Smash. Glass tinkling against wood flooring. A quick hop through the now-empty window frame, whatever glass shards that were still clinging to it scraping harmlessly along Crius’ tough scales, and he was in.

In all honesty, it wasn’t much of a target for someone of Crius’ abilities. Lizardfolk like him were big and tough, which meant that those who decided to put their talents to use in skulduggery were best served by taking jobs that made use of those traits. Anything that might require, say, a few guards to have their skulls cracked open. Even simple muggings tended to go better when you had a few feet on any targets and were covered in scales.

Crius wasn’t doing that. Crius was breaking into a leatherworker’s shop. Not even one of the good leatherworkers that made fanciful stuff for the nobles, either, just one of the ones that supplied whatever kit your typical man on the street might need. A low-priority target.

But you didn’t always need to be making big heists and breaking into heavily guarded fortresses. Sure, Crius would do that if the job seemed easy and the money was good, but he didn’t hold his breath for those opportunities and jump blindly at each one that crossed his path. There were people who did that, and they were called adventurers.

He was a thief. He didn’t steal for honour, because that made no sense; he stole for money, to keep his belly full, and to keep his coinpurse at a comfortable weight. Sometimes that meant robbing the lowly leatherworker. People wanted leather, and they didn’t want to pay shelf price for it, so Crius undercut the competition in the most direct way possible.

After stopping and listening for a moment to make sure there was nobody moving around inside—unlikely, given that it was midnight, but he’d seen stranger things on a job—Crius began to ply his trade. By the looks of the crates and racks arranged along the walls, full of leather either yet to be formed or formed into objects that he didn’t really care enough to identify, he was in a storage room. Unlit, but darkvision made that a nonissue. 

Crius might’ve seemed underequipped to loot, given his lack of a backpack, cart, or any other means with which to carry whatever it was he chose to steal, but that was where he had yet another advantage over his competition on top of being a hulking, dangerous lizardman. Reaching a hand into his pocket, he retrieved his secret weapon: a burlap sack, thin enough that it could be folded up until it was only a bit bigger than a hand, but spacious enough to hold a decent bit of loot.

But the word ‘decent’ did it a disservice. As unassuming as the bag might’ve looked, it was actually one of Crius’ most valuable possessions, and it looking so ratty was probably one of the bigger reasons that he’d managed to hold onto it for as long as he had. It was nothing other than a bag of holding, a magical artefact capable of, as the name implied, holding a whole lot more than its appearance would indicate.

How did Crius get his hands on such a thing? The first assumption people would make is that he stole it, but he hadn’t. He’d had to steal a [i]different[/i] magical wotsit to trade for it. It’d been a big effort, a massive headache, and an overall hassle that had required him to risk death several times over.

And now he was using the fruits of that labour to steal leather pieces for dinner money. Ah, the life of a thief.

Unrolling the bag and pulling open the mouth of it, Crius stared grabbing anything that looked leathery off of the shelves and shoving it into the bag. Rolls of the stuff? Into the sack. Bags? Sack. Gloves, hats, cloaks? You’d best believe it all went right into the sack. It actually felt kind of relaxing, just taking stuff and shoving it into the bag. As relaxing as the stressful life of a thief ever got, anyway, always keeping one ear out for danger.

Which was an instinct that served him well as, right about the same time as he finished picking his first shelf clear, Crius heard a sound. Like most thieves, Crius didn’t like sounds, unless the sound was coins clinking or people making those wet ‘glrk’ sounds after their throats were slit. This sound wasn’t either of those. It was a knock. Three of them, in fact. Knock, knock, knock.

If he was being honest, that was one of the better noises he could’ve been surprised with. It meant that whoever it was that was out there wasn’t the owner of the property, as people didn’t have a tendency to go knocking on their own doors. So Crius decided to take the passive approach and stood very still, waiting for whoever it was that was knocking to go away.

“Hello?” said a voice from the same direction that the knock had come, feminine sounding. “Are you still open? I know it’s late but, uh, I’ve got gold! I’m a paying customer!”

Gold? Crius might not have been the shopkeeper, but he was more than willing to take gold if she was offering. He opened the door from the backroom to the main room of the store, opening it just a crack and peeking through.

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t dark. The front of the store was illuminated by oil lamps, though judging by the dimness of them, they’d been left to burn a touch too long. Things fell into place in Crius’ mind: the owner of the shop, eager to get back to his wife and kids, must’ve rushed out without bothering to snuff out the lights. Drawing the attention of one late-night shopper.

Crius pushed his way through the door and squinted through the windows at the front, trying to make out what he could of whoever it was out there through a layer of grime so thick he probably could’ve scraped it off with a claw. She looked blobby and indistinct, but Crius could tell she was short, and she had that special something trailing off behind them that exactly two races in the city had—and seeing as how one of them stood at around seven feet and the other about four, it wasn’t hard to guess which of them the figure was. A kobold.

How much money could a kobold really have? Why would a kobold be visiting a leatherworker in the middle of the night? Questions that Crius didn’t have the answers to, and didn’t care to consider. The opportunity was there, and the particulars didn’t matter. A good thief knew how to play things by ear. Worst came to worst, he could punt her across the room.

“Just a minute,” Crius called out to her, shutting the door to the room he’d just broken in through before moving over to the front, turning the deadbolt, and opening the door to look down at his potential customer.

Definitely a kobold, one with dark scales that shone with a pleasant lustre in the light of the oil lamps. Judging by the backpack and cloak she was wearing, she was the travelling type, though Crius meant that less in the sense of ‘travelling mercenary’ and more ‘person trying to get from one point to another without getting eaten by goblins’.

“Oh, thank you,” the kobold said, having to crane her head up a bit higher than most to look Crius in the eye. “I hate to bother you at an hour like this, but Ludi and I just got into town, and I, uh.”

As the kobold spoke, her eyes drifted lower down Crius’ body, and it was clear that she wasn’t seeing what she’d expected to see from a leatherworker. Appropriately so: Crius hadn’t dressed to impersonate a shopkeep, he’d dressed to rob one. That meant a belt filled with all the tools of his trade, which included a rather vicious looking dagger dangling from his hip. The kobold’s eyes were locked on it.

“Lucky you came by when you did. I was just locking up for the night, getting ready for the walk home.” Crius nudged the pommel of his dagger with his palm, not threatening to draw it, just making the kobold aware that he knew exactly where her eyes had wandered. “Lots of unsavoury elements out at this hour, y’know.”

The tone of Crius’ voice made it clear he thought a kobold knocking on ‘his’ door in the middle of the night fell into that category. It was a very particular inflection that he’d heard plenty of times before, whenever anyone with even the smallest measure of power was talking to a kobold—which, considering the popular perception of kobolds, tended to be whenever a kobold was talking to anyone that wasn’t a kobold. A bit of the condescension you’d use when talking to a small child mixed with the disgust of speaking to a beggar or a drunkard.

Kobolds tended to react to it in one of two ways: begrudging acceptance out of hope of not making a scene, or if they were feeling brave, a bit of uppity snark. And if Crius had read this one right...

“As a matter of fact, I [i]do[/i] know,” the kobold said, returning her gaze to Crius’ face to give him a sharp look. “I passed a group of lizardfolk on the way over here. Looked rough, like they were gonna try to do something.”

Ah, there it was. All the suspicion she’d had instantly forgotten in her need to prove that just because she was a kobold didn’t mean she was a thief, and with a racial barb thrown in there to boot. Crius smiled. “That so? I’d be remiss to leave you on my stoop with such types skulking about. Come on in.”

Crius stepped aside and held the door open wide, beckoning the kobold to come in with a wave of his arm. She walked in with her head held high in the stuffy sort of way that came so readily to people who felt slighted, looking all the more ridiculous coming from a kobold. “Thank you. And the name’s Pruna.”

Crius hadn’t asked, but he wasn’t going to refuse any scrap of information she had to offer. Another chip in the pot, and he was going to need all the chips he could get if he was going to play the role of shopkeep and leatherworker without knowing the slightest thing about either profession.

“Adahn,” Crius said, moving to shut the door behind Pruna—and after making sure she wasn’t looking, taking the extra moment to lock the deadbolt. “So what is it you were after?”

“A satchel. Something nice, that’d fit me. Not [i]for[/i] me, but that’d fit someone my size, y’know?”

Crius had the benefit of having cased the place beforehand, but he still felt like the kobold he was talking to was a complete and utter idiot. This wasn’t a place where they made nice things. If she wanted a bag, she could get a bag, but it wasn’t going to be pretty; it was going to be serviceable, something for the kind of man who was going to be picking his meals carefully after buying it. Like a kobold like her even had the money for anything that could be considered ‘nice’.

He didn’t say any of that, of course. It didn’t do to be rude to customers, that much he knew, even if you were planning on robbing them blind the moment the opportunity presented itself. Instead, he flashed Pruna his best smile.

“I think I have just what you’re after. Right this way.”

Crius started moving towards the displays closer to the back of the shop, and as he’d asked, Pruna followed dutifully behind. In all honesty, Crius had no idea where he was going. He didn’t know where in the store the bags were even kept, apart from the ones in the back that he’d already snatched. He was flying blind, scanning the merchandise in hopes of finding something approaching what Pruna was looking for.

Which was fine. Crius had learned that as long as you carried yourself with confidence, even if you had no idea what you were doing, people were far more willing to trust you. Pruna certainly didn’t seem to suspect anything, even as they made what was almost a complete loop around the store before Crius spotted what he was looking for. A rack with an assortment of cheap looking bags hanging from its pegs, placed on the wall at a height surprisingly accessible for kobolds.

“Do any of these strike your fancy?” Crius said, stepping to the side and gesturing to the rack. Pruna, looking no less huffy from the unnecessarily long trip around the shop, stepped forward to inspect them.

Her mood didn’t improve once she got a look at the merchandise. “Hm. Do you have anything, well, better? Than these?”

“’Better’?” Crius echoed, slipping the slightest bit of indignation into his voice. “You won’t find a higher quality bag anywhere in town. Just take a look at the stitching on that one!”

Crius gestured to one of the bags lower on the rack. It looked just about as shoddy as any of the others, but Pruna seemed willing to humour him, if only so she’d have that much more reason to complain when reality failed to live up to his claims. She hunched down and grabbed the bag, making a great show of inspecting the stitches on the strap.

“The spacing’s all over the place. I really don’t see what you’re trying—”

Thwock!

While her attention was consumed by the bag, Crius took the opportunity to bring his knee forward into a sharp blow against the side of Pruna’s skull. Her head jerked to the side hard enough to slam into her shoulder, right before she went slack and collapsed into a heap on the floor without a cry, only a soft exhale as her body relaxed.

Crius wasted no time resting on his laurels. Before she’d even hit the ground, he was moving to swipe a handful of belts off of a conveniently placed display, then dropped down to his knees next to Pruna. She let out a soft groan, shifting around slightly and making it clear that she wasn’t quite unconscious, which meant that Crius had to work quickly.

Her wrists were first, then her ankles, both pairs tied to each other easily enough with a single belt each. Having one himself, Crius was well aware of the trouble Pruna would be able to get up to if he left her tail free, so he made sure to secure that as well. That wasn’t quite as easy to do with a belt, but a quick rustle through his bag of holding got him a piece of leather long enough for him to be able to tie it down and secure it to the bonds he’d already placed around her arms and legs.

It was a decent tie job. Not the best he’d ever done, on account of the rush, but he wasn’t trying to make art. Restraining was all about doing things just good enough in a quick and timely manner, and he was certain that he’d done the job well enough to hold a kobold.

Just in time, too. Right as he finished the last knot, she started shifting around, and Crius could see her eyes flick open. She looked dazed for a moment, but when she tried to move her limbs and found herself unable, clarity returned to her quite quickly alongside a healthy dose of rage.

“What in the Hells do you think you’re doing? If you don’t let me go right this moment, I’ll—”

Her ranting was cut off by Crius reaching out and grabbing a hold of her muzzle, squeezing it shut. “Pipe down.”

Clearly, there was one last restraint that he’d forgotten to add. Thankfully, that wasn’t a difficult issue to fix, even if she was trying her hardest to struggle and thrash against his grip. One belt and a few moments of tying and grappling later, Crius had Pruna’s snout shut tight, all the scathing insults she was no doubt dying to spit at him trapped inside her throat.

With that issue out of the way, Crius got along to the next bit of pressing business: relieving his customer of whatever she had in her pockets. While Pruna continued to wriggle and spit muffled curses, Crius started patting her down, rifling through her clothes.

She ended up having a pouch of gold that Crius estimated held about eighty pieces, a couple rather stale looking pack rations, and an inordinate amount of pocket lint. Crius took the gold and allowed her to keep the rest. Not a bad takeaway, considering the effort put in.

Which only left one thing to deal with: Pruna herself. She’d seen Crius’ face, so he couldn’t just let her walk away. Even if she was a kobold, she’d probably be able to get a guard to look into things if she kicked up enough of a fuss, and Crius wasn’t exactly difficult to identify. He didn’t feel like skipping town or lying low for however many weeks it’d take for the heat to die down for a mere eighty gold.

That left two options. Either Crius could dispose of her, or he could just... take her. That was an option that not many thieves had access to, but the bag of holding was a very useful piece of kit. He even had her all tied up and ready to go, so it’d be just as easy as sticking her inside and taking her out whenever he figured out whatever it was he wanted to do with her. Sell her, maybe. Maybe something else.

Yeah, the choice was clear. Crius grabbed the bag, holding it by the edges and stretching it out wide, then threw it over Pruna’s head. As soon as her face made it through the mouth of the bag, her muffled protests were replaced by a deep, blissful silence. Crius silently praised the wonders of whatever wizard had enchanted it; they’d really thought of everything.

One quick pull later, and the rest of Pruna’s body tumbled into the bag, disappearing into the enchanted interior without a trace. Crius hoisted the bag up, and it felt just as light as it ever did, not even a bulge in the outside to hint that there was a whole living being trapped inside.

He was pretty sure she’d be able to breathe in there. Sure, he didn’t typically stick [i]people[/i] in there, but he saw no reason why the bag wouldn’t be able to hold air just as easily as it held everything else he stuck in it. 

Crius stood back up. That was one problem solved. All that was left was to jam as much of the store’s inventory into his bag as he could manage before slipping out the back. Pruna would probably end up feeling a bit cramped by the end of the night, but Crius was sure she’d forgive him. He’d forgive himself, regardless.

---

People typically thought that thieves were less active during the day, but that wasn’t really the case. You were less likely to be pulled into an alley, have your coins taken, and get your throat slit, but that was only because the people who did that sort of thing were busy with the less exciting part of thievery: getting rid of all their hard-won goods.

Crius had just finished up unloading his haul. As expected, his contacts were more than willing to part with a bit of gold in exchange for a hefty supply of leather goods. How they were going to make use of a such a shipment once the news about his hit on the leatherworker started to spread, Crius couldn’t say. Maybe they’d wind up turning it all into cheap armour for some half-rate gang of bandits.

In the end, he didn’t really care. Crius had already gotten his payment, which meant that their business was concluded. That left him with only one thing left to deal with. Crius traced his fingers along the bulge in his pocket where the bag of holding rested, folded down into a small and comfortable size that left no hint as to its contents.

It was strange to think that he had an entire living being in his pocket. He’d taken Pruna out of the bag earlier that morning, just to make sure she was still alive. She was, and needless to say, she was not happy about being crammed into a sack full of low-grade leather goods for hours on end.

Yet another concern that Crius did not share. Once he’d confirmed that she was still breathing, Crius took the opportunity to shove what little food the kobold had on her down her throat, just so that she didn’t starve to death while he was figuring out what to do with her, and she didn’t care for that very much either.

But again, ameliorating her complaints was not high on the list of Crius’ priorities. Once he’d gotten her to choke down enough food that he was confident she wouldn’t be wasting away while he figured out what to do with her, the belt went back on her muzzle and she went back into the bag, and everything was beautifully silent once again.

That was shortly after he’d woken up. Now it was approaching noon, Crius was walking down the street, and he had yet to figure out what it was he was actually going to do with the kobold. He needed to figure something out quickly; if he didn’t find a solution by the time night came, the little food she’d had on her was going to run out, and he was going to have to start dipping into his own gold to keep her fed. An unacceptable arrangement, to be sure.

He’d been running down his mental list of contacts, trying to think of which of them might be interested in taking on such a piece—to little success, considering he was dealing with a completely untrained kobold, completely bottom of the barrel slave material—when something caught his attention.

“Sir! Sir, have you— okay, alright. Ma’am, do you have a moment to— no? Fine, fine.”

Panic and desperation, pure and true. Crius could pick that sort of thing out from a mile away; desperate people meant people willing to part with large amounts of gold to get what they wanted, and any good thief had their every sense honed keen for every opportunity to turn a coin. At the same time, a great thief didn’t jump slavering onto the first chance they saw, which was why Crius kept walking and glanced over as casually as he could.

Another kobold. The voice made it clear that this one was a male, though he certainly didn’t look it from a glance. His scales were a light purplish blue, almost pearlescent. He was actually quite striking for a kobold, though the rough look of the clothes he was wearing made it clear that he didn’t come from money, however nice his body might’ve looked. Few kobolds did.

“Sir, do you have a minute? I’m looking for my friend, she’s a kobold too, she— Alright, fine, walk away, sure...”

He was running up to everyone that passed him by on the street, begging, [i]pleading[/i] for them to spare just a few seconds to listen to his plight, and not a single one of them was willing to offer it. Most of the people he approached didn’t even look at him, and those that did offered nothing but looks of irritation. Crius could see some people farther away from him offer pitying looks. They were the ones that crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him. It was all terribly, terribly sad.

But Crius wasn’t about to get caught up in empathy. The kobold’s problem sounded mightily familiar. So, following his gut, Crius started moving towards the kobold so that he would be the next person he talked to.

And sure enough, the kobold’s eyes flicked over to Crius, he made a move to approach—then stopped. Crius was a tall, muscular, and generally imposing looking lizardman. Kobolds and lizardfolk weren’t known for their warm relations. They tended to end up in a lot of similar positions, which meant they ended up fighting over a lot of the same scraps. Lizardfolk were bigger, kobolds got shoved around and given the short end of whatever given stick they were fighting over that day, and animosity festered.

Which meant this kobold’s problem had to be a very serious one indeed, because he swallowed the lump in his throat, visibly mustered his courage, and approached anyway.

“Excuse me, sir,” the kobold said. “Have you seen my friend? Kobold, female, black scales? Wears a cloak?”

Crius made a show of stroking his chin and giving off a thoughtful hum. “She got purple eyes?”

The kobold’s eyes lit up with hope. “Yes.”

“Kinda ratty looking? Goes by the name Pruna?”

The kobold was excited enough that Crius’ comment about his companion’s appearance went either ignored or completely unnoticed. “Yes, that’s her! You know where she is?”

“Oh, absolutely. I could lead you right to her...”

Crius waited for the kobold’s excitement to reach the point where he was practically jumping up and down before finishing his sentence. “...for the right price.”

He couldn’t help but feel a little bit of a thrill when he saw the kobold visibly deflate. It was a little bit mean, but you had to be a little bit mean to get ahead. Sometimes more than a little bit.

“But... I don’t have any gold. Pruna was the one carrying it.”

“Oh, my friend. What’s your name?”

“Ludi.”

“Ludi, I would never dream of taking your hard earned gold even if you [i]did[/i] have any. Us kobolds and lizardfolk, we’re always at each other’s throats, but we both face the same issues. We’ve gotta stick together, eh? No, I’ll take my payment in services rendered.”

Ludi looked up at him with hope in his eyes that was quickly cut by an even greater amount of trepidation. “‘Services rendered’?”

Crius’ muzzle split in a toothy grin. “Nothing that a streetwise kobold like yourself isn’t intimately familiar with, my friend.” With that, Crius turned and started moving to the side of the street, towards a conveniently located alley. The sun was just right in the sky to cloak its inside in shadow, which Crius appreciated greatly. Sometimes, it seemed like the gods appreciated a bit of drama just as much as their subjects.

He looked back over his shoulder towards Ludi, beckoning him to follow with a toss of his head. For a moment, Ludi seemed hesitant, but ended up following anyway with slow, plodding steps and a heavy sigh.

Ah, kobolds. Crius never got tired of pushing them around.

---

One might think that there would be some words exchanged, considering the situation they were moving into, but there weren’t. Appropriately so, if the circumstances were considered: Ludi was about to have to sacrifice some piece of whatever dignity he still possessed in order to save his companion. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before or even the worst instance of it, sure, but it wasn’t something that ever got easier. Certainly wasn’t anything that made him want to be especially vocal—mostly, he just wanted to crawl into a hole and die, and it was only the fact that it wasn’t his own life on the line that kept him from doing so.

As for Crius, he was about to get blown, so he saw no reason to be chatting up a storm. He was more focused on unbuttoning his pants.

He’d just gotten the last button undone by the time they got to the very back of the alley, leaving the two of them alone and shrouded in the privacy and mild dampness of the shadows. Mostly for Ludi’s sake—Crius would’ve been comfortable doing absolutely anything even a few feet from the entrance, but he figured Ludi would want to be as hidden as possible. Crius was willing to oblige; there’d be plenty of ways to make the kobold uncomfortable once things were properly underway.

“You know what to do, right?” Crius said, leaning against the wall behind him. At the same time, he spread his legs apart and hooked his thumbs into the waist of his pants, a pose which naturally drew Ludi’s eyes down to his crotch and the hint of blue scales peeking through his open fly. Ludi clenched his jaw at the sight, but nodded all the same.

“Good,” Crius said, shoving his hands down and bringing his pants down to his thighs, exposing himself fully. “Get to work, then.”

Ludi stared. Given that Crius was a lizardman, there wasn’t much to see—from a mammalian point of view, anyway. A fellow reptile like Ludi knew precisely what he was looking for: a thin gap among the scales between Crius’ legs, indicating the slit where his equipment was hidden. Considering the lack of any peeking, he was either quite unaroused, or doing his best to keep himself contained.

He gulped. Either way, that meant this was going to be a long, difficult process. As much as Ludi would’ve preferred to avoid it entirely, he was going to have to do it, which meant there was no point in dragging things out any further. Ludi dropped down to his knees before Crius, face eye-level with his crotch thanks to a bit of strategic hunching on the lizardman’s part to make up for the height difference.

Though while Ludi might’ve taken the opportunity to kneel down on his own initiative, it was clear that his hesitance was preventing him from going a whole lot further than that, and Crius’ patience was beginning to wear thin. Ordinarily, he was a patient man—having a job that could require being still and quiet for hours at a time necessitated that—but when it came to waiting on a partner to pleasure him, it wasn’t a virtue he possessed.

So he took some initiative of his own. Crius reached forward and grabbed a hold of Ludi’s head by the horns, yanking him forward and driving his face into the space between the lizardman’s legs until his muzzle was butting right up against the slit that laid there, Crius making sure to angle the kobold’s head so that his nostrils were grinding right against it.

Ludi, predictably enough, was displeased with the whole situation. Crius could feel him squirming, making a token effort to wrench himself free of his grip in spite of having already agreed to cooperate. That was to be expected; people said all sorts of things, but once they got an actual taste of what it was they were dealing with, they tended to want to back out. That meant it was up to Crius to live up to his role and ensure that they didn’t get a chance to.

“If you really want that info, best put that tongue to work.” There was no growling harshness in Crius’ voice; his tone was quite even, just a plain statement of fact, because that was what it was. There was no need for him to try to threaten Ludi into doing anything when the situation was already working to do that for him.

It turned out to be an effective strategy. Crius could feel Ludi tense up, hesitation and reluctance causing him to seize up one last time before desperation finally won out. Ludi’s muzzle cracked open, and with an almost tangible sense of reluctance, Crius could feel his tongue move forward and come to press against his slit. Lightly, gingerly, not out of any sort of care for Crius, but out of the burning desire to be doing literally anything else.

To Ludi, even that slight contact brought with it a fresh wave of shame, coming paired with the taste of the lizardman’s slit. Even with everything still tucked inside, there was a distinct flavour to be found there. A bit of earthiness and salt from his scales, mixed with the musk that’d been allowed to stew in the confines of his pants.

Ludi was absolutely detesting every moment of what he was going through, and they’d barely even gotten started. Crius, on the other hand, was only feeling a slight bit of boredom. He’d had no expectation of things moving quickly, but he was growing tired of the sluggish pace things were proceeding at regardless. Perhaps things did require a bit of a nudge.

“If you don’t hurry up and get to the point, I’m going to call this whole thing off,” Crius said, really trying to convey the extent of his disinterest through his deadpan tone.

That got some of the reaction he was hoping for. He could hear Ludi suck in a breath through his nostrils, no doubt gripped with fear at the prospect of being denied the information he wanted after having debased himself so thoroughly to get it. A second after that, once the kobold’s desperation had sufficient time to materialize into action, Crius could feel his tongue start moving with a bit more vigour. Rather than the tentative sidelong licks that he’d been pursuing before, now Ludi was running his tongue along Crius’ slit proper, up and down and digging his tongue inside ever so slightly.

Crius sighed and moved a hand to the back of Ludi’s head, letting it rest there between his horns. Now, that was a bit better already. Still not quite where he wanted things to be, but improvement took time. He was sure that Ludi would push in a bit deeper soon enough, and if he didn’t, he could always make another threat. Those seemed to work as good motivation for the pretty little kobold between his thighs.

But that wouldn’t prove to be necessary. Crius had done well striking the proper kind of fear into the heart of Ludi, well enough to overcome the kobold’s natural revulsion at the act he was performing—both at the physical aspects and the embarrassment of being bullied and strong-armed into it against his will.

That was the best part, really. Sure, the stimulation was [i]nice,[/i] but it wasn’t anything that Crius hadn’t felt before or better performed by people who had proper skill at it. Compared to those instances, Ludi’s performance left something to be desired.

But watching the way his face twisted into a grimace at the taste of the inside of his slit, seeing just how much he wanted to pull away and spit yet forced himself to push in even deeper regardless—that was the good part. That would be enough to get Crius going even if Ludi was the most incompetent kobold in the world when it came to use of his mouth.

Crius had yet to meet a kobold who didn’t have at least a little skill in that area, though; with the long tongues they sported, they were naturally suited to the task. Ludi was no exception. He’d managed to fit a good third of his tongue into Crius’ slit, and was wriggling it around as best he could while looking like he wanted to retch. 

Unskilled, perhaps, but still effective in doing what it set out to do. Coaxed along by the feeling of Ludi’s tongue moving along its underside, Crius’ cock began to work its way free of his slit, sliding out and pressing along the side of Ludi’s muzzle. His scales were smeared with a mixture of saliva and the moisture from Crius’ slit wherever it touched him, the scent of lizardman musk clinging to every drop of it that was rubbed into his face.

On the bright side, that meant he no longer had to drive his tongue into Crius’ slit. On the other hand, that was only because of the fact that he had to redirect his efforts to the lizardman’s actual dick. Ludi wasn’t sure if he’d consider that an improvement, but he figured he’d grit his teeth and take things as best he could. Though maybe ‘grit his teeth’ wasn’t the best turn of phrase—he did intend on keeping them in his head and not having them knocked out and strewn across the ground, after all.

Overconsideration of a turn of phrase aside, Ludi was happy to yank his tongue out of Crius’ slit and pull his face away, drinking in those few precious seconds of freedom with a gasp. Sure, the taste of it was still thick in his mouth and wasn’t going away any time soon, but he had to make the most of what he had. He wasn’t going to be given very much breathing room in the near future, after all.

That fact was made abundantly clear by Crius’ hand tightening around the back of his head, and that grip subsequently being used to jerk his muzzle back until the tip of the lizardman’s cock was butting up against his lips. The message was perfectly clear: ‘back to work’.

Ludi grimaced, but reminded himself that he wasn’t doing any of this for himself; he was doing it for Pruna. Were it not for that driving factor, he wouldn’t be able to do even half of everything that came next. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, doing his best to ignore the scent that came with it, and clung to his motivation as he let his jaw drop open and the head of Crius’ cock start to enter his mouth.

He’d intended to take things slowly. He managed that for about six seconds, before Crius decided that he ought to take a personal hand in setting the pace. With a jerk of his hand, he pulled Ludi’s face forward into his crotch, sinking a good third of his dick into the kobold’s maw.

‘A third’ made it sound like it wasn’t much at all, and perhaps if both of them were lizardmen, it wouldn’t be. Ludi, however, was not a lizardman. As a matter of fact, lizardmen were around three times his height, and that size carried over into the other, more pertinent parts that he was dealing with. That meant Crius was already threatening to push his way into Ludi’s throat, and he wasn’t even halfway in yet. Ludi’s eyes watered at the feeling of it, and he let out a cough around Crius’ shaft that went unnoticed or, more likely, purposely ignored.

“Hey,” Crius said, “don’t pass out on me yet. I want you to see something. See that behind my knot?”

It was difficult for Ludi to see anything through the film of tears that had formed over his eyes, but he blinked them away as best he could and squinted to see what it was Crius was referring to. He could just make it out, even if he couldn’t really tell what it was: a bit of shininess, metallic-looking, hooked around just behind the lizardman’s knot.

“That’s a ring, there. You kobolds like shiny things, right? I expect you to have your lips wrapped around it by the time we’re through here.”

Ludi let out a pained groan, sounding muffled coming around the mouthful of Crius’ cock he was choking on. He wanted him to get his lips onto that? He had to be joking. Ludi wasn’t even sure if it was physically possible for him to get that far down, and even if he could, he’d probably wind up asphyxiating in the process. Knots were meant to keep stuff locked in; having someone’s junk locked into your airway didn’t tend to end well.

Still, Ludi didn’t voice any of those complaints. Protesting was a difficult thing to accomplish when you were being facefucked.

A good thing, too, because Crius wouldn’t be likely to listen to any of them even if Ludi had the ability to make them heard. Now that he was worked up, he was taking an even more active role in things, and Ludi’s job had changed from forcing himself to do things to forcing himself to [i]not[/i] do things. Specifically, not to pass out, retch, or scream while Crius gripped him by the horns and started using his mouth like it was nothing more than a hole for him to fuck.

He was doing a passable job of it. Crius could still feel the kobold’s throat seizing up and gripping around his cock on occasion, spasms rolling through his body from the effort of trying to withstand Crius’ violent use of his maw. That was just the way Crius liked it. If it were too easy, there’d be no fun in it; he liked to feel his partners struggle a bit. Struggle to take him, struggle not to cry, struggle to escape... the circumstances meant that last one was unlikely to come about, but that just meant he was going to be able to push the first two to their absolute limit.

The first half of things was easy enough. At that point, Crius was already pushing his way into Ludi’s throat, but the kobold took it better than he’d expected. Tight fit, slow going, and marked by plenty of pained sounding noises on Ludi’s part, but they were moving forward. On the whole, Crius considered that to be good progress.

Then, right around the time Ludi’s lips had reached the halfway point on Crius’ shaft, things began to take a turn. Ludi’s squirming was increasing to a near-violent intensity, hands gripping Crius’ legs hard enough for his claws to dig into his scales, and his throat was putting up a good deal more resistance than it had before. Unsurprising; Crius doubted that he’d ever had to take a lizardman like this before, and when it came to size, his species was no slouch.

But that wasn’t going to be a problem. Maybe the claws made Crius want to stop to smack a little sense into the kobold, but the urge to do that was outweighed by the fact that he’d need to stop and pull out to do so. There was no way he was going to do anything but go deeper, shove himself as deep into Ludi’s throat as he could, breaking in new and untouched parts of the kobold’s throat until he had the root of his cock pressed right up against his lips.

Though for all the suppressed annoyance on Crius’ part, those small trespasses weren’t anything that Ludi had set out to do. They were instinctual reactions, things that he had no hope of suppressing. He was already doing as much as he could to cling to consciousness while Crius pushed ever deeper into his throat, cock stretching out areas of Ludi’s body that had never dealt with anything so thick. The way things were going, Ludi had to wonder if he wasn’t going to end up going all the way to his stomach.

An absurd thought, but one that seemed perfectly reasonable to his oxygen-deprived and increasingly panicked mind. It was only the thought of who he was doing all this for that prevented him from dropping down into a fight-or-flight response, stopped him from tearing himself away from Crius’ grip with what little strength his increasingly shaky limbs had left so that he could run for dear life. Another life, far more dear, was compelling him to stand fast and strong.

So he did, and Crius slowly fed himself into Ludi’s muzzle, inch by inch, every one of them a hard fought battle for both of them—Crius against the gripping tightness of Ludi’s throat, and Ludi against the increasing difficulty of breathing that had tendrils of black licking at the edges of his vision. Eventually, that effort paid off; Ludi almost didn’t notice it with how insensate he’d become, but the feeling of a bulge pressing against his lips brought him sharply back to reality. His knot. Somehow, Ludi had managed to take Crius all the way down to the knot, and the great bulge of it was pressing against the entrance to his muzzle.

Getting that far had been an accomplishment in and of itself, but it didn’t seem like it was going to be enough to satisfy Crius. Ludi didn’t know if Crius had gotten to the edge particularly quickly or if his perception of time was just out of sorts on account of the lack of air, but whatever the reason, he could feel the knot pressed against his lips bulging and swelling in a very particular way. A way that was intended to make sure its owner stayed locked inside his mate, but thankfully for Ludi, here it was going to do the exact opposite: get big enough that there was no way it would be able to fit inside Ludi’s mouth.

Or it would’ve, anyway, were it not for Crius’ interference. He wasn’t sure if Ludi had really been listening, but he distinctly remembered promising the kobold that he was going to have his lips wrapped around his cock ring. Since Ludi was clearly not going to make the effort to accomplish that on his own, Crius was going to have to assist him.

Gripping Ludi’s horns as tightly as he could, Crius yanked the kobold forward, ramming his knot against his lips. It was big, bigger than all the rest of Crius’ shaft, bigger than anything Ludi would’ve felt comfortable taking, but not yet big enough that it couldn’t fit inside his mouth. Taken off-guard as he was, to say nothing of the weakness and disorientation, Ludi didn’t even move to put up a fight until his jaw had already been stretched wide enough to allow the knot to start slipping past his lips.

Not enough time for him to pull away, even if Crius’ hands weren’t intent on keeping him exactly where he was. A second later, his lips passed the midpoint of Crius’ knot, and his fate was sealed. The rest of it slipped in without issue, driving the tip of the lizardman’s cock that little bit deeper into Ludi’s throat in the process, then it was done. As Crius had promised, Ludi’s lips were now wrapped around the ring that laid at the root of his cock—and Ludi could feel that knot behind his teeth starting to inflate, ensuring that was where he was going to stay.

It only stopped swelling once it’d roughly doubled in size, the muscles in Ludi’s muzzle burning from being stretched so taut. There were more pressing concerns than that discomfort, though; namely, the fact that he couldn’t breathe. Ludi had managed to draw just enough breath to sustain himself when Crius was still working himself into his throat, but now that he was dealing with his knot, the game had changed. Now, his airway was well and plugged, and there was no way he was going to be able to draw air no matter how hard he tried.

Ludi began to panic, and the frantic jerking, thrashing, and particularly swallowing that occurred as a result translated directly into pleasure for the lizardman whose crotch he had his face buried in. A bit of added physical pleasure on top of what Crius was already feeling just from seeing the fear and pain in the kobold’s eyes. And considering he’d already been close enough for his knot to swell up in the first place...

Crius let out a groan and clamped his hand down on the back of Ludi’s head, grinding his nose against the scales at the base of his groin as if he could somehow drive himself even deeper into the kobold’s body by doing so. It didn’t accomplish that, but it did help keep Ludi in place a bit better as Crius’ finish came to a head.

A powerful throb, one that Ludi could feel travel from the base of Crius’ cock all the way down his throat, was the only warning he got before the lizardman’s orgasm hit. Crius’ knot pulsed, a bulge travelled along his shaft, and then Ludi was met with the feeling of a wet heat seemingly materializing partway down his chest before it dropped down into his stomach. It was quickly followed by another, then another, each pulse of Crius’ dick bringing a fresh spurt of cum with it.

Somehow, Ludi had managed to cling onto consciousness long enough to feel his stomach starting to slosh with the amount of seed Crius was pumping into it—though it didn’t seem that was going to be the case for much longer. His body was going alternately tingly and numb, and a haze of darkness was starting to cast its way across his vision. Unconsciousness was pulling him down, and with how long a knot tended to last, he doubted he was going to see his way back to the waking world.

His last thoughts were of regret, not for himself, but for Pruna.

---

Crius watched the light leave Ludi’s eyes as the treatment he was receiving finally overwhelmed him, and was torn between satisfaction at a job well done and disappointment that it had to end so soon. He supposed the former was stronger; this had been his goal from the very beginning, after all, and it wasn’t as if he could stay in the alley fucking a kobold’s throat forever.

Though he could definitely do it again in the future, preferably in a more private setting where he’d be able to indulge himself even further—provided that he extricated himself from Ludi’s mouth first. A right shame, considering how warm and tight it was, but a necessary one. Crius placated himself with the thought that it was a lesser experience when his partner wasn’t awake, anyway. Less struggling, slacker muscles, just worse overall.

Crius got a grip on Ludi’s horns and adopted a course of action that was a first for their little encounter: he pushed the kobold away. He could feel his knot pressing against the entrance to Ludi’s muzzle, this time from the opposite direction as before, and the kobold’s jaw straining to open wide enough to accommodate his exit. If he were conscious, no doubt Ludi would’ve been in a world of pain.

Crius didn’t find it overly comfortable, himself. Knots were meant to stay in; trying to take them back out before they were good and ready to was an exercise in sensitivity and overstimulation. Still, he grit his teeth and bore it. It wouldn’t do to go killing his new acquaintance when there were far worse crimes than murder he could commit with him still alive.

His efforts paid off. After a few moments of struggle, Crius managed to work his knot halfway out of Ludi’s muzzle, the widest point sliding past his lips. After that, the rest of it was a breeze. The last of his knot came right out, followed shortly by his shaft proper, pried free from the kobold’s throat with a little help from the grip Crius had on his horns. Once the head popped past his lips, a trickle of cum rolled down Ludi’s chin, the remainder of what he hadn’t been able to swallow.

Well, more than a trickle. Something akin to a tide, really. Crius wondered if he’d overdone himself slightly, but when he raised the back of a hand up to Ludi’s mouth and nostrils, he could still feel breath against his scales—however faint. That cleared those thoughts from his mind. As long as he hadn’t literally fucked the life out of Ludi, he wasn’t even [i]close[/i] to overdoing himself.

Crius lowered Ludi down and laid him out on the ground, reaching down to tuck himself away and pull up his pants once he’d done so. Then, once his belt was tightened and fixed, he reached a hand down into his pocket to retrieve something: the bag of holding, what he’d say was rapidly becoming his favourite tool if it hadn’t already held such a position. Never before had looting been so easy.

Though this loot would requite a bit of preparation prior to transport. Reaching an arm into the bag, he rustled around its interior for awhile before pulling his hand free with his fingers gripped around a handful of leather straps. A bit of product that he’d chosen not to part with during his last sale: after so long in his profession, he’d come to appreciate the utility of having a bit of cordage on hand at all times.

Ludi wasn’t coming to any time soon, which meant Crius had the time to make sure that his job was done right. A couple well-placed ties and the kobold had his ankles lashed to his wrists, all limbs bound together behind his back so that he wouldn’t be able to make any trouble during transport. One around his muzzle, too; he wouldn’t be able to make much noise while in the bag, but Crius felt it better to be safe than sorry. Ludi certainly didn’t raise any complaints.

Once that was done, it was head-first into the sack: one quick pull, and the rest of his body followed, his tail slipping into its mouth and disappearing into a curious lack of weight in the magical interior of the bag. Cargo safely in tow, Crius folded up the bag, returned it to its place in his pocket, and took a quick moment to make sure he looked presentable before heading for the mouth of the alley.

He wondered what Pruna was going to think of her new company. Crius was sure that she was going to let him know once he deigned to release her.

---

Ludi wasn’t sure how long he was out. All that time wasn’t lost to him, as he did have some snippets of memory between passing out and coming back to full awareness, faint as they were—though for the detail those memories possessed, he might as well have been unconscious the whole time. All he remembered was shifting darkness and the feeling of things pressing against him, some hard, some soft, some cool, some warm. Transport, clearly, with all the care that was afforded to a piece of freight tossed into the back of a caravan.

Those foggy, half-remembered moments were past now, though. Now, full consciousness was trickling back into his mind, slow as molasses. Sight wasn’t quite there yet, but touch was returning to him quite nicely, and he felt cold. He was lying on something chilly, damp, and hard. Ludi had slept on enough in his time to be able to recognize a stone floor when he felt one.

He opened his eyes, blinked a few times to clear the residual grogginess, then surveyed what he was able to see from his position. There wasn’t much: boxes, crates, all sorts of junk heaped together in that particular method of careless storage that made it clear whoever had placed them didn’t overly care how things looked. Judging by that, the dim light, and the stone floor, Ludi felt it safe to say he was in a basement. Not one he recognized, to no surprise. He didn’t sleep indoors a lot.

Ludi tried to move, but found his arms to be secured quite firmly in place behind his back, along with his legs. From the raw feeling of his wrists and ankles, it seemed that he was restrained, and had been so for quite some time. So he was a captive, then? Arguably better than being dead. Considering what people tended to do to vulnerable kobolds, arguably far, far worse.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

The voice Ludi heard was familiar, but not in any sort of way that invoked comfort; more the kind of familiarity that gave him a sinking feeling of dread in his gut. Straining in the direction of the voice as best he could from his position bound up on the floor, Ludi tried to look at who it was speaking to him.

His fears were realised: the voice belonged to the same blue-scaled lizardman he’d met in the alley, looking far more fearsome in the weak light of what Ludi assumed were oil lamps than he had in the open daylight. Ludi hadn’t even gotten his name, had he? He’d been roped into sucking off some stranger in an alleyway out of pure desperation, and now it turned out they were a kidnapping thug.

There was no time for him to feel too bad about that, though, because there was a far worse reality demanding his attention that overrode his desire to mope and self-deprecate: the lizardman had another kobold in his lap, tied up much as he was, though the bonds around her wrists and ankles remained separate so that the lizardman could more easily handle her. At the moment, she was laid out across his knees, staring at Ludi with wide eyes full of fear.

Ludi’s reaction was as immediate as it was ineffectual. He tried to cry out to her, and found that his words were muffled into silence by a muzzle tied around his face.

“Nice touch, innit? Figured I’d spring for something extra for you, since I’m gonna be keeping you around for awhile.” The lizardman paused for a moment before continuing. “Well, maybe not for [i]you.[/i] She can use it after. It’s just that I’m sure you’re gonna be real loud and whiny, and I don’t want to hear a word of it.”

Yet Pruna was the one who piped up the moment those words left his lips. “You shut up! Ludi, don’t listen to him, I—”

Whatever encouragement she was going to offer Ludi, it didn’t get a chance to pass her lips before the lizardman’s hand shot out and wrapped itself around her muzzle, clenching it shut and cutting her speech short.

“You might be too valuable a piece to hurt, but your friend over there isn’t. I’d suggest you keep a lid on it. Understood?”

Pruna’s eyes were a mixture of the same fear as before, made more intense with the lizardman’s hand clamped around her snout, and rage at being talked to in such a manner. In the end, though, her need to protect her companion was what ended up guiding her actions. She gave a short, sharp nod, as best as she could with the lizardman’s hand gripping her face.

Her compliance assured, the lizardman released her muzzle and turned his attention back to Ludi, who looked on with horror and indignation from his position on the floor.

“Right, that’s sorted, so I won’t waste any more time. Both of you are now mine, for however long it is I decide to keep you, for whatever purposes I decide to use you for. Considering the alternative is killing you both outright, this is pretty generous on my part.”

The lizardman’s eyes lit up, then he snapped his fingers. “Ah! I didn’t tell either of you my name, did I? Well, I gave [i]you[/i] a fake one, but I suppose it’d be polite for me to properly introduce myself: Crius. Feel free to scream or curse that name, for all the good it’ll do ya. Now, seeing as how I already know the two of your names, I see no point in dragging this out any further.”

Crius grabbed Pruna by under the armpits and hoisted her up, bringing her into a more regular sitting position on his lap. She gasped, not when she was being grabbed and swung around like a ragdoll, but only when her body once again came to rest against the lizardman’s. It took a moment for Ludi to follow the path of Pruna’s eyes and see why: jutting up from between her thighs was something just shy of a foot of pink flesh, of a familiar shape that Ludi had become all too familiar with.

“I hope you appreciate me letting you watch, Ludi,” Crius said, thrusting up into the sleeve created by Pruna’s bound thighs. “I could’ve just left you wandering down that street where I found you. Instead, you get to be reunited with your friend here. Aren’t I nice?”

Ludi didn’t think of that gesture as particularly nice. In fact, he had to wonder whether or not he’d rather be dead than witness Pruna getting violated in such a fashion, right in front of him, without him being able to so much as lift a finger to help. Maybe he was already dead, had choked to death back in that alley, and what he was experiencing now was hell.

If it was, then Ludi couldn’t think of a more appropriate punishment for having failed to protect Pruna, or of a more agonizing one. Lying there on the floor, tied and bound, unable to do anything more than wriggle helplessly and let out muffled cries as Crius lifted up Pruna and aligned himself with her entrance, his deathwish strengthened. He found himself wishing, desperately hoping, that his soul would be ripped out and crushed the moment Crius tried to penetrate Pruna. He didn’t know from what. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to know oblivion before he had to know the pain of seeing that kind of violation.

He wasn’t nearly so fortunate. Ludi stared into Pruna’s eyes, seeing the fear, the anger, the disgust, and her attempt to accomplish the impossible feat of keeping all of it contained inside herself rather than vocalized as the scream those emotions clearly burned to become. Then, the pain, materializing and intensifying alongside the mounting pressure of Crius’ member against her.

Crius was big. Ludi didn’t need to be told that; he’d experienced it for himself, firsthand. That meant he [i]knew[/i] what Pruna was going through, and the need to stand up, sprint over, and tear her from Crius’ clutches, to rip the lizardman’s eyes out with his claws, was so intense that it felt like it was going to burn right through his chest. Ludi yanked at his restraints, leather digging into raw wrists and ankles, sure that the power of his anger alone would allow him to rip right through them and deliver some measure of justice.

There was no such luck for him. The straps were too thick for him to rip apart and tied too tight for him to wriggle loose. All he succeeded in doing was chafing himself that much more—a pain that went ignored, completely overshadowed by that of seeing the first inch of Crius’ cock force its way into Pruna, the force behind the lizardman’s arms finally overpowering whatever resistance her body could mount.

That was enough to finally rip a scream from Pruna’s throat. Crius made no move to quiet her—if anything, it looked as if he were more pleasured by the agonized sounds she was making than anything he was feeling physically. As he pushed another two or three inches into her, though, something else gave him pause. He raised his head and sniffed the air, nostrils flaring. Then, he reached down, wiping his fingers along the taut-stretched folds of Pruna’s cunt.

When he raised them back up into the light, they were glittering, dripping with crimson red.

“Unbelievable,” Crius said. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

Pruna didn’t respond immediately, still gripped in paroxysms of pained screeching as she was. As satisfying as those sounds might’ve been, they weren’t what Crius was looking for. He’d asked a question, and he would have an answer.

“Answer me, or I’ll shove you down to the knot right now,” Crius growled, hands grabbing her thighs and gripping hard enough for his claws to dig into her scales, ready to make good on his threat.

“Yes,” Pruna managed to say, words sounding choked and strangled from the effort it took to shape them.

Crius chuckled and loosened his grip on her thighs. “You ought to have said so earlier. Bet virgin ‘bolds go for a good bit of gold on the market. Jokes on me, though: I never thought a gutter rutter like you would be able to keep it in your pants.”

He gave her a solid shove, forcing another few inches into her that displaced yet another cry of pain from her throat as new, yet-untouched areas of her body were made to finally realise their potential when Crius’ cock speared into them and stretched them wide. “Guess I’ll have to make up for lost profits, then. I know a couple’a people who’d be interested in kobold eggs, so you can still be good for something.”

Pruna grimaced at that comment, Ludi being quick to echo the gesture, both of their faces expressing fear and disgust at once. That comment didn’t suggest Crius was going to let them go, nor did it suggest that he was going to sell them to whatever kinds of parties there were that bought kobolds. It sounded like he was going to keep them here, breeding Pruna, keeping them as something like livestock while he pawned her young for cash.

That was the implied future for the one of them, anyway. Ludi, being quite incapable of producing eggs, had a fate far more uncertain. As if sensing that, Crius glanced over at him with a grin and a wink. “As for you, don’t worry. I’ll want to keep a spare on hand, ‘case this one here gets too loose. Just for fun.”

That solidified things. So they weren’t to be separated; they were going to remain in the grip of this monster, captives, chattel, alternately used for breeding and entertainment. The thought gave Ludi little comfort.

The knowledge gnawed at their minds as Crius continued to work himself deeper into Pruna’s body, her squirming and squealing every moment from the pain of it all while Ludi looked on helplessly from his position on the floor, completely and utterly impotent.

The size difference was making itself well and known; Pruna was a kobold, and as such, her body was never meant to handle anything nearly as large as a lizardman. At first, the incompatibility had manifested mainly as stretching, her body struggling to accommodate the ridiculous girth of Crius’ cock. He barely fit, and while that pain was still very much present, it was no longer at the forefront of things. That dubious honour went to a different physical sensation.

She was running out of depth. That was a curious way of phrasing things; thinking of herself in such dimensions made Pruna seem very much like the object that she was being treated as. Still, it was the best way she could think of wording it. She’d never before gotten to feel areas so deep inside of her being stimulated, but even with her lack of experience, she could still tell what was happening: the head of Crius’ cock was pressing against the entrance to her womb.

That deep, and she hadn’t even gotten to his knot yet. What was going to happen when she did? Was he going to try to force it inside? What was that going to mean for her? Could she even handle that physically? She was awash with questions, fears, and assorted anxieties, all sent fluttering wildly around her mind by the thrusts of Crius’ hips as he continued to work his way into her body, ever increasing that pressure against her insides.

Eventually, something inside her gave. Her inner muscles too overwhelmed to continue holding out against the onslaught, Pruna could do nothing as Crius pressed her down and pushed his cock even deeper inside her than before, finally bringing his knot to a rest against her outer lips—while inside, the head of his dick pushed its way past her cervix, stretching it wide as he started to encroach on her womb.

There was no pleasure to be found in that sort of intrusion, in any of what Pruna was being subjected to. There was only the purest, most agonizing sort of pain, the kind that brought her that much closer to a primal, animal state, ready to thrash and claw and bite and scream until she could make things stop.

She didn’t get the chance to do that, though, because Crius had plenty of experience dealing with others in that state. People expected great feats of strength from those in situations like that, far beyond what they’d ordinarily be capable of, but Crius had yet to see any miracles.

Right then was no exception. All it took was shifting his grip from Pruna’s thighs to her arms to keep her held in place, regardless of how hard she tried to struggle to escape the cock that had now dug deep enough inside her to create a noticeable bulge in her stomach. She was a kobold. She was weak. She was his. He could do what he wanted with her.

And she wasn’t the only one who fit that description. Looking over Pruna’s shoulder, Crius saw Ludi staring up at the two of them with the most exquisite mixture of rage and devastation painted across his features, Crius was made aware that he wasn’t availing himself of all the opportunities he had available to him. There were still more ways he could indulge himself.

When Ludi saw Crius staring back at him, they locked eyes for a moment before the kobold tore his gaze away, staring fiercely at some arbitrary point off in the shadows along the wall. Now, that wouldn’t do at all. Ludi wasn’t just an idle bystander in all this; however passive his role might’ve been in everything, it was a role he had to fulfill nonetheless. He had to [i]see.[/i]

Crius tightened his grip around Pruna and then stood up from his chair, keeping her skewered on his cock and continuing to make small thrusts into her as he walked across the room and over to where Ludi laid. That drew his attention; the kobold stared up at the two of them towering over him, close enough for beads of fluid to drip down and onto his forehead.

That wouldn’t be the end of it, though. Crius dropped down to his knees, one on either side of Ludi’s head, bringing the spot where he and Pruna were connected inches away from Ludi’s snout—then closer still, so that he could feel their joined flesh press against his cheek, hot and wet.

Crius pushed Pruna forward, laying her out flat on her stomach over top of Ludi, then dropped down over her back in turn for a better position from which to thrust into her. Every one of those thrusts was translated directly into grinding against Ludi, particularly against his face, his muzzle crammed right against the lips of Pruna’s cunt and the cock thrusting in and out of it.

The new position allowed Crius to completely throw himself into rutting Pruna, thrusting in and out of her like a wild beast, making the violation that much more intense. And now, on top of that, Ludi had to experience every bit of it. Not just see it—he could [i]feel[/i] it, feel the weight of the two bodies rocking against his, smell the mixed scents of their bodies. The heat of working muscles. The coppery tang of blood, a strong odour made subtle by the overwhelmingly strong taste of sex.

Things had finally come to their absolute worst. Pruna was being fucked rougher and faster than any point previous, the stretching she’d already received only serving to allow Crius to treat her even more harshly, to reach all new heights of agony. Ludi was now awash in the fluids, the scent, the pain of that union, and while he’d at some point started outright sobbing, the sounds of it were inaudible over the slap of flesh against flesh, the shrieks of Pruna, the grunts of exertion.

Pruna had been used, hurt, reduced to an object and filled with such pain that she could do nothing more than fit the role, writhe and squeal like an animal as her mind reeled and her body ached. Ludi had been stripped of all action and input, left as nothing more than an observer to watch as Pruna was broken down. To be broken down in turn, seeing, feeling that destruction.

And then there was Crius, sweating, grunting, thrusting in and out of the tight cunt of the kobold beneath him. He could feel all that pain, too, but he didn’t experience it. It washed over him, and he felt the power he held over these two kobolds, the thrill of being able to hurt them like this. It felt good, more so than sex alone ever could. If it were just about that, he could just hire a prostitute; it was about being able to feel their spirit break, to hear their cries, to make them [i]hurt.[/i]

He could feel all that twofold, coming from the each of them, and the joy it sent shooting up his spine and down through his limbs was unspeakable. Palpable, something physical, electric and rushing through his body. It concentrated in one spot in particular: right between his legs, forming that growing pressure that was going to be realised as a massive finish.

Crius didn’t try to prolong it. He embraced that pleasure, throwing himself into it, working his hips and pounding Pruna as hard and fast as he could. He could feel the kobold shivering in response, as if she were freezing, her body unable to withstand that sort of treatment for long. Her breath hitched in her throat, and what screams managed to escape sounded ragged and raspy.

She wouldn’t have to endure it for too much longer. After only a few moments more of that pace, Crius growled and slammed himself as deep as he could go, knot pressing dangerously against the lips of Pruna’s entrance. It throbbed, and he could feel a gush of his own pre backflow out to drip down onto Ludi’s face below.

He could shove it in. She seemed hardy enough to be able to take the whole thing, and there was no denying that there was a desire there to do just that, to see how she would react at being plugged up so utterly. And how Ludi would react at seeing his companion get right and properly bred, too. Ah, he could only imagine the reaction.

But, no. Crius did have places to be afterwards, arrangements to be made in regards to where he was going to keep these two. Not enough time to indulge himself in that sort of thing. Besides, there was nothing wrong with saving that for a future encounter, was there? He was sure that it’d be just as sweet then.

So he didn’t try to push it inside, settled for grinding it against the folds of Pruna’s cunt, and finally hit his finish. A pulse rolled through Crius’ cock, strong enough for Pruna to feel travelling through her body, working deep inside her until it finally reached and rolled through the entrance to her womb.

Then, it exploded, becoming a burst of wet heat inside her as the first rope of Crius’ seed shot into her womb. That one was quickly followed by another, then another, coming one after another and collecting inside her until she could feel it, a sloshing, liquid weight inside her belly. It was a lizardman-sized load, and given that meant it was fit for a species three times her size, she could feel every drop of it that was packed inside her.

More significant than any physical discomfort, though, was the knowledge of just what having all that inside her meant. Lizardmen and kobolds were readily compatible species, as the population of half-breeds in the city had come to reflect. That meant that being so thoroughly seeded like this carried a very real risk of pregnancy.

No, more than a risk, a certainty. After all, it was doubtful Crius was going to stop if things didn’t take. He was going to keep trying until her belly was swelling with something a bit more solid than what he was filling it with now. Then, when she gave birth to the eggs he’d put inside her, they’d be taken from her and pawned off. Never for her to see again.

She screamed, the purest manifestation she could muster of the pain ripping through her, physical, emotional. Ludi echoed the sound, muffled as it might’ve been through his muzzle. That was the backdrop to Crius’ orgasm: screams, primal vocalizations of the two whose lives he’d destroyed. No music was ever so sweet.

It dragged on, less than a minute of pleasure that nonetheless seemed to drag on for ages, then stopped. The screaming fell short. There was silence, of a relative sort. The kind with sniffling, quiet crying, but with the stillness that comes in the wake of loud, violent, painful passion.

Crius pulled himself free of Pruna’s well-bred hole with a wet sound, and a gush of red-tinged white followed him out, oozing out from her gaping folds and dripping onto the face of Ludi below. He stood up, looking down and admiring his work, the pile of two thoroughly broken kobolds below him.

Well, perhaps not quite broken yet. Spirits were strong things. But getting there.

“I’ll be sending down someone to, eh, ‘secure’ the two of you,” Crius said, pulling his pants up to restore some measure of decency to himself, even if they had a prominent bulge in the front from his yet-to-retract member. “Don’t try anything stupid, in the meantime. Particularly you, girl. I’ve got money riding on you.

“I’ll be back later tonight. Welcome to your new life.”

And with that, he was gone, turned around and up the stairs and off into the light of some room the two kobolds had never seen. Maybe would never see, depending on how their treatment went. They really had no idea how much freedom they’d be allotted. Even among slaves, there were degrees of freedom: some indentured servants were functionally free citizens, some people were left to rot in cellars and never saw the light of day.

Pruna rolled off of Ludi and onto the floor proper, pulling herself up into a sitting position while wincing at the aches running through every part of her. Ludi stayed where he was, soaked in fluids, shivering. One eye was wide open, the other shut tight as a bead of white rolled over its lid. His chest was heaving and he was shaking, almost seizing, looking for all the world like he was dying. He wasn’t, though. Crius hadn’t distributed his weight in such a way as to really hurt him.

Pruna leaned down and wrapped her arms around him in as best a hug as she could manage with him lying on his side and her hands tied at the wrists. It was strange. She was the one who’d been raped, and yet she was trying to give Ludi comfort. It was other things apart from strange, too. Tender, though maybe raw would be a more appropriate term. Ripped open even more so. 

They laid there, one holding the other, shivering, crying, sobbing, feeling like they were dying. Praying for a future. Praying for an end. Both and neither, contradictory, anything but more of the same. There in the dark on the cold stone, they poured their pain and sorrow into one another, both hoping to relieve the other.

It would be their only respite for a long time to come.