Illuminata's Garden Ch. 02

I thrash underneath Illuminata like a pathetic girl, my legs splayed out and my body underneath hers. She controls me so easily. The earth-shattering humiliation is worse than the pain, a physical feeling so bad that I find myself shaking.

Then, the first strike comes.

This is no meagre punch. Illuminata's hand balls into a formidable fist, and slams deep into my tummy, meeting the resistance of my taut muscles. I thrash beneath her -- now she's holding my wrists down with only one hand, and using the other to strike at me, so I should have more leverage.

Except illuminata's next punch hits me square in the cheek.

The impact slams my head against the ground, and my vision flutters. The flames lick at the rocky walls of the cavern, Illuminata's smirk swims above me in a sea of dizziness, and the pacing of her strikes accelerates.

She hurls everything she has at me. Her hands strike my face, my chest and boobs, my stomach. Fatigued and pained, even my abs begin to give way, and each new punch from my tormentor meets weaker and weaker resistance. Eventually, it just sinks in without real effort.

I'm still reeling from the blows, and she keeps piling more and more, keeping me off balance and under pressure, until one strike melts into the next. The fight feels more and more distant, as if I'm watching it from the outside.

Illuminata's knees press against my throat, cutting off my air supply, as she belly-punches me into complete submission.

They drive into my stomach, as she slaps my face with her open palms, so many times that I lose count.

She spits in my face, kicks me in the belly with the heels and tips of her boots, grinds my face against the rock with her boot soles firmly planted on my cheeks, weight bearing entirely on me.

This is a true beatdown, but it's not just my body she's systematically dismantling. She was right, she is using my pride as my punching bag. Not only I couldn't beat her, but she's demolishing me without the slightest opposition. I try to summon what remaining ounce of strength I have to get my body to move, but I can't even lift an arm.

She can't win... I can't be this weak... Worse of all, she can't be right.

About herself... and about me, and my status as a knight.

At last, the flurry of blows begins to slow, but by this point I cannot take advantage. Every single muscle in my body hurts, the rock beneath me is as unforgiving as Illuminata above me, and I feel like I've been compressed between the two. Reduced to a thin sliver of a woman, barely coherent enough to keep thinking.

Illuminata rolls me so I'm face-up again, and I'm so motionless I might as well be a ragdoll in her hands. I have no time to take in her stature, towering above me -- she looks so terrifyingly big from down here, and with a startle I realise that she actively scares me now -- before she descends atop my body once again, sitting above my chest. The weight makes my breathing even more laboured.

I'm so vulnerable. So pathetic.

"Hahahaha, I can see the sole of my boot imprinted into your face!" She says, giggling. "That's hilarious!"

I lick my lips, trying to muster enough coherence to utter a few words -- maybe of protest or defiance, I don't even know -- but Illuminata slides forward, until my face is being nestled within her thighs. Her crotch lands squarely atop my nose and lips, shutting me up.

I try to bite her, but my teeth can't gain any purchase over the taut, slippery surface of her trousers, and besides, my jaw muscles have taken so many punches that they barely respond.

Soon enough, her full body weight is squishing my face.

It hurts. My nose is bent over, my lips and teeth are bearing so much of her weight, my head is being pressed into the rock, and it's a struggle to even breathe. With my hands immobilised and my legs useless, I'm not going anywhere.

Illuminata could kill me, I realise. That's how thoroughly she's beaten me. She could legitimately choke me under her thighs and crotch and ass, and I'd be unable to get free.

Actually, she's decimated me to such a degree, that she could probably choke me with her feet alone, if she truly wanted.

With horror, I realise that I'm just as vulnerable now, as I was when she kidnapped me. Except, back then, it was the drug that did me in.

Now, my body is drug-free. Illuminata has brought me to this state with nothing but her bare hands and feet. Removed every defence, cut me down to size, and eventually asserted her utter physical superiority over me.

My cheeks burn with unspeakable, devastating humiliation. There is no doubt that this is my darkest hour as a knight, aside from the very real danger I'm in right now. What if she does decide to traffick me? And to whom?

The sound of my laboured breathing must be music to Illuminata's ears.

"Does anyone else here still think she's going to rescue you?" She asks out loud, and I'm dimly aware of her face above me, scanning our surroundings. "Anyone?"

Most of my sight is blocked by her crotch luxuriantly resting on my face, like my face is just a seat for her to use at her convenience, and she can confidently expect no resistance from this particular human chair. It takes all of my willpower to even twitch my fingers right now. After the beating I've taken, I might even be injured.

My hearing isn't great, either, not with Illuminata's strong, wiry thighs pressing against my ears like a vice. But through all of this, I can still hear the dreadful silence that follows her question. It's the answer we both need: everyone here knows I've tried to rescue them, and failed.

Illuminata giggles sadistically ath that. For my part, I feel a crack begin to form in my own mind.

What kind of knight gets defeated like this? How can I protect others if I can't even protect myself?

I start moaning and whimpering into Illuminata's crotch. It feels warm, and wet. Between the exertion of the fight, the crushing physical consequences of my defeat, and Illuminata restricting my airflow, I'm truly beginning to be in trouble. My lungs burn, tears well in my eyes, and my muscles spasm with adrenaline.

Not enough to buck her off... I can't remove her... She... has me...

"I'll let you breathe," Illuminata says, "provided that you're a very good girl. Promise. On your honour as a knight."

There... there will be time for defiance later. I must live to fight another day. So I mumble into her crotch, as she softly humps my face, marking her territory, claiming me like a dog does with a bitch.

Illuminata stands, her boot pressing down against my cheek. The other boot sneaks up, closer and closer to my face. We're close enough to the torch now that I'm sure my fellow slaves can see everything.

"Lick my boots," she says, and I can sense this is a defining moment for my entire life. Illuminata has outsmarted me, captured me, outfought me. At no step of her plan to traffick me have I been able to offer any meaningful opposition so far.

I should have expected her to request something like this, after the way she abused my face with her feet when I was drugged. It goes against everything I believe in, rubs even more salt into the wound of my crushing defeat... but what choice do I have?

It's just boots, and a tongue. It's nothing that will do real, permanent bodily harm to me. If this is what I have to do to buy myself time, and live to fight another day, isn't it the smart thing to do? Shouldn't I just feign compliance, and wait for my moment to strike?

But what if I lose again, and again? What if I'm just rationalising? When does compliance cease being feigned, to become way too real?

... Is it real now?

I don't have the luxury to think this through. I need to trade submission for time. And so, humiliatingly, I scurry to obey.

The leather feels rough and uneven under my tongue, as I lap at Illuminata's boots like an eager dog. I run it from the tip to the ankle, then up and down. In a mockery of kindness, she lifts one boot at a time, so my tongue can snake under the soles that have beaten me into the ground, and lick them good.

She's ground me into the dirt with these boots. Pounded me into dust. Reduced and diminished me, until I was literally physically unable to oppose them. But, to my surprise, they don't feel too bad to the tongue.

Yes, the slightly tangy aftertaste I get after each lap is unpleasant, but... this isn't torture. Compared to the beatdown I've just received, this is nothing.

Unfortunately, I'd underestimated how this would make me feel.

Each lap of the tongue against Illuminata's boots makes me feel even more like a poor parody of a knight, snivelling at the feet of a villainous criminal like I'm her lapdog. I feel tamer, meeker, more defenceless with every passing minute spent ministrating at her boots. I feel... pacified. Subdued.

Defeated.

I'm all too aware that my standing among the slaves is destroyed. That not only am I not going to rescue them -- I'm a lesser even among them. None of them have had to stoop this low, to lick Illuminata's boots in public. Even if we were to all get out of here in one piece, how could anyone ever take me seriously again?

This cannot be undone. I'll forever be known as Forte the wimp, Forte the bootlicker, Forte who accepted to utterly prostrate herself before an opponent just so her life could be spared. Maybe I should have gone down fighting instead.

So why didn't I? Why am I okay being on my knees, lapping and bathing these boots in my saliva, while my mouth is parched from days of captivity and the brutality of the fight? Do I really believe this is just a strategy to get back at Illuminata down the line?

I shake my head as I lick. There's a major crack in my self-confidence, and what I can glimpse from the other side is... troubling.

It destroys me.

By the time Forte slips a hemp of rope around my neck, I don't even have it in me to resist her. I docilely follow her down the tunnels, towards what I assume is into one of the processing chambers.

I don't look behind me, at the fellow slaves I have failed. I don't think I could bear the shame.

I don't look at Illuminata either, this girl who has outsmarted me, outfought me, beaten me twice, and demoted to her bootlicker in the space of a handful of days.

I tell myself I can still rise from this, and fight back, I just... need some time to think this through. But for now, I have no fight left within me. And so I offer no resistance, and let Illuminata tug my leash and drag me deeper into the tunnels, and into the darkness.