A Tale of Ties and Binds - Chapter 23

Chapter 23. A Punishment for Prisoners

There was one solitary candle to mark the passage of time.

It was first lit when Penelope was thrown into her cell in the dungeons below the Cretan Queen's palace. They had released her from the manacles at her wrists, relieved her of her armour and untied the linen rag from her mouth. Her newfound speech was of little consolation, however, since there was nobody to talk to.

Two dozen reflections of the small flame sparkled on the bronze studs imbedded in the thick wooden cell door. Penelope watched that door, as the candle slowly withered away, waiting for it to open.

It could be worse, Penelope pondered as optimistically as she could. Back in the dungeon in Larissa, she'd been chained wide to opposite sides of the wall with an irritating stone knob protruding from the ground between her legs, always close enough to feel but never quite close enough to enjoy. The wardens there had shoved stale bread down her throat, in and out, in and out. They took some sick pleasure from it. There are no sick wardens here, at least.

Despite all this, sleep did not come to Penelope. Her mind kept rethinking the conversation with Queen Adrianne. Could I have said something differently? Could I have offered her something in return? Would anything I could have done made even the slightest difference? And then there was the queen's son - the half-phallic, half-beast she'd spoken of. She'd be given to him as a gift and a plaything, to be hunted down and used until his animalistic desires had been sated.

The candle guttered out mere moments before Penelope heard the jangle of keys and the cell door swung open. One of the two jailors carried a torch in one hand and a bodice of leather armour in the other. She threw the latter at Penelope and ordered her to strap herself in. "The Minotaur likes his playthings gift wrapped," she laughed. They dragged Penelope from her cell and got to work binding her. With long lengths of rope, they corded her wrists tightly into the small of her back. Penelope thought that would suffice, but they also hobbled her elbows together, wrapped more rope above, below and between her breasts and looped down between her thighs, effectively giving her a breast harness and a crotchrope together. Then Penelope was once again acquainted with a linen cloth as it cleaved her lips. "He lies to hear them mmph for him too. Ha!"

They dragged Penelope through the dark dungeons and emerged into the pinkish daylight of the early morning sun. By the lush greenery, Penelope surmised she was in the royal gardens. The air was fresh and she could smell the flowers - a welcome change from the musty stale air of the dungeons.

Queen Adrianne was waiting with an entourage of cow-helmed guards deeper into the gardens. She was looking as regal as ever, though Her smug grin was a newer addition. Penelope was handed over to the guards and they held her tight under her arms just in case she thought of trying to run away. Any chance of that happening was gone. In any case, the ropes at her wrists were too tight to wrestle out of without the help of a sharp rock, and Penelope couldn't find any, let alone pick one up.

The queen didn't talk to Penelope as they made their way deeper into the gardens. Penelope didn't talk either. The time for talk was long gone. They soon arrived at a staircase leading up the side of a high stone wall riddled with cracks and covered in vines. Carrying on up the staircase, it dawned on Penelope that it was not the wall to the palace.

The stairs levelled out into a walkway. Down below, a myriad of twists and turns and junctions were laid out in a labyrinth of stone walls on sandy ground. It stretched for over a thousand paces in either direction. The grandeur was staggeringly terrifying.

Walking over the tops of the walls, making subtle turns here and there where the path below did the same and crossing over bridges where it was necessary, the group eventually came to a wide circular platform roughly centred above the middle of the labyrinth. There were four bronze bells on the north, south, east and west sides. A large winch system was placed in the middle of it all over a gaping mouth with the labyrinth two stories below.

Four of the guards positioned themselves next to the bells while some others prepared the winch. They drew out some slack and then began looping the end of the rope through Penelope's breast harness. She considered growling at them, wondering if the cows would run away at the threat of being bitten by the Scylla. Bound and gagged (and their not being real cows and her not being a real serpent), there was little chance of that.

The Queen cleared Her throat. "This is the punishment that befalls all escaped slaves in Crete so do not consider yourself special. You'll be released from the labyrinth as soon as My son grows tired of you, but that could be anywhere from several days to a moon's turn. After that, you'll be shipped back to Thessaly as My unwilling envoy to Queen Titania and to pay for your crimes there. It may be advisable for you to simply let My son have his pleasure of your body as much as he can until he gets bored. You'll be let out sooner that way." She gestured to Her guards at the winch and they started turning the wheel.

The slack was lost in moments and Penelope found herself being pulled backwards, closer to the edge. It was all she could do to stay upright once the winch reached its limit, leaving her teetering precariously on the tips of her toes just on the lip of the drop.

Queen Adrianne stepped in close and wrapped a hand behind Penelope's neck as if to grab a kitten by its scruff. She whispered, "Learn from this experience, slave, and consider it carefully next time you think about forsaking your mistresses." With that, She softly pushed Penelope backwards. It was more than enough for her to fall.

Penelope was caught by the ropes as they dug in painfully all around her breasts and crotch, supporting all her weight over the two-story drop. The Queen gave the order and the winch slowly unwound as Penelope was lowered into the jumble of paths and walls and dead-ends below.

The bells were tolling raucously by the time Penelope's feet were touching the sand-covered ground, alerting the Minotaur that his new plaything had arrived. She felt a sudden loss of tension in the rope, followed shortly after by it falling on her head and pooling in a hempen snake around her. They'd cut the rope at the top. Another indignity, Penelope bit into her gag. They want me to drag it along.

Left with no choice in the matter, she dragged the long rope behind her as she picked a direction and ran, not quite knowing where she was headed.

She could swear she was running in circles. Every wall looked the same, the sandy paths all looked the same. The tracks twisted and turned so much she could never keep heading in the same direction. The only inconsistencies in the maze were at some of the larger junctions where a bull's head marble bust stood on a podium in the middle of a fountain, but the direction it faced was never the same. Sometimes they pointed down paths. Penelope thought they were clues and followed them until she came across one that pointed at a wall, then she stopped paying attention to them.

All the while, she wriggled her arms, trying to wrench them free of her bonds, but they were too tight and every rope was out of reach. The gag in her lips was soaking wet and her throat was parched and dry. She'd drink at the fountains when she could, lowering her head into the water and keeping her eyes focused on her surroundings. It's the way cows drink, Penelope realised. A sick joke or an accidental result of being bound, she did not know. Her crotchrope was chafing the skin on her thighs and she desperately needed to rest.

The morning had turned to just shy of midday and Penelope was sitting against a wall in the shade, soaking in the coolness of the rock. She'd managed to find a junction with berry bushes growing up against the walls so decided to sit, rest and eat, using only her tongue to slip the berries off the short stems (another cow imitation, perhaps), made difficult by the gag in her lips. That was when she heard a muffled scream, followed by an unwelcome bleating noise.

The sound was getting closer and Penelope could eventually tell it was coming from the passageway around the corner behind her. Before she could decide whether to run or stay, the Fates decided for her. A woman came bolting from inside the passageway, bound and gagged the same as Penelope, with eyes wide from terror. Her clothes had been torn and ripped to shreds, hanging off her only from the assistance of the ropes that kept her bound. With little more than a passing glance at Penelope, the woman ran straight past her and turned right at the crossroad. The long rope tied to the girl's breast harness left a trail in the sand behind her.

It was then that Penelope discovered their cunning purpose. The ropes drew a faint line in the sand behind the prisoners allowing the Minotaur to keep track of his playthings. Find a trail, pick a direction and follow it. Fifty-fifty chance it'll lead to someone. Quickly as she could, Penelope coiled up her rope tail and held it in her bound hands. He won't be following me around!

The Minotaur bleated again, but it was no longer far away.

Penelope froze. The creature was only just around the corner. If she ran, she knew, there wouldn't be enough time to duck behind a different corner. The Minotaur would see her. If he's anything like the demigod bull his royal mother claimed he was, Penelope reasoned above all odds, his vision would be based on movement. My best bet is to stay perfectly still. She pressed herself against the wall and nestled into the protective shade of the berry bushes.

The Minotaur appeared.

The queen had lied about her son, though she'd made an admirable attempt to make it true. The Minotaur was not a demigod hybrid of phallic and animal - he was simply a phallic in ornate armour.

He wore a broad iron greathelm in the shape of a bull's head, bearing a pair of phallic shaped horns. His shins were covered by hoof-shaped greaves that came down just past his ankles. Aside from that, the Minotaur was naked. A dense rug of fur concealed his chest, arms, legs and groin, though a half-erect meat protruded from that undergrowth. It was as close to being bull-like as he could have hoped to achieve.

He huffed and puffed, catching his breath. His helmed head was looking down as he scanned the sand for a trail. He was so close that Penelope could have reached out to touch him had her hands not been bound and she'd been insane enough to try. As it was, the Minotaur couldn't see her, his peripheries blinded by the bull's head greathelm. His chubby fingers twiddled in the air as if groping an invisible breast in each hand. One of his hoofed feet kicked at the sandy floor, just like a real bull, eventually forming and arrow pointing away from the direction he came.

That's how he stops himself getting lost in his own labyrinth, Penelope surmised before the Minotaur bleated once more and charged off down the path of the right, following the trail of the woman before. It was only after he was long gone that Penelope realised she'd been holding her breath.

Somewhere in the distance, the bells tolled as yet another prisoner was lowered into the labyrinth.

"I need to get out of here," Penelope mmphed into her gag.

Continued in Chapter 24