Chapter 8: Found

The band of escapees trudged slowly through the forest, roughly following the path of a stream. They were trying to avoid any main roads to avoid being seen. A large group of largely naked escaped slaves with a tied up kitsune would draw immediate attention after all. Of course, travelling through the woods was hard. The aforementioned nudity meant that pushing hard could get them cut up on branches, twigs, and brambles. Any food they found was what they could scavenge, along with water from the stream.

For a long time, the only constants were the cold nights, the long days of walking and the moaning of Valerie whenever they stopped for a rest. Esbu and Kate had taken to resting in trees. The trees brought some more relief from the damp and bugs of the forest floor, and it was pretty easy for a sergal to climb with their long claws, and hand-like feet. Esbu snuggled up to his female as she purred against his chest. He couldn’t believe he had gotten so lucky to have her, despite their current position he had a woman of effervescent beauty in his arms. It also leant some small silver lining to their lack of clothing as he gently traced his hand over the curves of her body. He didn’t think that he would ever grow tired of how she felt in his arms. They had mated again before curling up to rest, an increasingly common occurrence. Sooner or later, she would end up pregnant with his children, if she wasn’t already, and Esbu just hoped they’d be somewhere more appropriate for a pregnant woman before it started to be a real concern. For now, though he just hugged her in their little tree top next and started to nod off.

Then the screaming started.

Both Esbu and Kate snapped to full wakefulness in record time. They looked around frantically to figure out what was happening. In a neighboring tree Marcus was similarly waking up and surveying. Down below was chaos though. Nude males and females were sprinting to and for, some disappearing into the forest, some tripping over themselves or each other and some falling to the ground as glowing bolts of energy slammed into them.

The source of said energy was immediately apparent. A small group of kitsune males had found their camp. They were dressed in ranger gear and didn’t appear to be regular hunters. Probably mercenaries hired by Valerie’s family to find her and recapture the escaped slaves.

There wasn’t much that the treebound trio could really do other than glance at each other. The men below may not have been many in number, but they were at least some level of spellcaster. Attempting to fight them wouldn’t work. Attempting to run would draw attention, so it seemed their best choice was to stay still and hope that the mercs didn’t look up.

The commotion died down before long. Most of the slaves had scattered into the woods. A few that had been stunned were being tied up and the mercs were gathering around the bound body of Valerie. The kitsune and former mistress was still bound, blindfolded, and very naked lying in the center of camp. There could be no mistake what had been happening to her just given the look of her sticky body.
“Who’s there” Valerie could be heard saying, “Are you here to save me? My father would reward you.. H-hey!”

One of the mercs a middle ages kitsune poked her with his toe in the stomach, “Well well, the third daughter is alive, and seems to have found a new life’s purpose.”

The other mercs chuckled, but needless to say Valerie wasn’t amused, “Oh fuck off, are you going to save me or not? My father sent you, didn’t he?”

“Nope”

“What do you mean ‘no’?” She asked sounding a bit alarmed.

“Your dad’s having a bit of a cashflow problem what with the farm burning down. We just read about the misfortune in the papers. A pile of slaves, ripe for recapture? That’s a profit opportunity.”

Valerie squirmed trying to get into a sitting position, “Well I’m not a slave.”

“You kind of look like you are, young lady” The male knelt down and stroked her cheek, making her wince away from him. “Now it may not be legal to enslave kitsunes, like you or me.” He smiled and pushed her onto her back, “But it looks like someone else has beaten us to it.”

Valerie tried to kick and squirm away, but in her bound and blind state there wasn’t that much she could do to keep the male from climbing on top of her once she was down. His hand griped onto her breast and squeezed. She yelped and shouted, “Get off, Stop, no no, no you’re supposed to save me, not FUCK me!”

The sergals in the trees watched silently as Valerie was taken by the male. A couple others took to violating the bound slaves they had already captured earlier, male and female didn’t seem to matter. Each took their turn one by one. Esbu gritted his teeth watching this. He knew there was little he could do. The slaves whimpered softly but mostly took it stoically. Valerie on the other hand was sobbing hard. She had gotten mostly used to her treatment by the males of the party, but being almost freed only to be used again had evidently been too much for her, and tears were freely flowing even as she stopped fighting and just flopped back letting herself be used.

Once they were finished sating their lust, one of the men, apparently the leader, ordered the rest to spread out to recapture more of the lost slaves. The band mostly disbanded to look while the leader stepped over the shaking Valerie, “Now then. It’s too bad that you couldn’t be rescued. We’ll tell your father that its unfortunate but that you were killed by the escaped slaves.”

“Please, no.. please.. I’ll … I’ll service you… I’ll be your slave” Valerie pleaded.

“Tempting, but if you ever told anyone about this, well” He pulled out a knife, “I need to make sure that you don’t.”

Esbu’s eyes widened watching this. He glanced over at Marcus with a pleading look. There was only one marc left right now, were they going to just watch him kill her? Despite everything she had done in the past would they just watch? It was a lot to convey in a glance, but Marcus seemed to get the message. He affected a groan and started to move.

The merc lifted his knife ready to bring it down on the helpless Valerie when something large and heavy landed on him.