The golden rays of dawn stabbed through the clouds, and a slow, ever-growing deluge of golden beams started to pour from the woods to the east, towards the slowly rousing metropolis, guarded by pink-and-purple walls and guard towers.
The city was a bizarre, wild labyrinth of purple stones, bricks, and many wooden structures, with most wooden architecture situated in its outskirts, often composed of cages or cage-like buildings. It was a Dark Elf city after all, and amongst the cities of the Monstergirl Empire "Reik", dark elves were notorious for the highest slave-to-free population rates.
The road leading to the city was quiet, save for a small trader's cart with a young dark elven girl sitting on it. She leisurely drove the cart towards the city about to wake up, laden with hay and grain, whistling in a quiet tone, sporting a big black hat with a white feather, and loose leather clothes.
What made this caravan rather shocking to a human viewer was that the draft animals were not horses; the cart was drawn by six strong human slave women. Each woman was naked save for restraints and thick leather boots, strapped with elaborate chains covering their breasts and crotch, neck and shoulders chained to the yoke, looking content, and quiet with the word "slave" tattooed on their right asscheeks, arms secure in leather armbinders chained to the cart. Their bodies did not look abused save for a few welts on their buttocks, the dark elf was a relatively kind owner who just saw human men as sperm donors, and women little more than slaves, workers, and nannies for her children. She didn't hit them much, nor did she shave their hair bald, instead let them groom it in their resting time.
"Just a bit further." The dark elf spoke in her sweet voice. "Then we can all wash up, rest, eat and sleep, girls." She gently swatted one of the slave girls' asses with a crop, not enough to hurt, the naked girls picking up the pace with a sigh, their steel-collared necks straining with the pull. They were older than her, quite strong women who, by the few welts that remained, must have carried armor as female soldiers or adventuresses. As the cart rolled along, dark elven sentries on the road gave curt nods to the driver, ignoring the groaning humans pulling the cart as if they were just horses.
"I'll buy you all some rich, dark beer. Just a bit more, c'mon!" Out of a sense of tender mercy to remove weight, (she would say it was a morning exercise if confronted, not admitting she had a soft side), the dark elf cart driver got off the cart and walked beside her slaves as they entered the city gates, guarded by several dark elven guardswomen, and entered the merchant's warehouse to unload goods, and rest...
The sentry watching the ponygirl slave cart pass yawned, snapped her fingers behind her, and a very young, wild-haired blonde human girl wearing a leather collar, warm clothes belonging to her former human militia of some distant village appeared from the guardhouse, bringing her a big stone mug of coffee. Her worn clothes were stitched with the words: "Army Slave."
The dark elf ruffled her hair and kissed her cheek, the human girl flinching with hesitation, earning a knowing smile from the slutty elf with chocolate skin. She pointed to the guard's bunkhouse with a weary hand, her fingers brushing the leather collar adorning the human girl's neck.
"Shift's done, eat what's on my counter, and go to sleep."
The girl looked at her, bowed stiffly, and left. At least she was wearing more comfortable clothes, compulsory nudity nearly earning her a beating from all the begging. The dark elf girl couldn't understand why human women were so prudish; slaves only were supposed to wear clothes when it's cold.
The sentry had grabbed her from some skirmish. Instead of wasting her youth with harsh work, the village militia girl had grown on her, so she kept the human around as a live-in slave.
Awkward captivity turned into eventual resistance, conflicted relation, and then, stoic acceptance. They had even bathed together once, and the girl stopped complaining and had started cleaning the guardhouse quite well. The sentry dark elf was pleased with her cooking too. Perhaps one day, the dark elf would take her to her house, introduce her to her mother's family as a live-in maid. She could always sell her at the slave market if it didn't work out.
Perhaps this night they could sleep together without the girl denying her advances: she didn't feel like pushing human women. They were pushed hard enough in the Reik as labor, and as wives and mothers in the human empire.
*-*-*-*
Another bright summer sun shone on the Dark Elven city of Schwarzelfstadt, situated on a fertile plain surrounded by a vast forest and an artificial harbor leading to the Western Ocean. Its winding alleys, purple stone buildings, and spires glistening in the sun's rays started to hear the first sounds of daytime activity. The cultural and populous capital of the Reik's largest demographics, the dark elves, woke up to another day with elaborate, handcrafted myriad clocks ringing the sixth hour of the day in melodic chimes across the city.
The denizens of the city's shops, crafts factories, and bazaars started to wake up, prepare, and shamble to their routines with rattling doors being unlocked whereas vampire citizens, the city's nighttime monstergirl citizens retreated from the sun's rays as their house slaves shut the windows and had their recovery breakfasts rich with blood-replenishing foods before sleeping as well. Dark Elven cities were paradise for vampire girls: blood was essentially infinite, cheap slave women who were essentially pampered kittens on their laps supplying them with high health and living standards for either. The former age's blood-draining, callous, murderous monstergirls and male vampires of old having been consigned to the dustbin of history after the Demon Wars and Theophilos's one-man crusade culminating in killing the Eldest Vampire in the world, Marina Nosferat.
And of course, the city's ubiquitous, cheap workforce was roused to life as well, led to another endless day of work from their bunks, cages, and house beds to the sound of turning keys, rattling chains, and whips:
Slaves.
Taken from raids, raised in monstergirl orphanages from abandoned children, children of women in the Reik that didn't want to keep, and bred in monster households, the chief economic force of the dark elf cities were always slaves, and most of these were human women. Human men, due to their nature were often used for breeding monstergirl citizens, casual sex, and the more contact-intensive labor to feed the monstergirl population with essence, their very dependence on man. Since Dark Elf cities allowed(and officially encouraged) public sex, wanton reproduction, and nudity between everyone regardless of race or gender, there were even the rare volunteers, intentional surrenders, and refugees from the more conservative human countries amongst the slave workforce, trusted with better and more skilled jobs in exchange for a life free from the military draft, fighting, and access to wild sex.
Still, the lowest-grade slaves led impersonal lives focused on labor. They staffed the mines and the fields outlying the city. Naked even in public from dawn until dusk, these lowliest slaves were the first to wake up, last to stop working, and often treated like livestock, albeit physically well-maintained: a healthy slave with no physical ailments and plenty of sex was a content one.
The farmhouses were the first to start their daily work routine alongside bakeries. Slowly, pale, nude figures started emerging from the long, wooden barracks situated at the surrounding farms in disciplined rows, guarded by beautiful monstergirls; dark elves with long, ivory hair and pointed, comically large ears wielding whips and whistles goaded their farm slaves in orderly lines. Human women, the rare prized Orc or Oni female that could be tamed, and the occasional human male(mostly for stud work, fucking other farm slaves during breaks or breeding Holstauri, cow-girl slaves being milked) were lined up with chains on their necks and ankles, nude save for hats against the sun, and a rare leather belt around the hips for tools. Under directions, the occasional whip, and the whistle, the farm slaves' daily life began, sowing, tilling, and harvesting labor-intensive crops for their owners. Occasionally their overseers turned a blind eye when the male slaves would get touchy with the females; intimacy and sex during work were encouraged to relieve stress, establish bonds, and breed the female farm slaves for future generations. Plus it amused dark elves who'd giggle and lick their lips seeing naked slave women on all fours with their farm tools aside asses raised high, getting plowed by strong, male slaves thrusting into their lovers' hairy cunts like bulls on a dairy farm. Also, the publicly visible sex spectacles and shameless naked farm work made it very clear to the new human captives: this was their place under the dark elf (high) heels, warm bodies to be worked, bred, and used. Escaped, oppressed peasant girls from religious human towns were the most enthusiastic slaves, gladly volunteering much to the Farm Mistress' satisfaction and polite welcome.
