Author’s Note: This is a somewhat longer story, originally written in five parts. I wrote it in response to a request: “Write a story about me.” Although I obviously made some (ahem) slight changes to the main character’s background.
Part 1
The Sorceress-Princess Alisha walked warily as she gathered herbs of virtue in her father’s forest. There were ogres in that forest, although not even ogres were stupid enough to confront her with her two guardsmen accompanying her. Not to mention Merci, her lady-in-waiting. But there were other monsters in the forest as well. Such as that tiger-lizard stalking around the tree toward her...
“Your Highness!” Merci cried. The two guardsmen nocked arrows. Alisha gestured for them to wait, and drew power into herself, speaking the weighty, sharp-edged Words used to cast spells. She rose into the air and, speaking one more Word, flicked a bit of power at the tiger-lizard.
It struck with a sound like a hammer hitting a block of wood. The beast recoiled. “Go away!” Alisha shouted at it. “I don’t want to kill you today. Scat! Shoo!”
The tiger-lizard hissed, its eyes glittering. Alisha spoke more Words, gathering power in a larger sphere to hurl at the creature. It seemed to consider this, and then whirled about to depart as swiftly as it had come.
Alisha released the power, sinking back to the forest floor, landing on her clunky peasant shoes. True, within those shoes her feet were cushioned with the finest lambs-wool socks, but they weren’t the shoes of a princess. Nor were the rest of her clothes particularly regal: A hooded gray cloak over a sleeveless white blouse and a skirt of plain green-brown cloth that reached just to her knees. Between her knees and ankles, her legs were bare, since her socks did not extend beyond the tops of her shoes. That exposed skin was pale, matching the fair skin of her hands and arms, and of her face. That face, at least, was beautiful enough to belong to a princess, with dark hair falling to between her shoulder blades, and almond eyes. It was the face of an oriental princess - naturally enough, given that her father was the oriental king of an oriental kingdom.
The princess finished gathering her herbs, and she and her followers returned to the town of Cherry Delving, sitting at the foot of the Palace of the Silver Hills. There she sent the lady Merci ahead to have a kettle heated, and dismissed her guard quench their thirst at the tavern they favored. Within the walls of the town would be safe enough, and she wished to walk by herself for a bit.
She came to a pony-cart, its bed covered with a blanket to protect goods purchased at the town market. “Good day, goodlady,” the peasant at the reins called out to her.
“Good day, goodsir,” Alisha answered. If she were in her royal finery, she’d be miffed at the common familiarity of his greeting, but in these clothes she didn’t expect to be recognized. To him, she’d be just another young woman returning from gathering herbs.
As Alisha walked past the pony-cart, she did not see the huge arms of an ogre, reaching out from beneath the blanket. She only became aware of them when they grabbed her, lifting her up and back. One of the ogre’s hands stuffed a wad of silk in her mouth, stifling her initial scream as well as blocking any spell she might cast. Then she felt the ogre bind her wrists behind her. She kicked out, and felt her shoes being plucked away, felt another pair of hands tying her ankles together. “Only the finest silks for her highness, even in captivity,” she heard from the man who had been disguised as a peasant. Her sight was limited to the underside of the blanket, and her attempt to spit out the wad in her mouth was foiled by a second roll of silk set in her mouth and tied behind the back of her neck. She squirmed, but even the minimal resistance she could put up while bound hand and foot was cut short.
“You lie still, please,” the ogre whispered, and Alisha foolishly shook her head, no. The ogre sighed, and tightened his grip to apply a brief shime-waza choke. Alisha’s vision darkened for a moment, then returned as the chokehold relaxed. “You lie still, please,” the ogre whispered again, “and no one hurt.” Alisha nodded and held still.
She heard (and felt) the cart rumble over the cobblestones, and out the gate. No one challenged it. She heard the town-sounds of Cherry Delving fade away, as her minds eye saw the cart made its way down the cart-track she had followed. The dimness under the blanket grew slightly dimmer, as the cart passed into the forest. Alisha could hear the forest noises, behind the creak of the cartwheels and the plod of the pony’s hooves. Birds sang, and small animals rustled through the leaves. “You can struggle now,” the ogre told her, releasing his hold on her and moving out from beneath the blanket. Alisha, still under the blanket, tried struggling, but her wrists were tied, her ankles were tied, and she was gagged. She tried, but nothing she did could change any of those three facts.
The cart came to a halt. “Here we are,” the man disguised as a peasant said. He removed the blanket covering Alisha, and grinned at her. “Welcome, You Highness. You may call me Chup, once you’re ungagged. Are you thirsty, by any chance?”
Alisha wasn’t very thirsty - yet - but she mewed and nodded anyway. To give her something to drink, they’d have to remove her gag.
“We’ll take care of that, once we’ve made you safe to ungag. Maark?” This last was addressed to the ogre, who picked up Alisha and carried her into the outlaw lair. It was a half-cave, with a largish hut or smallish barn built out from it and carefully camouflaged. Inside were several ogre-sized pieces of camp furniture, along with several other ogres who exchanged nods with Maark. Alisha found herself set on her belly, on an ogre-sized cot that would make a nice-sized bed for a human woman. Even for a woman like Alisha, who at seven and a third handspans was considered tall by her family.
Maark’s firm grip on Alisha’s ankle foiled her attempt to roll away. “Not today, cute sorceress,” the ogre said as he took the loose ends of Alisha’s wrist- and ankle-ties and knotted them together, putting her into a hogtie. He then pulled her socks off. Not with the quick, efficient plucking that Chup had applied to her shoes, but slowly. Teasingly. Fingerwidth by fingerwidth, until her right foot was bare. Then, even more slowly, he removed her left sock as well.
Alisha wiggled her now-vulnerable feet and closed her eyes. Barefoot, she was even more helpless than before. Her socks would have provided at least a minimal protection against fallen twigs and leaves, but now she didn’t even have that.
She knew better than to hope to recover her shoes, but she’d need something to protect her feet if she ever got a chance to run away. She could deal with a tramp through the forest, unlike many of the excessively tender young ladies of her father’s court, but she’d always worn shoes and consequently her bare feet were tender. Nor could she steal foot-coverings from any of her captors. Her own feet were just the tiniest bit over a handspan long, while the ogre’s boots were - she opened her eyes to glance up at Maark looming over her - much bigger.
“Tickle, tickle, cute little sorceress,” Maark said. Alisha looked blankly at him for an instant, then bit down on her gag in an attempt to keep from giggling as his fingers ran lightly over her vulnerable soles. The fingers of his right hand, that is; his left hand continued to hold Alisha’s ankles in a firm grip. But his right hand was enough to shoot unbearable tickle-sensations into her tender feet. Enough to make her squirm madly, and giggle into her gag. Enough to cause her to open and clench her toes, and to wiggle her feet in a useless effort to avoiding the gentle tickling touch. Enough to make her hands strain for the knots in the silken strips that held her captive, even though she knew that those knots were beyond the reach of even the pink-nail-tipped ends of her questing fingers.
The tickling went on and on, not intense, not fierce, just patient. Alisha could wiggle her feet, but the grip on her ankles was far beyond her power to break. She could only squirm and wiggle, and that wasn’t enough to keep the ogre’s thick fingers from running lightly over her vulnerable soles. Those fingers would make little circles over her insteps, then work up to the balls of her feet. Then they’d run over her toes before raking back to her heels, where they’d begin a set of circular and S-shaped patterns once again. Each time, the pattern would be a little different, so Alisha never knew just what tickling touch to expect next.
At last the tickling ended. The ogre removed Alisha’s gag, and Chup held a waterskin for her. Alisha drank greedily. When she finished, she tried speaking a Word, knowing it was useless, knowing that the tickling she had just endured had temporarily suppressed her sorcerous powers. And so it proved: The Word came out as a mere word, esoteric, but without any power in it. Chup chuckled. “Come now, Your Highness. You didn’t really think we were incompetent captors, did you?”
Alisha shrugged. “No, not really. But I had to try.” Belated recognition came to her. “You’re the Bandit Prince Chup. Aren’t you.”
Chup sketched a bow from his stool. “I am he. And you are the Sorceress-Princess Alisha, and my captive.”
“Unless you get caught yourself.”
Chup grinned. “True. But as a bandit prince I run that risk anyway.”
Alisha had to agree. Nor could she think ill of the man: As a “bandit prince” Chup was a noble, of a sort, and it was no crime for one noble to take another captive for ransom. At least as long as the captor succeeded, that was, with payment of ransom being the usual mark of success. That meant that Alisha - Princess Alisha - had a duty to endure her captivity with as much regal grace as she could muster. No matter how aggravating it was to have her plans disrupted this way. “So,” she asked brightly, “how much are you asking, for my ransom?”
“Forty thousand silvers of the South,” came the answer. “Or four hundred pieces of Western gold. But forty thousand silvers sounds more impressive, don’t you think?”
“It’s... a lot of silver.”
“Yes it is. Which is why your father has a full forty days to pay it, before I have you sold from the auction block in Ranchijammu.”
“Lots of pretty ladies sold in Ranchijammu,” Maark put in. Then the ogre switched to his own language. «But this one might even bring a full four hundred gold on the block. She is ticklish, as well as pretty. »
«Better to have the King’s coin in hand, though,» Chup answered the ogre. Then to Alisha: “I’ll have you untied and put in gilt chains, so you can sleep. Whatever happens you can look forward to forty interesting days.”
The next morning Alisha yawned and stretched, and found her arms brought up short by the gilt chains and fetters on her wrists. She frowned briefly at them, then composed herself. Regal grace, she thought. She would maintain the regal grace of a princess even if her path led her to climb barefoot onto the auction block in Ranchijammu.
Alisha did have to admit that the gilt chains were much more pleasant to sleep in than that tight hogtie of the previous day. Even if stubborn metal and intricate locks were even more impossible to escape from than the silken cords and knots of yesterday’s tie. She tried a Word, and again found it to be a mere powerless word. Her sorcery would return to her later that day, if her captors would allow it. Which of course they wouldn’t. She munched on the simple breakfast they gave her, and wondered how they would tickle her this time. Put her in a hogtie again? They might, but she rather suspected that they’d try something new.
And so it proved. Most of the ogres left the hideout. “Hunting, or leading your father’s men away from here,” Chup explained. Maark remained behind, along with the bandit prince himself. “And now, Your Highness,” Chup said as Maark unlocked the gilt shackles, “we must make sure you don’t regain your sorcery today. Also, this will prepare you for the auction block in Ranchijammu, if your path should be fated to lead there. Leave your clothes here on the cot, if you please.”
“My father will pay my ransom,” Alisha said. But she obeyed the bandit prince’s command. Nude and barefoot, she let herself be led out and tied between two trees. One silken cord bound her right wrist to the tree to her right, and a second tied her left wrist to the tree to her left. Each hand had a bit over a handspan worth of slack: By pulling as much as she could to the right she could just touch the tree there, and the same to her left.
Maark spilled out a sack on the grass before Alisha, and she found that she couldn’t take her eyes from the things there: The feathers, the brushes, the blunt-tined wooden forks, the silken puffs on the ends of their wooden rods...
There were also a few more pieces of silken rope. Chup picked up the longest one. “I think you need a bit more,” he grinned. Alisha squeaked as he ran the rope between her legs, tying the ends high to tree-limbs on either side so that she was forced up onto her toes.
“You’re enjoying this,” Alisha protested as Chup hobbled her ankles with a second length of silk rope. Maark pounded a stake into the ground, and Chup attached the hobble to it.
“You should enjoy this too,” Chup answered.
“Huh,” Alisha said. She did have to admit (if only to herself) that the taut rope between her legs was producing an... interesting sensation. One that became more... interesting if she moved. She made herself stand still. She saw Chup pick up a feather and stand before her, considering her. Behind her she heard Maark moving.
“Gag, or no gag,” Chup mused.
Before Alisha could say anything, Maark answered “Gag,” behind her. She felt a silken knot being gently forced into her mouth, felt the silken square being tied behind her neck.
“Mmmph!” she protested. And then “Mmmph!” in eye-widened surprise as she realized that her captors were going to tickle her while she was gagged.
She continued to protest through her gag as she watched the feather in Chup’s hand wave slowly up and down as it moved closer and closer to her side. “Mmmph-hmp-hmp-hmp!” she squealed as the silken puffball in Maark’s hand, behind her, brushed against her hip. Then the feather made contact, pressing its own set of soft, irresistible tickle-sensations into her helpless body, into her vulnerable skin.
Silk-puff and feather-tip marched around her, forcing her to giggle into her gag as they lightly stroked her hips and belly, the small of her back and along the outsides of her thighs. The fronts of her knees and the backs. She couldn’t keep from squirming under that gentle onslaught, and the silken cord pressed tightly into her, between her legs, produced its own set of sensations.
That cord continued to force her on her toes, and the tickle-dance her two captors forced from her made it rub against her in the most maddening way. It was driving her crazy, but she couldn’t keep herself from squirming and wiggling as Chup and Maark continued their quick, light strokes with their soft and delicate implements of torment. She wanted to laugh long and loud, but her gag held her giggles inside her, making her feel even more ticklish, even more sensitive to every touch and caress that her captors inflicted upon her.
Alisha felt her nipples harden as the feather tip ran between her breasts and beneath them, a slow meandering stroke down to her belly button. She felt the arousal growing within her as the silken puff teased her hips and rear, then ran down the back of her legs. She pranced, or tried to prance, in response to the tickling, even though doing so produced a maddening pressure from the taut cord strung between her, that tried to work her way inside her.
And even her attempts to prance were drawn up short by the hobbling of her ankles. The restraints confirmed her helplessness, and then Maark was brushing the insteps of her feet, sending shivering tickle-sensations rising up through her whole body. She wanted to scream with the pleasure of it, but she could only mew into her gag.
The orgasm took her. Waves of pleasure ran from the ropes holding her wrists, and from the ropes binding her ankles. The cord between her legs bit sweetly into her, keeping the orgasm from letting her go. Chup and Maark whipped it on with delicate tickles from feather and silk.
Alisha struggled as the tickling touches took her here, and there, and everywhere over her nude body. The more she struggled against her bonds, the greater her sense of helplessness grew. And the greater her helplessness, the deeper she sank into a sea of pleasure.
At last there came a time when Alisha could not struggle any more. When she could not endure any more. She felt her wrists being released, felt herself being lowered to lie on the grass. She gasped for air, and the gag was no longer there. A blanket warmed her, wrapping her in a comforting way that didn’t tickle at all. She couldn’t decide whether she was pleased or disappointed as she watched Chup and Maark carry her back to the familiar oversized cot, and fasten her in place once more with gilded fetters.
Part Two
The next day, they put Princess Alisha into green and white pajamas. After that, the ogre Maark bound her hand and foot, putting her into a hog-tie and tickling her once more.
“Squirm and giggle little princess,” Maark said as his fingers danced cleverly over Alisha’s bare soles.
Alisha did squirm, and did giggle. She couldn’t keep from squirming or giggling with those tickle-sensations being pressed into her bare feet. Maark seemed tireless as his left hand clamped her ankles in an inescapable grip, and his right hand made gentle curls, and swirls, and quick light stroke running from toe to heel or from one side of her foot to another. It wasn’t bad, not a torment to drive her mad with agony, but Alisha knew that there was nothing, nothing at all, that she could do to make Maark stop before he choose to do so. And that knowledge made her extra-sensitive to his touch.
At last, the tickling did end. Alisha was exhausted. When Maark released her from the hogtie, she curled up and napped, waking a couple of hours later to find herself back in the gilded chains.
She spent the day on her oversized ogre’s cot. Resting. Waiting. Her father had 40 days to deliver her ransom, before the Bandit Prince Chup and his ogres sold her in Ranchijammu. She knew that it would take most of that forty days to gather the ransom. But she was a princess as well as a sorceress, and she knew how to wait.
She meditated, and ran silently through various lessons in grammar and deportment, in etiquette and policy, in economics and in magic. She wished she could practice her magic, but after being tickled so, she couldn’t cast even the simplest and most harmless of spells. The Words turned into ornate but powerless words, on her tongue.
That, of course, was why her captors had tickled her. One of the reasons. The other reason was to prepare her for the auction block in Ranchijammu, if her karma should lead her that way. Ticklish, easily aroused young women brought a high price there...
In the evening, Chup returned from whatever princely banditry he’d been up to. “Strip, Your Highness,” he commanded after removing the gilded chains, and once Alisha was nude, he tied a silken rope around her waist. With a few clever knots, he turned this into a harness-and-leash, the rope running about Alisha just above her hips, dipping down between her legs to press snugly against her shaved womanhood, and then playing out as a leash with its other end held firmly in Chup’s fist. With this leash, he led Alisha out of the ogre’s hut-cave and onto the grass.
A circle of five or six ogres awaited her, sitting on the ground, grinning broadly as they watched her. Chup tugged on the rope, leading Alisha to the center of the circle. “And now, Your Highness,” he told her, “you will dance.”
Alisha stood and glared at him. “And if I don’t?”
“You need to stretch, to exercise. To get your blood flowing after spending all day chained up in our hideout.”
“And if I don’t?” Alisha repeated.
Chup grinned as broadly as the ogres, and tugged. Alisha squeaked as the cleverly tied rope goosed her in a sensitive place. She felt her face flush, and heard Chup say, “I suppose I could convince you directly, Your Highness. However, I’ll make a different threat, instead. If you dance, you’ll get a comb and a wash before bed. If not...” He raised an eyebrow.
Alisha gritted her teeth, and let her breath hiss out through them. “You win,” she spat out. Then she closed her eyes, raised her hands above head, and twirled around in place.
“Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!” the ogres began to chant, giving her a beat. Alisha stretched and kicked. She opened her eyes to keep from stumbling, and almost stumbled anyway. The ogres all had their hands up, wiggling their fingers as if tickling. “Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!” they continued to chant as they moved their hands up and down in the air.
It didn’t actually tickle, of course. It didn’t make Alisha giggle or squirm. But it did give her this squirmy sensation: The ghost of a tickle, the shadow of a tickle. She felt herself flush again, her whole body, this time, and not just her face. “Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!” the ogres continued to chant, and Alisha kept dancing. It would be more embarrassing to stop.
And demons take him, but Chup was right. She did need this exercise. Even if it was... unusual. Even if it did involve nude, rude dancing with ogres hooting at her and shadow-tickling her. Even with this maddening leash of a rope around her waist and between her legs. “Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!” the ogres chanted, still wiggling their fingers at her. She could almost feel their tickling if she closed her eyes. Chup gave an occasional tug on the rope, in time with the chanting, a smug look on his face.
Alisha had to choke back a giggle that didn’t come from the shadow-tickling. Well, at least mostly not from that: It also came from a sudden image of her throwing herself at Chup’s feet, screaming “Please please please! Tie me down and tickle me silly! I want it! I want it! I want it!” That smug look on his face would break in utter shock. Or maybe not...
A quarter-hour passed. A half-hour. Alisha continued to dance to the ogres’ chant. She shivered occasionally from the shadow-tickling they kept up. Nearly an hour passed before Chup called a halt. The ogres applauded, and Alisha, out of breath and feeling absurdly pleased, let herself be led off to the promised wash and comb before bed.
That set the pattern for the next five days. Maark the ogre would hogtie her in the morning and give her a vigorous foot-tickling. Then she would laze around all day in her green and white pajamas, barefoot, and chained in gilded chains while Chup and the ogres left for business of their own. Maark or one of the other ogres would always stay behind to watch her, and sometimes they’d agree to a game of Go.
On the eighth day after her capture, however, Chup led Alisha out nude and waist-leashed in the morning. “It’s an ogre holy day today,” Chup explained. “They want you to help celebrate it. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you.”
“No hurt cute princess,” Maark agreed. “Bad thing three ways. Today is... not magic, what-you-say.” He then said to Chup, «Tell our captive sorceress-princess that she should relax and enjoy it. That the roasting is entirely symbolic.»
“It’s all... play-acting?” Alisha asked. Her command of the ogre’s language was about the same as Maark’s command of hers.
“That’s right,” Chup confirmed. “Just relax and enjoy it.”
“Yes,” Maark said. “Play acting. Not hurt. Tickle. Tickling not hurt, eh?” he grinned suddenly.
“No,” Alisha had to agree. Being tickled didn’t hurt. It was embarrassing, maddening, and exciting, but not agonizing. The worst thing about it was the way it stopped her from using her sorcery. If it weren’t for that...
They made her lie down, arms extended ahead of her, and strapped her to a pole with broad leather straps. The pole also had cross-pieces to help secure her, to keep her firmly and comfortably in place when the pole was lifted and placed in a pair of Y-forks set firmly into the ground.
Alisha felt one of the ogres bind her hair back into a bun on the top of her head. She watched as the other ogres piled red- and yellow-painted rocks beneath her. Symbolic coals from a symbolic fire, she realized. Then they planted a broom among the rocks so that the bristles just touched her hip, and the awful realization began to creep over Alisha of just what she was in for.
Two of the ogres began turning the spit Alisha was tied to. As she rotated, the broom brushed over her hip, her rear, her hip, her front, her hip again, each rotation inflicting a merciless tickling over her most ticklish spots. Alisha whimpered and squeaked, trying to hold in her giggles. She squirmed, or tried to squirm. She could open and close her hands, and clench her bare feet, but the broad leather straps and strategically-placed cross-pieces held her firmly in place. There was no way she could avoid, or even mitigate, the constant sweep of the broom about her hips, loins, and rear.
Now another pair of ogres came forward to apply further tickling. A stiff brush teased the soles of Alisha’s feet, and she lost the struggle to keep from laughing. Giggles poured out of her as she felt the tickle-sensations sink into her soles. And then there were the soft-bristled brushes and the feathers playing over her belly and back as she rotated on the spit. Over her legs, behind her knees and in front of them. Along her sides, and up and down her arms.
This wasn’t the faint shadow-tickling of her evening dances. It wasn’t even the foot-focused tickling she went through during her previous mornings’ hogties. This was an intense, all-over tickling that had her boiling over with laughter. A symbolic fire indeed, it was so hot.
Alisha couldn’t decide what was worse: The wild laughter being forced from her, the gentle, clever touches as the ogres brushed her sides, the stiffer-bristled assault on her feet that seemed to seek out and embarrass every nerve in her soles, or the steady sweep over hips and rear and loins that were growing more and more sensitive as she turned on the spit.
Or perhaps the worst part was that she could not escape any of it. The broadness of the straps holding her in place kept them from cutting into her, and shielded large areas of her skin, but at the same time they left large areas of skin exposed - and held in place, so that she could move away from the tickling, no matter how hard she struggled. She was helpless, completely helpless, against the various maddening tickling touches being applied to her rotating body. “Heehee hahahaha!” she laughed as the various tickles brushed over her sides and back and belly. “Hahahaha heeheheeheehee” as they teased her arms and legs. “Haha hahaha hahaha!“ as they scrubbed the naked soles of her feet. “Heeheehahaheeheeheehaho!” as they tickled her most sensitive hips and rear and loins. A most frustrating tickle, this last, making her hot without giving her any release.
Alisha coughed, and gasped for air. The tickling rotation stopped, and the ogres lifted her upright. They gave her cold herb tea to drink, soothing the incipient rawness of her throat. They loosened the straps and allowed her to relieve herself without embarrassing herself in the process. Then, when she had caught her breath, they tightened the straps again and placed her back on the Y-forks for more tickling.
Her brief respite left Alisha feeling twice as sensitive as before. She was flushed and sweating, and struggled desperately as the ogres teased and tickled the bare soles of her feet. She laughed and laughed as their soft tickling brushes ran over her arms and legs, over her belly and sides and back. As that implacable broom continued to sweep her exquisitely sensitive hips and rear and loins in a way that was as maddening, and as frustrating, as all the other tickles put together.
Alisha, floating out somewhere in an ocean of tickling, heard Chup’s voice speaking from a great distance: “Is she done yet?”
“Check and see,” an ogre answered.
Alisha felt Chup’s fingers on her pussy, on that sensitive portion of her body that she had shaven as a spiritual exercise when she had first learned her sorcery, and that she had kept shaven from habit, afterwards. It felt even more sensitive after that long teasing of the sweeping broom as she rotated on the spit, but the bandit prince’s fingers were gentle. They moved with expert confidence, and Alisha suddenly felt herself flood. “Ah! Ah! Ah!” she cried out as the orgasm writhed through her. The tickles on her skin roasted her with sweet fire, and inside she was filled with molten pleasure. She squealed with the happiness of it, a squeal that went on and on and on...
She had only vague memories afterwards, of what happened next. She could remember being in a silken sack with only her head protruding, the fabric soft and soothing and not tickling at all. She remembered being propped up, the ogres making much of her as they fed her tasty tidbits from the feast they had prepared. She couldn’t remember being carried to her cot, but she did remember how wonderfully inviting it felt, for those few moments before she dropped off to sleep.
Part Three
Alisha found herself almost bored by the next morning’s return to routine. Once again she spent most of the day on the ogre-sized cot, wearing green and white pajamas and gilded chains. Just as she had for all the days before. But Maark the Ogre’s foot-tickling couldn’t be considered boring, no matter how familiar it was. Nor did the embarrassment and excitement of her evening dances fade, as the ogres chanted to give her a beat and shadow-tickled her nude body. Still, each day was much like the next, as she waited for the ransom to arrive from her father - or for word to arrive that he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay, and that her fate was to be sold from the block in Ranchijammu.
On the fifteenth day of her captivity, Chup stopped Maark from putting her into the usual hogtie for yet another foot-tickling. “I have something special for you, Your Highness,” the bandit prince told her. “Lie on your belly, please, and extend your arms over your head.”
Alisha complied. Chup pulled her pajama top up over her head, effectively blindfolding her, and tied her wrists, fastening them in place at the head of the cot. Then Alisha felt her ankles being tied - tied apart, so that her legs were spread.
“Tickle tickle, little sorceress,” Maark said, his fingers dancing over Alisha’s right sole. She giggled and squirmed, but with her ankles bound she could not escape his touch.
“Wait a moment,” Chup said, and the tickling stopped. Alisha felt Chup’s hands fasten straps - leather straps - about her legs and waist. Something metal pressed against her through her pajama bottoms, held in place by those straps. She heard the sound of clockwork being wound by a key. And then she felt the rattling vibration of the metal device between her legs as its clockwork unwound.
It pressed against her sensitive shaven parts, through her pajamas. She couldn’t close her legs against it, with her ankles tied apart as they were. She couldn’t reach it, with her wrists tied, and she couldn’t squirm away from it with the leather straps holding it in place. She moaned. Chup chuckled. “Like it, do you?” he asked.
“No,” Alisha lied.
Chup chuckled again. “All right,” he told Maark.
“Tickle tickle, little sorceress,” the ogre said once more, and once more Alisha felt the ogres clever fingers dancing lightly over the sole of her right foot. She squirmed and giggled. She also felt Chup wind the clockwork device up again, felt it rattle and vibrate once more. She squirmed harder as it aroused her.
“Tickle tickle, Your Highness,” Chup echoed Maark. Alisha felt his fingers start to stroke the sole of her left foot, with a sharp, quick, light touch that doubled the tickle sensations being inflicted on her.
Alisha laughed. She couldn’t do anything but laugh, under the tickling she was undergoing, and given the position she’d been tied it. Not to mention the fact that she couldn’t see, with her pajama top pulled over her head. That seemed to make her sense of touch even more sensitive than normal. Not that her normal state of ticklishness wasn’t bad enough.
Having her pajama top pulled over her head left her sides bare, and Alisha wondered nervously when that stretch of vulnerable skin would get tickled as well. For the moment, however, Chup and Maark concentrated on her soles, pausing occasionally to rewind that devilish clockwork vibrator between her legs.
Alisha pulled at the bonds holding her wrists together, over her head as she lay belly down on the cot. She only succeeded in reinforcing her sense of helplessness as the knots stayed stubbornly out of reach of her questing fingers. She tried to pull her feet away from the clever tickling fingers, but those knots were also well-tied. Her ankles remained stubbornly in the place where Chup had secured them, her legs spread to form an inverted Y on the cot. And while she could clench and squirm her bare feet, beyond her ankle bonds, she could not avoid the tickle tickle tickle sensations soaking into them. Alisha sensed Chup moving up the cot, felt Maark shift to tickling both her feet, one with each hand. She felt Chup’s fingers tickling her sides - her bare sides with her pajama top pulled up over her head to blindfold her. But after the first shock, the side-tickling faded in comparison to Maark’s foot-tickling. Not to mention the demonic vibrating device between her legs that Chup paused to rewind. “Use feathers,” she heard Maark suggest.
And then the light touch of a feather-fan sent exquisite tickle-sensations in to Alisha’s sides. She shrieked and squirmed and giggled. She fought against her bonds in a futile attempt to avoid the stimulation being pressed upon her. A deep awareness of her helplessness filled her; she could not use sorcery, she could not move away from the tickling, or block it, or even see what her two gentle tormentors were doing to her. She felt herself grow wet. The tickling went on and on, seeming to last forever. “Heeheeheehee,” Alisha giggled. “Heeheeha heeheehahahohee!”
Then “Ah ah haha ah ah!” as the orgasm flooded through her. The tickling paused, then resumed, brief bursts to drag out the orgasm for as long as possible. Alisha strained against her bonds, sweating, fighting the pleasure, then fighting to embrace it. At last the ecstatic convulsions worked their way to their end, and Alisha lay limp as Chup and Maark untied her.
“You’re training me for the block, aren’t you?” Alisha accused Chup as she lay limply face-down on the cot.
He bowed an acknowledgement, but said, “What makes you think that, Your Highness?”
“This,” Alisha raised a finger, too washed out to wave her hand. “This is much more than what’s needed to keep me from my sorcery. And I’ve read Gong’s Elements of Sensuality. This,” she waved her finger again, “is what it recommends, when training a harem slave. You’re training me for the auction block in Ranchijammu.”
Once more Chup bowed acknowledgement. “It will encourage your father to ransom you, to hear - truthfully - that you are being prepared for the block. And if, ah, the ransom is somehow not paid, this will be a good investment for me. For you too,” he added blandly.
Alisha blushed, but Chup had spoken truth: If she were to be sold from the block, this treatment would make her better off. Being easily and deeply arousable would make her more valuable to her future owner, and would win her better treatment. Pampering, even. Possibly a near-princess level of pampering. But she would still rather be ransomed.
“It will be more convenient for both of us if your father does ransom you,” Chup said, echoing her thoughts. “I do wonder, however, that Your Highness should have read Gong’s Elements.“
“A sorceress is suppose to read various esoteric works,” Alisha answered. “The Elements just happened to be one of them, in my case.” At least it had been esoteric at the time, Alisha thought. Now it loomed as disturbingly practical. Especially the chapters on ticklishness...
“Perhaps I should bring you some of Gong’s other works to read, then,” Chup suggested. “I’ll consider it.”
But Chup didn’t bring her any of Gong’s works to read, at least not on any of the next five days. The sixth day, if Alisha remembered Gong’s Elements correctly, would be another ‘episode,’ and she woke up with a feeling of squirmy anticipation. She didn’t know what would happen to her that day, just that it would be something... special.
“You nervous today,” Maark commented. “Think about auction block?”
“Yes,” Alisha admitted. “Chup is going to do something to me.”
“Yes,” the ogre grinned. “Something special today. Tickle tickle, little sorceress,” he teased her, wiggling his fingers at her.
Chup arrived a few minutes later. “You need to lie on your back, Your Highness,” he told her. Alisha complied, and soon found herself tied with her arms and legs sticking straight up, tethered by ropes to a beam running across the ceiling.
She wasn’t dangling - her weight rested firmly on the cot’s mattress - but she did feel an interesting sort of helplessness. Her wrists were bound together so that her hands could not reach the knots. Her ankles were bound together as well, and somewhere along the way she had lost her pajama bottoms. And the squirmy sense of anticipation was stronger now.
“This isn’t in the Elements,” she protested.
“No it isn’t,” Chup agreed. “It’s from one of his other works. Tickle tickle, Your Highness.”
Chup ran a feather-fan over the backs of her knees, making Alisha squeal. He ran the feather-tips up and down her bare legs, softly, gently, each stroke leaving behind a trail of tickle-sensation. Then Maark began to dance his fingers over her naked soles. “Tickle tickle, little sorceress,” the ogre said, as his thick, skillful fingers hunted out all the sensitive spots on the now-familiar territory of Alisha’s helpless feet.
The gentle, persistent tickling ran up and down her legs, and around and around them. And here and there and everywhere over the soles of her feet. Alisha giggled and squirmed and laughed and wiggled. She couldn’t do anything else, tied as she was. She tried pulling on the ropes tethering her wrists and ankles, but that didn’t even slow down Chup’s methodical feather-strokes. She strained to reach the knots holding her, but her fingertips could not even touch them. She tried wiggling her feet, but she could not avoid Maark’s quick fingers. “Tickle tickle tickle,” he said, grinning, as Alisha laughed and laughed and laughed.
There were occasional pauses in the tickling. Brief pauses, just long enough to let Alisha catch her breath. Just enough to keep her at the peak of ticklishness.
Alisha couldn’t decide which was worse: The forays Chup made to her exquisitely sensitive hips, or the way she could wiggle her toes and feet, and have it do no good at all against Maark’s clever tickling fingers. If “worse” was the right word for it.
Then Alisha felt her large toes being tied together. “Oh no,” she whimpered. Chup raised an eyebrow at her, and she managed to dredge up a defiant look. “Do your worst.”
Chup smiled. “Be careful what you ask for, Your Highness.”
“Hee heehee heeheeheehee!” Alisha replied as Chup ran his feather-fan in long wiggly strokes from the back of her knees to the outsides of her hips. Then a spike of renewed excitement ran through her, at the increased helplessness of her feet. At the way Maark’s skillful fingers exploited that helplessness. “Heeheeheehee hahahee heeheeheeheehee!” They sought out every ticklish wrinkle and fold. “Heeheeheehee haheeheeheeha!” And she couldn’t even try to protect one foot with another. Not that it had done her any good before, but now she couldn’t even try. “Heeheehaheehee heeheehahahee heeheeheeheehee!”
And now Alisha felt that demonic, horrible, wonderful device being gently forced between her legs. Felt Chup winding it up. Felt it rattle and vibrate, right against her pussy, adding its own jolt to the gentle, irresistible tickling her two captors applied to her legs and feet. Then the orgasm welled up inside her, and overcame her. She fought franticly against her bonds, and the struggle caused the pleasure to grip her even more tightly. She knew she should stop, but she couldn’t. The struggle, the pleasure, was too sweet, too sweet, too sweet.
She came back to the world lying on her side, the gilt shackles once more clutching loosely her wrists and ankles. Her pajama bottoms were back in place, and Chup was watching her carefully.
“You,” Alisha whispered accusingly.
“You’re one day closer to being ready for the block in Ranchijammu,” Chup told her calmly.
“Or to my father paying my ransom,” Alisha said.
“Or to your father paying your ransom,” Chup agreed.
Part Four
“It’s time to put you up on an auction block, Your Highness,” Chup said, as he unlocked his captive’s gilded chains.
“What!” Princess Alisha cried. “It can’t be. My father was to have forty days to pay my ransom.” She did a rapid calculation. “He has eleven days, yet!”
“True.” Chup’s grin was positively foxlike. “None the less, you will be put on the auction block today.”
“No!” Alisha’s hands formed spellcasting gestures with the grace of the sorceress she was, and she spoke Words. Or she tried to. The past weeks of daily tickling had drained her magical powers, and her Words came out as mere words, with no magic in them.
“Try another spell,” Chup suggested calmly. “Cast one that will just make pretty lights around your hands and head.” Alisha glared at him. Then she made another sorcerous gesture and spoke a Word. Green light flared and sparkled around her hands and hair. She clenched her jaw, feeling both pleased at the return of her power and annoyed at the limitations now set on it. The tickling had drained her power at first, but now, after weeks of being tickled, she had reached a new equilibrium. She could cast spells again, but only if her captor - Chup - explicitly allowed her to do so. She gestured, and the simple image spell vanished.
“Very good,” Chup said. Then, “Maark. Better gag her.” His hench-ogre, lurking in the background stepped forward.
“Calm now, little sorceress,” the ogre said. “Don’t fight Maark.” Alisha didn’t obey, but it made no difference. Maark rolled a silken square into a rope, and gagged Alisha with it, overcoming her struggles with gentle, overwhelming strength.
Alisha continued to fight Maark as he plucked her off the oversized ogre’s cot that had been her bed for the past four weeks. She squirmed and twisted as he carried her out of the cave-hut. But when she saw the auction block, set up under one of the trees, she wilted.
It wasn’t a real auction block. It lacked the auctioneer’s lectern, and the crowd of bidders standing in front of it. But coils of rope were piled beside it, and it was topped with a slave rug. Maark set her on this, and she was suddenly aware of her feet, sinking into the mix of fibers making up the rug. She glared down at Chup, standing before the block, but although her hands were free she didn’t quite dare pull out the gag he had ordered put on her.
Chup gestured, and Alisha knelt. She continued to glare at him, and he met her gaze with a smile. Her eyes dropped. He climbed onto the block and began to tie her with the coils of rope lying around. Her wrists he crossed and secured above her head, tying the rope off to an overhead limb. Her legs were tied together just above her knees, and her ankles were tied separately, held apart with ropes leading off to two anchor-rings on either side. Two thinner cords secured her large toes to two other anchor-rings.
“Mmmph!” Alisha protested through her gag, but Chup just smiled his exasperating smile. He returned to the cave-hut, leaving Maark and another the ogres to watch her. A short time later, he returned, carrying a wooden box that Alisha knew contained his tickle-implements. “Mmmph!” she protested again, unable to keep herself from watching as he laid out the brushes, and feathers, and other implements one by one in front of her on the slave rug.
Then he selected a brush, and the tickling began.
Chup started up at her bound hands, above her head. Alisha felt the brush’s soft bristles against the backs of her hands and the insides of her forearms, just below the ropes binding her. The tickling touch continued, down to the insides of her elbows and wrapping around her arms to her shoulders. Alisha squirmed and protested, her laughter muted by her gag.
She shook her head vigorously, but that didn’t stop Chup from tickling her ears with that soft-bristled brush, or from tickling her neck and under her chin. The lazy tickling continued downward, ignoring her squirms and muffled giggles, now across her back, now over her chest. And she could do nothing about it. Her squirmings and struggles were useless. Worse than useless, as they seemed to make her more sensitive, but she could not hold herself still. Nor could she stop trying to laugh, through her gag, the gag that seemed to hold her giggles inside her.
The brush ran quickly, fleetingly, across Alisha’s now hardened nipples. She squealed. Chup set the brush aside, and she watched, wide-eyed, as he considered the tickle-tools laid out ready.
Alisha squealed again, in anticipation, as Chup picked up a feather-fan. She squealed a third time as he ran it up and down her sides. First her right side, and then her left, running from her armpits to her hips. The feather-tips sent squirmy tickle-sensations sinking deep into her, and she laughed and laughed, or tried to, through her gag.
Then Alisha’s eyes widened as the feather-fan ran across her belly. She tried to avoid it, twisting and pulling away, but the ropes held her in place and Chup only had to extend his arm slightly to keep the feather tips brushing against her naked skin. He paused, and Alisha moaned into her gag. She wondered which would come next: More belly-tickling or a move to her bare feet. The pause continued, and Chup gave her an evil grin. Alisha squealed in anticipation, and once again tried to draw away, an effort limited by her bonds.
Chup extended the feather-fan once more, this time with a different tempo. Flick, flick flick; he applied light, quick touches. Teasing touches, impossible to avoid. Maddeningly swift and gentle touches against her helpless body. Here, and there, and everywhere over the giggle-wiggling skin of her belly. Impossible to avoid, no matter how she tried to pull away from it.
Then Chup moved around Alisha, applying the quick, flicking tickle-touches to her hips and her thigh, and her legs. He was behind her, where she couldn’t see him. But she could feel him, as he applied the feather fan to both legs. Flick, flick, flick. Any moment now he would begin to tickle the soles of her feet. Flick, flick, flick. Any moment now. Flick, flick, flick. The anticipation was making her legs extra-sensitive, as she rocked from side to side, giggling into her gag. Flick, flick, flick. When he did move to tickle her feet, it would be -
Alisha squealed, the sound muffled once again by her gag as she felt the feather-tips flick across her bare soles. Across her left sole and then across her right. The light, quick tickle touches seemed to find every sensitive nerve endings, and to sink in through the skin. Into her feet. Which she could not move to avoid the tickling.
Alisha felt her feet flush. She could feel the touches of the feather tips - oh yes she could feel them! But she could not see them, and that made the anticipation of their sudden flicking more breathless. Then the flicking ended, only to be replaced by a raking from a pair of blunt-tined wooden forks. Back and forth across her insteps she felt those forks rake. Up and down her soles, from her heels to the balls of her feet. First one foot, then the other, then both at once. Alisha twisted, and laughed her muffled laughter, and pulled at the ropes holding her wrists over her head. Then she squirmed as something soft and silken ran between her toes, teasing the extra-sensitive skin there. Again. And again. And then the wooden raking of her soles resumed.
Under that cultivation, Alisha’s feet seemed to grow. She knew it was an illusion, a trick played on her by her own body, but that didn’t help. Her feet now felt as if they were half as big as the rest of her, and every fingerwidth of them was as ticklish as before. Which made them ten times, a hundred times, as ticklish in total. And Chup was tickling every bit of them with his wooden forks and that unknown silken implement.
Back and forth the tickling went, and up and down, covering her soles from the base of her heels to the tips of her toes. In meandering curves, seeking out every sensitive nerve ending to individually tickle each one. The tickle-sensations sank into her insteps, impossible to avoid, impossible to escape, impossible to resist - and impossible to keep from trying to do those things. Alisha squirmed, and giggled her muffled giggles, and bit into her gag, and fought against her bonds. She felt as if she were going mad. Delightfully mad, as the tickling went on, and on, and on.
Chup had untied and lowered Alisha’s arms before she realized that the tickling had stopped. Her feet tingled, but no longer felt as if they were four times their normal size. Her body was soaked with sweat, and she felt washed-out, inside, but she made herself kneel straight as Chup removed her gag. A breeze blew, and she shivered.
“Put your pajamas back on, Your Highness,” Chup told her. He handed the green and white garments over. “We can’t send you to Ranchijammu with a chill. Or back to your father’s palace, either,” he added as an afterthought.
Sudden anger flared in Alisha. “My father will pay my ransom, bandit prince. And after the exchange-truce ends, he will bring his army and hunt you down like a beast!”
Chup raised an eyebrow. “It’s been tried before,” he said, his voice infuriatingly mild. “Maark, you had better bring a robe for the princess as well.”
Part Five - Conclusion
Three nights after the mock auction, the Sorceress Princess Alisha lay on the oversized ogre’s cot, and dreamed.
It was the thirty-sixth night of her captivity, and she was a sorceress again, as well as a captive princess. Chup would give her permission to cast this spell or that, and she would do so. But she longed for the tickling to stop, she told herself, so that her sorcery would no longer depend on her captor’s permission.
If she were sold from the block in Ranchijammu, she would need permission from her new owner to cast spells. But she wouldn’t be sold there. She wouldn’t be sold at all. Her father would pay her ransom, and she would return to the palace at Cherry Delving. The effects of forty days of tickling would fade, and she would once again be able to cast spells at her own whim, rather than that of her captor and owner.
In her dream, however, Alisha did not return to her father’s palace. She was in Ranchijammu - in a painting of that city she had once seen - standing nude on a slave rug, on the auction block. The auctioneer was Lord Tonoforu, one of her father’s ministers. He stood at the auctioneer’s lectern, taking bids. Alisha tried to protest and found herself gagged. “Mmmph!” she said.
Lord Tonoforu turned a stern face to Alisha. “Now now, Your Highness. You have a duty to defer to the wisdom of your elders.” He then went back to taking bids.
The crowd bidding on her were all ogres. Maark and the other ogres from Chup’s bandit camp waved their large hands with their thick and skillful fingers, and shouted out sums of gold. “Sold!” Lord Tonoforu called out, but Alisha couldn’t tell who had made the winning bid, or what it had been.
Then the dream changed. Alisha found herself dressed again, wearing the odd clothing of those odd Westerners she had once met, a “skirt” and a “blouse” of wool and linen. And sandals. And chains fettering her wrists and ankles. Chup was leading her forward, then carrying her into a brick building in a Westerner town full of brick buildings.
Chup wore Westerner clothing as well, but he kept his on when they entered the building. Alisha’s clothing and chains all vanished, leaving her nude. Chup set her on a padded bench of leather and polished wood, and strapped her down.
Alisha squirmed. Chup said nothing, but merely gave her that calm, exasperating look. Machinery appeared around them, the clockwork devices that Westerners were so skilled at producing. But these devices all formed a single tickle-device; one aimed at Alisha’s nude body.
Alisha squirmed again, and tried to wake up. But the dream held her. Chup smiled at her, a superior, exasperating smile, and operated controls. The clockwork began to move. She saw the brushes and feathers rotate and wiggle, moving with implacable, inhuman endurance, driven, Alisha knew with dream-knowledge, by an unseen waterwheel outside the building. She felt a vibration between her legs: Chup’s device, but now driven by the unending power of a flowing river, rather than by the limited force of a wound-up spring. The machine’s brushes and feathers came closer. Closer. Closer.
They made contact, tickling Alisha all over her naked skin, her helpless body. She screamed with laughter. She strained at the straps keeping her captive, but the straps did not give way. She tried to break out of the dream, to wake up, but the dream continued to hold her. She knew then, with dream-logic, that she would not wake up until the dream had finished with her, until the tickling had ended.
That seemed a long way away, an endless way away to Alisha. Brushes with soft bristles and with stiff bristles tickled the soles of her feet. Tickled her insteps, and her heels. The balls of her feet and her toes, and the spaces between them. Feathers and spinning woolen balls tickled sides of her legs, and her hips. Across her belly. Up and down her ribs. And her arms, stretched over her head. Around her breasts and over them. Behind her knees and on her kneecaps. The vibrating device between her legs pulsed against her most sensitive places, and those places grew even more sensitive as the tickling continued.
Alisha fought against the straps once more, and once more found struggling to be useless. The brushes and feathers and other implements continued to tickle her bare skin, driven by the untiring power of the water wheel. Their touch moved over her body in a pattern, and Chup, at the control levers, kept that pattern just predictable enough to make Alisha cringe with anticipation, and just variable enough to keep her guessing.
Laughter poured out of Alisha, from tickling too hot to be blissful. She felt the soft brushes and the stiff brushes chase each other over her soles, and she squirmed and writhed, unable to keep herself from doing so. The tickle-implements teasing the rest of her body drew back, so that all her attention was on her feet. Brush brush brush brush brush brush, the soft and stiff bristles touched every spot on the vulnerable soles of her feet. And then they did so a second time. And a third.
Finally the tickling brushes drew back, as Chup glanced over at Alisha and adjusted his controls. A new set of feathery ticklers moved in, ringing her ankles. Another adjustment of the controls and they stroked and wiggled, and began to slowly move up her body. She giggled and struggled, and once again the leather bonds held her in place, making her struggles useless.
The ring of feathery ticklers moved slowly up her legs, and Alisha could not escape their tickling touch. They moved past her knees, and she still could not escape them. They crept up her thighs, and avoiding their tickle-touch was impossible. Up to her hips, and she wished for them to hurry on to her less-ticklish belly. They reached her belly, and Alisha howled with laughter. She must have been mad, to have wished for this.
Over her breasts and up the sides of her ribs the feathery tickles creeped. They reached her shoulders and neck, and then began to move slowly back down her body. “Tickle, tickle, tickle!” Chup smirked at her from his controls. The device between her legs began to thrumb, a deep-pitched vibration driven by the tireless turning of the main axle that powered the entire tickle-machine. Alisha struggled to press herself against that vibrating device between her legs.
And then she woke up.
“Hssss. Oooooh!” Alisha was too frustrated to even speak. She felt her face grow hot, and her hands balled into fists. She pulled, hard, at the gilded cuffs and chains holding her captive on the oversized ogre’s cot.
She had woken up too soon, and now it was morning. Maark came over to apply her morning foot-tickling. “Don’t say anything,” Alisha told him before he could give his usual morning greeting. “Just. Don’t.”
On the fortieth morning of her captivity, Princess Alisha enjoyed a hot bath instead of a foot-tickling. She had cast spells - at Chup’s orders - to produce temporary screens that let her take that bath in private. As on the several previous days, she felt a mix of pleasure at using her magic and annoyance at needing Chup’s permission to do so.
The bath itself was a pure pleasure, or nearly so. The only thing missing was Merci fussing over her. She missed her lady in waiting. And she would miss Chup, after he received her ransom. Maybe, she could convince her father to turn Chup over to her, as a prisoner, after her father had hunted him down. But that still wouldn’t be the same.
Alisha toweled herself dry, and put on a clean set of green-and-white pajamas, along with a pair of sandals. She then dismissed the illusionary curtains that had provided her privacy in her bath. An ogre waited there, a guard against any foolish attempt on her part to escape. Chup stood there as well, to escort her to where his henchogre Maark was talking with a familiar but totally unexpected figure.
“Merci!” Alisha called as she hurried over. “What are you doing here?”
“Your Highness.” Lady Merci made a formal courtesy to Princess Alisha, just as if they were in her father’s court rather than a bandit’s camp. “Prince Chup.” She made a formal courtesy to the bandit prince as well. “I bring honorable greetings from Lord Tonoforu. And I come to beg a boon.” She took a breath. “It is expected that Lord Tonoforu will arrive before sunset, with the ransom agreed upon: Forty thousand silvers of the South, for the release of my lady the Princess Alisha. Yet it is feared that he may be slightly delayed on the road, and so miss the time appointed for the delivery of the ransom. Should it fall so, the Lady Merci begs that the noble Prince Chup should stay his hand, for a brief time, and preserve the Princess Alisha from the terrible fate of the unransomed.”
“How very formal,” Chup said drily. “But yes, I am willing to wait four more days before selling her Highness in Ranchijammu - on two conditions.” He watched Lady Merci closely, but she did not react. “First. You, Lady Merci, must stay here as well. If Lord Tonoforu arrives within three days and pays the ransom for Her Highness, then you may return with her. If he does not, then you will be sent to Ranchijammu along with Alisha, and I will receive the price of two pretty slavegirls instead of one. Second -”
“No!” Alisha cried out. “Chup! You didn’t capture Merci; she came to parley. You must send her back to Lord Tonoforu.”
“Your Highness,” Merci said. “If I can keep you from being sold in Ranchijammu by being a hostage, then it’s my duty to stay. If I can’t, then there are worse fates than for me to be sold there as well.”
Maark, looming silently over this conversation, suddenly smacked his lips. “Sold from auction blocks,” he said. “With no clothes on.” He switched languages. «Little Sorceress, you will feel better if Lady Merci is not sold beside you in Ranchijammu. But she will feel worse. »
Alisha nodded, tight lipped. Chup said, “Glad that’s settled, then. Now for my second condition. If Lord Tonoforu doesn’t arrive by sunset, then I will want a further forfeit from you two.” He explained his idea.
“No!” This time it was Merci who protested. “It’s, it’s, it’s a spectacle. You’ll make a spectacle out Her Highness.”
“And isn’t that traditional for hostages awaiting ransom?” Alisha asked. Her good humor had returned with Merci’s sputtering. “There was Lady Eunene when she was captured by Lord Jung, and what Lord Sun had Lady Yuna do when she was a hostage, and you told me yourself about Lady Bobana and Lady Lolana when -”
“All right,” Merci gave in. “But not a moment before sunset, Prince Chup, not a moment before.”
Chup just smiled at Merci’s glare, and spread his hands in agreement.
The sun touched the horizon, dropped below it. The ogres lit torches, except for one ogre-shaman who continued chanting, casting a ritual spell he had started three hours ago. Alisha and Merci sat on a blanket-padded bench, and when the torches were all lit Chup grinned at them and pointed to the ground. Alisha stood and stripped, leaving her green and white pajamas on the spot where Chup had pointed. She saw Merci doing the same, more slowly.
Alisha sat back on the bench, with Merci beside her, and the ogres moved to bind them. Alisha felt the snugness of the cloth slings around her ankles, and watched as the ogres fastened them beneath a horizontal beam in front of the bench. Merci’s ankles were bound the same way, and her upper body was tied to a vertical pole behind her, with her arms above her head. Another pole rose behind Alisha - she could feel it against her back, but the ogres did not tie her there - yet.
“Go ahead and cast the spells as I told you to,” Chup said. That, Alisha knew, was why her arms were still free. She needed them for spellcasting. She waited a moment for the ogre-shaman to finish his own spell, an aiding spell. She felt its power flow into her. She could use that power in one way only: To cast the spells that Chup had commanded her to cast.
Alisha gestured and spoke Words. She cast the spell slowly, carefully, so as to increase its duration. Then she cast it again. And again. Six castings total. When she finished, Chup stepped forward to bind her to her own post behind her, her arms over her head, just like Merci. Helpless and vulnerable to a tickling. Just like Merci.
All around her Alisha saw - and felt - the ogres to the same for the illusionary figures she had produced. Six copies of herself and Merci, sitting naked and bound and vulnerable. Enough naked girl-skin for all the ogres to tickle, all at once. And all the tickling inflicted on the illusionary Alisha’s would be felt by Alisha herself. And likewise, Alisha knew, for Merci and the illusions of her.
“It is past sunset, and Lord Tonoforu has not arrived with the ransom,” Chup announced. “So let the forfeit begin!”
“Hooraaah!” the ogres cheered. “Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!” With their fingers, and with feathers, and with various other implements they began to tickle. A chorus of laughter rose from the two trapped human women and their dozen illusionary counterparts.
Lady Merci, in the service to the Sorceress Princess Alisha, knew she was going mad. She wasn’t just being tickled, she was being tickled seven times over. The soft-stiff tip of a feather ran over her bare soles, up and down, and back and forth, wandering endlessly. At the same time, gentle ogre fingers and tickle-implements held in clever ogre hands were gently teasing the bare soles of the illusions. And Merci felt those as well, as if they were tickling her own feet.
It wasn’t just her feet being tickled. Merci could feel tickle sensations pouring in all over her naked skin. Both directly and through the six Merci-illusions. Soft brushes ran over her in long squirmy strokes. Harder implements teased with gentle pokes and light quick flicks. Fingers wiggled, and a half-dozen other implements each applied their own tickle-sensations to the mix. Seven times over.
Merci giggled and giggled and giggled as the varied tickle-sensations ran up and down her legs. Behind her knees, and across her hips. Around and around her belly-button, and gently digging within it. Light strokes and firm strokes ran up and down her sides, and up and down her arms. A downy teasing touch brushed between her breasts, and around, and over them. The ogres were tickling her all over, seven times over as she struggled and squirmed in useless attempts to escape the tickling. The Merci-illusions squirmed as well, uselessly and worse than uselessly. Merci could feel their helpless struggles too, as if they were her own, and the helplessness, the vulnerability of all that nude skin made her ever more acutely aware of the tickle-flow. The more Merci struggled, the more sensitive she seemed to become. Yet she could not make herself hold still. Not against that tickling.
Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle. Seven times over.
Princess Alisha was also enduring a seven-fold tickling. She howled with laughter at the wild, impossible tickle-sensations she felt dancing across her. But her laughter was brief; Chup soon gagged her with a clean, knotted cloth. Then she could only mew, her giggles held maddeningly inside her, as Chup and his ogres inflicted tickles on her. More and more and more tickles.
Alisha could hear the merry, excited giggles of her lady in waiting, and the matching giggles from the six Merci-illusions. She could tell that Merci was being tickled all over, everywhere at once, and the knowledge would have made her squirm in sympathy if she weren’t already squirming harder from her own tickling.
Unlike Merci, Alisha wasn’t being tickled all over, all at once. Chup and his ogres instead applied a different technique, one that they had found, during Alisha’s captivity, to work better on her. They would alternate between the soles of her feet and the rest of her body, and between the different parts of her upper body. Legs, arms, belly, sides, hips... Each were tickled in turn, as Alisha squirmed and wiggled, mewing into her gag, prevented even from laughing at the tickles she received.
This time, however, the tickle-sensations came to Alisha through the six Alisha-illusions as well as through her own naked skin. It was maddening, even more than the gag that restricted her to helpless mewing. The foot-tickling, for example, consisted of fingers raking up and down her soles, and of a soft feather meandering over her instep, and of a brush wisking back and forth, working up and down from balls to heel and back again, and of a set of light, quick flicking strokes with the edge of a wooden spoon, and of a teasing poke-poke-poke-poke with the quill end of another feather, and of a silken square of cloth being pulled between her toes, and of that demonic knobby roller rolling over her soles. All at once, with each tickle-type driving her mad with the way it reinforced the next.
Alisha experienced that same seven-fold reinforcement as she felt her arms being tickled, and her knees, her sides, and her belly. When her hips were tickled, she though she would explode. She tried to scream with laughter, bucking and twisting, but her gag reduced it to just another mew, and her bonds held her helplessly in place, leaving her completely vulnerable to that excruciatingly delicious seven-fold tickling.
The tickling continued for far longer than Alisha thought it possibly could. All the ogres could tickle them, all at once, thanks to the illusions, and the multiplied tickle-sensations all poured into Alisha and Merci. Both young women twisted and squirmed, under that tickling, until they grew hot and flushed red, their skin glistening with sweat. The tickling continued, and still they struggled, with no sign of weakening, even as tears of laughter ran down their faces. It seemed impossible that those female bodies could continue to put forth such efforts. Yet they did: Wild, desperate, energetic struggles that went on and on, and that came to nothing as the two women remained secured in place, helpless and vulnerable to the tickling.
The tickle session only ended when the illusions vanished. The ogres drew back with an “Ooooh!” Then they began to applaud, clapping their hands and hooting. Chup and Maark came forward to release Alisha and Merci, who now sagged, limp and drained. Wrapped in a blanket, Alisha felt herself being carried to the familiar ogre’s cot, and saw Merci being laid in another cot beside hers. She felt Chup brush the hair from her face, a touch that felt nothing at all like tickling, and she fell asleep with the sound of the ogre’s applause in her ears.
“Wake up little sorceress.”
Alisha opened her eyes at Maark’s familiar voice. She sat up, missing something, and then realized that the gilded chains she had slept in for the past forty days no longer secured her.
“Yes, little sorceress,” Maark confirmed. “Lord Tonoforu has arrived. Your father has paid your ransom.” He held out a pair of shoes, looking small in his large hands. They were clunky, practical peasant’s shoes, the shoes Alisha had been wearing when captured. The shoes that she hadn’t even seen for the past forty days.
Alisha took them and put them on, and only then did she realize: Her captivity in Chup’s hands was over. She wouldn’t be tickled today.
The End