Published by Stroker Chase at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Stroker Chase
Other Work by Stroker:
The Naughty Elf: A Mind Control Christmas: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/113596
The Invisible Next Door Nympho: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114001
“And what’s a pretty thing like you doing around here?”
The old woman shimmied on her hips as she fixed her eyesight on Rinoa walking up the road. Her house stood behind her. It was barely standing. In town, surely others would find that it was unsuitable for living, and would have torn it down, but out here, where no one dared to travel, it was causing no problems.
“Hi, is that your house?”
Rinoa was now face to face with the woman. She looked weary, and had a broom in her hands, dusting away the dirt from the long dirt road that ran from Mina to the other kingdoms. A worthless task.
“Yes, it is. May I ask what you’re doing this far from town?”
She didn’t recognize me, Rinoa thought. She was far too attractive to be this far from town. Rinoa could have been married to a wealthy man and living on an estate now. She had all the right assets: a beautiful face, a slender, yet voluptuous body, and the sexual appetite to make any lord scream days on end. But she had chosen a different path. She was one of the Sisters of the Sworn Swords.
It was at that moment that the old woman’s face turned in disgust. She could see the longsword on Rinoa’s back. When she saw the Sworn Sister’s emblem, a mermaid standing tall in the tentacles of a sea monster, she broke off down the road.
“Good day to you.”
It had been miles since Rinoa had rest. Back in the city, before she left and said her goodbyes, which were said in a way that made Rinoa feel like they were her final, they had told her of the old woman. “She’ll give you your last rest on the road,” they had told her. Rinoa hadn’t liked all of the talk of “final”. To them, she was just another pretty face leaving town to never return again.
She
ran after the woman. “Wait, they said back in Mina that you fed the
other girls who passed by.”
But she wasn’t listening. She was
headed right back towards her house. Rinoa grabbed her shoulder.
“Off, off you!” The woman spun around, and Rinoa could see that she had tears welling up in her eyes.
“Why do they send more girls out here? Don’t they know they never come back! I’ll not be feeding any more girls here. Now go back and tell them to stop sending more girls to die.”
That’s all she heard. “A waste,” she had heard one man say as she was headed out of town. He was some sell sword from a far off city. He was watching the procession from the pub doorway with a foamy beer in his hands.
“Such a thing was made for sex, not to die a needless death. Hey pretty thing, why don’t we just say you went into the woods, then you can steal off into my room at night, and we can travel the kingdoms together?”
Not one person thought she would be coming back alive, except for Rinoa. All warned her not to go on the path of the Sworn Sisters, even if it was a noble path. They would not even give her the respect of being a trained swordsman. Whenever men got in her way, she would challenge them to a display of swords. Not one man had defeated her. The sells word on her way hadn’t bested her either.
“I’m Rinoa, 31st Sister of the Sworn Swords. I have sworn my life, my sword, to slaying the beast named Sin. Sin, destroyer of our fields, the one who eats our cattle, and pollutes our seas. The great shade of Mina. 30 sisters have come before me,” and Rinoa added something that was not taught her, “And I will be the last.”