Your Featherlands CYOA Journey ~ Chapter 10 (Patreon)

You look around to see just how little you still know about this strange, quirky world. Waking up in a different place, surrounded by different people, was like finding yourself lost in the Featherlands the first time all over again. The bars on your cage, however, present very few options from where to go next, however, yet also present the oddly comforting conclusion of more concrete answers as to what was going to happen, though you find yourself dreadfully sure where ever it is you’re heading won’t be as kind as the elven commune. You sigh, collecting yourself, and crawl over closer to the cat-girl sharing your cage.

“Hello?” you ask, not even knowing if she will understand you. You tell her your name and where you’re from, making it clear that you are, in fact, human, not that you doubted she would be able to make that assessment herself. She doesn’t answer. She sits with her back against the bars and knees tucked up into her chest. Her cat-like features twitch slightly, her tail and ears both resting with a total lack of enthusiasm. Her arms are folded over her knees, holding up her head with her large eyes cresting over top. You wait for her to respond and elect to speak again when she doesn’t.

“So, obviously I don’t really know what’s going on right now,” you say, trying to make light of the situation. You figure that you would try to lighten the mood, to get the girl’s mind off of wherever it is you’re both heading along the wobbly road. “I’d love to know more about you. Y-you know, not in a ‘creepy’ way, but like… uhhh… you know, what’s your name?” The girl remains quiet. She barely moves beyond a slow eye blink. Her tail shifts into a more comfortable position, but with total lack of energy or life. You fight back the strong urge to pet the girl, your mind suggesting that it would bring her comfort. Her ears sit with a furry finish atop her head, looking as soft as anything else you’ve ever seen. But you restrain yourself, knowing how wrong it is to touch her without being given explicit permission. Instead, you stay by her side, accepting her silence.

“Where are you from?” you ask. Again, the girl barely moves. She sways with the jagged rumbling of the cart treading a bumpy, uneven road. She blinks again. You think you can faintly hear a soft sniffle of her nose tucked behind her folded arms, but you can see that she’s not in the talking mood. You sigh and nod. “Right, well, if you need anything, I’ll be around.”

You slowly peel away from the girl who gives little to no indication of even acknowledging your presence. Something about that seems oddly familiar. You note how attractive she is, a girl who would be depicted as a princess or even a goddess in any fairy tale. Perhaps she doesn’t trust people enough to talk, or maybe just you. Understandable. You did wake up in a cage and can assume she did as well. From the time you’ve spent in the Featherlands, you too can relate to not trusting many people. You don’t hold it over her, but your hero complex continues to compel you to do what’s best for those around you. As such, you make your way over to the other side of the cart, where the guard walks beside you.

“Hey!” you shout at the guard. He appears to be dressed in sturdy, old military fatigues. Articles of plate armor rattle against a light blue mesh. He wears boots, matching metal gloves, and a helmet. He matches beside the caravan, carrying a long wood and iron-tipped spear. You can barely make out any facial features beneath the helmet and hair pouring out from underneath, but you can see that he doesn’t look back at you. “Hey!”

“Stay in line, human!” the guard shouts back at you. “We all knew you’s be trouble.”

“I’m not afraid of any of you!” you shout back, scoffing at their ridiculous and antiquated ensemble. The guard just laughs.

“I know, that’s why they say your kind is trouble,” he says. “Don’t know enough to know what you’re up against.” You have to pause at that, hearing the painful truth in his words. Instead, you continue to question.

“Heh, yeah so, where’re we going?” you ask. “Since I don’t know anything, where are you taking us?”

“Don’t matter, human,” the guard says. “You’re not s’posed to know, you’re just s’posed to go where we tell you and be good. Got that?” You don’t know what to make of that, but you know it can’t be good. You look around once more. Still so few options from which to secure release or even answers. You scratch at the back of your head, still unable to see much beyond the trees lining the path.

“Yeah, well, if you’re so tough, how about challenging me to a real duel,” you say. “I studied magic, you know. Would be a fair fight.” The guard burst into a fit of laughter so hard, the man began to cough and bend over. He laughed through a deep coughing fit, what little you could make of his face turning gleefully red.

“Oh, that’s rich, human,” the guard says. “Gah, you know, that’s why the princess keeps your kind around. The things you all say, whoooo… it’s a fluffin’ ride!” The guard walks away, heading up to another cart in the line. He continues to laugh and even makes his way up to another guard, talking to him and pointing back at you. The two share in a laugh as you slump back into the cart, toiling away in your lack of ideas.

“Well, that didn’t do much,” you say. You speak aloud to yourself before looking over to the cat-girl, staring up at you. She quickly darts her eyes away, hiding any notion of listening or watching. You chuckle a little. “Do you know who this princess is?” The image of a princess associates pictures of a sweet girl who pines to take care of her kingdom and family, but as you stare around at all those carried away in carts and collars, you can’t bring yourself to assume that whoever this princess is will be so enchanting. The girl in the cart again says nothing. You sigh heavily and go back over to her. You sit by her side, resting your back and head against the bars of the cage. You hope to find something on the outside that you can at least pinpoint a location with. You imagine maybe seeing Tiamalla out looking for you and calling out to her for a daring rescue. But after having left the commune without saying anything to anyone, you find yourself doubting if you even deserve to be saved.

“Mo…” the girl next to you says softly. You look over to her. She continues to stare forward, alternating her gaze between there and down into the floor of the cart. At first, you think she just emitted a noise, but as you listen, you can hear the deliberate articulation in what she says. “... mo…. M-Momo…”

“Momo?” you ask just as softly. The girl buries her full face into the crooks of her arms where she sits. Her bare toes curl and her tail wraps around her seat. You notice how startled she’s become and approach with ease and tenderness. “Is that… the princess?” The girl shakes her head, still keeping her face buried against her arms. “Okay… is that… you?” The girl pauses. She responds a moment later with a soft nod. You smile and give a relieved huff. “Okay, see, that… well, it’s nice to meet you, Momo.” A silence falls over you two. You notice the sky shifting color into the darker shade of night. Your stomach rumbles a bit. You groan, gladdened to at least get somewhat closer to your cage-mate, one of the few actual people you’ve met while in the Featherlands.

“Wherever we’re going, there’s gonna have to be food,” you say. “We’ve been traveling for a while, I guess. I’m starving.”

“It… it is?” Momo asks, her voice small and timid. You look over.

“Oh, well, yeah… I mean, it was night when I went out to take on the trolls, and then I wake up here and…”

“N-nice…?” Momo asks. “Nice t-to… meet me?” You pause and look over at her.

“Yeah, of course,” you say with intimate sincerity. You laugh a little to ease the tension. “I mean, sorry it had to be inside of a cage, but maybe I just don’t know enough about the Featherlands yet.” Momo’s head pokes out from the crook of her arms. She looks over to you, her ears perking up a bit.

“Kn-know?” Momo asks. You shrug.

“Maybe cages are a good thing,” you say jestingly. “Keeps the dangerous stuff out, you know? Cages can be good. Sure it doesn’t seem like it in our case, but who am I to judge?” The girl looks back at you, unamused by your attempts to lighten the mood. She blinks and stares at you.

“Th-then you… you don’t know, human…” Momo says softly. Her dialect is formal and almost struggles to conform to your language. Still, she tries. “C-cages are… not good. No good.” You want to laugh at how seriously she has taken your jokes, but feel the translation of such may come off wrong. Instead, you look down and take the criticism.

“I see,” you say. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad we can talk, you know? I’d hate to be in here alone.” Momo still just stares. She blinks a bit as her ears faintly twitch. You can see the gears turning in her eyes, the strange, struggling dance going on in her thoughts. Perhaps you put too much on her all at once. You decide to dial back the companionship, to keep things simple for the rest of the cart ride. “So, where are you from anyway? If you don’t mind me asking.” Momo pauses again. She breathes deeply and returns to looking at the floor of the cart.

“Do not know,” Momo says.

“You don’t know?” you ask. Momo shakes her head.

“Siren happy house,” Momo says, requiring you to slide closer to listen better. “Couldn’t swim, kept on force farm.”

“These names…” you mutter, shaking your head. “I get ‘force farm’, kind of got a taste of my own what that’s like… Sorry you had to go through that. But what’s a ‘happy house’.” The young cat-girl didn’t answer. She simply stared down at the floor, swaying as the cart hit a rocky patch on the path. You wait for an answer, but come to accept her reluctance to give one. “I lived in the elven region for a while, Giggling Grove, I think… They were really nice, most of them. Humans I guess don’t get treated as well by some around here. But I got to know this sweet little elf girl named Tiamalla. She showed me how to harness magic spells and we trained together. I don’t have the wand she gave me anymore, but we took on trolls and… well, that was about it. In fact, I lost trying to save some others from a force farm. I think that’s the whole reason I’m here right now.”

“Trolls are… big… and scary…” Momo says. You chuckle.

“Yeah, well… I tried to get the best of them. And did a few times, I think, but… they got me when I tried to go back to save one more. Don’t know what happened to her, the girl in the tank, but they certainly caught me. Can’t tell if my stomach hurts from the laughter or just because I haven’t eaten in, like, a day and a half.” You find Momo looking back at you. Her eyes glimmer as if she was smiling, but you can hardly tell from her face still half tucked behind her arms.

“Humans…” she says.

“Oh, is that the stereotype then?” you ask jokingly. “What is it? Reckless and stupid? Brave but foolish, or whatever? What?” Momo gives a soft, muffled laugh.

“Yes,” she says, nodding slightly. “B-but… heroes.”

“Heroes?” you ask with obvious skepticism. “Don’t know if it counts as being ‘a hero’ if you fail. I think that’s just being dumb.”

“--human,” Momo says, trying to cut you off. You let the pause linger over you both. You find yourself smiling and glance back at Momo, still peering at you out of the side of her eye.

“Thanks,” you say softly.

You see that the caravan of carts pulls onto a stone road, one that cuts through an area far more populated by pedestrians. Small cottages and tents lay erect on both sides of the road, becoming more and more clustered the farther in you come. Banners and flags wave with the crest of what looks to be a bird surrounded by golden feathers. The people around you stare back at you. Some stare with pity, others with an appraising glare. Some even look back with mischievous malice, with sneers that promise just as ruthless intentions as the trolls had.

“Back!” the guards shouts. “Her highness’s lot coming through!”

“Aye, I’ll give three silvers for the imp!” a passerby hollers.

“Two silvers to tickle the pretty one right there to tickle for an hour!” yelled another. The crowd grows dense around the caravan, people looking into the cages and boisterously making offers. A hand reaches out to brush along Momo’s back. She yelps and backs away from the bars, crawling into the center of the cart. You turn and reach out for the man who touched her so abruptly.

“Hey! Watch it!” you yell. Momo lays her hand on her shoulder to pull you back into the center with her.

“No talking back,” Momo says. “Th-they get… it worse…”

“Who gets it worse?”

“Those that… disobey…” Momo says softly. “J-just… d-don’t look at them.” You grumble a little amongst the crowd of people still shouting offers and rude gestures at those inside the carts. Some even throw old produce against the bars. A couple even come close enough to get harassed by the guards.

“Why does the princess get the pretty ones?” a pedestrian yells.

“Wait for the scraps,” the guard shouts back. “Or next round, you’ll be in there right there with them!” Momo cowers, sitting upright and holding her knees tightly into her chest. You overcome the urge to scream back at the people, but know that your efforts are better used to comfort the girl with you. You stay by her side, pushing away the sounds of people calling you names and degrading you as just noise. You reach her hand up to rub Momo’s back carefully. She jumps a little, but quickly sinks into your touch. She shakes and lays her head gently against your shoulder, enduring the ridicule.

“I… gl-glad…” Momo says softly.

The caravan trucks through the open marketplace. Through the tents, you can see more houses and farmlands, a real community among the rampant scavengers. The crowds of people become more dense and rowdy the closer the carts get to their apparent destination: a large palace off to one side of the village. You notice more stone structures than you had seen in the elven commune. Everything around you seems more established into a more market-driven society, complete with rigid architecture and clearly pathed roads.

As the caravan travels farther into the palace, the carts are loaded into a particular section. One by one, the carts are opened at the command of a series of guards. Some watch over the idle carts while others facilitate the opening and transport of the people inside. You watch as the guards are rough and do their best to intimidate the people inside, ushering them into the palace walls in organized lines. You see your chance to break free. You know the path that you took to get in. All you have to do is slip past a guard, make a run for it, and–

“D-don’t… leave me…” Momo says, shuddering into your ear. You pause. You find yourself pulled back to the reality of the situation. You know your last rescue attempt didn’t go as you had planned it would. You see this frightened girl trembling against you. You know that you can continue to fantasize about fighting your way to freedom all you want, but you know that doing so may only cause more problems for you and the people around you. For once, you feel compelled to simply surrender for the answers, for the certainty, for your own sake, and now for Momo’s.

“I… I won’t,” you say. You almost sense that she knew what you were thinking. Maybe because you’re human and that’s the joke. Or maybe because she’s actually found herself compelled by your company. Regardless, you know that your biggest objective isn’t to escape, it’s to protect her, knowing that any escape plan made within these palace walls can’t happen without her.

“Alright, out!” a guard says, throwing open your cart door. The guards lead you out and push you and Momo into line with the others. You turn back to her and speak softly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get us out of–”

“No talking!” a guard yells behind you. It scares you into staring straight forward again. You swallow and decide the best course of action is to simply comply until the right moment to either flee or fight back presents itself.

You’re loaded into a long corridor. Mad, muffled laughter echoes throughout the dark walls of the palace underground. Slowly, you follow the line until you see a long stretch of seated stocks, each lined up side by side for what appears to go on for as far as you can see. The fellow prisoners around you shift anxiously in place. One by one, you see them before you, loaded into the seated stocks as they’re personally attended by decorated ticklers. From what you can tell, the tickling is cruel and impersonal. The tickles travel about the prisoner’s bodies, likely scanning out the best and most notable tickle spots. You look back to Momo who stands back and covers her ears, clenching her eyes shut and muttering to herself.

“Please no, please no, please no…” Momo says. Your heart drops. You steady your nerves to try and be strong for the girl. A thousand questions race through your mind, none of which you feel confident you’ll get a straight or satisfying answer to.

“It’s okay,” you say back to her, knowing that she likely can’t hear you. You place a hand on her arm, gaining her attention. She stops muttering for a moment and looks up at you. “It’s okay, I won’t leave you.” The lack of confidence in her expression is not lost on you.

The line shuffles forward until you come up next in line to be seated. The guard that ushers you forward stops you just before you get to your own pair of seated stocks. Another guard rushes up to him, whispering something in his ear.

“Hm, these two?” the guard asks.

“Her highness’s orders,” the other guard says. You stare back at the two curiously.

“What’s going on?” you ask, amongst the cacophony of screaming laughter further down the corridor.

“No talking, human!” the guard says. He sighs a bit and nudges you with his spear. “You’re coming with me apparently.” He pushes you further down the long stretch, breaking you out of the line. You look back to see the other guard grabbing Momo by the wrist and pulling her out of the line as well, leading her down the direction from which you came. She glances back at you, her face pale and eyes wide.

“Momo!” you say. You start after her, but the guard catches you by the arm and roughly forces you back into place.

“No starting trouble, human,” the guard says. “I know it’s hard for your kind.” You continue walking where the guard gestures to you with his spear at your back. You steal the occasional glimpse back at Momo until she’s thoroughly out of your field of vision. You want to fight back. You struggle with the urge to scream and push and make a scene, but guards and torturers fill every other square foot of the corridor that isn’t occupied with ticklish suffering. Even you know when you’re clearly out-numbered. You sigh and huff and follow along as the guard leads you to a lonely room just off of the corridor.

Outside of the room, another guard stands by. He greets the other and leads you both through the door. The room, still beneath the palace, is nicer than the barrack in which you had witnessed the assessing torture of all the other prisoners. It is compact and more of a storage space for royal trinkets covered up in dusty sheets. Torchlight illuminates the chamber that smells of fragrant musk. You notice no windows and just the one door leading in and out. You have a hard time seeing much of the room as the guards roughly throw you inside, tossing your body, weakened with hunger, around with ease. Sweat continues to drip from your brow as you’re led to the center of the room, where a macabre human-sized rack sits idly waiting for you.

“Can’t believe we caught her highness a human,” says one of the guards.

“And a cute one too,” says the other. “The princess is gonna have her fill with this one.”

“What’s going on?” you ask abruptly, your anger fueled by being isolated from the other guards. “Where am I? Where’s Momo?”

“Shut your mouth, human,” one guard says, pushing you back against the rack in the center of the room. The other raises their spear up to your neck. “Now be a good human and climb on in.” You consider being reluctant still. Something about being ridiculed and being told what to do sparks a rebellious tick in your psyche. Still, you search for that voice of reason. You swallow your pride and slowly climb on top of the rack, knowing well what will happen once you do and figuring correctly what would happen if you didn’t.

“That’s a good human,” says the other guard. The two circle you as you lay out on your back. The guards roughly pull you into place. You have little with which to fight back against their brute strength. They strap your wrists and ankles into specialized cuffs at the edges of the device, stretching out your arms and legs.

“You sure she said this one?” one guard asks the other.

“It’s the only human,” says the other.

“I guess, just seems so weak…” The guards talk idly amongst themselves as they get you situated firmly into the device. You want to talk back, but know that nothing you say will make anything any better. You even think about trying a spell to fight back against the guards and slip away, perhaps even in their armor for disguise, but after the failure at the troll camp, you find yourself second guessing your own brazen attempts at rescue, even for yourself. Instead, you stoically maintain your composure. You stare ahead and up at the ceiling, the torchlight around you dancing and crackling at the tinder. As the guards bind you into position, you’re dreadfully aware of how vulnerable you are in such a position.

The guards continue to talk among themselves. They mock you and laugh and even pinch at your sides a bit to make you jerk and squeak. After a hit of teasing, however, the door to the room opens. In walks a figure dressed in the black armor of the torturers from outside. The torturers wear long black cloaks with masks that cover the bottom half of their faces resembling wide, toothy smiles. You look away from the figure as it comes up next to you, staring down at your bound, defenseless body.

“Goodie,” the torturer says, their voice muffled behind the mask. “Such an honor being assigned a human to break…” You swallow. Your teeth chatter a bit. You collect your composure and steady your breathing.

“Let’s… get this over with…” you mumble. You expect the torturer to retort like a brute. Instead, he merely chuckles upon hearing you.

“‘Over with’, it says,” the torturer laughs, urging the guards to chuckle along with him as they stand by to watch. “Heh heh, no no, here… there is no ‘over with’. There is only… laughter.” The torturer walks around the rack, sizing up your body with appraising stares. He comes up behind you as you squirm uncomfortably in your binds. You still recall being brutally tickled by the hoard of trolls, so you figure that you can hold out well against just one–

“Neeaaaaaaaahhhhhahahahahahahahahaaaa!!!” A flurry of tickles surges against both of your stretched pits at once. The sensations come swiftly and brutally surging through your body. The sudden rush of tickles from the torturer’s experienced fingers sends you into an instant frenzy of exploding nerves. You barely had time to even recognize where his hands were by the time they were already tickling you. Now, it’s too late to prepare yourself, as you’re thrust into another whirlwind of surging tickles, ravishing into each of your plush, warm armpits at once.

“Oho, it seems humans are as ticklish as I’ve heard,” the torture says delightfully. His hands are ornamented with a unique pair of gloves. The tips of the fingers are long and pointed like nails, the ends of which feel as if they are accentuated with fine clusters of tiny feathers stroking against your skin. Whatever it appears to be, you notice a strong potency with the tickles ravishing your armpits. The tools and skills of the torturer are not lost on your senses as his tickling techniques hit your nerves with an experienced, artisan approach, far more devastating than any one person you’ve ever been tickled by before.

“Gaaaaaahhhheheehehehhahahah!! Stahahahahahaaaap!!” you scream as you thrash in the rack. The gloves scour across your ticklish pits, sending surges of tickles pulsing from both sides of your body. You buck and thrash, your head wafting side to side as you endure the onslaught of tickles. The torturer merely looks down at you. He seems to appraise your ticklishness with each spidering swipe of his fingers. You can’t tell much from his hidden expression, which seems to only emphasize just how helpless you are in this new and strange environment.

“Tickle, tickle, tickle, human… heh hehe…” the torturer mocks you, his voice seeping through a hidden smile. “We’re going to get good and acquainted, you and I.” The torturer’s feathery fingers swipe all across your delicate, plush mounds. They dig and swipe, alternating technique as they explore every since sensitive inch throughout. The tickles riddle through your senses. Your body twists and pulls at your binds. Your mind tosses against the roaring tickles ravishing your nerves. You do your best to maintain composure, to endure the tickles as you have before against other Featherland foes, but the torturer’s methods come with a surprising flourish of vigor you’ve only just begun to experience.

“NAAAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAAA!! PLEEEAHAHHAASEEE!!” Your laughing screams quickly fill the room, colliding with the howling laughter of the ticklish souls echoing through the corridor behind the door.

The torturer continues to assess your armpits before pulling away as tears bubble at the corners of your eyes. You gasp and heave a series of desperate breaths, sweat trickling down your skin. The torturer eases further down your body. He comes up next to your midsection, hovering over it like a scavenger looking at a feast. Your heart pounds. You stare back at him with pleading eyes. The torturer’s stare is soulless and set, however, unwilling to be reasoned with. He parts your robe to expose your belly.

“Stay with me now, human,” the torturer says. “Don’t need you passing out too quickly…” The assessment continues abruptly once more as the torturer’s gloves descend down upon your bare stomach. The tickles rise again with an instant command over your body. Spidering finger scratches and swipes across your stomach leave your arms and legs jerking again against the cuffs holding you down. You throw your head back as your voice cracks into another strained belting of ticklish laughter.

“NAAAHAHHHHAHHHHA!!! NEEEAAHAHHA STAHAHAHAPPP!” You feel the tickles sprawling across your stomach. They envelope the entire area, devouring the delicate nerves throughout. The torturer works tirelessly skittering and scratching his gloved hands across your belly. You can tell little of his expression behind his mask and the teary veil of your own eyes, but you see his stare narrow. The man quietly assesses your movements and studies your laughter. He sternly listens and watches out for the subtle changes in your intrinsic reactions to the tickles fluttering through your senses. Even still, you can feel through his ticklish touch a slight wisp of thrill in the act of tormenting your ticklish body.

“Heh, heh, very good, human,” the torturer remarks over your laughter. “You’re going to make for ample entertainment for her highness soon!” It was more information than you’ve gotten from anyone there yet, and still it comes as almost lost on your through the tickles pouring through your body and flooding your mind. The gloves that scurry across your bare, pulsing stomach leave tingling streaks where they touch, easily compounding the ticklish sensations more and more by the second.

“AAAAHHHHEEEEEEEHHEEEHEHEEE!!! PLEEAHAHHASEEE!!” You notice how quickly the tickles have come to take an effect on your body. What Oran had accomplished with magic and what Flauntroy managed with a small army, the torturer replicated with nothing more than a specialized pair of gloves and his own abrasive techniques. The tickles scurry quickly across your belly with his gleeful touch. The torturer alternates by pinching your sides with wide grips. He sends his ravishing fingers up and down your ribs before letting a single, scribbling finger plunge into your belly button. You shriek with laughter, tears pouring down the sides of your face. You buck and pull and find more and more of your stoic constitution slipping away, leaving behind only a squealing mess of nerves and futility.

“Heh, very nice,” one of the guards comments. The torturer snickers. They pull their hands back once more, letting you taste the tingling effects of the gloves. You squirm and giggle still, unable to find rest even in the idle moments in between.

“A nice specimen, for sure,” the torturer says, walking down to the bottom of the rack. You shudder and stare down at him, shaking your head.

“N-no…” you mutter.

“The princess will have a new favorite by the end of the day,” the torturer says. He stops right at the end of the table, raising his gloved hands up to your bound, bare feet. You swallow and groan heavy breaths. You do what you can to brace yourself for what you know will come, but even still, nothing you do, or can do, prepares you for the inevitable.

“FAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!” You let out a massive scream of laughter as the torturer’s special gloves begin toying with your helpless, bare soles. He scribbles eagerly up and down your soft, defenseless arches, painting maddening tickles all over your feet in an instant. The tickles surge up through your body. Your back arches, your head falls back as your mouth opens agape with hearty, fluttering laughter. The tickles that pour in from your vulnerable bare feet convulse through your limbs and muscles. They leave you bouncing and thrashing against the rack, further disposing your stable sensibilities.

“Just as I thought, human’s really ticklish down here…” the torturer assesses joyfully. “Heh heh, the princess will be quite pleased…” The devilish tickler delights himself in tormenting your poor, helpless soles. With rapid scribbling motions, he skitters the fine, feathery ends of the gloves all over your feet. Up and down, his endless scratching reaches every last ticklish inch. Every little swipe incites a bursting of tickles exploding up from your feet. You flail them in place. You toes curl and desperately try to fight off the torturer’s impish fingers, but you can do nothing to fight back against the tickles. The torturer’s ticklish touch even seems to track your movements, anticipating how your body will react before it does. You hear him laughing from beneath his mask, his hands proving more than effective at engaging your ticklish feet.

“NAAAAHHHHHHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAA!!! NAAAHHHAHAHA THERE!!!!” you scream and squeal uselessly. The guards and the torturer all laugh at your plight. Their eyes observe your ticklish suffering up close, drinking in your laughter like a fine elixir.

“Haha, are all humans this loud?” one guard asks.

“Loud?” the other responds. “I’m more curious if they’re all that ticklish!”

“I’d hope so,” the guard chuckles. The torturer’s fingers dance along your sensitive feet. His fingers dive into your squirming toes, painting the feathery ends along each delicate digit. You squeal and shriek and thrash about, sweat and tears spraying with each rapid motion. The torturer chuckles as he counts your ticklish toes methodically, letting his special tickling gloves reach all around each. Your voice starts to face. You begin gasping for air. Slowly, the tickles take over your body and mind. You beg. You plead. You cry for help, but soon you’re unable to do anything but laugh for the amusement of your captors once again. You’re unable to comprehend anything beyond the tickles.

As you begin groaning and straining to breathe, the tickles stop again. The effects of the gloves still leave behind a distinct tingling sensation, one that leaves you still fluttering giggles while you suck down needful gulps of humid air. Your body lays back, limp and weak. Your eyes close. Sweat drips from your body to the rack, then from the rack to the floor. The torturer steps back, his eyes still analyzing you for means unknown.

“This one’s going to need more stamina,” the torturer remarks, “but I think her highness will approve.”

“She’s already been alerted to the arrival of the human and the feilyne,” a guard says.

“Then it should rest,” the torturer says, straightening out his cloak. “The princess has high expectations for this one…” He begins making his way toward the door.

“No doubt,” the other guard says. He opens the door to let the torturer through, followed by the other guard. He turns back to you with a smirk hiding behind a thick, bushy beard. “Don’t go anywhere now, human. You’ve got a long night ahead. Heh heh…” The guard slips through the door and closes it behind him, leaving you alone in the room with the flickering torchlight and the muffled screams of laughter from areas beyond.

You sigh, taking the moment to catch your breath. As before at the camp, the contraption remains strong enough to hold you even at your best, but already weakened by tickles has left you not even giving it a challenge. You grunt and huff and continue feebly to try and get yourself free, knowing well your strength wouldn’t be the key to such a conclusion. You try to make the most of your time alone, able to plot openly for a daring attempt at freedom. You look carefully around the room. You try to find anything that may be able to help you. You search for potential weapons, a compartment in which to hide should you manage to get free, or even an odd path to the outside. Nothing. The room remains barren with only the slightest amount of odd trinkets and forgotten relics to keep you company.

Exhausted by the hunger and the ruthless ticklish assessment, you lay her head back down against the rack, hoping to rest well enough to at least endure the next grueling ticklish trial ahead. You steep yourself in a relative calm for a few minutes before a sharp voice cuts through the laughter and sends a chill down your spine.

“I want to see the human!” the voice chimes in from the other side of the door. “Show them to me!” You shudder at the tone that manages to reach your ears louder than the laughter still echoing in the corridor. You think back to Momo and Tiamalla, knowing that your freedom could be just as valuable to them as it is to you. As such, you’re compelled to stop at nothing to do what you have to do, no matter who you have to face to get there.

The door opens. One of the guards from before pushes it in. A girl eagerly steps into the room. She’s decorated in the most elegant outfit you feel you’ve ever seen. A flowing purple dress, accented with sparkling gems, floats effortlessly just off of the floor. Her hair is bright yellow as if strewn from pure gold. A sparkling tiara sits atop her head. She wears a modestly painted face, highlighting a clear and natural beauty. Tall and shapely, the princess comes up next to you. Her eyes stare like bladed slivers, enamored by your presence before her. She grins a subtle, sideways smile, her hand lowering to rest upon your stomach.

“This is the human, your highness,” one of the guards says, standing by the closed door.

“Yes, I got that, thank you,” the princess snaps back at him. The guard falls silent, keeping a watchful eye on the business of the princess before you both. She turns back to you. You see a look of deep intrigue in her eyes. Her hand raises to cup the side of your cheek. “Human… how strange. I almost didn’t think it was true.”

“H… wha…” you heave, still struggling to catch your breath.

“Aww, my men really did a number on you, didn’t they?” the princess asks. “Or is your kind really that ticklish? That’s what I’d like to believe. Not used to the way we do things here in the Featherlands, how exotic! I’ve always wanted to meet a human in person and now I have one of my very own!”

“Wh… where… am I?” you ask. “Where… have you taken me?”

“You will address the princess as ‘your highness’ and dare not question her!” the guard shouts. The princess recoils and turns toward him.

“Easy, now!” the princess says. “Did you not just hear me say it’s a stranger to our land?”

“M-my apologies, your highness,” the guard says. The princess rolls her eyes.

“Also, it’s a small room, Doug, there’s no need to shout,” the princess adds, her tone disgruntled and annoyed.

“Again…. Apologies.”

“Right, just… chill for a second.” The princess turns back to you and gives a knowing grin. “Right, sorry about that. Now then…” Her fingers walk around your stomach, mindlessly scraping ticklish scratches at your skin. You jerk a little, starting to giggle once more. “My name is Princess Valina, daughter of Valeor and heir to the kingdom of Plumewood. I imagine that you must have a lot of questions. All this must be so confusing. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do…”

Valina pulls away from your body and comes up closer to your head, She strokes your sweaty, tangled mop out of your face and stares down at you.

“Before we have our fun, because you can imagine how that’s absolutely going to happen, I’ll let you recover long enough to ask one question,” Princess Valina says. “Just one though and I’ll answer honestly. After that, you’re mine to play with for as long as you can handle… Understand, human?”

You think for a moment, still slightly dazed from the previous tickle torture. You pull at several of the questions you have buzzing around your mind. The princess’s controlling stare lingering down at you makes your heart and mind race. You want to stall for as long as you can, but can’t fight back against the urge to gain whatever information you can in your demeaning and helpless disposition. You think for a moment before finally speaking up.

What do you ask Princess Valina?