Skellige hovered over a swamp, held up by logs and tree stumps to keep its inhabitants’ feet out of the foul waters. And with wood being so abundant from the nearby jungles, it was almost exclusively used as a building material.

Wooden huts, pathways, railings, dockyards and a series of sturdy, well-made palisades encircling the bustling city. Everything taken from the Lustrian jungles and moved here, making use of the many rivers and waterways leading into the swamp.

And right now this city was bustling like never before, for hundreds of thousands of their kin had answered the call and now moved about. Not only the Skaelings, but Baersonlings and even ships from the Sarls and Vargs were now moored in the harbour. Or rather, the ships were moored to each other, creating a vast plateau made of wooden ship decks stretching out into the sea.

Skadi sat at a tavern, together with Erik’s most trusted officers and one of Jarl Ingolf’s aides.

“Our bodies are similar in shape and size, but the clothes and customs are weird. We too left our furs on board, but to go wandering about without a shirt in this mosquito ridden nightmare… insanity!” –Sven broke the silence by repeating something they’d all heard before.

It had been three weeks since they made landfall, almost two months since they left home. And Erik had been missing for those same three weeks, leading to unrest in his Warband.

Taking a sip from her cup, a refreshing fruit juice harvested from further inland, Skadi addressed the gathered men.

“Erik is alive, I’ve told you that every day. If he wasn’t, I would know and probably wouldn’t be here anymore. The fact I am here means he was just swept overboard and washed up somewhere. And he’ll be returning any day now. So why is it that you still can’t control your warriors?!

Some walking shit-stick calls us names and the men draw their knives on him? And they lost? That was a Skaelling clansman Erik beat to a pulp before and now he’s going around saying Erik’s men aren’t anything worth talking about!”

“What were we supposed to-“

“You are supposed to wait, show that discipline Erik hammered into you! Or is it that as soon as he’s gone, you think you can be lazy and comfortable? When he returns and learns of your failures, he’ll first kill the Skaelling to make an example and then he’ll put the lot of you through hell-camp!”

Fired up, Skadi continued to berate the burly warriors for their incompetence, as if lashing them with her words. But, just like before, nothing was decided except to wait. Either for Erik to show up, or for the enemy to come thundering out of the Jungle.

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One week earlier, Amazon encampment.

For the first in a long time, Erik was at a loss.

Somewhere around the middle of a colossal tree Erik sat upright against the trunk, hands tied apart to either side. Precarious rope bridges connected his ‘prison’ to a myriad of other platforms on which small huts were constructed. And below, barely visible to Erik through some cracks in the flooring, was a warcamp.

Thousands of tents made from giant leaves placed around small fires dotting the jungle floor for miles and miles around made it clear there were a lot of enemies below and around Erik.

To make matters worse, Erik was continuously being fed with different mixtures, potions and poisons which relaxed his muscles, paralysed him or did other things that prevented him from exerting his strength.

The Amazons that captured him quickly learned their lesson when he almost broke free on the third day of his capture. They didn’t understand how, but they were now fully aware they shouldn’t use the same stuff more than two days and in considerably higher doses.

And they also regularly fed him something else. A ‘helpful’ substance that didn’t get treated as an invading poison and excited a certain male reaction, whether Erik wanted to or not. And the 99,99% all-female Amazonian tribes… had their fun.

First, while still on the march, it was just an education from the older women to the younger ones who had never seen a male before. Then one of the teens asked a question which, after quickly skipping through numerous messages and pop-ups and spending some points, Erik understood to mean:

“What’s the funny thing between his legs?”

The older woman then licked her lips, straddled Erik and gave a live performance about the use of a man’s tool.

Turns out, some of the disappearances of Norscan or Imperial adventurers were in fact due to the Amazons in search of new genetic material. But those men quickly expired or became impotent, leading to only negligible success of the man-hunt. Alas, Erik’s greatest strengths were now used against him as every afternoon, an hour after his meal of the latest paralyser and aphrodisiac, he became little more than a toy.

‘All fun and games until you get ridden by 50 women a day running a train on you… And because none of them get more than one shot, it’s always inexperienced ones that don’t know what they’re doing.’

He hadn’t even been questioned, just tied up and used as a sperm-dispenser.

“What are you thinking about?” – A soft voice came from the dark and a lithe figure leaped from the branches above, softly landing next to Erik.

“Nothing much. Just wondering whether I’ll have the same poison tomorrow or a new one? Whether the teacher will give a live-show to the new group or just lets them do whatever? Not much else to think about.”

“Ehm,-“ The woman hesitantly started. “What about… your family and your home? Or one of those places you went to, like Betoni and Marnbirg?”

A cunning light flashing through his eyes, Erik turned to look at the Amazon standing next to him.

“I don’t think there’s a reason to think about that anymore. The way things are, I’ll be used up and fed to your Saurian allies. Or the next poison will be too strong and finish me off.”

With a huff, like a pouting, jilted lover, a move that forced Erik to cringe at himself, he turned away from the clearly curious Amazon.

The young woman hesitates before hunching down closely next to Erik and began to coax him, wrapping his arm in her ample bosom and softly stroking the suddenly not-so-sore manhood.

“Huff!” – Inwardly screaming at himself, Erik continued to pout.

Finally, seeing nothing but a biological reaction to her actions, she hesitates again before agreeing to something.

“Alright, I’ll… I’ll talk to Naisha for you and help you convince her to… not change the stuff as often anymore. Just... please tell me more about the outside! Please teach me more about… that stuff too! Please, Erik?”

Judging his act to have gone far enough, Erik turned to face the now teary-eyed Amazon.

‘What I’m doing is objectively evil, using an innocent girl’s curiosity to turn her against her own people… Nothing new though and Isabeau is now happily living in my Hall, bearing our happiness! And I need to get back to my Warband… if the morale drops any lower it will begin to shake their loyalty and I have to start over again…’

“Okay Xeyope, if you can stop the torture of those awful, painful poisons I will be very grateful!

Then, what did you want to hear more about? The Beasts of Norsca? The Splendour of Marienburg?”

Shifting uncomfortably, as if having an itch but no means to scratch, Xeyope bashfully asked for a different reward first.

“I, ehm, want you to embrace me first. You know, like yesterday? I’ll untie you now and, ehm, make them not so restrictive anymore. You said it hurts right? So, I don’t want you to hurt so, ehm, yes!”

Feeling his restraints lifted, Erik felt a pang of guilt again for abusing such a pure girl. Yet at the same time, a darker feeling made him relish in the act. To stain the white sheet of Xeyope with his own dark colours, dripping and adding to it bit by bit. From white to grey and ever so slowly corrupting it to his own black.

Now freed for the night, Erik turned to gaze into Xeyope’s deep, expectant eyes. Slowly grabbing hold of her muscled, yet soft arm and tracing his fingers over the white tribal tattoos spreading out over her tanned body, he feels her shiver from his touch.

The air slowly mists with wisps of pink as Erik moves his hands to softly stroke Xeyope’s platinum curls, cupping her face and then moving in to tenderly kiss her lips.

It was a long night, only broken by soft, muffled moans up in the canopy above the Amazonian army.

And the next morning Erik woke up like nothing ever happened, safely tied and awaiting to be drugged. But a glint of satisfaction and success was visible in his eyes, quickly hidden behind a veil of melancholy as the next batch of ‘trainees’ came up.

‘Just you wait, Amazons! I will pay back this humiliation a hundred times over!’