Orpheus leaned back on the moss covering his area of the rock ledge, and tried to find a comfortable position. Finally, he was forced to resort to lying on his stomach, to ease the burning feeling in his anus. He had quickly become the King’s favorite, and though the tritons did indeed have ways of quickly healing the constant internal ripping that came from the rapes, they couldn’t stop it from being painful. Or perhaps they could, but simply chose not to.
“Hey guy,” said a familiar voice suddenly. Yuushi swam into his field of view and perched himself on the edge of a stone ledge. “How’re you feeling?”
Orpheus shrugged, not one to complain. But Yuushi smiled, seeming to understand anyway, and petted his hair. “It’s alright,” he said. “I know it hurts, but there could be worse things. At least they only have sex with us. They don’t also torture us. I’ve heard stories, about concubines that the King didn’t want? They give them to villagers, who aren’t nearly as kind. I heard about how one of the guys got a sea urchin shoved up his ass. And they don’t have the good salves like we do, either. It must have taken him weeks, or months even to heal from that.”
“What about the Beast?” Orpheus asked. “How do they breathe if they’re away from the castle?”
“Oh, Galileo sends the Beast around,” Yuushi said. “I heard how one place, whenever the Beast was going to be coming, the slave’s owner would tell all his friends so that they could come over and watch him be taken, you know? And it would make them all super horny and the second the Beast left, they’d all fall on him and all of them would rape him.”
“How do you know all these things, Yuushi?” Orpheus asked with morbid curiosity.
Yuushi smiled. “I’ve been here a while. A lot longer than most. I was really young when I was brought in. Plus, people like to tell me things. I’m a good listener. And you know, in situations like that... sometimes people just really need to talk.”
Orpheus nodded, but was prevented from saying more by the arrival of another concubine, Armand, who swam up to their ledge. “Bad news, guys,” he said. “Narcissus is on duty today when the Beast’s here.”
“Fuck,” said Yuushi, squeezing his eyes shut. Armand left, apparently to warn others. Orpheus, who had been in the harem long enough now for several of the Beast’s visits, looked questioningly at Yuushi.
“Who’s Narcissus?” he asked.
Yuushi sighed. “You know how most of the time, when the Beast shows up, they just let it do its business and then leave? Like, even its keeper doesn’t show up with it, right?” Orpheus nodded. “Well, there’s always guards posted outside the door into the main palace, right? And there are a lot of guards, so their shifts change pretty regularly. And there’s this one guard, Narcissus...”
Yuushi trailed off, making a face, then picked up his narrative again. “Whenever Narc is on duty during the Beast’s rounds, he likes to come in and watch. He thinks it’s funny the way the Beast rapes us, and it turns him on. Most of the time after the beast is done, he’ll rape a couple of us. He’s not supposed to; technically no one but the King is supposed to touch us, but he and a few others bend the rules. It’s less noticeable when he does it right after the Beast comes, too, ‘cause our asses are still all full of the slime, so we’re lubed better and don’t tear as much. But Narc’s pretty huge, and it still hurts. I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t just the way he does it-”
He was cut off by a low sound from the tunnel that connected into the harem chamber. All activity in the chamber ceased as the sound resolved itself into a wet, squishing noise, and the large black body of the Beast emerged, tentacles flailing.
It went straight to the wall, tentacles snagging and lifting the human slaves as soon as they were in reach. No one struggled; Orpheus had tried once or twice, but it was effectively useless. The Beast was far too strong, and even if you did get away, there was nowhere to go.
As one of the dark tentacles wrapped around his ankle and lifted him, Orpheus got an upside-down view of the door to the palace opening, and a large, somewhat burly triton slipping in before shutting it behind him. The man had chiseled features whose beauty was ruined by the cruelty in his expression. His long blond hair hung in waves about him, and the bluish-green fin of his tail flicked idly as he gazed around the room. He gaze came to rest on the Beast, and he smiled; a cruel, ugly smile.
Orpheus closed his eyes as he felt the tip of a tentacle push sharply past his anus, widening him and wriggling down into his oft-abused passage. He opened his mouth, not bothering to fight, so that another could slip inside past his lips, sliding down into his throat.
He always felt almost as though he would choke on the tentacle, but something that coated the slimy appendages, a precursor to the slime that actually helped them breathe, seemed to suppress the gag reflex.
Orpheus felt the tentacle in his anus writhing inside him, trying to get deeper, and he jolted as it accidentally brushed his prostate. The brush didn’t come again, however, and the tentacle stilled. Orpheus opened his eyes to see Yuushi impaled on two tentacles next to him; they were so deep inside him that it seemed as though he were simply speared on a single appendage that went right through him, as though he were threaded on a necklace. His expression was calm and resigned, and something about it seemed almost heartbreaking to Orpheus.
But then he stopped thinking about Yuushi and began thinking about himself again as he felt the slime begin to ooze from the surface of the tentacles, coating his throat, filling his mouth and lungs, squirting into his passage.
The Beast dropped him somewhat unceremoniously, the tentacles withdrawing with a swiftness that made the body cry out in abandonment, and he floated gradually back down onto the rock ledge. He lay there panting for a moment before sitting up against the wall, feeling the ooze start to leak out from his anus onto the rock.
Yuushi plopped down next to him soon after, resting his forehead against the wall, catching his breath and coughing slightly. His mouth was small, and the tentacle had been very deep inside him.
When he was once again composed, Yuushi smiled at him. Orpheus wondered how he could manage that when even as they sat there, their fellow concubines were being raped by the Beast on the other side of the room. “See now?” said Yuushi, “That wasn’t so bad. The coolness is actually kind of soothing, once you get used to it. Especially if you’ve been abused a lot recently.”
Orpheus started to reply, but there was a sudden blur in front of him. The triton moved so fast that Orpheus didn’t even see him until he had Yuushi pressed against the wall, his member buried deep inside the young man’s anus. Yuushi cried out as the mer-man fucked him roughly, his thrusts quick and animalistic.
Orpheus was aghast – they’d been in the middle of a conversation, and now this was happening not two feet in front of him. He started to reach forward, to stop the guard, pull him off Yuushi, but the young concubine saw his expression and shook his head, before his own face contorted suddenly in pain.
Feeling strangely powerless, Orpheus sat and watched the way the fingers of the triton dimpled the skin where he gripped Yuushi’s hips as he pounded relentlessly into Yuushi’s ass. The movements were so fast, so violent, that they looked inhuman, less human even than the beast. It was as though the triton were completely unable to control himself, driven into a frenzy by the sight of the concubines’ penetration by the Beast.
Yes, that’s what it reminded Orpheus of. A shark in a feeding frenzy. Fast. Violent. Mindless.
The triton laughed in pleasure and finally buried himself completely in Yuushi, yanking the young man’s hips back against his body roughly, bucking slightly as he emptied his seed into the concubine.
He pulled out quite a bit more leisurely than he had thrust in. He turned to face Orpheus and grinned. Like to watch, Boy? he asked with a sick grin.
Orpheus said nothing, just glared at him coldly. The triton shrugged and turned, his eyes fixed once again on the Beast. Orpheus could see that he was already beginning to grow hard again as he swam off to get a closer view.
Orpheus edged over to Yuushi’s slumped form and helped him to lie on his stomach on the moss. To his anger, he saw blood beginning to seep out from Yuushi’s anus, staining the water darkly. “Why did you stop me?” he asked in a low voice. “I could have pulled him off you.”
“No, you couldn’t have,” said Yuushi. “Narcissus could’ve fought you off without ever pulling out of me. I’ve seen him do it before. Besides which, if you had tried, he would have come after you next. There’s still no guarantee he won’t, especially with the way you stared him down after. God.” Yuushi’s eyes closed and he shifted uncomfortably. “You see now why I hate the guy.”
Orpheus looked over to the other side of the circular, amphitheater-style room to where Narcissus was deep inside another victim. Around him, the other concubines were carefully averting their gaze, trying to edge away without seeming obvious about it.
“Yes,” said Orpheus. “I see why.”