A Plague Tale

Loss of Innocence

These are characters from the Asobo Studio game "A Plague Tale: Innocence." I do not own and did not invent these characters. This takes place several years after the events of the game, all participating characters are over the age of 18.

In Flight

It had been over a year and a half since Amicia's family fled what was left of home. When they moved faster, they found the wounds of the plague's northern path still too fresh, doors and windows still shuttered. Shuttered homes meant exposure to those in the Inquisition still hunting them. So, a spring passed, and then a summer, a fall. Amicia's mother, Béatrice, made ends meet offering healing and elixirs in market towns in exchange for food and shelter. Lucas, her friend and alchemical companion since the plague, assisted where he could, complain as he may about the lack of any good laboratory. Amicia could hunt and forage, sometimes even taking Hugo out with her to practice with her sling.

It carried like this for day after endless day, traveling impossibly slowly, carefully. Staying in each village or manor home for as long as a week while ensuring the next step of their journey had no English or plague or inquisition. Amicia's brother Hugo, with his uncanny Prima Macula, would be enough to ward off the plague, but not suspicious and traumatized peasants looking for a scapegoat.

It had been two interminable winters before the gates of Paris lay before their party, their wagon long-ago beginning to fall to pieces. Amicia was handy enough to keep the wheels on, but she missed Rodric, he would have made the repairs with a hand tied behind his back and left it better than before.

She missed him for many reasons, he was kind and... strong. For reasons she couldn't put words to, she liked to daydream about his hands, rough and worn, but delicate and dexterous from long days at the forge. He and Arthur, whom she had spent many nights back at the Château d'Ombrage secretly fancying from a straw bed away, both slain violently in front of her eyes. It made her never want to love again. Not that she had time or privacy on the road.

Her mother was a bold woman. An alchemist, a writer, who cared little of what people thought and less of what they loathed. She would sometimes disappear for nights at the manor houses where the convoy stayed, showing up in the morning as well-composed as ever, back straight. Amicia got the finest beds and meals -- even wines! -- in those estates. Hugo hated it in the beginning, but by his seventh year began to hardly notice as he asserted his childhood independence. Boys his age and station, in better circumstances, would be beginning to train as knights, after all.

Amicia of course suspected what her mother might be doing, keeping the men company and perhaps laying with them to stay warm, but she had never known much of what happened when men and women were alone. She and her mother never had the privacy away from Lucas and Hugo and Lady Béatrice never made such things a priority. She'd been a stranger to Amicia from Hugo's birth until their flight from Aquitaine.

Paris was a stunning, impressive, sprawling, mausoleum. The Great Evil had left only so recently that most doors still carried a white X marking them as touched. Mass graves lay uncovered, layering the normal city stenches with a sweet icing of death. Amicia was no stranger to it. Béatrice led them nevertheless in as stately a column as possible to the Palais de la Cité. Her late husband Robert de Rune had fought with King Philip, pledged his fealty to him. It was in the King's hands the fallen house of de Rune placed their last hopes.

"Wait here," Béatrice commanded her daughter, and Amicia gathered Lucas and Hugo to await the matriarch's return. Only her daughter could have noticed the distress on Béatrice's stony face when she returned.

"King Philip has been dead for a year, King John reigns now. His wife was claimed by the Bite, he now lives in the Château de Sainte-Gemme." She went to Hugo and spoke to him in soft tones as Lucas stared. Amicia turned around and started back the way they'd come.

The King

King John assessed the family suspiciously. A noble family claiming to know his father had shown up to his castle, in the aftermath of a devastating plague and amid war, seeking a place in his court. With ongoing crises devastating every corner of his fractured kingdom, he had little time or patience. But Béatrice carried herself like a noblewoman, could read and write, and spoke Latin, and so he allowed her a temporary stay in the chateau while she sought references to vouch for her.

"And is that your daughter, Amicia de Rune?"

"She is, your highness."

Amicia looked up when she heard her name before catching herself and bowing her head again.

"She's a pretty one, if a bit rough. It would help to find her a betrothal."

Amicia was a "pretty one." Years of travel after a childhood spent hunting with her sling and horseback riding with her father and a trim but never destitute diet had left her slender and toned. Her hair was expertly braided with pink ribbon. Her face, despite a few scars, beautiful like her mother's, with softer eyes and expressive lips.

"Indeed, your majesty. I thank your majesty for your sage advice, and I will take that under consideration."

Amicia's breath caught in her chest. It had been so long on the run the thought of noble betrothal had long escaped her. She had been a girl learning to read the great romances when she had last fantasized about knights in shining armor. She couldn't focus on the rest of the brief conversation before she was brusquely whisked away by her mother from the court, deeply curtsying between every step.

The guards showed the de Rune retinue to their guest chambers, and entire spire of the chateau! It was the most space Amicia had had since the Château d'Ombrage two years ago. She even had her own chambers! She threw herself onto the four-post bed and cried tears of relief, forgetting for a moment even the words of the King.

Lessons

Amicia woke with a start in the middle of the night. A slender figure prodded her fireplace, which crackled and glowed fiercely in the cool spring night air. Béatrice?

"Mother?"

The figure glided from the fireplace to the bedside, silhouetted against the fire in the otherwise pitch-black room. "Do not be afraid, Amicia," the figure cooed in her mother's voice. "You're dreaming."

Amicia was not sure that was possible but thought back with a shiver to the delirium she had experienced while searching for Hugo in the plague year. The feverous nightmares she'd had, of rats and reaching arms, had seemed so real. This was not that, she hoped.

Béatrice seemed to notice the apprehension. "It is a dream, my daughter," she coaxed, "but it is time you learned some things I should have taught you long ago." As Amicia's eyes grew accustomed to the dim firelight, her mother's sharp but beautiful features came into focus, fierce but tender. Her face barely changed in expression as she gracefully turned to sit on the bed beside her daughter, bent over, and laid a soft kiss on her lips.

Amicia's heart began to race. She felt equal parts confusion and strange excitement wake her up, and yet still she wondered if she dreamed. What did this say about her mind if this was the sort of dream she conjured up?! While she hesitated, Béatrice kissed her again, firmly, as if to say "no, like this." Amicia imitated her, making her lips firm and then soft again, grazing her tongue tentatively along the gap between them. Béatrice smiled against her, pleased.

"The secret libraries of forbidden books contained not only alchemical secrets, dear daughter, though there are some of those that may help with this as well," she chuckled to herself.

"And what is *this*?" Amicia asked, breathless.

"Seduction. Learn how to please... how to tease... like no other in the kingdom, and we will win ourselves the choice of any knight in court."

Amicia was silent, still processing. Béatrice continued her ministrations. Her broad thin lips touched once more onto Amicia's, opening slightly to allow the tip of her tongue to run along Amicia's. Her soft hands brushed confidently down to Amicia's thighs, pulling her chemise up to Amicia's waist. Amicia gasped, "what are you doing?!" Béatrice cooed softly. "Relax, Amicia, let your instincts guide your movements." She lowered her hands, pressed practiced fingers directly along Amicia's moistened slit.

"Guide their hands here, love, when you are with a man." She pressed delicately on the nub above Amicia's exposed wetness. Letting her instincts take control, Amicia bucked her hips slightly, and felt a shock of pleasure emanating from her core. She opened her mouth against her mother's in a silent cry. Béatrice smiled and continued rubbing. The pleasure built, like a spinning sling almost ready to release its payload. Amicia's eyes closed, and just as she was about to let her soul fly, a shock.

Something hard, pushing itself into her center. Her eyes opened again to see her mother looking over her. She looked down, it was a smooth ceramic obelisk, slick with some alchemical lubricant. Béatrice released a brief laugh. "When you're ready, they'll do this, but with their manhood Amicia, their penis. It is how we conceive children, but also how we enjoy ourselves with a man, if we're careful. I'll tell you about how later." She slid the obelisk, achingly slowly, further into Amicia's lithe body. "Make them take their time, it's better for you, and the anticipation will drive them mad." Amicia's body had begun of its own accord to undulate in time with the movements. "Good, good, move like that. Never be afraid of your body's instinct to move, *ride* the man from below, *press* yourself into him while you look him in the eyes." Amicia did her best, raising and lowering her hips in time with Béatrice's movements. She was rewarded with deep waves of wonderful pressure spreading across her stomach up her neck and down her legs. Her cheeks flushed as she began to pant.

"It won't be enough all its own, my love, guide their hands back to that spot." Amicia grabbed her mother's free hand and thrust it down to that special nub, desperate to release that wonderful torturous tension. Béatrice smiled again, and just as she touched Amicia, it happened. The sling let fly, the dam burst, the spring unwound. Amicia began to shake, her silent cries unsilenced themselves as she moaned into the night, her entire body flooded with warmth and light as she closed her eyes in rapture.

Beatrice stopped, slowly withdrew her tool, and stood. "Good."

She walked out of the chambers, back to hers, leaving Amicia shivering in the firelight.

Courting

Béatrice refused to address what had happened. Even in moments of privacy, she was a stone wall. She gave her daughter other lessons: courtship, how to avoid conception, how to speak to a man to inspire desire. But she never gave Amicia another dream. And so Amicia began to have some of her own. Some nights she would remember the dreams: Béatrice again, or some knight, a random servant she came across during the day, or even sometimes (to her total and complete waking embarrassment) Lucas, always coming to her in the night, thrusting themselves upon her passionately, pulling her braid as they plunged inside her. Other nights she remembered nothing, waking to find hands under her own chemise. Two weeks of this, and she grew resolute. She absolutely *had* to get fucked.

He would have to be discrete, quiet, strong. There were a few knights in the court who Béatrice had been trying to set her up with -- Thomas de Poiters, a young chevalier, was most promising -- but it could not be one of them, she must marry one of them after this.

Thomas... the young chevalier was across a table from her now, practically batting his eyes. No one had made it through the plague and the Bite totally unscathed, but Thomas was as close as you came to it. His blonde hair and grey eyes made Amicia think of the romances that traveling singers read to her parents, about chivalry and knighthood. With some of Béatrice's lessons applied, he might not be completely useless in bed someday. "Tell me of yourself, mademoiselle, what pleases you?" *You have no idea,* she thought, but it was nice of him to ask. "I like to hunt..." an eyebrow raised... "and read and embroider of course," she finished. He smiled a smile that could melt granite. "I adore a mademoiselle with strong interests." Amicia didn't melt, but settled for blushing. "Good, because they're not going anywhere!" She chuckled, and he laughed along. Thomas reached out a hand, and she took it. Things were going well!

But... there was no chance of that held hand progressing further unless they were prepared to discuss marriage, and Amicia had nothing to offer but herself. It will take a charm campaign of weeks at least to get him there. Infuriating! She squeezed his hand and directed a saccharine smile directly at him.

The conversation continued like this, pleasantly but harmlessly, for nearly an hour. Amicia snuck in as many fleeting touches as she could risk, but it wasn't nearly enough. If anything, it only heightened her tension by the time Thomas bid himself and gentlemanly goodbye. She *needed* a release.

A rock at her feet caught her eye. After giving a moment to make sure Thomas was out of sight, she slipped a few materials from her pouches and applied them carefully to it and placed it into a sling she always kept tucked away. The stone stuck easily into the well-worn pouch at the end of the leather strip, stayed there as she began to spin it, focused on a small unlit brazier nearby. She let the rock go, instincts guiding her timing, and the brazier burst into flame. She smiled, and another nearby voice gasped.

She stuffed the sling into her belt and glanced sheepishly over at the sound. It was a young apprentice smith. *Like Rodric* a little voice in her head said. She squashed that down, a shadow of grief passing her by. She gestured over to him "don't be afraid, my mother taught me some alchemy, it's no magic." The smith looked questioningly at the fire; *may as well be magic* the expression said.

"What's your name?"

"Geoffroy. I'm an apprentice here, for Stephen." Stephen Smith, the smith at the chateau. She'd seen him a few times in the courtyard. He was always berating whomever he was near, a loud drunk, newly brought to Château de Sainte-Gemme from the city and not likely to be around long.

"I'm Amicia de Rune, a guest here." She considered him: strong, skilled with his hands, a handsome-enough face stubbled with hair, at least her age if not slightly older. Is he discrete? "How is Stephen to work with?" She chuckled playfully.

Geoffroy shrugged. "To milady, he's a fine boss." Good. Discrete.

"Geoffroy, could you look at something in the northwest tower? I noticed a nail rusting through that could use replacing, I can show you." It was true enough, there was one nail in the bar that held her door that had rusted through, but it was one of seven and hardly an emergency.

He shrugged again. "I suppose I could milady." He still looked at the lit brazier suspiciously. Amicia ignored it and started toward the tower.

Into Her Own Hands

As soon as he was in the room in the tower, Amicia pointed toward the bar on the door, which he turned to examine. He lowered the bar into the slot, locking it, testing the strength without the nail by pressing down with his full bodyweight. There was a slight give. He extracted the nail, started measuring the width and depth, and totally absorbed as he heard rustling behind him. It took only a couple minutes; he'd know exactly what they'd need to make to replace the ...

"Geoffroy..."

Geoffroy wiped his hands, turned around, "Y..." he stopped short. Amicia an arm's-reach away, eyes defiant, several laces undone, revealing a swell of breasts under the tunic.

"Milady, pardon me, I have to..." She swooped even closer, put her hand to his chest, moved her lips close. "Go?" He gulped hard. "Err, yes." She held his gaze until it became uncomfortable. He looked away, downward. *Right past the fantastic view of my cleavage*.

"I'm married milady." It caught her off guard. He is so young to be married. But then, so was she. He already felt guilt, she could feel it. That part of her mind that loved exchanging riddles with Lucas, loved romance stories, allowed her to defeat the inquisition back in Aquitaine -- the practical puzzle-solver -- activated unbidden. Lean into the guilt. What he's already done. Thinking of unbidden... she glanced down. Sure enough, the pressure she felt...

"That..." she gestured down with her chin, a playful smirk on her face, "doesn't look like -- *feel* like -- it minds." He blushed in shame. "Please, milady, I don't know!" She felt empathy, she really didn't want to hurt anyone, but she was *really* worked up now. She needed something! And her empathy had never kept her from her goals before. Besides, she wasn't *hurting* anyone.

Following her instincts, she kept her hand on his chest and lowered the rest of herself down, keeping eye contact. He was still, silent, stoic. Only once her head was near his breeches did she drop her hand to work the laces. He started backing away, so she grabbed the bulge through the clothe. He stopped, shuddered. She grinned mischievously, keeping her eyes on his, and resumed working the laces. He was pacified. Not yet involving himself but allowing what was going to happen to happen.

At last, she pulled it out. The first cock she'd ever seen, in the tiniest fraction of a moment the first cock she'd ever touched. She licked it. Geoffroy groaned and leaned back against the door, tension gushing out of him. She had disarmed him and was ready for the killing blow. "Are you sure? You want to do this to me instead of your wife?" As she said wife, she plunged his cock into her mouth, forming a seal with her plump lips and keeping a pouty eye contact. The combination of the guilt with the pleasure broke him. She could see it snap in his eyes. He grabbed her hair at the base of her braids and shoved her closer, impaling her. He was hers.

Amicia tore her head away from his dick and stood, twirling around. Geoffroy yanked her skinny trousers down to her knees in one deft movement, and she felt his roughened hands against her thigh for the first time. She bent, undershirt and overshirt still intact, as he prepared to thrust his penis inside her in anger and frustration. "No," she laughed softly. It only made him angrier, his muscles coiled against her, but he stopped. She craned her neck to look him directly in his eyes and grabbed his hand from her waist. She guided it to her soft warm gap and rubbed it there lightly until he got the idea.

As soon as he got the idea, she smiled slyly at the man and wiggled her ass against him, his steel-hard cock still pressed against her. "Not that you had it *all* wrong..."

He grimaced, anger and guilt and desire and confusion all layered together, and pushed inside.

Lightning bolts.

YES! This was it!

She moaned, fearlessly loud into the bedchamber. "Yesss..."

He pulled back, and slammed back in, still rubbing her with his hands to match. She grunted approval. "Aren't you a..."

"Horseback... riding... broke... long... time ago..." She managed, between thrusts. As he settled into a quick rhythm, Amicia started pushing backward in time, accentuating each motion. He moaned. He'd never had it like this before. *Should I say that, twist the knife?*, she thought. No, she wasn't cruel, she got what she needed and did what she needed to get it.