The glowing structure was the size of a barn. It was built from what seemed to be stone blocks, but as I drew closer they looked metal. Standing outside I couldn’t tell, either way. They glowed with an internal energy but were cool to the touch. From inside the building I could hear the bubbling and trickling of water. I walked around it, trying to find an entrance or opening (how had I heard Naya if it had none? Had I imagined her? Had this world finally driven me mad?).
On the second round, acid-white light spilled out of an opening that had not been there before. I looked at the dust around it on the floor - there was no sign of disturbance. Had it always been open?
I set troubling thoughts aside, and entered.
Inside was a large, open, bright-lit chamber with another doorway at its far end. The air was humid but cool. It had a tang to it - part a chemical sharpness and part the smell of a clean, but long-used, aquarium.
Arranged in rows along the walls were clear, glass tanks filled with water. The tanks had been made in irregular, bulbous shapes - some like overripe squashes waiting to burst. Others were like fat, bent, cucumbers. Suspending the tanks in place was a mesh of black roots that seemed to grow right out of the walls. They gripped and coiled around the tanks like strangler vines, their tips passed right through the glass and into the water.
Swimming inside each tank was a naked slave girl. They stared and pressed their hands to the glass as they noticed me, long, dark hair swaying in the water. One pounded her fists against the glass. Another opened her mouth to scream but I heard no sound. A third girl rubbed her belly and breasts against the glass and licked it, like a good, tavern slave.
I put my hand against the glass of her tank. She put her hand on the other side, her eyes became hopeful. Small feet kicked as she treaded water. At the tank’s bottom were creatures that looked like the Mi-Go battery parasites. These were larger, about a foot long. I watched as one scoured the tank’s glass with mouth parts large as fingers.
I saw movement in the corner of my peripheral sight. I stepped back, hand going to my broadsword.
Behind the tank, attached to a strand of black root was a woman’s hand. It seemed to grow right out of the root, like a leaf. A finger moved. Then the thumb. Then stillness. Then another moved.
I looked on the other side of the tank. I saw a row of six, humans ears hanging in a bunch, the skintones between them varied. Further back I saw something moving in a regular beat. Using my sword, I pushed some of the roots aside to see what it was. I knew I’d regret doing so, but I had to see.
Sitting in a little nest, was human heart, beating away.
These dissected body parts had been set in the same, organic patterns I’d seen at the raided farm, the bandit camp, and that murder-surgery hell hole the Flautist and its under-creatures had worked in. Here though, the organs were still alive.
I wondered if the girls swimming in the tanks were either to be taken apart, or had been reassembled. The Mi-Go had studied humans longer than human medicine had existed. The slut in the tank put her hand between her thighs and started pleasing herself, then beckoned me with the other to punish her. If she had been remade, perhaps I’d never even know.
“Master!” I heard Naya cry out. The sound had come through the doorway at the end. “Master, are you there?”
I left the girl in the tank, who glared and began beating and kicking against the glass, and stepped through the doorway.
Inside was a similar chamber. Here though the glass tanks were smaller, bunched together like grapes. Inside each grape was a human brain.
Mi-Go brain cylinders! They were real!
“Master!”
Oh God. Had she been dissected?
“Master, I am here!”
Oh God.
I forced myself forward, one foot at a time.
Hidden behind a large cluster of roots, I saw my girl. Naya and three others stood naked in a row, on tip toe. They were each held in place by a root that coiled around their bare throats. Other roots gripped their arms and legs, immobilizing them. There was a conspicuous vacant fifth space for another girl.
“Master!” she gasped, her eyes bright, “Master you are really here!”
The other slaves began clamoring as well, tugging at their restraints and begging.
“Silence!”
All the meat became quiet and looked down.
“Yes,” I felt a huge weight lifting from me. “Yes, its hard for me to believe as well, Slave.”
Slave. It felt so good to call her that again.
I drew my knife to reclaim what was mine. The root around her throat felt rubbery and warm. I tried to pull it free but its grip was stronger than any man’s. I nicked it with my knife - it was like cutting through tough meat. Blue-white sap beaded out along the nick.
“Keep still,” I ordered.
I sawed through the root at her throat. The severed ends dripped sap, I watched as some ran down her pale back. It dripped its way to the swell of her buttocks. I could see them quiver as I slapped them in my mind’s eye.
“You have lost color,” I started unwinding the coil about her throat. “You need some sun.”
“Yes, Master,” she looked up at me, her dark eyes shined. She took me in, unable to look away. I wondered when she had even seen a man last.
I cut her arm free. Sap sprayed on her smooth, flat, belly. I used a strand of of root to wipe it away. My fingers felt the softness and warmth of her skin. I dug with my finger tips - the muscle had lost some tone.
“You are not as strong. You’ve not been put to work, either on your feet or on your back.”
“No, Master,” she trembled as my hand moved up. I cupped a warm, soft breast and took a moment for myself to enjoy how it felt, filling my hand.
Her lips parted and she moved her head to mine-
“What are these?” I saw a thin, red line, almost invisible, around her breast. There was another for the other breast. I studied her belly and crotch - there were more lines. It took me a moment to realize they were plotted around her major organs.
“Please, Master,” she trembled again but this time with a very different emotion. “Please free me!”
I finished cutting away the roots.
Naya collapsed at my feet. She threw her arms around them and kissed them with great energy, and pressed her forehead to my shin. I reached down and stroked her hair. It was soft, thick, luxurious. It spilled between my fingers.
“Curse you, Master!” she looked up at me, eyes brimming with tears. “May you be banished to the Outer Dark! May Cthulhu, God of Gods, crush you beneath his feet!”
I caught her fist as she punched at my groin. She snarled and tried to bite my hand - I slapped her and she glared at me.
“You said you would not sell me!” she sat back on her heels, thighs parted, back straight. Even in such defiance, she knelt as an owned woman. “You promised!”
“I also promise to release you, when I made you help us find your bandit friends. How did that work out? You cannot tell me you have been raging at me all this, time because I didn’t keep a promise to a slave.”
“You a warrior!” she spat. “You cannot break your word!”
“What are you?”
She said nothing, pouting.
“What are you?” I grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at me.
“A slave, Master.”
I got behind her and grabbed her wrists. She did not resist as I crossed them behind her back.
“That’s right,” I said into her ear. “A slave.”
With a leather strip from my pack I bound her wrists. I pulled tight till her skin whitened around it.
“A promise to a slave means nothing. I laugh at any Hyperborean who thinks otherwise,” I stood and reached into my pack. I pulled out and opened a bronze collar. Cuneiform marks had been cut along its rim, green patina showed inside them. “Do you know what this says?” I held it before her.
She stared at the marks and then back up at me.
“No, Master.”
“Of course not. No one thought should learn to read. I don’t need you to read, either. It will always be a strange magic to you. This,” I ran my finger along the letters, “says ‘do to me whatever you want.’ Not ‘do with,’ or ‘do for,’ but do to.”
I bunched her thick hair and held away, baring her slender neck. She was still as I placed the collar around her throat. I pulled the two ends together and forced the ends to lock.
Click.
“There has always been a collar around your throat, Naya. You’ve just never noticed. Darfur’s slums are nothing more than walled-in breeding prisons for breeding arrow fodder and slave girls,” I drew another, longer leather strip and leashed her with it. “The founders of Darfur’s cities did that. Understand? I am not the first man to put you on a leash. I am just the last. On your feet, Slave. Tonight, you will show proper gratitude to be kneeling again at my feet, or I will remove this collar and brand that cuneiform into your throat, instead.”
“Yes, Master,” the pale beauty got to her feet, head down. There was an absence in her voice.
Something in me softened.
“Back at the slave market, you seemed to enjoy yourself when you were dancing. Yes?”
“Yes, Master.”
“How did it feel to have all those men looking upon you?”
She looked up at me.
“I liked it, Master. I felt - I felt so beautiful. They liked looking at me, and it made me happy to see them pleased.”
“Good. You will dance again for men. They will pay to watch you, and each man will pretend you are the slave girl who is between his knees, pleasing him. Afterwards, I will have you bathed, perfumed, and oiled, and sent to my bed chamber. There, I will force you into a cage with several other girls - squeezed together, crouching, ready for me. Perhaps I will take you out and use you that night. Maybe you will watch while I enjoy one of your cage sisters. Or maybe I will take all of you out and make you please each other while I watch. And then, when I’m ready, you will all kneel before me with your heads back and your mouths open, to catch my seed. That will be the rest of your life, Naya.”
“Thank you, Master.”
I regarded the other three girls, standing bound by the roots. They were tall, pale, slim. One looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and then quickly looked down. They were large, dark, brown eyes.
Such tasty beauties! I-
Through the opening to the third chamber, I heard the sound of something scraping against the ground. Something large.
The slaves froze and Naya crouched and turned - the body language of a hunted animal.
“What’s th-”
“Quiet, Master!” she hissed. “It comes again!”
One of the Flautist’s henchmonsters?
“Go,” I pointed back the way I had come. “Wait for me outside this place.”
“Master!” her eyes were wide, “Please do not-”
“Go!”
She ran to the chamber with the glass tanks without a look back.
The girl with the large, brown eyes whimpered. Urine ran down her leg. The other two remained absolutely still.
In the next chamber, there was another scraping sound, and the moan of a girl.
A henchmonster! Rage boiled through me. Without thinking, quite done with thinking, I stepped up to the opening and looked through.
Inside was the third and final chamber. This too was cradled with black rooting. At the center of the chamber was a large slab of white stone, polished till it shined. Lights from sources I could not see, illuminated it. Whimpering one the table, unshackled but somehow unable to get up, was a naked slave. There were red vivisection markings on her body.
Dragging itself towards her was a Mi-Go.
I felt no nauseau, no terror, or maddening sudden panic at the sight of the immense, roach-like creature - it was not from the Outer Dark. However, there was an instant and overwhelming disgust - and hatred. It was like when one sees a cockroach - but so much stronger. I gritted my teeth and crouched to spring as it dragged its insectile abdomen after it on thin, black, mantis legs. It’s shelled head was crouched over, regarding the helpless slave. In one of its crab claws it carried a small glass tank - a Mi-Go brain jar.
This was it! The one Mi-Go that Perfect Feet had told me of. The creature behind everything - the cult, the mutant giants, the collecting of slaves. The one who had had Aymund resettled and brought its transformed, Runa slaves. The being that teams of desperate men were dying for out in the ruins, consumed by monsters or lost to different planes of Creation. The architect of so much human suffering!
Before I could rush in and strike - perhaps fortunately - it turned and saw me.
There was a screech that split my ears and made the slaves cry out, and the Mi-Go dropped the brain jar. It shattered on the stone floor, exploding into slivers. The slave girl on the table was showered with them and began screaming.
The Mi-Go smacked her right off the table. I felt the shockwave through the air from the movement, like a pillow pressing against my chest. The slave girl smashed into the far wall, bones snapping. The body fell and rolled on the floor, her spine and legs broken.
With another quick movement, it produced a long, coppery, conical device. I had seen it before in old glyphs found carved near ancient battlefields, and heard a half-blind Shemite bard tell me of it for a mug of beer, once. The lights in the chamber dimmed and I smelled the reek of ozone.
I turned and ran.
Behind me, there was a defeaning snap and a flash. The secured slaves started screaming. I did not look back and just ran on, through the aquarium chamber. Before I reached its end, the lights dimmed again. This time, the flash went off right in my face and I was knocked on my back. A tank exploded, showering me with jagged, broken glass and hot water. The slave girl who had been inside spilled across the floor, dead eyes staring. After-images clouded my eyes. I got up and ran.
Outside, Naya cowered against the wall.
“Master?! I-”
I grabbed the slave girl by her arm and we ran.