(A/N: Short boy follows up a long boy. Also, Poll! Because I'm conflicted. Your responses don't matter, I just want them)
(TW: Mentions of rape and general sexual abuse. No actual scenes of such are depicted)

Kara recoils reflexively as the hulking tower of a man before her shoves something up to her face. Fortunately, it isn’t his fist. Yet. Instead, it’s a set of papers, which she hastily takes into her hands and begins trying to read as quickly as possible while he talks down to her.

“Town’s quite nice. If a little too rural and backwards for my tastes. I’m sure you’ve done a nice good job cozying up to the local guild here, which is good, since we’ll need to start putting your forging talents to work getting some trade goods into here. Tell me, Karrelle, is there anyone in this little shithole who can hold a candle to us? No. Just to me?” He finishes his sentence with a wicked grin and by forcing Kara’s face up to his. Even if she tried to resist the hand on her neck, he could snap it before she’d even get her fists up, and based on the current amount of pressure being applied, he’s doing it to be playful. Dominating, putting her in her place, not actually threatening her or wanting to hurt her. 

That’s the trick she’d initially fallen for, years ago. Before she knew.

“No one, sir. There are a few who might think they can try, but no one who would be able to beat you, sir.” Kara tries her best not to sound afraid, and knows she’s failed. Apparently her answer is satisfactory, because his hand leaves her throat and lets her stand under her own power again. He scratches his chin before turning to them. 

“Well, boys! Looks like we’ll have the place to ourselves tonight. Karrelle here will go out and find us some-”

-X-X-X-

It’s all she can do not to vomit into the river as she sits underneath the bridge in the center of town, having climbed down here to avoid having to do any of her currently assigned ‘tasks’. She’d left that name behind, thought she’d left them behind, and was desperately hoping she’d outrun him. Yet here she is, sitting miserably near a sewer gate underneath a bridge, after having paid for whores for them to rape to death with her own money.

That’s probably not exactly what will happen to them, they’ll probably survive. They just won’t ever be going home, getting paid, or walking without a limp again. He always had a couple girls like that around. Non-adventurers, people that couldn’t possibly fight back or otherwise resist, people that ‘belonged’ to Blackwood’s of Blackwood. Undocumented and illegal sex slaves, something Kara hadn’t known back when she’d also been one of the people enjoying them.

That was part of the promise of Blackwood’s, rookie adventurers looking for pleasure and power being roped in by his promises and gifts like those, then inducted into the family proper, then indebted to them, then made into men of the Blackwood’s. An easy to understand slippery slope, one that Kara had naively thought the churches and knights would see the evil of and subsequently root out.

She’d been sorely mistaken. But, she was an adventurer, and while not a strong one compared to them or him, she was one with useful skills, not to mention her unique aura, so she couldn’t just be killed off for defecting. Wouldn’t do to have a potential asset, not to mention one the Blackwood’s have ample amounts of blackmail material on, simply disappearing off the streets. So she’d been ‘allowed’ (forced) to enjoy (...) a night (twelve) with him, before being sent on her merry way to do whatever she wanted with her life until her ‘family’ came looking for her.

She’s almost certain this isn’t about expanding the business of selling whatever drug it is now, but rather about getting to her specifically. It is bad to think about bad things as being targeted to her specifically? Almost certainly, but with how well things had just seemed like they were about to go before they came into town, she can’t help but feel that way. It doesn’t help that there’s a very real possibility she’s absolutely right about it.

Kara almost wishes she had a hero she could count on to save her, but can’t bring herself to have that much hope. Instead, she hopes whatever demon or cult is festering in Riverwake is strong enough to take him down, regardless of if that means everyone on this side of the kingdom is as good as dead.

I could… Kara starts to think about the consequences of such a thing as she finds herself reaching a hand out to the quiet river. Would it change anything? Would it change a single thing? I’m still fucked, and screwed, and moronic, and dead, and a dumb peasant girl who fell for a rapist and a psychopath twice! Even if I burn this whole town down with me… It’s still not going to change anything…

Then she feels a nagging sense of dread in the back of her mind, like there’s something she’s forgetting about or missing. For minutes, she sits there as if frozen, hand half outstretched to the water, desperately trying to recall what it is that she’s feeling, before coping in the only way she feels she can.

Casting her arm out in an arc, mimicking the gestures of elemental mages casting their fire spells, she uses the only gift the virtues have ever given her on the water’s surface. Destruction magic.

“Corrupt.” Kara watches as the sludge and sewage in the water turns a blackish color, then disperses, staining the yards-wide section of water she’d cast her spell upon red as it flows down the river out of town. “Corrupt.”

And again and again, she casts, flexing a skillset she hasn’t touched in three years.

-X-X-X-

Leuen’s vision fades in and out of focus. Like he’s wobbling on his feet, even though he’s standing perfectly straight. Feeling his balance failing him, he commands his arm to brace for impact against the nearest wall, when he notices something odd that he can’t quite put his finger on yet, as his arm catches himself from bashing his face against the stone.

Latching onto that odd feeling, Leuen pivots his head to try and see what it is on the corner of his vision, but his eyes can’t quite catch it, so he keeps spinning, eventually resulting in it being a different arm bracing him against the wall.

What is this? Why is this? Why is my arm so… slow? Leuen begins to wonder, before his word starts to feel very very hot.

Just as soon as it feels like the temperature in his brain is too much to bear, his senses snap back to normal, and he finally puts his finger on what he was seeing at the edge of his sight. It had been like the edges of his vision were heavily smeared, like a motion blur effect applied constantly. More than that, his field of vision had been bigger, and the things he could see and at what distances had been clearer, and the jarring transition had disoriented him.

His head still feels hot, and it’s making it too hard for him to think in any more detail than that, but Leuen finds it safe to think that TA’s offered value increasing by ten times should’ve been a warning, not encouragement. One tenth of the disorientation and confusion he’d just experienced would probably have been manageable, as would one tenth of the heat in his brain.

Leuen finds some amount of comfort in alternatively inhaling deeply and quietly laughing to himself while leaning against the wall, hoping that pushing more air through his body will somehow help himself cool off.

Cooling? Heat… Ah… Right… Understood. I was right about how heat makes you feel… Should’ve thought harder about how I might build it up…

After who knows how long of leaning against the wall, Leuen feels well enough to trust himself with walking around. He now feels something in the back of his mind, besides the heat. Like a mental muscle, one that’s very recently been thoroughly overworked, and clearly the source of the heat. Flexing it for the barest of seconds brings back the increased field of vision and edge smear around his vision, as well as making his single step forward feel… slower.

Around 10% slower, if he had to guess after the effect ends with him deflexing.

TA. T. A. Thought Acceleration. That feels like it should’ve been obvious.