Alexei Tripmiov [Tripmiov - Bounty Harlot

Bounty Harlot:

A World of Brutalia LitRPG

by Alexei Tripmiov

Copyright 2018 by the author and Brutalia Press. All rights reserved.

And I awoke and found me on this cold hills side

The words of the poem rattled through Tashas head like a pop song. It had been one of her fathers favorites; she had heard him mumble it to himself dozens of time, usually when despondent or worriedwhich summed up her feelings about her current situation.

She was, quite literally, just waking up, cold, and almost naked in the dewy grass of a hillock, a grey wet morning overhead. She was soaked to the bone, frightened, and wondering at the odd changes in her body.

Her figure seemedmore voluptuous, that was obvious. She stared down at the mounds of flesh that were now her breasts. Wrong. All wrong. Her body should be coltish, waif-like, a classic supermodel body, her agent had told her more than once (before he had sold her to those mafia vermin; recollections came to her through the fog of confusion). Now she was built like a stripper, or a Victorias Secret model, with D-Cup breasts and curvy hips. Only a bit of which were covered, she mused as she stood, running her hands along her creamy white flesh, over the little bands of bronzemetal? armor? metal armor that looked like lingerie?that barely sufficed to cover her more feminine parts. That was all she wore, save for a piece of jewelry around her neck, some kind of loose collar. Yes: It was like a slave collar, which she had some experience with. Only this one bore a large precious stone at the front, bright red, like a ruby. The gemstone glowed.

One thing Tasha did not want or need was a slave collar. She had experienced that sort of thing one too many timesenjoyable enough the couple times it had been consensual, but the last several timesthe last few months no . She tried to remove it.

It wouldnt come off.

The ring of metal was just small enough that it refused to slip over her head. Her slender fingers felt around the entire circle of it, searching for a clasp, some way to undo it. Nothing. For the moment, she was stuck with this piece of hardware around her neck.

What the hell was going on here?

I awoke and found me on this cold hills side John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci. About a knight and the witch-woman who destroyed him. But she, Tasha Magnova, was the woman awakening on this cold dreamy day in the middle of nowhere. Was she the Knight, or the Witch?

Pertinent questions, she decided, striding to the top of the hill to survey the surrounding area, trying to spot some sign of civilization, a house or a convenience storethe autobahn

The autobahn. She remembered that. Jumping out of the car as she realized what was about to happen to her. The pain of landingthen nothing.

Tasha looked around at this brave new world and realized she would not be spotting a convenience store anytime soon.

In one direction stood a forest of brilliant purple trees, not the purple of autumn they were not leaf-bearing, for one thing but the brilliant violet of psychedelic art.

In another direction, water, a large lake, or perhaps the sea; anchored near the shore was an elegant ship with multiple masts, bare spars designed for furled sails, and what looked like cannon poking through holes on its side. It was like something out of one of those Johnny Depp pirate movies.

In yet another direction figures, tiny in the distance, but moving in her direction. Her heart leapt for a moment in elation, which was immediately replaced with concern. This world wasnot her world. There was no other way to think of it, to describe it, not yet, anyway.

She changed position on the grassy hillock and her feet bumped something hidden in the grass: a medium-sized backpack. Torn between fleeing from the figures that approached and stopping to examine the pack, she chose a path that vacillated between the two and opened it while moving quickly down the side of the hill away fromwhatever they were. Pursuers. Predators. That was a class of man she understood.

Inside the pack: A dagger in a sheath that, she quickly surmised, attached to the sexy metallic g-string around her loins. A six-inch blade, brilliantly silver, in a slender pommel that fitted her hand perfectly. Nice. The heft felt familiar, though she had no recollection of ever picking up a knife for anything other than cutting a piece of meat or buttering bread. Words tumbled through her head as she gripped it: crouch and stab. A wave of familiarity pulsed through her body, gone as soon as she sheathed the blade. Whatever , she thought, continuing her inventory.

Food and drink in the form of muffins, hardtack, and a flask.

A leather-bound book. She opened it, pausing for a moment, and boom!

A small explosion and a puff of smoke emanated from the book. The smoke coalesced into a facea face she recognized.

Yuri . The bastard who Damn. The bastard who had bought her contract from her agent, who had told her exactly what her new modeling career would consist of.

Yuri had been in the car she had jumped out of, riding in the back seat with her, about to force her todo things to him as he took her to her new home, a caravan park off the autobahn outside Berlin, Germany, where she would work as a prostitute for as long as her new owners had use for her.

Yuri, in a cloud of smoke.

His sharp features pointed at her like a bird of prey. He was laughing. You thought you could get away from us, little Natasha? You thought that leaping to your death would save you?

She hadnt been planning on leaping to her death, as he put it, when she jumped out of the vehicle. She recollected that she just wanted away from him, away from all of them, all the vermin who had preyed on a foolish young girl with dreams of success in western Europe, who had believed the oily-voiced, well-dressed men who had told her all her dreams could come true, modeling, acting, well-paid gigs because she had it , the indefinable something that got you into magazines selling clothing and perfume and make-up. Lies. All lies. After she was in their clutches they let her know what she would really be doing, servicing up to a dozen men per day in a little trailer park off the autobahn outside Berlin, working ten hours a day as a common prostitute as she paid off her debt to them.

She remembered the smell of Yuris pungent cologne, felt his powerful hand on the back of her head as he tried to pull her down into his lap. She remembered lurching away from him, finding the door to the BMW unlocked, jumping out of the moving car, not thinking beyond the moment, just the need to get away from him, from all of them. The cold, wet day. The wet, hard pavement.

You are not dead, Yuris voice continued, emanating from the ghostly smoke that made up her former pimps visage. You did not escape, he laughed. And you are still working for us. Welcome to the world of Brutalia . He finished the last, ominous sentence with an equally eldritch laugh, then his smoky visage dissipated in the clean air of the rural landscape she found herself in.

Tasha had no idea what he meant, but she knew she was in a bad situation. The figures behind her were less than a couple hundred yards away now, and more distinct. One was a normally shaped man, from what she could tell, a sword in his hand as he ran in her direction. A freaking sword, she thought. The othershe had no idea what he was. A huge, misshapen beast of a man, a head the shape of a canned ham, but three times larger, with what seemed like tusks protruding from his mouth, from what she could surmise at this distance. He bore a huge axe, one that was definitely not designed for chopping down trees.

No, that was an axe men went to war with.

Natasha Magnova had always been a girly-girl, and not the slightest bit ashamed of it. Nails, hair, make-up, clothes. Those things were all certainly important to her, but they just as certainly did not define the totality of who she was. She was also a fairly integrated member of her time and her age, or at least she had been before smashing herself against the pavement of the autobahn and ending up in this bizarre land, and as such she had seen her share of TV shows and movies, including a decent number of action, war, and historical adventure flicks. And from what she could see of the two men running toward her well, one man and one whatever they were straight out of a fantasy movie, with their garb and their weapons.