They call them Istanza. The word is derived from a long-forgotten language, a language whose origins are lost in the depths of time. None are left who speak the language in its entirety, but there are a select few who understand the handful of words that are still used.
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1: Finding Silra
Leeann watched the ceremony with a keen awareness of her own growing arousal. Her nipples ached deliciously behind her leather halter, and her chest buzzed with lusty heat. Between her legs there was a nervous energy that was almost too much to bear.
There were ten of them this time, on their knees at the foot of the Altar Steps, hands bound behind their backs with bonding chord. The pale light from the single narrow window high above the Grand Altar cast them with little more than shadows; they were indistinct, white curves in the blackness. All of them new, all of them uninitiated, all of them quaking with fear and staring at the smooth stone surface at their knees. All except one.
She watched, rapt. She knew what they were feeling. She knew how cold the stone floor felt against their knees and the tops of their feet; she knew how their ankles ached at supporting their weight for so long, how their beautiful smooth buttocks had gone completely numb, how their thighs complained in cramping agony. She knew how tiny flecks of dust and grit on the smooth stone stabbed and pierced the sensitive skin of their knees. She knew how they would later sit hunched in their cold cell, rubbing their aching muscles and their sore knees in a vain attempt to numb the pain and drive some heat into their bodies.
They were Koda: they were the bound.
She knew how they felt, because she had once been Koda, just like them. She had been there, lost and terrified, awaiting her fate.
They could have come from anywhere. It was a big universe outside Krakus, and there were any number of ways in which the slave traders who served the Sect of Bane could find its Koda. They could have been orphans taken into the slave trade and sold to the Sect after they reached adulthood. They could have been victims of an accident on a spacecraft or station, picked up by an opportunistic traveller and traded like any other luxury. They could even have been artificially gestated for the sex industry and sold to the highest bidder, which just happened on this occasion to be the Koda-purchasers of the cruellest sect in the known galaxy.
From where Leeann was standing, twenty paces from the end of the line, they appeared very much alike. The gloom and the distance hid their faces, but their bodies were near-identical. Smooth backs, slender lithe arms, hair covering their shoulders in lank rivulets. Breasts and thighs were indistinct because of their positions, but that did not matter. Leeann would get to know each of their bodies intimately over the coming weeks.
She shifted subtly on her feet, already boiling inside with excitement. She was Istanza; she was control, and she was responsible for training the new Koda. The Sect of Bane employed her because of her talents and her penchants: she liked to cause pain, and she was good at it. To punish the Koda was her role within the Sect, and it was also her payment, as well as a handsome sum paid monthly into an off-world bank account.
The initiation was almost over. The Koda visibly shook as the shadowed figure at the altar read through the last of the sacred texts. Their backs heaved as their panicked breaths pulsed in and out of their lungs. Their toes were curled, clenched, like their numb fingers. They were afraid – all except one.
She was the eighth in the row, from where Leeann stood. Her hair, although naturally brown, looked almost black in the waning light, and it hung like mistletoe around her neck. Her shoulders stood through her curled locks, but they were not hunched like the other Koda – they were square, strong and proud. Her breaths were slow and controlled, and her fingers, though pale and obviously numb, were relaxed and unclenched. Her toes moved rhythmically as her feet crunched and expanded with each heartbeat, an old and little-known trick to keep blood flowing and prevent numb legs.
A loud slam reverberated around the room, making each of the Koda flinch. Leeann looked up at the altar, saw the single curtain sway as the shadowed priest passed through it into the antechamber beyond. The sacred book was closed, its closing having caused the slam that had awoken the Koda from their fear, marking the end of the initiation ceremony as far as the priests were concerned.
As far as Leeann was concerned, it was just beginning. At last her long wait was over. She had all night to fill, and ten Koda to train.
She walked slowly across the smooth stone, letting the hard heels of her knee-high boots knock loudly on the ancient floor, dragging out the seconds despite the hurried demands of her body. The echoes sounded glorious as they reverberated around the hall; she stood before the Koda, at the foot of the Altar Steps, and waited, leather-gloved arms folded, for the circling booms to die away completely.
"Stand." She commanded. She watched as they tried to obey, their numb legs unsteady or un-responding as they attempted to lift themselves from the smooth floor with their hands still bound behind their backs. One would fail, she knew – there was always one whose legs were less steady than the rest, and after several hours kneeling motionless on the floor they would be completely numb, and she would topple and fall to the floor when she tried to stand. Leeann stared at their frightened faces, one by one, wondering which it would be that earned a special first night for her imbalance. Would it be the one on the end, with the short black hair? Or the thin-faced girl, with the doe eyes? She could barely still her heartbeat as she waited for her first victim to earn her punishment, barely resist her body's cravings. As she watched one Koda's legs gave out and she toppled backwards, sprawled helpless on the floor. Leeann smiled deeply.
She took two paces forward, until she stood astride the fallen Koda, looking down at her panic-stricken face between her leather-clad knees. She lowered herself slowly onto one knee, felt the delicious slipperiness of her own arousal inside her tight leather shorts. Her knee pressed into the Koda's arm and pushed it into the stone; up-close Leeann could see the tears welling behind her wide eyes, hear the unsteady sobs behind her terrified breaths. She took hold of her greasy blonde hair in both hands and pulled the Koda's head towards hers until the face twisted and screamed.
"First one to fall earns a special reward." She said softly, all the while increasing the pressure on the Koda's arm. She let go of the girl's hair and stood quickly as her eyes clenched in pain. She glanced at her hand with mock disdain, wiped it against her leg. "Your hair is filthy, Koda." She snapped. "Why is your hair filthy?"
The girl looked up at her from the floor, lips trembling and eyes wide, but said nothing.
"Answer me, Koda!"
Again, she gave no reply.
"You will be cleaned, but first you will be punished." She grabbed the girl's tied hands and spun her onto her belly, pushing her face into the dusty floor. "Buttocks in the air!" She barked.
The Koda obeyed, drawing herself onto her knees and presenting her pale buttocks to the altar and the surrounding Koda like an offering. Leeann smiled again, withdrew her short cane from its holster on her left arm, held it aloft for all to see, then brought it down swiftly.
It cracked like a gunshot, the following yelp competing in the echoes that ran around the hall. She gave another strike, and another. Yelps followed each like answering calls, drawing at her heartstrings and winding up the breaking-point tension between her legs even tighter still. One more strike might just be enough – the sound of leather on flesh, the sudden scream, it could be enough to send her over the edge... But no, not yet. Plenty of time for that later.
"Stand!" She shouted again, grabbing the Koda's hands and pulling her forcefully upright. "Follow. Quickly."
She marched them out of the great hall and into the network of narrow corridors that led to Leeann's own dungeon. Neon lamps guttered on the walls and the smell of burnt tin and damp stone was heady in the air like musk. The Koda would spend their first night in a communal cell, before being assigned individual cells the following day; it was part of the ritual, and an important part of their training. This night they would witness the punishment of Leeann's chosen victim, and play a part in her own gratification. This night would be fun.
She stopped at the entrance to the cell, a wide cylinder lit by a ring of lamps suspended from the domed brick ceiling on an iron wheel. Ropes hung from the ceiling too, as did numerous shackles from the walls. The floor had a single drain in the middle and was sloped so that any fluids would run into it after passing over the rough flagstones.
"Koda; follow." Leeann commanded, standing in the centre of the cell. "You will stand against the wall facing me, and you will watch."
The Koda obeyed, faces downturned and eyes peering terrified from under brows that glistened with cold sweat. Leeann grabbed the blonde Koda who had fallen at the altar, dragged her brutally to the centre of the room, where she deftly fastened a hanging rope around her wrists, which were still bound behind her back. A hand-crank on the wall hoisted the rope upwards until the girl was bent forwards, her shoulders almost at breaking point and her feet arched to relieve the pain. She tottered, whimpered and sobbed as Leeann once again withdrew her cane from its holster and gave three sharp strikes against her buttocks, accurately covering the three growing welts that had formed from her earlier punishment in the great hall.
Only then did Leeann step away from the hanging girl and let her gaze wander slowly around the room.
"This is your future, Koda." She said slowly. "I am Istanza. I am your future. If you do not obey the orders of the Sect of Bane, you shall come to this room, where you will suffer the fate of this thing that you see hanging before you now." She narrowed her eyes and smiled. "I for one hope that you do not learn to obey, for every minute of your punishment is a minute of my reward."
All eyes were on her, or her victim. All were wide and terrified, all were twitching to nervous breaths. All except one pair, which were wide not with fear but wonder, her breaths not fast and twitching but fast and heavy, her lungs heaving, her chest flushed, her legs squeezed tightly together as she arched her back against the wall. It was the same Koda that had shown no fear in the great hall.
Leeann slapped her cane into the palm of her hand and walked slowly across the cell towards the Koda, her curiosity piqued. The girl stared sidelong at her, still breathing with fast sighs. She let her gloved hand touch the Koda's chest, where it was red and flushed, around to the nipple of her left breast, which stood proud and firm. She tweaked it gently, watched as the Koda's eyes narrowed, then again, harder, smiled as the Koda gave a shocked squeal.
