SBB 2015 ENTRY #2: CAGED (1/4)
Title: Caged
Pairing: none
Rating: R
Warnings: sexual & psychological abuse of a child, rape, violence, slavery
Final Word Count: 30,203 words
Kibum did not remember his parents.
He knew, distantly, that he must have had them, because everyone had parents. He’d asked Cook about it once, and she had said so. She’d also said that parents were very important, given him a weird look, and fed him one of the special treats she was making, the ones the slaves weren’t supposed to touch. Not the ones who didn’t work in the kitchens, anyway.
Kibum supposed he didn’t mind not having parents, whatever Cook might say. She had also said other things were important, like birthdays and holidays and carrots, but Kibum didn’t know when his birthday was, didn’t see the point in holidays when one had to work anyway, and hated carrots. So Cook might be wrong about parents too.
Kibum was not quite the youngest of the household slaves. Two of the gardeners and one of the parlor maids had babies, and one of the stablehands had a toddler. Everyone was forever trying to make Kibum play with the toddler, but he never wanted to. He was too old for that, being four, or maybe five.
Besides, Kibum had Minho.
The slaves didn’t think Minho counted. Kibum knew that this was ridiculous. Minho was what Kibum was for. The lord of the manor- Minho’s father- had purchased Kibum a couple of years ago as a plaything for his young son. The slaves warned Kibum that being a toy for a spoiled noble child was not the same thing as having a friend. Kibum never listened.
Minho, being the younger of two brothers, was not the lord’s heir. This was probably why no one felt it inappropriate that the lord had bought Kibum to distract Minho when he became too much of a handful for the nursery slaves to manage. The lord himself took little personal interest in his children; the rumors went that after his wife had died, he couldn’t quite stand to look at them.
Kibum was not interested in silly grown-up rumors or the slaves’ disapproval of Minho. ‘The lord’s brat’ was what they called him when the Choi family wasn’t around. Kibum didn’t care about that, either. Minho was fun. They had adventures together.
It was Minho who came thundering down the stone pathway to the gardens now, interrupting Kibum’s reflections on whether or not Cook was right about parents. Kibum, too used to Minho to be much bothered by the interruption, stowed his reflections aside and climbed up off the stone bench he’d been lying on.
“Kibum!” gasped Minho, wheezing and out of breath. He must have run all the way from the nursery. “I heard Misook talking about a place in the woods where some bandits buried treasure, and we should go and dig it up and find it!”
Misook was one of the nursery set, and a horrific liar. Kibum knew this because the gardeners were forever complaining about how some low-ranking baby-wrangler had the nerve to tell them tall tales that were never actually true, and did she think that just because they worked outside that they had no brains?
Kibum didn’t inform Minho of this, though. Digging things up in the woods sounded like fun, and Minho always got upset when someone poked holes in his wild ideas. Kibum didn’t fancy being beaten by Myungsook, the scary head of the nursery, for upsetting the lord’s youngest again.
“Sure,” Kibum said instead. He smiled and offered his hand. They weren’t supposed to hold hands, ever, but no one cared because they were young and Minho didn’t mind. “Where?”
“I’ll show you,” said Minho eagerly. He grabbed Kibum’s hand with his own, lacing chubby fingers through Kibum’s thinner ones, and tugged him towards the path that led towards the woods. “What if there are bones there?”
The idea of bones did not appeal to Kibum, but he ran cheerfully at Minho’s side anyway. There was another reason he liked playing in the woods, after all. Once they were past the edges of the garden, he cast a furtive glance around, and shifted.
The rush of the transformation was always enough to make him giddy. He yowled- softly, of course, they weren’t far enough into the woods to hide sound yet- and leaped about, reveling in the sharper senses and lither body of the werekitten form.
Minho was grinning at him, small face enormously pleased. Kibum finally stopped gamboling about and trotted up to him. He sat down at Minho’s feet and swished his long tail back and forth. The invitation was unnecessary, of course; Minho was already reaching forward to scratch behind his ears.
“Good kitty,” said Minho, and giggled when Kibum licked his face. “Pretty kitty.”
Kibum purred.
It took a moment more and some effort on Minho’s part, but Kibum was soon joined by a werepup. Minho couldn’t transform as easily as Kibum could. Neither of them knew why, only that Minho wasn’t allowed to transform. Of course, Kibum wasn’t supposed to either, which was what the slave collar on his neck was for. But he and Minho had long since figured out how to undo the transformation-blocking spell on the strip of leather and metal.
Minho yipped at him, Kibum mewled, and then they were off!
Running in their transformed states was much easier and more fun than running as humans. Kibum’s paws flew over the ground in an instinctive rhythm, skirting branches and rocks and mud patches, flying over brambles and bushes. Minho ran slightly ahead of him, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted his exhilaration.
They finally came to a small, sunny clearing. Minho arrived first and flung himself down, rolling over and over in the grassy dirt. Kibum, more fastidious, pranced over and arched his back. He stretched his paws out in front, curled his tail over his head and yawned, baby claws extended.
Minho, of course, had to tackle him right then. Kibum hissed with outrage and they went flying about. They tussled for a bit, nipping playfully at each other’s soft, fuzzy coats. Then Kibum, tired, rolled onto his back and arched his throat, baring it to Minho in a show of submission.
Minho growled at the sight, and flopped on top of him. Kibum gave a small, indignant squeal, and squirmed onto his side. Minho didn’t move off of him, just gave another puppy-like growl of pleasure and nuzzled his cold, wet nose into the side of Kibum’s face. Kibum huffed, then twisted slightly and licked his submission again at the edges of Minho’s mouth and jaws.
Then they lay still, sprawled in the sunlight. The joy of the run had apparently made Minho forget all about buried bandit treasure. This was fine with Kibum. He felt content and comfortable lying like this, with Minho’s weight a heavy warmth pressing down on him. He could feel Minho’s contentment as well, a self-satisfied curl of pleasure against his soul.
It would be nice if they could doze like this forever.
They couldn’t, of course. Perhaps half an hour later, Minho’s stomach rumbled with hunger and he rolled off of Kibum, who mewled with distress at the sudden lack of werepup on top of him. Minho impatiently dug his teeth into Kibum’s soft ruff and shook him.
Kibum huffed again, but there was no arguing with the lord’s son. They both knew who was in charge here, and it wasn’t him.
They trotted back towards the manor, side by side, Minho’s tail high and waving. They stopped occasionally to nuzzle and paw at each other. Sometimes Minho would bite Kibum’s ear and bark soft puppy laughter at Kibum’s offended snarls. Kibum took revenge by winding himself about Minho and tripping him up, demanding swift nips and nudges of Minho’s shoulder in return.
They soon made it to a different edge of the woods, one near the wide expanse of carefully trimmed lawn bordering on the east side of the house. They transformed back and went running as human children across the flowery grass.
Kibum, hand in Minho’s, tripped and accidentally brought Minho down with him. Minho yelled with glee at the opportunity to roll in more dirt and didn’t let go of Kibum. This forced Kibum to roll with him, nose wrinkled as they squished through dewy mud and over bugs.
By the time they stopped, Minho was breathless with laughter, and Kibum was covered in a disgusting amount of grass stains. He sighed. Minho just grinned.
“I forgot about the treasure,” Minho said comfortably, lying on his back next to Kibum. “We can find it later.”
Kibum nodded. There was a horrible spider crawling up Minho’s shin. Minho just looked at the spider, fascinated, then casually flicked it off. Kibum shuddered.
“Scared?” Minho teased.
“No,” said Kibum. There were tons of spiders in the slaves’ quarters. It’d be silly to be scared of them. It didn’t mean he had to like them, though.
“Uh-huh,” said Minho, and shoved him in the side. Kibum scowled. Minho giggled.
“I can’t bring spiders to the nursery,” said Minho after a moment. “No one likes them.” He squeezed Kibum’s elbow. “I’ll bring ‘em to you.”
“I don’t like them either,” said Kibum, forgetting his place, because ugh, spiders.
Minho just giggled again, like Kibum’s disgust was funny somehow. The sound sent a spike of annoyance up Kibum’s spine. He flexed his fingers, remembering the feel of kitten paws. Everything was so much simpler when he transformed. He wished he could stay in were form forever. He wouldn’t have to think about parents, or what was okay to do around Minho, or have to help Cook scrub pots. He wouldn’t have to eat carrots, either.
Minho kicked him in the ankle. Kibum’s sliver of irritation deepened.
“Hey,” said Minho. “Hey, hey, hey. Whatcha thinkin’ of?”
“Being a cat,” said Kibum truthfully. He flexed his fingers again. “And parents.”
Minho made a soft, disgusted noise. “Ugh. Parents.” He rolled his eyes. “I miss Mom,” he qualified. “But Dad is scary and boring.”
Kibum did not dare comment about the lord of the manor in such a fashion. He blinked instead.
“I dunno if I have any,” he said. “Parents, I mean. Cook says so, but I dunno.”
Minho snorted. “Cook is stupid,” he announced. “She won’t let me eat cake unless Myungsook says it’s okay, and she won’t, either.”
Kibum bit his tongue to keep from defending Cook. He thought about patting Minho’s arm in sympathy and didn’t. Minho was fun most of the time, but Kibum hated when he got like this.
“Kibum?” Minho sat up, looking very serious. Kibum sat up too, curious. “If you were Cook, you’d let me eat cake whenever I wanted, right?”
“’Course,” said Kibum automatically. “Why?”
“’Cause,” said Minho. He looked satisfied with himself. “You like me, right?”
“’Course,” said Kibum again, even more curious as to where this was going. “You do fun things with me and stuff.”
Minho grinned and nodded. “Good,” he said firmly. “I knew it.” He stretched and yawned. “C’mon, let’s go make Subin sneak us food.”
Something about the arrogant self-assurance in Minho’s voice made Kibum’s irritation flare into something deeper. He maybe should have kept quiet the way he was supposed to, but he was four (maybe five), and just couldn’t anymore.
“Do you like me too?” he asked Minho. He felt it suddenly important to know, so that he could for once and all ignore the slaves’ whispers of how he was no more than a toy to his best friend. They were wrong, he just knew it, annoyance notwithstanding.
“Yeah, ‘course,” Minho said dismissively, scrambling to his feet. “C’mon.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why d’you like me?” Kibum said, and heard some of the deeper irritation- which he suddenly realized was anger- bleed out into his voice.
Minho just blinked, like this was a ridiculous question.
“You’re mine, of course,” he said. “I like all my fun things.”
He said this quite calmly, as if this were just a fact of life. Which it was, but something in little Kibum’s soul snapped nonetheless at the confirmation of everything that he’d so far refused to believe. He stamped his foot on the ground, furious.
“I hate you!”
Minho’s eyes went wide, comical with astonishment. “Don’t be stupid, you can’t hate me. I like playing with you even more than Sticks.”
Sticks was one of the puppies kept in the hunting dog kennels. The act of being compared to an animal infuriated Kibum beyond belief and finally sent him over the edge into an uncontrolled rage. He shrieked and lunged at Minho, barely aware that he was transforming into feline form as he went.
Minho screamed with shock when Kibum’s claws tore into his front. The scent of hot blood just incensed Kibum further, stirring up deep-seated killing instincts. He continued to rend Minho’s front and bite at him, sinking sharp teeth into Minho’s human throat, desperate to inflict lethal pain on the false friend who’d hurt him so.
Minho’s screams died as his breath choked out of him. Kibum felt small fists beating at his furred chest as he tore deeper into Minho’s neck. The only thought in his wild, blood-frenzied mind was to cause pain- more and more and more of it.
Then a pair of large adult hands caught him- more than a pair, several hands- and dragged him back. A shock travelled through him from his collar and forced his jaws open. Kibum spat and hissed and snarled, but he was only a kitten and couldn’t get away.
Minho was crying, scary soundless crying. He was still bleeding everywhere, and Kibum still felt furious. How dare Minho actually believe Kibum was no more than his plaything? Kibum had always known that Minho was in charge of their friendship, but he’d thought it was still friendship nonetheless. He was willing to be the inferior in their relationship, but too proud to accept being only a pet, or worse- an object for Minho’s entertainment.
Someone grabbed Kibum’s collar, yelled something, and a shock of magic travelled through the werekitten’s body, sending him to sleep.
~~~
Kibum spent two days in the punishment cages after that.
Some of the slaves managed to visit and sneak food to him. Kibum felt scared and small and very young. They’d fixed the blocking spell on his collar, and he couldn’t even transform for comfort.
“They’re going to sell you,” Jiyoung told him one visit. Jiyoung was a kitchen slave, one of the ones Cook didn’t yell at much for slacking off. “Did you know that?”
Sell him? They couldn’t sell him! Kibum belonged here. He couldn’t remember anywhere else.
His distress must have been clear, because Jiyoung stretched her fingers through the bars and stroked his foot.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said gently. “You’re just a kid. They can’t sell you anywhere terrible, because you’re not old enough to interest those kinds of buyers.”
Kibum nodded and sniffled and didn’t understand. Jiyoung scratched his foot again and had to leave.
Then Kibum curled up and cried some more.
~~~
After two days, a scary man with an enormous dyed-red mustache bought him.
Kibum was hosed down, dressed in something not completely muddy and brought out into the back field. The lord of the manor held him still while the mustache man poked and prodded at him, and inspected his teeth.
“He’ll do, sir,” said the mustache man finally. “How much?”
They bartered. Kibum stood still, head hung low. An icy chill of terror was freezing everything inside of him, including the hot sobbing rage he’d felt while locked up in the cages. He didn’t want to go.
The lord and the mustache man finally settled on a price. The mustache man began counting golden coins into one hand while the lord undid the collar on Kibum’s neck.
The lord must have noticed the coiled tensing of Kibum’s muscles, because he slapped Kibum’s cheek and said warningly: “Don’t make a run for it, boy. Your new master would be most displeased, and I doubt he’s as congenial as I am.”
Kibum wasn’t sure what ‘congenial’ meant, but he understood the gist of the message and stayed still, even collarless. The lord accepted the money from the mustache man, then turned and left.
The mustache man grinned at Kibum, a scary grin, and unfolded a new collar from a pocket of his thick vest. Kibum growled quietly as the collar was fastened on- it was not nearly as comfortable as his old one- and the mustache man slapped him, hard.
Kibum went staggering, dragged to a halt only by the mustache man’s tight grip on the collar around his throat.
“Don’t give me sass, brat,” the mustache man warned him. “His lordship’s spoiled you rotten, that’s for sure, attacking the manor’s son and all. Powers beyond know what got into you. Well, you won’t be trying anything with me. I’ve got plans for you, kitty.”
Kibum didn’t growl again after that. He felt a slow rage start burning inside of him, though, as the mustache man bundled him off to a musty straw-filled wagon and urged his oxen down the road.
~~~
The mustache man- who ordered Kibum to call him ‘master’- mostly spent his time driving the wagon about the roads, whistling. At night, they’d camp somewhere and the mustache man taught Kibum tricks.
“I’m gonna sell you to a circus,” he would cackle gleefully. “There’s a trend for performing wereanimals these days. Cats especially, because powers know they’re tough to train, brainless as they are. But you’ll learn, won’t you, kitty? I’ll sell you for a good price indeed, that I will.”
Kibum felt silly, being drilled like a dog into following commands like sit, stay, meow, roll over, especially in human form. But he couldn’t do anything about it.
He lay in chains in the fusty old wagon at night and cried silently. He missed the manor. He missed Cook and the gardeners and parlor maids and even that silly toddler from the stables. He missed the woods and the buried treasure they’d never go look for. He missed having a collar that fit properly.
He did not miss Minho. The betrayed epiphany of how Minho really saw him had not faded. Kibum missed his illusions of their friendship, but the thought of Minho himself sent Kibum into a frenzied fury still. It was all Minho’s fault that he was here now, stuck learning silly tricks like the lord’s hunting hounds.
~~~
The mustache man soon grew bored of the novelty of having a kitten to train, especially when no circuses were interested in purchasing the sullen and tiny Kibum. Eventually, the mustache man lost Kibum in a game of cards to some highway merchants who were little better than bandits.
Though the highwaymen had no interest in training Kibum to sit up and beg, they did take great delight in causing violence to their new possession. Kibum began to miss the mustache man, who had at least never beaten him.
The highwaymen grew bored of him too, after a while. They swindled a tavern owner in some forsaken little town into buying Kibum for twice the price he was actually worth. Kibum spent his weeks with the tavern owner being forced to run errands around the kitchen and clean everything. It was hard work, and he was bad at it because he was so small. Everyone got fed up and hit him when he did things like bleed into the potatoes he was trying to peel.
Then he got sold to someone else, and someone else after that. Kibum lost track after a while of who owned him when. He kept his mouth shut and did as he was told, all the while nurturing a growing flame of rage and hatred.
~~~
His latest master got tired of him as well and sold him to a man named Byungchul. It had been a little over a year and a half since Kibum had left the manor.
By this time, Kibum remembered very little of his original self, the one who’d liked chasing butterflies through the gardens with Minho and asking Cook and the stablehands excessive amounts of questions about why things worked. All he knew now was the art of staying quiet, even when he wanted to scream and sink teeth and fangs and claws into his masters the way he had sunk them into Minho.
Kibum didn’t think things could get any worse at this point.
He was wrong; Byungchul was worse.
After being purchased, new collar snug around his neck, Byungchul led him to a place in the midst of this town. The place was shabby and falling-down and looked a little like a rundown cross between a tavern and an inn. The sign on the front read in peeling painted letters: Greenvale’s Eighth Wonder: The Most Excellent Cathouse. Kibum wondered if this was some strange place for werecats.
Byungchul led him through a back door and up a flight of stairs and into a tiny, cramped room. There was nothing in the room save a table with odd instruments on it and a bed. Byungchul tossed Kibum onto the bed and loomed over him.
“You’re very young for this,” Kibum’s new master murmured. He seized Kibum’s hair and hauled him up on his knees, inspecting him. “But there’s a very rewarding market for that sort of thing if you know how to advertise.”
Kibum had no idea what he was talking about, and said so.
Byungchul just chuckled. “Oh, you’ll learn, pretty baby,” he said, grin splitting his face with terrifying amusement. “Do you know what a brothel is?”
Kibum shook his head. Byunghchul grinned harder.
“Well, you’ll learn soon enough,” he said again, which wasn’t helpful. “I may as well give you your first lesson, though. Strip.”
Kibum stared at him. Byungchul hit him.
“You heard me, kitten. Clothes off, now.”
Kibum duly slid out of his ragged tunic and leggings. He didn’t like being naked. It was cold and frightening. No master had made him do this before. He didn’t know what to expect.
Byungchul ran a hand through Kibum’s hair, fingers pulling painfully at the tangles. “Good kitty,” he said.
And then the touching started.
Kibum tried to stay obediently still at first, while Byunchul’s right hand held him by his hair and the other ran over his unclothed body. The sensation was horrible, though, and soon Kibum began to whimper and squirm in an attempt to get free. The familiar hot rage burned the back of his throat.
Byungchul hit him again. “This is your first lesson,” he said sharply. “This is your job. You will let people touch you, like this-” and Kibum cried out as Byungchul’s hand drifted lower. “And you will pretend to like it. Do you understand?”
Kibum shook his head defiantly. Byunchul hit him yet again, this time on his rear. Kibum yelped with pain.
“Do you understand?” Byungchul repeated.
Kibum nodded.
“Good baby,” Byungchul said, and mercilessly forced him flat down on his belly. “Time for lesson number two.”
Then Kibum felt fingers where no fingers ought to be, and screamed.
The scream ignited the slow-boiling rage and broke through the blocking spell on his newest collar. Kibum transformed and rolled out of Byungchul’s reach, snarling. Then he launched himself at his new master with claws extended, no thought in his head except the mad urge to kill, just the way it had been with Minho.
Byungchul transformed too, however, into a white wolf much larger and stronger than Kibum’s kitten form. He knocked Kibum away, then ground him down into the mattress with one enormous paw. Kibum shrieked in outrage. Byungchul’s fangs then grasped his face, and the wolf none-too-gently forced Kibum’s muzzle into the mattress as well, smothering him.
When Kibum felt faint from lack of air, Byungchul transformed and let him up. Then he grabbed Kibum’s collar and chanted the blocking spell back on. Kibum found himself human once more, sprawled face down on the mattress.
“Do not do that again,” said Byungchul, cold. “Now. Let’s try this one more time.”
This time, Kibum was too dizzy from lack of air to fight back.
~~~
His stay at the cathouse became one long blur of awfulness. Half the time, Kibum fell into a frenzied rage that permitted him to do nothing but fling himself at the walls and bars of the cage they kept him in. He tried, out of hate-maddened fury, to kill anyone who came within arm’s reach of him and very nearly succeeded several times.
The other half of the time, he was exhausted, particularly when Byungchul or one of his associates beat him and hurt him and touched him so much that it ached to move and any response other than the required one was too terrifying to contemplate. Kibum lived those hours paralyzed by fear.
Eventually, Byungchul gave up on trying to train him and sold him to a caravan. The caravan included one wagon full of travelling whores, and the wagonmaster felt eager to try his hand at breaking Kibum in.
He did not succeed; he had none of Byunchul’s skill at hurting Kibum badly enough to knock the murderous killing rage out of him. Kibum spent most of the journey chained up and watching the rest of the whores do their work. Most of them were nice enough; they stroked his hair and fed him things, and one lent him a blanket for the cold and rainy nights.
At this point, it was hard to care enough to be grateful.
The wagonmaster sold him to a new brothel in a new town. Kibum lasted a few weeks and then wound up sold to a different brothel. Then he wound up on another caravan, in another wagon of whores. He briefly became the pet of a perverted innkeeper, then was sold to yet another brothel.
This became his life: shuffled endlessly around to a never-ending series of such places. No one outside of the pleasure trade wanted a five (maybe six) year-old ruined by whore training. Kibum gradually understood that he had nowhere else to go but from bed to bed to bed.
In the end, the despair of that realization did what no one master could, and broke him.
Kibum wound up staying at one particular brothel for several months. He learned what he was supposed to learn. He didn’t fight back. The wrath that had sustained him for so long was gone. He couldn’t even remember what it had felt like. He stopped thinking. He stopped feeling.
He just existed.
Among the clientele who favoured young ones like him, Kibum soon became a favourite. He was good at his job. He had no energy to spare for anything else. Even the things he’d used to hate especially- like sucking people off, because his mouth was too small for it to be comfortable- became merely boring and routine.
Eventually, a passing slave train offered a large price for one so young and so skilled, and Kibum was sold again.
He spent the time in the slave train in the bed of one of the overseers. The overseer was not kind to him, but that didn’t matter. Kibum knew how to give him pleasure anyway and did so. That was what he was for. That was what he was.
They reached some city, eventually, and auctioned him off to a wealthy noble. The noble petted and pampered Kibum and couldn’t keep his hands off his pretty new bed toy. Kibum didn’t care about the sweets or the soft silks he was offered. He didn’t care about the entertainments the man left for him.
“I only care about you,” Kibum told his master frequently as he writhed on his lap and let the man kiss him and touch him and thrust painfully into him. But that was a lie: Kibum didn’t care about his master.
He didn’t care about anything.
~~~
Some time later- and this was perhaps another year and a half since Kibum had been sold to Byungchul, three years after he’d left the manor- the noble fell upon bad times and had to sell Kibum to cover a gambling debt. The noble felt a vague sort of sympathy for his pet, however, and sold Kibum to the city’s charity Sanctuary, where masters could sell unwanted young slaves to be trained in the service of the imperial army.
Kibum couldn’t muster tears at their parting, which angered his master and landed Kibum with his first beating at that man’s hands. The master’s housekeeper delivered Kibum to the Sanctuary and left him alone on the doorstep. Kibum sat there shivering until one of the Sanctuary masters came to fetch him and brought him inside.
They dressed Kibum in something more appropriate than the garb of a pleasure slave and assigned him a bunk in one of the dormitories. The other children tried to talk to him, but Kibum ignored them. They soon gave up and left him alone.
His days at the Sanctuary consisted of lessons regimented around a strict schedule. They would wake early, march drills in the courtyard, then eat a healthy and tasteless breakfast. Then they had classes for several hours- reading, arithmetic, history of the empire, music. Then was lunch, and an hour of free play. Then more lessons: geography, physical exercise, art and etiquette. Then they listened to the mages instruct them on the glories of magic. Then dinner and another hour of free play. Then bed.
This was the schedule six days a week. The seventh day, they had no indoor classes but spent the day drilling- marching and running and climbing in the courtyard. They were being trained to be the slave soldiers of the empire and to one day fight in distant lands for the glory of the Six Kingdoms.
Kibum was glad of the endless schedule and spent his free hours asleep. He excelled in his classes only because he was used to excelling in lessons: otherwise he’d wind up beaten and fucked senseless by his latest master. The Sanctuary masters never beat them or touched them, of course: punishments came in other forms like extra laps around the courtyard or lines written on the chalkboards, but Kibum knew better than to get used to it. Sooner or later, this peace would end.
It always did.
~~~
It was a crisp, sunny afternoon when things changed.
Kibum dozed in the courtyard while the rest of the children laughed and played around him. He dozed too hard and eventually fell deeply asleep. When he woke, most of the children were gone to class already, leaving him alone and late for lessons.
This was enough to earn him several march sets of punishment that night. Kibum should have cared more than he did.
He yawned, stretched and rolled to his feet. Then he froze.
There was a smaller child sitting not too far away, holding a fistful of bright red bayberries. Kibum blinked. They weren’t supposed to pick the fruit from the courtyard; while some of it, like the bayberries, were edible, it was all intended for decoration.
The child’s lip wobbled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sniffling. Kibum stared. “I was hungry, and they stole my lunch when the masters weren’t looking, and I’m hungry, and these are here, and my brother used to give me them before they killed ‘im, and I’m hungry-”
“It’s okay,” said Kibum automatically. “I won’t tell.”
The child’s eyes widened with hope. “Really? Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
Abruptly, all sign of tears vanished. The child scrambled over to where Kibum was and beamed.
“My name’s Taemin,” the child informed him. “I think I’m gonna be five soon. What’s your name? How old are you?”
“Kibum,” said Kibum reluctantly. “I think I’m seven.”
Taemin smiled with joy and barreled on. “I like that name! We should be friends ‘cause you aren’t gonna say nothing about my vegetables.” He pronounced the word ‘vegetables’ with an extended snap of the middle syllable.
“Those are berries, not vegetables,” Kibum felt obliged to point out.
Taemin just shrugged. “They’re good for you, so they’re vegetables, ‘cause vegetables are good for you. Like milk. I like milk.” He offered Kibum a berry. “Want one?”
Kibum felt the familiar tightness in his chest relax. Something about Taemin’s sunny babbling made him feel better.
He took a berry.
~~~
They both got in trouble for being late, of course, but for once Kibum didn’t mind, which was different from hopelessly not caring. He spent his free hours after that finding Taemin and talking to him. He didn’t think they were friends- Kibum didn’t trust the idea of ‘friends’ anymore- but Taemin made life feel less awful.
They spent their post-lunch hour one day roaming the courtyard near the high wall that separated the south half of the Sanctuary from the north half. Taemin took the opportunity to jump in a thorny bush entirely because he thought it ‘looked fun’. Kibum hauled him out again, scolding, and brushed at the bleeding scrapes. Taemin grinned and squirmed at the attention.
At least, until Kibum found several non-plant-shaped bruises and cuts on his upper arms.
“Don’t tell!” Taemin begged him, wide-eyed. “They said not to tell, or they’d steal my lunch again.”
Kibum’s eyes narrowed. “Who did?”
Taemin shook his head. “Just them.”
“Who?”
Taemin gave a little whimper. “I don’t want ‘em to steal my lunch again,” he whispered.
“I won’t let them,” said Kibum with authority. Something strangely familiar was blossoming inside his chest at the idea of someone hurting Taemin. “Tell me who they are.”
Taemin chewed on his lip. Then he said: “Yejun and Yunseo and Woojin.”
Kibum recognized the names. They were a group of younger children who often followed Taemin around. Kibum winced; he should have realized that they were Taemin’s tormentors, not his friends.
“I’ll make them stop,” Kibum told Taemin. “I promise.”
Taemin nodded. It didn’t look like he believed Kibum, but that was okay. Kibum would protect him anyway.
~~~
Kibum spent his afternoon classes thinking. Sometime during art class, he recognized the strangeness he’d felt earlier. It was anger. This worried him: anger was useless, as he well knew. Why did he feel it now?
Well, he knew that too, even if it disturbed him and he didn’t want to admit it. He felt it for Taemin. It was wrong that Taemin should be unhappy, because Taemin was kind and sweet and followed Kibum around like a little duckling. Kibum felt weirdly responsible for him. Taemin clearly couldn’t be responsible for himself, after all: the child was only five and had next to no common sense.
So Kibum contemplated a plan of action.
Once classes and dinner were over, Kibum sought out the three children Taemin had named. He had only a vague idea of what he was going to do, but he thought it would work. He was older, and therefore scarier, than they were. And he knew a lot about intimidation by now.
Yunseo, the girl, was the leader of the three. She spotted Kibum coming and stuck her tongue out at him.
“What d’you want?” she demanded. Yejun and Woojin crowded close behind her.
Kibum fixed her with his best scowl. Her eyes widened.
“Leave Taemin alone,” Kibum ordered. He punched a fist into his other hand and ground it there, cracking his knuckles. Yejun cringed. “If you steal his lunch or hurt him again, then I’m gonna hurt you.”
Tears of fright welled in Woojin’s eyes. Kibum was surprised; he wasn’t that scary, was he?
Or maybe he was. Whatever. It worked to his advantage.
Yunseo alone remained unmoved. “You won’t do nothing to us,” she informed him, nose in the air. “You’re too weird.”
Kibum favoured her with the grin one of his more particularly sadistic masters had liked to use on him.
“Oh yeah?” he said, drawling the words out. “Try me.”
This was too much for Woojin. He squeaked, grabbed Yejun’s arm, and they both fled away. Yunseo suddenly looked nervous without her two friends backing her up. Kibum deliberately loomed closer.
Then she, too, yelped and ran.
Kibum grinned. It felt good to be in control of things for once.
~~~
“They didn’t steal my lunch today,” Taemin told him wonderingly the next day during afternoon free hour. “What did you do?”
Kibum smirked. “I told you I wouldn’t let ‘em hurt you again,” he said. “I promised.”
Taemin looked up at him with shining eyes. Kibum couldn’t help smiling back. He hadn’t really smiled in years, but somehow Taemin always seemed to bring it out of him.
Taemin leaned against him, curling up against his side. Kibum looped an arm over Taemin’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
“Does this mean we’re friends?” asked Taemin.
Kibum drew in a sharp breath. He remembered the last time he’d been friends with someone. He could remember neither the lord’s son’s name nor his face anymore, but he could remember the stinging betrayal of illusions shattered.
But that hadn’t been friendship, not really. This was.
“Yeah, we’re friends,” Kibum said, and squeezed Taemin in a one-armed hug. “Best friends.”
Taemin’s smile at that was the most beautiful thing Kibum had ever seen.
~~~
It was not long after that Kibum got promoted into the beginner fighting classes, which were much more fun than the endless marching and drills and laps around the courtyard. Kibum was one of the very youngest in the fighting classes. He knew, of course, why he found the physical exercise lessons so easy. He was used to learning quickly how to do different strange things with his body.
He was also used to suffering bruises and physical exhaustion. Most of the other children had been household slaves from wealthy magic-using households who had never exerted themselves physically beyond stirring and cleaning pots. Which was definitely something, but Kibum had endured worse.
During his free hours, he taught some of what he was learning to Taemin. Although Taemin was even younger than Kibum, he picked up on the training with a natural ease. They sparred in secret together, sometimes even transformed.
The Sanctuary, though they of course kept all the children collared, nevertheless put only conditional blocking spells on those collars. The spells kept anyone from transforming with the intent to do harm, or when a master forbade the transformation. Otherwise, the children were free to wander about in either of their true forms. There was a reason for this: in order to be soldiers of the empire one day, they had to know how to use their second forms effectively.
Kibum didn’t care what the reason was. He just liked being able to dance about on four feet again.
Taemin didn’t transform as often as Kibum did. Taemin was a vampire pup, and too young to have full control over his transformation. His powers were also sporadic; sometimes they worked quite well, and sometimes they did not.
Kibum didn’t let him get frustrated, though. When Taemin’s eyebrows started scrunching together while his healing powers and fangs refused to cooperate with him, Kibum would break off the sparring and tackle him into a hug. Then they would roll around on the grass and cuddle. That always made Taemin forget about his frustrations and return to his usually sunny self.
~~~
The hardest lessons for Kibum were the arithmetic ones. Reading was hard because he was just learning to pick out letters and spell things, but everyone else struggled just as badly. Slaves were not ordinarily taught to read.
But arithmetic was worse. None of the other children may have known what numbers and equations looked like either, but they had grown up doing basic sums and subtractions in their heads. They had to know how many items their masters wanted them to fetch, or how tall and wide the master wanted the new shelves trimmed, or how much water to fill a tub for each person and other little things like that. Often the children who’d been in training at their old places to be cooks and housekeepers and stablehands knew more because one day they’d have to understand the logistics of managing budgets and the like.
Kibum might have known some of that once. But a pleasure slave had no need to know how to count anything or do simple calculations. So Kibum struggled.
His hard-working nature was noticed, however, by his arithmetic master, Sanghoon. Sanghoon was one of the few masters who let children come to him during their post-lunch free hour for extra help. Few did; the children had very little free time and almost no one wanted to spend it doing yet more math.
Kibum, though he never spent the entire hour, did go in for help perhaps two or three times a week. Although he longed to spend every waking hour with Taemin, who made him forget how much he disliked being alive, he knew that he could not afford to be bad at something. Being bad at things had never led anywhere good. Besides, Taemin could use some extra time to nap and make other friends.
The fact that Kibum really liked Sanghoon made it easier to give up some free time. Sanghoon was everyone’s favourite teaching master; he had a playful charisma that made even arithmetic seem not quite the most boring thing on the planet. Sanghoon also was physically affectionate with them in a way that no other master was, ruffling their hair, accepting hugs, bumping fists.
This helped Kibum especially. After years of being alternately manhandled and fucked all the time, it felt very isolating to have no one but Taemin touch him, ever, except in the martial arts drills, which really didn’t count. It was comforting to let Sanghoon pet his hair and hug him and once in a while set him on his lap and kiss his cheek. It eased his touch-starved soul.
~~~
At some point, the new children, the ones who had been there less than a year, were gathered into the Circle. The Circle was a huge round room with a stage in the center and rows and rows of benches climbing high around it. Kibum sat squished between Taemin and an older girl, and listened.
One of the higher-ranking masters, an administrative something or other, began lecturing them. She laid out their life path: they would study hard for seven years, then be sent out for three more years of field training and experience. By that time, they would be hardened soldiers and effective, efficient drones who would aid the Empire and the non-slave remainder of the Imperial Army in conquering far lands and defending their own.
There was only one way to win free of the Sanctuary and its training program, Kibum learned. This was to enter in a gladiator tournament and win. After winning, they would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Those who bid for gladiator slaves often kept training stables of them and made money off the betting that went on and the prizes given for successful fighters.
The administrator went on to warn them that if they thought attempting to enter a tournament would be easier than dying heroically in the service of the Empire one day, they were wrong. Very few Sanctuary slaves who entered the tournaments survived; they had simply not trained to face that particular kind of peril.
The small number who did win wound up being forced to enter tournaments for the rest of their usually short lives. Their new master would work them to death in gladiator training and force them to fight again and again and again until finally their luck ran out, and they were killed for the amusement of the masses.
The administrator made a very convincing case. Kibum believed her entirely. The life of a gladiator sounded awful. He would much rather become a soldier. At least then he’d probably get to stay with Taemin. They were both first-years in the same Sanctuary; they would eventually wind up in the same field unit, wouldn’t they? And dying in some faraway exciting land sounded much more interesting than getting mutilated in front of a horde of screaming people.
~~~
Kibum and Taemin soon grew bored with wrestling matches and talking. They began to have other adventures as well during their free time. They observed the masters and the buildings and planned out routes for how to sneak everywhere. Then they made good on their observations and crept through the halls unseen. They frequently had to stop and press the palms of their hands against their mouths to keep from giggling, giddy at their success.
They pretended they were Imperial spies. They weren’t, of course. No slaves were ever spies. But they could pretend. They made up stories about their exploits and secret personas and wove giant, complex mythologies about themselves. When they sparred, they imagined themselves fighting distant enemies and terrifying magical creatures.
No one ever caught them. This was an accomplishment that made pride bloom in Kibum’s chest. Taemin was too young and silly to understand the kind of pride it was, so Kibum nurtured it alone. It was the pride in being good at things he wanted to be good at. Pride in being self-sufficient. Pride in being better than everyone thought he was. Pride in his skills, his confidence, the ability and opportunity to actually be in control of a situation.
It was pride in himself mixed with pride in freedom. And, of course, pride in Taemin for keeping up with him, young as he was.
There was nothing better.
~~~
One day, perhaps to impress upon them how absolutely awful gladiator life would be, the first-years were taken to witness a gladiator tournament.
It was a hot day, made hotter by the endless stone and metal of the gladiator arena. The arena itself was similar to the Sanctuary’s Circle room, but much, much larger. There at to be at least hundreds of people, if not more, crammed into its benches. The richest nobles had shaded boxes of their own up at the top, but the common people formed a foaming mass of screams and bodies and sweat, packed tightly into the remainder of the place.
The bottom of the arena was a smooth stretch of yellow-orange sand. Kibum could faintly make out the outlines of enormous metal gates and doors underneath the stands and surrounding the sand. That must be where the fighters were let in.
He’d acquired a seat between Sanghoon and Taemin, much to his relief. Sanghoon put an arm around him to still his squirming, glancing down at him with an amused look as he did so. Kibum widened his eyes up at Sanghoon, pleadingly.
“The arena mages will spell a viewer for us once it starts,” Sanghoon told him. He nodded at Taemin. “Do try not to elbow your little friend in the ribs again.”
Kibum winced and squeezed Taemin’s hand in apology. Taemin paid no attention to any of this, however. He was gazing around, just as awed by the sea of people as Kibum was.
After a long wait that seemed like forever, the Duchess of the region went to the front of the second-most glamorous box- the best box at every arena in the empire was reserved for members of a royal family as a matter of tradition, no matter how unlikely it was that any royal person would ever attend that particular arena- and projected her voice across the entire arena with a spell.
“LET US BEGIN!”
Kibum shivered at the screams and cheers. Taemin, having just noticed Kibum’s attempt to hold hands, laced their fingers together. Sanghoon chuckled softly and ran a hand through Kibum’s hair.
Kibum turned his attention to the large and wavering rectangular pictures floating in the air- the mage-viewers that allowed the spectators to see the faraway action close-up.
The first match was between a scrawny, half-starved slave and a bigger, better-armored gladiator with thick muscles. It didn’t last long; the larger fighter won with ease and spilled the scrawny slave’s blood over the sands.
The crowd screamed disapproval.
“They’re disappointed,” Sanghoon explained to Kibum. “They wanted to see an interesting fight, not someone getting chopped up right away with such ease. But the tournaments always start off with the smaller matches, so they can end with an exciting grand finale.”
Kibum nodded, digesting this information, and kept watching.
As the day wore on, the matches did get more interesting. Sometimes two slaves fought and sometimes a slave fought an animal. Occasionally, an animal fought an animal. There was a lot of blood and gore, which the crowd seemed to love.
The watching Sanctuary slave-children, not so much. Many of Kibum’s fellow first-years looked sick. Some were crying. They understood violence very well, being former slaves, and it was deeply upsetting to see murder and conflict glorified like this. They were not like the free children in the audience, who watched with detached glee. All of the slave children knew it could very well be them out there dying on the sands one day. And if it not them, then their siblings and parents and friends.
There were a few exceptions. Kibum and Taemin were two of these. Taemin looked fascinated by everything. But then, Taemin wasn’t the best at grasping the reality of situations, and loved imagining danger and doing risky things. No doubt Taemin found the fights to be, if not entertaining, at least very, very interesting.
Kibum, on the other hand, was not at all enthralled by the blood and danger of the matches. He had, however, suffered too much himself to be frightened or disturbed by it. He was merely curious instead. Kibum remembered years ago, when he himself had gone into a killing rage. His own past attempts at murder looked much different than what the gladiators were doing. They were focused, intent, moving with practiced and precise skill.
It was fascinating that they could muster up the ability to slay a fellow slave without going into a murderous frenzy.
Sanghoon must have noticed his lack of reaction to the violence. The master leaned over and whispered: “So, Kibum, what do you think?”
Kibum shrugged. “It’s weird that they’re not angry,” he said truthfully.
Sanghoon gave a startled laugh. “Well, I’m sure some of them are,” he answered. “But blind rage gets in the way of critical thinking. In order to kill effectively, one must be clear-headed. Aren’t the fighting masters teaching you that?”
“We haven’t gone beyond how to hold sticks ‘properly’,” said Kibum, imitating the fighting masters’ stuffy tones. He looked curiously up at Sanghoon. “Do you know lots about killing, master?”
Sanghoon smiled. “A little,” he said. “I used to be a soldier, you know.”
“Really?” Kibum breathed, awed.
“Yes, really.” Sanghoon tweaked Kibum’s ear. “Then I got injured. The Healers, even the mage ones, couldn’t fix my leg properly, so I left the army and went to college. Then I started teaching at the Sanctuary.”
“What’s a college, master?”
“A place where free adults study subjects they’re interested in,” came the answer.
“Huh,” said Kibum, and returned his attention to the matches. They’d just released a giant catlike beast with a mane to fight not one but two armored gladiators.
He’d never quite thought about what masters did with their lives; he’d always just assumed that they did whatever they wanted to do. It must be nice though, being free. Kibum was fairly sure that if a slave-soldier had been that injured, they’d have been killed for uselessness. They certainly could not have gone to a college.
It began to dawn on Kibum that being free might be quite nice.
~~~
An arid summer night not too long after, it was time for another adventure. Kibum stayed awake as planned, until it was time to move. Then he shimmied off his top bunk and climbed sideways across the rough stone wall.
There was a wide, short window at the top with bars in it. The window was too small and the bars too wide for a seven-year-old human to get through. A werekitten, on the other hand, had just enough flexibility and lack of collarbones to be able to do so.
Kibum was through in seconds. He dropped soundlessly to the ground floor twelve feet below with practiced ease. He swished his tail, then set off to the meeting place.
Taemin was waiting for him. Kibum purred softly as Taemin buried his fingers in Kibum’s fur and petted him. He licked Taemin’s fingers and made him giggle, then nodded down the hallway.
Their goal this time was to sneak all the way to the high wall which cut the Sanctuary off from the rest of the city. There were lots of guards and masters and a high chance they’d be caught. Kibum wasn’t afraid, though, just excited. This was fun.
It was almost pitch-black because the torches were extinguished for the night. This did not impede them. Kibum’s kitten form had excellent night sight, and Taemin was following him closely with one hand on Kibum’s shoulder. Taemin’s vampire eyes could see perfectly in the dark as well- vampire eyes saw by heat rather than by light- but Taemin’s ability to stay transformed was dubious at best. It was easier just to let Kibum lead him.
They eventually passed a dimly lit corridor. It must be in occasional use by the patrols; that was the only reason the mages would have left the torches going so late.
There were also footsteps and hushed voices. Kibum growled quietly and pressed himself into a nook. Taemin curled up behind him, breathing just behind his right ear.
“...killed by the bloody rebels,” one of the masters was saying, her voice bitter. “It’s so useless, don’t you think? We train these brats for years, and the powers that be won’t even let us use them to root out those traitors. We need more security forces, not more pieces of cannon fodder.”
“Slaves aren’t intelligent enough to do that kind of work,” another master replied. “It takes so much effort just to get the stupid things to read. I don’t know how the first and second-year teaching staff does it.”
“An infinite amount of patience,” said the first master dryly. “It’s worrying, though, that they’re burning Sanctuaries. The guards we set are excellent.”
“Well, the rebels must be getting better,” the second master said. “It is worrying, I agree. Unfortunately, using slaves to extirpate them just won’t work. You know that. They’re not just brainless, they’re emotionally unstable. Remember, what was it, Kunwoo and Haeun?”
The first master snorted. “How could I not? My first field instructor told us horror stories about what happened. Powers, that was a disaster.”
“Yes, and imagine if something on that scale happened on a security raid?”
“I do see your point. No, slaves wouldn’t work as security, I suppose...”
Their voices faded around the corner. Kibum breathed a sigh of relief and eased away from the wall. Taemin followed him, stretching a little.
Kibum meowed softly at Taemin, and they set off again.
They didn’t meet anyone else on the way to the high wall and didn’t get caught as they ran silently across the long stretch of grass between the building and the wall. Kibum put out a paw and touched it once they got there. Taemin poked at the bespelled stone, eyes wide.
“We’re the best adventurers ever,” Taemin whispered, eyes shifting into vampire form out of sheer glee.
Kibum purred.
Their trip back was uneventful as well. They slunk silently through corridors and through windows, surefooted and quick. Kibum wondered if being a soldier would be like this. He hoped so. This was fun.
They finally came to where they had to part. Taemin needed to go back to the younger children’s dormitory, and Kibum to his own. Kibum shifted back to human form for just a moment to tug Taemin into a close hug.
“We did it!” he crowed as quietly as he could. “We’re awesome, Taeminnie!”
Taemin squeezed him back, giggling softly. “Awesome!” he echoed, wriggling with excitement.
Their trip to the high wall had been their most dangerous yet. Kibum didn’t think they would ever top it, but they would have to. Life just wasn’t interesting without such challenges.
| Part Two >>
Pairing: none
Rating: R
Warnings: sexual & psychological abuse of a child, rape, violence, slavery
Final Word Count: 30,203 words
Kibum did not remember his parents.
He knew, distantly, that he must have had them, because everyone had parents. He’d asked Cook about it once, and she had said so. She’d also said that parents were very important, given him a weird look, and fed him one of the special treats she was making, the ones the slaves weren’t supposed to touch. Not the ones who didn’t work in the kitchens, anyway.
Kibum supposed he didn’t mind not having parents, whatever Cook might say. She had also said other things were important, like birthdays and holidays and carrots, but Kibum didn’t know when his birthday was, didn’t see the point in holidays when one had to work anyway, and hated carrots. So Cook might be wrong about parents too.
Kibum was not quite the youngest of the household slaves. Two of the gardeners and one of the parlor maids had babies, and one of the stablehands had a toddler. Everyone was forever trying to make Kibum play with the toddler, but he never wanted to. He was too old for that, being four, or maybe five.
Besides, Kibum had Minho.
The slaves didn’t think Minho counted. Kibum knew that this was ridiculous. Minho was what Kibum was for. The lord of the manor- Minho’s father- had purchased Kibum a couple of years ago as a plaything for his young son. The slaves warned Kibum that being a toy for a spoiled noble child was not the same thing as having a friend. Kibum never listened.
Minho, being the younger of two brothers, was not the lord’s heir. This was probably why no one felt it inappropriate that the lord had bought Kibum to distract Minho when he became too much of a handful for the nursery slaves to manage. The lord himself took little personal interest in his children; the rumors went that after his wife had died, he couldn’t quite stand to look at them.
Kibum was not interested in silly grown-up rumors or the slaves’ disapproval of Minho. ‘The lord’s brat’ was what they called him when the Choi family wasn’t around. Kibum didn’t care about that, either. Minho was fun. They had adventures together.
It was Minho who came thundering down the stone pathway to the gardens now, interrupting Kibum’s reflections on whether or not Cook was right about parents. Kibum, too used to Minho to be much bothered by the interruption, stowed his reflections aside and climbed up off the stone bench he’d been lying on.
“Kibum!” gasped Minho, wheezing and out of breath. He must have run all the way from the nursery. “I heard Misook talking about a place in the woods where some bandits buried treasure, and we should go and dig it up and find it!”
Misook was one of the nursery set, and a horrific liar. Kibum knew this because the gardeners were forever complaining about how some low-ranking baby-wrangler had the nerve to tell them tall tales that were never actually true, and did she think that just because they worked outside that they had no brains?
Kibum didn’t inform Minho of this, though. Digging things up in the woods sounded like fun, and Minho always got upset when someone poked holes in his wild ideas. Kibum didn’t fancy being beaten by Myungsook, the scary head of the nursery, for upsetting the lord’s youngest again.
“Sure,” Kibum said instead. He smiled and offered his hand. They weren’t supposed to hold hands, ever, but no one cared because they were young and Minho didn’t mind. “Where?”
“I’ll show you,” said Minho eagerly. He grabbed Kibum’s hand with his own, lacing chubby fingers through Kibum’s thinner ones, and tugged him towards the path that led towards the woods. “What if there are bones there?”
The idea of bones did not appeal to Kibum, but he ran cheerfully at Minho’s side anyway. There was another reason he liked playing in the woods, after all. Once they were past the edges of the garden, he cast a furtive glance around, and shifted.
The rush of the transformation was always enough to make him giddy. He yowled- softly, of course, they weren’t far enough into the woods to hide sound yet- and leaped about, reveling in the sharper senses and lither body of the werekitten form.
Minho was grinning at him, small face enormously pleased. Kibum finally stopped gamboling about and trotted up to him. He sat down at Minho’s feet and swished his long tail back and forth. The invitation was unnecessary, of course; Minho was already reaching forward to scratch behind his ears.
“Good kitty,” said Minho, and giggled when Kibum licked his face. “Pretty kitty.”
Kibum purred.
It took a moment more and some effort on Minho’s part, but Kibum was soon joined by a werepup. Minho couldn’t transform as easily as Kibum could. Neither of them knew why, only that Minho wasn’t allowed to transform. Of course, Kibum wasn’t supposed to either, which was what the slave collar on his neck was for. But he and Minho had long since figured out how to undo the transformation-blocking spell on the strip of leather and metal.
Minho yipped at him, Kibum mewled, and then they were off!
Running in their transformed states was much easier and more fun than running as humans. Kibum’s paws flew over the ground in an instinctive rhythm, skirting branches and rocks and mud patches, flying over brambles and bushes. Minho ran slightly ahead of him, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted his exhilaration.
They finally came to a small, sunny clearing. Minho arrived first and flung himself down, rolling over and over in the grassy dirt. Kibum, more fastidious, pranced over and arched his back. He stretched his paws out in front, curled his tail over his head and yawned, baby claws extended.
Minho, of course, had to tackle him right then. Kibum hissed with outrage and they went flying about. They tussled for a bit, nipping playfully at each other’s soft, fuzzy coats. Then Kibum, tired, rolled onto his back and arched his throat, baring it to Minho in a show of submission.
Minho growled at the sight, and flopped on top of him. Kibum gave a small, indignant squeal, and squirmed onto his side. Minho didn’t move off of him, just gave another puppy-like growl of pleasure and nuzzled his cold, wet nose into the side of Kibum’s face. Kibum huffed, then twisted slightly and licked his submission again at the edges of Minho’s mouth and jaws.
Then they lay still, sprawled in the sunlight. The joy of the run had apparently made Minho forget all about buried bandit treasure. This was fine with Kibum. He felt content and comfortable lying like this, with Minho’s weight a heavy warmth pressing down on him. He could feel Minho’s contentment as well, a self-satisfied curl of pleasure against his soul.
It would be nice if they could doze like this forever.
They couldn’t, of course. Perhaps half an hour later, Minho’s stomach rumbled with hunger and he rolled off of Kibum, who mewled with distress at the sudden lack of werepup on top of him. Minho impatiently dug his teeth into Kibum’s soft ruff and shook him.
Kibum huffed again, but there was no arguing with the lord’s son. They both knew who was in charge here, and it wasn’t him.
They trotted back towards the manor, side by side, Minho’s tail high and waving. They stopped occasionally to nuzzle and paw at each other. Sometimes Minho would bite Kibum’s ear and bark soft puppy laughter at Kibum’s offended snarls. Kibum took revenge by winding himself about Minho and tripping him up, demanding swift nips and nudges of Minho’s shoulder in return.
They soon made it to a different edge of the woods, one near the wide expanse of carefully trimmed lawn bordering on the east side of the house. They transformed back and went running as human children across the flowery grass.
Kibum, hand in Minho’s, tripped and accidentally brought Minho down with him. Minho yelled with glee at the opportunity to roll in more dirt and didn’t let go of Kibum. This forced Kibum to roll with him, nose wrinkled as they squished through dewy mud and over bugs.
By the time they stopped, Minho was breathless with laughter, and Kibum was covered in a disgusting amount of grass stains. He sighed. Minho just grinned.
“I forgot about the treasure,” Minho said comfortably, lying on his back next to Kibum. “We can find it later.”
Kibum nodded. There was a horrible spider crawling up Minho’s shin. Minho just looked at the spider, fascinated, then casually flicked it off. Kibum shuddered.
“Scared?” Minho teased.
“No,” said Kibum. There were tons of spiders in the slaves’ quarters. It’d be silly to be scared of them. It didn’t mean he had to like them, though.
“Uh-huh,” said Minho, and shoved him in the side. Kibum scowled. Minho giggled.
“I can’t bring spiders to the nursery,” said Minho after a moment. “No one likes them.” He squeezed Kibum’s elbow. “I’ll bring ‘em to you.”
“I don’t like them either,” said Kibum, forgetting his place, because ugh, spiders.
Minho just giggled again, like Kibum’s disgust was funny somehow. The sound sent a spike of annoyance up Kibum’s spine. He flexed his fingers, remembering the feel of kitten paws. Everything was so much simpler when he transformed. He wished he could stay in were form forever. He wouldn’t have to think about parents, or what was okay to do around Minho, or have to help Cook scrub pots. He wouldn’t have to eat carrots, either.
Minho kicked him in the ankle. Kibum’s sliver of irritation deepened.
“Hey,” said Minho. “Hey, hey, hey. Whatcha thinkin’ of?”
“Being a cat,” said Kibum truthfully. He flexed his fingers again. “And parents.”
Minho made a soft, disgusted noise. “Ugh. Parents.” He rolled his eyes. “I miss Mom,” he qualified. “But Dad is scary and boring.”
Kibum did not dare comment about the lord of the manor in such a fashion. He blinked instead.
“I dunno if I have any,” he said. “Parents, I mean. Cook says so, but I dunno.”
Minho snorted. “Cook is stupid,” he announced. “She won’t let me eat cake unless Myungsook says it’s okay, and she won’t, either.”
Kibum bit his tongue to keep from defending Cook. He thought about patting Minho’s arm in sympathy and didn’t. Minho was fun most of the time, but Kibum hated when he got like this.
“Kibum?” Minho sat up, looking very serious. Kibum sat up too, curious. “If you were Cook, you’d let me eat cake whenever I wanted, right?”
“’Course,” said Kibum automatically. “Why?”
“’Cause,” said Minho. He looked satisfied with himself. “You like me, right?”
“’Course,” said Kibum again, even more curious as to where this was going. “You do fun things with me and stuff.”
Minho grinned and nodded. “Good,” he said firmly. “I knew it.” He stretched and yawned. “C’mon, let’s go make Subin sneak us food.”
Something about the arrogant self-assurance in Minho’s voice made Kibum’s irritation flare into something deeper. He maybe should have kept quiet the way he was supposed to, but he was four (maybe five), and just couldn’t anymore.
“Do you like me too?” he asked Minho. He felt it suddenly important to know, so that he could for once and all ignore the slaves’ whispers of how he was no more than a toy to his best friend. They were wrong, he just knew it, annoyance notwithstanding.
“Yeah, ‘course,” Minho said dismissively, scrambling to his feet. “C’mon.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why d’you like me?” Kibum said, and heard some of the deeper irritation- which he suddenly realized was anger- bleed out into his voice.
Minho just blinked, like this was a ridiculous question.
“You’re mine, of course,” he said. “I like all my fun things.”
He said this quite calmly, as if this were just a fact of life. Which it was, but something in little Kibum’s soul snapped nonetheless at the confirmation of everything that he’d so far refused to believe. He stamped his foot on the ground, furious.
“I hate you!”
Minho’s eyes went wide, comical with astonishment. “Don’t be stupid, you can’t hate me. I like playing with you even more than Sticks.”
Sticks was one of the puppies kept in the hunting dog kennels. The act of being compared to an animal infuriated Kibum beyond belief and finally sent him over the edge into an uncontrolled rage. He shrieked and lunged at Minho, barely aware that he was transforming into feline form as he went.
Minho screamed with shock when Kibum’s claws tore into his front. The scent of hot blood just incensed Kibum further, stirring up deep-seated killing instincts. He continued to rend Minho’s front and bite at him, sinking sharp teeth into Minho’s human throat, desperate to inflict lethal pain on the false friend who’d hurt him so.
Minho’s screams died as his breath choked out of him. Kibum felt small fists beating at his furred chest as he tore deeper into Minho’s neck. The only thought in his wild, blood-frenzied mind was to cause pain- more and more and more of it.
Then a pair of large adult hands caught him- more than a pair, several hands- and dragged him back. A shock travelled through him from his collar and forced his jaws open. Kibum spat and hissed and snarled, but he was only a kitten and couldn’t get away.
Minho was crying, scary soundless crying. He was still bleeding everywhere, and Kibum still felt furious. How dare Minho actually believe Kibum was no more than his plaything? Kibum had always known that Minho was in charge of their friendship, but he’d thought it was still friendship nonetheless. He was willing to be the inferior in their relationship, but too proud to accept being only a pet, or worse- an object for Minho’s entertainment.
Someone grabbed Kibum’s collar, yelled something, and a shock of magic travelled through the werekitten’s body, sending him to sleep.
~~~
Kibum spent two days in the punishment cages after that.
Some of the slaves managed to visit and sneak food to him. Kibum felt scared and small and very young. They’d fixed the blocking spell on his collar, and he couldn’t even transform for comfort.
“They’re going to sell you,” Jiyoung told him one visit. Jiyoung was a kitchen slave, one of the ones Cook didn’t yell at much for slacking off. “Did you know that?”
Sell him? They couldn’t sell him! Kibum belonged here. He couldn’t remember anywhere else.
His distress must have been clear, because Jiyoung stretched her fingers through the bars and stroked his foot.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said gently. “You’re just a kid. They can’t sell you anywhere terrible, because you’re not old enough to interest those kinds of buyers.”
Kibum nodded and sniffled and didn’t understand. Jiyoung scratched his foot again and had to leave.
Then Kibum curled up and cried some more.
~~~
After two days, a scary man with an enormous dyed-red mustache bought him.
Kibum was hosed down, dressed in something not completely muddy and brought out into the back field. The lord of the manor held him still while the mustache man poked and prodded at him, and inspected his teeth.
“He’ll do, sir,” said the mustache man finally. “How much?”
They bartered. Kibum stood still, head hung low. An icy chill of terror was freezing everything inside of him, including the hot sobbing rage he’d felt while locked up in the cages. He didn’t want to go.
The lord and the mustache man finally settled on a price. The mustache man began counting golden coins into one hand while the lord undid the collar on Kibum’s neck.
The lord must have noticed the coiled tensing of Kibum’s muscles, because he slapped Kibum’s cheek and said warningly: “Don’t make a run for it, boy. Your new master would be most displeased, and I doubt he’s as congenial as I am.”
Kibum wasn’t sure what ‘congenial’ meant, but he understood the gist of the message and stayed still, even collarless. The lord accepted the money from the mustache man, then turned and left.
The mustache man grinned at Kibum, a scary grin, and unfolded a new collar from a pocket of his thick vest. Kibum growled quietly as the collar was fastened on- it was not nearly as comfortable as his old one- and the mustache man slapped him, hard.
Kibum went staggering, dragged to a halt only by the mustache man’s tight grip on the collar around his throat.
“Don’t give me sass, brat,” the mustache man warned him. “His lordship’s spoiled you rotten, that’s for sure, attacking the manor’s son and all. Powers beyond know what got into you. Well, you won’t be trying anything with me. I’ve got plans for you, kitty.”
Kibum didn’t growl again after that. He felt a slow rage start burning inside of him, though, as the mustache man bundled him off to a musty straw-filled wagon and urged his oxen down the road.
~~~
The mustache man- who ordered Kibum to call him ‘master’- mostly spent his time driving the wagon about the roads, whistling. At night, they’d camp somewhere and the mustache man taught Kibum tricks.
“I’m gonna sell you to a circus,” he would cackle gleefully. “There’s a trend for performing wereanimals these days. Cats especially, because powers know they’re tough to train, brainless as they are. But you’ll learn, won’t you, kitty? I’ll sell you for a good price indeed, that I will.”
Kibum felt silly, being drilled like a dog into following commands like sit, stay, meow, roll over, especially in human form. But he couldn’t do anything about it.
He lay in chains in the fusty old wagon at night and cried silently. He missed the manor. He missed Cook and the gardeners and parlor maids and even that silly toddler from the stables. He missed the woods and the buried treasure they’d never go look for. He missed having a collar that fit properly.
He did not miss Minho. The betrayed epiphany of how Minho really saw him had not faded. Kibum missed his illusions of their friendship, but the thought of Minho himself sent Kibum into a frenzied fury still. It was all Minho’s fault that he was here now, stuck learning silly tricks like the lord’s hunting hounds.
~~~
The mustache man soon grew bored of the novelty of having a kitten to train, especially when no circuses were interested in purchasing the sullen and tiny Kibum. Eventually, the mustache man lost Kibum in a game of cards to some highway merchants who were little better than bandits.
Though the highwaymen had no interest in training Kibum to sit up and beg, they did take great delight in causing violence to their new possession. Kibum began to miss the mustache man, who had at least never beaten him.
The highwaymen grew bored of him too, after a while. They swindled a tavern owner in some forsaken little town into buying Kibum for twice the price he was actually worth. Kibum spent his weeks with the tavern owner being forced to run errands around the kitchen and clean everything. It was hard work, and he was bad at it because he was so small. Everyone got fed up and hit him when he did things like bleed into the potatoes he was trying to peel.
Then he got sold to someone else, and someone else after that. Kibum lost track after a while of who owned him when. He kept his mouth shut and did as he was told, all the while nurturing a growing flame of rage and hatred.
~~~
His latest master got tired of him as well and sold him to a man named Byungchul. It had been a little over a year and a half since Kibum had left the manor.
By this time, Kibum remembered very little of his original self, the one who’d liked chasing butterflies through the gardens with Minho and asking Cook and the stablehands excessive amounts of questions about why things worked. All he knew now was the art of staying quiet, even when he wanted to scream and sink teeth and fangs and claws into his masters the way he had sunk them into Minho.
Kibum didn’t think things could get any worse at this point.
He was wrong; Byungchul was worse.
After being purchased, new collar snug around his neck, Byungchul led him to a place in the midst of this town. The place was shabby and falling-down and looked a little like a rundown cross between a tavern and an inn. The sign on the front read in peeling painted letters: Greenvale’s Eighth Wonder: The Most Excellent Cathouse. Kibum wondered if this was some strange place for werecats.
Byungchul led him through a back door and up a flight of stairs and into a tiny, cramped room. There was nothing in the room save a table with odd instruments on it and a bed. Byungchul tossed Kibum onto the bed and loomed over him.
“You’re very young for this,” Kibum’s new master murmured. He seized Kibum’s hair and hauled him up on his knees, inspecting him. “But there’s a very rewarding market for that sort of thing if you know how to advertise.”
Kibum had no idea what he was talking about, and said so.
Byungchul just chuckled. “Oh, you’ll learn, pretty baby,” he said, grin splitting his face with terrifying amusement. “Do you know what a brothel is?”
Kibum shook his head. Byunghchul grinned harder.
“Well, you’ll learn soon enough,” he said again, which wasn’t helpful. “I may as well give you your first lesson, though. Strip.”
Kibum stared at him. Byungchul hit him.
“You heard me, kitten. Clothes off, now.”
Kibum duly slid out of his ragged tunic and leggings. He didn’t like being naked. It was cold and frightening. No master had made him do this before. He didn’t know what to expect.
Byungchul ran a hand through Kibum’s hair, fingers pulling painfully at the tangles. “Good kitty,” he said.
And then the touching started.
Kibum tried to stay obediently still at first, while Byunchul’s right hand held him by his hair and the other ran over his unclothed body. The sensation was horrible, though, and soon Kibum began to whimper and squirm in an attempt to get free. The familiar hot rage burned the back of his throat.
Byungchul hit him again. “This is your first lesson,” he said sharply. “This is your job. You will let people touch you, like this-” and Kibum cried out as Byungchul’s hand drifted lower. “And you will pretend to like it. Do you understand?”
Kibum shook his head defiantly. Byunchul hit him yet again, this time on his rear. Kibum yelped with pain.
“Do you understand?” Byungchul repeated.
Kibum nodded.
“Good baby,” Byungchul said, and mercilessly forced him flat down on his belly. “Time for lesson number two.”
Then Kibum felt fingers where no fingers ought to be, and screamed.
The scream ignited the slow-boiling rage and broke through the blocking spell on his newest collar. Kibum transformed and rolled out of Byungchul’s reach, snarling. Then he launched himself at his new master with claws extended, no thought in his head except the mad urge to kill, just the way it had been with Minho.
Byungchul transformed too, however, into a white wolf much larger and stronger than Kibum’s kitten form. He knocked Kibum away, then ground him down into the mattress with one enormous paw. Kibum shrieked in outrage. Byungchul’s fangs then grasped his face, and the wolf none-too-gently forced Kibum’s muzzle into the mattress as well, smothering him.
When Kibum felt faint from lack of air, Byungchul transformed and let him up. Then he grabbed Kibum’s collar and chanted the blocking spell back on. Kibum found himself human once more, sprawled face down on the mattress.
“Do not do that again,” said Byungchul, cold. “Now. Let’s try this one more time.”
This time, Kibum was too dizzy from lack of air to fight back.
~~~
His stay at the cathouse became one long blur of awfulness. Half the time, Kibum fell into a frenzied rage that permitted him to do nothing but fling himself at the walls and bars of the cage they kept him in. He tried, out of hate-maddened fury, to kill anyone who came within arm’s reach of him and very nearly succeeded several times.
The other half of the time, he was exhausted, particularly when Byungchul or one of his associates beat him and hurt him and touched him so much that it ached to move and any response other than the required one was too terrifying to contemplate. Kibum lived those hours paralyzed by fear.
Eventually, Byungchul gave up on trying to train him and sold him to a caravan. The caravan included one wagon full of travelling whores, and the wagonmaster felt eager to try his hand at breaking Kibum in.
He did not succeed; he had none of Byunchul’s skill at hurting Kibum badly enough to knock the murderous killing rage out of him. Kibum spent most of the journey chained up and watching the rest of the whores do their work. Most of them were nice enough; they stroked his hair and fed him things, and one lent him a blanket for the cold and rainy nights.
At this point, it was hard to care enough to be grateful.
The wagonmaster sold him to a new brothel in a new town. Kibum lasted a few weeks and then wound up sold to a different brothel. Then he wound up on another caravan, in another wagon of whores. He briefly became the pet of a perverted innkeeper, then was sold to yet another brothel.
This became his life: shuffled endlessly around to a never-ending series of such places. No one outside of the pleasure trade wanted a five (maybe six) year-old ruined by whore training. Kibum gradually understood that he had nowhere else to go but from bed to bed to bed.
In the end, the despair of that realization did what no one master could, and broke him.
Kibum wound up staying at one particular brothel for several months. He learned what he was supposed to learn. He didn’t fight back. The wrath that had sustained him for so long was gone. He couldn’t even remember what it had felt like. He stopped thinking. He stopped feeling.
He just existed.
Among the clientele who favoured young ones like him, Kibum soon became a favourite. He was good at his job. He had no energy to spare for anything else. Even the things he’d used to hate especially- like sucking people off, because his mouth was too small for it to be comfortable- became merely boring and routine.
Eventually, a passing slave train offered a large price for one so young and so skilled, and Kibum was sold again.
He spent the time in the slave train in the bed of one of the overseers. The overseer was not kind to him, but that didn’t matter. Kibum knew how to give him pleasure anyway and did so. That was what he was for. That was what he was.
They reached some city, eventually, and auctioned him off to a wealthy noble. The noble petted and pampered Kibum and couldn’t keep his hands off his pretty new bed toy. Kibum didn’t care about the sweets or the soft silks he was offered. He didn’t care about the entertainments the man left for him.
“I only care about you,” Kibum told his master frequently as he writhed on his lap and let the man kiss him and touch him and thrust painfully into him. But that was a lie: Kibum didn’t care about his master.
He didn’t care about anything.
~~~
Some time later- and this was perhaps another year and a half since Kibum had been sold to Byungchul, three years after he’d left the manor- the noble fell upon bad times and had to sell Kibum to cover a gambling debt. The noble felt a vague sort of sympathy for his pet, however, and sold Kibum to the city’s charity Sanctuary, where masters could sell unwanted young slaves to be trained in the service of the imperial army.
Kibum couldn’t muster tears at their parting, which angered his master and landed Kibum with his first beating at that man’s hands. The master’s housekeeper delivered Kibum to the Sanctuary and left him alone on the doorstep. Kibum sat there shivering until one of the Sanctuary masters came to fetch him and brought him inside.
They dressed Kibum in something more appropriate than the garb of a pleasure slave and assigned him a bunk in one of the dormitories. The other children tried to talk to him, but Kibum ignored them. They soon gave up and left him alone.
His days at the Sanctuary consisted of lessons regimented around a strict schedule. They would wake early, march drills in the courtyard, then eat a healthy and tasteless breakfast. Then they had classes for several hours- reading, arithmetic, history of the empire, music. Then was lunch, and an hour of free play. Then more lessons: geography, physical exercise, art and etiquette. Then they listened to the mages instruct them on the glories of magic. Then dinner and another hour of free play. Then bed.
This was the schedule six days a week. The seventh day, they had no indoor classes but spent the day drilling- marching and running and climbing in the courtyard. They were being trained to be the slave soldiers of the empire and to one day fight in distant lands for the glory of the Six Kingdoms.
Kibum was glad of the endless schedule and spent his free hours asleep. He excelled in his classes only because he was used to excelling in lessons: otherwise he’d wind up beaten and fucked senseless by his latest master. The Sanctuary masters never beat them or touched them, of course: punishments came in other forms like extra laps around the courtyard or lines written on the chalkboards, but Kibum knew better than to get used to it. Sooner or later, this peace would end.
It always did.
~~~
It was a crisp, sunny afternoon when things changed.
Kibum dozed in the courtyard while the rest of the children laughed and played around him. He dozed too hard and eventually fell deeply asleep. When he woke, most of the children were gone to class already, leaving him alone and late for lessons.
This was enough to earn him several march sets of punishment that night. Kibum should have cared more than he did.
He yawned, stretched and rolled to his feet. Then he froze.
There was a smaller child sitting not too far away, holding a fistful of bright red bayberries. Kibum blinked. They weren’t supposed to pick the fruit from the courtyard; while some of it, like the bayberries, were edible, it was all intended for decoration.
The child’s lip wobbled.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sniffling. Kibum stared. “I was hungry, and they stole my lunch when the masters weren’t looking, and I’m hungry, and these are here, and my brother used to give me them before they killed ‘im, and I’m hungry-”
“It’s okay,” said Kibum automatically. “I won’t tell.”
The child’s eyes widened with hope. “Really? Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise.”
Abruptly, all sign of tears vanished. The child scrambled over to where Kibum was and beamed.
“My name’s Taemin,” the child informed him. “I think I’m gonna be five soon. What’s your name? How old are you?”
“Kibum,” said Kibum reluctantly. “I think I’m seven.”
Taemin smiled with joy and barreled on. “I like that name! We should be friends ‘cause you aren’t gonna say nothing about my vegetables.” He pronounced the word ‘vegetables’ with an extended snap of the middle syllable.
“Those are berries, not vegetables,” Kibum felt obliged to point out.
Taemin just shrugged. “They’re good for you, so they’re vegetables, ‘cause vegetables are good for you. Like milk. I like milk.” He offered Kibum a berry. “Want one?”
Kibum felt the familiar tightness in his chest relax. Something about Taemin’s sunny babbling made him feel better.
He took a berry.
~~~
They both got in trouble for being late, of course, but for once Kibum didn’t mind, which was different from hopelessly not caring. He spent his free hours after that finding Taemin and talking to him. He didn’t think they were friends- Kibum didn’t trust the idea of ‘friends’ anymore- but Taemin made life feel less awful.
They spent their post-lunch hour one day roaming the courtyard near the high wall that separated the south half of the Sanctuary from the north half. Taemin took the opportunity to jump in a thorny bush entirely because he thought it ‘looked fun’. Kibum hauled him out again, scolding, and brushed at the bleeding scrapes. Taemin grinned and squirmed at the attention.
At least, until Kibum found several non-plant-shaped bruises and cuts on his upper arms.
“Don’t tell!” Taemin begged him, wide-eyed. “They said not to tell, or they’d steal my lunch again.”
Kibum’s eyes narrowed. “Who did?”
Taemin shook his head. “Just them.”
“Who?”
Taemin gave a little whimper. “I don’t want ‘em to steal my lunch again,” he whispered.
“I won’t let them,” said Kibum with authority. Something strangely familiar was blossoming inside his chest at the idea of someone hurting Taemin. “Tell me who they are.”
Taemin chewed on his lip. Then he said: “Yejun and Yunseo and Woojin.”
Kibum recognized the names. They were a group of younger children who often followed Taemin around. Kibum winced; he should have realized that they were Taemin’s tormentors, not his friends.
“I’ll make them stop,” Kibum told Taemin. “I promise.”
Taemin nodded. It didn’t look like he believed Kibum, but that was okay. Kibum would protect him anyway.
~~~
Kibum spent his afternoon classes thinking. Sometime during art class, he recognized the strangeness he’d felt earlier. It was anger. This worried him: anger was useless, as he well knew. Why did he feel it now?
Well, he knew that too, even if it disturbed him and he didn’t want to admit it. He felt it for Taemin. It was wrong that Taemin should be unhappy, because Taemin was kind and sweet and followed Kibum around like a little duckling. Kibum felt weirdly responsible for him. Taemin clearly couldn’t be responsible for himself, after all: the child was only five and had next to no common sense.
So Kibum contemplated a plan of action.
Once classes and dinner were over, Kibum sought out the three children Taemin had named. He had only a vague idea of what he was going to do, but he thought it would work. He was older, and therefore scarier, than they were. And he knew a lot about intimidation by now.
Yunseo, the girl, was the leader of the three. She spotted Kibum coming and stuck her tongue out at him.
“What d’you want?” she demanded. Yejun and Woojin crowded close behind her.
Kibum fixed her with his best scowl. Her eyes widened.
“Leave Taemin alone,” Kibum ordered. He punched a fist into his other hand and ground it there, cracking his knuckles. Yejun cringed. “If you steal his lunch or hurt him again, then I’m gonna hurt you.”
Tears of fright welled in Woojin’s eyes. Kibum was surprised; he wasn’t that scary, was he?
Or maybe he was. Whatever. It worked to his advantage.
Yunseo alone remained unmoved. “You won’t do nothing to us,” she informed him, nose in the air. “You’re too weird.”
Kibum favoured her with the grin one of his more particularly sadistic masters had liked to use on him.
“Oh yeah?” he said, drawling the words out. “Try me.”
This was too much for Woojin. He squeaked, grabbed Yejun’s arm, and they both fled away. Yunseo suddenly looked nervous without her two friends backing her up. Kibum deliberately loomed closer.
Then she, too, yelped and ran.
Kibum grinned. It felt good to be in control of things for once.
~~~
“They didn’t steal my lunch today,” Taemin told him wonderingly the next day during afternoon free hour. “What did you do?”
Kibum smirked. “I told you I wouldn’t let ‘em hurt you again,” he said. “I promised.”
Taemin looked up at him with shining eyes. Kibum couldn’t help smiling back. He hadn’t really smiled in years, but somehow Taemin always seemed to bring it out of him.
Taemin leaned against him, curling up against his side. Kibum looped an arm over Taemin’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
“Does this mean we’re friends?” asked Taemin.
Kibum drew in a sharp breath. He remembered the last time he’d been friends with someone. He could remember neither the lord’s son’s name nor his face anymore, but he could remember the stinging betrayal of illusions shattered.
But that hadn’t been friendship, not really. This was.
“Yeah, we’re friends,” Kibum said, and squeezed Taemin in a one-armed hug. “Best friends.”
Taemin’s smile at that was the most beautiful thing Kibum had ever seen.
~~~
It was not long after that Kibum got promoted into the beginner fighting classes, which were much more fun than the endless marching and drills and laps around the courtyard. Kibum was one of the very youngest in the fighting classes. He knew, of course, why he found the physical exercise lessons so easy. He was used to learning quickly how to do different strange things with his body.
He was also used to suffering bruises and physical exhaustion. Most of the other children had been household slaves from wealthy magic-using households who had never exerted themselves physically beyond stirring and cleaning pots. Which was definitely something, but Kibum had endured worse.
During his free hours, he taught some of what he was learning to Taemin. Although Taemin was even younger than Kibum, he picked up on the training with a natural ease. They sparred in secret together, sometimes even transformed.
The Sanctuary, though they of course kept all the children collared, nevertheless put only conditional blocking spells on those collars. The spells kept anyone from transforming with the intent to do harm, or when a master forbade the transformation. Otherwise, the children were free to wander about in either of their true forms. There was a reason for this: in order to be soldiers of the empire one day, they had to know how to use their second forms effectively.
Kibum didn’t care what the reason was. He just liked being able to dance about on four feet again.
Taemin didn’t transform as often as Kibum did. Taemin was a vampire pup, and too young to have full control over his transformation. His powers were also sporadic; sometimes they worked quite well, and sometimes they did not.
Kibum didn’t let him get frustrated, though. When Taemin’s eyebrows started scrunching together while his healing powers and fangs refused to cooperate with him, Kibum would break off the sparring and tackle him into a hug. Then they would roll around on the grass and cuddle. That always made Taemin forget about his frustrations and return to his usually sunny self.
~~~
The hardest lessons for Kibum were the arithmetic ones. Reading was hard because he was just learning to pick out letters and spell things, but everyone else struggled just as badly. Slaves were not ordinarily taught to read.
But arithmetic was worse. None of the other children may have known what numbers and equations looked like either, but they had grown up doing basic sums and subtractions in their heads. They had to know how many items their masters wanted them to fetch, or how tall and wide the master wanted the new shelves trimmed, or how much water to fill a tub for each person and other little things like that. Often the children who’d been in training at their old places to be cooks and housekeepers and stablehands knew more because one day they’d have to understand the logistics of managing budgets and the like.
Kibum might have known some of that once. But a pleasure slave had no need to know how to count anything or do simple calculations. So Kibum struggled.
His hard-working nature was noticed, however, by his arithmetic master, Sanghoon. Sanghoon was one of the few masters who let children come to him during their post-lunch free hour for extra help. Few did; the children had very little free time and almost no one wanted to spend it doing yet more math.
Kibum, though he never spent the entire hour, did go in for help perhaps two or three times a week. Although he longed to spend every waking hour with Taemin, who made him forget how much he disliked being alive, he knew that he could not afford to be bad at something. Being bad at things had never led anywhere good. Besides, Taemin could use some extra time to nap and make other friends.
The fact that Kibum really liked Sanghoon made it easier to give up some free time. Sanghoon was everyone’s favourite teaching master; he had a playful charisma that made even arithmetic seem not quite the most boring thing on the planet. Sanghoon also was physically affectionate with them in a way that no other master was, ruffling their hair, accepting hugs, bumping fists.
This helped Kibum especially. After years of being alternately manhandled and fucked all the time, it felt very isolating to have no one but Taemin touch him, ever, except in the martial arts drills, which really didn’t count. It was comforting to let Sanghoon pet his hair and hug him and once in a while set him on his lap and kiss his cheek. It eased his touch-starved soul.
~~~
At some point, the new children, the ones who had been there less than a year, were gathered into the Circle. The Circle was a huge round room with a stage in the center and rows and rows of benches climbing high around it. Kibum sat squished between Taemin and an older girl, and listened.
One of the higher-ranking masters, an administrative something or other, began lecturing them. She laid out their life path: they would study hard for seven years, then be sent out for three more years of field training and experience. By that time, they would be hardened soldiers and effective, efficient drones who would aid the Empire and the non-slave remainder of the Imperial Army in conquering far lands and defending their own.
There was only one way to win free of the Sanctuary and its training program, Kibum learned. This was to enter in a gladiator tournament and win. After winning, they would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Those who bid for gladiator slaves often kept training stables of them and made money off the betting that went on and the prizes given for successful fighters.
The administrator went on to warn them that if they thought attempting to enter a tournament would be easier than dying heroically in the service of the Empire one day, they were wrong. Very few Sanctuary slaves who entered the tournaments survived; they had simply not trained to face that particular kind of peril.
The small number who did win wound up being forced to enter tournaments for the rest of their usually short lives. Their new master would work them to death in gladiator training and force them to fight again and again and again until finally their luck ran out, and they were killed for the amusement of the masses.
The administrator made a very convincing case. Kibum believed her entirely. The life of a gladiator sounded awful. He would much rather become a soldier. At least then he’d probably get to stay with Taemin. They were both first-years in the same Sanctuary; they would eventually wind up in the same field unit, wouldn’t they? And dying in some faraway exciting land sounded much more interesting than getting mutilated in front of a horde of screaming people.
~~~
Kibum and Taemin soon grew bored with wrestling matches and talking. They began to have other adventures as well during their free time. They observed the masters and the buildings and planned out routes for how to sneak everywhere. Then they made good on their observations and crept through the halls unseen. They frequently had to stop and press the palms of their hands against their mouths to keep from giggling, giddy at their success.
They pretended they were Imperial spies. They weren’t, of course. No slaves were ever spies. But they could pretend. They made up stories about their exploits and secret personas and wove giant, complex mythologies about themselves. When they sparred, they imagined themselves fighting distant enemies and terrifying magical creatures.
No one ever caught them. This was an accomplishment that made pride bloom in Kibum’s chest. Taemin was too young and silly to understand the kind of pride it was, so Kibum nurtured it alone. It was the pride in being good at things he wanted to be good at. Pride in being self-sufficient. Pride in being better than everyone thought he was. Pride in his skills, his confidence, the ability and opportunity to actually be in control of a situation.
It was pride in himself mixed with pride in freedom. And, of course, pride in Taemin for keeping up with him, young as he was.
There was nothing better.
~~~
One day, perhaps to impress upon them how absolutely awful gladiator life would be, the first-years were taken to witness a gladiator tournament.
It was a hot day, made hotter by the endless stone and metal of the gladiator arena. The arena itself was similar to the Sanctuary’s Circle room, but much, much larger. There at to be at least hundreds of people, if not more, crammed into its benches. The richest nobles had shaded boxes of their own up at the top, but the common people formed a foaming mass of screams and bodies and sweat, packed tightly into the remainder of the place.
The bottom of the arena was a smooth stretch of yellow-orange sand. Kibum could faintly make out the outlines of enormous metal gates and doors underneath the stands and surrounding the sand. That must be where the fighters were let in.
He’d acquired a seat between Sanghoon and Taemin, much to his relief. Sanghoon put an arm around him to still his squirming, glancing down at him with an amused look as he did so. Kibum widened his eyes up at Sanghoon, pleadingly.
“The arena mages will spell a viewer for us once it starts,” Sanghoon told him. He nodded at Taemin. “Do try not to elbow your little friend in the ribs again.”
Kibum winced and squeezed Taemin’s hand in apology. Taemin paid no attention to any of this, however. He was gazing around, just as awed by the sea of people as Kibum was.
After a long wait that seemed like forever, the Duchess of the region went to the front of the second-most glamorous box- the best box at every arena in the empire was reserved for members of a royal family as a matter of tradition, no matter how unlikely it was that any royal person would ever attend that particular arena- and projected her voice across the entire arena with a spell.
“LET US BEGIN!”
Kibum shivered at the screams and cheers. Taemin, having just noticed Kibum’s attempt to hold hands, laced their fingers together. Sanghoon chuckled softly and ran a hand through Kibum’s hair.
Kibum turned his attention to the large and wavering rectangular pictures floating in the air- the mage-viewers that allowed the spectators to see the faraway action close-up.
The first match was between a scrawny, half-starved slave and a bigger, better-armored gladiator with thick muscles. It didn’t last long; the larger fighter won with ease and spilled the scrawny slave’s blood over the sands.
The crowd screamed disapproval.
“They’re disappointed,” Sanghoon explained to Kibum. “They wanted to see an interesting fight, not someone getting chopped up right away with such ease. But the tournaments always start off with the smaller matches, so they can end with an exciting grand finale.”
Kibum nodded, digesting this information, and kept watching.
As the day wore on, the matches did get more interesting. Sometimes two slaves fought and sometimes a slave fought an animal. Occasionally, an animal fought an animal. There was a lot of blood and gore, which the crowd seemed to love.
The watching Sanctuary slave-children, not so much. Many of Kibum’s fellow first-years looked sick. Some were crying. They understood violence very well, being former slaves, and it was deeply upsetting to see murder and conflict glorified like this. They were not like the free children in the audience, who watched with detached glee. All of the slave children knew it could very well be them out there dying on the sands one day. And if it not them, then their siblings and parents and friends.
There were a few exceptions. Kibum and Taemin were two of these. Taemin looked fascinated by everything. But then, Taemin wasn’t the best at grasping the reality of situations, and loved imagining danger and doing risky things. No doubt Taemin found the fights to be, if not entertaining, at least very, very interesting.
Kibum, on the other hand, was not at all enthralled by the blood and danger of the matches. He had, however, suffered too much himself to be frightened or disturbed by it. He was merely curious instead. Kibum remembered years ago, when he himself had gone into a killing rage. His own past attempts at murder looked much different than what the gladiators were doing. They were focused, intent, moving with practiced and precise skill.
It was fascinating that they could muster up the ability to slay a fellow slave without going into a murderous frenzy.
Sanghoon must have noticed his lack of reaction to the violence. The master leaned over and whispered: “So, Kibum, what do you think?”
Kibum shrugged. “It’s weird that they’re not angry,” he said truthfully.
Sanghoon gave a startled laugh. “Well, I’m sure some of them are,” he answered. “But blind rage gets in the way of critical thinking. In order to kill effectively, one must be clear-headed. Aren’t the fighting masters teaching you that?”
“We haven’t gone beyond how to hold sticks ‘properly’,” said Kibum, imitating the fighting masters’ stuffy tones. He looked curiously up at Sanghoon. “Do you know lots about killing, master?”
Sanghoon smiled. “A little,” he said. “I used to be a soldier, you know.”
“Really?” Kibum breathed, awed.
“Yes, really.” Sanghoon tweaked Kibum’s ear. “Then I got injured. The Healers, even the mage ones, couldn’t fix my leg properly, so I left the army and went to college. Then I started teaching at the Sanctuary.”
“What’s a college, master?”
“A place where free adults study subjects they’re interested in,” came the answer.
“Huh,” said Kibum, and returned his attention to the matches. They’d just released a giant catlike beast with a mane to fight not one but two armored gladiators.
He’d never quite thought about what masters did with their lives; he’d always just assumed that they did whatever they wanted to do. It must be nice though, being free. Kibum was fairly sure that if a slave-soldier had been that injured, they’d have been killed for uselessness. They certainly could not have gone to a college.
It began to dawn on Kibum that being free might be quite nice.
~~~
An arid summer night not too long after, it was time for another adventure. Kibum stayed awake as planned, until it was time to move. Then he shimmied off his top bunk and climbed sideways across the rough stone wall.
There was a wide, short window at the top with bars in it. The window was too small and the bars too wide for a seven-year-old human to get through. A werekitten, on the other hand, had just enough flexibility and lack of collarbones to be able to do so.
Kibum was through in seconds. He dropped soundlessly to the ground floor twelve feet below with practiced ease. He swished his tail, then set off to the meeting place.
Taemin was waiting for him. Kibum purred softly as Taemin buried his fingers in Kibum’s fur and petted him. He licked Taemin’s fingers and made him giggle, then nodded down the hallway.
Their goal this time was to sneak all the way to the high wall which cut the Sanctuary off from the rest of the city. There were lots of guards and masters and a high chance they’d be caught. Kibum wasn’t afraid, though, just excited. This was fun.
It was almost pitch-black because the torches were extinguished for the night. This did not impede them. Kibum’s kitten form had excellent night sight, and Taemin was following him closely with one hand on Kibum’s shoulder. Taemin’s vampire eyes could see perfectly in the dark as well- vampire eyes saw by heat rather than by light- but Taemin’s ability to stay transformed was dubious at best. It was easier just to let Kibum lead him.
They eventually passed a dimly lit corridor. It must be in occasional use by the patrols; that was the only reason the mages would have left the torches going so late.
There were also footsteps and hushed voices. Kibum growled quietly and pressed himself into a nook. Taemin curled up behind him, breathing just behind his right ear.
“...killed by the bloody rebels,” one of the masters was saying, her voice bitter. “It’s so useless, don’t you think? We train these brats for years, and the powers that be won’t even let us use them to root out those traitors. We need more security forces, not more pieces of cannon fodder.”
“Slaves aren’t intelligent enough to do that kind of work,” another master replied. “It takes so much effort just to get the stupid things to read. I don’t know how the first and second-year teaching staff does it.”
“An infinite amount of patience,” said the first master dryly. “It’s worrying, though, that they’re burning Sanctuaries. The guards we set are excellent.”
“Well, the rebels must be getting better,” the second master said. “It is worrying, I agree. Unfortunately, using slaves to extirpate them just won’t work. You know that. They’re not just brainless, they’re emotionally unstable. Remember, what was it, Kunwoo and Haeun?”
The first master snorted. “How could I not? My first field instructor told us horror stories about what happened. Powers, that was a disaster.”
“Yes, and imagine if something on that scale happened on a security raid?”
“I do see your point. No, slaves wouldn’t work as security, I suppose...”
Their voices faded around the corner. Kibum breathed a sigh of relief and eased away from the wall. Taemin followed him, stretching a little.
Kibum meowed softly at Taemin, and they set off again.
They didn’t meet anyone else on the way to the high wall and didn’t get caught as they ran silently across the long stretch of grass between the building and the wall. Kibum put out a paw and touched it once they got there. Taemin poked at the bespelled stone, eyes wide.
“We’re the best adventurers ever,” Taemin whispered, eyes shifting into vampire form out of sheer glee.
Kibum purred.
Their trip back was uneventful as well. They slunk silently through corridors and through windows, surefooted and quick. Kibum wondered if being a soldier would be like this. He hoped so. This was fun.
They finally came to where they had to part. Taemin needed to go back to the younger children’s dormitory, and Kibum to his own. Kibum shifted back to human form for just a moment to tug Taemin into a close hug.
“We did it!” he crowed as quietly as he could. “We’re awesome, Taeminnie!”
Taemin squeezed him back, giggling softly. “Awesome!” he echoed, wriggling with excitement.
Their trip to the high wall had been their most dangerous yet. Kibum didn’t think they would ever top it, but they would have to. Life just wasn’t interesting without such challenges.
| Part Two >>