Legends of Belariath

Krom

Krom Faces His Fear

The evening was hot and humid as the hulking barbarian lay in his bedroll. The day had been a long journey and the passage through Belariath had been exhausting. Krom always preferred to travel alone, to explore the country side and learn about it and it’s ways independently. But on this journey he had met a traveling band of Red Fist warriors on their way to scout out new territory for their growing village. Krom had spent a night there with them, listening to their stories, recounting tales of their own. He had been doubtful of their leader who had held to himself all night, not telling any tales of his own, and sneering at the words of pride that Krom bestowed upon the other Barbarians he had talked to.

He left them early the next morn, and expected not to see these warriors again, and he set off for his own journey, his own fortune. Krom traveled through the entire day, taking little time away for food and water, he wanted to cover as much ground as possible. The hot sun beat down on him, beads of sweat dripping from his furrowed brow as he squinted to make out the horizon. The time finally came when the full moon rose up in the sky and Krom made his camp for the night. But tonight something was different, something just wasn’t quite right. It is said that the fae paint pictures in the mind at night, but the images that he saw couldn’t have been created by anything so sweet for they were much, much darker.

The barbarian tossed in his sleep, emitting the fiercest growls as he heard the sounds of death and destruction. Even in his dreams he could smell the burning of human flesh, the shriek of women and the pungent odor of sex and blood all swirling into one distorted macabre collage of images. Then through it all he began to see the men that he had met earlier, calling to him, their leader goading him on to come and prove himself, looking over his body with that horrible sneer.

Krom then snapped awake, glancing over his surroundings with a quick shift of his eyes, checking his location, establishing the fact that he was indeed awake and that it had all been a dream. But as his vision cleared he began to get a sneaking suspicion that not all had been just a dream. That smell of flesh still hung in the air, and he coughed a little from the smoke that lingered still. The smoke slowly filtered away from his camp, revealing a smooth piece of folded parchment. He picked up the parchment and slowly held it open. It took the barbarian a few moments to read the words, stumbling over them at first but eventually he understood their meaning. This note was a request to meet at the very point where the group had called to him in his dream.

As he folded up the note and rose to his feet Krom felt a strange urge pulling him in the direction of the meeting place. He could still see the men in his dream, standing there chanting his name while their leader called out to him, urging him to prove himself in battle. But what battle would this be, what had gone wrong? The bag of gear was quickly hidden behind rocks and stones where they would wait for him until he could return. Until then he would go and find out the meaning of the note.

Approaching the meeting area Krom nearly had to hold his breath the smell was so horrible. He had remembered from when Heldar was overtaken and the people there burned. He recognized the odor from that day, and he could smell it now. There was no describing how narrow his world suddenly seemed to become. The swirl of smoke billowed all around him as he neared the source of the smell, his massive feet stepping over pieces of hair, feathers, metal and bone. Yet as he passed over one place he saw something glimmering in the dim morning light. The massive man leaned down and picked up the shimmering object and dropped it again quickly upon realizing what it was that lay there. It was the tip of a tail, and it had been the scales upon it that had caught his eye. Krom had to stop and lean his hands against his thighs as he gasped for air a bit, winded by his shock and surprise. That was the tail of a snake, but the size of it had been too large to be any ordinary variety of snake, it would have to be something much larger.

He could feel the blood pounding in his veins, the pressure in his head surmounting as he thought about what he had found. Snakes were his greatest fear. There had been no explaining why this fear had grown so much over his lifetime, all he could remember was that he had been bitten as a boy, that he had been so ill he had nearly died in the healer’s hut. Perhaps that had been enough to establish this fear. All Krom really knew was that he had spent his whole life killing snakes. He wanted to be sure that none of the evil creatures would ever harm him or his kin again. It was only with sithian people that he had made any distinction, holding his disdain for their serpentine half in check by the acceptance of their humanity. What he didn’t know was that that slight distinction was all about to change.

When Krom finally collected himself he continued down the path, keeping his eyes straight ahead so as not to catch sight of any more of the scales laying on the ground. Then suddenly, through a thick cloud of smoke Krom stumbled upon a purely nauseating sight. There before him was a pyre with a body burning a top it, and all the flesh that was left was the thickest portion of the man’s body, his chest. Krom squinted slightly as he felt a roll of nausea coming through his body, seeing the mark of an opened red fist on the man’s chest through the char that had begun to cover it. Then he heard it again, the sound of his name being chanted behind him. The barbarian whirled around and stood facing a grim band of men, the same men that he had met just a few days ago.

"You! Krom of Heldar! You have seen them, You know their ways, You will lead us into battle!" their leader barked out at him as Krom looked back at the men with a confused expression.

"I have seen who? Known whose ways?" Krom replied calmly, trying to hold down his emotions before one of great power.

"The sithians! It was they that came and overtook our small group of scouts, they took one of our own! They raped our men, killed those who struggled and took the strongest as their sacrifice. Look at his damned body, not even his heart left within his body. They are monsters of the greatest degree. Their city is not far off, we can overtake them, kill the bitches who dare to mock us by taking our men. You said in your tales that you had been to Nathalion, that you had met the creatures. You will lead us into battle. Gather your swords men!" The leader shouted back out at the gathered group.

Krom’s mind swirled with what he had just been told. The scales hadn’t been of a snake, but of partially snake people, the sithian race. In truth he knew little of these people, he tried to avoid them due to his dislike for the serpentine kind. They were the only creatures in Nathalion that truly left the barbarian frightened and all that he knew for fact was that the females of their kind were the dominants, not the males. To admit that he didn’t know what they requested, that he didn’t think himself capable of leading their troop would be a dishonor to him and to his family name. No, he would have to lead this group into battle. He would have to face his fears.

Krom gathered up the men in a hurry until the whole area sounded with cries of encouragement, prayers to Father Red Fist and finally the cry of war as the group thundered with the power of army into the city gate of the offending sithian city. They broke through the barricades easily, but they had been waiting for them there behind the gate. All around the barbarians there writhed what looked like a moving mass of snakes, their mosaic of scaled tails moving amongst one another like a thousand snakes. There was a sudden flash of colored feathers from above on the wall and Krom suddenly realized that the women had flown down from the wall and were now surrounding them from all sides. The barbarians moved as one, their backs to one another to face the cruel creatures that were already licking their lips with murderous fervor. His eyes scanned over the crowd and suddenly came to the realization that every single warrior in the crowd was a woman, each one with a pair of wings that all snapped open as one, the massive wingspans darkening the battlefield, making the men feel even more trapped than they already were.

Krom began to count heads, human heads as the women slowly began closing in, the rasping sound of scales over earth making him want to run and find a way out. The men all turned to him for instruction as he realized that although they seemed much greater in numbers than they there was really just as many sithians as there were barbarians.

"We nearly outnumber them men! We can take these WOMEN, they are nothing compared to our strength, they haven’t even drawn weapons yet. Charge Them!!!!" he screamed and burst forward with the energy of a man possessed. He could hear the cries of agreement from behind him as the other men charged forward as well. Then as one once more the women drew their swords and met them with a clash of steel.

Krom’s blade whirled through the air, cutting down one woman, then another, leaving bloodied bodies in his wake. He felt the adrenaline course through his body as he began to feel victorious, so high he had become that he hadn’t even noticed that the sound of steel had begun to fade.

There was a flurry of scales and feathers that suddenly seemed to surround Krom and then almost as quickly as Krom’s victory had begun so did his end. He heard the clang of cuffs being snapped down around his wrists and then it came, the most dreaded feeling he could feel in the world, a thick serpentine tail winding round his waist, sliding up his chest until it finally came inches from his face, revealing a flattened tip, newly scabbed over. The barbarian dared to lift his eyes to see his captor, a massive sithian woman with a thick black braid of hair, with flyaway pieces around her jaw. Her features were stern yet elegant, like the human nobility. But there was no way that Krom could ever see a creature like that as being beautiful. The woman cackled, her bright violet wings snapping shut over her back.

"You’re lucky the full moon hassss passed" the woman hissed, her common poor, the sounds of her native language coming through. Krom cringed as her words brushed against his forehead. "Don’t worry two legged, another one will come and then it will be death. You will be begging for it then"

With those words the woman tugged him through the streets of the sithian city. The barbarian groaned, but was suddenly made hopeful as he heard similar cries from a few of the other men. They had no hope now, a handful against a whole army of trained women fighters. They passed through the streets, each man in the grip of one of the women’s tails. The world there was different, the streets filled with the passing of those who had no legs, women holding men by leashes. Every home they passed seemed to be simple mud huts that had been baked in the hot sun that beat down on them.

It felt like forever that Krom had been dragged through the streets until finally they reached a dungeon deep within a large mud hut. He heard the sounds of the other men being taken to various locations, but he was trapped alone in his cell with the woman with violet wings. For the first time he saw her tail, how it was cut, and the shimmering violet color of the scales. This was the owner of the piece that he had picked up off the spath.

"Ahh you sssseeee my tail two-legged? It wasss one of your kind that removed it from me, but it isss you who will pay. On your kneesss pet." She said, glaring down at him as her tail quickly released him, snapping back around her own form with that horrible slithering sound.

"Never you snake-bitch!" he growled at her and went for his sword, suddenly finding that it wasn’t there. The woman just watched him and laughed.

"Then I will have you the hard way" She hissed back at him, the woman suddenly throwing herself onto him, pressing the man to the floor where she growled at him, nipping at neck roughly until he was sure that she would nearly be drawing blood.

Her body roved over him, her tail wrapping around him, finding it’s way across even his most sensitive places. When she had him securely held she quickly tugged off her armor and then called out in a shrill shriek in her hissing native tongue. Suddenly two other women slithered into the cell, one with short chopped black hair and emerald green wings and scales, the other with long flowing raven locks and ruby colors adorning her.

"You sssseee two legged, there are thingsssss that I do to my prisssonerss but I haven’t had the time to vissssit the healer, so they will be assssssissssting me. You don’t mind a few sssscalesss do you my pet?" the violet woman hissed, her massive, naked breasts heaving with the effort of her speech. He could see her human form, already wet and excited with her anticipation of having her way with him

He would have argued, but he had barely a moment to glare when suddenly he felt the tails of the two others wrapping around him, their hands undressing him. His whole body tensed with fear but the more that it did the more the women seemed to enjoy it. They cackled with their laughter, kissing on each other, their hands wandering over each others’ naked bodies as they continued to undress him. Their touch upon him was gentle at first, the sensation of breasts and human thighs caressing his skin, their lips tugging along his body enticingly, but just when they would feel him relax they would run their tails along him until he shuddered and cried out in distress.

When it seemed that they could draw no more distress from him, that he had grown numb to the feel of their scales he felt the press of the violet woman’s wet sex against his lips

"You know what you are ssssupposssed to do" she murmered waiting with an anxious breath for him to respond to her order.

Thoughts of sheer darkness coursed through the barbarian’s brain and even though he was bound there beneath her scales he did still have control over that one place. He opened his mouth and bit down hard on her offered flesh. He heard her shriek and then felt the burning blow of her fist to his head

"Now you will be punissshed" she snarled down at him, hissing in pain while the ruby woman slid her hand over the others body, where he could see a tiny glow of healing magic easing the woman’s pain. She shoved herself back against his mouth and he readied himself to bite again, but then suddenly there was the worst sensation he had ever felt in his whole life. Without warning, the woman with the short cropped hair and the emerald tail and pressed her tail into his puckered entrance, working it in and out of his body with a snarling lustful expression. He could hold back no longer and cried out in pain and humilation and obeyed the woman’s orders, quickly servicing her soft folds with his tongue, lapping at it desperately to get the woman to stop.

But the emerald woman didn’t stop. Instead he saw the third slither across his body, letting her weight rest against him as she let her fingers caressing the sex of his rapist, only increasing her excitement to the point where he knew that the woman could no longer hear his pleas. He had to do something to force himself to relax, to ease the pain on his own. He dared to open his eyes, looking up over the women. He focused on ignoring their scales running across his body, holding him down, instead he let them fall on their human halves where he realized that they really were beautiful women, evil and cruel, but beautiful. He focused on the bounce of their breasts, the way the one with ruby scales would tug on the emerald woman’s lips when she kissed her and all their moans heightening into one. He began to feel his own excitement build, the pain he felt beginning to lessen but then suddenly all three cried out as one and he was released both from the pain and from the pleasure.

The violet woman slid off of his body and motioned for the others to do the same, looking over his excited male form with whispers of distaste.

"ressst well two legged. We will sssseeee you again tomorrow. Thisss isss the mossst pleasure you will ever receive from usss. I assssure you, the resst is pain" and with that the three slithered out of his cell, leaving him on the cold mud floor by himself.

His cell was devoid of anything, and there was no window to judge the passage of time, but each day the women returned and the beatings, the rapes only got progressively worse. They did everything they could to break him, pushed him to the point of terrifying screams, but never did he give. It became the violet woman’s game to dangle a collar in front of him, offering him salvation as her pet but he would only spit at her, which just made his beatings worse. There were days he knew he could over power her but she always traveled in her group of three and whenever she was worried about her strength her tail would immediately wrap around him. He learned eventually over time that her name was Verani and that she was a slave trainer in the city with a soft spot for humans. She told him they made the best pets out of all the two legged races, they lasted longest.

Day after day passed like this and Krom spent every waking moment trying to think of how he might escape, when suddenly it occurred to him. Even the most dominant of women he had met still seemed to want to be controlled in some way, but they wanted to be controlled only on their terms. This gave him an idea to work from, and slowly a plot began to form in his mind. With the next few sessions he began to give in. He stopped struggling, he obeyed her commands immediately until the point where Verani seemed to become bored with using him as a play thing. He was worried briefly that this would put him in a worse place, but when she stopped coming with the ruby and emerald women he knew that his plan had begun to work. Finally one evening he decided that enough time had passed, that tonight would be the night he would be freed. He noticed that no matter what Verani did she always wore at least her dagger at her side. This night was no different, and she had come to him naked, as usual, wearing her hair loose and flowing around her body.

"Miss Verani?" He said, trying to make his gruff voice as soothing as possible.

"Ahhh, sssee now you are my pet. What isss it. Decided to accept my collar?"

"No, not yet. I thought tonight you would like something different. You would let me pleasure you properly."

"and what isss it you have in mind?"

"Well I have come to enjoy so much from being held by you. I thought perhaps tonight you would let me hold you. I imagine it has been a long time since you have been held by a man. One who loved you, who wanted to make you feel cherished." He cursed himself inwardly as he said the words, but he knew that this was the only way that he could ever be free.

After a while of careful consideration the woman agreed and she let herself be held in Krom’s arms. He placed her down as carefully as he would one of his slaves, his hands roaming across her body, giving her pleasure until she cried out and begged him for more. In the fit of her passion he had managed to slide her belt from around her waist and the dagger had slid into his hand. He waited calmly until her eyes closed from the sheer ecstasy and then he caught her unaware, pinning her down to the ground.

"Never trust a captive who refuses to accept your coller" he growled out at her as her eyes opened with a sudden fearful expression, unable to close as he ground the dagger into her chest. He didn’t bother to watch her life ebb away, she wasn’t worth it. His hands found her keys and he let himself out of the cell, rescuing the four other men that had been captured. There was a fifth, but they soon found that he had not survived.

That night the men crept away from the village with malice in their hearts and silence on their lips. All knew the ordeals they had been through, each had the marks on their bodies from it, and they vowed that they would never speak the words of it amongst the other men of their villages for fear of humiliation. The next evening as they tainted the river that ran into the sithian city with barrels of alcoho,l they all vowed a hatred for the sithian kind, the women the worst, and a pledge to one another to never let another man fall prey to their cruel tactics.

The sithian city slept a poisoned sleep that night and the morning found only blood running through the streetways. They had taken the city, they had found their vengeance, but in a way that none of them were proud of. They returned as heros but as each man was given words of honor and of respect within the dark orbs of their eyes anyone could see the hatred that would burn for many years to come.

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