Aura Lockhaven Condemned Teaser

Aura stared in horror as the poker grew hot in the brazier. Its deeping red color promised agony. Gagged, she was unable to say an incantation, so her magical power was useless. She strained against the chains, but not even her strong muscles, seasoned by years of chopping firewood and carrying kegs of ale, would bend them to her desire for freedom. Soon, the Knights would come. They would shackle her left foot to the chain mounted on the wall. Then, they would have full access to her whole body, and would do as they wished with the poker, and the nips and pliers. That would not be the worst. That would happen after sunset, when they led her to the pyre and burned her alive. At least, they had not carried through with their threat to remind her that she was a woman. Yet. It was still early morning, and the summer days were long.

= = =

By popular demand, a teaser from Aura’s first (and if she has her way, only) naked bondage peril story, Condemned. Aura is captured by the Knights of the Holy Torch, a band of fanatical witch-hunting monks. They have orders from the Supreme Sire of the High Temple himself to exterminate the Pagan Enchantress of Hartshorn. Can she escape, or is this the end of Aura Lockhaven?

Bondage peril in fantasy is different from that of superheroine. We play for keeps. The peril isn’t sexy; it’s sharp objects, fire, and torture. And spiders. The end isn’t brainwashing or unmasking; it’s death. So, expect a grim and harrowing tale. Expect me to kill characters.

I’m following the same format for Condemned that I do for the Enchantress and the Warrior on my site. It’s an illustrated short story, with illustration at the top of the page and paragraphs of the story at bottom. I’m going to present it in a totally different way. I will post the cover, with a link to a PDF of the entire story, so you can download it and read it at your leisure. This isn’t the kind of story I want to post piecemeal. I’m already working on page six.

Not that any of you ever look at Aura’s hair (she does have hair, guys), but it’s different in Condemned. Her usual Free Spirit and Streaming hair all fall to her waist. If her hands are tied behind her back, we want to see hands and ropes, not hair. So, for Condemned, she wears the shorter Leyton hair. Besides, in this story, she’s 24, so she’s entitled to change her hair style in the intervening two years.