NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 20: Hah. This Sadistic Motherf*cker is Supposed To be one of the Male Leads? I Should’ve Let Him Die.
This motherfucking baboon is not stopping. He’s been walking for hours through the pitch darkness without even taking as much as a piss break. Oh. Hold up. Maybe that’s something she can try. She says instead,
“Hey. Put me down. I need to pee.” But the results aren’t remotely what she’s anticipating. He abruptly halts. Pulling on her collar to dangle her over a bush,
“Go ahead.” He’s got to be joking.
“What kind of sick fetish is this?”
“What? You need privacy?” he spins her around, “here.” facing her away from him.
“You’re fucking with me! Tell me you’re fucking with me.” she struggles. Violently twisting her body around like a rabbit caught by the ears. Attempting to rip the fabric of her clothes. But before she’s able to draw her dagger, he instantly tosses her over his shoulder. She retracts it back into her sleeve. It’s the only weapon she has left so she should be careful with it. She doesn’t want this confiscated.
“Guess you don’t need to pee.”
“Put me down or else I’m going to pee on you!”
“And you accuse me of having a sick fetish? If you do, all judgement is on you.”
It didn’t fucking work! He resumes forward for another good few hours. Tenaciously soldiering on without even the slightest momentarily lapse in vigilance. What the fuck is he even made of? Do testosterones come with ten doses of caffeine as well?
Now. The morning sun is rising on the horizon. Her eyelids are starting to feel like damp blankets each time she blinks. Refusing to stay open. She’s getting tired. But she can’t pass out. If she did, then she wouldn’t know the way back. She needs to stay awake to remember the path. She bites into her arm. Hoping to shock some adrenaline into her system to keep her alert. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Come on.
She passes out cold before she even realizes it. The next time she opens her eyes, it’s already dusk. The sky an eerie blood red. The scenery has completely changed. She’s waking up to two castrated corpses dangling from a gate frame like twisted banners with, ‘Death to Astian Snakes’ carved into their torsos. The doors themselves have been torn down. More Astian bodies are left rotting on stakes lining the peripherals of the short stone walls circling up to it. It shocks her wide alert. She flicks her gaze around.
She’s in a half-demolished settlement, teeming with Estelian soldiers, twice the size of Ryden. The buildings are better constructed with bricks and rocks, so most of them survived the invasion. Albeit not in livable conditions. This must already be Feror. Shit. Which direction did the redhead turn? It’s hard to tell. But the ground feels flat. They’re off elevation.
Redhead is crossing two livestock pens where pigs are kept in spaceless clusters adjacent to the windmill that’s left too tatted churn. She makes eye contact with a naked ragged girl discarded in the mud beside it. Tracing her blankly with vacant pupils as she passes. Dulled of all light. Repressed in trauma. And she isn’t the only one.
There are countless village girls everywhere Lumeria looks. Tucked away in corners. Shivering in fetal positions cradling themselves. Others soundlessly sobbing. Blood soaking their thighs. Some have sticks and bottles and even swords shoved in them. Left to die a slow excruciating death. The ones still alive are hollowed out to the point they don’t even try to escape despite not being kept in chains. A living nightmare. Being here immediately reminds her just how sadistically cruel Estelians can be to conquered lands. No wonder Soril called them dogs. Even that would be a tall compliment.
She soon spots an Estelian soldier mid act. His victim flutily crying for help to deaf ears. There’s a table of men nearby. One of them shows the girl a little more than a scornful gaze, whereas the other gets up. Approaches to kick her across the face,
“Quiet. Bitch. You’re lucky someone even wants to bone your maggot infested pussy.” and the perpetrator simply laughs. She can’t help but to holler at them,
“Hey jackasses! Imagine if someone else treats your mother or wife or daughter the same way. How would you feel?” It draws their attention. They’re studying her for a while before bursting out cackling. One of them ominously points towards her,
“Oh, don’t get impatient. You’re next.” Tsk. She doesn’t come off very intimidating when she’s held hostage herself. But Redhead cautions,
“She’s much trickier than your average village girl, so don’t touch her yet. I don’t want her escaping.”
“Who’s the special wench?” another one of the soldiers asks,
“By the way, Rakgar, where’s everyone else? Thought you went to fetch them.” Rakgar. That must be the redhead’s real name. No honorifics. They appear to be in friendly terms,
“They’re dead. The White Ghost of Astia got them. But this is his woman right here.”
“Shit. For real?” The next sentences make her veins run cold,
“Yeah. So don’t touch her for now.” it's that twisted, malicious grin that he’s wearing when he reveals,
“I want him on his knees, castrated. Helplessly watching his lover get passed around like a common whore before I behead him for what he’s done.” the soldiers hiss and cheer,
“Damn. You’re the most fucked up among us.”
So, this is his true colors huh. To think, she subconsciously got comfortable just because he didn’t threaten her enroute. He isn’t just a dumb gorilla she can mock. And she isn’t an obnoxious little girl he has to put up with. This is a war. They’re enemies. And she should’ve treated him like one. She was foolish to have dropped her guard.
He is bringing her towards a building. Two guards securing the ungated entrance amicably greet him as he enters. It’s a prison on the inside. He approaches a cell, violently ripping off a strand of her hair before throwing her in,
“Just to prove that I indeed have you.”
“I should’ve left you for dead.” she says as he locks the gate behind her. He squats down so he’s able to taunt her at eye level with a sickening smile,
“Too late missy. Could’ve killed me when you had the chance.” before turning around and walking away. What a real piece of work.