Splash!
- Get up, you lazy slut!
The icy water jolts me awake. No sooner had I started waddling and screaming than the guard slapped me across the face. Drops of piss and sewage drip down my body.
Naked, bound by the arms, my wrists reddened by the irons, I have to shake my head to move my dirty hair away from my eyes. Barely awake, I'm already exhausted, standing in the same position for three days... since my city fell.
We thought we were safe, in the southern desert, far from the tumult of the Civil War. We thought that by remaining neutral, the Imperial Guard would leave us alone. But when the first emissaries arrived and ordered us to submit to the Empire, to let the army settle in our town, and to pay for our freedom by offering our women as slaves, then we understood that we too were condemned to live in chains.
My husband did everything he could to save us. He wanted to negotiate, he even went to the Capital to defend our cause... And he never came back. Instead, the imperial guards arrived. They besieged us and left us to starve behind our walls. And it was under a boiling sun that I prostrated myself at the feet of the Masters, and sold my people to the slavers. I voluntarily stripped naked before the Masters. I offered them my life, my body, my obedience... And they threw sand in my face and went off to plunder the city.
For the past three days, I've been chained to the platform in the city's main square. People used to come here to meet, discuss and negotiate. There were huge stalls, the biggest market in the southern cities. We were a major trading point, and all the caravans passed through here. For three days now, only one resource has been sold in the square : human meat.