Monster's Good Girl

Chapter 1

Ariella

When I was younger, I considered myself untouchable. My father told me to remember my place in the world, before somebody more powerful than me reminded me of it. I can still hear echoes of his voice when I gaze around me, or during moments where I’m allowed to sleep.

I miss him greatly.

Once more, I kick back the rodan, which bites and gnaws at my ankles, emerging from the hay beneath me and from the corners of isolated and abandoned market stalls. For five years, I have been relegated to living among the taura and equu, viewed as livestock. I have been punished both for my insolence, and more often, for existing.

My captors nudge a bowl of sweetgrass and raw somanas in my direction, telling me to eat. It is not food intended for humans, and tastes more like a bitter prairie or a feed trough, but it would nourish me.

But to take their feed is to comply with my fate. Perhaps, if I resist, I can stall this out a little longer. For what, I am uncertain.

“Fifteen mena for this lovely specimen before you!” the dark elf cries out, before a roaring crowd of elves. A woman stands before them on an auction block, hair disheveled and eyes hollow. She is nude, and her breasts are tender and heavy, chains rattling with her every rare movement.

She is me in five minutes if I am not able to free myself. Five years, I have been chained up, bound to the whims of my sadistic captors. I am not sure where I would run to or how I would escape, but I have never given up hope.

“Eat your food!” one of the dark elves responsible for my imprisonment yells, whipping my bare ass.

I cry out in pain but knock over my bowl in defiance, the rodan racing to devour the scraps. They chew into it with their enormous teeth, then run away with the morsels, pink tails scurrying into obscurity.

“Twenty mena!” an elderly elf with distant silver eyes and patchy hair cries out. His belly is generously proportioned, bulging out.

“Twenty-five mena!” a sleek-haired, towering dark elf says, arrogance drizzling through his voice.

“Do you think if you don’t eat, you’ll spare yourself from the auction block?” one of my captors asks. “You’ve only made it more difficult for yourself. Now you’ll go hungry!”

A hardy-looking dark elf clad in plate roams mere feet before my stable, accompanied by a pack of hungry-looking worg. As they snarl and leap in my direction, their master holds them back.

“Is this one giving you trouble?” he asks my captors, noticing the general discontentment.

I am the only one here not cooperating.

He stares at me, smiling viciously.

“You know, I can let them go,” he says. “I’ve been starving Elem for just such an occasion. You are a valuable piece of property, but you’d fetch a fine price as worg meat.”

He laughs, as the worg continue to snap at me. My heart surges as they leap ever closer.

“Enough kidding around, Altrius,” one of my captors says. “You’re being paid to keep watch, not to play pranks.”

The other women in the stalls with me tremble with fear, knowing that should he let loose the worg, they would be devoured too.

“I just hope this one learns her lesson soon,” he says. “Would hate to have another accident on my conscience.”

He walks away with his worg in tow, who all snap back at me as he leaves but follow and obey when they are out of my range.

For some reason, beasts love me especially.

“Thirty mena to the gentleman in the blue tunic!” the auctioneer bellows out.

The crowd claps cordially. As they do, the man in front of me keels over, seizing on the ground. The sweetgrass in his mouth spills out with foam, and as I regard him in horror, my captors all chuckle.

“Must have gotten into some of the poison,” one of them says. “No matter. He was close to expiring anyway.”

He stops moving, and the rodan returns, gnawing at the sweetgrass and at strands of his grizzled hair. I am led forward by my chains behind a small, fattened dark elf, realizing with apprehension that I am next in queue.

“The worgs are going to eat well today,” another one of my captors observes, looking over the corpse on the stable floor.

I walk slowly but am tugged forward, beyond the threshold of the hay-covered stable floor and onto the stone tile plaza. The fountain in the center of the square barely sputters, clogged by algae and by the creeping forward motion of lotus vines. The auction audience watches me expectantly as I am led onto the auction block.

I feel more naked than I have ever been in my life, laid bare before the prying eyes of this auction crowd. They examine my every imperfection, discussing amongst themselves and scrutinizing me with undying focus. A strand of my dark, wavy hair falls into my eye, and I long to brush it aside, but with my limited mobility, am not able to bend my elbows far enough to reach it.

The eyes of the male dark elves are especially fixated on me, admiring my bare form, raw hindquarters, and full lips. I know the one thing they all have in mind. I would gladly exchange my beauty for even a little bit of liberation.

“Quite a wondrous creature we have here for you today!” the auctioneer announces. “This human woman is only twenty-five cycles into her lifespan and is barely harmed by the rigors of captivity!”

I look down at the scars and cuts adorning my arms and stomach, some of which ooze fresh blood even now. I would not consider myself ‘barely harmed.’

“Why, just look at the fight in her eyes!” the auctioneer continues. “Wouldn’t you love to be the one to break her in?”

The only relief, and it is a small comfort, is that Lord Everan Medrai is nowhere to be seen. From the moment I was brought to the Dark Market, I have witnessed his prying, scheming eyes on me, from daybreak until dusk.

The things I have witnessed him doing to his subjects terrifies me. So many servants and slaves have fallen under his ownership.

I see the toll it takes on them.

They advance years in days, becoming shells of the people they were when they entered his care. There are even rumors that he performs twisted magical experiments on them, leaving them for dead under the Dark Market’s hollow fountain.

“With a specimen of this utter splendor, we shall start the bidding at two-hundred mena!”

The market is silent at first, as the crowd grumbles. As disgusting as I feel for it, the fact that my starting bid is so high does flatter me a bit.

My mind turns to hope as I think that perhaps nobody will want to purchase me, and I will be brought back to the stalls, where I can plot my escape.

That inkling is dashed, however, as a portly dark elf with an eccentrically coiffed hairstyle raises his hand.

“Two-hundred-fifty mena!” he calls out.

The price hangs for a moment as the crowd staggers to comprehend the cost. I hear muttering in the audience.

“She isn’t worth thirty,” one of them says.

“That’s more than five months of my pay,” another objects.

“Now remember!” the auctioneer interjects. “The creature we have on display is young and virile. When you pay for her, you pay not only for her superior beauty and stature but for her excellent breeding capabilities and for the chance to pluck her frisse for yourself!”

I think the bidding has concluded, when a lanky dark elf with flowing white hair interjects.

“Three-hundred mena!”

From there, the bidding erupts into a flurry of offers. With each offer, I consider how terrible it might be to live under the ownership of each potential buyer. The only comfort is that none of these elves are Lord Everan, who is still nowhere in sight.

I find it relieving but unusual. He is generally the biggest spectator at these events. I’ve heard him confess, in passing, that he likes witnessing the hope draining from the eyes of every subject.

In the distance, I hear the loudening cries of an aquila as it soars through the sky.

“I believe bidding has ceased at eight-hundred mena,” the auctioneer states. “If anybody would like to contest this, now is your chance!”

“Nine-hundred mena!” one of the figures in the audience, an elderly female dark elf, says. I can see that her fragility belies a fierce penchant for cruelty and know that I would not be safe in her care.

The cries of the aquila grow closer, and I can see it flying above us, descending to the ground.

My heart stops.

There, saddled on top of the savage-looking aquila, guiding it with the sharp heels of his boots, is none other than Lord Everan.

“And here comes our honored Lord Everan with another majestic entrance!” the auctioneer announces.

The aquila lands and Lord Everan steps off of it, joining the crowd. They all marvel upon him, as though he doesn’t attend every single one of these events.

“Our bidding has stopped at nine-hundred mena,” the auctioneer declares.

I feel myself internally pleading with him as he admires every curve in my exposed form. If the bidding stops here, I can learn to cope with it. The woman is frail, and in time, she’ll certainly die, granting me my possible freedom.

“Five-thousand mena,” Lord Everan says casually, flashing me a vindictive smile.

The auction handler knows that nobody will match this offer.

It’s over.

“Sold to our gracious Lord Everan!”

I look around me, determined to find some method of avoiding this purchase. But as my chains are handed off, and I’m led off the auction block in his possession, no ideas are coming to me.