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I stared into the east at the setting sun. Somewhere in that direction, far beyond what I could see, lay our home--our former home, the land we had left behind.

I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, struggling to keep my gaze locked on the same point in the darkening sky, concerned that if I looked away the red and orange and yellow of the sunset would suddenly vanish--replaced by the blacks and blues of night--and I would no longer be able to see the horizon that I had once stared at from the opposite direction.

We had come so far. But how much farther did we have to go?

“Rangers--to me!"

The cry broke my concentration and sent a chill through my heart. I wheeled around, my hand finding the dagger at my belt as I looked around the camp for its source.

There was movement over by the Grandmaster's tents, torches bobbing in the cold air. I ran there in seconds, frozen grass crunching under my boots.

I poked my head in through the flap in the tent. A group of people were huddled in the center of the makeshift room, grouped around something or someone blocked from my view. They were speaking in low, hushed voices.

There was a rustling sound, and then the group as a whole seemed to recoil. Several of the people in the tent gasped.

“What abomination —“

"Gods!"

"Filthy beasts...!"

Matron Anne, who was standing on the other side of the circle, covered her mouth with her spindly fingers, fear and disgust in her eyes, which looked down at whatever was in the center of the circle.

The crowd shifted again, and I was able to catch a glimpse of what it was: Martyn, the ranger whose party had vanished some three months ago. He had been presumed dead.

I couldn't stop myself. "Martyn!" I cried out. My heart leaped. If Martyn could survive the wilderness for three months and return, then perhaps our journey wasn't in vain. Perhaps we were on our way to finding that fertile land the scryers had seen in their orbs.

Martyn had been staring at the dirt floor. At the sound of his name, he looked up fearfully, wrapping the blanket more tightly around him. All I could see was the now gaunt feature of his face, amplified somehow by the dancing torchlight--and the faces of the others in the tent, now turned to me.

"Ella, dear--" the Grandmaster said, motioning for his youngest daughter.

The red-headed girl shook herself and then strode quickly toward me, shielding the scene from view.

"Please, Vim, return to your post," she hissed, placing a hand on my shoulder and pushing me out of the tent. "There may be more--" She trailed off, not saying what there may have been more of.

I dug my heels in, trying to cast another look into the tent. "Is Martyn OK? Where is the rest of the party? Where's he been?" I blurted out.

"Martyn will be fine," Ella said, but her voice trembled.

...

The next day, I was told Martyn had been moved to his tent. He was not to be disturbed. He was being treated by our healers.

The day after that, Martyn was resting after having been seen be our healers. He was not to be disturbed. He needed his rest.

On the third day, I sought out Nyanna, Martyn's wife. She was tending to one of their children, her nimble fingers fastening the buttons of the child's coat.

I greeted her with a smile. “How is Martyn?" I asked, moving over to her.

Nyanna glanced up at me. “He's resting," she said.

“I know you must be overwhelmed," I said. I wanted to place a hand on her shoulder, but something about her body language told me she wouldn't have approved of it. “We rangers are tough, but I must admit I prayed for Martyn's spirit."

She said nothing.

I tried a different strategy. “It warms my heart to know this one won't grow up without his father," I said, smiling at the child, who seemed too young to understand me.

Still, no response. Nyanna continued to fuss with the child's coat. I got the feeling that she was purposely avoiding my gaze.

"Perhaps now you'll try for another blessing?" I asked, inclining my head toward the child. Our traveling party did not lack mouths to feed, but the Grandmaster had said that each new life were to be welcomed as a sign that we were on the right path.

"I--I must return to my responsibilities," Nyanna said, and she rushed into her tent, leaving the two of us--the child and me--confused in her wake.

...

On the fifth day, Martyn was dead.

"We may not be able to give him his ranger's rites, but we can at least return him to the wild, which he called his home."

The Captain spoke with the gravitas of a preacher, staring down at the fabric-wrapped bundle that was our brother's body, around which the rest of us rangers stood arranged in a semicircle.

I couldn't keep the shock off my face. The joy of Martyn's unexpected return had hardly faded. Now the relief had turned to ice in my veins.

The Captain, however, carried himself with the same professionalism, the same dignity that had come to define his more than a decade of leading the rangers. The man had not even batted an eye when he and his squad were selected to lead to protect this expedition into the uncharted lands, despite knowing that he might never return.

He raised a finger and pointed at several of us--myself not included--displaying that aquiline nose and chiseled jaw in profile.

"You ten guard the camp tonight," the Captain said, and merely by the tone of his voice, he made it sound like just as much of an honor as his next command. "The rest of you, we set out after sunset. We'll head to that clearing with the ash trees. Martyn... always liked it there."

...

Now that winter was beginning to release its hold on the world, we would soon be able to dismantle our camp and resume our quest, which had been frozen in place for two months.

The warming weather brought with it another benefit: It made it possible to dig a hole for Martyn's body.

I had come to like the clearing that the Captain had suggested during our winter of sheltering in place. The ash trees were perfect for bow making, and the tranquility of the place--known only to the rangers--made for a relaxing spot to reflect on our journey.

Now the memory of the place would be forever scarred by the grave we had dug. I was happy that we would be moving on.

"...and he shall nourish the earth that so nourished him. Farewell, brother," the Captain intoned.

"Farewell, brother," the rest of us said.

I looked down into the hole at the burlap sack that contained Martyn. Despite myself, I tried to discern the shape of his body, but I couldn't quite make it out. The contents of the bag seemed lumpy in the oddest of place. I blamed the dancing torchlight for playing tricks on my eyes.

"Doesn't feel right," Orry, our chief pathfinder, said. "Can we at least take him out o' the sack?"

The Captain stood at the head of the hole, grim-faced, arms crossed. "No," he said.

A moment of silence followed. Then:

"Please, Cap'n, let 'im feel the night air on his face one last time!" another brother said.

"No," the Captain repeated, this time more forcefully.

"C'mon, I wanna say farewell to me brother!"

"I will not repeat the order!" the Captain boomed.

Orry's hand moved to rest on the handle of his knife. "Martyn wouldn't've wanted it this way!" he said.

The Captain glowered at Orry. "Take your hand off your--"

"Look out!"

I looked up and saw that the trees had come alive--no, there were figures among the trees, huge figures, strange men in the night, men armed with axes.

The Captain shouted a word, and every one of us knew instinctively what to do--to fight, to save our lives.

I raised my knife to parry the blade of an axe slicing in my direction, but I miscalculated the angle of the attack, and the butt of the handle hit me hard in the forehead. I fell backward, and the attacker was on me. It was only then that the word that the Captain had spoken registered in my mind:

"Orcs."

I struggled against the creature pinning me down, but it was like a boy fighting a fully grown man--a man whose arms were as thick as my torso and whose body was covered in skin like cured leather.

Strong hands flipped me over on my stomach, and I closed my eyes tightly, waiting for the final blow. As the sounds of shouts and the clanging of metal on metal filled my ears, I registered that my trousers had fallen down at some point during the commotion and reflected on the indignity of dying in such a state.

Except death didn't come. The beasts tied my hands behind my back, lifted me by the armpits, and carried me to the edge of the clearing, my trousers trailing from one foot. I caught sight of one of the old sawbucks that we had used to cut the ash trees to size. Then the orcs tossed me forward. With my hands subdued, I flexed my core to brace myself, but the impact still knocked the air from my lungs. For a second, all I could do was dangle there, the wood digging into my abdomen.

Then several things happened at once. One of the brutes grabbed me by the back of the neck and forced my head down. Two more grabbed my legs and spread them wide, pinning them against the legs of the sawbuck.

I was momentarily paralyzed by incredulity. Surely the beasts, despite their feral inclination, had more sophisticated means of torture than debasing themselves by violating our honor?

The beasts seemed to have other ideas. One of them grabbed my scrotum, tiny in its large hand, and squeezed it by the base. A confusing series of movements later, the hand released me but the pressure around my scrotum remained.

"Please!" The cry went up from somewhere to my left. I recognized the voice as Font's. "Have mercy! We are not--"

"Silence, ranger!" the Captain barked.

The brute holding me by the neck grabbed me by the hair and forced my head farther down so that the scene behind me appeared in my field of vision, upside down. He wanted me to see what they were doing.

The beasts had wrapped a thin strip of leather around my scrotum, so tight that it was cutting off the blood flow. The flesh was an angry purple, the two orbs pressing against skin lined with blood vessels.

One of the beasts stepped between my legs and grabbed me by the scrotum, pulling it as far from my body as the skin would allow. With his free index finger, he smeared a thick ointment where the leather met my skin. Before I could wonder what it was came a piercing cold, the shock of it so surprising that I yelped in discomfort.

"What are you--no! No!" Font's cries were growing more panicky by the second.

I gritted my teeth, determined not to crack.

The brute wiped his hand on his loincloth. Then he drew a knife. The blade caught the dying light of the sunset before he brought it to my skin.

I hardly felt the sawing movement. Then his hand came away.

The orc let the piece of me that was in his palm fall to the ground.

...

I slumped against the wall of our cell, the dull pain in my crotch throbbing to the rhythm of my heartbeat. I stared blankly into space, trying not to think of the futures that had been robbed from me.

I would sire no children.

The orcs had moved swiftly to geld me and my brothers.

No mate would ever take me.

They had cauterized our wounds, fitted us with metal collars attached to a heavy chain, and set off with us in tow into the night.

My line would end with me.

We had been raised on old wives' tales of wolves stealing newborn children from their cribs while their parents slept. Of faithful husbands lured away from their marital beds by sirens. Now we seemed destined to become another such story. Yet the reality of our situation was so much worse than any tale I had ever heard spun.

There was another man in the cell--a scruffy-looking fossil of a man whose stomach bulged from malnutrition. The state of him gave us little reason to hope that our time in captivity would be brief. He was naked, and he, too, had an empty patch of skin where his scrotum once had been.

Any attempt to engage the old man in conversation proved fruitless. His eyes rolled around in his skull, focusing on nothing. He seemed lost in his own world, driven mad by an eternity in captivity.

It was well into the night, but sleep came to none of us where we sat on the straw-covered stone floor. Perhaps sensing the dark thoughts swirling inside us, or perhaps because he was thinking such things himself, the Captain cleared his throat to gain our attention.

“Men," he began. Despite grimace of pain on his face, he stood up into a kind of crouch. “For that's what you are: men. Never forget that. We know these fiends will stop at nothing to crush our spirits. But they know not who it is we are. We are rangers. We find the path. We light the way. We keep our flock safe.

“These beasts believe they can take our manhood. But the spirit of manhood rests here--“ he pounded himself in the chest “--and the words and deeds of manhood originate from here--“ he pointed at his temple.

"Mark my words, brothers. We will endure. We will escape. We will exact revenge."

I let the words into my heart and locked them away there. The Captain was right. I told myself that I had entered into the defining moment of my life. Not only would I survive; I would emerge on the other side a stronger man, reinforced by the hardships I had endured.

...

The next night, the beasts came for us. After a clanking of locks and chains that drove a stake of dread through my heart, the heavy door to our cell swung open.

There stood one of the beasts--smaller of stature than the ones that had abducted us and dressed in nothing but rags--framed by two torch bearing behemoths. The smaller of the three stepped forward and surveyed the room in silence.

I moved my hand like a spider in the straw as though expecting to find a concealed knife, a jagged rock--anything to attack the beast. We can overpower him, I thought with a rush of adrenaline, but the sight of the grisly weapons hanging from his companions' belts quickly drove the idea out of my mind. Instead I pressed my back against the stone wall, steeling myself.

The smaller of the beasts placed a pail in the center of the cell. Then he backpedaled out.

I heard the door lock but could hardly believe it.

Font leaned forward, regarding the pail like a bubbling witch's cauldron. "Looks like... food," he said.

The Captain didn't need to say anything. Despite not having eaten in more than a day, we all knew not to touch the whitish slop in the pail, whatever it was.

The old man, however, dove right in, slurping down big ladlefuls of the stuff until he leaned back against the wall, rubbed his belly, and expelled a satisfied burp.

The Captain monitored the old man closely. When, after what must have been more than an hour, the man's maniacal grin showed no sign of faltering, the Captain gave us permission to tuck in ourselves.

The stew, to our surprise, was mouth coating and nutritious, with chunks of protein and a taste that suggested it was based on seafood. Moreover, there was more enough of it for all of us. I nearly found myself declining a second serving but decided I needed to take whatever nourishment I could get.

I allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief and felt several of my brothers do the same. I looked over at the old man, who know lay snoring in a corner. If this was how the beasts treated their prisoners, I thought, then I wouldn't be surprised if I were looking at my future: a life as a haggard, crazed, yet oddly well-fed prisoner.

...

For about 10 days, our life in captivity followed that same schedule: 23 hours of isolation, 30 seconds of intense dread, and roughly an hour of feasting on that fishy, hearty stew.

We learned little about our captors, except that the beasts seemed to be interested in the wounds between our legs healing. When Gand came down with a high fever a few days after our abduction, the beasts carefully applied a poultice to the inflamed area just below his member. Gand soon recovered.

Over time, the relief we had felt soured into suspicion. Why did the orcs want us alive and healthy?

We received the answer one evening when feeding time took on a new meaning.

That night the trio of beasts unlocked our cell door at the usual time. The smaller of the three stepped into the cell and inspected us before depositing the pail of stew, as he normally did. Then he departed and the door to our cell was locked in the regular fashion.

It wasn't until we were scraping the bottom of the pail with the ladle before we realized that the beasts had tricked us.

Orry was in the process of serving himself a third time when the ladle slipped from his hand. A cry of disappointment went up in the cell, but it was marked by playfulness, as though the man had spilled a freshly poured flagon of ale.

Orry didn't share in our rowdiness. His eyes were alive with terror.

"Cap'n...!" he said, slurring the word badly.

The Captain leaped to his feet--and keeled over.

One by one, we were struck with the same paralysis. One moment I was watching in shock as my brother collapsed in the straw; the next, the gravity in the cell seemed to shift, and the floor came rushing up to meet my face.

But while I could hardly move a muscle in my body, my mind was as unencumbered as ever. I knew exactly what had happened: The beasts had waited for us to lower our guard and laced our meal with a tranquilizing agent.

For several minutes I lay face down in the straw, listening to the unintelligible grunts of fear and frustration issuing from my incapacitated brothers. And then I heard the sounds of our cell door being unlocked for a second time that night.

...

I was powerless to resist as the beasts fiddled with the laces of my leather doublet, tugged on my boots, and stripped me naked. I was helpless as one of them slung me over his shoulder and carried me deeper into their lair. I put up no fight as they placed me in a net of leather straps, securing my hands behind my head and my legs so that my rear was exposed.

I strained to look around the low-ceilinged chamber, turning my eyes in their sockets as far as they would go. My brothers were suspended in similar contraptions, all of them naked, all of them with wide, terrified eyes.

Instead of torture devices, the chamber itself was littered with flowers and assortment of odd, plump figures. Yet the flowers were not enough to cover up the musky stench of the beasts themselves--a scent that intensified as they began to shrug off their leathers and furs.

One of the beasts stepped out of his loincloth and toward me, and I realized with a pang that they didn't need torture devices.

Between the beast's powerful legs bobbed an appendage as veined and hulking as its owner. The green skin ended in a hood that barely contained half of an engorged, black head whose tip was split down the middle by a deep and even darker furrow.

The beast stroked himself tentatively, his eyes fixed on my upturned rear.

I sought out the beast's gaze, hoping to communicate with a look a reminder about the unspoken code of honor that captors and their captives all abide by.

The beast drew closer, his member swaying with each step as though it were helping him keep his balance.

I felt my unspoken appeal to honor turn into a plea for mercy. Not this, I thought. Anything but this. Whips. Hot pokers. Thumbscrews. Anything!

But the beast could not read my mind, and he seemed determined not to read the look in my eyes. He came to stand between my raised legs, looking down at my rear as though peering down at the surface of water from atop a cliff, mentally preparing himself to dive.

It was difficult to tell for certain, but the beast looked younger than me. Despite his heavily muscled body criss-crossed with scar tissue, the beast's upturned nose and pale gray eyes gave him a somewhat youthful appearance. There was nothing youthful about his manhood, however, which looked as though it belonged not on a man but on a prized breeding stud.

The beast accepted a small bowl being passed around the room and poured some of the contents onto his cock. He spread it up and down the shaft with a palm, pulling the foreskin back as far as it would go.

My eyes swam as the already overpowering musk intensified. The smell was somewhere near the intersection of humanoid and horse, but all man.

I blinked tears from my eyes, watching and waiting. The beast had made up his mind. Pleading would do me no good. Instead I chose to take solace in the Captain's words.

We will endure.

I felt the beast slather the lubricating balm over my loins.

We will escape.

I grunted in pain as the beast clumsily penetrated me with a finger much larger than any man I had ever lain with.

We will exact our revenge.

I held my breath as the beast leaned into me, his weight concentrated against the only point of my body that might yield. The ring of flesh resisted, resisted, resisted but then violently surrendered, admitting the head and a great deal of the invader's shaft at the cost of a blinding flash of pain and a muddled wheeze that would have been a scream, had it not been for my sedated state.

All around the chamber similar noises went up as my brothers were taken by the beasts, their protests mixing together into a cacophony of agony. I joined them as beast inside me tunneled deeper.

The adrenaline hit my blood stream three seconds later, and as the pain went from unbearable to merely tolerable, I felt myself fill with a reckless defiance.

You will never break me! I thought, gritting my teeth, spittle flying as I panted. I forced myself to look at the spot where that green appendage was being driven into me, sickened by how its girth caused my flesh to grip it as it was pulled back out. Give me your worst, fiend! Split me open! I can take it! I can take all of it!

If there was any consolation, the beast torturing me did not appear to be enjoying himself either. His pale eyes were screwed tightly shut, his brow furrowed into an expression of a man dutifully carrying out an order. From time to time his cock would soften and slip out of me with a sickening pop, forcing the beast to run a hand along the length until he had coaxed enough blood back into it so that he could squeeze himself by the base, trap the blood there, and cram himself back inside with a shudder.

Despite his lack of enjoyment, the beast seemed determined to finish. As the chamber filled with roar after guttural roar indicating that his brethren had reached completion, my torturer pulled his semihard cock from my rear and decided to do the work himself.

I watched for several minutes as the beast furiously jerked his slick length, his hand a blur, my eyelids flickering as though I were staring at a drawn bow. Finally the beast's expression of pained frustration turned into one of pained relief. He hastily pointed the black head of his cock at my rear and staggered forward to penetrate me--but missed his target.

The first blast of the beast's seed splattered me from crotch to forehead, so hot I thought I had been whipped. Then the beast found his mark, stretched me open, and planted the rest of it inside me. Even though it felt as though the beast were filling me with boiling water as his cock pulsed and gushed inside me, I was determined not to give him any satisfaction from having claimed me.

I clenched my jaw and took it all without a word.

...

Whatever had fueled me during the torture session had burned out by the time we were returned to our cell. Trapped in that small room, my and my brothers' feelings of confusion, of embarrassment, of hurt, of shame seemed to suck the oxygen out of the space.

I glanced hopefully in the Captain's direction at regular intervals, hoping that the man would deliver a rousing speech similar to the night when we had been captured and gelded. But the Captain appeared to be lost in thought, his face in darkness where it hung between his shoulders.

I decided to take it upon myself to do it.

"Men," I began as the Captain had, but my leg failed to support my weight as I attempted to get up, and I crashed down hard on my knee. I was more successful on my second attempt. "Brothers," I said, my knee smarting. I vaguely noted that I could not compete with the Captain when it came to commanding a room with my voice. "These beasts think they can break us. But they merely dishonor themselves with their foul, primitive acts of violence. We are still men, no matter the--“

Orry made a mocking sound and spat on the floor. “Easy for you to say, bugger," he said. “I bet them brutes smelled the stink on ya and thought we all take it up the arse."

I froze, utterly taken aback. There were no secrets between rangers. My brothers knew that I enjoyed the company of both women and men, and they had never voiced their disapproval. I had thought they cared about my ability to navigate by the stars, set a broken bone, or identify an edible plant, not with whom I shared my bed.

"What'd you just call me?" I asked, my fingernails digging into my palms.

"You heard me."

I took a step toward Orry. "Why don't you--"

"Men!" the Captain shouted, freezing me in my tracks just as I was about to launch myself at Orry. "I will not have blood spilt between brothers. Do I make myself clear?"

We said nothing.

"I said, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Captain," I, Orry, and the rest of the rangers muttered.

I gingerly lowered myself to the floor again, still glowering at Orry. I could not believe that the man I had huddled up with to survive a night on Mount Dezhes during our frigid and failed expedition to the peak harbored these feelings about me. I looked around the cell. Did any of my other so-called brothers feel the same way?

“Thank you," the Captain said as the situation was defused. He hung his head again. "As to what you were saying, Vim. The orcs... They don't intend to break us. They intend to breed with us."

Orry snorted. "'pologies for speakin' out of turn, Captain," he said. "I figured as much when I felt that big bastard ticklin' me giblets with his pecker."

The Captain sighed. "No, no," he said tiredly. He rubbed his face with a hand, opened his mouth to speak, paused, and then tried again. "You don't understand. If we are to survive what lies ahead, we must face the truth and prepare our minds. I have known since the orcs took their knives to us. I should have told you then, but I... I could not bear to add to our misery. I clung to a fool's hope that I was mistaken, but now..."

The Captain's voice trembled with emotion. I had never heard him speak in such a manner.

"I warn you--this may disturb you," the Captain said. "The orcs... They mean to mate with us. Impregnate us. Force us to incubate and, yes, give birth to their brood."

My initial reaction was to laugh, but some invisible force seemed to be squeezing my throat. Air could neither enter nor escape my lungs.

When no one else spoke, the Captain did. “Martyn told us. He said the beasts have been tracking our party for months. They intend to whittle away at our morale by taking our men, reducing them to mere broodmares, and returning them to the party."

A chill shot through my body as I remembered lowering Martyn's misshapen body into the hole we had dug.

“Martyn, was he--“ I began.

“He was heavy with--yes," the Captain said, an expression of unease washing across his face. "He could not bear the shame. He ended the life of the thing growing inside him--and his own--before it could see the light of day."

Another silence followed. It seemed absurd that so many men crammed into a single cell could be so quiet.

“This is ludicrous!" Gand, our tall, bald master of horses, said. "A natural impossibility!"

The Captain looked at him with heavy, sober eyes. “Be that as it may, it is reality." He raised his head and his voice a little. "Isn't that right, old man?"

We turned as one to the wizened man in the corner who, despite the close quarters, I often seemed to forget was locked in with us. The man's yellowed, bloodshot eyes flitted around as he took in our desperate expressions, as though we were begging him with our eyes to debunk the Captain's theory.

Three seconds of all-consuming silence later, the man began to laugh. It started as a snort, then grew into a wheeze that seemed to rattle the man's bones. Eyes shut, yellow teeth on display, the man cackled wildly until he finally said:

“The Captain knows, the Captain knows, the Captain knows!"

My gaze fell on the old man's belly, and I realized with a pang that it was not bloated due to starvation.

...

It took less than two weeks before the Captain's fears were confirmed.

"Lookee, lookee!" the emaciated man cackled one morning, poking Font in the belly. "I thinks it's beginning to take, I do!"

Font slapped the man's twig of an arm aside. "Hey, curse you!" he barked, but there was a real sense of terror in his voice.

Since that first night when the beasts had come for us, our captors had made it a nightly occurrence. At first we struggled, but the beasts easily subdued us. By the fourth day, we hardly put up a fight.

As our resolve drained from us, the beasts grew bolder. One night, I had breathed a sigh of relief when my torturer seized up and deposited his emissions deep inside me, but the breath caught in my throat as another took his place. This quickly became the new normal. By the twentieth day of captivity, I was appalled to realize that I had been taken by no less than fifteen of the beasts.

One night, once the cell has fallen silent, I watched as Font ran a hand over his lower belly over and over again as though trying to smooth out a stubborn crease, his face a stiff mask of terrified resignation.

The old man had clearly lost his mind, but as the darkness pressed against me like a straitjacket, I couldn't help but share in Font's panic. Did his belly look slightly larger now than it did a few days ago, or was it merely a trick of the light?

...

Another week later, we could not deny what was happening to our brother's body. His belly seemed to grow by the day, and occasionally he would place a hand on it and groan softly in discomfort.

We kept our eyes averted out of politeness—or perhaps embarrassment. The brutes' seed had taken root in our brother's body. They had already used their knives to mangle our manhood. Now they were using whatever magic coursed through their veins to strip away what little of it remained.

The orcs continued to come, night after night. One night, their routine changed. They took the rest of us. They left Font to gestate.

...

The changes continued in violent fashion as winter turned to spring. One morning, the Captain woke us with a series of retching noises.

"Curses..." the Captain grunted, phlegm dripping from his nose and mouth. He turned his head slightly to look at us with watering eyes. "Well, brothers..." he said sardonically, reaching down to clutch his gut. He didn't need to say anything else.

It soon became obvious when one of us had succumbed to the taint. They grew distant, shielding their bodies and their shame from the rest of the group, but the charade always failed. Sooner or later, the swell would become impossible to conceal--often revealed when the beasts came for us in the night--or the spawn would announce its presence with a shift or a kick that caused its host to yelp in discomfort.

I long thought that I was among the lucky ones whose bodies were powerful enough to fight off the potent concoction with which we were filled on a nightly basis. I was wrong.

One night after after we were half-led, half-carried back to our cell after a particularly vigorous torture session, I began my evening ritual of dressing in my ranger gear. Although the hour was late and the cell warmer than it had been when we first had been captured, the feeling of clothes against my skin felt comforting--some meager form of protection in an otherwise vulnerable existence. It also gave me something to busy my fingers with as I tried to ignore my aching backside.

I made to fasten my leather doublet but struggled to close it. Frowning, I loosened the fastening to see if the my twill shirt, smelling of stale sweat, had bunched up. The shirt, despite being stained with various bodily fluids, appeared to be fine. I lifted the shirt to check my trousers.

"Vim?" a voice said.

I don't know how long I had stood there, staring down at myself. The change was almost imperceptible, but I knew my body. The slight bump below my belly button had stopped my heart.

"Anything the matter, brother?"

The Captain got to his feet with some effort and closed the distance between us. I raised my head, and he saw the anguish in my eyes.

"Oh," he said softly as he read my expression. He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled like a man who has come across a grievously wounded comrade but is determined to let him die without knowing the extent of this injuries. "Best get some rest, ranger," he commanded, though his voice carried a note of compassion.

As the Captain turned away, his turgid belly brushed against my forearm. I recoiled, my skin crawling.

...

I jerked awake some nights later from a noise so hideous I will never forget it. I looked around our cramped cell with eyes gummed together with sleep, sure that the beasts were attacking us once more.

What I saw still haunts me to this day: the Captain on his knees and elbows in the hay, wailing as blood streamed from between his legs.

Every muscle in the the Captain's body quivered as the man braced himself against a pain so tremendous it seemed to radiate from him like heat.

Font, who had fallen asleep next to the Captain, awoke and turned sluggishly to face the source of the noise. He stared at the sight for two seconds, his face a grimace of confusion. Then he screamed and pushed himself away.

I saw it too. Something was forcing itself out from between the Captain's legs.

Every squirm and spasm triggered a new howl from the Captain. He clawed at the stone walls, beat his fists on the floor, and crushed his body into the corner of the room as though attempting to escape the grasp of some invisible tormentor.

The Captain screamed until his voice failed him. Even then, he continued to produce a high-pitched whine like a dog that has broken its back. He batted away our every attempt to console, to comfort. Relief did not come to him for hours.

At last, just when dawn was breaking, the red-splattered, green-skinned cause of the Captain's suffering dislodged itself from his body and lay motionless in the straw. The Captain collapsed in a dark red pool and never moved again.

Those of us remained alive spent the day in a grief-stricken torpor. We were inconsolable. We had seen our death. The alternative—indeed the only shred of hope that we could cling to—was that our bodies would not reject the parasites growing inside us; that we would instead suffer the same fate as Martyn, our bellies swelling with the unnatural spawn until the beasts allowed us to crawl back to our camp to face the horror and disgust of our compatriots.

That night, the beasts came for us again.

Without the Captain's inspiring presence, I debased myself in front of my brothers.

"Please!" I cried, kowtowing before the jailers. "No more! I'm begging you!" Sitting back on my heels, I took my belly in my hands and showed it to the beasts. "Can't you see? You have won! Let us mourn our Captain in peace!"

The beasts did not. Upon our return later that night, the Captain's body was gone.

...

Without the Captain's guidance, we struggled to divine the beasts' motives. They had already succeeded in their crimes against nature—the evidence literally grew larger every day, every week, a pace that sent my heart racing whenever I rubbed my growing stomach, dispensed with the latest ill-fitting item of clothing, awoke to vomit, or felt my skin flush with strange hot flashes.

For reasons unknown to us, the beasts continued to torture fewer and fewer of us, leaving the rest in our cell. One night, Gand joined the majority that remained in the cell, and we spent the next day exchanging theories and counting the weeks since our abduction in search of a theory but found none.

Though I did not voice it, comparing Gand's belly to my own suggested I was much further along. I now resembled an expectant mother in her seventh month of pregnancy, while he was barely showing. In fact, looking around the room, mine was easily the heaviest belly in the cell. The comparison brought an angry, embarrassed heat to my face. Why, then, were the beasts not leaving me with my shame? What more did they want?

The answer would continue to elude me. Whenever the beasts came for me and the unlucky few, they asked no questions and made no demands—other than for my body.

...

One by one, as we detected the swell of our bodies, we ceased to be a brotherhood. We closed ourselves off from the others mentally. Those in whom the seed never took were removed from the cell. Whether they were released from captivity or from this life, I do not know. Later those of us who remained were separated physically, relocated into separate cells and seeing one another only when the doors to our cells were flung open to announce each night's torture session. This lasted for a while until my cell door opened one night and I found myself alone with my jailers. I assumed the orcs had spaced out our torture sessions to further isolate us.

I did have company in my cell (though that is much too strong of a term): the old man. Other than muttering to himself, the man would occasionally fix me with one of his beady eyes, as though fearful that I could burst at any moment like some overripe berry. I assumed the beasts thought the disheveled fool unworthy of a cell of his own, despite the abomination growing in his gut.

...

Time passed. One morning I awoke and realized I had lost track of the days. More time passed. I gradually became aware that it must be summer. The stones of the cell seemed to radiate heat. I spent my days slumped against the wall, my legs bent at the knees and spread wide to accommodate my distended belly. I had long since dispensed with wearing clothes--besides the heat, none of it fit me any longer--leaving me wallowing in the straw like some brood sow, naked and pregnant but for my metal collar.

Each morning brought a fresh, horrifying reminder of my state. Some unknown number of hours after I drifted off to sleep, I would wake wondering why my body felt sluggish and swollen only to lay eyes on my bloated belly, the skin stretched tight and lined with purplish marks. Worse yet, some mornings it would wake me.

The gestation period was playing tricks on my mind. At times my chest felt as swollen and tender as my belly, as though my body were preparing to begin lactating. The phenomenon would not have surprised me. Perhaps it was just the bulk of my belly pushing against the muscles of my chest. Either way, I dared not touch my chest to find out for certain.

My belly also blocked from view what remained of my manhood. Occasionally I would find myself reaching around my girth to give my shriveled cock a reassuring squeeze, whispering to myself I'm still a man, I'm still a man, I'm still a man.

Other times, in darker moments, my fingers would travel farther, beyond the flap of skin that represented all that remained of my scrotum, trembling as they traced the slick rim of my passage. I could not see it, but the flesh there felt different, more pliant--though in fairness I had never explored it much before.

Touching myself there inevitably evoked thoughts--and this sent my heart leaping into my throat--of delivering, of giving birth. With every day, the grotesque, unnatural act was surely drawing ever closer. Yet with every day, the concept of performing that act grew ever more inconceivable. My body had already changed in ways that unfathomable, but this had to be impossible. Would I even survive?

Yet the orcs continued to come for me in the night.

...

One night, as I heard the rains of a summer storm beating hard in the distance, the orcs' plan changed again. After being fetched from my cell and led to the breeding chamber, I looked up to see that the room was unusually crowded. I felt uncomfortably aware of my own nudity, surrounded by orcs dressed in leather, furs, and finely embroidered fabrics.

After I was placed in the contraption, my limbs secured, the crowd drew closer. My naked, bloated form seemed to interest them. Despite the numerous times—dozens? Hundreds?—that the orcs had bred with me, I felt an unfamiliar feeling announce its presence inside me: embarrassment bordering on performance anxiety.

The feeling was unfounded, evaporating as soon as the first orc stretched me open with a grunt. I recognized the green-skinned, scarred individual as one that had mated with me before by his wild, black hair and braided beard that reached to his abdominal muscles--and, I am ashamed to admit, by his cock. The hefty, upward curving appendage was as gnarled as a log left on the forest floor, but it seemed to pulse with an aggressive virility that brought beads of sweat to my forehead.

The orc sank that cock into me to the base with disturbing ease and quickly settled into a rhythm, my belly bouncing uncomfortably every time his pelvis slammed against my rear.

Soon I became aware of a tightness in my bladder—or perhaps something behind it? The weight of the spawn inside me, combined with the beast's curved cock, was squeezing and rubbing some unknown spot inside me, and the sensation it was causing vacillated between two unidentifiable extremes on a spectrum, back and forth, back and forth, to the point where I couldn't tell the two apart. Neither could I move. Nor would the beast understand me if I begged it to stop. The feeling grew as the beast carried on, building on itself, multiplying, intensifying, until —

“Ahh!" The noise—half lustful cry, half pleading moan—burst from my throat. It wasn't the sound of a ranger bravely enduring the latest in an endless string of breeding sessions, but the sound of a bride discovering the pains of her wifely duties on her wedding night.

My outburst had drawn the onlookers' attention. I felt myself going red in the face as they crowded around me where I lay, legs spread wide, belly jiggling obscenely. The orc, after a moment's pause, resumed, and the noise escaped my lips again—and again, forced from my body every time the coarse, black fur of the his groin touched my skin and his cock kneaded that spot inside me.

I looked with panicked eyes around what little I could see of the chamber beyond the curve of my belly, though I could not have said what I was searching for. The torture felt different that night, and it scared me. I closed my eyes tightly.

“Gods...!" I panted, pouring into the word the alarm and confusion and the million other sensations threatening to overwhelm me. I opened my eyes carefully. My vision, which seemed to be narrowing to a point, took in my own swollen figure, blocking my cock from view, juxtaposed with the flexing muscle and laboring manhood and indisputable masculinity of the beast bedding me. The contrast was almost too much to bear, drilled into my brain by the constant in-out-in-out-in of flesh claiming flesh. “G-gods--gods--ahh!" I said again, my voice cracking.

One of the orcs in attendance issued something that sounded like a command, and as the beast between my legs continued his assault, I felt my arms fall to my sides—they had been untied.

“Th-thank--ah!--you," I gasped between moans, but instead of fighting to free myself, I grabbed my belly and held it as steady as I could as the orc continued to pound into me. My skin felt slick with sweat, and the trail of dark hair that ran down from my now protruding belly button lay glued to my stomach.

Mercifully, the orc fulfilled his duty in a matter of minutes. Powerful jaw set, wide nostrils flaring, he grabbed me by the hips and held me tight against his crotch as his cock throbbed and erupted inside me.

My relief was short-lived. To my horror, my stomach produced a sickening, rumbling gurgle in response to the orc's climax, and with my belly in my hands, I felt as the already thin skin of my stomach stretched even tighter as my gut grew impossibly larger.

“Urgh--what--n-no!" I stammered, pushing against my belly in a futile attempt to halt its expansion. Yet my stomach continued to inflate, the added bulk increasing the pressure against the tender spot inside me. "Gods--too much--can't be--happening!"

The assembled orcs drew closer again and conversed in low voices. In the meantime my supremely indifferent tormentor pulled his cock out me and tucked it back in his furs. Another beast, this one with a tusk pierced with a large golden ring, stepped forward, hands fiddling with the leather strap tied around his waist.

My belly had stopped growing, but its expansion and the lull in the action had made me aware of something else about my body: my cock, hard as the metal collar around my neck, poking out from under the bulk of my abdomen.

...

I was forced to cradle my grossly distended belly as I shuffled back to my cell that night. Three more beasts had inseminated me after the first, and my belly had awarded each climax with a deep rumble and a perverse growth spurt.

I thought the orcs had led me back to my cell until I looked up from the dirt floor.

The room in front of me was no cell. It was a chamber, but even that word failed to capture the beauty of the space. The room was decorated with the finest rugs, the thickest pillows, and the cushiest furniture for lounging, resting, and relaxing, and heavy tables laden with decadent meats, ripe fruits, and brightly colored sweets.

And the room was full of men. Men twice my size. Men with the heads of lions and the bodies of eagles. Men with scales who lay coiled around themselves like snakes.

In addition to being men, the people in the room had another thing in common: They were all heavy with child.

“Why are you showing me this?" I asked, despite knowing that my captors did not speak my tongue.

I look up into the face of the orc holding the chain attached to my collar. He was watching me closely, his expression one of gentle curiosity.

I turned back. Hand trembling, I ran my fingertips along a sumptuous purple divan in front of me. My body throbbed with pain and longing as it imagined how it might feel to rest on it, to sleep...

A wail drew my attention. In a far corner, a creature that could have been an orc, though with skin the color of dirt, lay writhing on his back, his legs in the air. Two men in robes tended to him, one sitting by his head, clutching his hand, and speaking soothingly in a language I did not understand; the other crouched between his legs, speaking what sounded like commands.

The wails were instantly familiar; they were the same that the Captain had made on the night when he had delivered and died.

I took several uncertain steps backward until I collided with my handler. “I don't want to see this!" I stammered, my voice breaking. Wheeling around as quickly as my belly would allow, I stared pleadingly up into the orc's face. "I don't want to see this! Take me back!"

The orc continued to stare down at me, his expression unchanged. He tightened his grip on the chain and remained firmly planted where he stood.

...

Much later upon my return to my cell that evening, I curled up in my corner, trembling and sobbing.

I could endure no more. I would not escape. I would never exact my revenge.

Like the Captain's death, the night's events had provided a crushing glimpse of my future. The different pieces that together formed the full picture of my situation swirled in my mind, but I dared not connect them out of a fear that doing so would cause me to lose my mind. Instead I lay there and wept.

I was unable to wallow in my own misery for long, however, as I felt something brush against the sensitive skin of my belly. Opening my eyes, I saw the old man crouching over me. He touched my belly with his long, gnarled fingers, causing me to wince.

"Deep breaths," he said, sounding uncharacteristically lucid. His eyes scanned my body as though he were an experienced healer. "We wouldn't want you to go into labor prematurely. You wouldn't survive it. Come, now. Up you go."

He hauled me into a sitting position. I struggled to control my breathing. My mind swam with images of the Captain, dead in the straw.

"Prematurely...?" I said incredulously, groaning as the weight in the pit of my stomach settled on my bladder. "Then why... why do they continue to torture me? I am already pre... preg—" I couldn't bring myself to say the word "-- but they continue to take me, day after day after day! What more do they want?"

The spawn inside me lurched as though it had heard, nudging up against that sensitive spot inside me and causing me to gasp.

“Torture? No, no, no! You misunderstand! Surely you no longer view mating as torture?"

I spluttered in protest, but then I thought about how my body had responded earlier that night—how I had lain there even after my arms had been freed as orc after orc ravaged me, sounds of depravity escaping from my lips, my emasculated, erect cock on display for the assembled crowd to see. I fell silent, my face burning with shame.

The old man must have been able to read the truth in my facial expression. "Exactly as I thought," he said with a wink that suggested the two of us shared a secret. He squeezed my wrist to feel my heartbeat. "It is not something to be ashamed of. Quite the contrary. You should be proud of how well you take them, and of how your body has taken to the changes. Your heart is healthy. You've maintained your weight--perhaps even put on some to accommodate the cub, which by the looks of it is ideally positioned. No bleeding as far as I can see. All in all, you're developing quite well for your first."

I snorted but said nothing. The matter-of-fact way in which the old man described what was happening to my body made me feel self-conscious.

"Oh, but I didn't answer your question," the old man said, snapping his fingers. “The warriors are extraordinary, virile beings. They do not reproduce the way humans do—not that you don't understand this already. Look at you, brimming with life! So, so lovely... Ah, apologies, there I go again... The warriors have no need for females. They merely need... a receptacle. Some vessel fertile enough to gestate offspring. A host that, once properly prepared, won't reject their gifts."

The old man stroked the raw, empty patch of skin below my cock. In my mind I saw the knife once more, the blade catching the firelight.

"Better yet..." he continued, "a vessel that can bear multiple inseminations to ensure that the offspring takes on the strengths of all its sires--not just one."

I groaned in discomfort, shifting in the straw in search of a more comfortable position. I wanted to push the man away, to stop him from confirming the fears that had swirled in my mind over the past months, but I could not find the strength to do so.

Instead I thought of the many orcs who had taken me, from the massive, amber-skinned warrior dressed in a bear pelt whose muscled gut had rubbed against my own as he bottomed out in me, to the older, one-eyed orc who had bred me gently, almost lovingly, reacting and adjusting to my every grimace and grunt.

I looked at my belly for what felt like the first time. The thought of some part of those and the many other orcs who had mated with me growing inside me stirred some brand new emotion that I was not yet prepared to identify.

The old man sighed. He sat down on the floor in front of me, crossed his legs, and placed a hand on his potbelly.

The old man straightened up. “I was once that vessel," he said wistfully. "But I am old. My body is worn. My time is coming to an end. My latest will be stillborn, I fear." The man's eyes glazed over, shrouded by memories from years in captivity.

I looked from my belly to his and realized that, even as the rest of us had succumbed and swelled, the old man's stomach had remained the same size since the day we had been captured.

“Is that why--were you placed in our cell to spy on us?" I blurted out as the realization struck me.

The old man's reply came without a moment's hesitation. "Yes," he said.

I frowned at him. I had expected him to vehemently deny it. “Why?" I said at last. "Why work for the orcs? Why betray your own kind?"

The man frowned at me as though I were speaking a foreign tongue.

"Betray?" he echoed. "No, no... I'm offering you a chance at a charmed life!"

"A charmed life? Like the Captain?"

The man waved my argument away. "Your comrades are not suitable," he said disapprovingly. "They can hardly nurture the seed of a single warrior. They will produce weaklings, runts, not even fit to sweep the cells. Your friend the Captain, not even that."

I should have punched him for daring to speak ill of the Captain, but I didn't.

“But you... you are special!" the old man hissed. He lunged forward with surprisingly agility and grabbed me by the sides of my belly. His hands moved up to caress my tender chest. I moaned. His touch felt so painfully soothing, like putting ice on a burn. “The warriors continue to bless you with their gifts, and your body continues to accept them, finding new, fecund soil for their seed!"

“That's not... I'm not..." I protested weakly.

The old man traced a line down the front of my feverish body with a finger, his hand disappearing beyond the curve of my belly. Suddenly I felt fingers between my legs, pressing in and up. I gasped.

The man brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed. “Yes... even now your body signals its desire to be bred, like a mare in estrus. You can still take more."

The man pressed his fingers under my nose for me to smell. I made an attempt to stop him, but as my hand closed around his spindly wrist, the unfamiliar scent--apparently produced by my own body--hit me.

My curiosity got the best of me. I sniffed, but then--disgusted in myself--I pushed his hand away. But whatever had been on the old man's fingers had been smeared into my bushy mustache, and the pungent smell lingered there. I licked my upper lip involuntarily.

The old man smiled knowingly.

"When the door opens, the choice will be yours," he said. "You can go back. Face your kin, who will never understand. Struggle through the pains of childbirth, clutching the hand of a reluctant midwife, and bury your shame in an unmarked grave. And then what? Continue this... half life? Live out your days as a mangled husk of a man, a freak, forever writhing in withdrawal, knowing you'll never again experience the privilege of receiving the warriors' seed, never again feel your body swell with their spawn. Yes... you can return to your comrades, the men who claim to be your brothers. The same men who whisper behind your back about who you lay with.

"Or... you can choose the charmed life. You can acknowledge the fact that your part in the great cycle of reproduction hasn't ended, merely shifted, worship the superior beings who have rightfully taken their place above you in the hierarchy, and embrace your new role in creating life. Choose this life, and you will be treated well, pampered and cared for! You won't even need to lift a finger! But you will lift your legs. You'll mate with the fiercest warriors, the wisest diplomats, the most talented bards, and you'll deliver their offspring with pride! You'll end conflicts between clans by joining the seed of their patriarchs in you! Don't you see? This is an honor!"

Just as the old man finished speaking, I heard noises on the other side of the cell door. I looked up at the door in terror. How much time had passed since the orcs had had their way with me? How many more wanted to take me? How much larger could I possibly get?

"No...! Not again! No more!" I whimpered, shielding my face with my hands as I shrank into my corner. What frightened me most, in all honesty, was how my body might react.

The door creaked open. I heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see Font framed in the light, his face contorted with disgust as he took in the sight of me. He looked no larger than the day when we had been placed in separate cells, whereas I must have been twice as big.

“Gods!" he hissed. “Can you--can you walk, brother?"

I stared at Font in disbelief. "What is happening?" I said.

"The beasts forgot to lock our cells," Font said in an excited hiss. "Can you believe it?"

I couldn't. I looked over at the old man, who had retreated into the shadows. He met my gaze, and in his eyes was the implication of every word he had spoken to me.

Font stepped around me, moving his head this way and that as though searching for some place on my body to grab me by in order to get my up on my feet.

"Font! What are you waiting for?"

The question came from outside the cell. I squinted and saw Orry--he, too, the same size as when we had been separated--and behind him several of my other brothers.

"Help me!" Font barked back at him.

"There's no time! We have to--"

"No time? Get in here and help me get--"

Orry stormed in and grabbed Font by the front of his shirt.

"Pull yerself together! He'll just slow us down! C'mon, let's get outta here!" He spoke as though I wasn't in the room.

"Orry, he's our--"

"Just leave 'im! Let's go!"

Font pushed Orry hard in the chest. "A pox on you," he spat. Turning to me, he said, "C'mon, Vim. Up with you. There's a good lad." He hooked his arms under my armpits, and with a loud grunt of exertion, he stood me up.

The look of disgust reappeared on his face as his gaze fell on my drooping gut. "Just... just stay close to me, all right?" he said. "We'll find our way out of here."

I stepped out in the hallway to rejoin what remained of our brotherhood. The men there looked all but unrecognizable: emaciated, unshaven ghouls with bellies no larger than that which would have looked at home on a drunkard.

Instead of greeting me like a long-lost comrade, my brothers reacted with horror. Some swore. Others averted their eyes.

To make matters worse, at that moment the spawn inside me jerked violently as though in the middle of a vivid dream, kicking me in the bladder. I fell to my knees with a braying moan, catching myself with my hands. As I waited for the squirming to stop, I heard the others issue barely muted cries of pity and disgust. I opened my eyes and realized that I had urinated on the floor.

"For the gods' sake!" Orry said. "He'll alert the guards!"

Even Font looked less certain about his decision to help me. "C'mon," he said.

We stole along the same corridors we had been led down an uncountable number of times during our captivity, but now, every shadow seemed to hide a danger, and every turn could be our last. I labored to keep up with the rest, gritting my teeth as I cradled my gut, but I was too afraid that they would leave me if I asked them to slow down.

Yet there were no orcs. At least until we stumbled upon the entrance hall.

They were all there. Dozens, hundreds of orcs, standing in silent formation on either side of the chamber, flanking the path to our escape. They had been waiting for us.

One of my brothers let out a sob, and it was the sound of a man who knows he is about to die.

I looked around the hall, scanning the faces of the orcs. The more I looked, the more I recognized. There was the young warrior with the chipped tusk. There was the barrel-chested hulk whose left arm was missing.

Even as my brothers despaired, I felt a limitless calm come over me.

“Go," I said firmly.

“Go where?" Orry asked.

“To the exit. The orcs will not touch you."

“Right. You first."

I didn't move. Neither did Orry. Then one of our brothers did, cackling like a madman leaping to his certain death as he ran across the room.

The orcs followed his progress with their eyes, but made no move to stop him.

The ranger reached the gates and seemed unsure of what to do. Then he tugged one of the heavy doors open to create a crack large enough for him and his belly to squeeze through, and then he disappeared into the night, his laughing growing more maniacal as it faded away.

Other rangers broke for the exit now, lumbering along as fast as their bellies would let them. They, too, were able to leave without being stopped. Orry himself eventually seized the opportunity, and then Font and I were the only ones left.

“Why...?" Font said, and the word was charged with the pent-up confusion and fear of months of captivity. “Why let us leave?"

“They already have what they want," I said gravely.

Font turned to face me. He looked at my belly, many times larger than his, and then locked eyes with me. A great sadness filled his face.

"You will never be forgotten, brother," he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "I will make sure of it."

"No," I said, grabbing him by the neck. "You will ensure that I am forgotten. Tell the others I died long ago. Send no search parties. Make no war with the orcs. Leave them be, and I will make sure that they do the same."

“But... how?" he said, incomprehension splashed across his bearded face.

I inclined my head slightly and placed a hand on my belly.