The Persian hoarder suite was a mess, with pillows flung everywhere, and stuffing still floating lazily in the hot, still air. I paused to take in the scene and nearly dropped my facade of a brainless servant in the first second.

  Ruby and Jane were both hanging suspended from silk streamers attached to the ceiling. They looked battered and only half conscious. Blood was dripping down a cut on Jane’s cheek, while one of Ruby’s eyes was swollen shut.

  Michael and another bare-chested man wearing red boxers were prodding at them with steel spears, poking shallow cuts in their skin. I spotted a lot of little cuts, all dripping blood.

  Tomas knelt on a cushion nearby, eyes glassy and expression vacant. Some of the silk drapes around the enormous bed were thrown back, showing the psycho mistress Abbie straddling Steve, who lay on his back, arms wide, unmoving.

  Abbie had embraced her fatal attraction character and gone full dominatrix. She’d changed into a leather halter top made up of crisscrossing belts with too many buckles and tons of spiky bits, along with a black thong bikini bottom. She was leaning over Steve, whispering throaty words as she slowly cut away his shirt.

  Three other shirtless, boxer-wearing men stood along the wall near the door, each carrying an unsheathed sword. They all ranged between level 14 and 16.

  I advanced slowly, head bowed, trying to breathe as I fought an overwhelming urge to start killing. None of the guards along the wall interfered, and Michael even paused in his torture of Jane to smile approvingly at me.

  “Mistress, lunch is ready,” I intoned in a bored, sleepy voice.

  “Bring it to me, boy,” she said, not turning from Steve.

  Her voice again slithered into my ears and attacked my mind, but this time I managed to withstand the onslaught. The huge bonus I’d received from that loot box made a noticeable difference. Besides, seeing Ruby and Jane getting tortured right in front of me helped even more.

  Every step was agony as I fought the urge to sprint across the room. It seemed to take forever, and Michael stabbed Jane again, this time right in the stomach. She groaned and blinked open her eyes.

  “Lucas, is that you?”

  “So you know the new guy?” Michael laughed. “Fat lot of good that will do you.”

  I finally reached the bed and Abbie lazily reached one hand back to snag a treat. It looked just like a mini smokey, wrapped in a biscuit. She popped it into her mouth and moaned, like the little treat was some kind of aphrodisiac.

  On the bed, Steve’s gaze was unfocused, a half smile on his lips, and he remained lying motionless, making no move to escape while Abby was distracted. Time for a little intervention.

  I grabbed Abbie by the back of her leather halter top and yanked, planning to hurl her across the room. Instead, all I managed to do was rip the entire sex dungeon outfit off. The buckles unsnapped like they were obviously intended to, leaving her entire torso naked.

  Abbie looked at me and laughed, her throaty voice vibrating with intense pleasure. “My, my, but you’re turning out to be a naughty boy, Lucas. Don’t worry, you’ll get playtime later.”

  I slammed the silver tray full of sweets into her face with all my strength.

  That should have splattered her to paste, but a faintly shimmering defensive barrier appeared around her, absorbing much of the impact. My blow still broke through and slammed into her hard enough to break skulls.

  She screamed as the impact catapulted her through the silk drapes in a crazy tumble all the way across the room to crash into the solid log wall with a crunching sound. Strangely, every one of the shirtless men staggered, as if that blow had radiated out to them too somehow.

  Even before she hit the wall, I continued my movement, hurling the now-dented platter at Michael. It caught him in the chest, edge first and even though it wasn’t sharp, it hit with enough force to punch through ribs and send him flying in a spray of blood.

  All the guards recovered from their initial stumble. They shouted and charged. Thankfully the dude who had been stabbing at Ruby charged me too. I snatched up two pillows, slapping my palms onto them before hurling them at the guards rushing in from the door. An emoji appeared on the face of each pillow.

  “Emoji trap. 50 punches. Force of each punch adjusted as a percentage of your strength.”

  “Emoji trap. Mud wrap.”

  The guards ignored the pillows, which proved to be a bad choice. The first pillow struck the center guard and a gray cloud enveloped him. The gray, hazy smoke condensed into fists all around the poor guy and started raining heavy punches over him.

  He shook, his body slamming back and forth so hard his feet left the ground as the invisible fists pummeled him brutally. I should have thought that one through. My strength was over 20, and that was a tier-1 human stat.

  The second pillow seemed to melt and wrap the second guard, expanding into sheets of muddy ribbon that whipped around with dizzying speed, totally encasing him in about 2 seconds. It was like watching him transform into a muddy mummy.

  “Tomas! Steve! Get up!” I shouted as I ran to meet the spear-wielding guard who had been stabbing Ruby. Neither of the guys so much as twitched.

  The guard lunged, stabbing out with his spear. It was a decent move, but too slow. I slipped the spear, not slowing, and reached him before he could retract the weapon. I clotheslined him across the face as I ran past, knocking him off his feet.

  Instead of turning to face the last guard, I jumped and soared past the bound women, slashing out with an ax-headed polearm to slash through the silk ribbons binding them.

  Ruby fell hard to her knees, shaking her head to wake up. Jane landed already running straight at the two remaining guards, her expression a mask of fury. She made a cutting gesture with one hand and their weapons hurtled out of their hands to stick into the wall near the door.

  Jane plowed into them, fists flying. She might not have a formal skill at hand to hand fighting, but anger fueled her punches with a lot of strength. I turned to help as the three of them met in intense melee, punching and kicking at each other, but an angry shriek reminded me Abbie was not dead.

  She rose from where she’d fallen against the outer wall, her body sheathed in layers of silk ribbons. Despite the blood on her face, she moved with sinuous grace. No doubt she’d already taken a full healing potion.

  Identify kicked in. “Abby Forrest. Level 25 baby human. Team Fatal Attraction. Class: Charmbinder.”

  No wonder she was so strong. She’d already hit level 25 and unlocked her class. It suddenly made more sense how a tier-0 baby human could affect me so much with her mind-warping powers.

  “Lucas, I’ll eat your heart!” she shrieked.

  “You’re breaking with your entire theme. Shouldn’t you be promising some kind of sex-themed death torture? Maybe even castration?”

  “You want me to castrate you?” She looked honestly shocked.

  “Of course not. I’m just messing with you.”

  “She’s mine,” Ruby growled, rising to her feet.

  She was visibly healing from a potion, and as she stalked toward Abbie, a pair of nunchucks appeared in her right hand. Suddenly loud, fast-tempo music filled the room. It was the same song that Ruby Roundhouse had used in the movie. “Baby, I love your way.”

  Despite everything, I couldn’t help laughing. “I thought you didn’t want to use those.”

  “We all have to do things we don’t want to.”

  She charged, but Abbie threw up her hands and the ends of the dozens of silk ribbons wrapping her torso rose like snakes and snapped out at Ruby.

  So that was how she had trapped them in the first place. Not only did she have that nasty seduction mind magic and some way to echo damage down to her followers, but also mind control over silk ribbons. Abbie was a total piece of work.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Ruby raced in, nunchucks whirling as she jumped and spun and danced, knocking one ribbon after another out of the way. I just wanted to stand there and watch the amazing show, but the door banged open and 4 more shirtless men charged in waving swords and spears.

  Jane was still beating down the two guards, while Michael was rising to rejoin the fray, his injured chest healed from a potion. I didn’t want to kill them. They were just pawns of Abbie, but I had to stop them.

  So I left Ruby to take on the dominatrix and rushed to meet the charging guards. Tomas and Steve still hadn’t moved. Abbie had rattled their minds even worse than she had mine when I first arrived.

  “You betrayed the mistress!” Michael shouted, face a mask of pure rage as he charged. That drew the attention of the new arrivals and they all oriented on me too.

  Fine with me. I didn’t want them stabbing Jane in the back or dispatching Tomas and Steve while they remained helpless. I considered my options as I gauged the onrushing 5 men. All but Michael had weapons, but they didn’t look like they were very skilled.

  So I pulled my two fighting sticks from my inventory and jumped to meet Michael. The group were slightly spread out, so they couldn’t all attack me at once if I didn’t give them the chance to encircle me.

  Michael had lost his weapon and barreled in, fists raised. I clubbed him in the side of the head with my steel-banded stick. I hadn’t thought I swung that hard, but blood flew and he dropped like a bag of hammers. I might have just cracked his skull.

  “Sorry,” I whispered as I turned to meet the others. I had to be more careful. It was too easy to forget my own strength.

  The first one swept a heavy sword at my head, but I ducked it and hit him half a dozen times before he could recover, pulling each swing so that I barely touched him. Again, bones cracked and blood flew, despite my best effort. I targeted his hands to disarm, elbows to disable, and knees to immobilize. In under 2 seconds, he fell screaming and writhing in pain.

  “Sorry,” I muttered again. Did I have to wrap my sticks in pillows to reduce the damage to where I wanted?

  Then the others arrived and I threw my heavier stick back into my inventory. Time seemed to slow as I spun and moved around them, stick blurring to deflect their blows. With my other hand, I slapped one man on his shirtless chest.

  He rocketed away like he’d been kicked by a mule. Growling as I tried to rein in my strength, I resorted to flicking the next guy in the forehead as I spun past his lunging strike. His skull rang like a gong, and he collapsed in a heap. It didn’t look like I’d seriously wounded him.

  Flicking it was, then. It felt like forever since I’d engaged in full contact sparring, but the forms seemed clearer than ever. My level 4 skill made more of a difference than I’d realized.

  The guards were even worse at fighting than I’d imagined. They’d do fine against a monster rushing straight in for the kill, but they had no experience fighting skilled human opponents. Their Agility and Dexterity were way lower than mine too, so they moved painfully slow. Worse, they broadcast strikes and moved in predictable patterns.

  As far as fights go, it was pretty disappointing. I danced through them like a ghost, but had to grin when I realized I was slipping into the same cadence Ruby was using in her dance fighting moves as she battled Abbie’s snake ribbons. As I deflected each attack, I responded with a single flick to a forehead.

  3 seconds later, the guards lay in a motionless heap. Healing potions would set them right, but I didn’t want them recovering while still in thrall to Abbie.

  Then Ruby shouted, “I hate you!”

  Somehow Abbie had gotten the upper hand and Ruby lay on the ground, wrapped in multicolored silk ribbons, struggling vainly. Abbie stood over her, torso still twined by the other halves of the same ribbons, making it look like they were crazy mutant conjoined twins. She raised a dagger that looked like a letter opener, with a handle capped by a bright red heart.

  I cast my stick back into my inventory and pulled out an energy rifle. The silk ribbons moved like snakes and hauled Ruby off the ground. Abbie thrust her dagger at Ruby’s heart.

  I shot Abbie in the head.

  Her skull exploded in a shower of blood and gore and she toppled to the ground. Ruby fell a second later as the ribbons holding her up lost power.

  “Mistress, no!” one of the guards Jane had just kicked over the bed shouted, reaching an imploring hand toward Abbie’s corpse. Then he blinked and looked around in confusion. “Where am I?”

  “You’re having a nightmare,” Jane told him, then punched him so hard in the jaw, she knocked him out cold.

  I rushed to Ruby, who was struggling to unwrap the tightly wound silk ribbons.

  “I could have beaten her,” Ruby said as I ripped silk ribbons away.

  “Sure.” I helped her up. “Thanks for coming to rescue me.”

  She snorted. “Some rescue. You had to save my life twice.”

  “Still, thanks.”

  “We’re a team,” she said with a genuine smile, not a psycho twisted manipulative smile like Abbie’s. Then Ruby surprised me by stepping forward and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “I was worried for you,” she said and held on for a long moment.

  The hug felt great, but I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. “No problem. Like you said, we’re a team.”

  I didn’t move away, though. The world was crazy, and sometimes a hug from a friend was necessary. She probably needed it more than I did. She was the one who had been bound, tortured, and then nearly killed. Finally Ruby released me, stepped back, then punched me in the shoulder hard enough to make me wince.

  “Ow.”

  “That’s for making me worry about you. How did you find these psychos anyway?”

  “Just dumb luck.”

  “Not what I’d call luck,” Jane called from across the room where she was kneeling beside Tomas. He held one hand to his temple as he sat on a fat cushion with some stuffing spilling out the side. He still looked confused.

  “I think we knocked out all her cult members.”

  “Good,” Ruby said. “They didn’t deserve dying just because a psycho mind demon got into their heads, but they did deserve what they got.”

  Then she glanced at me again, her eyes flicking over my mostly bare torso. The hint of a smile tugged up one corner of her mouth, and she raised one fine eyebrow.

  “Your wardrobe choices have gotten very interesting.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned away so she couldn’t see me flush. I willed my clothes to appear on me. They appeared just fine, but fell to the floor in a heap.

  Ruby smiled. “How are you so bad at that?”

  “I guess I haven’t leveled up my wardrobe auto-equip ability yet.”

  Grumbling, I got dressed, then triggered Soul Feed. I wasn’t sure it would work on defeated humans too. The white cloud erupting from Abbie’s corpse dwarfed what I expected. So it did work.

  I checked my achievements but didn’t get the ones I expected. I grimaced as Eva read the first one to me.

  “Every player eventually faces the hard reality that not every member of their race is worth saving. Some are downright evil, others have opposing priorities that make success impossible. Sometimes they have to be defeated just like the monsters. You have killed your first Earth human and receive a gold Brutus loot box.”

  That was not an achievement I’d ever wanted, but Abbie had given us no choice. Two other achievements were much more welcome, and I focused on them to not think about the memory of Abbie’s head exploding from my shot.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! Your stick and knife fighting has reached level 5.”

  “Congratulations, Lucas! You have reached level 8. 2 stat points allocated to Intelligence.”

  “I got a level for killing Abbie,” I said softly, not sure how to feel about that.

  I’d killed a lot of monsters, including the much higher-level elite gryffon. I knew I’d been close to getting a level, but it felt wrong to get it for killing a human. Did killing humans give more experience? I hoped not. If it did, some folks would see that as an irresistible path to quick leveling.

  “I did too.” Ruby met my gaze, her expression solemn.

  “Would you like to loot Abbie Forrest?” Eva asked.

  I accepted the prompt. I didn’t like having to kill people, even someone as insane as Abbie, but I wasn’t about to ignore potentially important gear. I couldn’t bring myself to try harvesting a spell from her, though. Just thinking of using any of hers made me feel dirty.

  I got a ton of mana crystals and a slew of potions, including 5 scrolls of firestorm that sounded really powerful. I also got nearly 100 silk ribbons, and 32 bottles of assorted hard liquor. I wasn’t a hard liquor drinker usually, but I’d give the 2 bottles of tequila to Steve and see if his margaritas were as good as he promised. I bet Sam would trade me barrels of his weak ale for each of the other bottles.

  I also got the knife with the heart-tipped handle Abbie had been carrying. The description made my blood run cold.

  “Dagger of Heartache. Rare. Stab this dagger through the heart of an enemy to rip out their soul and bind it to a silk ribbon. This transforms the ribbon into a semi-sentient weapon that will obey your mental commands and will gain the attribute: Resistant to cutting.”

  Abbie hadn’t possessed a telekinesis power like Jane. All those ribbons she’d fought Ruby with were possessed by the souls of Abbie’s victims. I’d seen close to 20.

  Ruby was moving around the room looting the cushions and the weapons from the unconscious guards. Jane was helping Tomas drink a healing potions. Steve still lay unmoving.

  ”Don’t take any of the ribbons. I’m going to pile them up here and burn them when we leave.”

  “Why? The crafters in town would love to use them to make more clothing,” Ruby responded.

  “Some of them are cursed. I’ll keep the ones that aren’t, but we have to destroy the others.”

  Ruby grimaced. “She was such a piece of work.”

  More than she knew. I double-checked my inventory and when I focused on the ribbons I’d gotten from Abbie, I found 3 with slightly different descriptions than the others.

  “Ribbon of the Reaper. Semi-sentient. This ribbon is possessed by the soul of Janice Peterson, who died alone and afraid. Her purpose now is to fight for the wielder of the Heartache dagger to make the pain go away.”

  The other two were possessed by Tanya Biddle and Wendy Lambert. A slow, creeping feeling of dread crept up my scalp as I considered the poor victims of Abbie’s insanity. She’d killed all the women who fell into her clutches and enslaved the men.

  All the other possessed ribbons were strewn on the floor, wrapped around Abbie’s body. I left them there and headed to the bed where Steve still lay unmoving.

  “Hey, you okay, Buddy?”

  Steve sighed and turned slowly to look at me. “Your sense of timing is the worst. You know that, right?”

  “What do you mean? Her minions were torturing Ruby and Jane. You were enslaved to her will.”

  “I know. It was just getting interesting, though.”

  “Seriously? You liked being a mind zombie?”

  “Not really, but I was still vaguely aware of what was going on. She was super hot. A few minutes in a mind haze would have been a small price to pay for more of that playtime she was teasing me with.”

  I shuddered, but reminded myself he didn’t know just how evil she’d been. “Trust me, she wasn’t worth it. She murdered a lot of people.”

  Steve sat up and sighed. “I know. It’s just . . .” He gave me a serious expression. “I didn’t even have a girlfriend when we got yanked away from Earth. We're all going to die. Could die any second. Am I evil to not mind an unexpected bit of intimacy to keep the nightmares at bay for a few minutes?”

  “Not if it was anyone else.” I extended a hand to haul him to his feet.

  He sighed again. “You’re probably right. I’m still going to loot the bed, though.”

  I grimaced. “Wash everything before you use it.”

  Preferably with a molotov cocktail.