The Challenge

m/f, snuff, drowning, necrophilia

As a gentle ocean breeze blew past him, Jad paused to inhale deeply. The air was warm, salty and slightly fragrant with the spice of some plant that grew on the island. It was a good day to be alive.

Of course, brushes with death always made you appreciate life more, he reflected. Only a few hours ago he and his fellow crew members had been locked in deadly combat with a Rolan merchant vessel. For merchants, they had been surprisingly ferocious once boarded and a good number of his comrades had died at their hands. He was lucky to have made it out with only a light slash across his upper arm. He rolled his shoulder, flexing the muscle beneath the bandage. Already healing up nicely, thanks to the poultice their ship’s doctor had applied.

They weren’t pirates. Although, admittedly, their lives were very similar to that of pirates. They were privateers--mercenaries of sorts, hired by the Davit crown. They sailed the open seas, terrorizing the ships of any nations that Davit was at war with. Which, at the moment, included the Rolans.

The risks were high but the rewards were great. The merchant vessel, the Seaspray, had been on a return voyage, loaded down with all manner of valuables. Jad’s personal share of the booty was sure to buy him plenty of nice things, once they made port at a major city. His ship, the Wave’s Malice, was currently anchored in the bay of a small, uninhabited island that had become a sort of headquarters for their operations.

A tug at the rope in his hand reminded him of another, much more exciting, prize from the raid. Most of the fighting men on the the Seaspray had been slain during the battle. Those who were not were summarily executed after their capture. Wave’s Malice had no room for prisoners. The few women aboard, only four in total, had been turned over to Jad and his friend Seth. It had cost them a fair portion of their share of the loot, but these women were going to do things that money couldn’t buy.

The women had been disarmed, of course, and posed little threat. Nevertheless, they had been bound, their their wrists tied together with rope. They also each had a length of rope tied around one ankle, with an iron weight attached at the other end. The weights were iron cubes with a thick ring on one side, which served as a handle and a tying point for rope. They were damned heavy. The women might have been able to lift them themselves but certainly wouldn't have been able to get far. He and Seth each wore leather bracers that magically enhanced their strength, making it only slightly tiring to lift and haul these weights around. There were several feet of rope between the weights and their ankle attachments, so they worked reasonably well as leashes with which to control the prisoners. They had brought the women ashore in the ship’s jolly boat and were making their way to a secluded seaside cavern.

The two women whose leads Jad held walked in front of him, toward their destination. Even though their tugging had been the result of him pausing to enjoy the breeze, he brandished his sword at them when they turned to him.

“Get walking,” he growled. The blonde one actually squeaked a little at this display. There wasn’t much hope for her.

They continued on in silence. Jad’s two prisoners slowed as they approached the cave, peering in cautiously. Once they saw that there was light coming from within, they resumed their grim journey, stepping carefully around the uneven surface of the cave’s entrance.

They were soon completely inside. It wasn’t a large cave. Other than the short tunnel leading in, the only other feature was a rough stone ledge that, after a short drop, lead to a small pond of calm, clear water. Everburning Torches had been arrayed along the walls of the cave, both above the water and below, giving the pool an eerie yellow glow.

Jad carefully rested the prisoners’ weights near the edge. Seth and two women with him arrived just behind them. He rested his weights on the floor in a similar manner.

“W-what are we going to do here?” the nervous blonde asked, looking down at the water below. She had been a stowaway on the merchant ship. The lover of one of the sailors, with whom she had hoped to travel and start a new life at the ship’s destination. Or so Jad had heard. She had explained all of this to the men who had come upon her in the cargo hold as she begged for mercy. She wore a dingy dress and apron that made him guess that she had been a maid or some other sort of house-servant before her ill-fated journey. The outfit did little to accentuate her body, which was slight and petite. She was young, although certainly in her adulthood, and her face was clear and smooth with youth.

The other women glared at the blonde with varying levels of contempt. It wasn’t clear whether they were scorning her due to her stowaway status or due to her cowardice. Maybe both. Who knew? Either way, they seemed to be just as interested to know the answer. Jad cleared his throat and began.

“I know that we must seem like mean, nasty pirates,” he began, eyeing the blonde, who quailed at his attention. “But we’re here to offer you a chance to make it out of this alive. Which is more than can be said for any of the men aboard the ship.”

“Just get to the point,” one of the other women asked him. The patches on her uniform marked her as the ship’s boatswain--rare for a woman to attain such a position, but not unheard of. Her black hair was cut short, in a style common for military women. Her dark skin and exotic eyes marked her as one of the people of the Southern Seas, who were renowned as expert sailors and traders. She had put up a perfunctory fight during the battle but had quickly surrendered when she saw her crew members doing so. Since then, she had accepted her capture with quiet cooperation. But now it seemed that there was some moxie in her. This one had some promise.

Jad smiled.

“My companion here,” he gestured to Seth, who had seated himself on the stone floor and was rummaging through his backpack for something. “Has a Potion of Water Breathing.”

At this, Seth produced a small glass flask filled with a blueish fluid. He uncorked it and downed its contents.

“I’m sure you can imagine what that does,” Jad continued. “He’s got an anchor, like yours, and he’s going to take a dip in the pool here.”

He paused in his explanation as Seth produced just such a weight. But before tying it to his ankle, he removed his pants, revealing a full erection.

The blonde startled at this but the others seemed less surprised.

He continued to disrobe, until all that remained were his magic bracers. He then carefully affixed the anchor to his ankle. He stood, holding the weight in one hand and a dagger in the other. He wordlessly walked to the stone ledge and, with a perverted grin to the women, hopped in.

“Oh, don’t worry, the water’s actually quite warm,” Jad assured them as they stared down into the pool.

“So, what’s the game?” a different woman asked. She seemed more bemused than scared. Maybe it was a defense mechanism for her, or maybe it was because she felt that she was about to have an advantage in the events to come. Based on her attire, she was clearly some sort of prostitute, perhaps a designated courtesan for the ship’s crew. Her low-cut dress revealed an impressive amount of white cleavage, boosted by a tight corset beneath it. Waves of jet black hair fell past her shoulders, contrasting sharply with the pale skin of her chest.

“As you couldn’t help but notice, my friend has been out to sea for quite some time and is in dire need of comfort,” Jad explained.

“Oh, that will be no problem at all,” she tittered. “Just hand me one of those potions and I’ll get him taken care of in no time at all!”

Jad smiled mischievously.

“I’m afraid that’s the only potion we have.”

They stared back at him in shock.

“I will send you down to him, one at a time,” he continued. “The first to get him off will be spared her life. He has a dagger down there with him, you saw, so he’ll be able to cut loose the rope that holds you, once you finish. That also means no funny business--believe me, there are more painful ways to die than drowning.”

The women collectively shivered at that last word. Even the whore seemed to have grown serious.

“Y-you must be joking, right?” she blonde stammered. “This-this can’t be real. I-I’ll do anything--whatever you want--just don’t send me down there, please, I can’t die, he said everything would be all right, he said that I would be fine, you can’t do this--” her pleas soon devolved into unintelligible blubbering. The other women all stepped away from her, their scowls deepening.

“Wait, who said that you would be okay?” Jad asked her, trying to sound genuinely curious.

“The man, the man who found me in the hold,” she sputtered out.

“Agon?” Jad asked, innocently.

“Yes, Agon, the man with the beard, Agon. He told me that I would be safe, I just had to let him tie me up, he told me…”

“Well, if Agon gave his word that you would be fine, I guess I have to honor that.” Jad was never that great of an actor but the frantic young woman seemed to believe him wholeheartedly.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, I don’t know what to say!”

“Here, let me get your hands free,” Jad said, moving toward her. She held out her wrists and he sliced off the ropes that had bound her. She was still crying, although they seemed to now be tears of relief as she heaped praise on him.

“Now, just let me get the one on your ankle too,” he said, kneeling before her. In one smooth motion, he lifted her anchor and shoved both her and the weight into the water below.