Oblique words are the last defense against an unacceptable truth.
There were many unacceptable truths on Hyperborea. The monsters that burned civilizations like bored children tearing legs off ants, we dismissed as ‘gods.’ The aliens that walked our planet as if it was theirs, we disarmed with the dubious term ‘elder races.’ But, least acceptable to all who survived it, was the ‘Event.’
The Event was an asteroid impact in the heart of the Armanean continent. Six months on, and I am starting to forget what the sun looks like. We still have sunlight - at high noon, the world becomes as bright as a rainy, miserable day. But, by late afternoon, it is back to pitch black. Plants don’t do well in the gloom, and all over the planet, crops failed. It was this, more than a few obliterated cities and raining ashes, that was the true disaster. A disaster our Hyperborean ancestors knew well would come and had planned for.
Here in the Borderlands and near the Mist Wall, our lands could have been the poorest in all Hyperborea. The jungle had already robbed the farmer of decent soil. The treacherous River Black could only be counted on to flood his crops. All he could safely grow were the wild rices - that did oddly well in the cold and dark.
After the event, these so-called ‘wild’ rices boomed. To understand why, imagine if you will, a world where apocalypses are a regular event. One where even peasants own slave girls - and cull them past their breeding prime. Settlers think nothing of traveling hundreds of miles to claim rich, fertile, and conspicuously empty lands. Empires hide caches of seeds on freezing mountains; their locations passed on by word of mouth from one king to the next.
Somewhere in the lost past, these rice strains had been bred to survive in the miserable conditions of a volcanic, asteroid, or nuclear winter. As the world moved past whatever hellish period that had been, these extremophile rices receded. They survived only in the gloomy, Eldritch-menaced, Borderlands. Now, their time had come. The Borderlands became a breadbasket keeping humanity from extinction, as it had done who knows how many times before.
First came the traders. River barges and sea-going ships sailed up to little river towns like Dura, bringing silks, silver, and meteoritic iron. Farmers became rich overnight, and the burghers, the town’s business elite, became sickeningly rich.
Then the refugees came from all over the planet. With nothing left to them but their names, they crammed into Dura and spilled past its walls in an explosion of tents, cooking fires, and hungry stares. Other burghers on the council called them dangerous. Diseased. Vermin. I called them the beating heart of a new empire, being born right at our doorstep. An empire that we might - if we worked as hard as they did - end up leading.
Mine was, as it has always been, a minority view.
Then came the slaves. Most had chosen to strip themselves and kneel - selling themselves for a sack of rice for their families, and the golden ticket of a master who could feed them. Beyond the Slumlands emerged Slaver’s Town: a great, dense sprawl of pits, pens, and auction blocks. It received girls from all over the world and shipped them up the River Black’s tributaries. There, they ended up kneeling in the muddy fields of fat, delighted peasant farmers. I never thought I would see the day I would buy girls by the lot. Dark-skinned beauties from Darfur bending and grasping their ankles to bare themselves for my examining hands. Pale, East Asian-origin girls from icy Zidon, tied three to a pole and begging me to buy them. Long-legged Shemites with silk-black hair, giggling and squealing in their cramped cages as they kissed and fingered each other: their slavers too busy selling them to stop and deny them their pleasure.
This had become my world.
***
Looming ahead of us was a chain of hills. I lead her down a thin, slippery ravine that joined with a small stream. Curious, tiny, grey fish, their heads encased in bone armor, darted after her wading legs and nibbled at her toes. She squealed at their touch - it was a pleasing sound. Overhead, rain clouds moved in, and the gloom deepened. We heard titanic lightning in the distance as it rained down. The slave’s hair plastered against her skin, the mud and dust rinsed away, and her wet body gleamed. She turned pale but did not shiver - even the Event couldn’t rob the jungle of its heat.
We reached one of the taller hills and began ascending. Rammed into the ground were wooden markers; one had a necklace of volcanic glass beads and quartz chips hanging from it. Another was stained with rust by a corroded, open collar. The slave’s eyes widened at these; she looked about and up the hill as if expecting to see someone.
“Slave’s One Escape,” I said, pausing to drink from my waterskin. I did not offer the girl any. Instead, I motioned to a puddle. She got down and drank from it. “You are almost there.”
The last of the rain ended, and we made our way to the top.
The hill ended at a sheer cliff-top, hemmed in by short, wind-stressed trees. Below the cliff was a valley of black granite. Lines of megalithic standing stones and tall, brooding statues marked paths leading down to the valley floor. The only life was a few, ragged, scrambling plants spilling out cracks and ledges. Steam rose up from the granite valley below. A wide stream ran through it, clear and lifeless. Along the stream bed, we could see bubbling vents. A sudden breeze blew valley air up towards us - it was acrid and burned in my nostrils and eyes. The slave winced and began coughing.
Beyond the lifeless valley was what held the attention of all who came here. The slave stared at it. Her face seemed to switch between awe and disbelief.
“You’ve never even seen a picture of it, have you?” I said.
“What - what is it, Master?”
“That’s the Mist Wall.”
The far side of the valley was hidden in a vast wall of mist. It ran off into the horizon in both directions. From up here on the hill, I fancied I could see how it curved inwards ever so slightly.
Hidden inside it, in a region large as Australia, a war had been raging for millions of years.
“Azathoth! Great Cthulhu!” her eyes widened, and she became excited, “Great gods!” she got down on her knees and put her head to the ground. She began muttering prayers in a language I didn’t recognize. She formed the words with difficulty; I doubt they had been made for human lips.
Yes, great gods Azathoth and Cthulhu, Set and Hastur. These were not fanciful horrors from the minds of writers of the 1920s and 30s. They were quite real, though in our time dispersed through space, or sleeping in the world’s dark places. Here in the Devonian, though, they were awake - and gathered in war. Their agents had introduced human life here, snatching us as across space and time as a child picks up his toys. To them, we were slaves, food, and sacrifices, our lives the cheapest of cosmic currencies.
“No,” I nudged her with my boot, “do not offer prayers.” a slave adopts the religion of her master.
“Please forgive me, Master,” she looked up at the Mist Wall, crouched over. “Is it true that none go in?”
“No. There is always some idiot going in, someday or the other. It is always an outsider. A whole parade of your people went in, just a few weeks ago. Some nonsense about Primal Chaos.”
“And they will not return, Master?”
“They won’t. No one ever has.”
High up in the sky there was the bang of a sonic boom. A bright star appeared and started shedding smaller stars behind it in a stream. It arced over the sky and disappeared behind the Mist Wall.
“What was that?” she stared, open-mouthed.
“Can you guess?”
“A god! A god coming to fight at Cthulhu’s side!”
“That was a Landing Beast.”
She gasped.
Landing Beasts were cosmic vehicles entering and leaving our universe from the Outer Dark. They came into ours to hunt, collecting creatures, most of all human females, to fuel the war of the gods. They re-entered space here, breaking up as they descend beyond the Mist Wall. Some missed altogether - crashing in the Borderlands around it.
From these, civilization had emerged.
The women the Landing Beasts brought were young and fit. We can only guess the fate of those landing within the Mist Wall. Those with the good fortune to land short, however, are enslaved.
“It is beautiful, Master!”
“Enough staring into the sky, Slave,” I tugged on her leash, and she got to her feet. “Look there,” I pointed to a dark boulder at the very edge of the cliff.
“Master?”
“It’s what you ran away for.”
I lead her close to the boulder. I saw recognition in her eyes as she noted the large, inverted ‘V’ that had been carved into it. Alongside it was the unmistakable shape of an arrow pointing over the cliff.
“Here you are,” I pushed her down, forcing her to kneel before the boulder. “Slave’s One Escape,” I untied her hands and her throat. She rubbed her wrists, frowning and staring at the boulder. I studied the rope marks on her neck as she stretched it, peering as far as she dared down the steep, jagged fall below.
“I-I don’t understand. This - no. Why did you untie me, Master?”
“The slave girl who told you of this place is tall and dark-haired,” I began, “her name is Perfect Feet. She is one dirty, dirty slut, and she is loyal to me. I showed her how to draw a map of this place. I picked out this path, I put those slave trinkets on those posts. You were always meant to come this way, Slave. Perfect Feet wasn’t lying when she told you this is a slave’s one escape. There,” I gestured over the cliff. “All you have to do is jump.”
She stared down into the valley. Her head and shoulders sank, and the brightness went out of her eyes.
This had been all an exercise in control. The slave informant, the false map, the trail leading to a suicidal drop - these were to show a runaway that even as she fled, I still had complete power over her.
With enough girls, no matter what you do, some will run. I find it best to let them - and let them find it futile. Then, accepting their fate becomes the only path open to them. When they do, be gentle with them -- make sure they orgasm. The more times, the better. Afterwards they will lick your feet and bare their buttocks at you, like your dirtiest slave slut.
“You have a choice, Slave,” I put the rope away in my pack. “And it is the last choice you will ever make, so make sure it is one you can live with. You can go over this cliff and return to Azathoth’s Primal Chaos. Or, you can come back with me - as a slave.”
I reached into my pack and pulled out a pair of thick iron cuffs, fastened together by a few inches of heavy links. Her eyes tracked them as I opened the cuffs and put them down on the ground before her.
Next, I pulled out an iron collar. It had a small iron bell fitted at the front. It tinkled as it moved. The collar was stiff, but I forced it open. Fastened to it was long, clinking, four-foot chain. I set the belled collar and chain down as well.
“Decide,” I cracked my knuckles.
“I cannot!” she clutched at the dirt, and her little hands become fists.
“Decide now, or I will throw you over!”
She turned her head away.
I reached down and grabbed for shoulders.
“No!” she cried out, batting my hands away. “I have decided!”
“What?” I barked.
“I have decided!”
“What have you decided!”
“I want to live! Let me live! I want to be - your slave!” She crossed her wrists and held them up to me for cuffing. Her eyes were filled with tears. “I am your slave, Master.”
I reached down and held her hands, stroking them. Her fingers were warm, the skin flushed. I lowered them and stroked her hair.
“Good,” my tone was gentle. “Good slave. That wasn’t so hard to say, was it?”
She said nothing.
“Was it?”
“No, Master!”
She looked up at me, thighs parted, back straight. Such a proud beauty, even on her knees! I felt another surge of pride, mixed with delight. She would not run away again, oh no.
“You have not been taught your place,” I stroked her cheek, my fingers tracing her ear. “Were you?”
“No, Master. My trainer was going to teach me today.”
“That might explain all this. Pity he didn’t teach you sooner.”
“Yes, Master. May I stand, Master?”
“Oh no,” I gripped her by her hair, my grip gentle but quite firm. “I’m going to teach you your place.”
I unbuckled my belt and pulled my erect penis out. She stared at it and tried to draw her head back. I held her steady so she couldn’t.
“Open your mouth, Slave.”
She looked at me, then my penis, then back at me.
“Yes, Master,” she opened her mouth and leaned forward.
Her lips were soft and full. They were warm as I slid against them. The softness of her mouth enclosed me. I cupped my other hand under her jaw. I enjoyed the feeling. It wasn’t just the feel of my penis in a beautiful, kneeling woman’s mouth. Oh no, it was much more, so much more than that…
***
Picture yourself at a slave market; perhaps just an open dock where passing raiders have stopped to unload and present their captives. Now, imagine the naked meat there; slim, fit girls standing with their hands bound over their heads, some forced to stand on tiptoe. See how they all look away from you? They are afraid. They know you will leave with one of them.
Pick one. Yes, it is the same one who first caught your attention. Go to her: see how she turns her head, trying to hide her nervousness? Look at the pale, upraised brand scar on her thigh. The heaving of her breasts as she breathes. The glances she steals at you.
The seller comes, and you drop the coins into his box without even looking. He bows and cuts the rope that holds the slave’s hands. She staggers back, with all her weight on her feet again. She regards you, eyes wide - and gets down on her knees.
You lead her away behind a fishing shed. It is quiet here, private. There is only the sound of the water birds. She kneels as soon as you stop walking, looking up at you, her wrists now tied behind her back, your rope around her neck.
You pull out your penis - she looks at it and then at you.
Then, she opens her mouth and takes it in. As she begins rocking her head back and forth, you know at that moment she has submitted to you. She has become yours in every way, no longer an ‘I’ but a ‘His.’
You have, as we say in Hyperborea, taught her, her place.
***
“Begin,” I ordered.
She rocked her head back and forth, looking up at me, as any slave does, for cues and approval.
“Good little slave,” I gripped her hair with both hands, “Carry on, pet.”
She moved her head faster, hair tossing back and forth. I held her by her jaw and her hair, guiding her. Making her push deeper. Controlling her speed. Stroking her cheek.
It is good to guide a new slave this way - remember, she is nervous and will not perform well. Don’t kick her away or whip her for it. That will make her even more nervous and do worse the next time. Instead, think of it like a dance where you must lead. Reassure her that she can - and is - pleasing to her master. She will gain confidence - and look forward to pleasing you.
I felt the urge to ejaculate surging.
I pressed her head forward. My penis touched the back of her throat. She gagged and tried to pull away, small hands gripping mine.
“No,” I held her head in place. “You must learn not to choke.”
I came; semen surging into her mouth in five, heavy spurts. The orgasm powered through me like electricity. She choked and gagged but I did not let go. I held her like that, dominating her ability to breathe. It was a few more moments before I let go.
She jerked away, lowering her head down to cupped hands. She coughed and choked out my seed. It hung from thick, gleaming mucus strings from her lips. It pooled in her hands as she spat and coughed again. Her chest heaved as she gasped for breath. She looked up at me, her face red. Stringy saliva mixed with cum dripped from her lips. Ir ran down her chin and chest.
“Good Slave,” I lay my testicles against her forehead. I made her tilt her head back. Then, I cleaned my penis with her thick hair.
“Thank you, Master,” she replied in a quiet voice. Semen-spit was still quivering in her cupped palms.
“Go on then. Eat it.”
She raised her hands to her mouth, and she began licking them clean. I watched her throat bob as she swallowed. Some dripped down onto her belly and thighs. I got down before her and scooped it up with a finger.
She stared at me, mixed emotions now fighting behind her eyes. There it went! The barrier I had thrown aside in her mind.
“Open, Slave.”
I put my finger into her mouth, and she sucked it clean. She stared into my eyes as she did so. I wiped more semen off her breasts and neck and fed it to her this way.
She leaned forward, pressing her hands against my chest, eyes closed as she leaned in to kiss me-
“Oh!”
I pushed her to the side and pulled her hands behind her back. She stared back at me, lips parted, as I crossed her wrists behind her back and cuffed them.
“Master!” she whined, “Please- Ah!”
She looked down, her cheek soon turning red where I had slapped her.
“Contain yourself, Slut,” I picked up the collar.
Tens of thousands of years of brutal slavery had made her this way. When a man enslaves a girl on this world, if she submits, he breeds her. If she doesn’t submit, he kills her and feeds her to the others. Just as in our time, we had bred dogs, here on Hyperborea, it is women who were - and continue to be - domesticated.
I had my part in this, as well.
I pushed her hair aside, feeling the smooth, soft skin of her neck and back. Then, I pressed the iron collar against her neck and forced it shut. The bell tinkled, right under her chin. I put the key in and turned the stubborn, heavy tumblers till each clinked into place.
Then, I showed her the key and hurled it over the cliff.
She watched it fall, bouncing off rocks and disappearing.
“Your name now is Belled Pet.”
I pulled her to her feet and set off back the way I’d come. Behind me, the little iron bell tinkled with her every step.
***
I made my way back down a different, easier path. It turned and lead down into the valley, for a distance. My boots scattered loose stones and chips of slate. Belled Pet’s chain went taut as she slowed, favoring where her feet trod. I let her; I didn’t want her pretty feet cut.
My eye drifted to a row of standing stones that reminded me of Easter Island’s Moai. Some were so old they looked worn and shrunken, like ice cubes left out in the sun. Others towered above, the hand-cut grooves of their eyes filled with shadow. One had a smaller stone (the size of a cart) balanced on top of it. The face carved into it did not seem human.
“What God is that, Master?” Belled Pet stared at it.
“I don’t know. Perhaps no one does. Most of these gods no one remembers anymore. Pilgrims have been coming here for a long, long time. If you dig in these hills,” I gestured, “you will find what they left behind. Every farmer has his own heap.”
I stopped for a moment to take in the history of the place. The faithful - not all of them human - had trekked here for as long as the Mist Wall had been up. How long had that been? Thousands of years? Millions? This was the holiest place not just in the world but perhaps the history of the world.
That was when I saw it.
Down by the sterile stream’s bank was a wooden statue, about twenty feet tall and five wide. It looked crude like it was bunched together from driftwood and fallen branches. What could have been lanterns or charms hung from it. It had a humanoid aspect like it had just climbed out of the lifeless, stinking, chemical waters.
“Master?”
“That’s new,” I frowned. “And it was put up without my knowing.”
“Master would know?”
“Something that big; everyone should know. Come,” I tugged her chain.
I detoured down a branch in the path that led me to the stream bank. The acrid, chemical stench grew - I felt it burning in my nose, mouth, and eyes. I passed a spring of near-boiling water. Spilled waves of brine had left rings of yellow crust that cracked under my boots. Belled Pet cried out as just across the stream, a geyser cooked off.
“Master, we should leave this terrible place!”
“Be quiet, or I will hang you here by your ankles for the night.”
She fell silent but looked about, eyes alarmed.
I felt the eyes of the megalithic statues upon me as I reached the wooden totem.
It was like a mass of dead, bleached branches that had come alive. I couldn’t see how it was held together - I saw no rivets or chains. Hanging off it, clattering, were lengths of broken human bones, strung together. Skull fragments and shoulder blades had been pieced like mosaic to form the statue’s face. It glared down at me through empty eyes and bared ivory tusk fangs.
The leash chain went taut. I tugged it; Belled Pet took a step, and the chain went taut again.
“Do not worry, Slave,” she grunted and slipped in the gravel as I dragged her to my side. “I will keep you safe.” I pulled her head under my arm and put her in an armlock. I lead her this way, bent over, controlled.
It was a statue of the god Dagon, a Great Old One from the sea. His followers had dominated the Borderlands in a previous age before some force, perhaps no greater than patient Time, reduced them to sunken ruins and die-offs of deep-sea fish hunting for long-gone breeding grounds. Nearly every Borderlands native farmer and fisherman gave offerings to Father Dagon. The further you went from traveled waterways, the more devout - and unwelcoming - they became.
At the start of the growing season, farmers would bind their prettiest slaves - or in some places, their proud, heirloom-jewelry bedecked daughters - to wooden, ‘x’ frame crosses planted along the water. These were symbolic, nighttime offerings of mates to the Deep Ones - half-remembered, fishlike beasts that ruled their ancestors. In desperate times, the symbolism deepened - girls would have their bellies slit open and their innards cast into the water. Fishermen would bind slaves to weights and drown them.
Except it was more than symbols. I had fought Deep Ones in the south, desperates who’d fled from inside the Mist. I had looked into the empty eyes of cross-bound slaves spared death and instead filled with terrible life. The Deep Ones still swam these rivers, and to them our power is just an interlude.
And now, here, half a day from my town was the secret but quite unhidden work of scores of unknown followers.
“Master!” she broke discipline, “Look!”
I followed her gaze.
Beyond the statue and in the flowing stream were white-wrapped figures. Stepping closer, I saw the shrouded had human forms - some matched large men. Others were much slighter. Many were the size of children and infants.
Each shrouded figure had chains wrapping their feet, anchoring them to the rocks that had held them under while they drowned.
Raw emotion and nausea hit; dazing me. I let go of my slave and hurled on the stony bank.
Nothing was said on the way back.