. 02

Sixto swore under his breath. Again. We were so close! But their silver stag party had been crashed by who knows what, and now self preservation was getting the better of greed. Hidden in his cops of reeds, Sixto listened to the commotion and tried to make out what was going on. All he heard was a whole lot of splashing and the bellowing of what sounded like giant toads.

Oh, great. Probably bullywugs. For the love of Mask, why did they have to show up right now? Something like this happened nearly every time he got close to laying his hands on a prize, it seemed. Sixto heaved a deep sigh. The gods must hate me. That has to be it.

After a moment spent stirring the bitterness in his mental cauldron, he added, Fuck the gods.

The sound of people making haste through mud grew louder to his right. Sixto slung his bow back across his chest and drew his short sword. It was old, and he rarely used it, but he kept it oiled and sharp just in case. When pursuing Tymora's elusive leads, one never knew when a little "persuasion" would be necessary.

The splashing and rustling grew louder and nearer, approaching from the other side of a tuft of grass across a small rivulet of flowing water. Sixto tensed, readying a swift, stabbing stroke.

Ilya hurdled the grass in a single, graceful stroke, landing feet-first into the stream. The grasses protected Sixto from the splash, but Ilya rushed by, heedless of his presence.

"Ilya!" Six hissed as loud as he dared. She pulled up abruptly, turning her gaze to search the reeds for the origin of the voice. "Here!" Six cried, waving his hands from his hiding place. Ilya quickly approached, crawling in next to him, a look of fear and concern on her face.

"What in the hells is going on?"

"I don't know!" Ilya looked genuinely perplexed. "I was watching the stag, waiting for your signal, and then all of a sudden it ran away, and then there were giant frog people coming at me!"

Sixto exhaled a breath he hadn't known he was holding as, at last, the situation began to come into focus.

"Alright. The hunt's over. But it could be worse. We just need to get the hells out of the bullywugs' swamp before this turns serious."

"The who's swamp?"

"The people who think this swamp belongs to them," Sixto bit out in rapid fire. "I don't have time to explain. All that matters right now is that we beat a hasty, tactical retreat back to the road. Where are Ash and Kit?"

The concern on Ilya's young face deepened. "I don't know! How am I supposed to know that? They were in their positions when it all went crazy, I suppose."

An uncomfortable pause ensued.

"We should go look for them!" Ilya exclaimed.

"No! Terrible idea. If we go mucking around in this swamp we'll become bullywug bait in no time. Ours is the position closest to the road, and we were to regroup here after snaring the stag anyway. We wait for them here."

Ilya began to anxiously clench and unclench her fists, poking her head up to see over the grasses secreting the two of them. After indulging her search for their friends for a moment, Six reached over up and pressed down on her shoulder, pulling her back into concealment.

Sound raged all around them. Two giant toad creatures bounded by, a mere 40 feet away. Then a horrible, choking, gurgling sound erupted not far from them, opposite the direction Ilya had come. Hearing the sound, both Sixto and Ilya instinctively crouched lower.

"Is that one of their battlecries?" Ilya wondered aloud.

"How am I supposed to know? I'm not a walking encyclopedia," Six replied. "But if I had to guess, it sounded more like one of them dying."

As if in answer to a summoning, the ivory and black of Ash's horns and face appeared above them, gazing down into the grass with a calm, satisfied smile.

Sixto jumped. "Dear gods, Ashe, do you always have to be so creepy?" Standing up to quickly survey the area and not seeing any large humanoid frogs in hot pursuit, he asked, "How did you get here without being followed? Ilya here had to channel her inner sprinter to outrun those guys."

"I don't think you want to know," Ashara replied, matter of factly.

"Right, then," Sixto said in a let's-change-the-subject sort of way. "Let's get the hells out of here."

"What?" Ilya protested. "But what about Kit?" At that moment, loud ribbits erupted from the direction Ash had arrived from. All three of them turned and looked that way.

"Hmm. Looks like they found him," Ash proffered, sounding bored. "Maybe we should go?"

"My thoughts exactly," Sixto concurred, already slinking away, back toward the road. Ash followed, also keeping low.

"But what about Kit?" Ilya asked quietly.

E: Yeah, what about Kit?

Y: You're a big girl. You can handle yourself, right?

Si: Exactly.

E: So much for solidarity.

Sb: I got your back, Em.

E: Thanks, Seb.

She looked anxiously over her shoulder across the meadow to where Kit should have been. After a short, indecisive moment, she snuck off after her companions to the sound of full-throated croaks closing in on their former hiding spot.

E: Seb?!

*******************

Kit was in a pickle. Not only did she have farther to go to rejoin her companions, she had to contend with the fallout of their actions. Unbeknownst to her, Ilya's success at eluding her pursuers was making Kit's escape harder. After failing to outrun her, they had assumed she had hidden herself in the grass and doubled back to find her.

So it was that, just as Kit was beginning to think she was outpacing the toads in hot pursuit behind her, two more of them entered a small, dryish clearing ahead of her just as she blundered blindly into it. Each of them had clubs and one had a short bow across its torso.

Kit skidded to a halt, pulling out her knife again as she recalibrated. Realizing she wouldn't be able to take these two in front of her before those coming behind caught up, she quickly made up her mind to run in the only direction remaining: to her left. On her right was the large, marshy pond where the stag had been; no way was she going to be able to outswim a bunch of frogs.

Just then, however, a trio of frogs trotted into the clearing from just that direction.

They jog? Kit almost laughed at the random thought, given how serious the situation had just become. One of the joggers was clearly the boss. You can always tell who the boss is, Kit sighed. And there always has to be one. The middle member of the new trio, it was wearing a makeshift, rusty breastplate that somehow managed to fit its amphibian torso.

Y: It?

I: You don't know it's gender. It's a large humanoid amphibian.

Y: Good point.

It also wielded what looked like a legit quarterstaff, as opposed to a large, straight-ish tree branch.

I wonder where he got all that?

Just then, the two from earlier bounded into the clearing from the way Kit had come. She wheeled around and they stared at one another for a full second.

Old friends, Kit thought. They looked from her to their boss, then back again. The frog across the clearing knocked an arrow and pulled its bow string taut.

This isn't looking good.

It was then that the answer to her previous question arrived, just a few moments late to the station.

Oh.

I: You've got bullywugs on three sides and a small pond on the other. What do you do, Emma?

E: I don't have much choice, do I?

I: I mean, it's DnD. You can technically try anything.

E: I see the writing on the wall on this one. I drop my knife and put my hands up.

Y: Oh I can't wait to see this unfold.

E: This is all your fault, Silus!

Si: Guilty as charged.

*******************

Trudging through the muck with her hands tied behind her back, Kit had ample time to ponder what had just transpired. Thinking over the encounter in the clearing, three things in particular stood out.

The first was how fast she had dropped her weapon and surrendered. Kit liked to think of herself as tough and self-reliant, someone who stood her ground. She certainly didn't see herself as a pushover--something that bothered her at times about Ilya, who struck Kit as too compliant and accommodating, however good the intentions behind it. Then again, maybe her swift surrender was proof Kit was also learning to be wise. Outnumbered seven-to-one and the enemy has home court advantage? Not favorable odds.

Still, it felt pretty humiliating to put her hands up and let them do what they wanted with her. And to a bunch of frog people, no less. Her traveling companions were going to force her to remember this forever.

Y: You'd better believe it.

They'll come for me, won't they? Having to frame the question in that vulnerable, helpless manner made Kit's cheeks burn with humiliation while her stomach churned with apprehension.

The second thing that surprised her was that the boss frog could speak Common--slowly, for sure, but with remarkable clarity and correctness. Maybe she was just being elitist and arrogant, but she hadn't expected the giant toads to be literate in anything other than Croak. At the moment, though, she was hardly in any position to condescend. She had her hands full just keeping her feet as the boss frog pulled her forward through the swamp by a rope tied about her neck. She felt like a piece of reluctant property.

It didn't help from a balance perspective that they had tied her hands behind her back. Kit was now fully convinced that ambulating on two narrow columns of flesh and bone was no way to traverse a swamp. Every time she sank to her thighs in mud, she looked at her captors with envy, their webbed feet keeping them on the surface of the muck like snowshoes.

At least I'm not ruining my boots or socks, Kit thought. Or, for that matter, my breeches or tunic.

In fact, she wasn't in danger of getting any of her clothes muddy, save her tiny (and now very filthy) thong. Because that's all she was wearing.

Kit looked down her body at her naked chest and bare thighs, now flecked with mud and slick with sweat and swamp water. She decided it was quite an unusual feeling to be so naked and exposed surrounded by complete strangers. Each one of them could see her boobs bouncing freely as she walked. She wasn't sure if they considered that erotic or embarrassing, but it was hard not to imagine that they did. Kit noted, with a mixture of shame and something else she couldn't put her finger on, that her nipples were quite firm--the way they got when she was cold or turned on. Given that she was sweating profusely in the sweltering heat, it was clear which of the two it was.

To be fair, Kit's nipples were the kind that seemed intent on boring holes through nearly anything she wore (her leather armor being the one exception). But for her tits to be this hard, something else had to be going on.

Which was the third thing that surprised Kit about her current predicament--it was making her horny.

Y: Wait, is anyone surprised?

Si: Not I. Seb?

Sb: I mean...

I: Alright, peanut gallery. Back to the story

E: Yeah. Can it, y'all.

That's funny, Kit thought. I'm naked, sweaty, muddy, and tired; and I'm literally wading through a mucky swamp, dragged along by a bunch of giant, bipedal frogs. Where's the turn-on?

Of course, the rope between her legs wasn't helping. Whether knowingly or not, Kit's captors had tied her up in a rather "frustrating" way. To further restrain her, they had bound her wrists to a loop of rope they had tied around her belly. But rather than do so directly, at the small of her back, they had done so by taking the leading end of the rope binding her wrists, passing it between her ass cheeks, along her crotch, then tying it off at her bellybutton. The tether was quite taut, such that any attempt to use her arms to maintain balance as she slogged through the muck pulled tightly along her crotch and ass. It was a powerful mixture of pain, pleasure, and frustration that kept her hot and bothered.

She wondered to herself whether the frogs knew what they were doing when they tied her up like this.

Still, though, Kit mused. Why am I so aroused? Despite feeling the crotch rope--now quite snug along her womanhood and anus--tug and rub, she couldn't recall a time when she had experienced this level of erotic energy. Her nipples had rarely been this erect before, even during sex. The strip dance at that seedy bar was the closest memory she could locate.

"The human slave is very slow." The frog holding her leash interrupted Kit's thoughts in his slow, simple, yet crystal clear Common.

"The human slave is not designed to walk through mud with her hands tied behind her back!" Kit retorted. It only occurred to her after she had said it that she had just misidentified herself as human. She was more preoccupied with the fact that she had just been called 'slave' by someone who had just taken her clothes and tied her up.

"The human slave is the warrior leader's captive," Kit's captor responded. "Of course she is tied up." Kit didn't have much to say to that--tying up captives was pretty standard operating procedure, as far as she knew--though she wondered whether stripping them naked first was.

Kit decided that while her captor was talking, she might as well ask some questions. "Where are you taking me?"

"Warrior leader will bring you to the tribe chieftain," it replied frankly.

Ok, Kit thought, the situation is getting a little clearer.

"Do you have a name?" The conversation seemed to be going somewhere and it only felt polite to ask.

Her question was greeted with silence for a moment, then, "Not in your language."

Kit slipped and went down on one knee. Getting back up felt like pulling herself up by her crotch.

"What can I call you, then?"

"After another pause, the response came: "You can call me the warrior leader."

I guess that's only fair, Kit thought. If they had asked what to call me in their language, I wouldn't know what to say, either.

"What does your tribe chieftain want with me?" At this, the frog holding Kit's leash turned its head to the side slightly, toward her. In the pause that followed, Kit gathered her interlocutor hadn't fully understood, or perhaps they feared they hadn't and was wary of revealing it. Not wanting to lose the flow of information so soon, Kit tried again.

"What will your tribe chieftain do with me when we arrive?" Again, the helpless, passive phrasing of the question galled Kit and she felt a stew of emotion churn in her gut.

Wow, she realized with a start. Whatever it is that's making my insides churn is turning me on big time.

The frog bellowed a succession of deep, playful sounding ribbits. Despite not understanding their language, Kit got the sense that he was chuckling--at her expense.

"Our tribe chieftain wishes to see the human slave," Kit's captor replied, cryptically.

"He wants to see me?" Kit responded, baffled. "Why?" Involuntarily, she began to imagine an audience with the chieftain of this tribe of frog people. Normally, she might be curious about such an encounter. But normally she didn't envision such exchanges occurring while wearing nothing but a thong and with her naked body glistening with sweat and slime.

When her query went unanswered, Kit followed up with another she was dying to ask, but was humiliated to put into words. "Why did you strip me naked?"

After surrendering, the first thing the frog people had done was relieve Kit of her weapons: her knife, longsword, and bow. That part had hurt a lot. Kit loved her weapons--her longsword had been her uncle's on his long adventuring career. Her bow had been made for her by her closest friend, Sadine--one of the best bowyers in the world, in Kit's opinion. And her knife, well, it was just a knife. But they had been through a lot together.

Unfortunately, the toad people hadn't stopped at disarming her. Once she was no longer a threat, the boss frog had told her to undress. At first, Kit assumed they just wanted her armor--it had real value and could protect her from harm if she tried to escape. Taking a captive's armor made almost as much sense as taking their weapons. But after she had removed her leather chest piece and bracers and thrown them in the growing pile at her captor's feet, he just stared back expectantly.

Kit was looking from one frog to the other, trying to figure out what they wanted, when it clicked.

"You want my clothes?" she had asked, incredulous.

"The human slave will give everything to the warrior leader," her captor had replied, clearly and concisely.

Kit couldn't remember a time she had blushed more furiously. Which was odd, since they were frog people and Kit didn't even know if they viewed the situation in the humiliating, sexual light that she did. Still, her cheeks had burned and she had crossed her arms defiantly over her chest at first. But the warrior leader had croaked something in their language, his frog goons had started to approach, and rather than be forcibly undressed, Kit had opted to do it herself.

First to come off was her tunic. It felt strange, the touch of the humid, swamp air on her bare middle. As soon as it was off her body, a frog took it out of her hands. Her boots and socks followed into frog custody. It felt very strange to touch the moist marsh dirt and grass beneath her toes. Kit had hesitated for a moment at this point, hoping not to have to bare her ass to her captors, but when they had continued to stare in silence she had stripped off her breeches.

Standing there in her underwear, Kit really had waited. Confused why they wanted her clothes, she hadn't in her wildest dreams thought her captors wanted her bra or thong. But her captor had bellowed something and before Kit knew what had happened a frog standing behind her had undone the strings on her cotton, bikni-top bra. Her breasts had bounced out as the frog ripped the cloth away, leaving Kit'seneth Lunasaria shocked and topless in the middle of a ring of frog warriors.

Why'd they have to take off my bra? Kit wondered for the tenth time as she trudged through the muck. She looked down again at her breasts, nipples pointing boldly up into the air. Kit was actually quite proud of her breasts. Neither too small nor too large, she loved how firm they were and the way her dark nipples contrasted nicely with her pale skin. She was fond of how large and erect her nipples got when she was turned on. Kit loved the looks she got, especially from attractive women, when they noticed her nipples through her clothing. But having them stripped bare like that evoked another set of emotions altogether.

For some reason, no one had stepped forward to cut off her thong. Instead, they had tied her up--crotch rope and all--put a leash around her neck, and marched her off into the swamp.

Maybe my thong was too small to be of interest? It was the only thing she could think of.

The laughing bellows of Kit's captor brought her back to the present. When his laughter subsided, he said, "You were a proud outlander. All outlanders are arrogant," he said, slowing down to very carefully pronounce the last word. "They think they are better than Kra'koa." When he said that last word--what Kit assumed to be the name of his own people--it came out more as an amphibian sound than a Common word. In that context, Kit found it sounded rather beautiful, her own situation notwithstanding.

Kit suddenly felt a stab of shame for having characterized their language as 'Croak' a moment ago, even if she hadn't said it out loud. Maybe this was the arrogance her captor was talking about. Feeling a little humbled, Kit bit the inside of her lip and looked away from the warrior leader.

"But now," warrior leader continued, "you do not look so arrogant or powerful. We have taken everything and you are just Kra'koa slave now."

So this is all about a sense of inferiority? Kit wondered to herself. As she turned it over in her mind, it started to make sense. It certainly explained the humiliating treatment she had received since her capture.