Witches' Thralls Chapter 4

Lyselle woke bleary-eyed to the world rumbling around her. She shook her head, trying to remember what had happened. The dull ache on the back of her head served as a ready reminder, and her arms weren’t faring much better; with a weak tug, she’d quickly found that her wrists had been tightly bound behind her. Her bag and jacket were missing, the Terran reduced to her t-shirt and worn down jeans, both covered in the orange dust of Karna’s earth like she’d been drug across the ground.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light available to her as she tried to take in her surroundings. Lyselle’s aching body was less than eased by the rattling and shaking of her enclosure, but amidst the jostling of the small space she managed to pull herself together enough to identify a handful of different creatures. Some had been lined up on benches along either wall, Lyselle included, while a small number had been left sitting across the space’s rumbling floor, provided they were upright at all. Several looked injured, and among those who were conscious there was a resounding sense of fear and sorrow.

A strange, fuzzy-looking young girl sat across from Lyselle, bound tightly in rope and audibly sobbing. A pair of whiskers hung over each of her large, tear-soaked eyes, and a set of almost cat-like ears drooped miserably over her shoulders. Tufts of pale fur draped out of the ears, framing her face as she sulked. Extra attention had clearly been paid to tying the girl’s arms compared to the other occupants, her forelimbs strong enough in appearance to be imposing well before one noticed the long set of claws jutting out from their furry ends. The rope around them was tied in layers, as if her captors couldn’t settle on how much was enough. In the thing’s present pitiful state, however, Lyselle couldn’t conceive of the poor creature being much of a threat.

A Terran man, roughly Lys’s own age, was sitting next to the weeping girl with visible contempt. He wore a plain leather jacket over a faded and stained graphic tee, and looked generally scruffy and ill-kempt all around; the sort of boy Lys would typically find deeply uninteresting in any normal situation, but had now caught her attention by merit of being the only person present whose limbs appeared to be free. Hewas doing his best to ignore his neighbor’s emotional display while staring out the back of the tent-like space through an opening in the wall beside them.

Lyselle followed his gaze through the thin slit in the fabric, and quickly realized why everything seemed to be shaking around them. Whatever company she’d found herself in, they were on the move. A trail of dust kicked up behind the rickety vehicle transporting them, with little of interest to see beyond the odd wilted shrub shrinking over the horizon.

“Ku ju?”

Hey, guys!

I strongly, strongly reading the revised version of Chapter 3 in the downloads below before hopping into this one! I was very unhappy with it and went back and did some pretty major revisions! Also, if you're in it for the smut, good news! And that's all I'm saying about that for now!

I also did a more minor revision pass of chapters 1 and 2 as well, so if you've been putting off reading Thralls this is presently the most up-to-date and cohesive version of what's available! That said, the additions to previous chapters are not as vital going forward as what I did with chapter 3, so you can pass on those for now if you (understandably) don't feel like re-reading a bunch of shit.

No illo for this one right now, and I removed 3's from the book for the time being since making full page illustrations both absolutely fucks up editing and makes it harder to do the inevitable epub export. I'll figure it out eventually!! Hopefully.