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My Nine Lives

My Nine Deaths

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by anonymous

“Unff…"

I rolled my head down, my chin tipped towards my chest. The dirty prison cell greeted me as I blinked, my eyes crusted together. With my arms chained up above my head, I couldn't even wipe it away.

Pathetic. I was meant to be a warrior and they had captured me, even though I had fought. Once, the name Tigress had struck fear into the hearts of those that opposed the land in which I lived, but even The Dragon Warrior had fallen before Tai Lung.

I was the last one left. And my end would be in the dank cell, blinking slowly as water dripped, perhaps even ever so slightly grateful that I had snatched a little sleep. There would be precious few comforts, I knew, in the rest of my life.

Everyone…gone.

_ _

From Po, The Dragon Warrior, to even Crane and Viper… I had not felt all that close to them, in all honesty, but I missed them deeply, an ache in the pit of my stomach that didn't even belong there, considering how I was facing my own mortality. Just how did I think I was getting out of that? With Tai Lung, the fearsome snow leopard with immeasurable kung fu powers at his disposal, there was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do.

One tigress, as much as I may have liked to think otherwise, could not stand up against him.

I wished I could.

Months had passed. Sometimes, I was fed. I wished they'd just get it over with already.

“Hey, kitty, kitty…"

I growled, tucking my chin down. It was the wolf guard, though I didn't want him anywhere near me. I didn't want any of them anywhere near me, though I had, originally, hoped for a quick, clean death.

That would have been better than the taunting, the wolf with a grizzled muzzle that always seemed to be twisted into a leer. I think he was, previously, one of the convicts: a perfect candidate to serve under Tai Lung. Truthfully, maybe Tai Lung was one of the few who could keep them in line, as he ruled with fear. It was not as if the snow leopard was about protecting the people either, of course, so…what did the convicts, who had been put away for a reason, care about anything? They would do as Tai Lung said and no more than that. But the snow leopard simply did not care for ruling an empire in any way, no… That was not why he had sought power.

However, there was no one to stop him. Not anymore.

Even I had failed and the wolf taunted me, rattling a stick against the bars of the cage.

My body ached and I tried to pick up my head, though he still mocked and stared, his words all blurring into one as the other guards gathered around.

“Weak kitten," the wolf mocked, sneering as he banged on the bars. “Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine! No time to be sleeping!"

I growled, but it was so faint that I might never have tried at all.

“Dirty musk kitty needs to be taken out of her cage and played with…"

“Oh, the little tiger cub is going to get so bored in there…"

“If you tie her tail in a knot this time, will she squeal?"

I closed my eyes, drifting away. Yet it didn't help me remember what had come before.

Back when I'd first been captured, humiliated after defeat, but still with fire in my soul, they'd marched me down and down and down. With my hands behind my back, tied, I struggled, twisting back and forth, heart leaping in my chest. But the convicts flanked me on either side, shoving me off-balance. The stairs had seemed to go down forever, lower and lower, deeper and deeper, to the point even I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how to get back to what I needed, the surface life and world, though perhaps they'd just been trying to disorientate me, even then.

No one, surely, yearned for a life set in the darkness, after all, but I could not tell for what the guards, the former convicts had in store for me.

They were mostly predatory species, though there was one big ox amongst the wolves and the lions, even a tiger like me, though he sneered, a scar over his right eye. I didn't say anything, not as they led me all the way down, the way lit only by a burning torch clasped in the paw of the wolf leader. The very guard who was mocking me back in my present time.

Ah, I had been so foolish…and helpless. My kung-fu had not done anything to help me after Tai Lung had drained me, leaving me as weak and as useless as a newborn kitten. Even my claws had been filed down.

As if they would have done me any good anyway…

“Strip, kitten!" The wolf had goaded me, shoving me back, the convicts ringing me, a blazing mass of hungry maws and ravenous eyes, though it was not my flesh they sought to feast on. “What good are clothes to you down here? Strip!"

They howled and hollered, stomping and bashing staffs on the ground, though they didn't seem to need them to walk: they were just there for show, for a mere act of intimidation.

And then their paws were all over me as I was tossed from one side of the circle they'd made to the other, hissing and yowling, flashing my useless, dulled claws at them. I tried to strike out with a kick and a punch – but it did me no good. Every blow I tried to make connect fell woefully short and I hissed as claws sank into my clothes, where I had not obeyed their command to bare myself before them.

I never would. Not even in my humiliation, not even in my defeat.

I would not fall so low, not then, not as they tore my clothes from me, shreds of cloth spiralling out from my body as if I had become a ribbon, twisting and turning in a display that should have been performed by one far prettier than I. I had never been conventionally pretty, but that was all well and good, at least by me. It meant males did not look at me, not all that often, and I was quite fine with that.

“Get her stripes out!"

“Go on, get her! Get her!"

They howled as I flashed my blunt claws – but I was but a toy before them. It was then, at that very moment, I understood how far I had fallen and still how far I had yet to fall. For I still did not understand the meaning of true humiliation.

Someone grabbed my vest, tearing it through, exposing my chest – or the wrappings that covered my breasts. They offered me some modesty, but the convict dug his greedy claws into those too, snarling as he ripped them off, some unravelling and others pulling and catching at my back.

“Ow!"

I whirled around, heaving and grunting, though they were all around me, closing in on all sides. Heat rushed to my cheeks, clawing at my neck, though not even my fur could hide my embarrassment, insidious humiliation twisting through my guts as they poked and laughed and slapped at my freed breasts.

“Huh…" A bear grunted, rubbing my breasts as if I was nothing more than an object to him, something without feelings. “They're bigger than I expected… Heh."

I snarled, showing my teeth, but I had to hold on to what modesty I had, the air of honour, even if it felt like it was sliding through my grasp already, like water through my fingers. My breasts stung where they were slapped and I clenched my jaw hard as someone pinched my nipples, sending a shock of pain through my body.

“Yowwww!"

I couldn't keep that cry away from my lips, trying to turn away again – but the wolf guard was there with a smirk on his lips, blocking my way. He growled, grabbing my arms and holding them too tightly behind my back, though pain was something I was more familiar with. I knew how to hide that, how to hold it back, to look like my face was schooled and expressionless.

If only I could sink away from the moment too, trying to hold my chin high as hands groped my tits, not even cautious of their claws sinking in, biting and pulling at both skin and fur alike.

I fought, squirming, though it felt dismally pathetic, like it wasn't getting me anywhere, longing for my old strength. How could all have changed so quickly as my greatest vulnerability was put on show for them to grab and paw at like a pack of wild beasts?

Their paws roamed my body as I snarled and growled, though I never once begged for respite, not for that first time. Not as sharp claws bit into my shoulder and I let out a cry, my underwear the last thing covering my modesty. I'd always been very modest but, down on my knees with hard stone bearing up into my knees, I panted heavily, lips parted, a drop of blood in my mouth where I'd bitten my tongue.

No one would take my undergarments from me, not even them, and I held on to that very last shred of dignity as I stripped out of those on my own, even if I never would have said it was ever from my own free will.

“Ohhhh, look at her!" A fox jeered, though he seemed bulkier than most foxes I'd known during my time. “She's gonna get her puss out for us!"

“Show us what you got, kitty!"

It was the wolf, however, who loomed, his eyebrow sliced through with a scar, though his grizzled, grey fur covered up most of the mark. I lowered my gaze from him as I waited there, nude as if I was meditating, nothing at all to cover my bare fur from their prying eyes and jeers.

“Ohhhhh, and I thought she might have shaved between her legs!" The wolf mocked, slapping his thigh as if it was all a great joke to him. “A hairy pussy on a cat like that… Well, who'd've thought?"

I turned my face from them, sinking into myself. Yet it was not calming, not as their mockery bounced off the stone walls, compounding their humiliation of me. But I didn't have to let it hit home, not in my heart, oh no.

At least, that was what I told myself. That was what I had to say to myself, all to know and understand that I was better than them, that I would never treat another as they were treating me.

That was why I had fought for the right of good in the world, to maintain it. A pity it had all failed in the end. And I had been the last one standing.

“Agh!" I snarled and snapped, shoving the wolf's paws away where he slid them down to my breasts. “Get away from me!"

“Ohhhhh, look here now!" He mocked, smirking as he finally got a reaction from me. “She's got some bite on her too! Why don't we show her what kind of hospitality she's been fostering in the prison cells, huh?"

And then he had his arms around me and grabbed a breast, pinching the nipple until I thrashed and squealed. The bare lips of my pussy, hairless where they tucked in, ached deeply, humiliation running hot and deep even where I had sought to draw myself inward to forget it all.

“Agh!"

I hissed and snapped, but they took the chance to draw my arms behind my back, shoving my -paws into entrapment devices. They were not just chains and manacles, oh no, but full-paw containments that would stop me from even using kung-fu tactics to release myself, when my strength returned.

Oh, of course… Of course, they would have thought of that too. My back arched and I howled as a paw closed around my muzzle, shoving my mouth closed again. The rank, dirty stench of the wolf and his convict comrades clung to my fur and nostrils, making my eyes water.

Everything happened as if in slow-motion, though I knew that was only adrenaline pumping through my veins, breath raking through my windpipe even as I fought to calm myself. There was no calm to be had, however, as I watched the wolf approach with a smirk and a rank, dirty, leather muzzle between his paws.

It did not take a master of the world to tell just where that muzzle was to go and I recoiled from its sweaty, musty reek. It was the kind of muzzle that was designed to go all the way around one's snout, though that one didn't even have a gap in it for air, though it would surely not make such a tight seal to their face they could not breathe.

Maybe. Perhaps.

The brown leather, however, was stained with things I didn't want to think about, bodily fluids,, perhaps, from all that had gone before. I grunted and twisted, not wanting to let my cries out, not to be humiliated further, though the dark and light stains vastly discoloured the leather, with a big buckle on a strap that looked like it would go around the back of the wearer's head.

I twisted away from it, eyes watering at the reek of what seemed to be old cum, sweat and the musk of death itself, but they had me right where they wanted me. With my paws locked away already, they wrestled me into the muzzle, though their paws were all over me at the same time, dragging my attention all over the place as my heart leapt and jumped. Never had I felt fear like that before, not since I had been a much, much younger tiger, the reality of my situation drawing me down and down and down.

Maybe it was all like the steps to the dungeons, I'd thought dimly as they grabbed at me, squeezing and pulling at my breasts, grabbing my arse, my hips, treating my body as if it was nothing more than a toy to be used as they pleased. And maybe that's all I really was to them too as the stiff, old leather clung to my face, hiding away my teeth, even if I didn't really feel like I had the energy to use them at all either.

It was of no matter, not as another humiliation, the wolf grabbing both of my tits at once and spreading them, though his howl of mockery at their size didn't strike all that hard. My body had never been there for his approval or needs. But it had never been there so he could grab and pinch and squeeze it either.

“Unff…"

I grunted through the gag as I pressed at it with my tongue and instantly regretted my decision as grime forced its way into my mouth. There was nothing for me to do other than to gulp it down, but I shuddered bodily as a heavy, metal collar slammed down around my neck.

And that was it for me, kicked to my knees and forced to spread them, even my tail yanked up so everything between my legs was on show down there, no modesty at all left to me. My ankles and wrists were chained, though my toes, for the moment, were left free. Maybe that was one tiny thing that I thought, back then, would allow me to get free later on, even if that was a very slim hope indeed.

Although it was not as bad as the muzzle, they forced me into an old, prison jumpsuit, stuffing my arms and legs in when I tried to resist, ripping it so it fit over my breasts.

“Heh, her tits can't even get stuffed in…"

The stench of previous prisoners clung to the jumpsuit, not something that was ever made for me, no. And they were as much a part of me, leaving their smells behind, as I left a part of my smell behind for those to come later too.

The jumpsuit could be used again. I could not.

Not when I was gone.

The leather muzzle, gagging me completely, reeked, sinking into me as if it was becoming a part of my fur and flesh in that moment, the old, stale stench of the others, the wolves and the bears and the other convicts, infused into it. And…well…my own scent too. For I would not be the last, surely, as the smell of tiger sank into the muzzle too, adding to the stench of fear and death, dark and insidious. Maybe they'd planned this humiliation, though I was sure Tai Lung didn't much care what they did to me. I was fortunate to escape as lightly as I did. And it wasn't light in the slightest.

I blinked, back to the present moment, a clamour echoing around me. I'd gone so far back into my mind and memories that I hadn't even noticed the wolf, whose name I neither knew nor cared for, entering the cell. He was flanked by more like himself, though they were better fed than they had been before, which I supposed I should have noted. Maybe it was not all their fault they had turned to criminal means to take care of themselves, but there was no going back for me to inspect the validity of their lives and situations. Most were not the kind of convicts I'd ever have had dealings with anyway.

But they still had a bone to pick with me as my manacles were unlocked from the ground and I moaned, head hanging. I worked my jaw, wondering if I could pull away from them, but the present moment offered no respite from my past as the wolf guard dragged me in against him, squashing into his thicker, softer stomach. He had more of a gut than what he'd boasted before but reeked of stale sweat and urine, as if he had come to my cell with a particular reek about him, just for me. From what I knew, that was exactly why he stank as he did.

“Hey, pretty kitty," he crooned, though there was no softness in his tone as a bear and a fox closed in on me on either side. “Give us a kiss… I know you like that… And, oh, those pretty whiskers of yours tickle!"

I growled and tried to show my teeth, but it was of no use. It would almost have been better to have the gag on again as the wolf dragged me against him, his long, flexible tongue dragging over my face. It left a sheen of slick, wet saliva in its wake, stringing from my fur as I gagged and heaved, fighting to keep the bile in my stomach where it belonged. Yet the dank reek of them swarmed me, clawing around, forcing me to inhale again and again as the wolf dragged me under his arm.

“Oof! Nnngghhh…"

I groaned but could not voice any words as my nose was shoved into his armpit yet again and I panted heavily, not wanting to take in any air at all.

“Mmm, take a good whiff, kitty-cat," the wolf snarled. “Big, deep breaths… You little musk cat, huh? You like sniffing stinky armpits…"

It was said as a statement rather than a question and it was not as if they allowed me any other option there. I tried to turn away, but I had to breathe sooner or later, someone holding my legs, a hand shoved between them, groping my pussy.

I yowled and kicked out but they had me in too firm a hold. With my state of malnutrition, weakness sweeping through my body, there just wasn't anything I could do about it, even as I snarled and growled, trying to ward them off. Cries like that, well… They seemed to be the only thing I had left, even then.

But the reek of his pit sank into me, so sweaty and gross, as if he had not bathed in weeks. The reek of old body odour made me hack and gag, bile rising in the back of my throat, a bear wrenching me back as he claimed my muzzle with his own.

A slick, wet tongue invaded my mouth as he kissed me, sloppy and gross, and I snapped at him, trying to at the very least bite his tongue off. Yet the bear was too quick for me as I was pinned on my back, watching in horror as the rough-furred wolf's backside descended, torturously slowly, towards my face. His ass stank and I fought, striving with all my might not to take in more air than I needed to simply to get by. Yet nothing could stop the traumatic descent of his ass towards my muzzle, until it enveloped me.

The wolf sat on my face, grinding his rump over my head and forcing me to take in the rancid reek of his buttocks, even his tail hole stinking putridly. My face crushed into his rump and I gasped, eyes streaming, his muscle forcing the flesh of my face to accommodate him as he rocked his hips and ground back cruelly.

“Unnnnggggghhhh…"

I let out a long groan, something that did not seem right in coming from my lips, not as my nose was shoved into a groin, bare nuts bouncing on my nose. The older furs would not have posed all that much of a threat to me normally, but their heavier-set bodies were weighty enough that even I could not have shoved them off in my state at that time.

Yet that was not the worst of it, not as boots were shoved in my face and I was flipped over on to all fours, more feet in my face.

“Sniff them kitty," they mocked, ordering me about too easily. “Fucking get a good whiff in there… Worship them. That's your place, cat, down on your fucking knees before us."

I didn't want to but no one could truly know what they would be forced into at a point like that, sock-clad feet rubbing over my cheek as I coughed and gagged on the reek. Even their natural scent was repulsive to me, though they were not all rank, but my mind knew there was something I had to pull away from, a danger that I could not face, not right there and then.

As their toes wriggled in my face, I debased myself, kissing and licking their feet, my tongue rasping over socks and boots and fur alike. It almost didn't matter what I was touching, though it was a blessing their feet were mostly free of dirt, with only a few scraps clinging there. It was just their lack of hygiene, compared to how I kept myself, that revolted me. And that they seemed to have a particularly strong scent about them that made my head spin.

If they didn't have their socks off already, I was forced to remove them with my teeth. A stoat shoved his foot in my face, wiggling his toes.

“Use your teeth, vermin," he snarled, his narrow muzzle twisted with vicious glee. “Come on now, don't disappoint us… You don't want to know what happens when you disappoint us, cat."

I shuddered, but they didn't let up, no, and I felt like I had to do it, parting my mouth only the maximum needed to complete the task. The rough cotton dug into my tongue as I fought down the urge to let my stomach revolt. But I couldn't, no, not as I dragged off the sock with my teeth, my eyes watering, huffing and grunting.

Toes crammed into my mouth and wiggled, my tongue trying to retreat as I coughed and gagged.

“Get your tongue all over them, cat," they sneered. “Lap properly. Breathe it in, breathe it all in… A big sniff…"

I tried to ignore it, acting like I was licking – but, of course, that was not good enough, not for them. They pressed the sole up to my tongue as I lapped, screwing up my muzzle, but I just wanted it to stop, even as the putrid stench wound into me.

I coughed, hot breath washing over their foot, but they only made me inhale first, someone else grabbing the back of my head and shoving my face all the way down. I struggled and fought, holding my breath as a whining growl escaped me, ramming my face into the stoat's foot until, finally, I had to breathe.

A huff of air sank into me and my head spun dizzyingly, but I had to do it again, inhaling, satisfying my aching lungs as the musk of their foot enveloped my nose, forcing its way brutally into my lungs.

“Now, kiss."

I didn't want to… It was too debasing, all as I pursed my lips the minimum needed, just wanting it to end. My stomach churned as I kissed that foot and then the next, inhaling when they told me to, my sniffs bigger and more obvious, because that seemed to get them to back off.

I drooled, my kisses wetter and sloppier, though I wasn't thinking about swallowing, not as another pair of sweaty feet were rubbed in my face. Almost without thinking, trying to slip away from the scene, my mouth was open and my teeth caught in the sock, tugging off first one and then another sweaty, revolting mass.

“Ah, good kitty," they laughed, slapping my face and rubbing off their sweaty feet on my face, using my fur to soak up the sweat. “Lick now… Then we'll use you as a rag all over again."

They repeated that, though I tried not to think too much, eyes wide and staring, not really seeing. Sniffing and kissing and licking and then letting them rub my face. Socks were marginally better than feet, though the lurching of my stomach said otherwise.

“Hey, guess whose feet you're smelling, cat," the wolf mocked, grabbing her head and shoving her down. “Blindfold the wench!"

A couple of old socks were tied together to cover my eyes and I ducked down, shaking my head, quivering in place. When a boot was shoved in my face, the toe bonking my nose, I yowled, but tried to play along, sniffing, but not hard enough. It didn't feel like the boot was on a foot at that time and my guess was confirmed when my nose was shoved into the open neck of the boot, the reek of old sweat clinging to me.

I struggled, fighting back, but they shoved my face down even further into the dirty old boot, forcing me to inhale. My head swam.

“Unff…"

“Nuh-uh, cat, sniff properly…"

I had to do it, burning up with humiliation, sniffing more and more loudly, coughing and spluttering. What was I supposed to be doing? Giving a species?

But I couldn't think, no, my head held down so they could hear my loud, almost echoing sniffs. Musky sweat and old cheese sank into my nostrils as I whined, trying not to breathe – and yet I had to! I had to get out of it, I had to make it all end. Yet the putrid scents sank into my fur, adding to my natural scent, the body odour of a sweaty foot infused with the musky, dirty boot.

“Uh, fox. Fox."

“No! Wrong!"

They howled and laughed and slapped their thighs, though I was just throwing out species names. I didn't know the names of those there and had never cared to learn them, not as more boots were presented, though I couldn't see through the blindfold. The worst one smelled of old vinegar and I didn't care I didn't get a single species right in their sadistic guessing game.

Toes shoved into my cough and I coughed, pulling away before my head was forced back down again. My tongue slithered weakly between the digits and over the top, not caring where it went, as long as they stopped using me soon. Maybe they would get bored if I didn't give them what they wanted…

“Wolf."

“Wrong again!"

Their howling laughter echoed off the walls and they hauled my head back, wrenching my mouth open.

“Ngghh…"

I fought, yanking my head away and clenching my jaw. Someone hawked and made gross sounds with their mouth, like they were dredging up as much saliva there as possible. My ears twitched and I quailed, the blindfold lying heavy over my eyes.

“Open wide, cat, or we're going to make it worse for you."

I didn't want to… Yet I did. I opened my mouth slowly, hating every second, my heart hammering.

Yet I couldn't see anything at all with the sock blindfold in place as dollops of gross, wet saliva splattered into my mouth and I once again had to force down the bile rising in the back of my throat as they spat directly for my mouth.

“Pfffffftttt…"

They spat and I flinched, hearing it coming. Yet the wet drool slopped into my mouth and someone clapped their hands across my mouth, forcing it shut as I gagged and fought.

“Swallow!"

They wouldn't let me up until I did as they asked, stomach roiling. Yet it took a great effort of will just to swallow, forcing my body to obey, even if the gross spit sliding down my throat was one of the most disgusting things I'd ever felt.

Finally, they let me loose, gasping and heaving, struggling not to lose my stomach. A little spittle trickled down my face as another anthro, I think it was another wolf, ground his buttocks back into my face.

“Lick, cunt!"

I shuddered. What if I held back? What if I ignored them? But they had never stopped before, even if that was the furthest they had gone. With every foray into meditation, I forgot what they had done before, even if my body remembered.

That was just something I was going to have to live with. Until… Well.

I sniffed, though the musk of the fur was not that bad that time, even if his fur was rough against my nose, hurting it. A heavy hand on the back of my head shoved my face in further, holding me there. I trembled, nose thrumming with pain even as I lapped, using the smallest strokes of my tongue I possibly could.

I didn't want them to think I liked it. I just wanted to do anything I could to stop them coming back for more as they rubbed their bodies against my muzzle and tongue anyway, simulating me licking either way. It didn't matter what I did as they swapped places, tails pushing over my head as my stench tangled with theirs, all mixed up and confused in the worst of ways.

I'd never smell like Tigress, just Tigress, ever again.

“Get her down, boys, time to give her a true taste of our hospitality in the prison…"

On all fours, I tried to retreat into myself, but their bodies were bared anyway, some with shirts still on over their thicker, chubbier bodies. Eyes wide, I snarled, warding them off, but forced me to hold my mouth open instead, fingers hooking viciously into the corners of my lips to pry my jaws apart. They left enough room in my mouth for the wolf to take the lead and ram his pink-skinned prick into my mouth, fingers hooked into the corners of my mouth to make sure I could not close my mouth around his shaft.

“Nnghhh… Guh…"

I gulped around his cock as he debased me, though I never let them see the tears pricking in the corners of my eyes. It was just a reflection of my emotions and they had to come to the surface sooner or later, even as I was forced to take his cock, though I gave him nothing in return. He used my muzzle as if he was fucking a sock, nothing more than a tool to get off in, his slick shaft grinding over my tongue and ramming into the back of my throat, again and again.

And that was not the worst of it, my hips jerking when another set of hands landed on my backside. Someone gripped me, though I didn't feel who it was, not as the thick gut of a fed belly ground over my backside, another cock prodding at my anal pucker.

I screamed around the cock in my muzzle, not able to hold back even that cry, not as I was anally used. I didn't know how big the cock that plunged into me was, but it burned like I was being speared through, powering deep and slamming in hard and fast. There was no time for me to get used to the pressure of his shaft taking my anal virginity but I ached to be free, blinking rapidly behind the blindfold.

Not being able to see them didn't help, but I recognised the wolf's hands after so long, after so many blows and gropes and strikes in my cell. I sank into myself, though sensation remained, from the horrendously tight filling of the cock under my tail, ramming deep, while someone added the bite of nipple clamps (too tight) to my chest. They dug in and I yowled around the cock muffling my cries, their laughter abounding.

Jeers echoed and I lost my sense of self as another little part of me died, huffing and panting, fighting, even then, for every breath. They swapped around, cum painting my muzzle whenever someone finished, splattering over my blindfold, running down my cheeks, some ended up inside my mouth.

“Swallow, whore… This is your last meal."

They closed my mouth, gagging me again, and I didn't have as much strength to fight as my throat worked tiredly, swallowing it down.

It was almost the least of their sexual torture after everything, yet left me clinging to life a bit less with every second that passed. Done with using my maw for the moment, the guy raping my ass slammed his hand over my mouth, forcing me to take in the hideous cacophony of scents there.

The rough feel of his palm.

The slick sheen of sweat.

The rotten stench emanating from his hand, fat and chubby, grinding into my muzzle.

My stomach roiled and lurched, yet I'd get used to that. Even then, they had ways to keep me quiet.

My tail hole burned, left gaping with cum drooling from it when they finally pulled out. The blindfold was left in place and I growled weakly, though, after all that, a sock gag was only shoved into my mouth, tied around the back of my head to keep it in place. Horror curled in my stomach and I twisted, trying to fight, pushing at the gag with my tongue to strive to get it back out again.

Of course, there was no use, not as the nipple clamps ached deeply, sending a bite of sharp pain into the core of my being. It dragged me back to the present moment repeatedly, despite me trying to strain away from it with every moment that passed.

A stream of cum splattered my muzzle, a few of them standing around me, marking me with their seed. My will burned, a soft, subtle flame still in the pit of my being, where I could keep it safe.

I would not let them claim me. I would never be theirs. Regardless of what they did to me, I would always be Tigress.

“What a dirty whore… Just sitting there for us."

I was just waiting. They could think what they liked about me. They would anyway. As the stream of cum painting my face finally petered out, I caught a few comments, my heart pounding heavily, adrenaline coursing through my body.

“Won't have this bitch to use for much longer…"

“Ah, no… Yeah, not with Tai Lung executing her. Unff… Shame about that, she's a good foot whore."

“Eh, I prefer having my cock in her arse. Tighter. What a fucking slut Tigress turned out to be!"

I swallowed hard as they backed off, loathing the taste in my mouth, but it was better than still being used and debased. The wolf guard remained, ready to chain me, to muzzle me, for I would never be left in my cell without something to lock me in.

But what they'd said… Was that an end in sight?

Finally…

_ _

At least I wouldn't have to go through their humiliating rituals anymore, the sordid rights that they had undertaken down there. My sex and tail hole ached furiously, but the embarrassment of their cum drying into my fur was the worst of all.

I won't have to go through this anymore.

_ _

In the end would come my peace. Even if I had not been able to save the empire, as much as I had tried.

So, I waited. Days passed, maybe. It was hard to tell the passage of time down there – at least until the guards came for me again. The wolf's heavy paw closed around the back of my neck and it was terrifying, in a strangely detached sort of way, just how easily he lifted me, as if I weighed nothing at all. It was not as if they gave me much food down there, but they had never intended to keep me comfortable, only barely alive.

I wasn't worth anything else.

Up and up… He dragged me part of the way and forced me to march some, mocking me, though his jeers were all the same. I even believed some of them.

In the end, I came out in a stone pit of sorts, no daylight to be seen. I was still underground, somewhere, torches illuminating the pit as I blinked up at the stands surrounding it. There were some witnesses, though I didn't recognise them. After being down in the dungeons for so long, a prisoner in every way, even my vision was blurred, not giving me a true view of my own end.

“Tigress!"

I gulped softly and kept my eyes lowered, waiting for the end to come. In the stone pit, set below the raised stands, was a lone chair, with leather bonds on the arms and legs.

Maybe that was where the end would come. I could not tell. I could only wait.

The speaker seemed to be a judge or something, but that was of no matter to me. The lean weasel surveyed me shrewdly and took a breath.

“It is decreed that your life will end today," he went on, his voice carrying clearly, yet echoing around the pit. “Your first life will be taken today. As felines are known to have nine lives, every life will be taken to you until even the afterlife will not be a safe resting place for you. This is for your crimes."

Of course, there were no crimes to list, not true ones, but he rattled off what Tai Lung wanted to execute me for anyway. Going against his empire, causing unrest, disharmony… I would have rolled my eyes if my stomach had not sunk, my heart pounding. My body flushed hot and then chilled, biting deep as if a beast had ensnared me, sinking its teeth into my flesh so I could never squirm free.

Nine…

_ _

Nine lives.

_ _

I'd heard of it, but I'd never thought it was true, some of the guards witnessing murmuring amongst themselves.

“No…" I breathed, my voice hoarse and raspy from lack of use. “Please… Have mercy…"

“What mercy is there for a scrawny feline like you?" The wolf mocked me, though I'd barely even remembered he was there. “You don't deserve even an end, but to be tortured for the rest of your miserable existence."

“No…" My eyes remained on the weasel, though there was no compassion in his eyes, only dark pits that had sealed my fate already. “Please… An easy… Have mercy. Please… Give me an easy death. Please…"

I'd begged before, but I'd never thought I'd beg for death, resigned to my fate as I'd been. The weasel only shook his head and pointed to the chair, giving the wolf, behind me, a short, sharp nod.

“Denied. This is Tai Lung's decree and shall be carried out to the letter. Strap the executed down. The guards will bear witness, as ordered, to every execution."

I wrenched and howled and tried to thrash but I was tired, so very tired, as if the bones in my body had been infused with lead, all to drag me down. I just didn't have the strength and my own helplessness struck a fear unlike anything I'd ever felt before into my heart, heaving and rasping and panting, breath rippling over my lips in the ghost of a growl. But what good was a growl to do me when I was going to die nine times over?

I hissed as they wrestled me into place, strapped down into the chair with the leather strappings binding my arms to the raised arms of the wooden chair and my legs to the legs of the chair too. It was a crude, functional design, but it didn't need to be any more than that as I heaved and gulped, eyes wide and wild. It was not my demise that I feared meeting: it was the pain of fading, again and again and again.

Nine times. Nine times over.

They were really going to kill me nine times?

The wolf walked slowly up to me, though I turned my head as he went behind, a big, dark, stained hood in his hands. I hissed, but they shoved the thick, smelly hood over my head, so heavy it made my neck ache. Yet that was very much the least of it with my heart pounding as it was, hissing through my teeth as I tried not to inhale, not that holding my breath was going to do me much good.

The stench of the condemned, who had worn the hood before me, leeched into the old fabric, dull and stiff. So much old sweat and drool, even the stale aroma of their last breaths. I grunted, grinding my jaw, fighting my panic as I added my own horror and fear to the hood.

This is my legacy.

Muffled voices echoed through the dull, thick bag and I snarled, showing my teeth, true fear giving me strength that had to wait until that very moment to unleash itself. I twisted but the leather bonds bit into my flesh, holding me fast as I twisted and writhed, the stale, rank air sinking into my lungs. Something tightened around my neck and I hissed, heaving, gulping at air that was not mine to take into my lungs.

But…nothing more happened. Not as I fought and heaved and grunted and barely made any pretence at fighting at all. To them, it must have looked like nothing more than twitches and jerks, the best I could conjure up at the moment it all mattered the most.

Yet…there was something wrong, others watching, whispers hissing like snakes around me. Slowly but surely, the air in the bag ran out. I took shallower, panting breaths, already dizzy. I had to hold on, had to breathe slowly…

As I breathed, the bag inflated and deflated a little – not much, but enough for me to notice. That meant it was airtight and…taking shallow breaths wouldn't help.

When there was only a limited amount of air in the bag, there was nothing to be done. Dizziness swamped me and I tipped, not knowing which way was up or down. The bonds dug even more viciously into my limbs as I thrashed and fought, my body acting on pure instinct alone, though there was nothing left in me that had the energy to do so. Around my face, the bag warmed, growing hotter and hotter.

Adrenaline coursed through and, not even then, I could not stop myself from taking snatches of breath, my chest heaving and fluttering, grabbing at oxygen in limited supply until there was no more left. Not as I drifted and faded, lower and lower and lower, my eyelids fluttering while my eyeballs felt like they were bulging, strain lacing my body.

Suffocation dragged at me, not even able to tell when the light faded from around me, for it was pitch black and rank inside the back. I blinked, seeing spots as I faded, my tongue lolling out of my mouth as I drooled, my saliva leaking into the bag. It was not a blessing to not breathe anymore, not as I suffocated, no softness in the release of my breath from my body. I huffed and panted, my tail thrashing back and forth. They must have left that free just so they could take in my demise, I thought, fading, my mind slipping back more until, finally, the darkness took me.

If only it was soft.

“Agh!"

It seemed like only a moment later that I woke again, huffing and grunting, clawing at my neck though, of course, there was nothing there. Well, nothing other than the heavy collar and I was chained up back in my cell, even though my limbs ached from where the bonds had dug into them and my muscles were sore, as if I had fought off an army.

Of course, I was still nude. My chest heaved as if expecting air to be stripped from me, the taste of bile in my mouth and the rank stench of sweaty bodies and musk still lingering on the fur around my head. It felt like I was still there, with the bag over my head, suffocating…and yet that had been one life stripped from me.

I tried to be still and meditate until they came for me again, not sure if it was hours or days, though there was no food for me. It was not needed, not for me, apparently, and it was the wolf again who came for me – though not without smearing his filthy cock over my face one more time for good measure.

“Maybe a good dicking down would remind you what you're missing out on," he suggested, smirking as he marched me to a different room, that one small and dim, though with a window set with shiny glass in the side of it. “But I'm the last thing you're going to see this time."

“Why… Unff…" I huffed as he dragged me to a low table that looked like a torture device, as innocuous as it was with the sickening, stiff, leather straps. “Why isn't Tai Lung witnessing? Doesn't he want to make sure…unff…I'm really gone?"

The wolf shrugged, strapping me down, though my fingers only twitched, the memory of my first death too fresh in my mind, as much as there was a feral part of me that still wanted to fight, to seethe and to roar.

“None of my business, kitten," he snapped. “Keep your gob shut… Or I'll do it for you. They're all watching, you know. Just don't want to get too close to this one."

I feared he was going to do something worse to me, something to me her, to spill my guts across the table – but his big, dirty hand came down across my mouth and nose. Once again, the fear of not being able to breathe lurched and heaved inside me and I groaned aloud, kicking and squirming, though my tail had been strapped down too that time. Ti was as if they had wanted to strip even that last bit of fight from me, though I had no idea who was watching at all from the other side of the window, if I knew those guards or not.

They were just there to witness as the wolf's bristly, rough hand covered my face, pushing down on my lips and crushing even them into my teeth. I tried to snarl, tried to snap, tried to do anything at all I could to ward him off me, but I was once again rendered helpless.

He would have had a reckoning to fight with, I thought dimly as the lack of air clawed at my lungs more quickly that time, panic setting in. If I had been at my full strength, he would never have been able to tie me down like that, the leather leaving deep marks in my fur and skin that would not fade, no.

But the wolf just treated me like something to be tortured, for the only use I had to him was in death. He shifted, adding a second hand to my face, all to better cover my delicate, soft nostrils and my lips, stealing any chance of a breath of air from me. Grains of dirt and grit ground into my lips and fur from his hands, but I could only shudder under him, my tongue ground back between my teeth, a droplet of blood adding colour to my debasement.

“I could smother you to death right here," he snarled, lifting the pressure. “You no longer have the right to breathe. You don't have the right to live. How does that feel, vermin?"

I couldn't say anything, head spinning, powerlessness seeping into me. They controlled me, they owned me… And there was nothing I could do about it as his dirty hands shifted away.

I could breathe again, even as my body lay there as limp as a rag doll, eyes streaming. Then and only then did I realise the table had another function, the hard wood under me sliding away around my head as my neck nestled into a soft, wooden curve, cradling it perfectly. Above me, the other half of the guillotine, the top half and the wicked, sharp blade, was wheeled into place, everything locking together so there was no escape for me.

Fear sank into my heart as the straps were tightened, my struggles weak, eyes wet and my body straining to recover lost strength.

I watched the blade rise, slowly but surely, light gleaming off the metal. My lips parted, but I had no last words to give them. Fear chilled my heart, feeling like it was stopping it before the moment of death itself, fingers twitching, eyes wide and glassy.

Shing!

_ _

The blade dropped in a rush and a whistle of air. Dimly, I was aware of the slice through my neck, the thud of it powering through sinew and bone.

My vision rolled, head detached from my body, the wolf clasping me by one ear and hefting my head up so I could look back at my body. My vision faded swiftly, life departing, but I was still there, my body headless, blood seeping.

It didn't even look like me anymore. Yet it was.

With my second death, I held on to life with all my might, even when beheaded. And it did me no good.

I woke again, more slowly that time, my body aching and my lungs burning as if there was fire contained within them. The corners of my eyes were damp with moisture, but I was still bound in my cell again, with nowhere for me to go.

That was how they wanted it, so I had to wait, sinking into meditation, refusing any morsels of food I was offered. If I was going to die again, what need did I have of food?

The third time the wolf guard came for me, he had to carry me, for I snarled and gnashed my teeth until he muzzled me with a dirty sock to gag my mouth. He laughed and grabbed my arse as he carried me hefted over his shoulder, taking me to another execution location, though that was the first time I'd been allowed out into the light.

“There you go, kitty," he grunted, setting me down and adjusting the gag as I tried to spit out the sock, a boot going over the top of it to trap me in his reek. “Now you got a good audience to watch you go. The guards, of course. You'll like that."

I closed my eyes, not wanting to look out down the ridge, not at the hordes of others gathered there. I didn't want to see either the joy or the pity in their eyes, regardless of how it all played out with them. Maybe they wanted me dead.

And yet my focus was on the death itself, everything seeming to happen in swift succession, my control over my own life and death whipped out from under me. Maybe none of us had ever had that control to begin with and I snarled into the putrid gag, the sock clinging to my tongue, tucked into the pouch of my cheek.

The cross lay flat on the ground and he slammed me on to it, though seeing it coming was no less brutal. My arms ached as he wrenched them apart, huffing and panting, eyelids fluttering.

No…

_ _

But I couldn't stop it happening, helpless in the face of my first death as the sun set, the wolf tying my wrists down tightly to the crossed, spread out across the arms. His gut rubbed against me as he tied me with coarse, old rope to the cross, my arms spread wide along the arms and my legs hanging down.

“Should be glad it's not worse, cat," he grunted, tightening my bonds as I twitched, pain straining through my shoulders, hanging. “Tai Lung decrees your executions, every one."

Of course, I had him to thank for it. It would always have been him that came up with something so sick and twisted.

A stinking blindfold wrapped over my eyes, hiding the world from me, the sweat of previous condemned marking it. That was almost becoming familiar. I huffed, chest heaving, though the air did me no good as the cross lurched, my legs hanging down where they were lashed together, pulling my shoulders viciously. Yet that was only one nuance of the pain.

The weight on my shoulders hauled at me as the cross was hoisted all the way up, placed upright. At least, that was the position I felt I was in: I could only assume. My body pulled at its bonds, weightier than it should ever have been, though I didn't bother to struggle that time.

There was no need. Not as I hung, crucified, waiting. All I could do was wait, seeing nothing but the blindfold. With the gag of the boot and sock, every breath pulled through that stank, nothing even for me to look at to escape from the pain. That must have been why they'd used the blindfold.

How cruel.

My first two deaths were swift in comparison to the third, too many coming to see me, some mourning, some praising Tai Lung. They were nothing more than whispers on the wind to me as the burning ache in my body grew more and more stringent, my organs giving up, one by one. Every breath came with great difficulty as the sun beat down on me during the day, baking me alive, sweat and dirt caked into my fur, which I had once kept in pristine condition.

As if that even mattered anymore.

A day passed. And then another, and then another, each day hotter than the last as my body sweater, sun burning the skin under the white-furred parts of my body. Out there, I cooked.

And then a third day, bringing me into the fourth and final day.

Days to die: who could ever have thought dying could take that long? And the blindfold forced me to live every second, nothing to distract me, musk and sweat seeping through the sock gag, the boot holding it all in.

I couldn't feel much of my body anymore, mostly numb with screaming pain. It throbbed through me with every slow, fading beat of my heart as I left the world, weak with starvation already, my lungs rasping, wheezing weakly with every breath I dared drag into my lungs. Every intake of air came through the boot and the sock, though I had long ago stopped drooling around it. There wasn't any moisture left there, in my mouth, to do so anymore.

Blinking slowly, I left the world once more, staring through the blindfold, though there was no one there but a bear guard and the wolf to bear witness to my end. The snow leopard may have been in the distance, but it could have been a shadow too.

After my third death, I didn't want to wake again. I didn't want to face another death, even when it was all out of my control, my body pounding with pain, my head aching. It felt like I'd been struck and yet, when I blinked again, like nothing had changed, I was back in my cell, chained up all over again.

I dropped, sinking into myself. If I meditated and entered a heightened state of consciousness, perhaps I would be able to bear through my fourth death with greater dignity. If they were to be believed that I was going to die nine times, I was not even halfway through.

Yet I would not beg for the end, not after that first time. I would hold my pride, quietly and serenely, until I left the world for a final time. It was the only control I had left.

Again, the wolf guard took me to surface level for my fourth death, though I was still aching and had little time to recover from being crucified. My legs were tied together so he could haul me about more easily, but he was freer with his hands than ever before, groping my bare tits and even driving his fingers crudely into my pussy and tail hole before dropping me down on a wooden platform.

Darkness fell around me and I hissed at him, though I was already bound so well with my arms behind my back and my legs together that all I could do was squirm weakly. It was better not to fight when every movement sent a shot of pain through me, my body remembering the pain of my past deaths and, even then, trying to warn me to get out of that position.

Yet I couldn't save myself, not as the wolf hefted me to my feet and tied me to a post so I couldn't move away, my hands back behind the post to yank my shoulders back. Ropes ran around my chest, waist and thighs, cutting into my flesh, though it was not as if that would matter for long.

I grunted as I watched some more guards approach with a big bucket that steamed, the sharp, cloying scent reaching my nose quickly: tar. I almost didn't want to think what they were doing with that, but I was about to find out as it was hefted up – and I barely got one eye closed in time before they dumped it over my head.

The thick, sticky tar poured down my body as if it did not want to flow, clinging to my fur as I gasped and fought. And the heat! It sank into me, burning even then, though it was not enough to drag a howl from my lips, not even as I thrashed uselessly. But even that was not enough as the wolf grabbed a big brush, thick with tar, slapping it all over me, to make sure I was completely covered. I howled and twisted, my throat rasping, but no one from the guards watching came to help, darkness deepening around us as the wolf worked with the light of a burning torch, brush rasping and pulling over me, spreading every inch of my fur with it.

The tar slickly and stickily clung to me, darkening my fur so I was unrecognisable, as if I was having a second skin put on me. Yet that was not the worst of it, not as it leaked into my mouth and I was forced, or at least to try, to blink it from my eyes.

The buckets of feathers, white and humiliating, poured over me, sticking to the tar as if I was something out of a children's game, though there was no game about what the wolf was doing to me. Before a feather dropped over my right eye, I chanced I saw Tai Lung out there, behind the guards, though the snow leopard needed no one to protect him. Maybe things would have been different if any citizens had been out there.

With gloved hands, they scooped up loose feathers, plastering more over me.

“Chick-chick-chicken," they mocked, though I couldn't see who it was – not the wolf talking that time, another convict. “Who's a pretty feline, all dressed up for her end?"

They mocked me, but what substance did their insults have anymore? It was the nudity and the rapidly approaching death that sent ripples of chilling, sinking fear down my spine.

“Puh… Ugh… Puh…"

Spitting feathers out of my mouth did me no good as I was pressed back against the pole – a stake. And only then did I realise, far too late, how they were building up a mound of sticks and logs and more around me, with the platform I was on at the very centre of it.

“No…"

I breathed the word too quietly for anyone to hear as the guards watched and, as if from a great distance away, I saw the wolf guard drop the burning torch.

The flames came for me slowly, giving me enough time to panic and cough, spluttering on feathers, the scratchiness of too many factors burning and itching at my throat. My eyes watered and streamed and the tar tried to glue my eyelids shut, though that would only have held me visually back from my fate for a little longer.

The flames crept closer and closer as the heat rose, licking at my fur. Yet I thrashed weakly and struggled at the stake, the tar hardening on my body as if it was encasing me fully, locking me in place like chains and manacles.

It was slow but not as slow as the cross I'd been tied to, pain searing into me as, finally, the flames reached my feet and lower legs. They licked at me and yet I was not an old friend to be greeted as they burned, searing up my body, a scream ripping from my throat as I heaved and twisted, though really just thrashed in my death throes. The feathers alit as I burned and, dimly, I was aware of the guards watching.

I howled and twisted, pain lancing through me, the heat from the flames unbearable, though it was not the relief I thought it would have been to have the end so near. My fur burned off first, though it seared and cooked the skin and flesh beneath too, like I was a roast above the fear, there for sustenance and only that. I tried to curl my toes, purely out of reflex, but my nerve endings flared up, no respite from the overwhelming pain, a pain my mind could not even take me away from as flames leapt and danced and fully obscured my vision.

There was no one there that cared for me. Not even as the flames engulfed me fully and I was treated to the pain of being burned alive, breath stolen from my lungs as the flames snuffed every last gulp out.

Awakening again, back in my cell, the wolf was waiting for me. His eyes gleamed with a sick sort of pride and he hefted me up by the scruff of neck.

“On to the next."

He took me out of the prison again, though I didn't know how many days passed between executions. They seemed to hasten as they carted me out to a pier where I finally got a good look at Tai Lung, my oppressor nodding to the wolf as he stood me in a bucket at the very end of the pier.

The pier jutted out over the water, but I wasn't looking at the dark depths as the feline locked eyes with me, so dark and foreboding, so coldly terrifying. We had been right to fear him.

The wolf growled as he slammed me into a chair at the end of the pier, hitting my legs with a staff until I lifted them to place them down into a big, deep bucket. I blinked, not knowing what it was for, for it didn't seem to be an instrument of death. But he tied me to the chair with rope too quickly, my pulse quickening.

Yet the wolf nonchalantly poured wet cement into the bucket where my feet were, bubbling between my toes, hardening too quickly to be a normal compound. I twisted and fought, body heaving weakly, knowing it was bad, something bad, the dull weight heaving at my feet.

“No… Please…"

The water… The cement… There were worse deaths, but they were few and far between.

“Ah-ah-ah…"

The wolf's hands clawed around my face, gagging me so I couldn't scream, couldn't talk, my muffled begging falling on deaf ears.

His dirty fingers folded over my mouth and nose again, bearing down, my vision wavering, though he still allowed me enough air with which to breathe: barely. I was not to die, after all, from him gagging me, though it forced me to focus as the cement set around my feet, slowly preventing me from wiggling my toes and then creeping its way, more firmly, down the sides of my feet.

The incremental reach of it solidifying had my heart pounding, but I was calm enough, supposedly, for the wolf to handle me. And then I couldn't move my feet at all, ankles trapped too, the dullness already seeming to drag me down better than any lock in the prison.

The wolf seemed to be getting used to the executions as he waited only long enough for it to harden fully before he and another guard shoved me off the end of the pier.

Water engulfed me and, for a moment, I was glad of the coolness as I sank down and down and down. At least, I was until my lungs burned and ached and I panicked, floundering and twisting, my arms still bound too, trying to breathe, striving to get free.

Down and down and down… The water streamed around me, reeds fluttering, the light further and further away with every passing second. There was nowhere to go, not as bubbles streamed from my muzzle, showing how the air left my lungs. Every breath left me, until there were no more bubbles to come, even the surface of the lake gone from view.

Yet there was nothing there, a long way down, until the chair I was in, along with the cement bucket, settled almost gently at the bottom of the lake, a weed clinging to my arm, twisting and draping. I couldn't even brush it off, bound as I was, fighting and heaving, my body straining to live even while my mind faded, the underwater world growing darker and darker as I lost myself all over again.

Around me, the bodies of the other Furious Five members lay, also with their feet stuck in cement, bodies shifting, drifting a little, though never moving from their final resting place. And then there was Shifu too, small and not forgotten, their bodies decomposing slowly, though it did not look like they had been down there for all that long. Their fur still drifted with the play of the water around them and their features were still there, Crane's eyes open in a dead-eyed, forlorn stare.

Of course, they were nude, and I blinked at them, disgust pulling and twisting in my chest. That could have been the lack of air, however, as my vision went blurry. They were the last thing I saw as unconsciousness, although not sweet, took me.

My body would be retrieved later.

From the fifth death to my sixth execution… I don't think I really returned to myself in the in-between, as if I was in a deep state of meditation. I was aware vaguely of being in the cell and I was aware of being taken somewhere else, but the execution room I was taken to seemed to be a morgue.

It was the wrong place for me, if they were going to kill me several more times.

I did not fight, Tai Lung standing further forward that time. He must have been present for every execution, giving the order, yet he did not grace me with a single word. He didn't need to, the feline so far above me in the status of the empire. At least, with the power he'd taken.

They left my body bound, arms at my sides and legs straight, wrapping more and more cloth around me, reeking of the doomed who had gone before. More curled around my entire body, some of the smelly sheets stiffer than others, until I was at least three inches thick in them, unable to move for them even if my hands had been free at all, let alone my legs. The tightness of them weighed me down too, the stiffer ones reeking the most of old body odour, sweat and blood, but I squirmed, wavering while they prodded me all over and added an extra, immobilising layer around my neck.

They tossed me in a coffin, gagging me quickly with socks when I snarled and hissed. They were weak sounds, but they were the only cries of pushback I had at my disposal, feeling like I had to do something, anything. I had to fight, even when there was no chance.

And then they performed my execution as if it was a ritual of sorts. Old prison garments were tucked under me, dirty sheets beneath my back, though their old, musty stench had not been something I'd focused on. I rocked and rolled from one side of the coffin to the other, heart pounding.

Please just leave me in the ground this time…

_ _

Yet the wrapped the clothes and sheets and more around me, covering me from head to toe. I was still in the coffin, but I was…mummified. All wrapped up as if they were to let me decompose and perform the true mummification rites, but I was sure they'd say that would be too good for me. No one thought I deserved anything, no, not at all, not as more socks were added, tucked in alongside me, my body still within the mummification bindings, something sweet, as if I was being embalmed too, lingering on the clothes.

And yet they itched as the guards made sure I knew, muffled through the sheets, what they were putting in the coffin, packing me in tightly. One by one, the guards walked up, taking off a sock and adding another one, the dirty items of clothing packing me in, bit by bit, squeezing around my body.

“And now, the lid."

Tai Lung, at last. He gave the order as the heavy lid slammed down, though there was no change in light for me, so many layers covering my head and eyes already. It left a crack, but I did not know that, could not see that, even if more came to light every time I revisited the cell, waiting on my next death.

“No…"

There was a scuffle, someone resisting – but what could I say to them? A sock was shoved, regardless, over my muzzle, huffing and grunting through the reeking press of them, my fate already sealed. And then the nails came, hammers banging down, crude and rough, nailing me into the coffin. Dimly, I heard the one who resisted, who said “no," being hauled away.

The sense of the coffin being lifted was disconcerting, not really present, as they carried me to the burial site and put me underground. The weight of earth being piled on to the coffin pushed me down, struggling inside, twisting and rocking, though there was very little room to do so. I tensed muscles, everything I could, trying to beat up against the lid, losing air as they left me there, in the quiet of the earth, the coffin heating around me.

Warmth stank through the wrapping clothes, the muffling layer sweltering as I was left alone with the stench, the reek, eyes watering, seeing nothing but muted, grey darkness. It took days for me to die, the coffin allowing a meagre amount of air to filter in – but not enough. Eventually, even my weak struggles stopped, though my body hadn't given up, just my mind. It already knew what was coming when starvation and air deprivation, in the end, was more than enough to sap the life from my bones.

I awoke in my cell again, my body still holding the smell of the sheets and that embalming lotion. I twisted but the wolf guard was there, holding me up, forcing me on to my feet.

“You took too long this time to wake," he grumbled, as if I had inconvenienced him. “Get walking."

He forced me up the stairs, out into the air where the guards were positioned, in the dead of night, before a stage. The open air did me no good, already knowing my fate, my hands wrenched behind my back at an angle that had me sucking in a sharp breath as pain grabbed at my stomach.

With my hands tied, they marched me on to the stage, my eyes dropping to the trapdoor, clearly marked there as if they were trying to draw my attention to it. My chest heaved and juddered, though there was no air I could draw into my lungs that could save me, not then.

The wolf approached as I was forced to watch him raising a big hood over my head once more, sliding it over my ears and down the back of my neck, the reek of other condemned still layered into it. Their fear was the worst and, before then, I had not even realised fear could have a smell, not like that. It reminded me of the bag they had used earlier – hell, it was most likely the same bag.

No…

_ _

I tried to hold on to my dignity, but there was no true dignity to be had in hanging. I was not a common criminal and yet that was all I had become to the world, the rank hood seeping into my nostrils, though I swore I was becoming slowly immune to the rancid scents they forced me to inhale. Maybe I would not notice them, not by the end.

Hunched over, I tried to duck away from it, fighting that little more, as the noose tightened around my neck, rough hands sliding the knot closer to the back of my neck, ensuring it was a good, snug fit. I coughed, gagging even into the hood as my eyes watered, the hood fluttering in front of my mouth, where my breath shifted it very lightly.

“One, two…three!"

The platform, a trapdoor, below me dropped out and I yowled in a way I was embarrassed to hear as I jerked down, the rope stopping my fall. With the hood tight around my neck, my airflow was already restricted but the knot was not placed to snap my neck, no.

They wanted to strangle me slowly, kicking out as I hung there, heaving, panting, my body fighting for a life that I knew was pointless. I could fight and I could scream as much as I liked, but there was no relief for me, no kind of respite, nothing at all.

I kicked and flailed, swinging back and forth, back and forth. The world around me narrowed to pain, searing into the fibre of my being, though there was nowhere for me to go, nowhere at all. My neck was too thick and muscular, too strong, and I had never imagined that would ever be my undoing as the hood inflated and deflated, my heaving, dragging breaths trying to claw at it from the inside out, though it would not save me.

My weight dragged me down, the knot grinding into my neck, though it was in the wrong spot for a quick death: of course, they wanted me to suffocate slowly. The noose let me take in some air, my lungs heaving and straining, but not enough, not as I swayed and slowly stilled more and more, twitching and kicking, yet there was only so much energy left in a body being deprived of increased air.

The only relief would come in the darkness of the abyss, or any afterlife that was waiting for me. Yet I didn't know, I couldn't know, not after all they'd done to me. Maybe there would be no afterlife, no peace, never for me, not as the stale sweat from my body added to the reek of the hood.

But I still needed it to stop as I listened to the voices of the guards growing fainter and fainter as they commented on me, how long it was taking me to die. Slowly, I faded, gulping for breath, breathing in my own air, which didn't have the oxygen I needed. The hood shifted around me, my body still enough as I hung to make it shudder as it stopped inflating, for my lungs were not strong enough to affect its movement, not anymore.

As I suffocated and faded into death once more, I knew the ninth death was close.

They didn't take me far from my cell for the eighth death and, instead, I was taken to a kitchen with a very large stove, ridiculously so, with an older fox there. He clutched at his own hands as the wolf shook his head at him.

“You're at fault for this," the wolf told him. “If you hadn't refused to put your sock in with Tigress, Tai Lung wouldn't have to punish you."

I blinked at him, but didn't say anything. I knew there was no point, though to have someone punished with me… That turned my stomach more than anything else.

The guards, my executioners, laid me down in a large pan, which looked suspiciously like something used for roasting, and tied the older fox to me. With our bodies facing one another, his chubby belly and fat chest rubbed into me, as if it was meant to be erotic in a way, though there was nothing sensual about that. I hadn't even really been interested in that kind of thing before and most certainly not after my imprisonment.

He blinked, eyes shiny and glassy with fear, though I didn't have any words to reassure him. Yet my eyes kept opening again, as much as I wanted to close them against the horror, staring into his eyes. Fear rang through his, reflecting my own as if he was nothing more than a mirror to me.

Stomach to stomach, they forced his penis hard and shoved his cock into me, though neither of us wanted it. To them, it was nothing at all and his shaft ground between the folds of my sex.

I barely felt it, a small, chubby prick, but maybe I was set back and drifting from my own reality, even then. I had to face it – but only at the point death came for me.

On my back with him on top, the executioners goaded him on and forced him to fuck me, rocking and grinding his hips, eyes wide and bulging with fear. Under his breath, he muttered “I'm sorry," over and over again, but I had no words of comfort for him, not even then. I hoped he knew he was not at fault.

Cooking twine lashed our legs together and they tied our heads and muzzles together, lips pursing as they were forced to press, though we were not kissing, not really.

“Kiss her!"

Our lips pressed together harder, wanting to make it easier on ourselves. He seemed more fearful than me, but he had not died several times already, not like me. I could not blame him for that, no.

“And tongue, go on, old man!"

He grunted against me, parting his lips, yet it was nothing like what I'd imagined a kiss was. His tongue snaked fearfully, almost distrustfully, into my mouth. It wiggled and wound back and forth, as if he was trying to mimic what he thought a kiss was supposed to be like, though his taste seeped into my mouth.

It had an odd…mustiness to it. I shouldn't have thought that, but what did it matter what I thought when I knew how close I was to death? His small dick ground into me, but it was not painful, not at its size, and his belly stopped him from going deep in that position. Still, he swept his tongue against mine, getting a deep lap in, grunting into my mouth as his eyelids fluttered.

Someone slapped the side of my head, making my ears ring.

“Kiss him back!"

They forced me to do so, though I shouldn't have expected any less, kissing him, trying to move my head and make it look like I was doing it. Dying was a skill, after all, and I had trained for it. I did it very well, after so many times.

I knew how to put on a show, to grunt into his mouth and kiss him, wetly, the slickness of his saliva sending a horrific shudder through me. It was all a mimicry, even as they slapped his backside, forcing him to keep thrusting, to keep putting on the show Tai Lung wanted for my ultimate humiliation.

And there was still one more to go. One last death.

Would it be worse than all the others?

I could not know. It would not matter.

And then we slid into the oven, the pan large enough to easily hold us both as the door closed behind her. Then the fox finally fought and I could not comfort him except with my stillness, not as the oven heated around us, slowly and surely cooking us alive in a long, drawn-out death.

It burned my fur, cooking my flesh, searing and simmering, the heat sinking into me as the composition of my flesh was turned into mere meat. It was not like being burned at the stake, no, but my flesh simmered, the outer layer turning crispier, slowly but surely, as if they had practised for cooking me alive.

It did not matter that I was bound, twitching and pulling, my body wanting to thrash, though this was not a death my body could ever have expected. I sensed the end drawing near, however, that I should have been sweating – yet the heat of the oven was such that it burned all that away.

I couldn't sweat, after all, when the glands in my skin were seared off. Even the pads on my hand-paws blackened, my fingers stiffening in a crooked, curled position.

The fox shuddered, eyes closing, though maybe he couldn't look the end in the eye, as I was. His tail flipped back and forth and he juddered against me, as if my heat was less than the oven and he was seeking respite in me. I'd never get the chance to ask him, no, for he wouldn't come back to life again.

Slowly, the fox's furtive movements faded, dying against me, losing his grip on life more swiftly than I did.

His eyes were glassy and staring by the time death snatched me from the jaws of the oven.

Finally, I was taken from my cell, having awoken for the last time, and marched outside. The light burned my eyes as I blinked, almost wishing for a stinking blindfold to hide away in.

But they took me to the woods instead, a richly forested area, and untied me. I rubbed my wrists uncertainly as the wolf guard stepped back, his eyes dispassionate.

“You can leave," he said. “Tai Lung has ordered it. You are banished…forever. If you return, we will take the one life you have left."

My heart lifted. Really? Could it be true? My soul was so sore and so weary and I walked away on staggering, unsteady legs, my body not understanding how to move properly after so many deaths.

The guards let me go and I walked more evenly as I tried to slow my pace. Could freedom really be mine, after everything that had happened?

The day seemed a little brighter, the air a little cleaner. Even if I could not save the empire, Tai Lung having taken over, maybe I could save a little something for myself.

And then I stepped in something soft and squashy. At first, I thought it was mud and tried to keep walking, but I sank with a juddering squelch, grey seeping up my legs, all the way up to my knees as I struggled. I was not strong enough, not after everything, to get myself out, realising too late that there was a pit in the forest.

They'd never intended to let me go free. The notion sank into me even as my body physical sank, clawing and yowling, fighting even as the cement dragged me down and down and down. After having the cement shoes set around me for my drowning, I recognised it, though it set slower – slow enough that I could still be dragged down into it, sinking increasingly.

The guards returned, laughing, slapping their thighs, their mirth a din against my eardrums. I yowled and lunged for them, though that only made them laugh harder and my body sink faster. Tai Lung stepped to the front, not needing any words, his arms folded across his broad chest while he watched my final end.

It was fitting, in a way, as I sank there. The cement even dried into my fur and set, making me stiller and heavier, as if I was nothing more than a statue before a temple. Maybe that was what he would do to me in the end.

My fury was misplaced and I didn't know what to think, where to hope, as I struggled, my arms flailing, though the slow set of the cement was just so I could take in my fate more and more, the snow leopard's eyes locked on to me, boring into my very soul.

It dragged and dragged, my feet growing heavier, weightier, as I sank, down lower and lower. I panted softly, eyes half-closed, resigned, waiting for the end. It crept up my legs as I sank, encased in cement, though it was a slower-hardening mixture, not like what had been used at the lake, allowing me to keep sinking, not trapping me there, halfway.

No… No, that would never have done. And I should never have thought they were going to release me, given false hope when all I'd wanted…was for the end to come.

“Goodbye, Tigress," the wolf guard taunted, waving mockingly. “So ends the Failing Five… You were entertaining to play with."

The cement eased up my legs and I stayed there, my head held levelly but not high. That didn't feel like it would have been right for me, not anymore. Not as my fur hardened, the cement pulling me down more swiftly, though only a little, with more of my body encased, working its way up over my crotch and even into my pussy.

Encased in cement, would they chisel me out one day into the statue I'd envisioned to show what happened to those who went against Tai Lung? Maybe my cemented corpse would serve as a warning to the empire.

Yet I was pulled down and down, my breasts finally covered, allowing me modesty at long last. But he was not content with that, a massive foot landing on my head and grinding me down, forcing my demise to hasten. My arms stuck into the cement, my fingers curled forevermore, and he pressed down, his musky foot grinding into my skull.

“Oof…"

The cement rose more quickly as he added his weight to me, the grey swathe rising up to meet me, though I did not greet it either like an old friend. I sank, their taunts ringing in my ears, his heel grinding into my nose.

Tai Lung didn't say anything as I disappeared into the cement, though he was the last thing I saw as I disappeared under, the musky, almost cheesy reek of his foot lingering in my head still. He was the last thing I saw, blocking out even the forest behind him, when there was so much beauty in the world, my ninth life ending as I was swallowed by the cement, lost to the world.

Under the cement, the world was dull, quiet. There was an outside world, the forest and more, but that ceased to matter. It was not a pool I could swim in, cement burning into my eyes, everything stiffening and hardening, not a hair on my body left outside the pit.

Slowly, I suffocated, lips parted, cement pouring into my mouth, into my nostrils as I heaved and he held me under, though his foot vanished at some point. He didn't need to hold me under anymore, not as my body twitched and juddered, weakly giving up. There was no more point fighting for life anymore, my last exhale lost in the thick glop of cement.

My ninth life ended.

And then I knew no more.