Broken Oaths [F, Snuff, Slavery, Noncon, Taxidermy]

\[A princess's bodyguard fails in her duties, and swears herself to retribution and redemption. Her journey doesn't last long.\]

How quickly it had all fallen apart. Sunday had seen Tessa standing watch in the rose garden as Princess Violet sipped tea with dignitaries, Tessa’s role more ceremonial than protective. On Tuesday, the war had begun, Melnea’s armored divisions crashing across the border and pillaging as they went like armies of old. On Friday evening, Tessa had donned her body armor and knelt before her royal charge, the battle outside the palace walls waiting for no one. There, she made promises that she would not be able to keep. Now, as far as she could tell, it was Sunday again, and she lay naked and caged in some dank and unknown dungeon. Shrapnel wounds had peppered her left arm, since expertly cleaned and sealed. The enemy’s medics had pulled the fragments from her flesh; The medical squads always followed close at the soldiers’ heels when there were slaves to be taken. Tessa examined her right arm in the dim light, flexed the muscles and watched the play of the tendons beneath her grimy skin. Gingerly, she repeated the motion with her injured left arm. Pain flared in her shoulder and along her triceps, but she could move the limb. She was strong, and mostly intact despite her wounds. Tessa knew she would heal. Then, there would be work to do.

Somewhere near, the Keeper crept about the dungeon, singing as they worked. Some other captive whimpered as they were collected and taken away.

As the artillerists’ drumbeat marched closer with every shell as Tessa, bodyguard and guard captain, had knelt before the princess. She had sworn that she and her guard units would hold them off, at least long enough for Her Majesty to make good her escape. Tessa had every reason to believe she swore in earnest. The fortress walls were strong, and had withstood many sieges before. The tasks done with bow and trebuchet would be better done now with machine gun and mortar. And they had ammunition to spare. Her guard units would hold, at least until morning. Kneeling before the princess, Tessa had told her as much. Her charge, beautiful and grave, looked down upon her.

“I would have you come with me, Tessa.” Tessa bowed lower to hide her eyes. She explained that if the safety of the princess came down to the action of a single bodyguard at her side, then she had already failed. She was needed at the wall. She could keep them at bay.

It would be an understatement and fundamental misunderstanding to say that the Melneans were cruel. Flesh, to them, was material like stone or wood. They studied torture as they did art and music. Salacious, obscene, decadent, to be their captive would be to know strange hells. For these reasons, if none other, Tessa needed to buy Violet time.

In reality, it had ended before the sun had even set. Tessa had strapped her blade to her thigh and cycled the bolt of her rifle before slinging it across her shoulder. She left the strangely silent keep and made for the wall. Stalton, a young officer serving as her aide de camp, had fallen in with her, voice fast and low as he briefed her on the fortifications and the movements of the enemy. The evening sky was stained flickering orange beyond the citadel as the war carved through the city. Tracer rounds darted skyward as unseen targets came and went. Tessa fancied that beneath the low rumble of battle, she could already hear the war chants of the Melnean legions. It wouldn’t be long, now.

She had felt the high pitched whine of a seeker in her teeth before she heard it’s terrible wail. Stalton, unseasoned and used to the life of a staff officer, had stood with his head cocked, unsure what he was hearing. Tessa grabbed him about the shoulders as she ran, heaving the two of them into the lee of the wall. Flash and thunder came together. Overhead, the seeker warhead split and munitions tore into the guards’ emplacements in a chain-rattle of blasts.

The fire had been too precise, Tessa reflected from her cage. It fell on positions not an hour established, including the enfilades they had lain within the wall to better hold the gate. There had been a rat, someone to sight the Melneans’ fire from within the keep. She flexed her hand as she thought. Who it was hardly mattered now. They’d have their rewards, and Melnea rewarded their tools handsomely. In time, she hoped to reward them herself.

One of the seeker rounds had struck an enfilade near to her. The flash had dazzled Tessa. Intellectually, she knew her eyes could not have seen her squad being atomized by the force of the blast. She had been blinded, and could only have seen their silhouettes at the moment of impact. Still, she saw their twisted forms against her eyelids, edges gone ragged as they came apart. They never felt a thing.

The blast sent her and Stalton airborne, a hail of shrapnel microseconds behind. There was darkness for a while, or for an eternity, she could not tell which. When Tessa came to, she found the ceramic plating in her body armor broken and deformed. There was blood flowing, coating her, filling in her mouth. She’d been hit, she was sure. She must be gored, bleeding out. It was cold relief to find that most of the blood was not her own, but spilled from an opening in Stalton’s throat as he lay tangled atop her. Was he still moving when she dropped him to the slick dark cobbles? Down the avenues of the keep she had fled, clutching her injured arm, the limb howling with shrapnel. He had been beyond saving, she would tell herself. She was right, of course. Tessa bellowed orders, calling to get to cover, calling for medics, calling for a radioman. It took her some moments to realize she was yelling only to herself.

Tessa had failed Stalton, like she’d failed the rest. They’d died, she’d lived. Worse than that, when the squads of Melnean vanguards had poured into the keep, moving like wraiths among the fires, she had not fought them with the strength she had left. She should have been proud to die with her people, but when they came, they would shoot and bayonet the wounded while she stole away, shedding her now useless plate carrier and tearing the dog tags from her neck. Opportunity presented itself. Rounds from second and third salvos must have fallen while she was unconscious. It was dumb artillery now, the seeker having largely extirpated organized resistance in the keep. Some had landed in the courtyards, killing several of the palace staff unfortunate enough to find themselves caught in the maelstrom. A stout young woman’s body was curled like a crushed spider on the ancient stones. Her head had been struck and ruined by by a chunk of broken masonry. Tessa had yanked the clothing from her body before pulling her own fatigues off. Streaked with blood and sweat, she pulled and tugged the girl’ unresisting body, still warm, into the fatigues and fastened the tags about its neck. Thus, Captain Tessa Albright, bodyguard to Princess Violet and captain of her house guard, was to have died.

Tessa found the unfortunate’s ID card in a pocket of the stolen clothes as she redressed herself, quickly committing the girl’s name, date of birth, and address to memory. The unbroken face in the picture looked passably similar to Tessa’s own. It would have to be enough. She aimed to try for one of the keep’s hidden postern gates, see if she could slip out those secret exits along the river and make her way into the city. Dodge the patrols, blend into the populace, disappear for a time. She didn’t make it that far.

The Melnean vanguards, made terribly shapeless by cloaks of mottled black, drifted down from the walls they had so effortlessly scaled, falling on their suspensors like flakes of ash. The squads moved quick and silent through the courtyards, rifles raised and their blades unsparing. In a moment of rising terror Tessa considered playing dead, but the dead were not spared their attentions. She froze, which in the end was the correct choice. When the Melnean squad rounded the corner, Tessa saw the fires reflected in a thousand fractal eyes of glass. The bolt took her in the side between the third and fourth ribs. She thought again that she had been mortally wounded, but the hot numbness that spread hungrily through her stumbling, staggering body was not that of a bullet. Tessa fell for the second time into darkness.

Awareness came before feeling, and the guard captain found herself in a paralysis nightmare. Her eyes flicked about in a stilled head, and she saw the Melnean medics leering down at her from behind masked faces. Forceps slid between the rent skin of her arm and one by one drew out pieces of shrapnel. Slick and red, they plinked into a metal bowl.

“Look, this one’s coming around,” came one voice.

“So it is,” answered another.

“Restraints?”

“No, it’ll be hours before she can move. She’ll be a good girl for us.”

Tessa tried to move, her addled mind ready to make a swipe for a scalpel and show them what she thought of them and their dismissal of her, but her body would not answer. Patched and treated, Tessa was transferred bodily from the field hospital. Some unknown time later, she was deposited in the low cell, little more than a cage in the rock. As feeling returned, she found that she was naked to the chill, damp air. Her effort to retain the dead girl’s identity had been moot; They had not even asked her name.

In time, Tessa came to understand that the place she was confined in was as much a slave market as a prison. They came and went, with no consistency of features, dress, or gender. They walked past the cages, eyeing each occupant in turn as the Keeper toured them about with that sing-song voice. Most paid Tessa no mind. One bent to examine her through the bars, eyes never bothering to meet her gaze. Time stretched on as Tessa collected her thoughts as best she could. She could still scheme, prepare, have some semblance of a plan for when she got out of here. She knew as a dark certainty that the princess must have been taken. The Melneans wouldn’t kill her, though; She was too useful as a political tool. Tessa would have to find her.

It was a woman who finally bought Tessa. In a black dress, the bodice ribbed like a bat’s wings, she glided among the cages with her skeletal retainer stalking at her heels. To the attendant she proclaimed:

“No, no, I want *strong* ones. Shapely isn’t enough, I need form *and* function, athleticism and power made manifest in the flesh, not these half-starved little whorelets, I-” The woman’s eyes, a searing blue, found Tessa. Silent now, she approached and began to devour Tessa’s naked flesh with her gaze. “This one,” she said after a moment of delicate consideration. “Let me see this one.”

Whatever directives Tessa had given herself in those lonely hours of captivity, plotting vengeance and redemption to kindle some lone spark of hope, whatever need she knew she had to play the cowed and obedient slave, she still chafed under the examination. The attendants came forward and drew her from the cage. Feeling her spine give a string of staccato pops as she was able to straighten for the first time in uncounted hours, she found her full height to be a foot above that of her prospective buyer. This gave the woman not a moment’s pause, but rather a tight smile stretched across lips the color of dark wine.

Tessa’s hands were yanked behind her head, her feet kicked outward, forcing her legs open for examination. The woman paced about her in birdlike strutting steps, slowly circling the prize three times before closing in for a nearer look. A hand wrapped in black leather, the type of which Tessa kept herself from guessing at, palpated her bicep, shoulder, buttocks, thighs. She bit her tongue, stilled her heart, and willed herself to endure.

“Superb musculature,” the woman mused to herself. “Well-built, yet not insistently so,” she continued, her fingers tracing the topographic contours of Tessa’s upper back. She tilted Tessa’s head from side to side, examined her ears, her neck, and spread her ass for a moment’s look. Circling to her front, the noblewoman’s hand and eyes drifted lower. Fingertips brushed the once-groomed patch of dark-blonde pubic hair at Tessa’s crux, causing the captive to grit her teeth. “Decently kempt, but will need a little work…” Lower still, a finger traced Tessa’s labium, one then the other before parting the two. Tessa swallowed her gasp, but emitted a small and stifled grunt. Upwards trailed the finger, finding her clitoris without deviation or hesitation. The pad of the finger circled once, twice, thrice, again, again, before returning lower. It pressed at her entrance, and sank up to the first knuckle the finger, then the second. Tessa realized that the probing touch had made her wet. Her cunt gave a twitch and a shudder around the digit. This time, she could not repress the gasp which was followed by something humiliatingly near to a whimper.

“...And sexually healthy as well, it seems.” The howl of anguish in Tessa’s head was near to breaking loose, but the attendants’ eyes watched her closely, searing whips and truncheons near and ready. There would be hell to pay for this, Tessa swore. Someday, somehow, if not by her own hand, then by another’s.

The woman mercifully withdrew from Tessa, but not yet content with the item, examined Tessa’s face. Those fire-blue eyes looked into Tessa’s own, but saw no humanity reflected back. “A touch plain, but perhaps a vulgar sort of prettiness. Sharp, angular, almost modernist in its shape…” The fingers now felt Tessa’s near-trembling lip, peeling the lobes open before forcing her jaw to do the same. As her teeth and mouth were scrutinized, Tessa could smell and taste herself on that horrible gloved hand. In that moment, she resolved to kill this woman if ever she had the chance.

“And the scars,” she continued, her fingers alighting on the patch of shining scar tissue on Tessa’s right deltoid, a souvenir of her first deployment as a junior lieutenant. “The wounds,” the woman intoned, examining the bandaged constellation of shrapnel wounds peppering the left arm, so recently received. “They mar, yes, but do they not excite? Do they not draw the eye, and lend an earnestness, an *authenticity* to it?” The noblewoman’s voice grew louder, her tone bordering on the rapturous.

At long last, the examination was over. The woman, the vulture, the *creature* withdrew, eyeing her bare prize as the retainer proffered a handkerchief with which to wipe clean her soiled glove.

“I will take this one, yes. Have it prepared and I will send Karris along shortly to collect it.”

And that was all. The lead attendant bowed and scraped and made noises involving the phrase “your grace.” The vulture turned on heel, receding quickly from sight. A newborn star of hate burned bright in Tessa’s breast as she was led away, not back to her cage, but down along the rows of steel bars and staring faces.

In her mind, Tessa held tight her plans of escape and resistance, turning them over and over in her head until her thoughts were smoothed and polished as a river stone. Whatever humiliations she had endured and would yet endure, that horrid creature was her way out of this place. Once shipped away to whatever estate she was destined for, she could find her bearings again. There would be pockets of resistance still, in the mountains and the Eastern forests of the country, and clandestinely in the alleys and backrooms of every city. Tessa would choose her moment, slip away, and find them. In time, perhaps a small raid could liberate Princess Violet and get her across the northern border to neutral territory.

All these things and more Tessa considered behind a face of vacant complicity as the attendants sprayed her down with cold water, scrubbed at her skin until it was a newborn pink. A silent and empty-eyed waif in a steel collar and naught else shaved Tessa, removing all hair below the neck with a steady hand. The madman scrawl of silvery lines that danced across every part of the girl’s body hinted at modifications Tessa hoped to never understand.

The spindly form of the Keeper approached, singing in their disconcertingly mellifluous voice. Leaning down to the waif’s ragged ear, they spoke in the harsh tongue of the Melneans. Tessa knew little of the language, only able to identify a few conjunctions and linking words. The kneeling waif’s back went ramrod straight, her eyes growing wide in an expression that could have either been mortal terror or some sick ecstasy. Having been given some directive, she stood and melted away into the next room. The Keeper turned their eyes, eyes that were somehow wrong, on Tessa. They clapped their hands and grinned.

“So! The Marquess was quite taken with you, I hear. Such a pity. And we hadn’t even begun to get to know each other.” They gestured for Tessa to come, and with only slight hesitation she did. She was guided into a small room of painful brightness, a steel table outfitted with padded shackles dominating the center of the space. “Be a dear and lie down on your stomach, won’t you? We have to get you ready to ship.” The Keeper hummed intermittently while they worked, happy to converse with the air if Tessa did not feel like responding.

“Hm, you may not be a beauty to grace the Court and its pleasures, but you are an exceptional specimen. The Marquess has been collecting ones like you. Farm girls, some athletes, a good-looking laborer here and there. And soldiers! Certainly soldiers.” Tessa felt a prickle along the back of her neck, worried suddenly that the Keeper had found her out and was toying with her. “So, which were you, hm? Come now, don’t be shy!”

“A… a smith.” The keeper made a quizzical noise.

“A smith, you say? For how long?”

“Most of fifteen years.” The Keeper gave a barking laugh.

“No, no, no no. Look at these arms,” they continued, an ice cold hand lifting Tessa’s arm by the wrist and examining her bicep with the other. “A smith would have biceps even more developed. And likely burn marks on the hands and about the forearms, and very distinctive calluses on the palm from swinging the hammer to match.” Staring at the metal of the table inches from her face, Tessa inwardly bristled. “Pick a better lie,” the Keeper continued, buckling her wrist into the padded shackle before continuing to the next. “A toughening of the muscle and skin at the shoulder, where the rifle recoils, exceptionally well-developed legs, upper body built intentionally, boot calluses and… what’s this, calluses from… is this from hand-to-hand training? And perhaps even some *fencing?* Goodness, girl, you must have been a cultured sort of soldier, rather high up in the palace. A better lie would have been, hm, a forester, perhaps, maybe a game warden. Something to match your body a little better.” Adrenaline was rising in her breast. She was discovered, her body read as easily as a map by this ghoul. “It’s fine, dear, I don’t expect honesty. Bodies are always honest, in their way. Minds, never, not even to themselves.” Tessa expected she’s be turned over to the Melnean’s intelligence officers. However horrible the stories about them and their techniques were, it was too late to fight at this moment. There would be no heroic escape from this room or this dungeon. She’s have to wait, choose a moment once she was being transferred. The Keeper finished buckling her ankles. Unexpectedly, they then put her concerns at ease.

“I’m sure the inquisitors would delight in a session with you. I’ve met a few, you know. They’re weird ones, if you ask me, but they do *so* love their work. I can empathize with that. But they shan’t have you! You’ve been promised to the Marquess, and she so hates to be denied her treasures.” Out of Tessa’s sight, the Keeper was arranging their tools to a purpose that Tessa decided not to dwell upon for the time being. Instead, she tried to put the Keeper’s loquaciousness to use and attempt to net some useful information.

“The Marquess… I assume her estate is in Western Melnea?” It was a safe bet, knowing what she did about the country and its geography.

“Indeed!” the Keeper responded, the pleasure evident in their voice at drawing Tessa into conversation at last. “It’s an estate renown for its beauty, and the pleasures enjoyed there.”

“I suppose the Marquess takes in a lot of slaves.”

“So very many, and she always needs more! Slaves to serve, slaves to entertain, slaves to decorate. That’s what you’re for, if you hadn’t guessed.”

“...Decoration?”

“Quite!” Tessa was a little taken aback at this. She’d rarely considered herself to be all that worth looking at. The idea of being kept to lounge quietly about on an eccentric noble’s estate for the sake of improving the scenery, though, was hardly the worst fate she could entertain. It might afford her time to survey the environs and plan an escape. Perhaps she’d have time to pay the Marquess a personal visit before leaving.

“And do all the Melnean nobles engage in such excesses? Keeping and feeding slaves just to have them stand around and look pretty-” The Keeper again burst into throaty laughter.

“*Feeding?* Oh, sweet thing, no no no, by the time you’re serving in the Marquess’s estate, you’ll be quite stuffed and stilled.” The words floated through Tessa’s mind, not quite connecting with meaning. “As I said, she’s been collecting ones like you. She must have a new art piece in mind, perhaps a new statuary arrangement for one of the gardens or the entrance hall. It was men of strong build she was looking for last month, you must be for a companion piece.”

The truth was almost too terrible to be believed. Almost. Tessa jerked against the restraints, hard.
“No, no, come on, wait, you can’t- I- I-” The shackles held her firm. In an effort to generate any significant amount of force, she tried to jerk her body upwards from the table, but the Keeper buckled a restraining belt across her waist.

“Now now, out of all the uses for you, this is really quite a nice one. You’ll be beautiful and useful far longer than ever you would have before. The fleshworkers might even make a few improvements to your face when they’re putting you back together!” As the Keeper spoke, he worked out of Tessa’s sight. She heard the scrape of metal on metal.

“No, wait, *please!* I- I have information! Troop deployments in the rest of the country, informant networks! I know things! I can be useful to you, just let me talk to someone.” Two quick footsteps, and the Keeper was behind her. She strained to see what they were doing, what they had in their hand.

“Look forward, please. This will only take a moment.” Panic, desperation, a wild rush of terror. Tessa again surged against the bindings, again to no avail. Her voice broke, rising to a sobbing scream as the ice-cold hands, strangely strong, pushed her head into the desired orientation. There was a touch of cold steel at the back of her neck.

“*Please! Whatever she wants, I’ll do it! I promise! I’ll do anything Let me try, I- I- I’ll be a good girl! I’LL BE A GOOD GI-”*

The captive bolt discharged and tore through flesh to neatly pare the spinal column. The body convulsed once and went slack, save for the last mad twitchings which would persist for some minutes. The Keeper lowered the head gently to the table, careful to do nothing to damage its features, and slipped a stint into a vein at the neck to begin the draining. They whistled to themselves as they waited for the body to empty and its twitching to cease, before selecting a scalpel from the arrayed tools. They began the flensing process with a long incision down the middle of the back. Trapped in her own head, Tessa’s consciousness quickly had begun to narrow to a single guttering candle flame. Her perception of what used to be her body was lost to a starry and nebulous void. As what oxygen lingered in her tissues was consumed, the candle flickered out.

The process took several weeks to complete. With offal removed and the skin cleaned and drying, the body was immersed in baths of solvents and polymers, plasticizing the flesh to better preserve its living shape. The preserved skin would be returned to the écorché. The fleshworkers, the best at their trade, added filler and stuffing where necessary, banished death’s pallor, and returned the glow of life to its cheek. They replaced dead eyes with glass ones that were very nearly the right color. In a month’s time, the completed piece joined a growing number of others like it in the garden of the Marquess’s sylvan estate. Beautiful in form and function, the strong body would hold a bronze vessel on high, from which an endless stream of water would issue.

Some years later, Princess Violet would find herself in this garden during one of the Marquess’s much anticipated fêtes. She was a different person then. She had married a Melnean duke, helping to cinch their control of the country, and had since been well-educated by her husband and his concubines in all the civilized pleasures her adopted culture had to offer. Violet’s tastes changed quickly. She was of royal blood after all, and such people are always receptive to lessons in the exquisite uses of helpless flesh.

Momentarily glutted on wine, sighs, and shrieks, Violet wandered through the gardens, taking a breath of cool and quiet night air. Her eye happened to fall upon a robust female form amid the water feature, one that still held high a brazen vessel. She walked to it, fixed it with a curious smile, reached up and ran a moon-pale finger along its thighs, its quim, up to the tips of its breasts. Its face was familiar, she thought, but Violet could not recall its name.