The morning sun was high in the desert sky. Carrion birds cawed in the sand-swept distance; restlessness spurred them to flight. Black wings flapped and vanished into the vast pale blue. The horizon was wide and empty.

"Bring the prisoners forward!" Lanius' grating voice thundered throughout the encampment. Steel-clad in golden armor he sheened center stage of the makeshift platform. “Gather swiftly! Today, we celebrate victory with the spoils of war.” The camp hastened and dust spurred into the air. It was a hot pocket of breath, nearly 200 Legionnaires sweated and sunbaked. The burly crowd parted for their promised spectacle.

~~~~

“On your knees, mut.”

A soldier's boot collided with Lilith’s kneepit, and she crashed to the tent’s floor. The sharp strike nearly crippled her, and on all fours, she was forced to crawl. “Wiggle your ass when you move, bitch.” Lilith’s walker ogled the peach shape of her nude ass. She’d been stripped entirely—collared and fettered like a dog. “Crawl, mut.”

Lilith’s walker yanked her leash and the metal ring choked uncomfortably at her throat. Lilith snarled and jerked him forward to no avail. The soldier pulled her tether taut. “Oh, the feisty kind, aye?”

The soldier’s smile creased the corners of his brown eyes. “From all that hollering yesterday, we’d figured you’d have no more fighting spirit.” Lilith’s walker turned to address the second prisoner. “You, too failure. Get a move on.”

The tent unzipped and out crawled the Courier. Lilith, on all fours, nude and head bowed. Her hands and knees shifted begrudgingly across the coarse sands. The desert pricked at her exposed figure, lodging its grainy stings into the crevices of her nails and palms and kneecaps.

Crawling alongside her was the Legionnaire she'd bested the night before. His downcast face streaked with fresh tears as he frantically murmured the alphabet over and over again.

"C, D, E, F, G..."

Lilith's lips pursed to a flatline. His panic was unnerving, contagious even. Her black hair was still wet from her bathing just minutes ago. Her raven tresses matted to her face and with no clothes she thought she must've looked a banshee or a rancorous spirit.

‘Kill me now or you’ll regret it later,’ Lilith recalled her promise. She could still taste the fetid scent of Lanius' cock on her tongue.

One hand in front of the other, they walked like pups in front of the leering crowd. The Legate's men were silent as death, but their expression and glimmering eyes betrayed their true thoughts. Lilith clicked her tongue, cursing silently.

She'd rather die a thousand times than be had by these ghoulish fiends. Lilith's gaze flickered towards the platform Lanius stood on. The morning sun sheened off his golden armor. His expression an enigma beneath his Roman mask, and his posture unwavering as a statue.

"Heel!" Their walker ordered the prisoners to halt as they reached the stairs leading up the wooden stage.

"What the fuck did you—" The Legionnaire yanked her leash taut, and Lilith's words were choked by her collar. Her hands scrambled to the cold iron coiled round her throat. Her fingers wrestled for the thin space between her skin and her choker.

"Okay! Okay!" Lilith gasped and spluttered. Her face flushed from the near asphyxiation and turning to her fellow prisoner. Lilith saw he'd already assumed the mongrel position.

"Heel!" Their handler repeated and the prisoner sat on his hind legs, placing his palms on the earth, and opening his mouth he showed his tongue. Lilith grimaced in secondhand embarrassment.

“Good boy.” The Legionnaire cajoled before patting the man’s head. Turning to Lilith, he regarded her with a terse jaw. The Courier complied with a flush of embarrassment. Lilith sat on her hind legs and lifted her chest. Unwilling to open her mouth like a lapping mut, she simply snarled, baring her teeth.

“Bring me him first.” Lanius gestured to the heeling man. The Legionnaire proffered the man’s chain to Lanius and their commander walked the prisoner to center stage.

“Failure is only excusable by death. Let this be a reminder to all of you.” Lanius said.

Cowed and frightened, the prisoner's eyes were locked on Lanius. Clasping his hands together, he recited. "Q, R, S, T..." he repeated like a trained seal.

Lanius turned to the man. "Why are you reciting your letters, cretin?"

"I..." the man trembled and stammered. "I don't know what to pray for anymore so I just say my alphabet and hope God—"

With unnatural alacrity, Lanius removed a dagger from his hip and sliced the man's jugular. Frantically, the man's hands scrambled to his leaking throat. Crimson slipped from his fingertips and soon drenched the stage in a sanguine pool. His final words sputtered out hoarsely. "Figures the rest..."

His eyes dimmed to half-moons and the man collapsed onto the stage. Lanius seized him by the nape and tossed him into the audience. His soldiers parted as the body landed flatly on the ground.

"Bring me the Courier." Lanius commanded, his tone desolate and unforgiving as the Mojave Desert. The soldier hesitated for a moment, his eyes flickering nervously towards Lilith. "Now!"

With a nervous sigh, the man tugged Lilith's leash, pulling her forward. She resisted, struggling fiercely, but it was no use. Without her guns and gadgets, the Courier was intrinsically weaker than these men. She’d stood no chance against the Legate’s army, and her friends had died for that ambition. Her limbs clamored as she was pulled across the stage. Grunting and flailing until her chain was passed to Lanius.

“I thought you wanted to die, Courier?” Lanius’ violent frame loomed over her like a gargoyle in daylight, unmoving and unperturbed. Lilith realized. It wasn’t the scope or cruelty of Lanius’ power that postured him—it was its certainty. An overhead cloud blanketed the sun; Lanius motioned to speak.

"It is time to make you whole with the Legion, Courier." Beneath his golden mask, Lilith could tell he was smiling. "Bring me the pillory," Lanius ordered.

Lilith sneered and craned her neck towards the bustle in the crowd. Two Legionnaires hurriedly carried the contraption forward.

The pillory was an antiquated torture device. A wooden block with three holes fitted for each arm and the victim's head. Elevated by two stilts, it was purpose to bend and forcibly hold the victim at the waist while standing. Lilith grimaced. Tally marks and splinters indicated recent use.

"Now place her inside." The Courier made to run but Lanius’ iron grip on her leash was indomitable. His heavy weight anchored her, and she flailed onto her back. The Legate’s men hoisted Lilith by the arms, and pressing her face down, bent the Courier over. The wooden block clamped shut. Her arms stretched outwards, and her neck secured within the confines of the device. She struggled futilely, wiggling her ass as she wrought, unable to break free from the restraints. The crowd murmured with morbid fascinations.

"Silence!" Lanius’ voice boomed. The camp hushed. The breeze whispered a dry omen and Lanius’ armor clamored as he undressed himself.

“No! No!” A horrid fear gripped the Courier. The pillory rumbled as she struggled. Scraping her wrist and neck with splinters till her flesh flushed rutilant. Lanius’ final armament hit the deck with a resounding thud.

“What will you do to make this stop, Courier?” Lanius slipped a fiddling finger inside Lilith’s sphincter.

She winced. “Just kill me! I won’t accept this disgrace.”

Lanius leveled his cock with her asshole. His head prodded for entrance and Lillith squirmed frantically to deny it. “Your ass is mine, Courier.” His hips reared back for a damning thrust.

Part of Lilith’s mind didn't accept what was happening. Until she felt the monster’s steel-hard shaft press between her soft derriere, spreading her cheeks apart to accommodate. Suddenly, it was as if she was watching herself from outside her body—witnessing a crime happening to someone else entirely. The kind of people who such things always happened to: the poor, hapless or whorish. It couldn't possibly be happening to her.

But as she felt his hips ram forward, thundering against her tight entrance. The true reality of what was unfolding finally pierced her. The realization that she was to suffer the fate of countless generations of women before her. The very definition of ladylike terror—a fear instilled into her and all like her, ever since she was a young girl. An act upon which there would be no return—a defiling from which she could never recover.

Her thighs thrashed as he pierced her, the weight of him ramming her into the splintered block. Lilith’s spluttering chokes echoed across the encampment. Her blue eyes bulged in horror, wide and bloodshot as his fingers clawed into her hips. Using her soft flesh as leverage as her body ricocheted against the wooden restraint. As he pressed forward, the pain in her twisted shoulder was forgotten, replaced instead by a piercing, searing heat between her cheeks, burning all else from her mind. Her body bucked, shook, writhed, twisting helplessly against his crushing bulk. Lilith’s mouth opened and closed with a wordless, gasping, unintelligible babble as she felt her defenses tremble, and start to give way.

"Lilith your ass is perfect, so tight!" Lanius’ body tensed and trembled. His hardened muscles swelled with ghoulish vigor. He squeezed his cock into her unwilling hole. His rigid length was still four inches from full insertion. "I know you can take all of it, Courier. That's it scream!"

Lanius groaned and he wrapped his arms around Olivia's stomach. Bending at the waist, Lanius hugged her. Laying his chin on her spine and humping her passionately. "What is it, Courier? What's hurting you?"

Lanius thrust harder. He wanted to make her talk. Hear her say it. Lanius needed Lilith to acknowledge his cock—to scream and decry its size and horrid shape.

Lilith’s garbled screams finally found their voice. Her blood-curdling cries curse the air, high and warbling and strident. Her head rocked back sharply, her back twisting into an arch, her black sweat-laden hair tangled over her eyes. The pain was unimaginable, violent, and searing, like a blade sunk deep into her yielding flesh. Violent spasms racked along her thighs. Her tendons tensed against her flesh. The Courier’s unprepared body quivered in shock at its violent invasion.

Gasping, she felt his biceps tighten around her sides. Their bodies pinned together. Her lower half bent and exposed, pinned in place as he began to rut against her—hips jolting in rabid, brutal strokes.

Turning her head to the side, she cried out in tears.

"Stop! Please.. unnngh... pl... mffffgh..." Lilith could barely think, barely breath. "Too big... I can't take it... please, don't do this..."

Another shuddering spasm tore through her, her right leg starting to twitch uncontrollably as his cock shifted deeper. "Please! Not deeper, please! I'll do anything, don't... DON'T! MFFFFGH!"

Lanius’ groans wafted across the sweat of Lilith’s back. He wanted Lilith to hear his pleasure, and how much he was enjoying her body—claiming it for what it was instinctively made for. His hips pistoned and found their rhythm. He could feel himself finally bottoming out inside her.

"Lillith, it's all the way inside!" He nibbled at her shoulder before kissing and licking the dainty wound.
"I knew a butt slut like you could fit it," Lanius grunted now. "Scream, Courier!"

Lanius didn't care about the lesson anymore. He didn't need a future or a plan. He had Lilith, right now, in front of an awestruck audience, and he'd torture and twist his prey for as long as she could withstand it.

"I can't... I can't... I can't... please... make it stop... MFFFFGGH!" Lilith’s body shook involuntarily, her chest rising and slamming against the pillory as her muscles spasmed and seized. Splinters grinded against her bared breasts. Her body quaked now. Lilith’s once pristine, olive skin covered in welts and scratches. As the man's cock hilted itself inside her, Lilith felt a dull, sickening ache spread from her groin and stomach—felt her organs shift inside her as he pressed deep, deeper inside her core.

"I'll... be... good... I won't try and escape... I'll... make you feel good, I'll..." Her voice caught in her throat as she felt a sharp welting sting against the side of her derriere.

"Nnnnngghh..." The sound coming from her lips was almost inhuman, a garbled, broken noise as she struggled to breathe, her back now twisted sharply, forcing the curves of her ass into a perfect arc beneath him. Every thrust against her sent a violent shudder through her body—her ass rippling and quivering, her breasts swaying and dancing for display. Needling goosebumps, sparking daggers of pain tore along her legs now, ravaging her nubile frame, every second burgeoning worse than the last.

But worse—far worse than the pain—was another feeling growing inside her: a shuddering, crestfallen pleasure, unwelcome and surging with every brutal thrust of his cock against the wall of her ass.

Lanius lost himself in the throes of pleasure. His feral noise rang off the metal of his mask. Heady adrenaline intermingled with primeval desire and the vagrant's cock tore at Lilith’s asshole for satisfaction. Her flesh wasn't resisting anymore. The Courier’s frame trembled in acute suffering.

"You'll what?" Lanius bare hand struck Lilith’s soft derriere. "I'm almost there, Courier." His hoarse voice wafted across her nape. "Your ass is incredible." he groaned.

Lanius balls swelled and tensed with his with his ghoulish seed. He thrust recklessly, trying to his cockhead seemingly searching for the bend in her rectum.

Lilith lamented. Her strident wails reduced to ugly groans. Her eyelids flickered in blinding pain. He was everywhere—filling her vision, pressing against every part of her body, the heat and scent of him shocking her senses, crushing the air from her lungs, utterly dominating her slender, petite form—making her body his own.

Every thrust of his cock caused her nubile frame to shudder and spasm. Her torpid muscles seized and cramped. She could feel her flesh stretching around him, nearly tearing from his rabid rut. Thrashing thrusts beat against her soft, pliant flesh like a jackhammer. Her right leg was shaking violently now. Lilith’s nerves overloaded. Her vision blurred from the pain. Her mind teetered to eclipse. Flee consciousness and shut down to protect herself from the grisly horror she was being subjected to...and yet all the while, horrific arcs of involuntary pleasure pulsed and throbbed within her groin, growing stronger with each bludgeoning blow of his cock. The wild movement of his hips beating the sensations into her, forcing her to feel everything... pleasure and pain becoming one within her. She had never orgasmed with a man... she had been saving herself, saving that perfect moment for the perfect night of bliss. And yet now, she felt it rising... fast and cruel and unwanted. Not like this... Not like this...

As the man's hand twisted her raven hard, craning her face to his, Lilith let out a wild, screaming whimper, hot tears pouring down her cheeks, abject fear and horror painted on her once brave face.

"No one will save you, Courier. Look at me." Lanius groaned feeling his climax burgeon. "Look at me!"

"Are you going to cum, Courier?" Lanius thrust himself fully inside her and paused. He removed his mask and the monster’s pupils dilated to pits. Lanius’ checkered grin revealed the tar-black of his gums. "Cum like the whore you are. Cum while I relieve myself inside you."

Lanius seized her hips, holding her ass still and closed his eyes. As if meditating, he relaxed the pressure of his Vas Deferens, allowing his urethra to pour lukewarm fluids into Lilith’s gaped hole.

Lilith wiggled her body with the last dregs of her spirit. She grimaced feeling warm pressure erupt inside her. The acrid scent of piss filled the air. Some of the soldiers averted their eyes. Lilith’s violent, bursting orgasm halted at the precipice. Instinctually, she wiggled her butt to finish the job. Lanius spanked her again and Lilith rippled from near ecstasy. His cock slipped from her hole, and Lilith’s sphincter drizzled with Lanius’ piss.

The camp’s commander circled round to face the Courier. Stroking himself he spewed two thick ropes across Lilith’s face before batting her face with his cock.

“Welcome to your new life, Courier.”