Chapter 16: Utterly fucked
Stefan’s POV
The second in command led me to her tent and I couldn’t do anything than to follow.
The tent was quieter than I expected. No weapons mounted on the walls like Wildrose’s, no furs stacked military-neat like Jonquil’s. Just space, organized with a kind of deliberate simplicity that told me whoever lived here didn’t need to perform power. She already had it.
I stood in the middle of it, hands loose at my sides, and waited.
She stood across from me and just looked, the way you’d look at something you were still deciding how to classify. Not hostile. Not warm either. Just present, and very, very attentive.
The silence stretched long enough that I started counting it.
Then she spoke.
"You are not from this planet." She said it simply, the way you’d state the weather, no question mark attached. "I can tell from your scent. Your air is different."
I blinked. Of all the ways I’d imagined this conversation starting, that wasn’t one of them.
"You can smell that?" I asked quietly.
She didn’t confirm or explain. She just continued flatly. "Were you sent here by our enemies?"
"No." I let the word land clean and sharp, then couldn’t help adding the rest because silence had never really been my strong suit.
"I came to offer civilization. Think of me as a Messiah, delivering something your world didn’t know it was missing."
She didn’t understand the word civilization. I could tell by the slight pause before she responded, the way her expression didn’t shift but something behind it processed and filed the gap away. She didn’t admit it though, which told me she was proud in a quiet way the loud ones around here weren’t.
"Understand this," she said instead, her voice still carrying that same measured, unhurried calm that made everything around it feel slightly nervous. "Any person of your gender who cannot contribute useful domestic labor to this camp is beheaded. Without exception."
She let that land.
"I have not ordered your execution yet," she continued, "because I was told you possess a certain skill with your hands. That you perform something close to magic."
I chuckled despite myself. "Magic. Yeah, you can call it that."
Something shifted in her expression, not a smile, but something adjacent to it. A kind of pleasant acknowledgment, like she’d decided I was at least interesting, which wasn’t nothing.
I realized, standing there, that my shoulders had come down from around my ears for the first time since I’d landed here. This was the first person who’d spoken to me without shouting, without a weapon drawn, without the very specific energy of someone deciding whether to cut something off my body.
Even when she delivered the beheading part, she’d said it the way a reasonable person mentions a policy, unfortunate but sensible, nothing personal about it.
I instantly found her likeable. And that scared me slightly.
"Before I decide how you will be used in this society. I need to see what your hands can actually do. You will not remain here without purpose." She informed me.
"Gladly," I said, and meant it, because at this point proving myself useful felt significantly better than the alternatives.
She turned and walked toward the far corner of the tent, gesturing for me to follow.
I followed.
And then I stopped.
Three women were laid out on the ground, barely moving, breathing slow and shallow like they’d each forgotten how to do it properly.
Their short wraps had been torn through, damaged during the earlier fight, from the look of it - strips of fabric hanging loose, leaving them almost entirely exposed. Their juicy breasts barely contained by what remained of the fabric, the sides of their bodies bare and gleaming, their legs stretched out and still.
Their eyes were open. That was the worst part, somehow - eyes open, seeing, but the rest of them completely absent, like someone had cut the connection between mind and body and left the lights on by accident.
My cock, already noticing things it had no business noticing right now, started to react before I could stop it.
The System buzzed helpfully in my vision.
[DAILY TASK REMINDER: Do not climax for 24 hours. Current streak: 6 hours. Do not waste it.]
"I swear to God," I muttered under my breath.
"These three were overcome in battle," The second in command said, coming to stand beside me, her voice still calm. "In our world, this is what it means to be won over. They breathe. They see. They cannot move, speak, or act. They will be transported back to the queendom and kept this way."
I stared at them. "Kept this way," I repeated slowly. "You mean... indefinitely?"
"It is our practice." She replied simply.
Something cold settled into my chest that had nothing to do with fear for myself. These women were alive in there. I could see it in their eyes, awareness behind the stillness, the particular quality of someone present and completely trapped.
"If your hands cannot help them," She continued, turning to look at me directly, "then you have no use here. And I will have you executed before nightfall."
She didn’t add anything to that. No dramatic pause, no raised voice. She just said it the way she said everything else, like it was simply the next logical step, already decided, waiting patiently for the relevant conditions.
"Oh, great!"
My cock softened instantly. Whatever blood had been drifting south rerouted itself back to my brain where it was urgently needed.
"You have until I return. A few hours." she said, moving toward the tent entrance.
She walked out and the flap settled closed behind her.
I stood there for a full ten seconds, staring at the three women on the floor, their shallow breathing the only sound in the tent.
Then I spun toward the System notification floating in my vision, lowering my voice to a furious whisper.
"Nobody told me I was coming here to become a healer. Nobody put that in the mission briefing. What exactly am I supposed to do with three paralyzed warriors and a salve that lasts ten minutes?"
The System said nothing.
"Are you actually going to help me right now or just float there?"
Silence.
"Say something!"
Nothing.
I pressed both hands over my face, dragging them down slowly, and looked back at the three women on the floor.
"Nah," I muttered, the word coming out flat.
"I’m utterly fucked!"
