Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Being angry at you would be pointless. You were manipulated out of this world. You were told terrible things by a terrible little whelp who is going to suffer for it. You have been punished enough by the consequences of your actions. Others are being punished more directly.”
“You mean Equinox is in trouble.”
“Equinox is going to be spending several years in the dungeons for the crime of enabling your escape, and he is lucky that is all that is happening to him. Anybody who helps you escape is going to be punished severely. If he were not family, I would surely have ended him.”
I immediately feel the worst guilt I have ever felt. Equinox sacrificed himself for me.
“I want to see him.”
“That will also never happen,” Ornix says. “He helped you escape this world. He made sure that you were put in danger. Without him, your escape attempt would have been entirely impossible.”
“I want to see him because I want to know what happened to him. I want to know what I made him suffer.”
“You didn’t do anything. He was misguided, and he needs to pay for his actions. He is paying.”
“I still want to see him.”
“No.”
It’s firm. Not mean. Not loud, but absolutely unyielding.
“You have much to recover from,” he says. “You have suffered injury and surgery. Do not worry about the one who put you here.”
“I put me here.”
“You have done what you were told since I met you. You bent over the table for your first spanking; you took my cock when I decided you would be my mate. You have been obedient—perhaps not when you stole the horse, but in general. I do not want to hold you responsible for what happened with the wings, but if you go near Equinox again, I can promise you will regret it and share in some of his punishment.”
It’s a threat. One he means. One I don’t intend to bow to.
I did escape because I wanted to. Not because I was tricked into it by Equinox, or because I didn’t know better. I knew there would be trouble and I invited it anyway. I am about to invite it all over again.
Ornix does not keep me under guard. I guess I seem pretty pathetic and battered right now. The surgery scars are healing well, but there’s still something in my body, a resonance of pain and of trauma that is going to take longer to shed.
The first chance I get, I sneak down to the dungeons. I know where they are the same way I know where everything is. This place is slightly more complex than the game makes it seem, but the general outline of things is exactly the same. Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that dungeons are generally down.
I walk past guards, who barely cast a glance at me, and start looking for Nox. It’s not hard to find him. There aren’t any other inhabitants of the dungeon, and there’s only one humming the theme music to DFE online to himself.
“Hey,” I say as I come up to his cage.
Equinox looks bruised and battered. I can see marks on his face, his lip is split, and his throat looks as though a muscular circlet pulled too tight for too long. He has been through quite a lot of pain for me. I recognize that, and it makes me immediately guilty.
“Well,” Equinox says. “That did not go well.”
“It did not. Sorry you’re in the dungeons.”
“It’s okay. It’s not actually that bad. I don’t have to push any updates at least. Sorry I couldn’t get you out. And sorry about the wing situation. I heard that was…”
“Gross? Yeah. Skin wings. Like a plucked chicken. Weird and gross,” I say, trying to lighten the mood a little.
I’m trapped here, in a world where I do not belong, and Equinox is trapped down here, in the bowels of the keep.
“How the hell did she find her way down here?”
The question is thundered back at the dungeon entrance. I stiffen, my eyes widen at Nox as I realize I’m absolutely fucking caught. I don’t think there’s a way out of here. Ornix’s surprise is kind of funny though. He keeps forgetting I know the place better than he thinks. I played every inch of this place when it was released in the game world. Me and my friends have idled down here plenty of times, waiting for the mobs upstairs to respawn.
Nox gives a little shrug. I’m fucked. We both know it. Fortunately I only have a few seconds to wait to find that out.
“I told you not to come down here. I told you never to speak to him again!” Ornix is thunderous as he grips me by the arm, turns me about, and proceeds to spank my gown-clad rear over and over until I cry out. This isn’t the kind of spanking I’m used to, with my trespasses laid out and addressed firmly yet fairly. This is the kind of whipping a relieved parent gives a lost kid they just found.