Initiation



Contents TOC \h \u \z Initiation PAGEREF _Toc41206863 \h 5Massed defeat PAGEREF _Toc41206864 \h 6Reprisals PAGEREF _Toc41206865 \h 8Scapegoat PAGEREF _Toc41206866 \h 10Worth PAGEREF _Toc41206867 \h 12On view PAGEREF _Toc41206868 \h 15Sour look PAGEREF _Toc41206869 \h 18Bite of the cane PAGEREF _Toc41206870 \h 20Scream PAGEREF _Toc41206871 \h 22Warning PAGEREF _Toc41206872 \h 24On parade PAGEREF _Toc41206873 \h 26Fascination PAGEREF _Toc41206874 \h 28The idea PAGEREF _Toc41206875 \h 29Attitude PAGEREF _Toc41206876 \h 32Reckless PAGEREF _Toc41206877 \h 35Ambush PAGEREF _Toc41206878 \h 37Weakening PAGEREF _Toc41206879 \h 39Foes PAGEREF _Toc41206880 \h 42Presence of mind PAGEREF _Toc41206881 \h 44Dignity PAGEREF _Toc41206882 \h 46Challenge PAGEREF _Toc41206883 \h 48Fixed PAGEREF _Toc41206884 \h 50Assault PAGEREF _Toc41206885 \h 52Connections PAGEREF _Toc41206886 \h 53Strapped PAGEREF _Toc41206887 \h 55Seconds PAGEREF _Toc41206888 \h 57Meat for hire PAGEREF _Toc41206889 \h 59Slowly does it PAGEREF _Toc41206890 \h 62Lathered with pain PAGEREF _Toc41206891 \h 64Beaten PAGEREF _Toc41206892 \h 67Out of my mind PAGEREF _Toc41206893 \h 69Obsession PAGEREF _Toc41206894 \h 71Re-position PAGEREF _Toc41206895 \h 72Racked PAGEREF _Toc41206896 \h 75Frenzy PAGEREF _Toc41206897 \h 77Ropework PAGEREF _Toc41206898 \h 80Control PAGEREF _Toc41206899 \h 83Weaponry PAGEREF _Toc41206900 \h 86Curious PAGEREF _Toc41206901 \h 88Madness PAGEREF _Toc41206902 \h 91Crushed PAGEREF _Toc41206903 \h 94Crazy PAGEREF _Toc41206904 \h 96Inevitable PAGEREF _Toc41206905 \h 97Enduring PAGEREF _Toc41206906 \h 100Snapped PAGEREF _Toc41206907 \h 102Rage PAGEREF _Toc41206908 \h 104Alternatives PAGEREF _Toc41206909 \h 107Fiend PAGEREF _Toc41206910 \h 110Elemental PAGEREF _Toc41206911 \h 111Demonic PAGEREF _Toc41206912 \h 113Not finished yet PAGEREF _Toc41206913 \h 115Fabien Sassier models cover and chapter pagesInitiationMassed defeat40195517081500They were tired and sweaty, this mass of defeated soldiers spread out before me. The devastating attack on their forces had left them bewildered .. confronted by a technological military might they could barely conceive. They’d had to surrender. No choice, completely out-classed. Since, marched for two days, day and night into this wilderness, walked till many of them dropped.I mounted on the back of a cart and surveyed the mass. There had to be two hundred of them. Soldiers, tough men who'd proved themselves in battle. Veteran soldiers but cripplingly defeated, overwhelmed by the superiority of the Realm. Experienced, veterans of many a war. But they'd been no match for the sophistication that had knocked their armies for six. In a series of coordinated lightning strikes, skilfully planned, expertly executed, within a few days our superior weaponry had cut a bloody swathe through their country. Their resources, their mineral wealth .. above all, those prized rare deposits which we needed to develop the next generation of our unbeatable weaponry .. it was now in the hands of the Realm.Their government had capitulated, hoping to spare more citizen casualties. But such niceties were not the concern of the Realm. Ends always justified the means. More irritating, pockets of resistance had persisted. Elements of their military that had doggedly kept up the fight. This division had been one of the last. Finally they bunkered themselves up in some mountain caves, cornered. Our geological X-ray drones said those caves could house hundreds of men.This enemy before me was exhausted. Hungry, tired, demoralised. By contrast, I insisted my guards appeared smartly turned out. Immaculate in their uniforms, crisp tight looks. Here in the camp I allowed a more casual look. But still they knew to look good, superior. The obvious victors dominating over these bedraggled men. Chosen for their build, sleeveless tops bulged etched muscle holding overwhelming firepower. Recruited for a will to dominate over men like these who were used to dominating. Guards who when shirtless could intimidate even soldiers used to generating respect themselves. I commanded men given to dominate other males. Intimidation had started already on the weary march here. With shock this tough enemy experienced first hand the blistering force of stun guns that stopped any defiance in its tracks. Weapons they didn’t even know existed. With horror they watched stragglers cut to pieces by laser guns. Horrified. Prisoners of war didn’t get treated like that! They were in for a surprise.Beaten and broken, totally out-classed by superior weaponry. For the past years, secretly the Realm had developed this unbeatable military strength. In preparation of invasion and conquest. Weaponry that experienced soldiers like these had never imagined. Two hundred prisoners, tired out, hungry .. they ranged before me in this quarry. Totally out-classed in battle. Even experienced fighters like these.My guards had forced them into lines facing me, faced to the front. Made to kneel. A symbol of their worth. Made to kneel in submission to me. The supreme representative here of the Realm. Their uniforms were dusty, sweat-stained from days of forced march. The men were hungry. Many had their heads sunk to their chest. Bodies slumped .. with exhaustion, with defeat. But their downfall had only begun. The downward trajectory started here."Prisoners if the Realm. Heads up."I called out over their bent heads. The rows of defeated men spread out backwards a hundred metres. Probably those at the back never heard my voice. But as if on signal a volley of gunfire blasted out. Every single guard held high his weapon and blasted an ear-splitting barrage of gunfire into the air. The sounds echoed off the high rock-faces all around. Echoing shrill after the firing had stopped.I looked out over the heads of hundreds of captive solders. I had their attention."Transported here. In service to the Realm. For re-adjustment. Learn your place. Station-adjustment. Prisoners of the Realm." Reprisals4019551333500This weaponry that had defeated them, experienced soldiers .. they’d seen nothing like it. That soundwave cannon .. couldn’t even conceive of it. And accompanied here on the march by fire-power they’d never seen. Laser guns, stun guns, stuff they’d never heard of. Brave fighters. But out-classed. None of that weaponry would see much use here, though. In this labour colony, the gunfire that had just blasted out to catch their attention .. such gear would not be used in this adjustment programme. For psychological re-programming, the Realm made use of tools from an older time.When the blasts of gunfire had drawn the prisoners’ attention to me .. the echoes of gunfire zinging off the rockface into the air .. I addressed this fresh batch of my prisoners."Your general was hanged yesterday."Together with the prime minister and his cabinet. But soldiers were mainly loyal to their own kind. My words about their general would stir them more. I would not bother to paint for them a picture of the slow hanging used .. drawn slowly up by the neck .. panicking, choking .. legs flailing in wild desperation. The executions were telecast to the whole vanquished population so no one should be in any doubt. Seeing with their own eyes that the Realm dealt firmly with its enemies.He was a tough bird, their general. No desk bound pen-pusher. I had watched the telecast myself. He had taken twenty minutes to slowly choke, the camera had stayed on him while the commentator listed the crimes. But I wouldn't waste my breath telling that to this mass of defeated soldiery lined up before me. No doubt they'd be witnessing such an execution themselves soon enough. There were always rebellious ones who refused behaviour adjustment. Who’d rather die than toe the line. Though most thought death would come quicker than it ever did."Send me out your colonel. Where is he?"I knew the officers commanding this mass of dirty sweaty men, the details had been digi-mailed to me here. But in this sweating mass of inhumanity, we have a job spotting them. There'd be no identifying their colonel. Better to have his own men pinpoint the man. Betray him.The rows turned around .. looking among their ranks. Looking to spot the man who’d led them into the fight. Voices were raised. Waves of sound went to the back from the front. I indulged their ill-discipline .. for now. If it got me the man I wanted …. Given up by his own men.It took some time, I was beginning to lose patience. Then a movement from the back rows. He stood up. Too far away to recognise. But the prisoner who stepped forward over the kneeling ranks of prisoners was tall. Despite his ungainly progress stepping through the rows of his men, I could see a dignity and authority in the man. Was I being palmed off with an imposter? A previous batch had tried that on. None of these prisoners objected or looked confused. I was not being fooled, this was their man. And there was a bearing about the way he carried himself. Looks of concern greeted him as he clambered through their midst. Men feared for him .. why else was he being summoned out? Straight after that talk of executing their general …. But none reached out for him, none applauded their man. Two days of intimidation on the march here. None of the prisoners dared.When he reached the front, two of my men grabbed him by the arms to direct him over to me. Pushing the man to me stood above him on the cart. Disdainfully he shook them off. But when he marched himself over towards me, I deigned to let his disorderliness be."You took your time. Hiding away like a coward?"He stood looking up at me. Not at all offended by my words. A smirk painted his face."It takes a man to have a voice that can carry to the back."I stared back .. just as unshaken by his insult. My composure asking his insolence, Who holds the power here?"Another minute and I'd have had ten men shot."The coldness of my look told him that was no idle threat. The stern riposte in his eyes betrayed no sense at the disproportionate injustice. What else would he suppose, his body language said? His stance scoffing, Just what he’d expect from scumbags like us. Scapegoat39941516827500I looked down at the men's colonel. Stood looking up at me, chin up, broad chest stuck out. No sign of looking intimidated in his stance. I let him get away with his insolent retort about me not being man enough. For now.I chose to ignore that brash demeanour. Fronting me with his authority. The fool. He still thought he was a colonel. Did he think he was still a soldier? Or prisoner-of-war? His re-adjustment training would begin soon enough. Not too soon ….My gaze passed again out over the rows of his men kneeling, all their eyes on this confrontation. Their most senior officer cockily fronting up the enemy. Without glancing back at him, I spoke out, loud enough for some to hear. At the back they couldn’t heat me, he’d said disparagingly. Those too far away would see the effect anyway."Shirt off, scum."Out of the corner of my eye, I felt the pause. I felt his eyes looking up at me rebelliously for ordering him out off his tunic-top. I did not turn to face him .. it would not do to have to repeat myself. Needing to reinforce my order with a look .. that might be read by his men as an uncertainty. And I had no reason at all to doubt my powers.Still I sensed his hesitation was not born of fear either. He was not hesitating out of doubt. The sensation that his vibes were transmitting to me were, All in my good time!But he did. He did as told. I kept my eyes front, disdainfully ignoring my prisoner. My body gave out my message clearly to this scum kneeling before me, My authority expects nothing other than to be obeyed. Anything less had severe consequences. My peripheral vision saw him undo the cuffs of his shirt. He was obeying …. I’d let him do it “on his own terms” … for now.I sensed it rather than saw it. A flourish. An element of theatricality. The way he revealed himself. Dramatically whipping the tunic over his head. As much a display of bravado for his men watching on. I had the sense of a muscular torso being revealed. Stood proud, unconcerned. I saw an admiration reflected in the eyes of the kneeling prisoners in the first rows.I was not going to play to his theatricals. He was playing to an audience. A public that had respected him .. for his leadership, for the powerful torso he had just revealed. Playing to his own men .. showing his fearlessness. But mainly he was performing for me. His message clear .. I did not put the shits under this man.My sensors felt him shrug his upper body once he was free of the shirt. Like he'd just flexed the strength in his bare upper body. An effort to attract my attention. See this? This is what you are dealing with. Playing me. Tempting me to glance his way.I was not playing ball. The man was showing off! Giving me a display of a full-bodied muscular male who was not going to be unsettled by me. But why should I play along? I stared out over the massed ranks of his own men, defeated, dishevelled, weary. Deliberately I denied him his drama. I ignored him. Before he contemptuously slung the shirt to land at my feet. More attention-seeking.This fool was just playing into my hands, I thought. If I’d wanted a , an attitude like his was just what I needed. I smirked to myself."Boots. Footwear. Off. Look smart about it."I could only be talking to him. Though I hadn’t deigned to look his way. Again he played that waiting-game. A delay of haughty superiority. Waiting just that little bit too long. He was going to comply. But he had to make his point.I sensed he was looking up at me. He wanted to fix me insolently in the eye before giving in. He had an attentive audience rooting for him. He needed me to give in to my curiosity. A sign that he was controlling this show. But I could play games too. I denied him his fun. I ignored him. Looking out, dominating the sight of his defeated men.He had to give in first. When he was down on one knee unlacing a boot .. when he could not hold me eye .. I did look down. A solid back, pure muscle. As hard and arrogant as his attitude. Shredded shoulders rippled as he loosened his laces. A muscle-packed torso that matched the insolence with which he had stood posing for me. A supreme image of the real male. A soldier’s soldier. All-man. Just what I wanted. This initiation of the adjustment programme could begin. Worth400685508000They were veteran soldiers, experienced in many wars. Men who would hold their own in any bar fight. Men used to being looked up to. Men who knew they deserved respect. Who could pull a female any night they tried. Men used to respect. And here, in this camp, they were worth nothing. Hence the re-programming. Forced to adjust their out-dated ideas of their self-worth. Before the Realm chose how best to make use of their bodies.I turned away from the show-off removing his footwear before he could see I had been looking over the body I’d offer in sacrifice."Prisoners of the Realm. Beaten men. Defeated."I heard the usual murmur of dissent from the ranks. This wasn't my first day in the job, they weren't the first batch of prisoners I'd taught their new worth. I let the murmured dissent go. They’d learn soon enough."Worth nothing."This was not the message men like these were used to hearing. Certainly not conceited men like the colonel at my feet."If I gave the order now, I could have every single one of you gunned down."I saw nervous looks to the sides. There had to be two hundred of them kneeling in front of me. And only thirty of my men. But the firepower they could unleash would kill and maim half of them before they got up off their knees.“What would the Realm lose? Nothing.”These soldiers had learned to fear the military technology we could unleash. Weapons like nothing they had known. Secretly developed over years in preparation for launching just such a saturation attack. That sound blast we had turned on their caves, just one of our outstanding secret innovations. Inside the caves, hundreds of this enemy .. unassailably bunkered away inside the mountain.The top-secret cannon emitted ear-busting soundwaves. It had taken a sound-attack of only ten minutes …. The siege was over. Their general came out ear drums busted, bleeding, waving his white flag. These men would believe me when I said I could have them gunned down."Scum. Slugs. The flea on a rat's back is worth more to the Realm than all of you put together."That insult was received with silence. They didn't think themselves worthless. But our gunfire could prove it so. Useless against an enemy like us. And the treatment they’d experienced from our guards .. two days on the road …. they believed it alright."Your guards . .. to worthless shitbags like you …. they are your gods. So far above you in worth you cannot conceive."I sensed him looking up at me, their colonel. I stole a look at him .. I was deliberately including him in my affront. Bare-chested, bare-footed. A torso that spoke of a hard-bitten fighting man. Stood proud, upright, a muscular torso that denied the insults of my works.But I’d ordered him to strip to the waist. He’d done as told. He might have played at defying me. But he stood there in his bare feet. For all that arrogant body language, he was beginning to look the part. He was beginning to act the part. A worthless scumbag, prisoner of the Realm. But still he wanted to hold my gaze, haughty, full of himself. Still I sensed a refusal to accept my words. My precious . That attitude. This physique. He’d do just right. He fitted my picture perfectly.I scoffed in the face of his impudence. Then with a curl of the lip I turned back to the men he once had led."Your guards. Expect .. Demand .. Total respect. TOTAL.”I let the words shimmer over the silent rows of fighting men. Men like these .. they’d need more than my words to convince them of that truth. And they’d get it.“Any sour look .. Punished. Any harsh word .. Punished. Curse ….. Disobey an order. Thrashed.”This ingenious policy for the adjustment camps had been devised by the Realm's military-industrial section, Psychological branch. Over the past years, secretly the resources of industry had been bent to developing weapons far exceeding other neighbouring lands. Weaponry to seize the resources the Realm required. Sophisticated killing machines that had proven their worth. Beyond the conception of even veteran fighters like these.But, by sharp contrast, in these re-adjustment programmes for the captured enemy, the psychologists niftily re-programmed time. It was to be reversed. Working on men who handled modern weaponry and fought in modern wars …. Time was turned upside down. This quarry was run on the lines of a prisoner colony, a slave camp. From ancient times. Advanced firepower was still on-hand in case of riot or if things got out of hand. But otherwise prisoners here were worked like slaves. Worked, dressed, treated like in ancient times. Beaten with clubs, lashed with canes. Proud modern soldiers found themselves beaten, pushed up against a stake and whipped. Like they’d seen in those old movies. Slave labour .. brutally worked into the ground. Vicious punishment for any who failed. Treatment so far outside the experiences of the modern soldier, of men used to respect. Disorientating. Bewildering them. Subjected to ancient punishments that they could never have imagined. Stretched on a rack. Strung out on a cross. Just like in those old films. Tortured like in long-forgotten barbaric days. They’d read those comics as a kid. But that treatment was back then, wasn’t it? Slavery! Reduced to the level of slugs, trodden at will underfoot. No justification needed. Where was the proud military man when worked as a slave? What was a soldier when he got whipped even when he was doing the right thing? Handled with a time-warped barbarity … Gradually, it ground most men down. Losing faith in themselves. Losing hope.I glanced back down at my target victim again. There was a casualness with which he stood, a who-could-give-a-fuck about him. A flippancy thrown at me about this initiation ceremony. A message that bawled back, the system would never grind him down. Text-book-perfect. Sucker. He was walking straight into my trap.“A flippant remark …..”My eyes ate up my . He was just the picture. He was giving me every excuse.“A cocky attitude.” As personified in this swaggering fool stood at my feet. Worth? That cockiness in him was worth everything to me."All ill-discipline dealt with .. ruthlessly. Total obedience.” These men were soldiers, they thought they knew what orders were. They understood obedience .. or so they thought.“Your guards are your gods."To be worshipped. Obeyed without hesitation."This piece of shit …."My hand disdainfully gestured towards the colonel looking up at me." … who once led you into battle …."I saw his eyes crease. It wasn’t the insult. He was beginning to suspect I had something for him. But then …… why else had I singled him out?"Your former colonel. Your leader. In battle he has shown you the way …."I smirked to myself. I stared full in his face. Suspiciously he was glaring at me. "Here too ….. he will show you how." On view400685952500Had he boxed himself into a corner? Had he left himself with no choice? Playing to his audience. Playing the strong man before his men. What choice did he have?He could accept the inevitable. He could follow my orders and let it happen to him. His body language haughtily answering me back, You think you can break me?Or he could resist. He could have my men set about him and get forced into taking his punishment. How would that go down? How would his men see him then?It was all about the optics. Strong man or victim? Had he really left himself with a choice?For the first time .. did I see a chink in the swaggering armour of that one-time colonel? My two men had directed him to the punishment frame. First his eyes had turned to the faces of his own men kneeling, watching him, curious. Some held his eye and nodded, they were one with him. One I saw give him a thumbs up, he’d need that good luck. Clearly, this colonel was a soldier who had earned the loyalty of his men. Physically he looked like one who could match even the most hard-bitten soldier, they looked up to him. A soldier’s soldier. That all played into my hands.Again he'd sternly shrugged off the hands of my men, he didn’t need directing. But when he turned to see the frame, they did have to give him a shove. He'd halted. At the sight of the frame he stopped. I was confused. It was as if the idea of taking my beating suddenly froze him. Not what I’d expected of this show-off stud.But when I turned my attention from imagining the pain sparking off the muscled breath of his flexed back, I saw it with his eyes. The noose. Hanging down from the top rail he saw the noose. With that talk of the slow hanging of his own general, had he thought that was what he was being taken to? Dragged slowly off his feet, choking, legs shamefully flailing as he drew his last agonised minutes of breath? An agonisingly slow death as his men looked on. Not a glorious stud-like ending. The general had taken long to die. By the look of this colonel, he too could take his time.If he carried on behaving like this, I could see that could finish up his fate. I’d have to have all these men again assembled here. Forced to watch what happened when a prisoner's attitude pushed me too far. But no, not today. I had a job for him first.He almost passively allowed my men to slip his hands into the noose. Was it that he was relieved it was his hands in the noose and not his neck? Did I see him take a deep breath when he was not to be hanged? Stood under the top rail, the cord of the noose wrapped around his wrists and pulled tight. His arms raised just above his head. For a moment he cast his eyes over the men he had led. He knew he cut an impressive figure for them. A sea of faces looking up at this lone muscled figure, the warrior-supreme. The imposing physical power in the man .. muscled arms raised above his head, the hard bulges in his shoulders, the stance shaping his muscular torso against the light. Impressive. But not for long. The punishment frame stood on a small mound. Designed for public punishments .. raised high so that other prisoners could all view what happened here when rules were broken. Suddenly his arms were snapped upwards. Yanked up off his feet. Effortlessly the colonel found himself jerked up into the air. The look on his face made the first rows of prisoners gasp. He too looked up in shock. Not expecting a force that could yank his muscular weight up in the air with such ease. Feeling the bonds in his wrists tighten, digging into his flesh. He swung. He hung and swayed as the momentum lessened. For a while I let his men see the sudden change from cockiness to helplessness. On his face the stabbing pains in his armpits from being jerked up so violently ground into his shoulder joints. This punishment frame was another of the technological developments I’d allowed in the camp. Most conditions here dragged prisoners back to earlier barbaric times. Cruel violent times, men worked like slaves, the prisoners were worked till they dropped. And then they were beaten back to their feet. Here our superior modern-day weaponry was replaced by clubs and whips. More hands on, more personal, seeing the determination on the face of the guard thrashing your back. Punishments carried out at the whipping post. Personal, man violently dominating man. It had proven disorienting for modern-day soldiers when they were treated like animals and less. Dismay grinding down any hope and self-worth into compliance and despair.But more advanced methods were invaluable too. This frame could be so flexible. Like the way the guard had simply pressed the button and he had his prisoner jerked off his feet, hanging off his wrists, shocked out of his head. A colonel who had the physique of a soldier who could throw his weight around .. effortlessly jerked into the air. A violent shock to the system. Technology beat him again. And all it took was a finger on the button.The guards gave my prisoner a couple of minutes swaying. Exposed to the scrutiny of his one-time men. Curious, wondering what this all meant for the admired colonel. Yanked by some powerful force off his feet, his muscular body tossed in the air like some toy. That shredded torso of manly muscle even more defined by the hang as he swung. Left a couple of minutes hanging for him too to assess the force that had overwhelmed him. If that was so easy …. What else could this enemy do?Giving time too for the noose to set around his wrists. Another innovation I let into the slave colony. A newly developed material that responded to a prisoner’s nerves. Anger or fear, whatever …. The heat generated soon set the noose hard. Inescapable .. rendering him vulnerable until his superior chose otherwise. Nothing other than the sharpest clippers would cut through it. Certainly not the mere muscled might of even this prisoner's forearms.The swinging had stopped. The prisoner had stopped looking up at the frame to understand what was happening to him. Now he'd gazed out at the sea of his men watching .. seeing the concern for him on their faces. Every muscle in that torso etched and sharply defined by the stretch. A figure of some considerable strength and physical might. I’d had him strip to the waist, bare chested .. deliberately. So his men now saw the stunning musculature of his torso exposed to them. Ripped belly sucked in, pants sinking down his abs, the mounds of his muscle-solid pecs elongated into lozenges of bulging might, arms shaped up alongside his head. Yanked by overpowering technology into the air, vulnerable. Obvious to his men .. obvious to him …… strip a man to his waist, suspend him in the air. Something nasty was going to happen. "This man has led you into battle …."I saw the prisoner now fix his attention on me. Still I stood on the cart above the heads of his kneeling men. I saw him fix me with a firm look. His demeanour changed in a flash. He was vulnerable, no way could he defend himself. But he’d not given in. The fighting soldier was back. He glared at me. Now he had an enemy to fight. Playing into my hands still. He fitted the picture perfectly. Fight me, I thought. I like a good challenge."Now he will lead you into your new life. A life of slavery.”I let that dreaded word ring out over their heads.“He will show you. The only life you'll know from now on." Sour look400685952500We held each other’s gaze an intense wait. My look demanding he cast his eyes down. His was making it clear where I could go fuck myself.With a curl of the lip at the man’s insolence, I slowly turned my face away.If only he knew how his attitude suited my purpose. With a contemptuous sneer slowly scanning the hundreds of defeated men, I dominated those soldiers my had led into battle. I saw looks of concern for their one time colonel written on many of the faces. The guards had returned his feet to the earth. The sweat of his nerves and the heat of a body under stress had set the cord tight around his wrists. Set hard into an unbreakable cuff. They'd not be released till I ordered it so."Your guards are your gods.”My voice echoed over the mass and bounced back off the rock-faces in the quarry.“Treat them with less than unquestioning respect ….. and bear the consequences."My gaze returned to . My gesture indicated his helplessness. My curl of the lip nodded at the insolence of his glare. Hinting at the consequences he was deserving to know. His body was standing less stressed now he was planted on his feet. A muscled torso that matched the fearlessness he was throwing at me with defiant eyes. Still he was making a demonstration of his anger at me. Perfect!"Give your guards a sour look … expect this in return …."I snapped at the guard already stood weapon-ready behind the prisoner."Five across the back."Without a moment's hesitation, almost before could ready himself, the leather was growling through the air. It caught him straight across the width of his muscular broad shoulders. A leather strap the width of a grown man's forearm slammed hard into proud male flesh. The torso threw itself upward, back arched with pain. The guard hadn’t just tickled his skin. His mouth was ripped wide open. A silent cry got trapped in his throat.Already the second strike was flying. Little chance to compose himself. Force threw one foot forward. Pain tore open his eyes. He managed to crush a grunt between tight clenched jaws. My eyes were focused on the disrespectful cur who thought he could stand up to me. But my ears were on the mob. I heard some gasps of shock. When had they ever seen a man whipped? In a modern-man’s army? What could a soldier do in these times to deserve to have his back agonisingly thrashed? And this man was their colonel. He commanded their respect …. What had he done nothing to warrant this?The final strike caught around the side .. taking a sharp nip out of tender flesh. He'd managed to hold in the pain till now .. crushing his teeth together .. murdering the cries in his throat. That final bite taken out of his sensitive side twisted him half round, nearly tripping himself up. A sharp intake of breath .. a half yelp ….. I’d settle for that. For now.Five strikes …. Five stinging slashes into bare flesh and he’d held in his pain. I bet he was feeling proud of himself! He was panting hard. Sweat trickled down his forehead. The stretched mounds of his pecs speckled red with the stress of a body under the lash. He glared back at me. Anger at the injustice of this beating bright in his eyes. Fury at the act. He was a .. and he knew it. Hauled out because of who he was. Taking a beating before his men .. to show them. To shame him. I could hear the silent curses burning in his head from where I stood."A harsh word. A curse at your guard ….."I glared back in the face. A long hard look. He didn't look away, he didn’t flinch. I didn't want him to. I needed him not to."Ten. Across the front." Bite of the cane397510762000The guard with the cane thought the onlookers deserved a demonstration. Proud of the new thin swishing cane made from an ingenious combination of materials. Two metres long, a weapon imaginatively developed for such a purpose as this.He waved it up, he flicked it down. He swished it menacing at the frame. He waggled its springiness for the prisoners’ fear-filled admiration .. the suppleness, the flexibility. The evil swoosh as it cut through the air. The sheer majestic menace of the thing.And, stood right in front of my cocky , the guard knew he was being observed. That naked flesh .. taut with tension as it watched .. the one-time colonel’s head had to be spinning. Drawing the picture for himself. When it smacked him across the midriff, he had to feel the sting.The first strike took him across the ribs. The force unsettled him .. he had to take a step backward. Recovering quick, he glared. Spears of cold anger slung back at the guard. Quickly he had to change his look. The second was already in its way. A stinging blow across the chest. The whole torso stiffened, the ribcage lifted as shudders clearly reverberated through his flesh. That stung. Intense smarting heat followed by a deluge of eye-watering fire. He was biting down hard on his bottom lip, eyes creased to contain the smarting pains. And, seeing the guard already readying himself for the next, the prisoner threw up his mental armour to beat the next strike back.The panting had begun, I saw. His face had flushed crimson. The abs sucked in tight, defined, taut. Rocking with his ragged breathing. He held his breath. Again he saw the cane fly. He could see it aiming for his midriff. Flexing his belly muscle. Putting up muscle-hardness. Fending off the damage from that punch to his innards.Instinct twisted him round. Hoping to take the force on his hip. No chance. The guard was no novice. In the soft centre. Right into the muscle core. A sharp resounded smack that took his breath away. The bite of the cane twisted him further round. Muscle went rigid. Quivering with shimmers of liquid fire. That cane really stung. A yell was briefly out before he could clamp his jaws together. He was going to want to put on a good show, that was obvious. He was a stud. Manly pride world not let him give way to pain. He was their colonel. He owed it to his men. He'd show them the way. He'd keep up the fight. An order for these men to follow his lead. He’d set them an example, virile, confident. Ordering them to follow him into this battle. They were not beaten yet.The guard changed his grip. He'd dished out a taster. The prisoner had got a taste of the sting. Gorging on the searing burns from this willowy cane. Pains that I could see quivering in the flesh long after the force of the strike had died down. Now the guard determined the dog would feel the force. Combined with the stinging, the cane never failed. The prisoner world be singing to its tune.Two handed. Stood slightly to one side. The guard gripped the cane and tensed himself. I'd chosen two specials for this job. Every bit as well-built as their prisoner. Every bit as infused with zeal. Soldiers of the Realm. Masters over this scum.The guards had stripped to undershirts. For this enemy to see the shredded power he was up against. There was no subterfuge. The prisoner was seeing for himself that bulging muscle also belonged to the guards. Rightly he judged the threat, flexing muscle clammy with anticipation and nerves. A sheen of sweat glistened on the smooth contours of his taut torso. I felt him call on his inner strength. There'd be no trickery. No catching the prisoner unawares. The guard let the prisoner see the tautness of his muscle as two-handed he tightened his grip on the cane. He wanted the prisoner to know, he let him watch. Strikingly thick arms, veins running up the biceps like a roadmap. He let the dog see the muscled tension up his arms, the bulging hardness in his shoulder-might. No hiding the menace of the twist as he torqued a muscular upper body round. And held the tension. Holding his breath.The guard signalled his intentions. The prisoner could see the guard's gaze was targeted on his abs. He'd tensed. He'd too held his breath. Twin columns of outstanding ab-work in that tight, tapered waist. All tightness, all tension. Tension tied up his guts. Those abs frozen in nervous anticipation of the whoosh of the cane. I fancied I could hear the pounding of his heart against his chest from here.The tension broke. A two-metre cane cut whistling through the air. The target torso twisted away. But not before the end of the cane punched across that muscled flatness of its navel. Smack on the heart of things. Force knocked him sideways. His midriff did its best to crumple together .. beaten by the breath-taking ferocity of the blow. And the blistering heat of pain. A insane combination. Force and fire.The air was punched out of him. The sting of the burn blistered like acid over his skin. Knocked sideways. The shock disabled his brain. Sledgehammered in the gut. Blinding, searing heat. Mind-crushing pain pulverising his innards. Petrol poured on his flesh and set alight. The prisoner screamed. Scream278765317500Once he’d let one out, the guard vindictively made sure he’d not clamped his jaws tight on the pain again. Smacked right across the muscled breadth of his midriff. Those mountains of false pride got smashed up repeatedly. No let-up, in quick succession.He couldn’t get his breath. He couldn’t hold in the cries. With every stinging lash across that vanity in his belly, he yelled out loud. The force bent him up, the stings flashed tremors of molten lava up his arms.By Seven, his legs had given way. And still his defenceless torso took its battering. Yelling out. Blistering heat. Savage stings tore agony out of muscled flesh. Pain screamed out of every pore of sweaty skin. Strike Seven knocked the stuffing out of him. A lucky blow. He'd twisted away out of the path of the stinging cane, diverting it. It caught him with breath-taking force, deep in his lower abs. The force hit just above his naked groin, knocked him backwards, knocked off his feet. The flesh-weakening sting slashed down his legs, he failed to get them to work.Spotting his success the guard struck out for gold. Gripping the cane stronger, wielded two handed, he slowed the pace. The last three strikes were body-breakers. The prisoner hung, abs stretched, fully exposed. As good as comatose. A will-crushing sting broke across his midriff. Torqued out of a muscular physique. Thrown with the zeal of a devoted soldier of the Realm. Thwacked merciless into a body that hung defenceless. Thudding with muscle-proud power into abs that knew no way out. The force smacked that muscular physique backwards. Pain exploded in tortured bawls. Three times. Three body-breaking, will-crushing times.After …. there was a silence from the men. The prisoners watched in shocked horror. Such savagery. Such as unadulterated mindless savagery. These men were soldiers. They’d killed. But they were watching meaningless brutality. Their colonel had done nothing. He'd not offended. He'd committed no crime. He'd been singled out. Because of his rank. And then they’d watched him pitiless lashed before their eyes. Body-broken. A . A warning to them. Picking on their colonel .. because he was their colonel. Mindless. They were stunned.And then the guard went and did something really stupid.The staging had been perfect. A drama that had etched itself into the brain of every soldier watching. The savagery. Pointless but ruthless. Their pin-up colonel mercilessly torn apart. His competition-standard bodybuilder physique broken. He hung broken off the overhead bonds. That eye-catching musculature unable to stand on its own two feet. The quarry was soundless. The soldiers watching stunned into silence. Only the gasping of the guard catching his breath. And the tortured moans from their man who’d been broken before their eyes.The perfect tableau. An image these prisoners would not forget. The initiation ceremony had achieved its goal. They knew what awaited if they ever thought of stepping out of line. Not soldiers. Not prisoners of war. Objects. Animals deserved better than they.That stupid guard. He had got carried away. His success .. the violence .. he clearly had a hard-on that filled out his brain. He cast his cane aside. Masterful, he strode over to his victim. One hand grabbed the prisoner by the throat. With a grunt of effort, he hauled the inert muscled body to its feet. And slammed a fistful of male domination into the prisoner’s gut.He felt backward. The prisoner collapsed again. A tortured shout broke from a broken physique. Head back, hanging off the overhead bonds. A tortured yell of despair.It was like switching on a light. It was like that unnecessary vindictive fist in the gut had created new life. The head snapped back. The prisoner’s face was on fire. He hauled on the bonds with his arms and pulled himself up to his full height. I could have sworn he’d grown a full foot. The eyes were filled with rage. The prisoner glared in fury at the guard.“You’re a dead man.”I saw that shredded physique tremor with fury.“I’ll get you …..”Where had that strength come from? Like he’d come back from the dead. On fire with burning rage. “Watch your back …..”The voice had gone cold. Chilled. Icy.“We’ll all get you.” Warning3975101079500The guard was an idiot. He’d ruined the perfect ending. This initiation to the camp had done its job. That colonel had been crushed. No need for any more. Then the fool went and aroused him. Someone in the rows of soldiers shouted out. Imitating his colonel. “Dead man.”Another. Another. Fists punched the air. I couldn’t permit that. I had my men always primed. Initiations could always have their flash points. Men still not adjusted to the change in their fortunes. At the first sign of trouble guns blasted out. A barrage of automatic gunfire splattering hundreds of shots into the air. When the echoes had stopped zinging off the rockface, every soldier had his head down. The riot had been quelled.But that idiot of a guard had ruined things. I had to save the day.The damn-stupid prick. I’d have to restore order. I had to leave the prisoners with that abiding image. The broken man, the hopeless future. What I’d have to do, though ….. This was truly a moment when I expected a revolt."Strip the swine."I'd had my battered about his abs. That powerful mass of belly muscle .. clearly he treasured it, obviously he'd worked it hard. You didn’t get like that without the effort. After all, he'd not been loath earlier to whip his shirt off and show them off to me. Now those abs had hung battered and broken, strained by the stretch, smashed by ten stinging strikes across his front. Crippling the man till that fool had aroused his fury."Everything off. The lot!"This mass of defeated soldier-hood had tolerated seeing their colonel viciously beaten. But beatings were physical, taking a beating was manly. Physical these men understood. They’d been stunned at seeing the savagery of breaking him. Only that vindictive move from the dumb-arsed guard had aroused them to rise up. But the threat of massive gunfire had settled that.Now I was pushing it one step further, though .. having to make good that guard’s ill-judged move. Leave them with an image of no prospects for the future. I was having their precious colonel stripped naked before their eyes …… Obviously, that meant I had not finished with him yet ….. What did you do with a man naked? Was that going to be step too far? Hadn’t I done enough? Stripping a man when he was down … toying with him naked. Belittling. Making a laughing stock of him …..? Wasn’t that deeply insulting? Didn’t that offend the man's sexual pride? Taking a savage beating …. that tested your manliness. But this …..? Would they object? Was I going too far?There were no objections. No shouts of protest. Not even from where it was safer, from far back. That ear-splitting barrage had settled that, the zing of massive firepower still jangled in their ears. The men kept their heads down. No one offering to be a target.But their precious colonel wasn’t broken, was he? That was my problem."Fuck you!"All heads turned back to the frame. He’d come back from the dead. Maybe without that guard’s provocation, he’d have stayed down. But now his men had seen him. Rising out of the fires of his torments. He’d threatened a guard. He called his men to action, he’d ordered them to get that guard. This leader of men was not finished yet. Now I would have to finish it off. The tableau of this initiation would have to have its lasting ending. Branded on the memories of these men.Stripping the of his soiled pants and underwear was no problem. No boots, the clothes were quickly dragged off his feet. Then that guard .. he HAD got a hard-on that had bloomed in his head … he must have, the prick! He had no idea of the harm he had done. Seemingly for a laugh .. because that hard-on he called a brain was manipulating his hands … he'd gone and grabbed my by the balls and tugged. Swinging him forward by his balls. He spat in the anger-filled face. And then he pushed the prisoner backwards. With contempt. Pushed him away in a demeaning swing. Unbalancing him off his feet.That curse was meant for me, though. My 's patience had snapped. A look of pure incandescent fury shot at me from off the frame Beaten, humiliated .. he'd had enough. He didn’t care, he’d thrown all caution to the wind. His men were watching, he was centred stage.Fuck you, he’d cursed me. He’d had enough of this crap. Wrong, you arrogant piece of dogshit. I can’t finished with you yet.My scowl gave back the warning. No harsh words to your betters ….. no cussing. Remember? No sour looks at a guard. He HAD been warned."Fifteen! Down his back."The pair of guards, well briefed … they were already lined up behind the frame. The strap swung without a pause. The pain-cane flew .. striking a second after. “Down” the back I had ordered. Down the back they stuck. Cutting across the earlier welts of pain. Slicing through the stretched planes of muscle, already burning, already inflamed.Another salvo, another coordinated pair. In quick succession. Bursting across his tortured stripes. He yelped. Bursting into flame under the sting of the cane. He yelled. The bludgeon of the strap arched the back .. sent him flying. No stopping him. He howled. The smarting cane, an instant later .. the shock had him yelling out .. tortured muscle twisted off the sting.Twisting, flailing. The cries were out before he knew. Dull pulverising thwacks, sharp yelping cries. One, Two. Thwack, Sting. Pain exploded down his back. Three, Four. The head thrashed back, eyes popping. Another tortured pair. Five, Six. The torso twisted, convulsed with his cries. Pain tripping over pain. Flooding his body. Swamping his mind. No holding back. Cries. Shouts. Scream. On parade2546354064000He dropped. The guard pressed the button. He released the rope that had been keeping him upright. He collapsed. That mass of battered muscle fell. Knees wobbled, legs crumpled. He fell, body hitting the earth. Crying out. As good as senseless. The pair of guards grabbed an arm each and yanked him roughly up. Pulverised muscle protested, he moaned. Tough, the had not passed out. More fool him, more indignity for him. Helpless, he got dragged by the arms .. over to a huge boulder up on the mound. In full view of his hundreds of men. Visibly broken.Unceremoniously they dumped his lifeless torso over the rock. Feeble moans of useless protest as his guards slung him over the boulder. Draped like some beast over an ancient stone of sacrifice.His body grumbled out at the hurt. Bruised and battered muscle groaned in tormented protest. Callously draped over the boulder, his broken muscular form on display to his stunned men below. Deliberately a guard turned his face. Towards his horrified audience. Showing them his wrecked powerlessness. Looking out at the dumbfounded men he had let down. This vaunting pride in muscular virility sacrificed over a stone of shame.A chilled mood had settled over this mob. They'd been exhausted on arrival, two days of march, no food. They'd witnessed a scene of violence they could hardly comprehend. Against one of their own. For doing what? At best, for doing his job. Their leader, a colonel.There had been a fevered tension in the air. During the intense whipping of his back, the heat of madness had been in the air. In other circumstances, there could have been a riot. It would have been a bloodbath. Against our weaponry even their mass numbers would have had little effect. After all, this initiation ceremony was planned out. Any likely behaviour had been anticipated. And it would have neutralised.There was no uprising. The shock at the viciousness they had witnessed .. out of proportion .. unnecessary .. arbitrary .. illogical ….. mindless violence, it had left them stunned. The only sounds audible in this space were the pitiful moans of the man. He’d been slumped off his overhead bonds. Shamefully exposed in his nakedness .. for no reason except to humiliate. This fighters’ leader, this soldiers’ soldier .. his spirit ruthlessly beaten out of him. As they watched. An agonising beating that left these hard-bitten tough-men shocked. This warrior, a man in his muscular prime, reduced to a shell of his former self.I waited. I let the stunned silence grow. I left the sight of the man they had admired and looked up to sink in. They could observe it with their own wyes. The message of his helplessness. I let it grind hopelessness into their spirits. I gazed out at the mass of dismayed faces before me. Some still looked up at him .. their faces creased with incredulity and shock. Others hung their heads .. the weight of reality crushing their hearts. Not one looked ready to start a riot.At a nod, the guards standing around brusquely approached the front row of prisoners .. bawling at them .. screaming at the tops of their voices. Yelling at them to shift their arses. Ordering the sinking rats to get up off their knees. "Strip.""Out of them clothes.""Every fucking stitch."Confusion had the men in its grip. Unthinking they did as told. Paralysed out of their normal reactions. Stunned by the shock. Overwhelmed by yelling and noise. Threatened, pain-canes wielded to get them to shift, the front row of naked soldiers clubbed and beaten to make them move."Shift your fucking arses."A dispirited and naked line of men was made to shuffle forward one behind the other. At the foot of the mound, under the muscled figure draped lifeless over the stone, they were ordered to throw their uniforms in a pile. A jerry-can of petrol was thrown over them and set alight. Their former lives going up in smoke. Clubs and whips moved them on, further into the camp. Under the unseeing eyes of the man who had led them into the fight.The first row was already being replaced by the second. A cacophony of bawling voices echoing off the rock-faces. Another sorry line of former soldiers, forcibly stripped and made to throw their former lives into the burning pile. Under the helpless figure of the officer who had once earned their respect.Symbolically burning away their former lives. Walking naked and helpless into their new destiny. I'd told them he'd do it. The man who'd commanded them before, my .. he’d show them the way into their future, I’d promised. He’d stepped the path before them. Abandoning what they had known before .. the tough but satisfying demands of the military life …. Gone. An existence which earned others' respect …. A thing of the past. Excelling at a job in which they believed. Of which they could be justly proud. Going up in flames.Veterans of many campaigns. Not anymore. He'd led them into this. Their former lives disappearing in smoke. Shuffling forward into a naked unknown. Past an officer who could not help them. He could not even help himself. It was like he was taking the salute, like he used to. His men marching past him. Taking the salute for the last and final time. No longer their leader. Demoted to the ranks. Just one of them. Joining his men in brutal servitude. Men who once had wielded modern weapons and fought a modern war. Now he with them was being wrenched back in time. Back to older more violent ways. Reduced to a life of pitiless hard labour. Meaningless hard work to break their backs. Him with them. Nothing more than slave labour.Worth nothing. Less than the beasts. Prisoners of the Realm. Their downfall was symbolically represented in the lifeless figure strung out above them. Muscled. Virile, a man’s man. But helpless. Broken by the Realm. Possessions of a merciless, a demanding Overlord. FascinationThe idea3987801079500For a time, since that day of his public initiation and shaming, the guards had taken to calling him by his title. Colonel Dogshit. It had become his tag for the first few days. Ironically mocking his fall from grace by sticking him with his former rank. But it struck me .. that stayed as a reminder to the other prisoners. He was a man they'd looked up to. Could that stick?I could see when they were working in hard-labour teams, they still looked to him. I'd assigned all the officers to the hardest labour .. with the assumption they'd not be able to cope. Their men would see them for what they were. Wimps when it came to back-breaking work. But he did. He more than coped. He could match the best.I could see he was out to hold his own. More than hold his own. Even under the most intense pressure. He was holding on to the men's respect. Put him under pressure .. expect the most demanding of him .. that was not demeaning for him. He rose to meet the physical challenge, every cell in his body. Calling him colonel still .. that was counter-productive. It was reminding the prisoners .. they still had their respected leader in their midst. A hard-nosed military man.My orders went out. From now on the guards enjoyed mocking him as just Dogshit.He was tough, you had to give him that. He was resilient. Even the hardest, most physically exacting task did not faze him. Some beat him, some demands he did not meet. And he'd get beaten for failing. But seemingly goodwill was always on his side. Men saw that the task he'd failed to accomplish .. that was beyond human capability, anyway. They’d not have managed it either. Impossible. No one turned up a lip because he'd had to give in. He hadn't given up, that was the difference. He never give up, I saw. Not for even the most meaningless waste-of-time task. He had a knack of giving out the message, He'd not given up, he'd didn't know how to. His men read that sympathetically. OK. Like any man, they shrugged, he could be beaten by the impossible. Who couldn’t?The way he'd recovered after that intense beating … at the initiation before that fool of a guard had messed things up …. he'd looked out of it. Ten will-breaking smacks with that pain-cane .. he'd hung, looking broken. Then that cretin had smacked him a body-breaker in the gut. The way that had worked. A flick of a switch. The powers of recovery! Incredible. Almost unfathomable. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes …. I'd never have believed it. Like that legendary phoenix rising from the ashes. No, not a phoenix. A dragon. A dragon in his magnificent fury had arisen. He’d been breathing fire.OK, after that fool-guard’s intervention … I'd had put him down again. Those fifteen body-smackers driven into his back. He’d yelled, he’d bawled. Impossible to rise from the ashes after that. A savage beating that had left his men stunned. That final march-past. The humiliation of his defeated men shuffling past, naked .. their uniformed past going up in smoke. And it had worked … A dramatic grand finale as unseeing he had watched his men shuffle past in dismay .. past the leader they’d admired, broken.But he had risen out of the ashes. Again. These last days had shown … it was going to take more than a few weeks of soul-destroying hard work to break this one's will. His powers of regeneration were remarkable, physical, above all, mental. It was almost like he saw accomplishing the near-impossible was a confirmation of his strength of will. Give him a near-impossible job, it made him stronger. Even if he failed … it was like he told himself, Next time! Next time I’ll do it! He wasn't just strong physically, tough. There was an amazing toughness of the mind about him. Where that money-making idea had come to me, I was still unsure. But since then, I'd become increasingly interested in the progress of Dogshit. Like that special interest you take in something because you own it, it’s yours, a special relationship. It was when I was reviewing my strategy with this hard-bitten prisoner that the idea struck me. He was not knuckling down, he was still a force to be reckoned with. Some special measure was needed. A continuing pain-in-the-arse. That idea of mine, though … I realised. It could turn a continuing problem of ill-discipline into a profitable side-line. Money in the bank.That ill-tempered doggedness of his .. the very thing that was keeping him on my radar …. The stubbornness that had the guards cussing him to hell because they couldn’t scare him ….. those very irritants …. Couldn’t they be turned around? Since I’d got the idea .. since I’d started to see him as my personal money-making asset …. I was seeing that pig-headedness of his in a different light. I couldn’t stop myself, fascinated, curious. I kept returning, keeping an eye on him. With a future owner’s justifiable self-interest. And what I saw …. He just kept me intrigued. The idea bloomed in my head. A man who would not give in. WOULD not. Could not. He didn't know how to give up. There had to be some worthwhile outlet for a body possessing such stubborn strength of mind. Combined with a strength and physique that conquered the near-impossible ? There had to be some way of making good use of that.And I thought I'd found it.But first …. Today's misdemeanour would have to be dealt with. He'd gone too far. His attitude was getting him noticed. Many prisoners early on the programme proved stubborn. Not adjusted yet to their new status in life. They would adjust .. in time .. pain would make them, they'd have to. This was nothing unusual in the programme, we always had a few slow to catch on. At the beginning. there was an unusually high rate of severe punishments. Many of them public.He was acting as a focal point. He’d been their colonel, not just some also-ran grunt. And a man they respected, I’d seen it in their eyes. It was when I observed that prisoners were still looking up to Colonel Dogshit that I ordered the title dropped. His dogged resistance was getting noticed, he was retaining a following. A dangerous subversive kind of leadership. And today he’d given me all the excuse I needed. It had gone too far. That act had been too public. It had to be dealt with. He'd been wise not to land that blow. But even raising a fist to a guard …. He'd gone too far. Attitude2730501079500It was the incongruity that got to the prisoners. They were fighting men, they wielded up-to-the-minute weapons, they had mastered modern killing machines. Even their defeat they put down to the superiority of advanced weaponry. Not their resolve. Overrun by the brilliance of the Realm’s superior firepower. Modern fighters in a technically advanced world. Yet here they were .. condemned to some hard labour camp. Made to work like slaves. Treated like slaves. For want of a better word .. they WERE slaves. But .. this wasn’t right. They were prisoners of war, their spirits protested, they had rights. True, POW’s didn’t get treated like this. But slaves had NO rights.Their uniforms gone, their former life burned before their eyes. Naked unless they fashioned themselves some covering. Bread and flour got delivered in sacks.. Rough sacking was around to be filched if dignity demanded they got covered up.Forced into hard labour. But they knew what hard work was. Labour made sense, labour they understood. Hard physical work .. soldiers were used for that .. there was “worth” in labour. But what they were forced into .. worse. Meaningless back-breaking tasks that served no purpose. Producing nothing, doing nothing worthwhile. Brutalised into performing endlessly repetitive tasks that served no purpose .. other than to run them into in the ground.And when they were broken to their knees … when even their own tough-guy’s reserves of strength could find no more …. They got pitilessly beaten till mates helped them struggle to their feet. Beaten by some guard over them wielding the whip. And when that was not on …. when a guy hadn’t got it in him …. Openly shot to pieces. In front of them, in front of their mates. No pity, no shame. If you couldn’t earn your crust, you were of no worth to the Realm. Shot to pieces. Then the bits carried by their own army mates and thrown to the pigs.That didn’t happen, not like this, their spirits protested. But few dared protest. This was worse than slavery. Slaves had some worth. By contrast, they were treated worse than animals. Like they were some kind of subhuman. They were POW’s .. every cell in their bodies objected. POW’s didn’t get treated like this. But only the reckless handful dared show what they thought.And that was the beauty of the adjustment programme. These prisoners couldn’t get a grasp on what they had become. One moment fighting men with advanced weapons in a modern world …. the next, worse than slaves in some ancient times. And with slow relentless confusion, that incongruity pitilessly ground them down.I returned as the sun began to set on the headstrong prisoner. After that brazen escapade from him earlier .. when he’d tried to go for me … I had left him suffering under the sun. It was scorching today. The sun could do its worst. Let the sun weaken that rashness out of him first. Before I returned to the task of dishing out the punishment for the first crime he’d perpetrated today. Since formulating my long-term plan for profiting from his stubborn hide, I always got a tingle of intrigue. I loved stealing up on him unobserved. I had my designs on this body, ingenious money-making plans for exploiting the mental toughness of this man. Watching him unobserved, I was seeing the real Dogshit for what he was. And for what I could make on him.Today, because of that original crime, I had planned to have him publicly disciplined. Pinned to this cross and again broken him by pain. A severe working over with the pain-cane. But before we’d even assembled his men …. the wild animal had gone berserk. He had made things worse for himself. He’d gone for me. Ineffectual. But a gesture I could not allow. I’d left him .. for the whole day. Left him sweating under the heat of today’s savage sun. Weakening with every drop of sweat he shed. Draining that recklessness out of him. Going for me. Attacking me. I had every bit of strength sweated it out of him. And now, as the sun was setting, I was back for him. Weakened, he’d know who called the shots.For hours under the hot sun, his arms bound to the crossbars with rope, chest thrust forward. Drained dry by the blistering sun, his skin flaring red. He looked out-of-it. The heat had done its best. My plans for him were still secret. And that fact had me even more aroused. An inner urge to understand the man who’d put money in my bank account. An asset planned for my personal use. He had become a fascination. I itched to get to know him better now I saw him as my personal possession. What he was capable of. What I could use that body for. How far I could take him.I liked to appreciate him unobserved. So I had approached him from behind, unseen, revelling in the exhausted moans of pain. I could see he was barely conscious so I had moved in front. I felt that warmth of possessiveness prickling in my pants again. My eyes licked at the chest .. straining as he was slumped forward, the mighty-muscled stomach pulled in. Tightly sucked in by the hang, four eye-catching tight rows of strength trapped lifeless in his sucked-in gut. A magnificent beast. He’d do just right for what I had in mind. He more than fitted the picture. Physically, mentally, his psychology. But for now there were today’s crimes to deal with. That near-attack on a guard. He wasn’t “adjusting” as fast as his guards required. Today he’d really overstepped the mark. The wild beast was here for a good dose of public disciplining. To please my guards as much as anything. His disdain for them got on their nerves.I felt in my mind my hand trace up that straining stomach. My brain could actually feel my fingertips stroking through the lines between muscle. I couldn’t wait to get on with my plan for him. This body was picture-perfect. And this gutsiness …. The very thing that was a problem in the camp …. Ironically, it was just the thing that was going to make money for me. That strength of mind .. like the way he was standing up to my guards .. it was just that I treasured for his future use. I couldn’t have that scorched-earth toughness-of-spirit wiped out of him. Ironically just what was driving the guards out of their minds …. That tough resilience, however many times they laid their pain-canes into him …… THAT was what was going to put money in the bank. THAT was what was going to make me money. Funny world, isn’t it? Like carved granite, the cobblestones of muscle in that straining stomach, collapsed, sweltering in the heat. The tireless hardness across his chest. The marvel of those abs pulled down by the weight of my prisoner sagging off his bonds ….. PERFECT! I licked my lips. I was salivating. I swallowed my greed at the sight of him.He looked just the part. That physical toughness, that mental doggedness …. They were going to serve my bank balance nicely. Reckless2584455778500It was surprising he’d escaped a public disciplining for so long. He’d been done-over that first day, visibly crushed before his men.But he’d come back, he’d recovered his former self. His attitude to the overseers …. His glowering insolence …. But he was clever, He would only go so far. Not given enough cause for a good thrashing again. Other prisoners were noticing, though. And today’s near-attack on a guard …. That could not go unpunished. The guards were irritated with him subtly getting one over on them. To keep my men happy ….. Anyway, discipline in the camp dictated, an attitude like that had to be seen to be tamed. It had all started earlier today ….. I’d had him brought to me. He had to know what for. He’d stopped himself from punching that guard. He knew there were limits .. he crossed the red line. Others had seen the raised fist,Even as my men were binding him to this cross .. they had struggled. He’d made them struggle. He’d made them work for it. He knew he was in for it, he was going to get a beating. But that didn’t have him worried. Typical … just the kind of behaviour that had caught my attention. Fearless .. to the point of reckless,. A man who could not give up. Kicking out at them, lurching his muscled bodyweight into them, cursing and shouting. He was making things worse for himself. But it was like he didn’t care. Despite being out-numbered and out-manned, his arms strained and knotted to fight them off, his packed, rounded shoulders struggling against the hands. Then just as my men had fought his back against this cross, arms spread ….. he had spotted me. That had really set him off. The man who had had him publicly broken and shown up. His hatred sparked,. His hatred for me was intense. He’d snarled savage defiance back at his new overlord. He’d never learn, I realised, he was beyond hope. But then, secretly …. My plan did not allowed for that savagery of will to be smashed. That was one of my money-making ingredients. That wildness of character that give not allow itself to be beaten. It just needed controlled, bent to my plans for him.His wrists had been roped to the tops of the crossbars .. yet still that animal ferocity strained against the bonds. The corded plates of muscle in his chest yanked and pulled to break free. The packed strength in his belly straining to lift and launch an attack. To go for me.My men had his wrists secured. I already had clear designs on him. So it would do no harm to let him know who was master here, who was in control. On both counts. In this camp. And later when I was making money out of his hide. I had approached. His eyes were ablaze .. that I might even dare. Fires of rage burned. But I was master here. I was not the one going to back down. We got close, we were nearly chest-to-chest. I was going to dominate. All this savage posturing .. my men had it securely locked down.I fixed my prisoner with an icy look, masterly. In response, the arrogance of the prisoner’s look bored back into mine. A look of hatred, rage, defiance. Bravely, surly, provocatively, the prisoner’s glare did not waver for one moment. That part of me that already owned his reckless attitude smirked. He WAS so perfect. But the commandant of this labour camp was going to act otherwise.To show him what was what, I gripped him hard by the chin meaning to deliver a good slapping. Still animal savagery was returned in his stare into my eyes. Suddenly there was a rapid movement and then a sharp stabbing pain in my thigh. I stumbled back. I cried out in pain. Wincing I backed off clutching at the deadening pain in my leg. The prisoner had jabbed his knee hard into my thigh. A crippling jab in the leg from a muscle-powered thigh. With luck I’d escaped a knee in the balls.Insolence. My men were outraged. For punishment, I had his ankles out to the uprights. Try that again, I thought …. and I’d have him hanging off only his arms for hours. No chance of reprieve for his shoulders. An ache of agony that ground for hours deep in his shoulder joints. And swamped his whole being.That secret unseeable side of me …. Well, I had to thank him for his confirmation. He WAS everything I had imagined to be. He suited my plans down-to-the-ground. But ….. he had gone for me. My men had seen the attack. He was going to know who was boss. Two can play at subterfuge, I thought. Instead of getting a guard to give him a good thrashing for daring that attack, I left him. I had him left pinned to this cross. Left him for hours. Letting a scorching sun to do its worst. I’d be back. And when his skin was already burning hot and tender as hell …. Then we’d see how reckless he wanted to be.I will be back, my slave, I secretly promised him. He’d given the private Me cause. He’d given me the chance to see what he really was made of. And the public Me, commandant of the camp, ……? I assured my exasperated men ….. I’d broken this Dogshit once. I’d see him broken again. Ambush3987801079500That attack on me had been in the morning. Angered, I’d had him spread-eagled on the cross and left. By the look of him now, the heat had done its dirty work. Drained of strength, drained of that savage recklessness. I was back. As the sun began to set, back to see the transformation .. from defiance to powerlessness. How much I’d changed him .. from savage wildness to tamed weakness. Dogshit hung lifeless from the crossbars. Head down, out-of-it. Torso swollen with his strains. Shoulders alive with his agonies. The plates of his stretched chest salted with dried-on sweat. Pinned arms stretching back his pecs. He’d not try that on again, attacking me. He’d learned. His torso swollen with the stretch, rigid rectangles of pec-muscle under strain. Skin scorched. Even the slightest touch was going to sting. When the pain-cane laid into him …. he’d been going mad with the pain. Looking at him, he was done-in. How long he’d stood slumped into exhaustion I did not know. His body drooping, that granite-hard belly was sucked in. Carved in stone, those vibrant unyielding hillocks of muscle filled my eyes. The trail of hair downwards thick with the salt of his pained sweat. A sculpted torso set in stone, transfixed by torment. After that rash attack on me, I now felt a glow of pleasure in my pants at how I’d visibly tamed this savagery. I allowed myself a sigh of satisfaction at the change I’d caused. The brute had learned fear of my power over him as he hung choking under the hot sun. As if drawn by a magnet, I looked up. My heart stopped. The ferocity of a wildcat held me transfixed. The savagery of a mad beast visually gored me. A spine-chilling shock from those eyes tore straight at my soul. Like the claws of a lion ripping straight through my throat. He was awake. He had not been tamed. He’d waited in ambush. He’d tricked me. This prisoner, my pet project, my money-making asset .. I had had him hung out in blistering torment. Strung out in heat enough to sap the strength of the mightiest beast. Barely able to breath. The solid mounds of muscle pulled up to crush into his chest. Burning down onto his head .. frying his brains. Yet he was. Bursting with life. On fire with hate. Seemingly he’d been lying in waiting. Patiently awaiting my return. The dragon had arisen out of the flames. Ready to ambush his torturer. And ambushed me he had. Breathing fire. My heart missed a beat. I nearly jumped in surprise. That look of animal savagery fuelled by intense hate. Powered by his pain, he had laid in waiting. I stepped back in shock. A volcano about to burst, rage instead of magna …. He’d kept in all in, he’d kept his fire under control. Till his moment came.A predator .. still as death. He had waited for his prey. A panther, still as death, but heart pounding with animal stealth. He glowered in untamed savagery at his torturer. He had my heart transfixed. I struggled to breathe. The savagery in that glare had my blood chilled.Naively I had come back to gloat .. thinking him broken. I was going to have the prisoner thrashed for his crimes. I’d glibly returned .. thinking I had won. And all along, seditiously, he had lain in waiting, the hunter sneakily awaiting the appearance of unsuspecting prey. He’d turned the tables. He had waited to pounce. Shocked, an icy chill crackled down my back.The powers of recovery. Arms twisted in pain suddenly swelled as if to snap out of the bonds. The tortured chest seemed to flood with fury. He looked like he’d swelled to half his size again .. all aggression. All aimed at me.Shocked, I flinched away. He looked like he would break free. Manly shoulders bulged with aggressive threat. I felt icy talons clutch at my throat as if those corded arms had reached down and were squeezing the life out of me. A sense of his overwhelming power had me rooted me to the spot. I withered under the prisoner’s blistering glare. How was this possible? He had hung in torment for hours. The blistering sun had done its worst. Yet, overcoming agony and anguish, the savage brute had me ambushed. He bulged with virile strength, he’d kept it back, he had a brute-animal strength still vibrating in his core. The sight of his torturer brought him to a standing fearsome ferocity. He bristled with manly rage. A breath-taking virility glared over at me from his cross. He froze me to the spot. Weakening398780952500I’d waited the whole day with impatience. Instead of carrying out the due punishment, I’d let him stew. But time-and-again during this day, that moment of ambush kept coming back to me. The feat of the man. The strength of that will!The heat hadn’t broken him, the cross hadn’t crushed him. He’d ambushed ME. Taken me unawares. The shock had had me rooted to the spot. Where did he find that strength? How deep did it go? Drained of strength all day but kept enough in reserve to unnerve me. Making me flinch away. Which was the predator here? For a moment I’d been lost. Mentally unbalanced. Thrown. I’d expected to arrive. To dominate. To exercise power over this man I was claiming for my own. And the brute had turned the tables. He’d trumped me!Proof! What more evidence did I need? He WAS perfect for me. That hide of his was a money-making pot of gold. What strength of will. What depths of mental toughness .. to last out like that. To keep enough in reserve .. to pounce at just the right moment. My precious pot of gold.What depths of hatred could do to this man. That feat of conquering the heat of the sun .. just in order to teach ME as lesson …. A rage that could overcome human weakness. That was almost superhuman. What I couldn’t do with a will that tough …. What I would make out of him. How much. Such thoughts only came to me afterwards, though. Appreciating the magnificence of that strength of mind .. the toughness of that will …. Conquering the physical weakening that I had ordered him to …. He WAS a remarkable piece of muscled brute. At the time, though …. at that ambush .. that assault on my own courage .. he did have me thrown. Chilled. A rabbit caught in the headlights. But subsequently ….. alone in my room after …. that look still haunted …. The power behind it. That scorching anger in his eyes …. that had had me frozen to the spot ….. But by the time I’d had a first stiff drink ….. that look had ME fired up. I was already counting the cash. His recovery .. his ambush …. My heart pounded at the thought of what a lucky sucker I was. To have come across him, to have singled him out that first day. To have seen with my eyes that first glimpse of such inner strength.To have seen the potential! Now, afterwards, he had me as fired up as that look of hatred he’d thrown at me. Impatience now gnawed at me. I poured another drink in celebration. How long? How long was I going to have to wait before I could put him to use? To switch on my money-making machine.He wasn’t going to get away with it, of course. I couldn’t let him get away with those crimes. I’d have to deal with them. First, he’d raised a fist to a guard. Then the knee-jab, he’d tried to get me in the groin. And he’d won the psychological battle with that ambush. If I was going to labour this brute all the way to the bank, there was a small matter of who was boss.Those camp crimes .. the raised fist, the knee-jab ….. I’d have to deal with those first. The other prisoners would be taught the lesson. My men too had to have their satisfaction that he was not getting away with such stuff. Two birds with one stone, then. I’d have him publicly disciplined. And …. When I had disappeared the brute away …. When he was in my sole possession …. Then the brute would remember who it was he was working for.My heart rate had quickly settled with the drinks. And my thoughts were racing with the thrill of putting my little secret into action. After all, that ambush … what had it been? Just some unexpected surprise. There’d been no danger. He couldn’t have got to me, he couldn’t have wrenched himself free of the cross. But I had planned a little surprise for him too.I had returned the favour. I’d done the unexpected too. I had seized the initiative. I ambushed him myself. I hadn’t had him punished as planned. I’d lie in wait for him instead. I’d spring the trap when it suited me. He’d know it was coming, he’d know a man in my position wouldn’t let him get away with that. But when …..?He’d surprised me, lying in wait. Skin scorched .. but the wild cat had lain in ambush for me. I’d surprise him too. Instead of the thrashing he knew he had coming, I had composed myself and walked away. I ordered him left there. Having recovered my shock, I had him left him there for the night. A restless night pinned on the cross. He’d not eaten all day. The night-time cold in the wilderness would chill on his sunburnt skin. There’d no be much rest that night. Chilled by the desert air. No food, no water. Weakening him. And then with the arrival of a shivering dawn, he’d get a full day. Worked till he dropped. Wondering … Had he got away with it? Knowing deep-down he hadn’t. But hoping he might have. I was toying with his nerves. I’d had the brute living on his nerves all day. A long arduous day. At dawn today, I’d ordered the guards to him. Not for the thrashing he had to be expecting. No fists to the gut, his reactions slowed down by the night’s chill. Simply released from the cross. Taken to the windlass. Put to work. A normal day at the office …..A punishingly crippling hard day’s work, that was what I had ordered for him. Weakened by no food, exertion eating away at his last reserves of strength. Today I had ordered the guards, Work him into the ground. Work him till he drops. A pitiless day, my orders had gone out, not a moment’s rest. And then, exhausted by back-breaking labour, weakened by a pitiless regime .. starved of food … I’d order him back. Thee he was … now at the end of the day, he’d been sent for. It was today this animal would know who held the whip-hand. Exhausted, hungry, skin scorched by a merciless hear ….. NOW I’d spring my trap. Two days after that original crime. Heart racing, but outwardly looking casual and indifferent, I waited for him at the punishment post. I had sent four guards to fetch him .. end of the day .. another scorching day. The instant the brute spotted me I reckoned his whole demeanour would change. And I was looking for that moment. He’d know then I had not forgotten him. From my vantage point leaning against the stake, I watched closely the guards bringing him down. There was a messy tangle of muscled bodies struggling with him down the track. Guards pushing and shoving, lashing out and poking. And he was not taking it lying down .. he was not taking their shit. Pushing back, lashing out himself. I was astonished. He had still got fight in him. Still after that punishing day .. exhausted after a sleepless night …. He’d still got it in him.But then ….. as his future owner …. could I be seeing anything better? As the man who had designs on him and this toughness …. wasn’t that sign of his strength of will just what I’d like to see? The sucker was just playing into my hands. I heard the money chink. A man who just could not give in.The guards had released him from his neck-collar, I saw they already had his wrists tied in his front. And, just like the petulant brute I was banking on, all the way to the bank .. unintimidated, he was still giving them a hard time. It was like he didn’t care anymore. I’d chosen four of my biggest to whip him into shape. But, bound though he was, out-numbered though he was, big and determined though they were .. chosen to be every bit as muscled and strong-minded as him ….. still he was finding the strength to make life hard. Still the rounded boulders on his shoulders jabbed out, pushing and shoving back, swinging at them with his elbows. Dogshit, as ever, was not giving in. But he would. Today he would. He’d have to. I’d make sure he knew who was boss.I watched ever closely as they came towards the flat ground where he’d taste the lash. I watched, entranced by the play of perfectly formed muscle, as he shoved back at the guards’ aggression, the setting sun glistening fiery-red on his rippling skin. Could anything break this man? As his future owner …. I could only hope not.He was approaching me in his two personas. This awkward guards’ pain-in-the-arse. But more I saw him as my money-making asset. This stubborn, fearless tenacity I was observing …. that was going to put money in the bank. And today both personas here at this post were going to know it was me that held the whiphand.So far I could observe him unnoticed. The low sun was in his eyes if he had had eyes for me at all. Too taken up with giving the guards a hard time. I saw the twitch of his shoulders at another crack with the pain-cane into the defiant muscle of his shoulder. But it made little effect on taming him. A savage aggression pumped fight through his ripped arms, he spun round in anger to lash out .. just as another strong determined hand shoved him on. The heat of the pitiless day had streaked the dust on his broad torso with his sweat. The hair on his head clung to his scalp from the effort of a day in the blistering sun. I caught the red of the dying light glisten on that tight sweated stomach as he gave another defiant twist back at his guards. Like on the sculpted muscles of the hardest gladiator. Just the way he would look, I thought .. when I was renting that body out. How he’d be seen by money-paying spectators. Solid dense fighting-muscle. Like chiselled rock turned liquid, writhing, alive, twisting in that knotted stomach of his. Bulging in his chest. I smiled at the thought. He would … he’d make me a fortune. Foes3987801460500It would be a terrible thought, I mused, for that magnificent body to go to waste. After the adjustment programme, assessors arrived. They selected suitable candidates for the Realm's development programmes. The worst, the feeblest .. they finished up as lab rats .. testing out some new nerve gas. Didn’t last a day. Disposable. With his musculature, I saw him getting selected as jobber for a guards' training programme. Guard recruits learning physical enforcement. Beating discipline into a captive. Physically demanding, prisoners taking severe punishments all day, every day. He looked the part. I could see the assessors taking him for that.Worst of all, if they heard reports on how he was not “adjusting”, some pen-pushing assessor might decide to cut his losses. Assign him anyway to a lab and get him exposed him in some bio-weapon they were trialling. A waste. What a damned waste!I had better plans for him than that. Much more profitable. But secretive. Which meant I would have to act before the assessors got their grips on him. He’d disappear. I'd make him disappear. In a dangerous stone quarry there were accidents all the time. The Realm's military was precise in its record-keeping. As detailed about the numbers of prisoners it maintained as it was about the number of cartridges it possessed. Paperwork covered everything. Every captive was an asset. To be used in the service of the Realm. Records stated precisely how many prisoners were occupied in which experiment. How many expired, cause of death.The Realm was meticulously military, exact about its paperwork. The rank and file were just numbers. Officers, though … the Realm kept a close record of the officers. The wealthiest, in rare cases, had been ransomed out. Research into new weaponry cost. But otherwise paperwork trailed each individual officer through the programmes .. until a certificate of death accounted for the nature of the prisoner's demise. Detailing in which experiment, what scientific lesson learned had been gained from their death, etc. The Realm's paper trails were second-to-none.Dogshit had to be disappeared. Disappearing into my own personal assets. To the facility I was preparing for him on my estate. There'd be the appropriate paper trail, there’d have to. An unfortunate rockfall in the quarry. A fatal landslip. It would be no problem, these lethal mishaps happened all the time. Best of all ….. I kept the records, it was my responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the numbers kept. He'd have an accident. His death would be logged in the records. His hide would disappear into my estate. And he'd start making money for me. Big money if I had played my cards right.Then he saw me. Stopping my musings in a heart-beat. He’d been fighting off his guards for some time. And then he spotted me. He caught sight of me leaning casually against a whipping post, waiting. And he stood stock-still. Seeing me brought back memories .. recalling the initiation day's beating. The man who’d left him shivering for a restless night on the cross. Had him chained to the windlass in the burning sun, for hours. Chained by the neck like some beast. His enemy. The foe.He remembered me alright. He’d remember that ambush. And he’d remember that insubordination had not been forgotten. His eyes drilled into mine. All the power in that body went hard, tense. Hatred-turned-to-rock. An appreciative whimsy whispered to me. Didn’t my pot-of-gold look magnificent! But I wasn’t here today to admire this supreme male form. Discipline had to be done. And seen to be done. That latent wild-animal aggression needed a seeing-to. Ironically it was that self-same bottomless pit of physical and mental tenacity that I was counting on to make my fortune. But for today … it was the commandant role I was playing. And the commandant would see that behaviour punished.A guard shoved him forwards. He jerked only slightly under the push. An immoveable force. He dug his bare feet strongly into the earth and did not budge. With a curse, a guard lashed out across his back. A stinging swipe off the pain-cane into the breadth of his muscle-broad back. The prisoner twitched but his muscle-packed rage did not shift. The twitch in my pants whispered, He looks a thousand dollars. He IS magnificent.From my position, the stern commandant returned his stare. Calm, in charge. Only one master here. Arms crossed, leaning back against the stake where I'd have him disciplined, I countered his look. Just as hard. I saw his jaw set, the eyes harden. Competing with me for determination. A rival for supremacy.Another hard shove knocked him one step forward. But just one step, one step off-balanced. Muscle-turned-to-iron, he did not relent, stock-still he continued to glare across the compound at me. The hands bound in front of him balled into fists. Knuckles turned white. He knew what was coming, why I was standing there.A lash across his back flashed a rapid grimace across his face. Then just as quickly it re-formed. Hate re-shaped his features. I could feel his fury pumping through every rage-taut sinew, his muscle-packed arms visibly knotted. Rigid in anger, eyes glowering at me in unrestrained insubordination. That whisper in my pants affirmed that I was one luck bastard. I was going to own this peerless strength-of-mind. What a waste if the assessors got their hands on him. Sent him to the labs, guinea-pig for some lethal gas.In contrast to that volcano of muscled aggression, I made my stance relaxed, arms over my chest waiting patiently, one leg crossed over in front as I leaned into the post. The prisoner knew why he was here. So he was in no doubt, I shifted away from the stake. Leaving it free. He’d seen it in use before. Was he seeing the ingrained blood stains for the first time? Or the sweat of pain that had soaked in? Today it was him the punishment post was calling. Presence of mind2628901079500A shove in his back had him spin round in anger. The rock-like muscles in his stomach torqued in the tension-packed twist. The eyes flashed. The teeth bared. The coarse hair that trailed down to his groin seemed to flash into life. A virulent sign of manly menace. His upper body lunged at the guard. A sudden quick jerk. Like the bite of a snake. A snake that was all-aggression, all male-muscle. Magnificent to watch.The move was no more than a threat. A snap of his jaws, a flash of teeth. As if he knew .. a supreme wild beast …that was all he had to do. Threaten, warn.True to form, the guard did recoil. He was solidly built, he could handle himself. He visibly flinched away, backed off. These guards, though …. they weren’t used to prisoners who fought back. Not one built for seething menace like this one. A muscle-bound guard shrank before his snarl. That was why they had to have him broken. But the Dogshit brute did nothing more. He froze. He just glared at the guard. Fixed him, he checked any backlash from the guard. He stopped any such thought in its tracks. With a look of utmost menace. He was bound and unarmed. But the muscled brute remained undaunted. And intimidating.I was spellbound by the force of him. Back in owner-mode for a moment. Then, without any prompting, without getting shoved, the prisoner turned. He walked straight towards me. Eyes glaring at me. I began to panic. He seemed capable of swelling before my eyes. Like some male birds can inflate themselves to attract a mate. Muscle seemed to grow as he came closer. But then he headed off for the stake I had vacated for him. Head high. He knew he had done enough to set my pulse racing .. just by his look, just by a few steps toward me. My heart was still pounding. Not for one second as he came across the compound did his eyes leave me. I could have sworn I saw that broad sweep of his solid chest expand. That solid muscle ballooned up into mounds of pride .. and menace. His backbone straightened and gave him extra height. Towering over mortal men. It was all I could do not to back off as that muscular might had got closer. Those massive shoulders had seemed to bulge to ever greater proportions. Mountainous. Solid. Without a single shove from a guard .. with the dignity of a warrior soldier .. I watched the beast strode manfully towards that stake. Magnificent. All-male. His eyes menacing me every inch of the way. All-threat, none of it physical, Jaw set like rock, mouth hard with intimidation. Dogshit-brute looked the most ultimate definition of a male. I had seen that glare before. He'd fixed me that strong on the initiation. That glare should hold no more surprises for me. It should no longer grind me down. I'd had it thrashed into senselessness that day. It shouldn't ambush me again. Easier said than done? My pulse still raced. He was near enough. He could still turn on me. The guards would be on him. But that towering mountain of menace could still do the damage. What did surprise me .. even in my panic …. Where could he find this strength of will? I had had him tired out .. no sleep .. endlessly ground down since dawn by punishing hard work. And still ….. at the sight of me ….. that muscular defiance had pumped itself up. In response to the sight of me. The dragon aroused itself out of the ashes breathing fire. How did he do it? How far do down did those reserves of inner strength extend? How far down did I have to reach and beat submission out of him?That glare .. and the continued insubordination behind it …... those veins of iron-hard resolve deep down in his soul ….. that was the cause of him being here today. He’d threatened a guard, he’d tried to knee me. The brute would learn. This adjustment programme insisted. The brute WOULD learn. As commandant, I would make sure of that. My duty to crush that steely will. As commandant, that was my duty. He was a prisoner. Prisoner of the Realm. The Realm would make good use of him when that will was broken. Today he'd worked in a neck collar like a beast of burden. And today, he’d be whipped like an unruly dog.But I was playing two roles. Wasn’t I? Once he’d been disappeared .. once his fatal accident was in the record book … when that facility on my estate contained him …. The unruly dog was just what I was counting on. Break that fearsome, fearless will? Where was the profit in that? At arms’ length from the stake, Dogshit-brute suddenly stopped. He looked up at the stake, stained with men’s suffering and sweat, discoloured with men’s whiplashed blood. His head then slowly turned towards me. Unblinking, he drove his eyes into mine. Like a dagger straight between the eyes. Thrown from a face turned to rock, an icy glare. A look that sought to intimidate me. ME! The commandant here. That was a look of pure menace. With a solid promise to me. Promising HIS time would come. These tables would be turned.Seemingly undaunted, I returned his look. Arms still crossed over my chest, head slightly to one side. Who was in charge? Who held the whiphand? Eyebrows raised I countered his promise. I felt a tingle of aggression working in my groin. I made my own promise. There was no anger in my look, no rancour. HIS day had come. It was me having HIS hide whipped into shape. Dignity397510762000This man did dignity. And how he did dignity! And he knew it. I had to admit to more than a shiver of respect at the sight. He slowly walked the last steps to the stake. And then to top it …. To disrespect me .. to spit on the seriousness of his predicament .. he threw me a power pose. His bound wrists were thrown up behind his head. He squeezed. Every muscle in that filthy, sweat-streaked torso went into a display of strength. Arms knotted. Chest crunched. His abs sunken in. Maleness at its supreme best.But it wasn't muscle he was showing off. It was strength-of-will. A muscular unbreakable might that no whipping post was going to break. That …. and he was throwing me bucket-load of disrespect. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck go up. At this display of insolence. If I hadn’t decided his fate this day, that move would have sealed it.And yet …… that whisper of greed in my pants swooned at the display. Shit, was that impressive! That show. He was a natural. Give him an audience. Give him a public to play to ….. I gave my longing a twitch. Down, boy. Don’t get ahead of yourself.I had to give it him. His eyes were fixed on the stake, welcoming it like a friend. Inviting it to take him, welcome his dogged courage, calling on it to attend this hurting. Then he turned his head, slowly he turned it towards me. Nobly. A poise in his bearing. Arrogance. Haughty. A composure that spoke of the manly strength deep within his soul. What you waiting for? I could read his mind, I heard his scornful voice. And as if knowing the answer, with a move pregnant with understanding, he pressed his hands into the post in front of his face. A challenge. Inviting me to give it a try. Knowing what he was doing, the man was offering himself to the stake. For the beating of his life. The men was no fool. He knew what he was doing. He'd known he was in for the full works. I had no doubt he knew exactly he'd just made things worse. Give it a try, he was saying. You'll tear open my skin with your whips. But you'll not break my will.I wondered briefly what kind of leader he must have been before that final battle in the caves. I’d seen the looks on the faces of his men. When those ear-busting sound blasts had crippled every soldier within the caves ….? Had he been down on his knees, hands to his ears screaming? I fancied not. Against all the others, through all the sound-pain firing up his head and exploding in his brain .. for a brief second I saw him, the warrior leader, still rallying his men .. attempting to save the hopeless situation. Not giving in.His eyes held mine. His gaze enveloped me standing behind the post, just to one side. I was watching his every move, mesmerised by this muscular force of life. He looked at me over a bulging bicep, streaked with the sweat of a day’s labour. He was watching my every thought, I felt. His arm held up to the torture post. Waiting. Inviting the rope to bind him in place. Offering himself. He had something to prove, to show to me. Still unbound. Free. Yet presenting himself. He knew what he was up for. His wide tense back was a spectacular display of solid muscle. A sacrifice. Yet, he was not resigned, not submissive. Not resisting this beating and not accepting it either. He was showing me. He was going to take the inevitable. But on his terms. This was showing off, I felt. A shimmer of resentment shimmered down my neck. He was challenging ME! Submitting to the lash to show me what he was capable of. Displaying to me a courage as tough as his shredded body. Offering his body for the beating. As proof. Not to himself. He had no need of assurance of that indomitable strength of will. He was proving himself to me. Proving I was wrong. Proof that no lashing was going to break him. And after ….? When this was over …..? There was a threat burning bright under the white sheets of that gaze. I'd have him thrashed. He was self-assured enough to know I'd hear him scream. Of course. He had no doubt about how far I could take this. How far this could go. But there'd be an Afterwards. When the beating was over … when his thrashed flesh had recovered ….. that stance, that look … he re-assured me ….. for me there'd be no hiding place. Challenge3994151206500What a performer! Shit, did the man like a show. Just loved being the centre of attention. What was he going to be like when he had a real audience? Some, cheering him on. Others jeering. A showman. He’d perform. Like hell, he’d perform. Not to please. He wasn’t at this stake to entertain. His was an act of blistering defiance. A performance that was a spit in the eye. When he was performing .. in that exclusive gentlemen’s club that was his destination …. Shit, how he’d flaunt his disdain for them, fans and foes.Rich men screaming for him. Powerful men betting on his hide. Glorying in the bloodbath that he was the centre of. He’d have his fans. Men from the great-and-the-good who trailed their hard-ons in his blood-splattered wake. Others wanting no more than to see that cockiness knocked out the other side of his face. His fan-club jeering back. You could knock their man down. But he’d not stay down.A tangible menace in that look thrown at me off that blood stained whipping post. No amount of beatings would save me, it said. He'd be coming for me. It didn't end here.That warrior dignity standing at the whipping post. Unbound, ready. Unbent, unbroken. Ready to take the whipping of his life. Ready to take the lash. Challenging me to try and beat his spirit out of him. Offering himself. To prove to me. To show me I could not. What a showman. The fool!Yes, a challenge. But not one he could win. Attempting to dominate me by the intensity of his glare .. silly fool!. Challenging me to try and break him. Challenging me to beat that iron-hard will out of him. Futile …. But you had to admire the spirit. I saw for myself now what had fascinated me from that first day, at the initiation. He’d drawn my senses to him like a magnet. Ruggedly handsome, in a tough soldierly way. That couldn’t go down badly in the future, either. From that first glare thrown at me, after I'd called him out, singled him out … his posture had thrown down the challenge. That was what had been itching at me since that first moment I had clapped eyes on him. We were locked in combat over that unbreakable will. We were at war, the pair of us. My position vis-a-vis him was unassailable. He was Dogshit, I was commandant. The resources at my disposal in this labour camp were as overpowering was the superior weaponry that had wiped out his country in our lightning strikes.But that imbalance in power between us did not unsettle him. He posed the challenge. Which of the two of us was the better man. He didn't mean “male”. He meant MAN.In all circumstances, in the context of this camp, the balance was tilted massively in my favour. Physically, there could be only one outcome. I could break that body. I could cripple that body.But then, his look was saying, …. I would have lost. Here was a tussle over the stronger will. A fight for a mental prize. Attempts on my part to go for that magnificent muscled form only showed my futile desperation. There was the weakness of my plan. I was fighting the wrong battle, his sneer answered back. It was the will I had to go for. And that he would not surrender. He’d die first.A relentless battle to the bitter end between my determination and his steely defiance .. that was what his stance at my whipping post was throwing in my face. That was the real battle-front. His body could be damaged, he was in no doubt. Only question was, What would it take to cripple his strength-of-will? If it was possible at all …. His posture scoffed at me.And another taunt shot across the short distance between us. The mockery of his question crackled in the air. And if it was YOU? The scorn in his look travelled down over my frame and scoffed. If it was you being led to this whipping post? You cowardly dog? A gutless cur. Who needs guards to do your dirty work? If it was you here, could you have walked up to this stake and kissed it like a lover? Welcoming the chance to prove the steel of your unbreakable will? Could you have done that?Or would you be standing here hoping you wouldn’t start pissing yourself? Could you do this? Stand manfully at the post and offer your back. Without a trickle of sweat? Facing the inevitable. Facing the impossible. Without a trace of fear on your face? Without your heart pounding in your chest? Thudding in abject fear of this blood stained post? Could YOU do that? How would you be? Panic ringing in your ears?But …. Fool! That wasn’t the option. I sneered back. I am not under threat. I have no need to prove myself. That scoffing taunt didn't come into question. I AM master here, I AM in charge. We are the conquerors. You the defeated .. Bested by a superior race. The superiority of the Realm has beaten YOU. And you …. you are going to knuckle under and kiss my arse.He was the ill-disciplined brute. Out of control. It was HE who WOULD be tamed. I had no intention of going to the stake. It was not my arse that would burn with the agony of countless lashes. And very soon that vaunted dignity would be burned off. Very soon, his backside would be on fire. Very soon, the sweat of his pain would sting his eyes. Then we’d see dignity. Then we’d weigh the value of his arrogance. Challenge me, would you! Before the sun would set, I'd see his will bent under a barrage of stinging whips. Bend, crack, splinter. Scorch and burn under his better's lash. It was his destiny. The superior race of the Realm would come out on top. Fixed2355854127500The guards tried to force his hands higher up the stake. It’d be better to have him fully stretched up against the post. Hands up high, body stretched, forced to his toes. Every muscle under strain as they took the lash. He resisted. They couldn’t make him. Biceps knotted, shoulders bulged, arms pressed against his new-found friend, the torture stake. He was having it his own way. On his own terms. HE would decide on his position. His hands trussed up to the stake. Before his face, almost in prayer. This was HIS challenge. He was doing it HIS way. This was his show.A guard cursed him out loud. Punched him in the back. Another planted a hard knuckled jab in his side. But the prisoner would not give. His hands stayed locked before his face against the stake. Glaring straight into my face. Alive with insubordination.His eyes remained hard-fixed on mine. I held up my hand to the guards. Let him be. Wherever his hands were placed against the stake, soon he’d scarcely know he was alive. Thick rope was wrapped around his wrists, binding them in front of his face to the stake. He didn’t resist that. He’d won the first round.His eyes never left me. Defiantly stood at the torture stake. As if he actually wanted me to whip the shit out of him. Begging me to order pain scything through his arse. So he could prove himself. Prove I couldn’t best him. He’d never surrender me his will.His eyes taunted me. Inviting me to watch .. bent doubled-up in my frustration .. as his whip-spasmed strength-of-will refused to bend. Showing me he had no fear of me. Of these guards. Of this injustice I was ordering on him.I saw the guards pull tight on the rope, knotting him in place. The sacrifice was secured. Restraining him, tight. Later when his legs collapsed under him in the pain, his hands would not move. Only his body would slump. There was the slightest of winces at the bite of the coarse rope into his skin. But his iron-cold eyes never flinched. His domineering gaze never left me, not once. You have the power for now, they seemed to say. But my time will come.But not today, Dogshit. Full of my confidence .. knowing the power I wielded over him …. I could afford to gloat back. And very soon, that insubordinate glare of his would be twisted in agony. That hard-set jaw will be writhing in pain ….. My look told him … my confidence projected the image back at him. Thrashing to the talons of torment clawed down your impudent face. A smirk of satisfaction at this futile bluster of his broke on my face as I approached. His will would be destroyed. I knew that. My confident posture assured him of that. Today, incinerated in a furnace of white-hot fire. Behind, the four guards were stripping to the waist. I’d had four of the biggest selected for the day. He too had had the chance to size them up as they brought him down from the quarry. They were vindictive, they were determined. All the guards were pissed off that he’d not knuckle under. Tired of his continuing insolence. These men ….. they had a duty. They represented their mates. Buddies who looked to them. Sort the prick. Sort him out. Sort him finally out.Their arms bulging out of their sleeveless tunics, on the march here his torso had felt the power of their fists. He’d felt the strength in their broad backs as they shoved him forward. He already knew what they could do. They were not so easily dismissed. And he had felt their determination. These men were hand-picked by me. Pissed off with his insolence. His continuing defiance guaranteed him one thing. They wanted him broken as much as me.My eyes were not to be unsettled by that menacing glare. I was the one who held all the cards. I rivalled the look in his face. The guards had him secured, they left him. Up close, my eyes stroked over the big rounded mounds in his shoulders corded by the lift of his arms. My gaze caressed the breath of his muscled back, now for a moment at rest after an exhausting day pounding the endless circles of the windlass. His stomach was sunken-in lifted by his raised arms. My asset, my investment in my future. Impressive. His will as muscled as this eye-catching physique. But soon both were to collapse under the terror of the lash.I reached into my belt and produced the knife. For the first time, his eyes left my face. And watched the downward progress of the blade, glowing orange in the setting sun. His taut muscled stomach pulled in when I slid the blade down his skin. He felt cold metal glide down the skin of his hot flesh towards his loins. And with one quick slice, I cut away the loincloth. His chiselled tightly packed physique exposed .. naked to the lash. His marbled muscled arse on display for the canes. Naked I’d had him thrashed on the day he had arrived. Today naked again he’d fall to the lash. AssaultConnections39497016383000My friend had invited me to visit his club. Our families had always been close, our estates were neighbours. Well-connected, he’d risen to Lieutenant-General. Then two years ago he had resigned .. “to commit himself to family affairs”. He’d set up a money-making enterprise. An exclusive all-male club. Membership open only to the great-and-the-good .. old money, former nobility, magnates and major industrialists.He’d adapted an idea from his last years running training for special forces. When the men had passed some milestone, he organised a celebratory fight night. Not between the different units of fighting men. That happened as a matter of course in the programme. To celebrate a passing-out ceremony, free beer and women prisoners accompanied an evening of fun. Fit prisoners were used for real-time entertainment. He kept a few particular burly prisoners. Marked out for these fight nights.Sub-humans … that was the way soldiers talked about prisoners. One was put in a fight cage. Up against three or four of his most vindictive trainees. The booze flowed with the pounding of fists. Men got their rocks off on the savagery of seeing a sub-human slaughtered. Getting the crap pulverised out of him. No one expected him to walk out on his own two feet. That would spoil the fun.Bets were placed. How long could the victim keep taking it? Finishing it off fast … slaughtering the sub-human …. that did not work. Guys who lost control like that got booed out of the cage. The fun was in dragging it out. In the splattering of sub-human blood. Bets placed .. How long would this prisoner last? Booby prizes given for the dumb-arsed trainee that landed the fatal blow. “Cuming” too soon. Mocked for ending the fight?Retired, my friend had adapted the idea. And he’d gone upmarket. He saw there was money in the idea. And in who was going to swallow the idea. Entertaining the rich, at an exclusive fight club. Men convinced of their superiority. In society. And racially. A customised fight ring. Guests sipping champagne watching from the gallery above. Below one prisoner, sub-human, up against hand-picked fighters .. fees earned for landing the most brutal blows .. rewarded for making the savagery last. For only for the finest of society. Society’s best networking with only the best. Astronomically high joining fees to guarantee the most select of guests. High rollers. Men-only. Men of influence. Men of superiority in the Realm. For-once-in-a-while, at the club, able to let their hair down, here where it was safe. Letting out their male lust for violence among the like-minded. Expensive cigar smoke enveloping the victim below. After all, he was not from the Realm, racially inferior. They were captive soldiers. Men who’d proven they could not hold their own against a superior race. It was sub-humans having the shit beaten out of them. Members had every right to cheer.Men of money. Making business deals between bouts. Lobbying for a son to get a plumb job at Army HQ, The usual thing that we get up to in gentlemen’s clubs. Sipping a good brandy while betting on the bloodbath down below. High stakes, big money changing hands. Of course, my friend ran the books. For guests such as the members, money was no object. Not in the pursuit of a thrilling night’s fun, in the best of company. Industrialists on lucrative miltary contracts, senior officers well-connected in the junta, old money. A good time spent with only the best that society could offer. Amusingly diverted by the slaughter of a blood-fight happening in the ring below. A men-only club. Girls on-hand if the thrill of the fights needed some massaging after.Business was booming, my friend beamed sipping brandy when the members had gone. Only one potential difficulty on the horizon. Over drinks, my friend had confessed. A shortage of supply. The attrition rate was high. The sub-humans didn’t last long, even the toughest. They took quite a hammering to keep the guests thirsting for more. He was always on the lookout, my friend had said. It was a tough existence. Men did not make it through more than a few bouts. I saw him wink. I knew why I’d been invited that night. I winked back, nothing said. I had a stream of captive enemy going through my hands. Could I help out with his supply problems? Strapped38862026352500A growl seeped from his throat at my touch. I’d pulled the puppet’s string. And he had jumped to my tune. Goading him. my hand stroked over his naked arse. Fingers slid into the crack. My hand gave his arse a squeeze.The arse newly exposed when I’d sliced his loincloth away. I felt the sudden tensing as my thumb stroked mocking at the lightly haired backside. Making him growl me a warning. And this fool had thought he was in control of this show! He snarled at me under his armpit. A predictable glare into my face. I looked at the guards. Reminding them with my hand .. signalling their target. They nodded. Four of them, just as determined. All as big and muscled as this conceited brute. Who’d invited this. Who’d greeting the whipping post like a long-lost friend.Stripped now to the waist, they looked every bit as eye-catching as the prisoner did. Four of them .. enough so they did not tire. Back-up to keep their efforts fresh. Four of them .. so every stroke counted. With brutal ferocity.My instructions were clear. Tomorrow he’d be back at work. Even as light broke, Dogshit would be chained by a collar to the windlass. He would be back at work next morning. That broad muscled back, the straining thighs, the groaning shoulders would be hauling rock all day. Every step of that bruised backside would be a reminder. Every muscle in his body agonising from the first order to push. First light to sunset. Every sinew twisted in agony. He’d remember this day.His was valuable prisoner flesh .. an officer. He’d led his men into insolence and insubordination. Broken, he’d lead them into submission, too. Of course …. his value to me was …. inestimable. But these guards were never going to know how much he meant to me. I wanted him thrashed. But not marked, I’d emphasised. I wanted his behaviour punished. But nothing was to keep him from maximum effort at work. His agonies the next days would be a warning to his men not to follow in his footsteps. His arse was the target, his back could take a beating. Above all, nothing to rip him open. Nothing to cut. No blood lost. After all, a whip-lashed back wasn’t going tp look too attractive where I had in mind for him.The guards had come suitably tooled up. First up, the guard came swinging a thick leather strap. I recognised it. The sort that went round a horse’s girth. Almost the width of a hand. He held it first between both hands and snapped it with an intimidating crack. The brute must have heard it snap behind. I myself heard the menacing snap of leather crack through the air. But my victim’s face remained unchanged. His exposed torso did not react. His features impassive. Surly. He’d prepared himself for this, he knew this day was coming. But could any preparation be enough for the defeat these guards had in mind? His eyes stayed riveted on mine. Like pins driven into my eye balls. Unmoved, unblinking. He knew the lash. He took the pain-canes daily. Those eyes pierced into mine with hatred. Telling me he was going to take it. Scornfully telling me I couldn’t. Not if it was me at the stake.But that was not the point. I was not there. It was not me going under the swipe of the pain-canes. I had no intention to. The weak-minded fool. He was, it was him getting my pain. This time there was a distinct tensing in his arms when again that strap whooshed through the air. Shoulders bulged, turned to stone. A deep-throated growl of leather slicing towards his arse. The first strike did not disappoint. A look of shock cut across his face. A guttural grunt shot up from his arse to his throat. The strap hit him harder than expected. Had the fool forgotten how much it could hurt? His eyes flashed wide, a jagged tremble shook in his arms.Lay them on hard, those were my instructions. Nothing held back. Five strikes, then hand him over. Keep yourself fresh, drink plenty of water. And give his arse hell.The brute’s face shuddered. Shook, trembled. But briefly. His gaze barely wavered. Still he stared in defiance into my eyes. Take it slowly, I had told them. Let him savour every strike. Let him taste the full impact. Every moment of pain. Every biting second. Give him time to get his breath between each one. Let him think he has managed one more. Then hit him with another savage blow. Take the fool’s breath away. Seconds39751016954500The second whoosh cut across his arse so hard it rammed his hips into the stake. At the growl of leather through the air, he sucked in breath. Willpower pumped up his arms. Yet still the force behind the strap rammed that carved lower belly with a slam into the post. Pain shot searing tremors up his backbone. For a second, his eyes closed in the pain. Then - just as fast - they flashed open. Locked on mine. A tremble passed through his knotted shoulders, juddered down his muscled back. But still he could glare back at me fiercely. I held his look. Firm, assured. Reminding him. Only two so far. Only two blows. And his mind was beginning to see what he was up against. This was a battle of minds as much as the pain targeted on his arse.The air was again cut open by the sound of leather. The third slap of leather rang like triumph in my ears. The loud crack of thunder, the muffled grunt of pain. Pain that sliced up from his arse until he barely strangled it in his throat. He jerked hard. In surprise, I saw his manliness leap up in shock, his back thrown into long hard tremor. But the brute still managed to force back down the cries of his pain.I’d positioned myself … to see the searing slap of pain across his backside. And to evaluate the increasing difficulty of fighting me back, scrawled on his face. His breathing accelerated with each blow. With each strap slapping painfully into his bare arse, he panted faster, harder. The guard would wait till the prisoner’s back settled into a near-normal breathing pattern. As I’d ordered. And then, when the fool thought he had a hold on himself again, the guard let rip. Fascinated, I watched the transformation. His face exploded with the cutting pain into his flesh. His eyes shot closed, his neck spasmed into rapid shudders. I caught the effort as he throttled his pain in his gullet. And then, defiant to the last, his eyes shot open, snorting hard through his nose, breathing fast to recover. Teeth closed, snorting fast through his teeth. His gaze turned on me, in anger. His eyes burned with fury. To my joy. With an element of surprise to myself, I found I was enjoying this tussle. Encouraged by the fact that he was defying me, throwing down his challenge. And that I could see it was going to get harder for him with each strike. I took a brief glance at his backside when the guards changed over. Glowing pink, angry red welts pock-marked the strong muscled globes. I was tempted to approach, touch and feel the heat. But there was plenty of time. All evening if necessary. Until the brute had to admit he was beaten. Till he grovelled and pleaded for it to stop. I realised .. part of my increasing fascination in this ….. it was trying to spot that tipping point.And still his eyes were on me all the time. Still resisting me. Still believing he could defy me. He was drawing strength from the hatred those eyes threw at me. Still letting me know I was dealing with a man who could take all this. And more.As indeed, he would. Take it, bite on it, suffer it. Take it till he really could face no more.The change-over guard had stayed with the pain-cane, springy, pliant. Full of whiplash, full of sting. Intended to smart more than to punch. With the enthusiasm of a beginner, the guard launched his attack. Intent on matching the earlier strap. A high-pitched whistle warned the prisoner. Tensed him, prepared him. It was the look on his face that showed me success. Shock. A blistering sting. A thousand wasp bites. A fiery white-hot bolt of lightning exploded on his arse. The prisoner’s eyes shot open. His mouth spasmed in soundless cry. And every muscle in the broad back shuddered. Like wildfire with his pain. I smirked. He’d known the cane at the yoke, he thought he knew pain. But the brute had just realised there was more. So much more.Pain clamped his teeth together. The next stinging swish into his crimson arse locked his body in a violent spasm. The guard was big, every bit as muscled as the brute about the shoulders. Armed himself with the lightest weapon. But sent swishing through the air like from an uncoiled spring. Cutting through the light from untwisting shoulders. Scything into the brute’s bare arse. The look on his face said it all. Teeth clenched, determined jaw. His eyes popped open in shock. His head shuddered in pain. His jaw clamped down tight. Murdering his cry. Meat for hire394970317500I’d helped my friend out with a handful of consignments, making a bit on the side. It was easy enough. Accidents happened in the quarry. A guard could get carried away. Easy enough to manipulate the records. A well-built, burly hard-case just disappeared.He‘d been getting through sub-humans at quite a rate, he told me. Business had really taken off. More than twice a week now. Men making connections, mixing with the men who made things happen for them. It wasn’t just the fights. But they did draw them in. Deal-making paused when the bloodbath began.He was getting through victims at quite a lick, supply was getting dangerously thin. And these were not clients you wanted to let down with second-best. He was on the phone once a week. For a friendly chat. Then another couple of likelies disappeared.What he'd really love, my friend with his fight-club had told me another time over a drink … He’d had this great idea. Something different to offer, a bit of variety. He wouldn’t want his clients to get bored with the meat on offer. What he dreamed of ….. he’d love to get his hands on a victim who could really hold his own. Go into the cage against, say, two tough-nuts .. only two opponents to even up the odds. But two of the toughest motherfuckers on the books. But the sub-human had to be just as hard a nutcase. A hammer-and-fist contest, no holds barred. Two onto one, working him together. BUT …. Just imagine …. What if he’d win? No fixing the result. He genuinely wins. A sub-human who can really hold his own.It would be more like the conventional cage fight. It would be different from the usual slaughter on the menu. There the victim got hammered, only one way out for him .. on his back. The gallery cheering their guys. In this new one …. There was an element of the uncertain. He wanted to provide some variety in the usual fare offered at the club. A timed fight, he imagined. This mother of all toughest sub-human motherfuckers up against two of the same. Could the pair of opponents put the sub-human down within a half hour? If they could, a huge bonus was in it for them. But where could he find such a beast? This wasn’t a drag-out-the-end fight ….. This was hammer-and-tongs. This was the hardest, dirtiest fighting that men could put on. There was only one of him, after all. How hard could that be? But …. imagine it …. If the underdog won ? A guy who could win against the odds. Against the dirtiest fighters. Fighters who’d been promised a huge bonus to put him down.And still he won. Not just once. He won regularly. Perhaps .. in case it got too predictable … you’d up the stakes, then … One against three. And still the suckers couldn’t put him down. As time was running out for them .. the fighters would be pulling out all the stops. And still they couldn’t tire him out. A victim like that …. Did he exist? Was he just some pipe-dream? Was there anywhere a sub-human like that? That good? To see him winning .. against all the odds ….. to be forced to watch a sub-human that good ….? …. For spectators like these … it went against the grain … men convinced of their racial superiority. It shouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. For the club members watching from the gallery above …. Watching this was a monstrous offence. The Realm’s fighters always come out on top. Can’t you hear the madness in the house, my friend had grinned? The bawling, the rage. Screaming at their guys to knock the shit out of the prick. Willing the worst of possible slaughters on this insolent sub-human who did not know his place. Pure madness. Aching for extreme violence. There’d not be a limp cock in the house. Enraged because “their own” were letting a sub-human get away with it.You could even imagine a case like that getting himself a following, I’d suggested. Some would be outraged that a sub-human beast could win, they’d be furiously arguing the fight was fixed. This went against all their knowledge of racial superiority.But perversely others would be rooting for him. Because he was one tough motherfucker. Admiring a sonovabitch you couldn’t put down. Not because he was the under-dog. Because he was pulling off the impossible. His followers would sneer back, You can knock our guy down but he’ll bounce back up. Now wouldn’t that spike the members' interests, I suggested? A competitiveness among the members. Factions for, factions against. That would have the blood racing. Tribalism. Guys getting really worked up. Madness. The wagers would go through the roof. There’d be boners everywhere, I joked. The girls in the back rooms wouldn’t know what had hit them after!He'd not win every time, my friend added …. we were thinking this through together. No match-fixing. Luck of the draw. But that was just the point, he winked. In that randomness was the gambler’s thrill, the uncertainty. There was the kick in the punter’s risk. If only he could find one like that, my friend mused. Where could he put his hand on a motherfucker tough enough for that? He'd pay a generous finder’s fee to the man who brought him that.That was all before my brute fell into my lap. That first day, at the initiation, when he’d overcome pain and exhaustion ….. after I’d wondered at that … it clicked. I realised. I’d found just the guy. Guinea pig #1. Colonel. I already had a fight name for him. Colonel. A sub-human but he’d have rank.I was honouring him with his former rank as he fought wins straight into my bank balance. And it wouldn’t hurt that he was good looking. Muscular, tenacious …. and a manly face. Plenty out there would love to see him hammered just to smash up that pretty face of his. And plenty of others on the gallery above the show …. they’d be dreaming to have a son like him. A tough motherfucker a father could be proud off. One you just couldn’t put down.But this was a different deal. I’d handed over a few “disappeared’s” for a flat fee. In search for this fighter-ideal, my friend had suggested a finder’s fee. Not acceptable, I had decided. This asset was exceptional. My Colonel was a one-off. And I was the one going to benefit. This transaction had to be something different. Also a one-off.It was still to be negotiated but I was not letting my Colonel go. He stayed in my stables. A share of the winnings, that was what I’d take. I’d hire my Colonel out for a share of the takings. He was mine. And he was staying that. He was a wonder, this fire-breathing dragon of mine. And I’d put that refusal of his to stay lying down against any brutal odds in any fight. I’d watched him. I’d seen him rise from the ashes. Breathing fire. A man who did not give up. Who COULD not. He WAS a man who could get a following. The fight fees would go through the roof. Slowly does it3949703365500The guard took it slow. The way I’d told them. Allowing the brute to feel the sting. Let the pain shiver through every bone, scythe savagely up through every muscle. In-between strikes, allowing him to catch his breath. And panting, stand at the stake, heart pounding, blood thundering in his ears. Congratulating himself. Another one under the belt. Waiting. Heart in mouth. Listening for the next swish of the switch. Fooling himself. Thinking he still could prepare for it.Every fibre on edge for the sound of the scorpion’s tail. Another smarting burn …. ripped across the tops of the brute’s legs. The eyes that he kept drilled into mine watered with the shock of the sting. His shoulders jolted, his head flew back. The brute shook his head to clear it, recovered and snarled his fury into my face. Features twisted with anger, huge arms knotted to hold down the pain. I returned his look, not missing the quiver of pain snatching at his jaw. He thought he could fool me? I saw his hurt. His breathing had quickened, sweat trickled, deep smarting stings cutting through to his core. As ordered, the guard gave him time in-between .. for each searing flame to burn at his flesh, to scorch fears into his soul. Like a serpent’s breath burning him alive. Lips pursed, the prisoner’s breathing now came hard and broken through tight-clenched teeth. The brute wiped the trickle of sweat from his forehead on his upraised bicep. An arm also flushed with his pain, sheened with his struggle against scorching hurt. The sound of another warning swish of the branch bunched into tense bulges in his arms, stiff, pain-hard, fists clenched, face ice-taut.Suddenly, his face lashed into the stake. A grunt of pain smacked into his throat. Intense hurt from a crippling blow across his beaten backside. Biting at his whip-lashed arse, slashing at his beaten flesh, pain eating into his burning skin. The evil sting of the pain-cane. He opened his eyes, he glared into the post. Head pressed into the stake, scorching heat beading on his face. Breathing hard, ragged, hoarse. His arms trembling, trembling in the extremity of his pain, a hundred cuts scything through his muscled defiant bulk. From the side he saw me peering into his eyes. Seeing me watch the trickle of the tear. In response, the brute’s jaw set solid in my face, his teeth clenched. Scorn filled his eyes. Determined more than ever to give me nothing of his pain. His breathing slowed, he was finding the control. His chest rose hugely, fighting to bring his breathing under control. Looking me in the eye, without a flinch, chest rising and falling massively. But still he was getting his breathing brought again under control. Glaring over a corded bicep. His torso tight, tense and within his power, bent to his will. His look again challenging me to do the same. If this was you, weakling …..? Telling me I couldn’t. With a look of disdain, the brute pushed his chest back off the stake.Upright on his legs, feet planted, he squared off his shoulders. Facing me, eyes challenging me, defying me. Challenging the sting of the switch, he set his back, pumped power back into taut self-assured muscle. Visibly I saw him power steel back into his guts. He fired his determination into a hard-set back. Insolently he stared .. his posture daring the guard. A god-like physique. Perfectly sculptured with rock-hard muscle. Offering his granite-carved back topped by square-cut boulders. I caught the guards’ reactions behind. They threw angry looks at each other. Each defiant challenge was like a gauntlet thrown down at them. This fucking prisoner .. presenting them with the solid muscle of a brawny back .. tapered down to a tight hard waist. Rebelliously defying the cane. They shared glances, they agreed. They’d have him, they’d break him. Come what may. He wanted a fight? He had it. The impossibly cinched waist led my eyes back down to his aching crimson-whipped arse. Inviting another swish of the lash. I glanced at the guards’ face. Their grim looks said it all. They’d have him. He’d have what he wanted. Lashes. In abundance. With determination. He’d break. They’d break him. His defiance guaranteed it.The brute set his shoulders, hardened his look. His determination centred on me. He set his solid back. Squared his bunched shoulders. As if saying, look at me. Here I am. This is what it means. To be a man. Come and get me. Take on a man. Coward. See what it means to be a man. Lathered with pain344805-190500They showed him no mercy with the lash. I’d ordered none. He deserved none. The guards were in no mood to give him any. Not just his backside, Tops of his thighs. Slashing the pain-cane down his back. Winded, dazed, his head had collapsed onto his hands. Legs trembling, threatening to sag. Kept up only on legs of pig-headed will.I had watched him every pain-accelerated moment. Muscles on his powerful back leapt under the lash . lashing out in a dance of stabbing torment. That last biting sting of the cane had his shoulders shuddering in agonised spasms. Frenzied. Beyond his control. But still .. pig-headed, dogged, stubborn as hell …. Amazingly he had not offered up a single cry of pain. That refusal was driving the guards mad. That challenge thrown down only goaded them on. They were pissed off with him. His pig-headedness was making them fume. The sting of the pain-cane was replaced by the thud of the knot. Rope the thickness of an arm tied over into a thick murderous knot, a huge swinging club. No sting. A heavy pulverising thud. The dense dull punch pounding into his battered backside. The flesh-crushing knot thwacked into his red-raw skin, smashing at ravaged hard muscle. Stood where I did, I saw the devastating impact twisted his defiant face into agonised convulsions. His back sharp-twisted under the thick-coiled knot that pounded into his whip-lashed arse. A dull body-crushing thud delivered from the fresh guard’s determined back. Delivering a thunderbolt up his pain-juddered back. Groans lifted to grunts. Deep resonant sharp grunts forced up from his arse. Shuddering upwards, slashing at his spasmed back. Grunts yanked into pained cries that exploded in his chest. That hammered for release at his throat. That threatened to burst on the air.Still not once. He’d not given up a cry. Not one. A defiant warrior leader. His silence, though, was a false mark of his triumph. He proudly held on to his cries. And his refusal could only provoke more determined attacks. That stubbornness of his fuelled the driving force that exploded from the guard’s shoulder. The fool had locked the shame of every tortured cry within his chest. And that stubbornness of his clawed out of the guard every last vestige of muscular determination. He burned to hear him cry. To see him break.But I was OK with this. The brute was giving me his pain. I didn’t need his cries. The agony of his cries might explode devastatingly in his chest, each blow might torture him with the fear that he’d give out a cry. I didn’t care. I had his pain. I had his pain splattered in my face. And I had proof. I was observing my fortune accruing with every pain-bursting strike. This punishment …. And still he could refuse! He didn’t know how to give in.With every pain-crippling blow, with every spasm-stabbing thud, ….. I bathed in it, I revelled in it. Unable to hold my triumphant gaze, the brute now hid his shame within his hands. Pressed the disgrace on his face hard into the stake. Sweat dripped off strong hair in his armpits, ran down his flanks. From thighs to back, his skin flared blotched and flushed with the agony of his hurt. The guard with the horse leather returned and let loose with fresh vigour on that once hard arse. The brute’s whole body convulsed. A loud resounding smack on his pain-crimson arse. Shock twisted his head off the stake. I caught a flash of his face, contorted in his torture. Pain ringing in his ears. Fire eating him alive. Groans of torment that he had locked down in his chest exploded and this time threatened to erupt. His agonised cries of pain scratched at a locked throat, fighting to break free. Claws of fire raked across his brutalised buttocks. Screeching their agony down through his trembling legs.Now he hung, face buried in his shame in this hands, against the stake. Down the sides of his chest sweat ran in glistening rivers. A spasm of pain trembled unaccountably through his body. Pain seeking release. Pain flashed and crackled through his being seeking outlet, seeking relief. His broad back was flushed .. the pain of his agony blazing off his arse. Down on his whip-lashed backside, black hair had dusted the skin. It lay now flat, sweat-drenched. Drowned in the sea of his crimson fire. He burned there like in the flames of hell. Deep-red, fiery welts throbbed like liquid fire. How many times? I had lost count. What did it matter to me?. No mercy, unrelenting. They’d keep on smashing into him till he gave out his first cry. His legs trembling with shock. The brute, exhausted, head buried in his hands, pressed himself half-lifeless for support against the stake. Chest rising slow, hard. Back heaving pained, exhausted. Waiting helpless for the next round of torture to begin. Suddenly a violent convulsive spasm seized him . An after-shock twisted, shook him. Pain that had found no way out … sizzling in convulsions through his flesh. A vicious flash ripped up his back, turned his arms to rock. The back of his neck fast-trembling at the shock. His whole body was lathered with sweat, the sweat of his agony. Drenched with his gut-wrenching pain. I approached. I had stood close-up watching him take every lash. Closely observing, awaiting the moment when he could no longer control the pain, when he hid his crushed defiance away from me. That moment was now. Standing by his shoulder, I caught another hideous dance of convulsions that puzzlingly shook his sweat-drenched torso. Flashes of pain that crackled at his soul. Pain locked within him because he refused to let it out. A whimper of his anguish seeped into his hands. A moan leaked from his throat. I’d surprised by the touch of my fingers over his fiery arse. Muscle rippled like a horse flicking flies off its eyes. But it rippled in pain, shivered, trembled. I felt like a beast drenched in heat against the agony that burned at my hand. This prisoner now knew the penalty for defiance. All that remained was to face it. And to bend his will to the man who’d ordered this punishment. And who could order it again.Beaten mounds of once-solid muscle burned to the touch, my hands felt a surge of power as they slicked over his sweat-sheened arse. Streaked over the flat soaked hair. The power over this beast .. the sense of success .. a surge of victory powered a tingle to my loins. My hand closed into a claw in his battered flesh. Dug in. Nails biting deep. He groaned in feeble protest. Pain like a torrent of molten lava surged up through his body, arse clenched. The clenching could only make things worse, squeezed painfully tight, his back exhaustedly tense. A long ragged groan leaching out under his breath. Beaten3949702667000I longed to see his face. I had to see the script of my agony scrawled on his face. The agony that had been my gift today. He was done-for. Pain had broken him.He’d brought this on himself. He’d kept on goading the guards. He kept on spitting in their face. His message …. No way could they throw anything at him that he could not bat away.Well, they’d shown him. Guard after guard had accepted his challenge. Man-after-man they’d been determined to beat their last mate. The buddy hadn’t broken him down .. My turn. Take that, you sonofabitch!I had to see his defeat. It had been long in coming. I’d got increasingly caught up in the feeding frenzy. Like the guards, willing him to cry out. Urging him on to give me what we ached to hear. A full-throated yell. A cry of despair. Confessing to the world … he was not unbeatable. Accepting defeat.The boner in my pants urged me on. I grabbed at his scalp. Twisting my hand in his hair, I turned the brute’s face into mine. Tears of agony had streaked his face. The mouth clamped together still fought with the agony that burned in his back. I craved to see his eyes. The eyes that had scorned me. The glare that had challenged me. I had to see that haughty look of defiance finally crushed from his gaze.. I had to see his eyes submit to mine.. Owning up to his defeat, giving up the fight. In full knowledge that his will had been broken in his pain. Broken by my pain. His insolence and that truculence whipped into a mass of screaming flesh. I had won.Irritatingly his eyes stayed defiantly closed. But a lash of my hand across the face snapped the brute rudely back to life. His head swung puppet-like in my grip on his hair. His head rocked in rhythm to his tortured breathing. Mouth gaping open, eyes open, eyes empty. Looking but not seeing. A flush of satisfaction washed over me at the sight of this face. Defeated, sweat-covered, barely conscious. A tongue licked at his parched lips, he swallowed on a dry throat, animal-like instincts. But barely aware.At last. I had him crushed. From now on, he’d know who owned his hide. Here in the camp, later when I’d had him disappeared …. he’d know what I was capable of. He’d not try me again. I’d keep him a while still in the camp. Till the facility of my estate was built to contain him. I’d keep him naked. Shame-faced, he’d go amongst the men he once had led, naked. They’d seen him for what he had become. Forced by me into this biddable state. Gone that insubordination. Where was that bristling insolence? This was not someone the others would risk following. His head sagged in my tight grip. A head hung in humiliation. The boner in my pants welcomed his defeat. It taunted him, see, brute, you’ve met your match. His crippled body, his shame-hung head told it. His aching body throbbed in unison with his tortured pulse. My boner scoffed, see what you have brought yourself to? His arms stiffened suddenly, another after-shock ripping through pain-corded muscle. His shamed head hung from my grip, in a whirlpool of despair and hopelessness. Everything about him now looked good. Right. Right pose for a biddable prisoner. His muscled broken body slumped against the stake. His arms, sweat-drenched, collapsed around the pole, his whip-lashed backside burning him alive. Burning at the stake. Enough was enough. He was beaten. The guards had broken him. His sweated body glistening in the orange of the dying sun, appropriately sinking to mark his defeat. The brute clung for support against the stake, broken, in agony. In his arse, he was animal meat. Stiff powerful mounds of strength pulverised tender .. like on the butcher’s slab. He’d remember this moment. Tomorrow back at work. Trudging in mindless circles around that windlass. For hours. For days. Naked to his mates. Shame-faced. With every pain-crippled step he took he’d show himself broken. He’d not given up a single cry. But I could give him that. Enough was enough, no need for more. It would be some time before the brute would again arrogantly stride up to that stake, the show-off. Would he ever dare that move again?I lifted his head one finally time. For one final look into that lifeless unseeing face. He spat. He spat in my face. He spat, he spat again. He had no spit,. His mouth parched, dry as a bone. But it was his disdain that splattered on my cheek. A big, viscous glob of his contempt clung to my face. Unthinking I wiped it away. His head still rocking in rhythm to his pounding pulse, the eyes drilling into mine were on the verge of screaming. Shrieking at me like some wild fury. His face had darkened like the sky before a sudden storm. He’d spat his never-ending contempt into my face.I was shocked. I flinched. He’d caught me totally unawares. Unthinking, my hand lashed out. His face span helplessly away under the force of my fury. Twisting away in my grip on his hair. Then, blinking through the burn on his cheek, the head returned. Slowly. Controlled. Masterful. Turned back to me. Eyes menacing. The head turned slowly into my face. The lips curled into a snarl. Eyes crushed to demonic slits. By sheer force of his will, a twist of his head wrenched his hair from my grip. Manfully, he lifted up off the stake, towering to his full height. Slitted eyes burning into mine. I felt a tremor of cold. Down my spine. Freezing in my balls.Chest raised, massive, biceps knotted, corded with anger. And the prisoner roared blood-curdling curses into my face. Roared like a cornered beast. Snarled like a caged lion. Fangs snapping, spitting, roaring in my face. Threatening. Terrorising. I trembled.His shoulders peaked, neck pumped, he lifted his head backwards. He raised his face in unbroken defiance to the darkening sky. He grew to a colossus before my eyes. Feet planted firm, back straight, chest high. From an inhuman height, he looked down at me, scorn-filled, rage-pumped. And he threw into my face a blood-curdling battle cry. Out of my mind39497016192500I should have been overjoyed. He was all I wanted. And more. How much he had taken! And hard. Everything thrown at him. Stinging pain-canes. Thwacked by the knot. How many men could have lasted out under such punishment? The vast majority .. even tough hardened veterans .. they would have given in. Most would have been begging for this savagery to stop. Sobbing for it to end. He was all I had promised myself. This was my pot-of-gold. He was my retirement plan. My way out of this camp of sub-human stench and degradation. The way he had taken all that. The way it had taken everything out of him. He’d looked totally, utterly broken. I’d been convinced the guards had worked the magic. They’d certainly looked pleased with themselves. They’d set out to prove it to the sucker once and for all. They’d done it. They laid him out.And THEN …..!Just imagine him. In the cage. Three fighters have hammered the shit out of him. Thirty minutes they had to put him down. Big bonus for them if they did. Three. Working him over together. Doing him over to kingdom-come. Held up in a half-nelson, taking turns at smashing his abs apart. Worked over by three hardened fighters. Till he can barely stand.One steps up for the final blow. Just his approach …. . Like the beast can sense the final coming …... Just that approach ….. Just the vibes announcing the coming end ….. And the magic bursts …... The dragon arises. Fire in his belly. Lashing out, lashing back. Above in the gallery, the good-and-the-rich …. they’ve been waiting for this moment. Chewing on pricey cigars in nervousness. Just wondering. Was he going to pull it off again? Was he really done-in this time? Knowing it couldn’t be. Knowing no man can come back from that. And he does. The tension breaks. The roars almost lift the roof off. I should have been overjoyed. MY man. MY fighter. Colonel. My one-man pot-of-gold. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t thrilled. I was baffled. I was shocked. I was frustrated. I was hopping mad. I was the Master. I was his Lord. He bent the knee to me. How much did it take? What did I have to do to make him see me for what I was? I was going out of my head with frustration. Why couldn’t I get that one simple desire? What did it take?Later …. when I could calm down … much, much later when I’d had chance to have a stiff drink and could think things through …… I realised my quandary. He was my fortune. Because he was like this. Because he acted invincible. And he was … as good as. The beating he had taken …. Mind-boggling that he was still conscious, never mind that he could come battling back. I see him … that image of him in the cage …. Beaten shitless. And still he lays out three of the toughest hard-cases under the sun. If that wasn’t invincible … someone had better invent me a new word.THAT was all I desired. No way did I want that fire quenched. On that “invincibility” my future fortune rested. No way was that to be controlled.What WAS to be controlled …. He had to acknowledge me. I was his Boss. I owned him. He was MINE. He did MY bidding. Not the other way round. Damn him! He’d acknowledge that. My power over him. My ownership of his hide. He was to be MY wild animal. True, I wanted him wild. But the beast did not go for his tamer. It was the animal tamer who held the whip. And damn it! This beast was damn-well going to know it!I don’t know what got into me. It was like I was possessed. I WAS going to best this brute. He WAS going to bend the knee. I was the animal-tamer, he was the BEAST. I’d break him. I’d tame him. Or die in trying. ObsessionRe-position39497016383000I am so mad. That spit of contempt at me has got me furious. Worse …. I am getting nowhere with him. Frustrated like fuck! I am having a training and containment facility custom-made for him on my estate. I am investing in the best personnel for security and training. But it seems I am making no headway with him. Not in respect to his attitude to me.I glory in the unquenchable madness that burns in his belly. I revel in the way he can come back from the dead. Knock him down, he comes bouncing back up, spitting fire from his belly. But how can I fulfil my plans if there is not the first sign of acknowledgement? Not a glimmer of respect for me. His owner.That pig-headed, obdurate bloody-mindedness …. he is supposed to reserve it for the fight. This tenacious fiery invincible will …. he blasts that at his opponents in the ring. Not at me.I’ve had it. I’ve had it with him. I order the most extreme punishment .. what we’ve rarely had to use .. reserved for the most intractable of prisoners who will never toe the line. The guards set about re-positioning him. In the full knowledge .. he’ll not make it easy for them. And man, will they relish making him.The guards have hammered a pair of stakes into the earth behind the raging prisoner. Since spitting in my face, a demonic fury had seized him. He has ceaselessly yanked, uselessly, at this wrist bonds as if he actually could rip himself free. I was pissed off, he was out of his mind, screaming savage abuse into my face. Confirming it. He needed this.His body seemed to pump up with an ravenous anger raging through his blood. When the guards had tried to stretch his legs backwards to the stakes, from the deepest fiery reserves far-down within his spirit, the brute had found savage strength. Fury had lashed out at the guards. Hugely muscled thighs kicked out, throwing a guy to one side. Bulging calves smashed another in the face. In vindictive response one guard slashed out viciously with his knotted rope into the brute’s back. It seemingly had no effect on this fit of fury. He was like a man possessed, I expected to see him foaming at the mouth like a mad dog with his rage. Weakening punches into his ribs also made no mark. But eventually, totally out-numbering him .. some guys punching, some grabbling hold of his ankles and pulling them back …. Finally they had him. Grabbed hold of his ankles, pulled the, back. Stretched him back, ankles pinned out to the stakes, hands still tied to the punishment stake. Twisting, fighting against his bonds. But hopelessly trapped. Leaning forward at an angle from his pinned ankles, stretched by his own body in a human rack.The men took a quick breather. And still he twisted and turned, even leaned forward at an angle. Each foot was now tied to a stake behind him, stretching his legs apart. A wild animal, trapped, unsure. But all the wilder for that. After a breather, after plotting how they would go about the next move …. the guards made to reposition his hands. It had taken an effort, the brute had fought. Once he had his hands free, he went mad. Stood upright throwing punches. Needing a number of body-breaking fists. Finally one guard grabbed him in a bearhug from behind, another slammed his club across the brute’s midriff. Weakened him, slamming a good half-dozen hammer blows to his gut. Enough to give their mates’ the chance. The chance to secure his arms, make them useless for a fight. A few more vengeful blows and they managed to get each wrist attached by rope to the overhead bar.He leaned. Finally positioned, helplessly defenceless. The guards stood back, taken big slugs out of their water bottles. They had his arms snaking up to the crossbar above his head. And his feet were fastened to the stakes behind. The position made him lean forward, the angle was tipping his body forward under the crossbar. The stretch was already making itself felt, I observed him trying to adjust his angle, the density of his chest pulling into his armpits, up his biceps. The drag from being strained at this forward angle .. in a human rack … it hauled on his thick powerful arms .. lengthening them ,defining them. Things had gone quiet after the violent struggling. No one was talking. The dominant sounds were the guards getting their breath back. The occasional grunt as the brute adjusted his position. He too was examining what this change meant for his defiance. An eerie quiet before the ferocious storm.Tension filled his every muscle as his back was forced into a slight downwards arch. The stretch was pulling his body on its own rack, his head now hung down heavily between his arms. The stress on his neck, the strain in his upper back carrying the weight of his head, every muscle in his torso stretching, straining. With gravity adding in its malice .. pulling his chest down. These guards knew their stuff. And they’d worked for it, to get him this vulnerable. He’d not made it easy for one moment. And now they’d pay him back. They had deftly got him under maximum strain. And they hadn’t even started on punishing him yet. It seemed to have quietened him for a moment .. as he worked out what this position meant for his fight-back. Every bit of the brute was now under tension. Even at rest, leaning forward, strain clawed at his arms, pain dragged at his shoulders. His cobblestone stomach hung racked by the downwards pull of the earth fighting with the upward pull on his wrists. Breathing came hard. He was not stupid. He had to realise. This position invited pain. He tried to adjust again, looking for a way to ease the strain. The rounded rocks of his shoulders trembled. Shook with the strain .. seeming to swell under the skin to near-bursting as they struggled to fight the downward drag of the earth. Strain-packed arms bulged with his tortured stretch. The downward bend of his body scraped sharp-fingernails of pain into the length of his arms. Pain dug like sharp claws into his armpits. That powerful broad back seemed pumped with pain as his stretched abs strained to kiss the earth. And .. burning, scorching, torturing ..- that flame-red arse of his was plunged in the fires of hell. The battered muscle on his screaming backside was torqued tight together by the stress of his arched back. His powerful whip-lashed arse-muscles screamed, crushed together by the downward pull on his back. A solid target of battered muscle awaiting more vindictive attention from the canes. Already on fire, already burning him up .. stretched out, exposed, vulnerable … awaiting more torture and pain. Without stop. Till he begged me for it to stop. Till he gave me the respect his owner deserved.Involuntary groans seeped from his throat. Even at rest, even before the whips flew, the truculent prisoner hung in his pain. In pain .. expectant. Soon, when I gave the word, when the canes slashed into his exposed vulnerable back, he’d be crying out for mercy. For the moment at rest, stretched like on the rack by the hang of his own body, his aggression and hostility had eased .. hopelessly trapped, tamed between pinned out feet and red-raw wrists. But soon the lash would fly, ripping at every joint, convulsing into every sinew, tearing searing pain through every pain-pumped muscle.He had to understand, I had to make it clear. Who was ordering this. Who owned him. Close-up by his shoulder, my hands slicked down the skin of his back, unable to resist the temptation of running my fingers through the useless power of that captive muscle. Running my fingers down the slick stream of sweat along his backbone till they slid into the crack in his red-raw arse. From below, a low growl of protest. By sheer force of will, he lifted his head from its prison between his arms. Straining to hold himself up, his eyes glowered at me over a bicep quivering with the strain of his weight. A look of fury burned into my face. The fool! I had no interest in the prisoner’s arse.. Not like that. If I’d wanted, I could have had him staked out over the boulder outside the guards’ quarters. His arse could be anyone’s for the taking. Any time if I wanted. There had been others before. These guards were all men’s men. Female sub-humans were not scarce. But they knew the humiliating value of ramming it up a male prisoner’s arse.Above all, my interest was in bending this will to mine. Anything like that could come later .. If he persisted. If he pushed me, I’d have it done. Putting the self-image of his manliness to the ultimate test. My prime goal here …. He’d know he was owned. By whom. And he’d show me that respect. Owed to the man who owned his hide. Racked397510762000To mock him in his helplessness .. to torment him with his inability to stop me … my hand stretched out underneath him. My fingertips stroked over his muscled chest, toying with his pride. Hard and straining from the stretch of his arms.My fingers played at the sweated slabs of his pecs. Swollen and elongated by my rack. I toyed with him. I mocked this futile parade of manliness. Goaded him for his helplessness. He thought he could disdain me. He’d pretend he could spit in my face. Whatever body-breaking punishments I willed on him …. he told himself he could laugh in my face. But not as long I deemed him my future fortune-maker. Not if I was investing my hopes in besting his will.He WOULD learn. This day or on other body-breaking days. If he failed to respect me .. if he goaded the guards …… every insubordination bore its consequences. Here in the camp as my prisoner and later as my prize pot-of-gold ….. if he took me on … it would cost.I found the nipple straining .. my fingernail found it on the sharpened edge of his over-proud chest. For the sake of it .. to goad him, to rile him …my finger scratched at his meaty nub. A growl of warning broke from between his arms. Manna to my ears, just what I wanted. I had no interest in the brute like that. I did it because I could. I goaded him because he could not stop me. To show he could do nothing to stop me. And to show he was mine .. to do with as I willed. I did it because I needed to …. I needed to …. To simply goad him. He felt the flesh of his nub hardening against my insistent nail. He growled … but what was he going to do? I kept on .. no doubt, he’d be feeling a tingling growing further below. There’s a wiring between cock and teat. Maybe for that reason, my prisoner growled back at me. In anger at me. In anger at himself. Because he could not stop me. Because he could not stop himself. I could use him like that. I knew it. He knew it. He knew that I knew it.For fun, to provoke him more …. I reached under further. The muscles of his stomach seemed like iron in the over-stretched gut. His back arched downwards threw his belly forward, dragging his gut down to the ground by his muscular weight. The ripped muscles in his gut felt they were sticking out like the cobblestones on an ancient street. Hard hewn-granite. Built with the strength of a battle-hardened warrior. And in-between them, that trail of hair that ran through the furrow in his hard stomach muscle down to his crutch. My fingers stroked through the dense black hair. My direction unmissable.I’d have thought it impossible for him to stiffen more, his whole body already racked with extreme tension. But the stroke of my fingers in the hair between the rows of muscle got to him. Circling ever downwards, slowly, twirling in his navel briefly, then snaking further down. A fresh tension went hard against my hands, a tightness as he held his breath, a hardness of his body sweating against my arm. A deep growl of warning fleshed out his anger as my fingers twirled at the start of his bush of crinkly hair.Truly, I had no interest in him like that. My hands left off teasing him. I even managed to resist the thought. To find out whether his pain and my teasing had started firming him up that little further down. He was naked, after all. My fingers could have found out the truth.But I resisted .. as much giving him a false sense of relief. Knowing he had much worse to come.Partially too as a reminder to myself. What this was all about was bending his will to mine. I could have his cock toyed with any time I chose. What mattered here …. I’d promised him I’d have his mind. But if he persisted … I’d his manliness crushed. I could have his arse invaded. Humiliating his over-proud manliness. On letting him be, he broke into a light pant to regain his breath, the cramped muscles of his stretched back struggling with the effort to breathe, his head once more hanging down, strain pulling down into his back.I caught a look from the guards. They were itching to lay into him again. They were freshly motivated by his refusal to give in. Perhaps .. just maybe .. they were pleased by his continuing stubborn refusal to bend. I saw they were just itching to get on. Each probably lusting to be the one .. the first to wrench his scream out of that formidable fighting body, his first cry of pain. I looked at the guards. I saw they craved my permission. To take all of his back. From the fiery-red backside to the trembling boulders in his shoulders struggling with his suspended weight. All of his back was theirs. Up-for-grabs. To take him. To make him cry out.I nodded. Permission granted. Frenzy2451103619500All of his back, I told them. Cripple his arse. Smash his back. He was theirs for the taking. He was making a mockery of their efforts. He was making a mockery of me. Who was boss here, prisoner or master? I taunted the guards .. riling them. Getting their anger up. He’d got me so worked up. Frustrated. Lost for ideas.I was about to step back and give the guards their freedom. Then, with herculean strength, I saw the brute tear his head up between his arms. His back rose with the strength of a whale rising out of the sea. Controlled, powerful. He arched further to lift his head up. His shoulders-turned-to-stone with super-human effort. The brute twisted his head and roared a torrent of abuse in my face. Incomprehensible, gibberish. I was so appalled I took none of it in. With the blistering force of his passion, his words were spat out with an incomprehensible ferocity. Blasted out from a body tortured on its own rack. Yelled like a snarling wild beast, like a man demented, bellowing like the demons of hell. The power of his rage was awe-inspiring. The strength in that battered body to lift himself against his weight, to conquer his pain .. it filled me with wonder. It had to. It sent a shudder of trepidation. Instinctively, I swallowed down a tremor of fear at the sight of this power. At the shock of his rage and the ferocity of his look. The quivering strength, the seething frenzy. Arms corded, back knotted, trembling with fury. Strength powered by hatred and rage. Breath-taking. Stunning. Fearsome.For a moment, I was taken aback. Shocked by the wildness of this outburst, daunted by the strength he could summon up. Intimidated by the reserves of strength thundering still in his crippled body. Awed by the pain-racked intensity of his fury. But .. recovering, forcing down the beat pounding in my ears … - I asked myself, Who commanded here? I told myself it was HIM on the rack, on MY rack. It was me in control. I grabbed hold of his resisting head and forced it back down between his arms again. His power shuddered in resistance under my hand, his threat shook tremors up my arm. Taking a hold of myself, taking myself in control, my other hand rammed a knuckled-fist, punched hard into the back of his neck. I felt the force of my anger shake through the body under my fist. I felt the strength of his fury slash back at my punch. But still, encouraged by his helplessness, my fist bunched again. Gathering my strength I held it high above his neck. And with a sense of overwhelming power over his hopeless body, my fist cracked into the back of his neck-bone. A strangled grunt of pain spewed out at the earth. It was only the second time I personally had struck out at the prisoner. But it was him who gave me the taste. And I enjoyed the flavour of his trapped captive defiance. And rammed my bunched fist hard for a third time into the back of his neck. The sound of a drunk throwing up splattered on the air beneath my fist.Egged on by his resistance, pressing on to taunt and torment him, my arm snaked up between his arms. My hand found his thick hard-muscled throat. And squeezed. My fingers closed down on his windpipe. And gripped hard. My arm pushed straining upwards attempting to lift his weight, his own weight pushing his neck down into my stranglehold. I was choking him. His own bodyweight was choking him.I tensed, gathered strength. And again I pushed upwards. The earth pulling down at his body crushed his windpipe into my hand. In anger and frustration at his refusal to bend, I thrust up hard making him throttle himself against my squeezing hand.I had no intention of choking him. There was much worse for him in mind. Nothing so quick, nothing so final. If he’d been rational, the brute would have known the same. But combined with the searing pain in his arse, with the crippling stretch backwards on his joints and the straining agony in his muscles, the brute wasn’t thinking. He was choking. I felt his panic. I felt him writhe desperately under my hand. Muscles straining to maximum to lift himself off, back trembling with supreme effort to escape my grip. Struggling desperately for breath. I fought him back, followed through by pushing up more. My arm trembled at the effort. I grunted out loud. My arm flexed into steel. Pushing back up. Strangling him. Letting him strangle himself. He yanked back hard, thrashing best he could. Resisting pulling on muscle-corded arms. I stood firm. When he dug deep into his over-stretched shoulder joints to fight himself free, I gritted my teeth and thrust up high into his windpipe. His head tried to twist his throat out of my grip. Gurgles of fear mixed with his desperation to draw breath. The feel of his hopeless fight sent a surge of excitement into my loins. Tingling at his useless attempts to break loose. Alive with the thought I was tricking him into fear. Desperation flooding his veins. In my loins, growing at the strength of my power over his strong, futile, writhing body. Perhaps I hung on too long. Perhaps I was enjoying his powerlessness too much. Relishing the sheer pleasure of his desperation. My mind diverted to the heat flowing to my loins. Perhaps his squirming into my grip had completely crushed off the breath to his tortured lungs. When I did let go, his body threw itself into a frenzied fit. He coughed and spluttered. Bucked and wrenched. His muscled mass shook, arms twisting, chest writhing. Exploding in an orgy of struggling and joint-wrenching fits. He gasped noisily, he heaved painfully for breath. A coughing fit stabbed steely daggers into his armpits. The joints of his elbows rippled in pain. With every gasp for air, his body twisted, rolled, shook. His bulging arms torqued, his muscled back convulsed. Pain twisted through his suffering. I watched. I observed. Pleased. The brute had taught himself the dangers of this rack. Every move could cripple the prisoner in his pain. A coughing fit shook him. Another splutter for air shot a violent wave down his back. Clawed at his achng joints. I smirked. Before me, the brute gasping, writhing, struggling with his pain, my colonel. And this was but the start of worse to come.With a taste for his suffering in my mouth, I stepped back. Savouring my unlimited powers over my prize prisoner. Power of life over death, if that was what it took. Power to flood his muscled back with my pain. Suffering .. shock .. despair .. my gifts to him today. I pointed at the guard with the heavy knotted rope. “You.” I snapped. Flushed with the power. Squeezing on the force he’d flooded into my groin.“Get his back. Take him!” Ropework397510762000The guards too had had enough of his insolence. This was a prisoner, they were guards. They got his respect. No half measures. Certainly not this arrogant display of muscled strength. He would learn. He WOULD learn.The nominated guard raced towards the trapped captive, his rope whirling above his head. He sprinted. The huge knot at the end, the thickness of my fist, whooshed menacingly through the air. Bloody-minded determination written all over his face. He’d had enough.With a determined downward strike, his face set hard with dogged bloody-mindedness, he loose fly. All his pent-up frustration released. With a yell of pig-headed determination he swung his strike from the power of his own muscled back. Going all-out to show it to this sucker, the guard pounded the knot into the brute’s back. The defiant prisoner bellowed it out. It was inevitable. The dense thick knot battered into his backbone. Unforgiving force smashed him between the shoulders. The determined look of the guard’s face, the force of the knot whooshing in the air, the prisoner’s hang on his body rack .. they guaranteed the brute would bawl it out. It seemed the knot would drive right through his back and smash all the life-force out of him. His breath exploded out of his chest. With an unearthly bawl. Force smashed his body down at the earth. The inhuman roar ripped out of his throat smacked at the earth. Tearing him downwards. Eyes popping in shock. Body spasmed in horror. The over-stretched joints in his armpits suddenly wrenched him to a violent stop. Thunderbolts cracked in his shoulder joints. Recoiled pain shot him up back upwards, muscles spasmed, sinews shocked. The recoil shot another pained yell out of his throat. Agony spat out from his chest. Tearing at his throat. Then again the earth claimed him back down. Yanked him downwards to its breast. Pain ripped him apart. Yanked at his shoulders. Tore up his arms. Agony tore through his soul. From his head, writhing wildly in soul-crippling recoils, the brute had exploded in his first cry. Violence retching the life-force out of him. The guard waited. His spirits lifted by the rewards of his work. He’d been the first. Honoured with the sucker’s first pained cry. Under the frame, the brute’s arms turned to iron, hands clenched together, fighting the pain. Pain that threatened to overwhelm him. Drown him. Crush him. The prisoner had given up his first cry. It had been a long time coming. He had resisted, he had denied his guards. He’d driven them mad with frustration. Back with the other three guards, the success was applauded. Slaps on the shoulder, high-fives. The guard who’d broken the back of this stubbornness was applauded by his mates. Broken the brute by savagery.I held up my hand. Delaying the next strike. Itching to see the impact of the strike. Slowly recovering, very slowly. Was the dragon retreating at last to his den? Agonisingly fighting back on the rivers of pain, the brute’s every gasping breath came laced with moans of dismay. Unbearable, incomprehensible agony. And four more times, I allowed it .. just to make sure. The knot hammered the life out of him. Four more times, the guard raced at his back, the knot whirling in the dying light. Four more times the knot splattered intolerably at the brute’s backbone. Smashed his chest down to the earth. Slashed agony through his joints. Sent his torso spiralling into spasms of horrendous pain. Insufferable. Excruciating. Arms turned to pain-filled rock. His back clawed raw by talons of agony. His head, released from its straitjacket of shock, thrashing wildly. After the requisite five torture-blows, I approached. Was that enough? I looked down at him now. His back swam with his sweat. His muscle-layered shoulders hung stretched and taut, tense, every muscle bulging with his pain. He sweated, he moaned. Across his back, in-between the muscles, the furrows deepened, hardened .. ridges of tortured strength trembled, tight, pain-locked. Fighting the agony scything through his very being. Five times, the knots had smashed the fight out of him. Five times his breath had exploded out of his chest. Five times, the devastating power of the knot had crippled the life out of him. Spewed to the earth in his agonised bawl.Truth-to-tell, the violence of the blows had me worried. I feared permanent damage. His recoil off the force was so violent. The stab into his shoulders so vicious. The ferocity of his beefy strength so powerful, I dreaded he’d break apart. So violent that this muscled power could rip joints apart, tear muscle from bone. True, with satisfaction I soaked up the sight of his pain. I’d heard the twisted agony of his cries wash at my face like warm waters. Now we were getting somewhere.This was the route to taming. Bending this wild animal’s will to accept mine. Pain so excruciating that it would rip his spirit apart. But I wanted his will broken, not his body smashed. In a few days I’d have the facility for him built, then I’d have him disappear. I needed him in one piece.I’d watched in awe the ferocity of the blows on his body. Achieving what I needed. The brute broken by pain. I could hardly believe, though, that his shoulder joint was still in place. The force of the blows, the agony of his pain rammed into his shoulders. His enormously muscular weight jarred sharply into his armpit. It was a wonder he had not dislocated. With every blow, I’d wondered whether to call a halt.Still, as he hung forward, he moaned. It was a wonder he was still conscious. The power of this life-force was awesome to watch. Just to be sure, I indicated another dose, these next five blows should be on his arse. The next guard scowled, annoyed. He’d heard the prisoner break. The first rips of pain from the defiant dog. He wanted to better it. To press his advantage. Competitive, he craved to best his buddy. That tortured back offered the best chance, the better prize. This defiant dog deserved it, had asked for it. And HE was the man to give it him. On that pummelled back.I glowered back. My sharp finger pointed at the whip-lashed arse. There, only there, I ordered. The brute’s arse paid for the guard’s frustration. He paid for it with the fury smashing into his arse. Again with the knotted rope. His arse paid for it with all the guard’s frustrated anger. Crippling, devastating rage smashed into tight trapped mounds of muscle. Whirling the rope wildly above his head, racing forward, the growl of the knot slashing through their air. Menacing. The thunder-flash about to explode. Then released, pounded with brutal determination into the sweat-slicked arse. The guard leant his whole weight behind the blow. His body twisted, his teeth clenched. All his anger fuelled the blow. All his determination behind the destructive force. The angle drove the brute’s hips at the earth. Pain erupted like thunderbolts. His ruptured backside shocked, crushed. Lightning strikes slashed through his body. His muscles contracted, bulged, knotted with pain. Pain stabbed like a knife into his armpits. Jagged knives scythed through his stretched stomach. Cries slashed at his throat under the devastation of each blow. Five times. Pitiless.Afterwards, groans seeped from every pore with his sweat as he writhed under the heat of his pain. Agonised moans trickled tormented down his front. Hanging, barely conscious. But unknowingly waiting for the next round of pain-blistering blows pulverising his arse. Control397510762000I had the last two guards go at his backside. I was in two minds. Had we done enough? And I had calmed down, I was no longer so hopping mad. I now sensed we were getting somewhere. But twice now I had seen him rise from the dead. Best make sure, I reasoned.No prisoner .. however manly, however tough .. could take much more. Most arses couldn’t take this much. But it wasn’t his arse I was going for. It was his soul. Only on his arse, I indicated to the guards with my hand, only there. Nowhere else, I signalled. And a change to the pain-cane, I signalled. Less bludgeoning, less risk of permanent damage. Which didn’t fit in with my plans.After witnessing the devastation of the agony of knots thudding into the brute’s back, after applauding their mate’s success with high-fives .. there was a reluctance. They too craved to best him. And the pummelling of the knot gave them that. After they’d heard his uncontrollable cries .. they itched to top their mates. They’d tasted blood. No holding them back. They burned with a savage lust to rip their own tortured cry out of him. To hear pained cries torn reluctant out of that arrogant chest, to feed the lust aching in their groins. With every vicious blow. Each one more determined than the last. Sadistic pleasure fuelling power into brawny backs. Violence and brute strength bulging out their every muscle. Just to make him howl, to force him to bellow. Every time. With every stinging swipe of the cane crippling that back. They glowered at the tight perfection of his arse. It drew them on like for sailors a beacon in the night. All their angry frustration at his earlier disobedience .. firing a longing for revenge for his insolent triumphs .. there was a merciless lust burning in their loins, a tented hardness that just ached to hurt. All their vengeful furies they smacked screaming into his burning arse. But first I had satisfied my own urges. No longer so maddened by my frustration to keep him down … but I had to let him know it was me who owned this hide. It was his new Master that was not tolerating this insubordination. My urges to dominate would have it no other way, they kept egging me on.I had crawled in underneath him. I felt the heat from his stomach off his burning body searing into my own back. It was as sweat-cloying as in the sauna. All around me, sweat choked the air. In the confined space under him, my nose was assailed by the heavy musk of his pained sweat. The heat off his burning torment ran in trickles of sweat off my hair. Sticky, viscous the air under him Tight-packed. My shoulders pushed him up to make space, the solid resistance of his downward-straining gut forced hard and muscled against my back. That hard-on from my earlier stroking had deflated. Crushed and impotent by the brutality battered into his screaming backside. That made my task easier. I felt his growl of annoyance rumble through his torso down my backbone. A grumble of annoyance, a growl of uncertainty, a snarl at his own powerlessness to stop me. My tunic top felt now glued to him, clammy against the sweat pouring down his front. We were as one. But we weren’t. I owned this tortured mass of sweating muscle. And that was why I was crawling underneath the beast.A grumbled snarl rasped from his throat when my hand circled his ballsack. With finger and thumb, my hand reached in and grabbed him by his gonads. Encircling them. I forced his balls down into the sack. The snarl grew fangs. Just because I could .. to show him who here was boss …. my palm closed on his sack trapped in my hand. Just to show he couldn’t stop me, I squeezed his balls in my grip. A mixed growl started up above me. I cut it off to a sharp grunt when my hand gave him another extra-hard squeeze. And held it there, crushing painfully hard on his balls.To make my point, I rolled one ball gratingly into another. Twisting them in my grip, crushing one solid ball over another. Crunching, grinding, gouging. Slowly, hard, fingers tightened to a claw. Pleasure washing through me .. his hissing snarl had changed to a groaning hiss. Hiss mixing anger and pain. To make sure, I gave them an extra-long squeeze. Just to let him know. Know there was nothing he could do about it.My grip pulled down on his ballsack, stretched the skin and the other hand circled them with a thong of leather, wrapped it round him in three tight loops. Tugging, biting into the skin. Feeling him jolt angry against my back.Quickly the thong was tied off, separating balls from his shaft. Aching rasping groans spat at the air above me. I imagined his face screwed hard together, fists crunched tight into his helplessness. Angered at this powerlessness. Fighting the sense of shame. Teeth clenched, jaw set. I felt the stiffness of his pain tremble in the glue that clammed us together. Grunting pain dragged tight-lipped out him in a long drawn-out despair. If he knew anything about husbandry … if he’d ever been near an estate like mine …. tying off a young bull’s balls …… till they withered .. till they fell off. Neutered. Emasculating a bull was as much about spaying his temper, mastering his will. Did he want it stated any clearer than that?I crawled out backwards. But, on impulse, I gave a final swipe at the balls. His trembling stiffness shuddered against my back as I crawled out from under him. Back on my feet, I could not resist. This was too good to miss. My hand twisted in his filthy hair, I yanked his sweat-streaked face roughly up into mine. Pain was scrawled in every muscle, eyes twisted together eating up the shame biting on his balls. A tear trickled down a cheek. His neck shook in fast agonised tremors. Suddenly his eyes flashed open. Instantly burning red-hot iron stabbed into mine. Rage setting his face ablaze. Aware of what the symbolism meant. Neutered. His manliness spayed. . A violent curse stabbed me in the eyes. An incomprehensible heathen-sounding curse splattered at my face. He wished me to burn in the fires in hell, probably. But it was futile cursing, meaningless rage. It hadn’t first struck me. Again he’d risen from the grave. But it was only later that penny dropped. Still so full of my power over him .. getting off on that symbolic neutering of this powerful will. I toyed with his anger. Gently, almost playfully, I gave him a light slap on his face. Then two more, for good measure. Mocking his helplessness. After all, I could afford it. If I wished .. he had more to come. He had no spit. There was no saliva left in his mouth. But his heathen cursing ended with him spitting in my face. A pointless gesture. Without spit, he was robbed of its power to insult. A weak useless move that did him no good. Robbed of its strength to offend. Just like his powerless-bound tortured body. His neutered will. Helplessly weak, hopelessly defenceless, that futile spitting was a tribute to his senseless defiance. A feeble resistance that my lashes were about to whip out of his arse. While the symbolic neutering of his sense of self-worth was biting down on him. But it was only later .. with a stiff drink in my hand .. I realised ….. He’d been done in. He could barely move. But after that symbolic castration of his will …… He’d done it again. He’d risen from the grave. Could anything put this man down? Once I’d got him to accept my authority over him ….. what a prize bull I had on my hands. My own one-man pot-of-gold. Weaponry397510762000He wasn’t beaten. His will wasn’t broken. There was still fight left in him. Fight against me. Reluctant to accept his Master. Unwilling to accept the facts. Symbolically castrated of the strength of his will. Forced into using the pain-cane on him, still two guards were determined to match the effectiveness of the knot. Yelling in exertion as they threw every ounce of determination at his seething-red arse. Every sharp jolt through his body betrayed the agony he felt. Each stinging swish into his crimson backside shot him into juddering spasms. Uncontrollable. Overpowering him. One of the men took him slow. Giving the brute a feel for the full sting of each slash of his cane. Tremble at the burning power of every everlasting moment. Judder in the helplessness of each crippling sting. Playing him. Letting him come down slowly, sliding off each weakening pinnacle of pain, the ravages of agony clawing at his soul. Before striking at him again. In seconds blasting his way back to the pinnacle.There was more to this breaking than the weaponry. Timing was a weapon as well. Walking back down off the mountain top can be the worst part. Tiredness, muscle ache, joints burning. The guard took him slow. Every faltering step off that summit of sweated agony searing like hot irons through his flesh. Tottering back down to a plateau of pain where his anguish was still intolerable. Every trembling step back off that pinnacle of torture he took with scything shudders scoring through fire-stoked muscle. And in an instant he could be back burning up on that pinnacle of suffering all over again.The other guard went at him relentlessly. Continuous. Rapid. Without a break. Giving the brute no time to catch his breath. Slashing and lashing at his whip-streaked arse. Each stinging bite jolting him sharply. Out-stretched, helpless between the stakes. His contorted grunts of torment splattered with sharp cries of pain. The guard craved one more thing .. to rip from his tortured arse a howl of pain. Torn forcefully, strangled, tortured, unwillingly given. Irresistible ripped from his writhing body. He ached to hear the brute howl. An unearthly howl of an animal in pain.Body-twisting, a tortured cry up shot up from the shamed soul screeching in his bound balls. But then again his cry was cut off, painfully crushed at birth, another stinging lash slicing into his agony-crippled arse. Cutting off his cry. Whipped, lashed, frenzied. Sweat pouring, rivers of his false pride shaken from his armpits.I watched him writhe, helpless. With this much pain we had to be getting somewhere. Writhing, crying out, anguish ripping out his will. I imagined the shame of his bound balls yanking at his tormented will. Tight in their sack, humiliatingly ensnared. His shaft limp, dancing an agonised jig. His whole body, muscle, sinews and joints jerking in a grotesque dancing fit. Was he conscious of that shame bound around his balls? Had the searing lashings across his butt relieved him of that resolute thought? That his new Master would have him neutered of all resistance to him? It barely mattered now. That reminder would come back. He’d face me again with the fear of this pain scorched into his flesh like a brand.A searing slash tore across his tortured backside. Pain torqued that muscled back. The stakes held his lower body immobile. But the ropes to his wrists twisted with his pain. The torso wrung out like a wet cloth. Twisting at muscle. Jerking at joints. And the brute cried out. Again. He cried out often now. The guards had got their goal. They’d got him to give up his conceited stubbornness. They’d cut through his pride. Inexorably. He was giving them up his pain. Irresistibly. He cried out his pain for them. Inescapably. Again and again he called it out. Hoarse, ragged. Pain-sweated. Cries ripping themselves free from a red-raw throat. His cries fleeing the torment of his body. Pain impossible to stay locked inside his contorted chest. His sculpted torso bursting apart, releasing that sweat-drenched torment in tortured shame-laden cries.Anguish escaped out of every pore. Pain poured from his tortured armpits. Agony ran in streaks down his flanks. Muscle that once rippled in freedom .. now ripped, trapped, convulsed. Tortured, in torment, in agony. He’d fooled me before. Had we done enough? Curious3930651270000The final guard was raring to go. He’d picked up his horse strap, swinging it in eager anticipation. His whole body burned with impatience. I could see his urges scorching at his body. Craving to be the first to beat a first sustained howl of despair out of that crimson-beckoning arse. Cries were no longer enough for the guards. They’d squeezed that out of his reluctant spirit. But now they were upping the ante. They wanted dismay. Despair. Torment wrung out of his soul like a wet rag.But I held up my hand. I commanded him to stand down. I gestured him to wait. A momentary look of anger flashed across the guard’s face. Till he remembered himself, realised who was in command. He snapped his horse-strap into the earth in frustration. Violence spitting dust up into the air. He really did want at the prisoner. He cracked his strap brutally above his head. A snap that carved his frustration in the air. The others had had their share. And he wanted his rightful go. And he was going to beat his mates. Going to best the brute. He’d howl.My glare ordered him to control himself. He turned sharply away. As he did so, I spotted the bulge in his pants. The unsatisfied ache that explained his anger. The prisoner’s insolence had got to him. A burning urge to hurt had flooded his loins. He ached with a lust to hear that brute howl in anguish under his strap. A wounded animal giving up. Aching to feed the hunger in his groin with the nectar of the prisoner’s pain. He was making a fool of himself. He paced up and down excitedly, failing to calm himself. A meaty hand passing over his hair in wild frustration. His aching loins had already waited, impatiently. Then .. thinking their turn had come .. maddened cravings had rushed excitement into his crutch. And now, in burning frustration, the urges in his bulge were ordered to stand down. Maddening. Driving his urges mad with frustration.His time would come, I promised myself. Soon. I grinned to myself. And maybe that wait was not such a bad idea. This frustration of his would only put fire in his belly. Double his efforts. Put power into his back. And bring the brute more taming pain.Perhaps those last efforts would be enough? Enough finally to finish the prisoner off? I also had my aching needs. Curiosity was torturing me, too. I needed to interrogate this prisoner-body that hung in torment before me. How close were we? Just this final push? One more round? I was burning to know. Was he close? Was he breaking? Had I got him to respect my will? Had the accumulative devastation of the pain-canes, the torture of this rack, the crippling thudding of the knots .. had they finally ripped out his will? Had I finally gelded his will?I stood now .. ignoring the nonsense of the frustrated guard. Close by this whip-crazed arse. I surveyed the evening’s work. The brute did indeed look broken. As planned, though it had taken much more than I’d hoped. But he’d surprised me before. I doubted any man could have taken the punishing pain smashed into his body rack. But could HE?This rack was designed with just that murderous intent. Used only on the worst recalcitrants. Some had not survived. Would HE? If anyone could, I was convincing myself … it was he. And wasn’t that just what my plans for him wanted anyway?Every second had become torture, even at rest. Even his breathing now cracked unwelcome movement into a tortured chest, sent crippling strain into agonised muscle. Pummelled by the might of countless lashes .. the knotted rope jarring shocks into joints .. beatings jerking pain through muscle .. stinging pain-canes ripping sinews apart. Dozens of blows breaking him in torment! The brute did indeed look broken. Broken on a rack that would break a Hercules! But was he ….? Could I be sure?His writhing had scraped his wrists raw, coarse rope grating painfully into open flesh. His well-haired forearms tense, taut. The hair there lay exhausted-flat, matted in dirt and his sweat. The shoulders bunched too painfully tight under the strain from his tortured armpits, the struggle of holding up his heavy-muscled weight. The shoulder joints had jarred agonisingly with every tortured jolt .. suffering dozens of stabbing jolts .. pain popping at his eyeballs. Countless times on the rack.My eyes rested mesmerised on his torment-written back. Pain had scored deep furrows between each muscle. Suffering had scraped iron chisels through writhing flesh to carve out torture-bursting muscle. The back rose painfully and fell heavily, with groans of unthinkable torment seeping out from his throat. He glistened orange in the dying sun, the sweat of his glowing anguish ran in gleaming rivers. The deep furrow of his backbone collected pools of his agony between high ridges of muscle. How many strokes had hammered into that haughtily muscled backside? Could he still raise the will to defy? The skin remained unbroken. But it burned. It scorched. It seared like a steak on the red-hot grill. Vicious angry blotches, deep welts of battered pain, red-crimson weals of his thrashed agony. The downward hang of his back jammed the muscle tight together in his crack. The dusting of black hair lay flat, sodden, exhausted. A towering mountain of red pulverised meat. No more than animal flesh on the butcher’s slab. Before, it had been prodigious, colossal, hard. But was it beaten now into bruised submission? Battered, brutalised, burning him alive. Could this dragon still arise out of that?Could any man have withstood the force of those knotted punches into his back? Pulverising, battering, body-breaking. But I had thought that before. And since then, a continuous barrage of searing pain had ripped into his arse. Pain-canes slashing at his defiance, cutting at his strength, scything through his will. Sending his reeling senses in a whirl. The final guard’s desperation caught my eye. He was pacing up and down. Frenetic, almost frenzied. Still fighting the burning frustration gnawing at him in his pants. Biting at a bottom lip. Strap swinging wildly by his side. Still fired up with anger at my command to wait. I caught his attention with a snap of my fingers. My hand pointed at the crimson arse burning beneath my gaze. And gave him the nod. The brute’s finale. What harm could it do? A final twist of the screw. A mark written under his name: prisoner broken. The guard looked at me. His eyes flashed to the brute’s vulnerable arse. He gathered himself. Relieved. He blew out a breath. In preparation. Like an athlete. He breathed out. Containing himself. A single blow, I indicated. ONE. There. On his battered arse. Hard. Fast. Only one strike? For now, he was promising himself. Only one. He’d make it count. He lifted his arm. He breathed in deep. His eyes fixed on the inviting arse. He dropped the strap down behind his back. He took another deep breath. Tensed. A strong bicep bulged hard over his shoulder. His fist tightened in eagerness around the strap. Blood pumped up his spirit. Lust rushed to his loins. Hurt. Hurt!! HURT. The word seemed to pant with his every heart-beat. HURT!! He focussed. An inert defenceless arse at the centre of his cosmos. One final breath. He breathed in deep. He sucked in resolve. Hard. And jerking like a snapped spring, he came racing at the brute’s arse. Madness400685762000“Stop!” I yelled. For the third time. He’d gone berserk! Panicking I yelled. “Stop him!” Even I could hear the desperation in my voice. Who was supposed to be in charge here?As a man, the other three guards rushed forward and hauled the guard away. He’d flipped. He gone out of his mind. He was like a man-possessed. Standing by my colonel’s backside, lashing away like a man demented. Hitting him with that horse strap. With all his might. Lending every ounce of his body-weight behind every lash. He’d kill him. He’d destroy him! My pot-of-gold.Hair flying, shoulders driving forward. Smashing his brawny body-weight behind that demented might into the brute’s crimson-hot arse. Lashing out wildly. Backhand. Forehand. Without a stop. Clenched teeth, sweat-spraying. Beating the fuck out of my colonel’s arse. He’d gone berserk.After a good dozen strokes, I ordered the others to grab him. I unfroze. One strike I’d ordered. One. To test the brute out. But he didn’t stop. Demented he couldn’t stop. Shock at this monstrosity paralysed me. Stroke after stroke he hit out. Incomprehensible. Another wild hit, and another. Mind-blowing. My brain couldn’t take it in. Had he just mis-counted? The demons had him. The brute was not giving him his pain. He wasn’t howling like a demented fiend. One strike .. not enough. He’d hit him. He’d beat him. He’d hit him. He’d hit him. He’d hit him. He’d not stop till he howled. Till he beat him into submission. Beat him within an inch of his life till he gave up his pain. My calls to stop had served only to encourage that fervour. My orders to stop just doubled his resolve. Mad. Wild. Almost foaming at the mouth. Desperate he’d lose this chance. My orders to stop lent increased fury into his shoulders. His grunts of effort splattered into his every stroke. His exertions exploded loud on the air. The whoosh of his strap growled deep through the dying light. Setting my colonel’s arse on fire.His first strike had exploded with cataclysmic effect. He had raced up at the prisoner. Frustration at being made to wait bunched in every sinew. He needed the brute to sing. Howl, screech. Like he had done for the others. His mates had made him cry out. He was going to better them.That conceited defiance had got to him. Made to wait had got to him. Fine, he was up for it. He’d take the prisoner on. He was taking no more from a sub-human. He issued his own challenge. At a sprint. He raced up to the hanging prisoner. His arm bunched with determination, with the horse strap swaying menacingly down his back. A doggedness filled his arm, strength of purpose powered his run. Judging it just right, he raised his arm, brought the strap up over his head. Its murderous arc cutting the air with a menacing low growl. And with a forward lunge of his chest, with a mighty heave of his shoulders, with a vengeful clench of his jaw, he let the strap fly. How many lashes had already slashed into the brute’s arse? Already brutalised, already excruciatingly bruised. This horse-strap cracked on his battered flesh like a solid drumbeat. A beat that exploded in fire. Solid muscle turned agonised into rock. His back straightened in a flash. His head shot upright above his arms. Like a crack of a dry branch, like a tree trunk struck by lightning, the brute snapped upright. Pain burst through every muscle. A straight line from toes to hands. Torment lifted him into the air. Tremors raked through his arms, agony shook his back. Arms bunched, knuckles white. Shrieks of agony shot from his arse into his throat. And smashed into his pain-closed mouth. Trapped in his gullet by an agony-choked throat. The whole body rigid. Pain pouring from every pore.But before the pain could cut through the tight clenched throat, the guard lashed out again. Maddened. And again. Wildly thrashing at the crimson target below. Backhand and forehand. Wild with frustration. Standing close-by the pain-spasmed arse. Throwing himself forward into every blow, leather strap cutting at the brute’s hard muscled arse. My eyes couldn’t believe it. I’d ordered one hit! The pain-rigid body below him jolted with every lash. Pain searching for space on a pain-written map. The rigid body gave a sharp jerk. Each and every new blow turned into fiery agony. Pain-shuddering agony. The pain of each new blow trapped behind the throttled barrage of his throat. And he kept going. I shouted out, No. I ordered him to stop, His strikes seemed to get worse Cutting like a ragged blade through the contorted body. Scything pain through every organ, a firestorm of agony raging within. A body rigid with agony. Shuddering in total torment. Back-muscles spasmed. Arms locked in a frozen judder, shaking the whole agonised body. Cut to shreds by each searing thunder-flash bursting at his arse. Tearing his very being apart. “Stop!” I called out. The guard had frenziedly shot a dozen or so devastating lashes into the brute’s arse. He had not mis-calculated. He wasn’t counting. He was out-of-control. The brute’s head had rocketed up between his arms. Eyes screwed tight-closed. Face scrunched up against the searing pain. Arms a solid mass of quivering granite. Frustration lent even more vigour into the blows. The bastard would not give it up. His defiance fed the muscled bulk thrown behind every searing slash of the strap. Ever more viciously, the strap smacked off the muscled arse. Followed by the corresponding backhand. The brute shook, rigid. Every crevice blistering with pain. A solid muscle-stiff straight line from chafed wrists to out-pinned ankles. Agony defying gravity. Scything pain in every crevice of his torment-driven body. “Stop!” I ordered. In vain.The force of demented blows yanked at him, my colonel. Pain ricocheting through him. Scorching pain racking him. Out-stretched in mindless anguish between the stakes.I was feeling sick.“Enough! Stop”, I cried.But the guard was deaf to all but his insatiable drive. The others had wrenched a cry of the prisoner. He’d better that. The brute would give him his pain too.Agony shuddered in every crevice of the brute’s body. Pain fought brutally at the boundaries of human suffering. Anguish pounding at the barricades in his throat for release. With every leather-cracking smack, blistering pain exploded on his arse. Thunder-flashes ripped into his back. Pain-spasmed his shoulders. Torture choked the agony in his throat. Locked in his throat. Unable to release his pain in a blistering scream. Sweat poured off his armpits, the smell of agony ran freely down his back.I was going mad. I was panicking. Two more scorching straps slashed into agonised arse-muscle. My colonel’s mouth was wide open, gaping in soundless screeches of agony. A firestorm raged within, overwhelming everything in its scorching path.“Stop! Enough, I say”.In desperation, I screamed, “Stop him!”As if fearing the chance was slipping away …. more devastating lashes hit out at the naked arse. Leather cracking out in a last desperate hope. Two more sweat-blistering blows at the heart of my colonel’s torture. Two more screaming cracks of torture-laden pain. Two more lightning flashes exploding on this brutish torment. Crushed40068516954500He’d be on latrine duties forever-and-a-day. I’d said ONE strike! Three of them fought the frenzied guard off. Dragged him away. And yet he was still the mad dog, fighting back. My colonel had pressed all the wrong buttons with him.I I swore that dumb-arsed guard would never again enjoy a day’s work in this place. He was off his head, he was still straining like crazy to be back at him. Like a rabid dog snapping and snarling to be back at its prey. He punched, he fought against his mates. The solid muscle of his torso thrashing with the effort to get back and whip the prisoner to death. The damage he could have done. Maybe he already had.Beneath me, the brute trembled. My heart was in my mouth. Rigid. Shuddering. A pain-solid straightened back. Agony lifting him up against gravity, trembling. Stiff as a rock, liquid rock. Trembling with some supreme muscular effort. Head up, rigid, shuddering between his shoulders, his neck one mass of trembling muscle. Was it already too late? His arms, bulged, knotted, shook in a pain-filled seizure. Stiff as a plank pain had him stretched out. Was the damage done? The knotted muscles in his back spasmed in a sudden frenzied judder. The dying throes …. That phrase rushed to my head. I froze.My plans all down the toilet .. because of that fool of a guard? Shoulders bunched, tremors like a man shaken in a violent fatal fever. My investment in him gone up on smoke? Every muscle in that power-etched body was at war with itself. Biting on a lip, I watched him .. in panic. He looked like he was fighting his final battle. Locked in an insane frenzy, wrestling against his looming defeat. Like a warrior chief beaten in battle. Surrounded by a savage enemy. Armed with only his broken sword. Ringed by armed snarling foes, weapons raised to hack him to death. Defeat inevitable. Death a certainty. But he couldn’t give up. I knew that of him. It was like his manful pride demanded one final, fatal response. Digging deep into his last reserves. Like a warrior-god, his broken weapon raised above in defiance. Glistening chest swelling with rugged determination. Some ancient warrior .. he’d go down fighting. Glory in his death. Raised armpit heavy with manly resolve. Willpower setting his jaw, fortitude swelling his corded fighting arm. Bulging stomach-strength tight with gritted purpose. Defying an implacable foe with a muscular will.Death throes. The last reluctant shudders. I didn’t want to believe it was true. My whole fortune was ebbing away before my eyes. That cretin of a guard had stolen him away. My colonel’s final battle? Visibly, the brute was at war with himself. But was it a losing battle? Facing the final indignity. This magnificent warrior-leader of-old. Exhausted, overwhelmed by the numbers. He’d fought himself into exhaustion. His will near-broken. Warriors taken in battle .. they were thrown into chains. Sold naked into slavery. The worst imaginable fate for such a hero. Yoked to labour like an animal. Torture ripping his body apart. That was a fate not dissimilar from his truth. Was his pride saying he’d rather die? And yet I had such plans for him. Such glorious plans.His battered spirit clung on to life still. As of course he would. He didn’t give in. Madly I prayed he’d not give in. In desperation he gripped on to his will-to-fight on, hanging on by the thinnest thread. Dread at impending defeat pumped the last meagre reserves of willpower into his blood. It was almost sad to watch. This rout. Fear at knowing his will ripped out of him. Lashed out of him by intolerable pain. Corded determination turned to stone, still willing himself to fight back. Refusing to accept defeat. I willed him to fight on. Ironically I willed him to come back at me. Like before. Like he’d irritated me before. I needed that fire in his belly. Above all else. He looked crushed …. yet surely he had to be resisting that dreaded image? Seeing in his mind’s eye that horrifying moment of horror. The warrior leader defeated, broken to his back in the sand. Fate written with terror on his broken will. Like he could feel enemy hands were clawing into his chest and ripping out his soul. Shrieking in terror at the truth of his defeat. His foes’ taloned fist tearing out his broken life-force. Sad to see the end of such virile manly might. For which I had such wonderful plans. Eyes screeching out his agony at the sight of his enemy holding up in victory his manly spirit. His manful will-to-endure crushed within the adversary’s claws. His muscled soul held aloft over his defeated body. His will-to-resist dripping like blood down the enemy’s upraised arm. And that was me. I was the enemy.Suddenly, my image of him as the defeated warrior of-old shattered. That metaphor of my colonel as an ancient warrior cruelly broken in battle …. It crumbled. Next to me, out-stretched, rigid with pain and despair …. All-of-a-sudden my colonel collapsed. My investment, my colonel … he collapsed. Physically. His torso crashed down at the ground. Collapsed into a lifeless arc of pain. Gave up a short sharp cry. And then silence. His head rocked briefly between his arms. Dead? Given up? What had that moron guard done! Lifeless. He hung in defeat. A last low groan seeped from his throat. My heart picked up. Alive! A baleful sound .. hoarse. Rasping. Broken. Broken in spirit. That moron! My colonel might be alive. But what was there left of him? That fool had ruined everything. A long ragged moan dripped with the colonel’s crushed willpower onto sand. Like a warrior’s final breath. I was panicking. Was there anything left to recover? Had the idiot done the worst? My colonel was broken. Not dead. But he’d given up his spirit, defeated by agony. That indomitable fighting spirit on which I was building so much. That very essence of this man that made him so unique .. so invaluable to me. Limp, lifeless. Crushed. Inert he hung arched between the stakes. A muscled back bunched. A muscular specimen of eye-catching manhood. But without that fire in his belly …..? Useless. A brawny sub-human like the many others. Shocked, dismayed I took him in .. stretched in his arc of torture. Motionless. Broken. Broken. In body. In spirit. What use was this? To me? To anyone? CrazyInevitable 4006851016000The guards’ Dogshit hung like wet washing on an airless day. His legs had collapsed under him. I’d had the guards release him from the rack. Now he just hung off the crossbar, legs collapsed. His wrists sore-chaffed. His wild joltings had ripped at his wrists scraping them raw against coarse rope. Before release, he’d hung, motionless. His muscled back cramped together, tight but lifeless. My heart had been in my mouth. At this sight. Fearing he might even be dead.Now, freed. he just hung. Helpless. The orange ball of a huge sun hung magnificent in the sky and kissed the horizon. It lit his sweat-drenched shoulders with its dying glow. Down on his arse, that merciless firestorm raged. Sweat-drenched, pain-crippled. They’d done it, the guards had done it, they looked happy enough. They had what they had itched to have. Beaten the arrogance out of the brute. Countless times, the guards had slammed their weapons into him. Determined, lust-crazed punishment. Smashing once proud solid muscle into shrieking thrashed meat. And then that idiot .. that mindless cretin …. He’d spoiled it all. He’d lost control. Maybe I’d break him down through the ranks. Maybe he’d spend a night with the prisoners. Let’s see how much was left of him by dawn.What a waste! My asset destroyed. My investment a waste of the funds. If only ….. If only I could have got him to understand? This was all in his best interests. If only I could have rammed it into his thick skull? Give in. Show me due respect. See me for what I was, the guy who owned his hide …. And life for him would have been hunky-dory.The best that such a life could offer, That facility was being tailor-made for his needs … it would be ready in only a few days. There’d he’d have the best. Roomy accommodation all-to-himself. A fitness gym second-to-none. The best trainers money could buy. And the best medical support. What more could a world-class athlete need?He’d have a few fights, true .. but no more than once a week. I’d hold him back, make him an object of rarity. Keeping those high-roller-punters hungry for him. Just a fight once a week. Hard. Tough. He’d have his work cut-out. He might get injured. But that was why I had the best doctors on-hand.What was there to object to? What was the alternative? Chained to the windlass hour-after-hour. Nights spent in stinking confinement with the sub-human dregs. By day, his very being goading the guards into singling him out. And heaven-knew where the assessors would send his hide? If he got himself a reputation like this .. they’d cut their losses. He would be a lab-rat for some bio-weapon experiments. He’d not last long.Cut his losses, that was what he should do. See which side his bread was buttered on. The good life offered on a plate. Where was he best off? Gagging for his last dying breath in some lab experiment? Or favourite fighter in the cage? Cheered on by the great-and-the good? Where was he best off?He'd wanted his challenge. He'd got it. And regrettably that cretin had gone too far. Lifeless, crushed, defeated. The guards too seemed pleased it was over. Sweat flattened their chest hair, they poured welcome water over matted scalps. Gulped greedily at flagons of water. He’d made them pay for this.The one with the horse-strap, the one who’d gone crazy, the object of my seething resentment …. he was bent forward, I noticed, hands on knees, his back panting with laboured breath. Those dangerous brawny shoulders rocking in rhythm to his sweated fatigue. I’d get my own back on him. Guaranteed.It hadn't been easy on the guards either. They had given their all. And, to prove it, the brute hung motionless, his head collapsed heavy between his arms, barely breathing. Ravaging blows had thudded through his pain-shrieking back. Ricocheting him upwards, jolting agony down into joints, yanking anguish into his torment-torn manliness. Convulsing him in flashes of searing pain. With each ferocious blow his arched back had been slammed by body-crippling force down at the ground. Repeatedly. Relentlessly. Ruthlessly. Each time even worse. His back threatening to crack, muscles screaming in recoil, jolting pains shrieking into every joint, hurt screeching through every muscle.But he’d taken it. My tough-arsed colonel had shown me he could take all that. He was all I could wish for. Tough as hell. He didn’t know how to give in. Until that mental guard .. until that moron had disobeyed. ONE hit, I’d ordered. Instead the prick had obeyed the commands of the bulge in his pants. Ruining everything.Out. Out-cold. Or almost. When they’d released his ankles, he’d groaned out is torment a few times. Now, inert he hung. Broken in body. His spirit crushed by that fool.Watching my colonel’s command over himself during the whipping had been an awe-inspiring sight. Seeing him writhing on his body-rack a breath-catching excitement. Biting on my lip. Sometime holding my breath. Wondering with each strike ….. Would he break? Would he scream? As the one here with the most invested in his hide, there was a fear that he'd never give in. And I’d not be free to call a halt. It would go on and on, the exertions from the guards would know no end. The punishment world know no end. Resulting in my investment being crippled, unworkable. Which finally it seemed had happened.That ability of his to absorb pitiless punishment while refusing to give in … it was simply mind-blowing. He was unique. Wasn’t that just I wanted out of him? There was a quandary going on here in my mind. A fear of causing lasting damage. And yet a burning eagerness to know just how far he could go. How many more would he take? What would give first? It had been a ferocious battle. Pain had been flowing like liquid gold under his skin. A lava stream burning him up from inside. And in every moment, the thrill of battle had raged, his will against mine. His stubborn defiance battling it out against my single-minded determination that this insubordination must end. Was it too much to ask? All I wanted was recognition. That he belonged to me. He did as told. Then the promised land was his.Devastating punishment. It had been inhuman. A savagery against which he could not win. The guards were too determined. And I would not be deterred, he had to succumb to me, otherwise my plan could not work. But he had fought. He had fought admirably, my asset, my investment. He had battled. My colonel. No one could have taken that and won. Not survived with his will intact. Not even this haughty obstinate warrior. I could see why his men admired him so much.But then that moron of a guard had messed things up.The overwhelming pain in his racked back, the feral ferocity of the guards' brutal blows, the vicious convulsions of his torso .. a torture with which they had aimed to crack his arrogance. And looking at him, it had worked. But it had now gone too far. It was all ruined.Had he brought this on himself .. refusing to give? He'd irritated the guards with his tenacity. And finally he’d driven that last guard into madness. He had made this happen .. pain-broken to his knees. In the long run, it was his fault. If he had tapped out, in time ….. if he had given me what I wanted. But he’d refused. He’d goaded the guards into going for him. And they had. And that last cretin really had. Driven mad by frustration. With a muscular cruelty he’d responded. And broken the back of my colonel’s will. That attack had been the final straw. The colonel had fought. He had battled well. But he’d driven that moron too far. He had lost. I had lost. We all had lost. Had I miscalculated? Had this been inevitable? Enduring400685952500A strange sense of anti-climax hung in the air. A monstrous challenge, almost indestructible in his will. Wild, unruly, feral. Nothing had seemed capable of taming him. Invincible was a big word. But he’d come damn-near close. Truly unique.Earlier, I’d had him hung for hours off the cross in the sun, wearing him down, draining him of strength. But clearly not of his indomitable resolve. . Even after hours yoked to the windlass, battling under the blistering sun, when they brought him down here, he could lash out in muscled fury at a guard. He couldn’t stay down. It seemed he showed no fear. A bottomless capacity to take hurt. Where else would I find another like him? True, he was pig-headed, he needed taming. An investment like that .. exposed to the tasks I planned for him .. he would indeed be worth his muscular weight in gold.I fancied I heard him groan. Or was it just my wishing to know there was still hope? A pained animal-like whimper seeping from his lips. Incredible, that he could still be conscious? After all that he had taken? I longed to see his face. Oddly I felt personally attached to him. Almost empathetic. After all, I had bound our two futures intimately together. My respect for him was sincere. He’d known the ultimate in pain. He’d stood at the gates of hell. He’d taken all that to defy me, me personally. And yet even that thought .. that dogged tenacity, that pig-headed stubbornness .. that bound me to him. Our fates had been intimately linked. He had struggled, he had fought me incredibly. And together we could have achieved great things.That power to dominate this mighty beast that had earlier signalled its presence in my pants .. it was long since gone. When I had seen that bulge that had driven that moron of a guard to that madness, I no longer wanted to know where such powers could lead.Oddly, I needed to be one with my victim. Burning with curiosity, I took him by the hair and lifted his head from between his strained arms. But disappointingly the face looked lifeless. What had I wanted? A smile? A look of his forgiveness? For letting that moron crush the strength-of-will out of him. Part of me would almost have shouted out for joy to see him glare fury into my face and snarl. Totally beaten. Sweat had streaked his long black hair over a dead face. Eyes shut, features lifeless, his face bearing the look of a broken man. I felt truly sorry. I turned the face again towards me. Hoping. Gently I shook his head by the hair. Hoping for some sign of life in this lifeless face. But nothing. No life, he gave no sound. Matted hair stuck to his forehead, spread over his face. With my other hand, I picked over the sweat-heavy strands of hair to peer into his eyes. Hoping for some sign of life. But my colonel was out. His eyes were closed, dead. Inadvertently crushed .. my power over him .. it had all gone horribly wrong. His original attack on the guard had given me the excuse. My plan had been simple. Use that excuse to bend his will to mine. He had to understand we were in this together but I called the shots. A hard punishment, I’d promised myself. But nothing like this.He’d driven a hard bargain. He had kept bouncing back. I should have realised .. after all, that was what made him so unique. But I hadn’t calculated in the guards. His tenacity .. his pig-headedness .. refusing to give in …. that just kept firing them up. And I was trapped. As entrepreneur, I wanted one thing. As commandant, of course I was backing the guards up. Until finally that madness had taken over. Until things had got out of hand.Absent-mindedly, my fingers stroked away the hair pinned by his sweat to his cheek. Almost caringly. Respectfully. He had put up a fight. The best. He had fought supremely. What was there not to respect? But it was over. While he had been battling the ferocity of the blows, part of me had not wanted it to stop. Inside, I was cheering him on. I didn't want him to lose. This was my fighter in the cage, nothing could keep him down. My Colonel, my asset … I didn't want him to give in. The more he took, the more I was going to be making money out of him.But …. regretfully …… There was a great swathe of admiration in me for this beast. Brave. Untamed, he had fought back. Snarling, claws menacing, fangs bared. Truly, a wild untameable beast. Invincible, almost. Endurance beyond belief.What future was there for him, I wondered? I glanced over at the four guards. Their differences were resolved, that cretin who’d ruined my prospects was mates with them again. Joking, laughing. Glad of what they’d achieved.My blood boiled. I knew what I would do. That guard, the moron … he’d disappear. “Assigned to another Unit”. Only he’d never turn up. I’d offer him to my friend. Fodder for his cage. One dickhead against three of my friend’s most brutish thugs. Free, no charge. Only I wanted an invitation. I wanted to be there when the gallery cheered the bloodbath on.Lost in thought, full of respect for his he had endured .. absent-mindedly my finger scratched at trapped hair pulling it away from his inert mouth. I had to stop myself from almost tenderly stroking a finger down his tear-streaked cheek. Tomorrow. What did tomorrow hold for him? And the future?And I’d had such a glorious future for him planned. Sad. Snapped3282956794500I looked towards the guards. I seethed. Stood there congratulating themselves. Slapping each other on the back. That big-headed prisoner who thought the was something special .. who’d got right up their noses …. They’d shown that fucker. Let him try it on again! He’d know what he had coming. Gone, in their celebrating, that memory. How I’d screamed at them. Yelled at them to fight that moron off. He was killing my dream. I’d ordered them to drag him off. He’d thrown them a few punches. He’d hit back at his mates. All forgotten now. All mates together. They’d shown that arsehole. They were the best!I’d be on the telephone tonight. Talking to my friend. A fresh consignment for his fight ring. Brawny, strong in the back, muscled shoulders on the beast … I’d sell him up. A pain in the arse, Have him. Free. Gratis. Get him off my books.Mad. A wild motherfucker. You’ll need your best thugs to take this one on, I’d emphasise. He’ll put on helluva show. No push-over. Get your hardest nut-cases out for him. Get me a ticket, I want in on the show. He didn’t have to know he was a guard.I’d have lost a finger if I’d been any slower. Luckily my reactions were fast. Pure instinct. Fuelled by shock. A nano-second slower … he’d got a finger. My heart stopped. I jolted back in surprise. But still I felt the hot breath as his jaws snapped just by my finger. Searing breath like a serpent’s deafening flame. Like a lion’s roaring snarl. Rabid jaws gnashing. His fangs snapped closed. A hair’s breadth from my hand. I should have known. I should have been warned. I'd witnessed it before. The leviathan springing from the hidden depths. The dragon rising from the ashes of defeat .. breathing fire. My heart stopped at the snapped clunk of his jaws. Where a nano second before my finger had been. My pulse raced. The inert prisoner suddenly snapped to life. His snarling jaw cracked open. Bared fangs tore at my hand. So close I still sensed a shock tremble in the air. One second slower and I’d have lost a finger. A wild animal. A mad dog. The brute’s jaw would have clamped down hard on my finger. And nothing would have torn that grip apart. My heart pounded at the thought. Nothing in the world could have broken that grip. Not till the wolf fangs had worried my finger off. Front teeth ripping into flesh. Razored fangs biting down to the bone. The murderous look that burned on his face …. I froze at the terror of those flashing eyes …. That told me. He would have gnawed it off. Hate-filled jaws crunching through into bone.My heart was pounding. It had missed a beat at the snap of his teeth. I’d stepped hurriedly back. To safety. My heart turned to ice at the ferocity in those eyes. My body paralysed. Ye gods, he was not unconscious. If the regime hadn’t abolished all superstitions about gods … I would have sworn I was looking into the face of a god. A god of wrath. A god of blackness. And terror. How was it possible? Not dead. Not comatose. Busting with vengeful life. Snarling savage ferocity into my eyes. Searing like branding irons into my face.He’d come through. Through the most vicious beating imaginable. Through skin-stinging, muscle-pounding, flesh-crippling blows. Through that madness from the demented guard …. He had come through. Not just survived. He was violence incarnate. He was white-hot seething vehemence made-flesh. And cunning with it. So together, so controlled … he’d had the presence of mind to wait in ambush. A wild cat waiting for its prey. Playing possum. He'd had the crap beaten out of him. Yet that leopard in his spirit had lured me in. Me picking away at the hair matted to his face, Phenomenal that presence of mind .. a superhuman control over himself ….And to think only seconds ago, I’d been feeling sorry for him. I’d been stroking his face almost tenderly. Regretting all that we would miss together. Gently I’d been picking the sweat-matted hair off his mouth. And he’d waited. The panther dead-still .. awaiting the perfect moment to pounce.My heart was pounding in my chest. I knew how lucky I was. I thanked my lucky stars. Like a cobra, he’d struck. Lightning fast. As if he’d been reading my thoughts. Musing about consigning that dumb-arsed guard to the cage in revenge. And in that moment the cobra had struck. Shit! I was one lucky man!Unbelievable. He’d recovered. AND …. He’d waited. He’d toyed with me. Able to hold himself in. An incredible presence of mind. And a warrior. A warrior through-and-through. Pulsing with controlled vindictiveness. Making himself wait. Choosing the perfect moment to strike.That power over his will. That control to lay in wait, to trick me. To bite back. Unbelievable. He had found the strength. He had the drive. Still fight in him. Still .. after missing me by less than the blink of an eye .. the mad dog had the energy to power rage into a murderous glare. What was this man! This was superhuman, supernatural. I shivered with cold in the heat of the dying sun.Sweat-streaked, hair clamped to his face, body whipped beyond belief, arse beaten to pulp, skin burning him up. And still the dog had summoned the power to go for me. Like a rabid dog even now he bared his fangs. Frustrated .. missed me by a hair’s breadth.My heart was racing. I’d had a narrow escape. I was looking into the eyes of a wild monster. Still the dog did not know he was beat. His look burned branding irons into my brain. The shock of his attack sent beads of sweat to my face. A wash of heat shuddered through my chest, choking my breath. A high fever. Madness. Panic. I was burning up. Rage396240508000Whip him within an inch of his life! That thought flashed through my brain. My brain flipped. Beat it out of him! Yes, that’s it! Like a crack of lightning, I realised it. That’s what he needed. Whipped within an inch of his life! The dog wanted it. The dog begged for it. I was going mad with my anger at this prick. This dog deserved it.My face was already turned to the guards. The words in my mouth …. If that’s what he needed …. If that was what it took… My mouth opened. To call on them to pick up their weapons. Whip him into shape. Whip the life out of him. Another fifty lashes on his back. Whip this fucker within an inch of his life!I caught myself. Thank god! What would there have been left of him? Fifty lashes. Was I mad? I could kiss my plans goodbye. The money I was investing in him .. creating that world-class facility to train and secure him …. Blown to the wind. Had I gone out of my mind? Beat him within an inch of his life? What the hell was I thinking?I looked around. Shit! We had an audience. This had gone public. The other guards had joined us. Come to watch. Locked the other sub-humans away for the night and come to join in the fun.But I couldn’t. The superhuman powers of my colonel … they had kept him going. Within a hair’s breadth I’d have lost a finger. But look! There was still a chance. He was NOT done-in. Look! That rage in his eyes. That snarl on his lips. That cretin of a guard had not crushed him,. That indomitable spirit lived on. There was still a chance. I just had to keep him in one piece. I just had to secure his strength of will. Maybe I’d have to break him later. When I had him on the estate perhaps. I just had to get him away. With that fire in his belly preserved.But FUCK! I had an audience. Other guards .. come to see the crap beaten out of their least favourite sub-human prisoner. Shit! I felt trapped. I couldn’t afford to let them at him. Any more … I risked losing everything. There had to be other ways to whip a dog. More than one way to skin a cat. More ways to break his will than just more lashes of the cane. That was what I had to avoid. Luck had granted me a second chance. I could still have my precious colonel working for me. That was one piece of invaluable meat. But here they were .. gathering around the three guards. Eager for more. Many would willingly take over. Grab at the strap. Wield the pain-cane. Have him pulverised? Have them go for his already brutalised arse? Could I let that? Could he survive? Could he still pull through? Fresh men, full of vigour, Out with their mates for a good night’s fun. A dead cert .. they’d inflict permanent damage. On this my most precious asset. Kiss goodbye to that money I was laying out? Shit! He was going to be worth a fortune to me. He’d fooled me, he’d tricked me. I’d really under-estimated him. Who would not? Who would expect a guy to be capable of that. And yet …… what did that mean to the man whom owned his hide? When I got those powers in a fight-cage …. How much was that worth?Here WAS all the proof I needed it. He'd given me all I wanted. This man simply did not know when to give up. Knock him down, he bounced back up. Was I mad? To throw that away? To let these fun-seekers go at him. Beat him senseless. Beat the hell out of him. Crush the fire in his belly .. so unique. THAT I could not afford.My eyes soaked up that tortured flesh. Those shoulders that had survived that body rack .. What would they do in a fight against the toughest men put up against him? Those tension-filled boulders on his shoulders …. What damage could they not inflict in the cage? He’d fight and slaughter like few others would. I couldn’t lose him again. That body was invaluable to me …. Another fifty lashes? There’d be no recovery from that. Was I off my head?SHIT! I couldn’t believe my luck. I had been THAT close. I’d nearly bungled it. I’d been given a second chance. My dragon was back blowing fire …. And I’d nearly ordered him another fifty. That would really have done it! I thanked my lucky stars. I’d been within a hair’s breadth of ordering every trace of that fire in his belly whipped out of him. Whipped within an inch of his life. A second chance. And I’d nearly blown it.Madness. Thank god! I had nearly lost my mind. I’d nearly given into my rage. That thought kept going around and around in my head, my heart thumping. In panic I had nearly blown it. Another fifty lashes. That would have finished it. In my terror at his bite I missed what was happening. He’d risen from the ashes! I’d forgotten my longer term plan. This power of recovery .. this panther like slyness .. beaten till no other man could stand ….. amazing when he came back up breathing fire ….. He'd shown me all I wanted to see. He was perfect. And …. It had been on the tip of my tongue. How close to blowing it.FUCK! I needed to get his hide out of here. It could only get worse. I could make another mistake. But how the hell did the commandant of these guards justify letting him off? He wasn’t done-for. He wasn’t going to play possum for me so I could secrete his hide out of here. As soon as the guards released him, my fire-dragon would be at them again. He wasn’t broken, they’d see. Why was I letting him off?I couldn’t believe my luck. He was still a going concern, we were still in business. We’re so close, I communicated to him. Almost within my grasp. Just conjure him away. An accident would disappear him. The record complete. Away to his own tailor made fitness workout. It was almost there. But shit! We’d gained that audience. The other guards had locked their sub-human charges away and they’d turned up for the fun. Just at the wrong moment. Everyone was here to witness this sub-human taken down. He’d got under every guard’s skin. Destroy him. Crush him. For them, nothing else would do. Let him off? He’d suffered enough? Everyone could see the truth. The dragon wasn’t going down.Just what I could not allow, another beating. My heart raced. The terror of what I'd narrowly escaped still ran like ice through my veins. The image of him taking another fifty lashes, …. I’d been off my head. That thought of what I had been about to throw away raged in my head. No more whipping, I knew I could not afford that. Not for him. Not now. I was trapped. There was no way forward, no way back. Forward was letting the guards loose on him. They’d been competitive with each other before. Now they had a bloody audience! They’d been playing to the crowd. Shit! What did I do? I was commandant. I had an unruly prisoner. One who refused to learn. I had an audience. I couldn’t call it a day. They’d be shocked. Had I lost it, gone weak. There’d be questions. Had I lost my backbone? My heart wasn’t in it anymore, spineless prick.Trapped. And yet soooo close. I felt the panic rise. There had to be something else. There HAD to be. There had to be more than one way to whip a dog into shape. Alternatives400685952500Maybe there was a god .. despite the Realm’s ruling. It was certainly smiling on me. I’d got him back, my treasured colonel, my one-man pot-of-gold. Luck had brought him back to me. And no way was I going to lose him again.Those feelings of warmth towards him …… back when I’d thought him lost …. that did not embarrass me. We were inextricably bound. I could almost have given him a big brotherly hug.But how did I get us out of this mess, the pair of us? We had gone public, we had an audience. Other guards, after lockdown, sporting their bottles of beer … come for the show. I couldn’t let it be. It would be a nightmare. That earlier crazed attack on him …. ten times worse. Playing to the audience. Jeers for any half-hearted attempt. Cheers if a strike had the prisoner howl.And I couldn’t rely on him. The last person I could bank on for saving his own hide ….. As soon as a guard started on him again, he’d fire up. He’d rant and rave. And the audience would only be cheering to have him put down.He had me trapped. And I was on his side. A beating …. As ferocious as they come, egged on by the beer-swilling guards ….. that really would be the end of it. It was the end of the day, the sun nearly set. With their prisoners safely penned away for the night, other guards had wandered over to enjoy the brute under the lash. His red-flaring arse signalled to them like a flashing beacon. That helplessly hung body gestured an opportunity. Every one of them had put up his bad moods. Every one of them wished to see him broken. Every one burned to have a share in seeing him tamed. I approached from the side, my back to the public. His head followed me. The rage in his eyes .. He’d be glorious .. when I had that tamed, focussed, used in the ring, not wasted on me! He was frustrated by his bonds .. consumed me with fire. He’d loved to get his hands on me, there’d be no stopping him. But I was sage, those flames couldn't reach. If only I could talk to him ….. if only I could reason with him …. As if warning him not to goad the guards, silently assuring him we were on the same side …. I was trying to save him from another beating ….. my hand slid over his burning arse. You want more of this? I was trying to communicate. My hand was trying to persuade him not to make things worse. A growl of warning seeped from his lips. Warning me. Idiot, he misunderstood. What did he think I was going to do? One part of me welcomed the sound of his growled resistance. The entrepreneur, his business partner. This was the resilience which bound our futures together. His arse sweated. The hair in the crack there lay matted and flat. My hand stroked him, almost caressed his burning backside. Trying to get it through to him. Cooperate. We’re in this together. I’ll get you out.Unthinking, my finger slicked through the sweat to his arse crack. By chance I slipped a glance at the guards. I saw one of them watching. I saw him give a welcome lick at his lip. The thought hit me. Was that the way-out? Was that what would save my man from another beating? Wouldn’t that go down a treat!My touch there pulled the brute’s arse-cheeks tight together. Guarding his crack. Eyes still on the guard, I slid my hand slowly through the sweat in his crack, testing his reaction. The guard nodded. He poked his neighbour in the ribs. Further down, my finger halted at his hole. Stopped. Tapped. Twice. Several guards were watching me now. I gave a slight poke. Inwards. The men were getting the idea. Warming to the promise. The suggestion was gaining an audience, salivating.I felt a tremor on his skin under my finger. A mixture of fear and helpless rage. His legs were making a move to haul himself up to his feet. But seriously, what defence could he summon? What hidden reserves of strength would help him out of that? That tremor against my intrusion … he had caught on to what I was suggesting? That tremor was his shock at the thought? Rape?I looked back at the guards. Their eyes were riveted on my hand with my finger poking at his arsehole. Signalling, signposting. They’d got the idea. I nodded, I gave them permission.Rape. Brutal. It would be savage. Vengeful cocks hammering at the brutalised muscle of his arse. But it would save his skin. No beating. That was our way out of this mess. Let the guards have him. Turn his rape into a show. Next day, god knew how raw he’d be. But I’d have saved his hide. Who knew, Maybe my gang-bang might teach him to treat me with due respect?I turned away. Without a word. Without a backwards glance. I left the prisoner to their devices. Their evening’s entertainment. With my compliments. My treat. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay. I didn’t need to be around when the first one stretched him open. It would be raw, it would be savage. Put on to the cheers of the guard’s mates. The guard’s calloused hands dug at him by the hips. Strong sunburnt arms pulled his backside upright, opened him up. When his arsehole felt the first touch of a superior cock of the Realm. I could already the roars of his rage. I could see his eyes ablaze with fury at his impotence to stop them. Bawling himself hoarse when the first unyielding enemy manhood ploughed up his burning arse.It wouldn’t be nice. He’d bring the worst out in these men. Imbued with the teachings of the Realm. A night full of throbbing superlative manhood. Racially superior. Solid, engorged by his defiance. Engorged by his helplessness. I would have loved to have been there, though, when impotence crumbled his rage to dust. Rage turning to pain. Pain of shame. But I knew it would not be a pleasant sight. And not quick in coming. Hours of searing physical pain of the Realm's superior manhoods rammed repeatedly up his stinking sub-human arse. I’d take myself off. It had been a hard session here at the stakes. I had earned a stiff drink. Away from his bawling. I didn’t need to hear his pain laced with his tears. Tears at his helplessness. Shamed by taking countless racially superior cocks rammed up his arse. Perhaps I would return later. To see the after-effects. See him mortified by his inability to stop this disgrace. The warrior leader turned into the Realm's whore. His muscled sub-human arse turned into unpaid whore-meat.Hissing at the searing pain. Sobbing after more and more heaving enemy cocks had scraped him raw, red stinging-raw. Bleeding raw. The strength in his muscle-layered arms useless to him. His power-laden back taut with burning pain. His defiance impotently scraped searingly-raw, his own screeching arse invaded by vindictive guards. I’d leave him in the guards’ good hands. I had no doubt they’d do a good job. And they’d laugh. Mock him, taunt his impotence. Cheering when they heard him whimper at the touch of another racially superior cockhead pressing against his bleeding arsehole. Stinging-sore inside from an invasion by indifferent cocks. Man-seed seeping freely out of his hole lubricating the next shameful forced-entry. His flesh inside red-raw, skinned, bleeding. Sending screaming shudders of pain through his every nerve. His inhuman howls descending into insane gurgles as he lapsed into an anguished ignominious oblivion. Fleeing impotently into unconsciousness from the savagery of rape. Defiance ripped to shreds in the shrieking agony of his bleeding arse. Should I have stayed? Should I have let him see me watching. Knowing I had ordered this, the man who owned hide. But I turned away. I’d already decided it could wait. Wait till I had him on my estate. Then, in privacy, I would bend his will to mine.What a piece of luck, though, that serendipity. Rescued by that lucky thought. Just by chance stroking his backside and the thought had come to me. I knew it, I’d told myself there was …..There was more than one way to skin a cat. No, I’d not hang around. Let the guards have him. I needed a stiff drink after what I had gone through this past hour. And, anyway …. I had to disappear him away. I had an accident record to fabricate. FiendElemental400050825500I had turned away. I’d turned my back on him. I’d leave him to the guards. I had no doubt what they had in mind. I needed that stiff drink. Probably more than one. It had been a tough hour, emotionally. It had been a helter-skelter of a time. Whirling, swirling .. my emotions struggling what to think. What to do? What thing was right to do? Playing two conflicting roles at the same time. Commandant, one minute. Responsible for punishment. Strict disciplinarian .. demanding from my men the utmost rigorous .. commanding from my prisoners scrupulous behaviour.A moment later .. panicking for my asset. Concerned about permanent damage. Go too far and I’d have nothing left. That moment of despair earlier had crushed me. When I thought that prick of a guard had destroyed all I had set my heart on.I turned away. I’d more than earned that drink. But I would return, I’d decided. A few shots of the hard stuff and I’d come back. No saying what could get into these guards. They were handing the beers around. They could be in for the night. Booze and violence ….. I might have to intervene. Call it a night. I couldn’t afford for it to go too far. Behind me thunder split the air. A thunderbolt thrashed out of the orange glow. Like a firestorm from hell eating up my wake. I twisted round. Shocked, shaken. My heart missed a beat. The prisoner had hauled himself upwards. Enlarged, gross. Throbbing, surging with power. He was an incredible sight. As if the forces of hell had flooded his body. Demonic powers had set him ablaze. He was the leviathan rising from the sea. Demons from hell, not his own strength, had lifted him up, overpowering the forces of nature. Overcoming the pull of the earth. He was coming after me!Still at the stake, still fastened to the torture post, this prisoner rose like a monster out of the surf. All power, all elemental energy. Gargantuan energy. Seething with the forces of hell he snarled at me. "STOP!"The voice, his voice … commanding. It cracked with the devastation of a lightning strike. Elemental-destruction incarnate. Arms clutching at the torture stake, muscled arms carved like rock, set in granite. Mountainous shoulders had hauled his power-pulsating body upright. He'd ordered me to stop. He bellowed at me to stop. Demanding I did not run away. But I couldn't have moved. That power had me paralysed. Mesmerised. Frozen. Gripped by the petrifying sight. Powered by an elemental force. A torso that rose up like monumental rocks of pounding strength. Pure muscle, absolute seething virility. That body of his was not sagging now, not hanging off his restraints. His muscular torso was no longer arched. Straight-backed, chest up. Muscle cramped against pulsating muscle for space. A might in his body that was taunting the forces of nature to contain such virile power. Absolute pure-male. Bristling with menacing power, muscle-knotted rage, fight-corded might. Menacing terror that surged in waves over that breadth of bulging muscle. Like the unstoppable swell of the ocean. Trembling with surging rage. A combination of demonic devastation with superhuman power. "YOU! You are going nowhere!"That voice cut through into the depths of my inner core. Like a brine-salted whip. Involuntarily my hand went to my throat. As if the prisoner’s force itself had clutched at my throat. Against my will, I found myself battling against him .. grappling with the terrors in my own mind. Blanching in recoil at the herculean rise of this muscled aggression. Unthinkable violent terror distilled in one manful body. Deep corded veins down the muscle-brute’s arms pumped power into heaving muscle. Deep maps of throbbing veins pulsed over heroic thighs, muscles pumped wild in gargantuan fury. Going nowhere? Who was he to command? By what right? Yet my will could not resist. My prize asset, my colonel, my one-man pot-of-gold …. He rose like a fiendish monster in his bonds. Brute strength bulging .. threatening to burst at his quivering skin. His orgasmic strength threatened to break free of the mere bonds that had him restrained. The fragile ties that kept me safe.He’d commanded me. Ice-cold with my fear, unbelievable. I felt a tremor pass down my backbone before the colossal strength-surge that thrust through the prisoner’s veins. Manic, menacing. Demon-possessed. A fiend! “We are not finished here!”Open-eyed, the insane thought flashed through my head. He’d break free. Super-charged muscle was about to rip him free. Rip himself free. Rage on a roar of wind. And rip my throat out. This monstrous supernatural fiend from hell.Hell! Fiend! Such things did not exist. The rational world of the Realm had disdained all such superstitious talk. But here he was. That fiend. My fiend. The worst nightmare. Terror-struck, I wanted to turn my back on the sight. I wanted to run. Flee. Turn my back on the source of these terrors. Somewhere deep in my conscious … my role, my status. I was commandant. That awareness feebly fighting back. Willing myself not to flee. Not to run from that fearsome force in terror. An icy shiver shot down my trembling back. Like a glacial spear lancing my flesh. Ice that defied the dying heat of this scorching day.Behind him, the guards who had whipped the prisoner into this fury stood open-mouthed. The onlookers who’d promised themselves his arse stood around frozen .. astonished at the resurrection of the torture-beaten prisoner. That image I'd had … the dragon arising from the ashes, breathing fire … did they see it too? Demonic4013201143000Shamefully I stooped as if reducing my size could hide me from that monstrous force. The guards had heard him, bawling me out. They’d seen the prisoner turn his head. Seeking me out. Hunting me down.Their eyes followed his. Taking in his massive back flaring in fury. Arms ripping at his bonds. Body shaking with terrifying demonic force. Ordering me to stop. Ordering me!I was caught in their cross-hairs too. They had heard him dare order me around. What did they see? What were they thinking of me? Their commandant wilting under the ferocity of his rage. A mere prisoner bulging with his fury. Their commandant retreating. Fleeing he might of that force. Shuddering inside, chilled with my fears, a tight claw clenched at my heart, I forced himself not to turn and flee. I had face to keep .. with my men. What were they thinking? But couldn’t they feel it? Were they not too gripped by that demonic power? Elemental power flooding the brute’s every muscle. Despite this brutal punishment .. despite the strength and stamina drained out of every part of him .. still he dominated this scene. This was HIS show. The monsters from hell had resurrected him. Back from the grave. Hell’s monsters were rejuvenating him before our eyes. We were watching him flooded with colossal strength. Did they fear this too?What was I planning to take on? I had fancied owning this beast. Here was my precious pot-of-gold. I'd rent him out for show-fights at a prodigious fee. Entertaining the good and the great. Monumental bloodbaths to match the gladiators of old.What had I been thinking? That I could contain this beast? I could bend him to my will? I trembled at my folly.This brute monster that rose super-natural up from his tortured hell. Looking like he could rip apart those bonds. Put out the stakes and like the colossal heroes in those old movies, use them as weapons. Wielding this superhuman power. Rising up to wreak blood-curdling revenge. On the guards who dared to beat the crap out of him. On the man who’d ordered him beaten. On the fool who'd presumed to own that will.Had I lost my mind? Control this fiend?I struggled not to blanch. I fought not to show the tremors on my face. Fearing my men were observing me. In face of this resurgence of monstrous manliness impossibly rising from its destruction under the lash. Struggling not to flee this force rising out a burning sea-bed of pain to wreak devastation. Was I going out of my mind? I fought not to give in to my fears. Wildly imagining him ascending into the air, defying incalculable pain, overpowering unfathomable torture. Rising up like those dragons breathing fire. A flame-thrower released on me. This brute unbelievably brought back from the dead. Re-born to monstrous aggression, instilled with seething super-human fury. I couldn’t believe what I was thinking. All these primitive superstitions. Was I mad? He was only a man. A sub-human. This incarnation of hostility and wrathful virility. Lifting up, controlled and strong, overcoming nature, arising like a serpent bursting out of the surge of the surf. I'd wanted to put him in a fight cage ….? I was going to keep him on my estate. Was I off my head? Train him .. make him fight for his life .. to serve my needs .. to make my fortune. To make my name as the proud owner of such fighting ferocity. I thought I could use this uncanny might? I’d been congratulating myself on my find. A force that could not give up. Knock it down but it would not stay down. Wasn’t that how I'd boasted of him to myself?This monster of the depths, this leviathan that threw his head up at the skies, neck corded, thick-muscled, with a roar driving his face to the heavens. I shuddered. Fury burned in every muscle. Rage fuelled every sinew. His manful wrath burst on the air like a vengeful tornado. Fury burst out in a gut-chilling roar. His mouth thrown open, the brute’s eyes scanned the darkening sky."We're not finished here!"His roar split the air. I shivered. A deep-throated yell that burst on my hearing. I struggled not to clamp my hands to my ears. Vengeful banshees from hell shrieked in my head. I was going out of my head. He was driving me mad. Screeching demons summoned by implacable gods. I did not believe in such things, they did not exist. But they were here, shrieking in my head. I shuddered. At the demonic force of the man.We are not finished here. Meaning, he wasn't finished with me!I was commandant. I was in charge. He was sub-human. But who was the one quivering? He’d haunt me, he’d pursue me. He’d hunt me down. That threat rang shrieking in my head. Shrill. Didn’t the guards hear them too? Weren’t they shuddering under this ferocity too? Ear-splitting screeches bursting out of the orange ball of the dying sun. Fiendish shrieks tearing at my throat. Like hyenas’ claws. I was going out of my mind. My blood ran cold. Fear clamped down on my balls. His taloned claws ripping at my loins. Ripping them away. The power of this beast was unmanning me!In terror, I struggled not to flee. But I couldn't have moved. Paralysed. I trembled in fear at the thought of turning away and fleeing from that terror-crazed roar. Sure he'd then break free. Tearing those feeble bonds that could not contain such monstrous rage. Tear free. Swoop up into the air and monstrously engulf me. I was losing my mind. Not finished yet40132018415000The brute lifted his tortured body up .. striving against the forces of nature. Back ramrod straight. Defeating all the body-weakening I'd ordered on him. Laughing back in my face. Mocking the will-breaking tortures I’d wished on him. Lifted up on legs that were pillars of bulging rock, knotted shoulders thrown back, corded by his rage. Head raised in demonic fury, he bellowed out a rallying cry. To me it sounded a fiendish bellow to summon barbaric gods. Goods of war, gods of vengeance.Against the world he threw out a roar of defiance. Here was a will that could not be controlled. From the depth of his chest, deep throated, he roared defiant with super-human strength, flooded with manic power. The guards had thrown everything at him. But here was a strength of will that defied gravity. A willpower that overpowered torture, overcame pain. By a monstrous force of will.The prisoner's rage-powered shoulders swelled, thunderous arms shuddered and bulged. His eyes turned on his retreating torturer. Who'd foolishly fancied he could control an untameable force. What had I been thinking! I was having a facility built on my estate to contain this power. A measly caged-cell, a training room to develop the untameable. I was hiring mere humans as security guards to manage this superhuman beast. And I thought I could control that?Without thinking, I turned away. My dreams were turning to shreds, shattered in face of this monstrous might. I'd have to think again. How could I manage this monster? Yet he promised so much. Could my greed to let this opportunity pass? When would there be another like him? A force like this that was snapping at me heels. It felt like rabid wolves from this fiend’s hell were breathing hot down my back .. I trembled at their frenzied snarls. How could I control such a force?He really unnerved me. This fearsome force. Even as I went .. managing not to burst into a run .. his fury pursued me. We're not finished here! He’d bellowed it at me. HE was not finished. Not finished with ME! That roar of menace clawed like razored fangs at my back. Rage-driven, his bellow split the air. A cry of war. A war of attrition. A war he was bound to win. A roar that cut through the air at my retreating back like some barbarian battle axe. I must have been crazy. I'd thought I could contain that? In the fight cage, I’d seen that that fire in his belly as my pot-of-gold. Unbeatable. He could not give up, he would not give in. This beast WAS unbeatable. Look at him, unbeatable. Control that? Tame that? Even now as I tried not to flee, those fiendish spirits pursued me. Laughed at me. A monstrous bellow of threat .. like some barbarian calling upon his gods of vengeance. What HAD I been thinking! If I could control that .. if I could bend it to my will ….. Hadn't that been my purpose here today? Hadn’t I used that excuse to see how much he could take? To plumb the depths of his strength of will. Discover his breaking-point when he submitted to me. The guards had given their all. At one time I'd feared in their vindictiveness they’d gone too far. But who was fleeing? To all the world he'd looked broken. The guards had exhausted themselves. But listen to that roar. Unbeatable. Calling down on me barbarian ferocity. Summoning fiendish forces to join him. We're not finished here. Not finished with me!Could I give this up? He was all I wanted. He looked perfect .. rugged looks, outstanding physique. Knock him down and he bounced back up. He was all I needed. But …. ?I couldn't think. I felt his burning curses scoring like a pain-cane across my fearful retreating back. Curses threatening to pursue me into the farthest reaches of the earth. Was he driving me crazy? I had to get away, I couldn’t to think like this. From behind me, my mind's eye tortured me still. Fearing he’d shake himself free of his bonds, muscle-powered. Flying at me, claws out, fangs bared. This was madness, this was not happening. Where was I getting these crazy thoughts from? I had to get away .. to think. Clear my head. Away from that image of his muscle-plated chest pumped to bursting with these powers of revenge. Revenge on me. He’d not finished with me yet. And I planned to make money out of this monster …..? Who was controlling whom?Would I ever be safe? If I went ahead with my plans …. We aren’t finished! Was I putting my life on the line? My head was ringing with the threat of him pursuing me to the ends of the earth. Yet my greed still wanted to hang on to him. Behind, shoulders shuddering with demonic rage, he bellowed out his cry of war. Against me. Pursuing me. Panic. I had to think things through. But my head was cracking with him bawling out his eternal oath. I’d go out of my mind. I had to get away. Away from that pledge from the depths of his iron-clad will. He’d get me. Even if it cost his final breath. We're not finished here! How would this end? This marriage of inconvenience? My plans counted on these fires of wrath. But would I ever sleep soundly in my bed? In the name of eternity, he was swearing at my retreating back. Never-ending vengeance. Wrathful revenge to the end of time. His battle cry again split the air. Come what may, I would know the tortures of hell. We’re not finished here. Was I going out of my mind! ................
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