Ballad Of Saymon

Hi everybody! Just poppin' in. Now, the dialogue in this is gonna seem like a bunch of typos, but bare with me, it's supposed to be that way. Enjoy and review!

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He, Kyichi, had grown up in the deserts. So this cold day did not agree with him.

Neither did the subterranean marketplace, so he was not in the best of moods.
And, strangely, the sight of Lila bound and gagged did very little to improve his demeanor.

But it did not diminish his curiosity.

It was a feature that distinguished him from other demons, his interest in knowledge. In a way it made him seem more taboo to humans. He was careful in what he did and did not say, and this made any attempts to cultivate trust with him futile. He liked to keep it that way.

When the stairs attached to the platform were lowered to the ground he followed the flow of people up towards the captives. Buyers were always anxious to test the potential slaves before a sale, and this made the small stairway crowded.

Kyichi was a silent sort of demon. He often remarked, when the mood for talk took him, that it was unwise to speak when it wasn’t to one’s advantage. This was how he had built up his fortune in his younger days, and also how he had maintained it.

He was not particularly old. Perhaps his mind was, but physical signs of age had yet to appear on him. But he had seen many things in his lifetime, and he was vaguely surprised at what he saw around this tanned slave. He struggled to pin it down and give it a name.

It covered her, flowed around her. Etched into her skin, hanging in the air like a fine ladies perfume. It made his hard eyes soften, pulling at his heartstrings the way a motherless child would.

Kyichi fought with it in his mind, trying to win its name. He could not force it to come to him. He relented and continued to approach her.

Two humans had made it to her before he did. They were teasing her, poking, pinching, touching here, groping there, laughing as they spoke threats or promises to her, he saw one spit on her. They were enjoying themselves, as was their right to do with a slave.
One looked up as Kyichi stood a few feet away. He had small, close set eyes that the demon refused to trust. But the human looked back at his companion and gave him a jab, jerking his head towards their new companion.

The other human, not as impressed by the sight of him, pinched her once or twice again, before he and the other human moved away.

Kyichi watched her for a moment, as he began to close the distance between them. She was trembling, perhaps it was just the cold. On either side of the post she was tied to, he could see her back and the scars that decorated it. They ranged from black to a rich red to a grayer shade of her skin. Some were normal lines, a few others twisted, one even seemed to form a letter.

He came up behind her, as she was positioned near the edge of the platform. He stopped about an arm’s length from the post she was bound to, again grappling with the something that inflected the air around her. Not a sent, not a feeling, something… emotional. Again he failed to find its name.

Now he took the last few steps towards her, moving smoothly around the post and coming up beside her. His eyes slipped over her, taking in dark charcoal smudges around her silver eyes and how amazingly thin she was. It seemed, in that moment, that she was nothing more than a skeleton with tan flesh pulled over it. Her ribs poked out, almost so far that he could hook a finger around them.

To ignore this, he occupied himself with the filmy old rag that served as a gag for her.
He had long fingers, a bit too long for his palms, which weren’t small. So he made short work of the knot, and pulled the filthy strip of fabric from between her jaws.

She shuddered as he did this, shaking her head and coughing dryly. As the coughing passed, she murmured something and spat twice. But she did not raise her head. Too afraid, he concluded, to see who was here to molest her now.

“You most must be very popular with the others.” Demons speak from their throats. He was no exception, his voice boiled up in his chest, a large ribcage giving the sound a depth no human voice could match, then erupted from him with the quiet intensity of a summer storm.

This voice, though the mind that controlled it was very eloquent, had at times been his shame. Like most demons, he spoke human tongues with a very thick accent, and he often had to repeat himself when he spoke with the other species. His words came out in more or less a single stream and, while he did not speak the words particularly quickly, they all seemed to mesh together into one continuous sound.

She was lost to try and understand him.

Kyichi was gifted with social skills that even the talkative lacked. He was incredibly good at reading body language; to the point that the slightest twitch of a muscle could tell him all he needed to know about. So, as she continued to seek solace in the wood of the platform, he saw the frightened glint in her eyes that signaled the inability to understand something.

Inside he was relieved to see it, and he dropped the quiet awkwardness within which he spoke human languages as he spoke again;

“Hello, my dear.”


Lila’s body began to shake as he spoke again. It was as if the horrible chill around her was slowly freezing her, the demoness feebly tried to generate heat as he watched her.
But her mind was strangely detached from her body, and she was aware of the demon’s words now.

The fact that she understood him frightened her, and she wondered if she was better off trying to ignore him again.

It was the ‘my dear’ that made her talk. She was not used to being called such things, much less knowing that she was being called them. Not even Nomare, in all his kindness, had addressed her as such a thing, only her name.

“H-ello, sir.” She was slow to speak, and her tongue shook between her teeth, making her already crippled reply seem tangled and skewed.


Kyichi’s eyes widened at the sound of her voice. There was a certain lilt to it, not quite as sweet as it was kindly. He realized that the something around her was not his imagination. No, this girl was something special, something innocent.

And then it came to him. The name of the something, it was sweet innocence that covered her. That strange aura that surrounds the young, the force that gives men pause before they claim women. And here, in this thin frame of a slave, it was.

Kyichi was not stupid. He knew she should not be innocent, that her eyes should have been glassy and distant, that she should not shy away from touch, and that her scars should stand as a testament to these assumptions.

And yet it was there. Most definitely, it was there.


Lila continued to tremble, for she could feel the demon leering down at her. It was in moments like these, when all else was silenced by a new patron, that she felt her nakedness. Women, at least the free women, would not have known this feeling, for they saw little purpose in baring one’s flesh. But to Lila this feeling, the awareness of the senses that tells you that all you would like to hide is out for the public to judge, was nothing if not familiar.

And there was something piercing in the demon’s stare, something that surpassed the lecherousness of humans and the cruelty they seemed to adore. It was as if, in that one stare, the demon saw passed everything within and without her, as if he cast the beauty that had preserved her life for so long aside, and looked with greater interest at the ugliness she tried so desperately to hide.

From experience she knew not to close her eyes, but with every passing second the urge to escape into the sweet darkness beneath her eyelids grew more powerful.

As she continued to scrutinize the wood below her, Lila became aware of something warm and smooth on her shoulder. She turned to see his long, red hand eclipsing the joint, and for a moment the warmth it brought eased some of her fears.

Now she looked up at him, her charcoal masked eyes meeting the amber pools of his own. Lila couldn’t help but second-guess herself now. His eyes, along with the rest of his face, held the strange lines of pity as he looked at her. These were not wrinkles so much as they were contractions of involuntary muscles, each working away to make the face seem thinner and to bring grayish circles under the eyes.

This look had been her savior many times, and for that moment she conceived that it would be again.

Lila had little use for judging character, and as was she wasn’t very good at it. So, as the demon moved in his long and lazy way to stand in front of her, Lila dropped any hopes that he may be kind. He was a demon. It was his hand that held her shoulder, and no matter what expression the face above the hand made, she was convinced that he could mean nothing good for her.

Her eyes returned to the wooden platform.

“What is your name, girl?”

Again she was slow to speak, it was so hard to remember all her new names.

“Is-is Shevain.” She felt her cheeks burn in the shame of her slow tongue, and the sharp contrast between his smooth fluency and her chopped speech.


‘Shevain.’ The word drifted through his mind, bouncing off the corners of his memory as he tried to place where he had heard it before. He thought for a moment, before he was able to place it. ‘Shevain’ was the most common human name for a whore.

For a moment he considered ignoring this. That would be too much for him.

“Tell me, my dear, what is the oldest name you can remember having?”


Again Lila struggled to remember, but now she journeyed into the foggiest depths of her mind. So long ago… She focused on her childhood, seeing things she had cherished, things she had tried so hard to forget…

Then, as she felt herself reaching the edge of her memories, she remembered a woman’s voice in her ear. How long ago was that?
“Is… Lila, sir.”


Now he tried to link the name with some meaning, but he found none. Lila. A good enough name for her, he thought.

As they fell back into silence Kyichi noticed something strange beneath the charcoal around her eyes. In the small patches where the coal had faded or been smudged by the other patrons, he saw that the skin around her left eye was a rich purple color.

He wore a long black cloak whenever he visited the market, and from inside it he now drew piece of white cloth. Carefully, so as not to worsen the condition of her eye, he smudged away the black marks, until the purple dominated the area from her left eyebrow to the curve of her cheek.

Curiosity and intellect mixed with him, and he took hold of her chin, pulling her head up to get a better look at her eye. The lids were narrowed over it more than their partners were, and the edges of the purple spot were swollen and tender.

He pressed the pad of his thumb to her brow and drew her eyebrow up, leaning in to see her injury better. “We’ll need to get something on that…”


Lila knew not to speak; it was impolite to disturb a freeman when he was thinking. She waited, looking away from him, and slowly his hands released her chin and brow. As his long fingers slipped to her neck and shoulders, she hung her head again.

God, she was tired.

The demon made an interested sound at this, not so much a word as a sharp intake of breath. Again he took her chin, but only to bring their eyes together. He didn’t move as he saw her, but a small tremor went through his fingers.

Lila was aware of how red her eyes were, and how watery. What surprised her was that the demon had not noticed before, and that he cared enough to look worried.

“You haven’t slept.”

“Not, sir.”

“Why?”

Her head spun. Why did he ask? How did she answer? Why did he sound like that? His voice changed half way through the word, as if it were only half meant for her.

“Is-is…rule…for to have slave…gived not sleep.” She didn’t want to talk. She wasn’t good at it.

Another sound, now a sigh, followed her response, and she watched his eyes as they moved from hers. Now she looked down again, trying to focus on the pattern of the wood below and not the weight of his hands. But she flinched as his hands began to test her shoulders and neck. A few men had done this before, handling the fatless joints of muscles to see how healthy she was. And, as the demon continued, Lila became strangely aware that that was all he sought to do.

She held still, and thought of how smooth his hands were. Not soft, though, but smooth. It felt as though they were originally layers of hard muscle, which had been rubbed flat by large stones. She felt a few calluses, along the fingers and the palm, but all else was even.

He pressed two fingers to her throat and said simply: “Swallow.”

She complied and he nodded to himself, before testing the muscles of her upper arms as he had her neck.

“Sir is doctor?” She felt the need to ask, for these were not movements that would act as a prelude to lechery. This was an examination.

“You could say that,” he said, focusing on the pulse through her jugular vein now.
Lila smiled in a small sort of way. Not so much enjoying his hands as the simple way he spoke. It was with great ease that words escaped him, and with a relaxed and almost distant voice that he allowed them passage between his lips. It had been a long time since she had been spoken to in such a way.

His hands moved to her sides, where they touched her with a brusqueness she didn’t understand.


In truth he worried about her thinness, and in a moment even feared that he may break her exposed ribs if he held too tight. So, he touched along her sides in the slightest of ways, focusing to keep from disrupting any of the precious organs that lay so close beneath her skin.


As he continued, his expression changed from a lazy sort of concentration to a more serious and almost uneasy attention. Lila worried at what this meant, for if this demon was not a buyer, but rather an inspector of some kind, she was putting Nomare and his father at risk of loosing everything.

And then, as soon as his name entered her mind, Lila’s full attention went to the possibility of being sold away from her love.

She panicked and squirmed under his touch, prompting him to look for the cause of her movement. As their eyes met she saw him as a demon again, and made the small sounds of protest she was prone to when fear took hold of her.

“What is it, Lila?” Something about that name on his tongue made her feel sick.

“I—”

“Shevain!”

Lila, upon hearing the loud voice, tried to sink into the wood of the post.


The human, a hulking man with a beard and powerful features, was draped in thick furs and seemed to be an eccentric artist’s brown study come to life. The only things Kyichi could see that challenged the sable in any way were the whites of his eye and the dull yellow of his teeth.

“Shevain!” the man called again, in a voice that matched his hair in both coarseness and thickness. His big yellowed teeth hung out of his mouth in a smile, but as the demon watched the man approach he was aware of something strange in the smile. As the man drew nearer, he wondered whether the fur-laden human understood the meaning of the gesture.


Lila shuddered as Sulteen called out to her again. As his heavy footsteps grew closer, she looked back at the demon, who looked down at her.

“A friend of yours?” he asked, somewhere between sarcasm and dull interest.

As the hulking form of Sulteen closed what little shape was between him and the two, the demon stepped away from her, the blackness of his cloak flowing around him in such a senseless way that it seemed his entire bottom half threatened to disappear into shadow.


He had no intention of leaving her. Kyichi was not the sort of person who enjoyed wasting time, and he had seen the havoc such a lifestyle could wreak, and it wasn’t for him. In fact, as he stepped away from her, he realized that he had been thinking of buying her as he had ascended onto the platform. This was not uncommon for him. In his life he had dropped any habits that led him astray from whatever purpose occupied him at the time.

As far as he was concerned, the only thing standing between himself and possession of the girl was her current owner.

That thought inspired him. He wanted to buy her. This was uncommon. In all official circles, he was neutral when it came to the question of slavery. And for him, that was a great number of circles. But in his private life he rather detested the idea. But, it was good to keep out of such controversial business, and that’s just want he did.

So why, now, did he feel the urge to buy this girl?

Well, he knew the answer to that, she was young, and beautiful, and seemed to be submissive. The classic ‘ideal woman.’

Perhaps, he thought, you have finally become an old lecher. This thought brought an acerbic smile to his face.

“Shevain,” the human cut into his thoughts, bringing him back to his position not five feet away from where the hide baring man now leaned some of him bulky muscle against Lila. “Why do you look so surprised, girl?” the sandy colored skin at the man’s mouth pulled back into another misunderstood smile, and something traced sick fingers up the inside of Kyichi’s stomach as he watched the face warp until it was somewhere between a mocking expression of sincerity and that of filmy compassion. “You know I come and visit you everyday, now, and you know that you’re—eh, what’s this?”

The voice changed considerably in the few syllables it managed, from sardonic manner-of-factness, to something of genuine surprise.

The thick hands of the man snatched at something on her neck, and in a moment of wounded pride Kyichi wondered how he had missed the thin cord that the human now grabbed at.

“What’s this?!” He turned the cord around, revealing a small gleaming ring that hung from the necklace that had been hidden between the post and her back. “This is from that boy, isn’t it?! What did I tell you about him?! You’re mine, Shevain, mine! Anything that boy gives you you throw out!” From where he stood, Kyichi couldn’t make out her expression, but she was shaking badly, and the human now had one fist around her necklace and the other raised at her.

“Do you want me to hit you? Is that it? Is it?!”

Kyichi had begun to close in on them now, but even his trained reflects could not outrun his mind. In the milliseconds before he saw her head jerk back from the impact of the man’s fist, he understood that attacking or even stopping the human would spell death for him. Demonic testimony didn’t hold up well in any court, official or not.

So he watched her head snap back on her neck, her cheek bone absorbing the blow, and all he could do was wait for the human’s hand to recede far enough back for him to be assure a second’s delay before the next blow.

“Sir!” his voice came out louder and sharper than he had intended, but it gave the human pause, and that was what he wanted. Kyichi moved with a rapidity that was uncharacteristic of him, his long tail whipping around behind him as he came around the side of the post and moved in front of the human.

His eyes searched for something on the man’s clothing he could grab onto, and as he saw the wooden brooch of a thick fur cape he hooked one hand around it and pulled the human away from the girl.

Kyichi focused on calming himself, but as the human yelled and swung his meaty hands around in protest, he felt his control beginning to slip. As one of the rough paws connected with his shoulder, every muscle in his arm contracted, and he picked the human clear off the ground. His long neck swept around so that he could see the man’s eyes.

“Who are you?” his voice was thick and broken by his quick-lit anger, his tongue forming these foreign words slowly and clearly.

“Vesinchi!” the man spat out the worst slur humans could muster for demons. “Vesinchi! Let me down, I’ve killed larger things than you! Let me down!”

“I could say the same thing.” Kyichi’s anger slowly mixed with his control again. “Now who are you?”

But the human only demanded to be let go. Kyichi complied, and stood over the pile of furs as it fell to the wood of the platform. He leaned down, bending every necessary
joint until his back bend in only a slight arch over the man.

“Listen, human, I’ve no patience for you. Are you that girl’s owner?” the thickness of his voice and the anger that formed tongues of fire within his eyes coaxed a response out of the human. The shaggy head swung back and forth, the small eyes bulging at their corners. “Then leave.” Kyichi pulled himself up, his hand sneaking close to the human as he stood and pulling the makeshift necklace from the man’s shaking hand.

Below him the human scrabbled up, and ran towards the stairs of the platform. His voice carried over the noise of his heavy footsteps; “Vesinchi! Vesinchi!”

Kyichi took a moment to collect himself, breathing deeply and silencing what remained of his rage. He opened his eyes to find the girl staring at him, her watery eyes leaking down the sides of her face.

He approached her slowly.


Lila wished with every fiber of her being that he would be gone. This demon, who had bested the strongest man she had ever met with one arm, now came towards her as if nothing had happened. He wanted to buy her, she was very sure of that now, her old instincts that were tattooed into her mind telling her that look in his eyes said he wanted to possess every taunt muscle in her starved body.

His hand returned to her shoulder, and she shook to keep from turning away from him completely.

“Lila.” Her stomach churned inside her, mixing her hungry acids together and making her feel sick. But she raised her head and look at him, trembling as he drew a hand close to her face.

Again he inspected her injuries, his eyes moving in sharper, angrier motions as he noted the damage Sulteen had done. Lila tried to keep her eyes away from him, but with his eyes on one side of her face and his hand cupping the over, she could only turn her eyes to the heavens to avoid him.

He hummed, close to her ear but not intentionally humming to her. It was a long, tuneless thing that told her he was thinking. Why did he have to think so much?
His hand relaxed and slipped from its purchase on her, moving behind his back and into the blackness of his long cloak. He drew back, the other hand still holding her shoulder, and Lila blinked her tired eyes down to meet the demon’s. They were hard and jewel-like, a rich amber color with perfect black slashes for pupils. She blinked to avoid them, then hung her head and closed her eyes, tired and scared and wanting solitude more than ever.

“You know him.” Questions, so many questions! Why did he want to know so much?

“Yes, sir.”

“Who is he?”

“Is named Sulteen. Is promised to buy me.”

“Only promised? He’s never made an offer?”

“Do not know, sir. Is here everyday. Is…is liking me.”

“Well of course. He gave you that black eye, didn’t he?”

Lila pulled herself up and looked for the human over her shoulder. He never went far away when potential buyers were allowed on the platform. Where was he now?

Her eyes strained but failed her, and she turned back to face her feet, only to have her chin fall into the palm of the demon’s ready hand. Lila bit back sounds of protest, and
let him lift her face towards his.

“So he did?”

She nodded as much as his limp hold on her allowed.


Kyichi released her chin and was surprised to see her keep her head up. He reached inside his cloak, hooking two fingers around the strip of leather the formed the cords of her necklace. He drew the ring baring trinket out from the folds of fabric, and held it so that the glossy ring hung between the girl’s eyes.

She stared and her little mouth fell open, her whole head and neck thrusting forward as she struggled to find words for her desires.

“Who gave you this?” He made his voice steady and patient. He could wait for her answer.

Her eyes flicked from his hand to the ring, and her lips quivered as she searched for her tongue.

“Ah-own-er’s son. Is pra-promised to buy me. Is to show ownership.” She was shaking all over now, and her voice broke as she tried to speak.

“What’s his name?”

Now she closed her mouth and shrank back from the ring, her watery eyes pleading to his own for something neither of them could name.

“Lila,” he drew her name out, as a parent who warns a child does, “Tell me his name.”

“D-do not na-know name.” She looked away from him, hiding behind the thin walls of cover her lie could afford her. She hurried to continue, looking up at his again; “Is gived to me. Is mine. Please to give back. Please to give back, sir, is mine.”

The new pleads continued as he gathered the broken necklace into one of his big hands. With the patience of a saint, he hushed her and leaned in, taking each edge of the snapped cord in either one of his hands.

“Now, Lila, I think you do know his name,” he spoke evenly to her as his fingers began to tie the thin cords together again. “And I think it would be best if you just told me what it is.” As he fell silent his hands pulled the knot tight, and the glossy faux gold of the ring gleamed against her tan skin.

His eyes moved from her neck to her face, and he saw how tightly her eyelids had sealed themselves. The demon looked over her face in the silence that followed, seeing the smudges of grime and dirt that coated her skin like a powder. The charcoal still slung to her right eye, and the richness of the purple made her left stand out too much. The lines on her furrowed brow were mimicked in miniature at the bridge of her unbroken nose, which pointed down towards the plumpness of her red tinted lips.

He watched her, thinking. There was a great capacity for beauty in her face, everything was there, is just needed to be…enhanced.

“Is-is…Nomare.” Her little voice faded as the name slipped from her lips.

His fingers took up the ring again, coaxing it around her neck so that it was hidden behind her back again.

The simple charm of her innocence and fear had his mind in a vise-grip. He wanted to lean in and kiss her forehead, or whisper into her ear, but instead he took a step back and then spoke.

“Good girl, Lila.”