FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Nigrido: The Crucible

By Mint the Faithful

Chapter I - Capture

Tansy needed to go. She looked around carefully to ensure that she wasn't being followed, then trundled off into the bushes and hiked her skirt up, letting herself go. Tansy was a young, lithe little felari with a set of pearly white fur and bright green eyes. Her long, catlike tail swished behind her and she purred with pleasure, her right ear twitching as she relieved herself. Her urine made a kind of wet spattering noise upon the leaves of the bushes and Tansy closed her eyes, enjoying the sound and the sensation for the few brief seconds it lasted...

Partially due to distraction and partially due to the skill of her assailant, she didn't know that she had been knocked unconscious until she awoke. Her vision was blurry and her head ached something fierce. 'W, what happened? Last I remember I...' And then Tansy realized that she was tied. Her arms wouldn't move from behind her back, and her tail was tied into the bonds. Tansy closed her eyes to stop the awful feeling of her head swimming and forced herself to climb to her feet. She yelped in surprise as the legs were kicked out from under her. Unable to stop her fall with her arms, she was forced to take the brunt of it on her side. She groaned with pain at her aching ribs, and her head was throbbing. She heard a voice, cold as the winter wind, but it sounded as though she had stuffed cotton rags in her ears. 'Oh no... I... I hope there's nothing wrong with my head...'

"I see I caught myself a little kitty." What followed was a laugh that caused something inside Tansy to flare up. She forced her eyes open and tried to see. Her vision had improved a bit, and she could make out the cold stone floor and walls, the wooden ceiling, some odd devices, a large feather bed with her neatly-folded clothes lying up it and the rough outline of... 'Oh no!'

Icy, black fear twisted Tansy's stomach. It was a yinn. Like some insane cross between wolf, dog and man, the yinn were the scourge of the north. The best of the yinn were egotistical bastards who thought all others beneath them... the worst had tried to purify the land of all non-yinn. Tansy didn't have to do a lot of guessing to find out which kind this was. This particular yinn's fur was dark gray, and her eyes black, like voids in the universe. She wore a skintight pair of shorts that went halfway down her thigh and a skintight tube-top, both black, and over them an open black cloak with jagged red patterns along the hem. Tied around her waist was an odd, thick black belt that looked to be made out of scales.

"On your feet," came the voice again, quite clearly. Whatever trouble Tansy had been having with her ears had quite cleared up. Tansy closed her eyes and huddled down. The last thing her sore body wanted was to force itself up again. She didn't have the courage to force a defiant note through her teeth... yinn were naturally stronger than felari, and Tansy had never been much of a warrior.

"I see. Disobedience. You'll soon learn the price of disobedience." A rough, furred hand gripped Tansy and pulled her up by the ear. Howling with pain, Tansy was dragged across the floor, tears streaming from her eyes. A blade was between Tansy's hands and... her bonds were cut? Pain clouded Tansy's mind, and before she could begin to wonder why, she had been pressed against the wall. She struggled feebly out of sheer instinct, but her panic was no match for the trained hands of a strong yinn. Tansy's left hand was thrust upward, and she felt a cold touch against it. Unable to stop her natural curiosity, she looked up. With horror, she realized that her hands were being forced into leather cuffs. She struggled a bit more, thrusting her tail into the yinn's face. The yinn growled, crushing Tansy against the wall and finishing the cuffing. "You'll pay for that defiance, too, felar."

As the cuffing finished, Tansy could barely touch the ground with her tip-toes. She winced with the constant, minor pain of this situation. Suddenly, she felt the yinnish hands on her tail. She panicked again, slipping it out of the yinn's hands. She felt a hard punch connect with one of her kidneys. She moaned with pain, and, in her distraction, could not evade the yinn's hands a second time as she felt her tail being tied around her waist.

"Now, my little kitty, you must be wondering why you're here, hmm?" The voice had never sounded colder. "Quit playing mute. I heard you singing when I was following you in the forest."

Tansy was too frightened to say anything.

"We'll start with your name. What is your name?" The voice was almost sweet now. Tansy could not force herself to answer...

Pain. A screaming, twisting, jagged cut of pain licked across her back. Tansy took a moment to realize that she was screaming as loud as she had ever screamed and tears sprang, unbidden, to her eyes. As the fierce pain simmered upon her back, Tansy realized that she had been whipped.

"Answer." The voice was not nearly so sweet, but still quite calm. Nonetheless, Tansy could not bring herself to...

Another lash, this one diagonally across Tansy's back, from shoulder to hip. She could feel all of this one, the stinging welt causing her to dance about uncontrollably in pain as she howled indignantly. '...I'm going to die here...'

"What is your NAME!?"

"T, Tansy..."

"Very well. My name is Anroko... but you will call me ma'am. Is that clear?"

"Y, yes..."

The whip came across Tansy's back again, placed so that it crossed both of the other welts upon her back. She howled in pain, her feet attempting to run on thin air as she hugged the wall, trying to disappear into it.

"I said, is that clear?

"Y, yes ma'am," Tansy breathed hoarsely. Her throat was sore from all of the screaming, and she could swear that her back was gushing blood.

"Alright, then. Here we go. You are here, Tansy, because you are weak. All of your disgusting kind are weak. You are to be punished for your weakness, felar, and made strong. I am not going to kill you..." Tansy's head swam, flitting oddly between relief and fear until she didn't know what to think, "...but I am going to change you. The road you will travel may take many years, but when you are finished, I will make you a yinn. Do you understand?"

"Y, yes ma'am..." 'She's crazy... must keep her talking...'

"Now, for your earlier disobedience, you will be given eight lashes of the whip..." Tansy's eyes widened as the burden of fear in her stomach seemed to dance within her, causing Anroko's voice to sound heightened, "...and in addition, you will remain tied as you are for the remainder of the night. If you resist or try to escape, you will be harshly punished. Do you understand?"

Tansy's voice was tearful and filled with frenzied anguish, "B, but..."

The flesh of Tansy's back received two hard strokes of the whip in quick succession, the liquid pain raging through her body as Anroko yelled, "DO YOU UNDERSTAND!?"

Whimpering and sobbing, Tansy hung her head in defeat. Hoping to at least avoid further punishment, she whispered, "Yes, ma'am."

Anroko ran the whip through her hands a few times, letting Tansy's aching back burn with pain for nearly a minute. "For the duration of this flogging, I think it would be instrumental if you counted. You'll have ten seconds between lashes. Any you do not count or count wrongly will be repeated. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am." Tansy's voice trembled with fear and loathing.

The whipping began in earnest. The first lash tore into Tansy's flesh and electric pain lit up her whole body, from the tips of her ears to the bottoms of her madly dancing tip-toes. Tansy's screams and howls of protest echoed in the stone room. The pain was intense... Anroko was striking harder than she had before. Tansy forced herself, through the pain, to weakly stutter out, "O, o, one..." The next lash came horizontally, right across the small of her back. If Tansy thought she was bleeding before, she was sure she was now. Despite the intensity of the pain, she forced out again, "Tuh... tuh... two..." The words were barely out of her mouth when the third lash struck true, crossing the first two lashes, inflaming the both of them afresh. Tansy's cheeks were tearstained, her once pearly-white fur stained crimson with blood, her sobbing uncontrollable. The whipping continued in this fashion, the fourth, fifth, sixth strokes coming in ten second intervals, Tansy forcing her voice to obey.

It became harder and harder, and on the seventh stroke, she could not force her voice to work. Though she struggled, the whip fell again before she could say it, searing her flesh. Through her now-hoarse screams, she croaked, "Eight..." but the whip fell again, causing Tansy to shriek maddeningly, and again, and again... Anroko was not giving her time to count anymore. The whip fell the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth time, and Anroko stopped. Tansi's back was a mangled mess of pure pain, her limp form choked with tears and tiredness. 'I'm going to die,' she thought longingly, 'oh, I'm going to die... please be done, please...'

"You suffer," Anroko addressed a sobbing Tansy, "because in your weakness you tried to cheat. Now, let's do the seventh and eighth the right way, hmm?" Tansy made a broken, moaning sound but Anroko cruelly pushed her, landing the whip again. Tansy screamed, "SEVEN!" as loud as she could, then the last stroke fell and, as her scream died down, she cried, "Eight... oh, oh.... ohhhh..."

Looking satisfied that her prisoner was broken for the day, Anroko grinned, walked up, and patted Tansy on the back. "You got what you so well deserved, girl. Now don't make too much noise, or I'll leave you hanging up there for all of tomorrow, too. Be a good girl and you'll be fed and watered. Be a bad girl, and... there are punishments so much worse than a good whipping."

Tansy sobbed in response, horrified at the thought... but tried to quiet herself. She strained her will, not looking forward to a night chained to the wall... but the alternative could be a lot worse.

Anroko made and ate her own supper, then snuffed out the torches in her stone dungeon and lay upon the feather bed, leaving Tansy to cry herself into an uncomfortable doze.

TO BE CONTINUED...