who had once been one of the most dangerous assassins in all of Runeterra wept with genuine euphoria that it hurt slightly less in her cunt than it had her asshole.
Because really… what other mercy did Kitten deserve, anyway?
The rain wasn’t usually this cold in Southern Demacia. The wind whipped the falling rain horizontally through the forest like a thousand slashing knives, and Quinn thought it was cutting her all the way to the bone. She kept walking anyway… through the darkness and the rain, when it was coming down so thick she couldn’t see three feet in front of her face, she staggered onward. When the only way she had to know which way she was going was by listening to Valor’s cries somewhere overhead, the ranger kept walking and trusted that the hawk would never lead her astray.
And the whole way she carried Luxanna’s limp and frighteningly cold form over her shoulder.
“Stay with me Lux,” Quinn grunted out as she took another few steps. “You’re going to be alright. I’m going to get you somewhere warm, Princess. Just stay with me.”
She wasn’t sure what had happened. Back in Demacia City, everything had suddenly gone to hell. People had started acting… well, acting crazy. Men and women had started indulging in their anger… there had been riots, looting, fights, murders… rapes. The guards around the palace had seemed to pivot on a dime, the majority of them somehow all agreeing at once to change allegiance to Sylas of all people as the new King… and worst of all only about half the population of the city seemed to find anything at all strange about this.
And Quinn hadn’t been among them.
It was hard to remember anything about that time… like waking up from a dream and trying to remember back, the longer passed the harder the details came to remember. She remembered… a lot of anger. Hatred. A burning desire to bring down Sylas and crush his treason while it was still small. None of that was too surprising, though. What had been surprising was how intense her desire to slit Lux’s throat had been.
When Valor had caught a glimpse of Luxanna fleeing the city, Quinn hadn’t been following her to save her. She had been chasing after her to kill her.
It had taken until she was in the petricite forest that her mind had begun to clear. That she had begun to have doubts about what she was doing. That the burning intensity of that anger had begun to fade. That she’d begun to wonder why she had been feeling that way, and she had been certain there had been very good reasons… but she couldn’t remember any of them anymore.
It was just like the nightmares she’d had after leaving Noxus.
Quinn wasn’t a fool. Something was happening with Lux. Something bad had happened to her inside that fortress, and if she didn’t want to talk about it that was fine with Quinn… but something bad had happened before that, too. That night in camp when she had woken up… that was when it had started. Her best friend had become distant, distracted, and badly shaken… and while Quinn wished she had sat her friend down and forced her to answer some questions and gotten to the bottom of it, the truth was she had barely been less distracted herself. Every night was a new nightmare, a half-remembered trip through violence and loss and pain and misery until she woke up, feeling no more rested than she had when she started. That, of course, had led to her sleeping less, and getting even less rest, thinking even less clearly… and getting lost in her own problems. Dreams of being hurt… and hurting other people…
Maybe if she had paid more attention, and been thinking more clearly, she would have gotten to the truth of it. Maybe she would have been there to help earlier. Maybe she could have stopped… whatever was going on in the city right now, whatever had led Sylas to escape, and Shyvanna to attack the castle, and people to start acting like psychopaths, and who knew what else. She wasn’t sure… but she could help Lux now.
Even if it was hard to remember why.
With every step the urge to put that treacherous fucking slut down and violently wake her up, putting her in the place she belonged, was overwhelming. With every step, raw hatred seemed to boil up inside of Quinn, reminding her of what the woman had done to her, what she had done to Valor, and what she deserved for her betrayals. The feelings were so strong, so real, that they were almost overwhelming. She wanted to punish Lux for that. Hurt her, like she had been hurt. Take it all out on her.
But those memories weren’t real. Luxanna hadn’t really done any of those things. Quinn had never been a captive in the castle, even if she remembered being one. Her friend had never tormented Valor to get to her. She had never been raped by Sylas, or by Lux, or by half the Noxian army, or by a horde of Winter’s Claw warriors, no matter how certain she was that she remembered those things.
Feeling all of this, knowing all of this, and denying it felt like it was ripping the young scout apart. It was like a constant pressure on her mind and her soul, threatening to send her spiraling down into a panic attack or outright catatonia… and while she felt like any second the pressure would fade, that it would retreat, it only seemed to build with every passing moment… the weight of it building and building and building. It hurt, on a level so deep that the cold and the wounds she had sustained were barely noticeable, but the worst part was that she could feel the comforting darkness of acceptable welling up somewhere inside of her… beckoning her with its warmth. She could accept these things as true, she knew. She could give in and stop thinking about it, stop letting her knowledge of what had actually happened conflict with the memories she had dreamed… and the pain would go away if she did. She would feel warm in the furnace of her anger and the resolute certainty of who she was and what she stood for. She wouldn’t have to wonder. She wouldn’t have to doubt.
And all she had to do was abandon her friend to whatever tender mercies that darkness possessed.
Quinn pushed onward.
“Come on, Lux… stay with me.”
Luxanna was growing heavier by the step, and while she was getting increasingly waterlogged in the rain the ranger was pretty sure that wasn’t possible… instead, Quinn was getting weaker. The Demacian scout had picked up Lux and starting dragging her forward through the forest, following the cries of her eagle overhead. She didn’t know where she was going, but Valor did, and she trusted the eagle more than she trusted herself. She just had to keep following and hope that there was safety and shelter that Valor could lead them to before she bled out.
The scout wasn’t going to be able to make it much further, she knew. She had been stabbed, and she could still feel that knife wound in her back, seeping out her lifeblood. The assassin’s knife felt like it had left an opening in her body through which all her remaining warmth was pouring out into the cold, dark rain. She didn’t know what Lux had done to defend herself from the killer… she had just looked up in time to see a bright flash of light and then the assassin had been lying there, curled up on the ground and randomly spasming… and so had Luxanna, shivering in the cold rainfall as it drenched her. And, for just a single second, Quinn wasn’t sure whether she should scoop her up and comfort her and try to rub the warmth back into her limbs… or take off her pants, grip Lux’s blonde hair tight, and slam her head into the ground until she woke up, and then sit down on her face. That thought hadn’t lasted… but after she had fought it down there had been others.
So many others.
She was so cold…
Quinn heard Valor’s increasingly panicked cry three times before she realized that she had fallen… that she was on the ground with Lux half beneath her. The knife wound in her back had stopped hurting… it was nice, even if some quiet voice in the back of her mind kept trying to whisper that it was a really bad sign. The mud felt so warm. Surprisingly warm. It was nice… maybe she could just lay here for a minute. Just a minute… until she was warm again.
Valor landed by her, all but screaming in her face as he settled onto her and started tugging at her. “Ughsh…” Quinn mumbled as she was slowly tugged, mostly stuck in the mud. It wasn’t much. Valor could lift her, but not really her and Lux at the same time, and with the canopy this low the Demacian Eagle wouldn’t be able to build up a full head of steam… there was no chance of her managing to drag them both to safety. Seconds later she collapsed back down into the mud again. “Th… thanks Valor…” she whispered, choking the words out. So cold… “I re… really… am glad… we got to do this t-tog- gether… but I th-think… this mi-might be as f-f-far as I g-go…”
“I don’t know about that.”
The voice took Quinn by surprise. It was only with effort she lifted her head up enough to see that someone was standing just a little bit in front of her. She was tall… so tall, dressed in black and with a hood and… and veil… masking most of her face.
Valor moved between them, the huge eagle giving a challenging cry as the great bird spread his wings. Slowly, ever so slowly, the veiled figure sank down to her knees, utterly unconcerned about the rain and the mud, and brought both hands out towards the eagle, palms up. “I know you, Master of the Winds. These days, you are the Winged Guardian of Demacia, aren’t you… and my fire is what you’ve been guiding them to.” Slowly she pushed her hands closer, and Valor tensed… but let her. The veiled woman caressed the great eagle’s face in her hands, her smile just barely visible beneath the fabric covering her face. “That’s right… you’ve been so brave.”
She looked past him and down at Quinn, still cradling the unconscious Luxanna, still hopelessly trying to rise and failing over and over again. “Both of you have. Now let me carry your burdens for a moment.” The woman reached out, and the hand that caressed Quinn’s cheek felt like it was an oven for how warm it felt, how comforting. Not like the warmth of acceptance promised by the darkness lurking inside her and trying to grow. Real warmth. Warmth she could get lost in.
That warmth swallowed her up, and Quinn, exhausted beyond measure, let it.
Lux came awake slowly.
It was so warm that she didn’t want to move, and she was lost in the comfort and warmth and the safety it implicitly offered… it made waking up both slow and hard, especially when her memories of the last few days were so hazy and disjointed. She wasn’t used to sleeping comfortably, not anymore. Not since the nightmares had sta-
Thinking of the nightmares, of the demon haunting her sleep, was like a shot of adrenaline. Memories came flooding back… Sylas being captured by the nightmare, and rather than her being pulled into it it was pulled out of her… escaping out into the world and spreading its poison to everywhere near her. She had managed to escape in the chaos, she remembered that… Sylas had been distracted when the castle had been attacked, and Shyvana had been pulled into the nightmare the moment she was in her presence, and Lux had decided to run, and…
And Katarina had chased her into the woods.
She all but leaped out of the bed… or tried to. All but swaddled in warm blankets it didn’t go as smoothly as she had thought. Instantly her limbs tangled as she kicked the covers, trying to get them off her even as she pushed herself up and tried to rise. The warm sheets tightened around her calves almost like ropes, and as she tried to jump up they caught almost like a tripwire. The blonde mage let out a small cry as she fell immediately, tripped, and fell to the ground almost like a worm bound in blankets.
She hit the ground hard, but thankfully not that painfully. Soft, thick rugs caught her fall, and while she landed heavily on her shoulder it felt barely worse than falling onto a bed. She lay there for a moment, feeling utterly ridiculous as she sprawled in bondage of her own making. Her surroundings were odd. She was in some kind of cave, rather than a house… but it was furnished as nicely as any home in Demacia she had ever been in. The furniture was lush and well made, the carpets everywhere were as thick as the one she had fallen on, and the lanterns glowed warmly. A fire crackled nearby, flames rising high in a well-furnished hearth, its orange glow lighting up her face as she slowly worked to untangle herself.
“You’re awake.”
The sound of an unfamiliar woman’s voice made Lux jump all over again and almost resulted in her tangling herself back up again. Instead she – just barely – kept herself calm enough to remain still and not make it any worse. “You have to stay away from me!” she blurted out, an edge of hysteria tainting her voice. “It’s not safe! Stay away from me!” She craned her neck, following the voice even as she spoke… and froze as she saw the woman seated in the comfortable chair on her other side.
“Fear not, child. You are safe from the nightmares here,” she said, her voice calm, warm, and utterly confident. “The darkness within you holds no purchase on me.”
The figure was absolutely a woman, that much was clear… even if Luxanna couldn’t see her face there could be no mistaking that. She was dressed in blacks and violets, a dress that hugged her form tightly and emphasized the form within it. That dress, however, didn’t stop at her shoulders… instead, it continued to swoop upward and over her head, a cowl that turned into a veil that fell over her face, leaving Lux with only a vague impression of her features beneath it.
And despite all of that, Lux recognized her. She had been praying to her every day since she was 9 years old.
Something of the shock she was feeling must have been obvious because the face beneath the gauzy silk twitched in an obvious smile. “Do you recognize me, child?”
“You…” Lux swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “You’re the Veiled Lady.”
The woman’s face moved in a small nod as she rose from her chair, her tall, languid body rising with the liquid grace of a cat. “That’s right,” the woman agreed. “I am.” She strode over and, gently, helped Lux disentangle herself from the sheets, a surprisingly domestic gesture for a goddess. “I am glad that you woke up. I worried for a time you wouldn’t.”
Luxanna Crownguard tried not to stare and failed miserably. The Veiled Lady was… well, if she was being honest, Lux had thought she was more of a symbol than something real. A story and an ideal, not an actual being that praying to could accomplish anything. She was the Demacian goddess of justice and punishments, and of secrets, and Luxanna had been praying to her since the first time her magic had manifested to keep her abilities as one of those secrets she guarded. She had been someone to worship, a story to live up to. Now she found that the woman was real, and Luxanna was unexpectedly sprawled on the floor of her… home?
The young mage shook her head, banishing the thoughts. As strange as she found all of this it wasn’t a priority. “What do you mean that I’m in no danger here?” Luxanna asked. “Are you certain? The danger… I saw the demon pour out of me inside Demacia City, and stain everything around me. Being around people… it’s too dangerous.”
The Veiled Lady finished helping the mageling unwind her legs, and Lux realized with a start that she was naked beneath the blankets… even the torn remnants of her wedding gown had been stripped away from her. She clung the blanket to her body, using it to cover her breasts… at least the air was warm. Even the piercings in her flesh were comfortably warm… not the burning heat of the demon manifesting, but not the cold of a chilled body. “I am certain, child,” the goddess promised. “The demon within you… he is older than I, and strong, but he would not dare attempt to confront me… not here, not now. He would not even risk pulling you into one of his nightmares here, and should he try to touch my mind I would be able to drag him from the shadows and into the light, where he might be confronted… and destroyed. You should pray he is so foolish as that.”
The words had a profound effect on Lux. She had lived with the fear and paranoia for so long by now that she had been existing in a perpetual state of tension, always waiting to discover that she was in the next nightmare, always waiting to be attacked. The calm certainty in the goddess’s voice, however, was resolute and as solid as the ground beneath her feet. The woman was certain that she was safe here… and Lux believed her. “How did I even get here?” the blonde asked, the hand that wasn’t holding the blanket to her chest rubbed her head. “Last thing I remember I was… I was…” Her voice trailed off in uncertainty. Why was it so hard to remember?
The goddess gestured to Lux… no, not at her. Behind her. “The heroism of your friend,” she said with a soft, concerned voice.
Luxanna turned around, and her eyes widened. She had jumped out of the covers so quickly that she didn’t realize that she hadn’t been alone in the bed. Quinn lay there as well, equally naked and wrapped up in blankets. Valor lay all but entirely on top of her, protectively sheltering his human from the world… one wing over her like an additional blanket. Neither of them was awake… neither even moved, and it was only with effort that Lux could see the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed.
“Quinn…” she gasped out quietly, breathlessly. She hated that she talked like that. It was the sort of voice she would use in a tomb, or on somebody’s deathbed… a horribly gentle, cautious voice, like she was worried her words might hurt her. “What happened?”
“I don’t know why and I don’t know how,” the Veiled Lady said with calm steadiness, “but you have drawn the attention of an ancient demon. One that was imprisoned long ago, during the Rune Wars… one named Nocturne. And you are its gateway out into the world once more.”
“Nocturne…” Lux breathed. She felt something inside her roil at the name, spoke aloud… something powerful shifting inside of her. It made her want to vomit.
“In Demacia, you encountered another mage,” she continued. “One that was… special to you in some way, I wager. One that has always been able to lurk in your thoughts. When you encountered him, the demon was able to use his magic and that link to pry open the doors of his prison just a little bit… enough to drag part of its power out into the real world.”
Lux nodded along. That matched what she had read in the tome she had stolen and put together for herself.
“After the demon emerged in the city and you fled, Quinn followed you into the forest,” the Veiled Lady said, her voice similarly quiet. “Then you two were attacked.”
“The Noxian assassin,” Lux breathed out, shuddering violently as she remembered Katarina and what the redhead represented, what she had done to her… and the danger that being in her presence represented.
“Afterwards, you were both injured, and the demon was brought to the surface,” the goddess continued. “And you were unconscious… so she picked you up and carried you. Nocturne must have assailed her horribly… its talons raking at her mind the whole way, trying to find purchase and drag itself out of your mind and into her. It would have tried to get her to stop you. To keep you in captivity, and drag you back to more people. Instead, she resisted its will… and one step at a time she carried you to safety. The only safety she could find… which led her directly to my fire, and to me.”
Lux looked fearfully at her friend, her stomach feeling like it was in knots. “She did all of that,” she whispered. “But the demon…” She turned her gaze back to the goddess. “Will she… will she be alright?”
She hoped for immediate reassurance. For kind words, or a laugh. Instead, the Veiled Lady sighed. “I do not know, child. Resisting the demon like that must have caused considerable pain and psychic damage to the young ranger. For now, I have closed the gate in your mind that the mage in Demacia pried open, and I have gifted her with a deep and dreamless sleep for her bravery. It may be some time before she recovers, but I do believe she will, with time… and no nightmares will find her so long as I shelter her.” She looked up, meeting Lux’s eyes once again. “In the meantime, we need to discuss what you are going to do.”
Luxanna looked down. “Isn’t that obvious?” she said in a subdued voice. “I have to stay here. No nightmares… no one around I can hurt. I can’t be trusted to go anywhere else.”
Lux thought that the Veiled Lady had been being kind, allowing her to come to that conclusion by herself. Instead, she shook her head. “You cannot.”
The blonde looked up sharply. “What?”
“It is too late for that,” the goddess said. “The demon has already found a foothold in Demacia. His stain has been left on too many people, and he has manifested parts of his dark reality into ours. Without you there, it will not always be as such… but the strength of its effect on the land I am sworn to protect will wax and wane as time passes. By staying here, you will avoid causing any new damage and giving the demon any further opportunities… but only for a time.”
She stepped forward towards a set of bags on one of the bookshelves, and Lux recognized with a start that those were Quinn’s bags. From inside of them she pulled out a book… a familiar, leather journal. “From here on out, the demon will only grow in strength with each person it drags into darkness… and the infection will only spread. At this point, hiding you away will only slow the inevitable… and rob you of the opportunity to stop it.”
“I can’t stop it!” Lux cried out. She had fallen to her knees at some point during this and hadn’t even realized it… the sheer contrast between the relief she had felt at being safe and now being told that safety was an illusion literally knocked her off of her feet. “I don’t know how!”
“Yes, you do,” the other woman said, gently coming down to her own knees before Lux. For the first time, the blonde mage caught sight of chained wings emerging from the dark clothing she wore, low on her back. She wasn’t aggressive, but she was firm as she placed the book down before Luxanna. “You do know what you have to do. You need to locate the prison where he was sealed… you need to go there… and then you need to close it. Seal the prison once again. Only then will his influence be gone.”
“But I don’t know where the Blessed Isles are!” Lux whispered. “The kingdom fell a long time ago!”
“Yes, but I know where they were,” the goddess said, her voice supportive, “And much of it still exists… in ruins, true, but knowledge there was preserved in magic more than paper and vellum – what you seek will still be there, somewhere. The kingdom was in the sea to the East, on the Southern coast of Runeterra. Make for the chaotic port of Bilgewater… Lawless it may be, but there are many there that know where to find it. As long as you avoid any mages that you have a similarly close relationship with, you should be able to keep the portal from opening again. Then, once you confront the demon, his corruption will vanish from this world.”
She didn’t want to go. Leaving home like that… it was terrifying. But… but what the Veiled Lady was saying was true. The damage had already been done to her home. What the goddess wasn’t saying, however, was that it was all Lux’s fault. She had brought this thing into the world. Fiona had crippled legs because of her. Quinn was trapped in this dream because of her. She had had the journal for weeks… and the whole kingdom was suffering because she had been too cowardly to leave the city and follow the information she found there when she had already known that was what she had to do. This was her fault… she needed to fix it.
Lux blinked her eyes clear of the tears that were falling. Then, slowly, she nodded. “Will you go with me?” she asked, already knowing and fearing the answer.
One of the goddess’s delicate hands came up and brushed one of her tears off of her cheek. “I cannot,” she said, a touch of regret in her voice. “I swore I would protect this land, and such oaths are not easily forsworn… especially not now when it needs me more than ever. I cannot go with you, child.” Slowly, she pulled up her veil, revealing a beautiful, painted face beneath it with dark, deep eyes and dark hair. She pressed her lips in a kiss to Lux’s forehead, the brush of her lips like fire to the young, terrified mage. “But you can stay here as long as you need to to recover, and I will keep the nightmares away. We have time enough for that, at least.”
Tired, lonely, and terrified, but determined, Lux took a deep breath. Then she nodded once again. “I’ll do it.”
Three days later, Lux was as ready as she was going to get.
Three days of rest, three nights without dreams, had been a blessing that the Luxanna Crownguard of last year would never have guessed. It hadn’t so much healed her mind as it had brought her back from the dead – she felt more like herself than she had at any point since Noxus after just a few nights of sleep, and not even the looming threat of the demon that she had to confront could make her feel as bad a she had felt when arriving here. The first night had done wonders. The second, if anything, had just reinforced it. By the end of the third, however, Lux had to face that she was just wasting time as she built her courage.
Quinn hadn’t so much as twitched the entire time she was here. Unlike the brave ranger that Lux would never be able to repay if they both lived a thousand years, she wasn’t injured. She had rested up. It wasn’t going to get any easier with time. Now was when she needed to go.
Living with a goddess was an odd experience. The woman didn’t act like a goddess, or anyone out of legend… she was helpful, and kind, though with a biting wit whenever they spoke… and the winged goddess was prepared. Lux didn’t know where her supplies came from – she had never seen the Veiled Lady leave the cave she called home, not even once – but her supplies were well stocked. A pack had been filled with rations, waterskins, and everything else she needed to survive a long walk through the wilderness between towns… a bedroll, flint and tinder, and all the other survival gear that Quinn had shown her how to use.
The Veiled Lady had even, somehow, acquired a set of her armor for her. It might not be the best traveling clothing possible, since it very firmly declared her allegiance to Demacia, but as she put it on she felt more and more confident and like herself. Each article of clothing felt like planting a flag – this was who she was.
Her goodbyes were short and sweet. The goddess wished her luck and promised that she would do her best to keep Demacia from falling apart while Luxanna was gone. Valor rested outside of the cave now, perched on a nearby tree, and he fluttered down to allow Lux to stroke his head a few times and feed him a scrap of jerky before heading back up into the petrified tree. Lux knew that he would never leave Quinn, and she wouldn’t ask. Instead, with a wave to the Demacian Eagle, and one last look back at the cave containing her sleeping friend, Lux turned to the East and walked without looking back.
In many ways, that first day was the worst. The Sacred Woods’ petricite trees stretched on for what felt like a very long time, and the ground was rough to travel through even without the mud from the recent rain… with it, it took her a full day to make it out of the forest and she wanted to turn back almost every single second of it. She resolutely kept going though, and by the time she reached dry land out of the mud, she was so tired that even her worries that the nightmares would come again weren’t able to keep her from sleeping.
They didn’t come. And the piercings embedded in her skin stayed cool.
She awoke with the sun and continued to walk. Today she would be entering the borderlands… heading up into the hills that surrounded the plains of Demacia before it became the vast stretch of protectorates, fiefdoms, and city-states that were allies of Demacia and held off the current borders of the Noxian Empire. She knew that. What she didn’t expect, however, was when she crested the hill and looked out, and she could see all the way back to Demacia city… and the smoke that rose there. The chaos and rebellion and conflict that had engulfed her home when Nocturne had pulled himself loose of her had never stopped… it raged on still, and it probably would until she was able to put that monster back where he belonged.
She knew that she should go but she couldn’t stop herself from staring over the kingdom she was leaving behind. Everywhere she looked she saw places that she had been, places she recognized… places that she felt like she might never see again. Once she left this hill, right here, she might never go back to her home. And she missed it.
“Lux!”
Lux froze… then she turned. “Quinn!?” she said, incredulous.
The ranger was quick-stepping up the hill towards her, with Valor flying through the air above and behind, riding the thermals pouring off of the sun-baked hill ridge. After days of looking at the woman and pleading for her to wake up without result, Lux felt sure that she could have visualized every detail of the woman down to her pores with her eyes closed… but now here she was, recovered and in the flesh. She looked none the worse for wear from her extended sleep… in fact, she looked energized as she quickly caught up to Lux, pausing only a moment to catch her breath from the quick pace that she had set. “You… you didn’t think I was going to let you leave without me, did you?”
Luxanna stared, eyes wide with hopeful shock. Then, as if reality came rushing back to her all at once, she frantically backed away. “Stay away from me, Quinn!” Lux protested. “It’s too dangerous! Being near me… no one can be near me. You’ll end up… end up like that, again. I can’t let that happen.”
Quinn took another step back towards her. “I’m fine, Lux. I’m alright. As soon as you left I woke right up, and that woman… she told me everything. Told me about what you’re trying to do, the crazy idea to head to the Shadow Isles to fix this. And I can’t let you do it alone. You need my help.”
“It’s too dangerous, Quinn!” Lux protested. “For both of us! I… I can’t control this thing. This demon, this… Nocturne… I can’t control what it does to us both, the dreams, th-”
“They’re just dreams,” Quinn said firmly, taking another step forward. “The Veiled Lady closed the opening that it was going through, so it can’t hurt us… it can only try to scare us. And I can handle it. I carried you to safety… and I’ll do it again.” She took another step forward. “If you go alone, you might never make it. You might fall down again like you did in the forest. You might run into a thousand other problems and never come home, and I’d never know what happened to you.”
The ranger took another step forward, and suddenly she was right on top of Lux, just inches away, gazing solemnly into her eyes. “I’m not going to let you do this alone, Luxanna,” she said softly. “I’m alright. I’m going to be alright. And I’m going to make sure you always are too.”
Then she hugged Lux, and all of the good reasons in the world couldn’t have kept the Demacian princess-in-exile from crying as she wrapped her arms around her friend. “I…” she sobbed, choking on the words. “Th… thank you, Quinn. I didn’t want to do this alone.”
Lux wasn’t sure how long they embraced with Valor flying overhead, while smoke rose in the distance from the capital city of their home and the clouds moved overhead. She just stood there in her embrace, taking comfort in the support of a friend. In the knowledge that she didn’t have to do this alone anymore. That Quinn wanted to be there with her. “Alright,” she said finally, drawing back from the embrace. Quinn, she noted, had a similar pack of supplies to her own… probably packed better, and with things Lux had never even thought of if the ranger was her usual efficient self. “We need to make it to the other coast, and find a ship willing to take us South.”
Quinn nodded. “I’ve been through that part of Noxus before. There are plenty of small city-states on the coast in the shipping lanes. It should be easy to get a boat to Piltover, and then further South after that. But that will be months from now… we have a long walk ahead of us.”
Lux nodded and wiped away the tears she hadn’t realized had gathered on her cheek. Then she smiled. “Then we had better get started, shouldn’t we?” she said, one hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming with me, Quinn. With you watching my back, and me watching yourself, I feel better about this already.”
As the blonde mageling started walking away, down the other side of the ridge they had crested, Quinn watched her go… and as she did, for just a moment, her eyes changed color. The blue shifted into darker, more dangerous hues. “Me too, Luxanna,” the ranger said softly. “Me too.” Then her eyes were bright and normal once again, and she shook her head violently, smiled… and set off after her friend, Valor wheeling triumphantly in the air above them as they went.
The End of Act
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