Chapter 1

General Taltson sat on his horse on a bluff using his spyglass as he surveyed the battle going on below him on the battlefield.

As a battle, it really wasn't going badly. In fact it was going so well that inside of another hour everything should be sewed up.

So far his men had pushed back the dissidents who were trying to cause a coup in the kingdom. Their plan appeared to be to overthrow the crown and seat some crazy, but charismatic leader on the throne, in place of King Roland of Stelmore.

Sitting idle as he did, he watched and saw his men start the flanking maneuver that he and the other commanders worked out the night before. The Captains were doing their parts as asked and the Lieutenants had the men branching correctly and swiftly as directed.

While this wasn't really a "major" battle, it was one that would show the usurpers that the crown meant business and hopefully a few more of these battles would show those starting this rebellion the errors of their ways.

They weren't even rebelling about something unjust. They were doing it because they felt that they were oppressed, but they had never said what they were supposed to be oppressed from. The common consensus was that someone was pulling the strings from behind the scenes and whipping them up into a frenzy.

As General Taltson sat looking on, he couldn't miss the weird rumbling sound that he suddenly heard going on below him.

Quickly turning the spyglass in the direction of the sounds, the first thing his eyes settled on that he could make out in the distance, was what looked to be several mercenaries behind the ragtag rabble. They were dressed far better than the rest around them and instead of carrying whatever they could find into battle they had weird looking items with them.

Staring as he sat trying to figure out what was going on down below, General Taltson saw the new groups, comprised of two men each moving below him, pushing about four strange cylindrical tube shaped objects on wheels between them as they quickly seemed to cover a lot of ground.

Suddenly as one the eight men stopped moving and the devices, which were about level with the ground, seemed to be angled upwards slightly.

Then while he watched four of the men moved almost as if they were in concert and loaded some kind of weird shaped object, rocks maybe thought the General, as the other four men took places behind the tubes, spinning some type of circular handle, and looked to be sighting down the battlefield.

Then there were four separate loud "BOOMS" and a whistling noise for a long few moments before the ground around the center of where his troops were gathered suddenly exploded. Then there was nothing but the sound of screaming men and horses.

General Taltson's own horse quickly grew skittish from the noise, but he quickly reined it in as he tried to figure out what those things were and what was going on.

While he was trying to figure out what was going on with those strange devices and the sounds that accompanied them, another sound that drew his attention again away from the battle, and he found himself trying to locate where the strange rumbling noise was coming from that now drew his attention.

This new noise caught his attention because he was already working hard at trying to remain calm and survey all of what was going on around him. He was trying to see how to turn the former new surprise into a victory when more strange noises reached him.

As he looked for the source of those new noises he saw what looked to be two wagons.

Well they were the size of two large wagons, but they weren't being drawn by any horses that he could see, and there were very large wheels on the wagons. They had what seemed to be wicked looking treads on the wheels and what looked to be sharp spikes for the wheels covers.

But by far the strangest part was that where a rider and the bed would be was covered entirely by rounded iron. Looking in surprise at this new development, the General couldn't miss smaller but similar tubes also poking out of their own rounded cover with a slit in the front of it the tubes protruded out of.

The covers rotated slowly left to right as the tubes moved up and down as if it was looking for something.

Suddenly a similar "BOOM" sound, albeit softer, was heard from these wagons and again the ground erupted and men and horses screamed.

General Taltson was confused. What were these things? He had never seen anything like this on all of his 58 seasons.

Suddenly he noted several of his special troops breaking free of the battles headed for the men with the cylinders on the ground. He felt confident that once they got close enough they would stop these men and maybe capture some of these things for study later.

As he watched, he saw the men who were loading the tubes stop and grasp at their belts and suddenly "fling" something over their heads in an overhand motion at his men while they were still several yards away from them.

A few men slowed down to look at the ground quizzically while the rest pushed on, but suddenly the loud report could be heard even as far away as he was when the ground exploded where the devices landed.

Men threw something time after time at his men and the men started retreating as something landed and man after man died from the resulting explosion.

"If Stoner hadn't died without an apprentice we might have been able to fight back using some kind of magic, but even then this doesn't look like magic. What is going on? If we don't get our men out of here fast we won't have much of an army left to stop them with, " thought General Taltson.

Quickly he told an aid to signal a retreat, and soon the flag was being frantically being waved to signal the troops to quickly withdraw.

While the General was looking on at the battlefield below him he failed to notice the small four man group that was sneaking his way.

The only warning he received was when he heard a soft "tinkling" noise as an oval egg shaped object rolled to a stop just below his horse.

Removing the spyglass from his eye he looked down in shock at the item as it rolled under the horse, with no idea what it was as he tried to figure out what it could be, and then the world appeared to go dark with a loud explosion.

The last thing he could remember hearing was the dying screams of his horse.

Suzan, while strangely woozy and with her eyes closed, started trying to sit up in a very plush bed. She felt at her head as she did and tried to will the room to stop spinning.

When she finally opened her eyes she quickly realized two things.

One, she had not awakened in her small room at the Inn where she should have been.

She should have awakened in it so she could get ready to head back to the guild, and afterwards she would then traveled to her home in Patenenall where her husband was waiting for her after her successful completion of the contract she took without him.

But she clearly wasn't where she was supposed to be.

As she looked around she realized that this lavish room was not the same small room that had before only held one bed, one chair, and a small washbasin on a stand with a mirror. This room was huge and decorated in sheer but short multicolored and tasteful silks.

There were throw pillows all around the room, and floor that the bed rested on was a sunken floor with four circular steps that went completely around it and led up to the main floor. The bed she was lying in was very plush and she realized that she was sunken very deeply into it.

For all its lushness, it was just barely more comfortable than the bed her husband Dusty had created for them in both their homes in the guild and at their Barony.

As she looked across the room she could see a "large" window that had the drapes pulled to the side and was letting the sun stream into the room, one large wooden door that was closed on one side, and a smaller door on the opposite wall.

And the second thing she realized was that as she focused on herself taking stock of the situation she then realized she was not dressed in her normal sleeping attire that she normally wore when she traveled. She always dressed for bed when she was alone and naked when she was with Dusty, but what she was now wearing wasn't either.

Because she didn't know when she might need to get up, or for what reason when she was alone, she always wore a very loose tunic and pair of pants to bed.

Suzan always used different types of outfits to hide her build.

While she was growing more comfortable with her looks since she had married Dusty, she found she was still at times trying to hide those same looks when he wasn't with her. Her body was for Dusty and Dusty only she felt.

But now someone had dressed her in what looked to be a small bikini styled top that had to be at least one size too small and her large breasts were squeezed together and fighting a hard battle with the top as it tried its best to keep those same breasts from spilling out of it.

As she examined the top she touched it and saw that it had what was thick golden threading around the outside, where it helped support and framed her breasts. She felt the rest of the top, and the incredibly soft white material it was made of, and couldn't help but think that the rest of it was the whitest cloth she had ever seen.

It was almost blinding it was so white.

While stroking the material it caught her eye that someone had manicured and also painted her fingernails a bright, but rich, shade of red. Not bright enough to be flashy, but bright enough to match her skin tones without making her look trashy. It was an expert job with no streaking and looked as if it was the natural color of her finger nails

Looking at her fingers in shock, as she turned them over she then noticed that she had on what looked to be a set of golden bracers on each arm.

As she examined the new ornaments on her wrists she couldn't seem to find a seam on their smooth surface. This baffled her as to how they even got them on her wrists, but they appeared to be what she guessed was roughly three to four inches in length.

While looking at her hands and wrists she eventually took note of something else that caught her attention. Looking down her almost impossibly flat stomach, and it's moderate to light stomach definition, she then saw that she was now wearing what was at best a small mini skirt.

It rode very low on her hips and only appeared to cover down to the middle of her upper thighs. It dipped very low into a "V" in the front, was the same bright white as her top, and was also likewise trimmed in golden threading.

Curious, and hoping against hope, she lifted the skirt and was relieved when she found it was really a strange set of very "short shorts" combined into a type of wrap around skirt style that she had never seen before.

At least finding that out made her feel somewhat better about this situation. She wasn't sure what she would have done if she had been wearing equally revealing panties to match the top underneath this outfit.

Sitting there she thought about how she must look and then realized that dressed as she was now there was no hiding that impressive figure of hers from other men as she normally did with her oversized clothing. Only while Dusty was around did she feel comfortable enough to let her hair down and wear a little tighter clothing, like her party and ball dresses.

She had not have realized it yet, but the outfit on her was solely designed to make her look completely stunning.

The contrast of the white material combined with the golden threads served to greatly highlight her golden hair and face, and to draw attention to all her best physical features.

While she was lost in thought trying to figure out why she was dressed like she was, she absently stroked her very nice legs, and it was only then that she realized that someone had shaved them, but strangely they didn't feel like they should have after a shave.

They had a very soft silky smooth feeling to them, and she started to feel a little uncomfortable about that. She had never had a shave feel this "close" before.

Her legs were so smooth in fact that they kind of felt to her like they were getting stuck together at times, as though they had the feel of a baby's soft warm bottom to her.

With a new thought, and now dreading what she might find a second time, she pulled the short skirt\shorts combo away from her body and looked down into them at her crotch. She could then see that all of her hair was missing there as well. Whoever shaved her wanted to make sure that they were consistent and complete it seemed.

As she became aware of what had happened to her here as well, she realized that she could feel every ripple and seam that the skirt\shorts were made of. While the material was equally as soft as her top, and she was sure it was only in her mind, it still felt like she could feel everything when she moved.

Every ... little ... thing.

It was also disconcerting to know someone had seen her like this.

But the more she thought about it, the more she felt violated now that she had found all of this out. On further inspection of her legs she also noted that she was barefoot, her toes were also manicured, and also painted the same deep shade of red as her fingers.

After a few minutes she decided to stop dwelling on what she could now no longer change. She didn't feel like someone had taken advantage of her, or had used her in any way physically, and since she could no longer stop whoever had done this from seeing what they shouldn't have, she tried to concentrate on other things, like finding out where she was and how to get out.

Slowly standing a flash of light caught her eyes, and she moved over to the only mirror in the room.

On inspection of her face she realized that her golden blonde hair looked as if it had been trimmed, styled, and teased, but thankfully was still hanging down the middle of her back the way she knew Dusty liked.

But on closer inspection of her hair she realized that it was a brighter, almost metallic, shade of its normal golden appearance, if that were possible.

Suzan also noticed that now on her head was a thin wire tiara with a very large amber gem in the center of it that looked to be threaded through her hair instead of resting on top of it.

The sunlight coming in the window caught the light and she then also noticed that someone had painted her eye lids a very light shade of golden brown, she could see that there was something gold and glittery in what was used, and it now highlighted her dark brown eyes wonderfully.

Somehow they had even made her eyelashes look, longer, thicker, and darker as well.

Her lips were also the same shade of ruby red as her fingers and toes, but they had a "wet" look to them as well.

She tried to wipe it off of her mouth, but strangely found she couldn't. She licked her lips to see what it was made of, and found that they always tasted of sweetened cherries, no matter how often she sucked or licked them.

Confused about what was going she wandered over to the large door and tried to open it. It was solid and locked from the outside. So for now she knew she was effectively trapped in this room.

Taking a better look around the room now that she was up, she could see a stand that had different types of fruit on it against the wall of the large door. It also had other things she didn't recognize, which she guessed those to also be fruit, and everything was in a metal bowl sitting on top of the stand.

There was the other door behind her that she had yet to try, but other than those few items she found in this main room nothing else gave her any ideas as to what was going on or how she got here.

Moving first over to the open window she saw that she was very high off the ground.

The people below her were so far off in the distance that she couldn't quite make out their features, but she did note that there were quite a few of them around and it looked like she could see that they were in what looked to be a market place.

While she was able to open the large window and look down, she knew that there was no way she could safely jump down from where she was. As she looked around, leaning as far out as she dared, she could see the smooth front to the building. So there would also be no scaling of the walls.

Heading back to the bed, she tried to move it to see if it was secure and it easily moved for her. That counted the bed out as a place to securely tie anything to.

She looked around the room but found that nothing appeared to be anchored down.

Whoever had put her in the room hadn't left her any real blankets and the silks were very thin and short. Even if she tied them all together there wasn't enough to reach the ground.

Even if she shredded the bed and all of its bedding as well, it still wouldn't be enough to reach the ground.

Looking around she also noted, short of using the small metal bowl that contained the fruit, she also had nothing of use to fight with in this room. All of her stuff was missing, including her phone.

Moving over to the other door she opened it and saw that it opened into a large bathing area. From the doorway she could see that had a tiled floor, a sink, a toilet, mirror, basin, and a large four person sunken tub in it.

There were towels in there, but still not enough to make a rope and get out of the room using the windows.

Whoever put her in here had effectively trapped her in the room, but made sure she wouldn't be starving or in want of anything for the time being. She started wondering who put her here and why?

Did they really believe at her age they would be able to keep her here against her will? Didn't they know who her husband was? He would level any kingdom to get her back. Did they know this and still not care?

But even as she had those thoughts she realized that he didn't even know she was missing yet and so he wouldn't come looking for her for a long time, and she would have to figure something out for herself.

Thanks to him lately she felt very comfortable fighting, even if it came down to her only using the hand to hand Dusty had been teaching her. Since her battle with Joseph two season's ago she had been driven to never let anyone humiliate her like he had.

No one would either humiliate her or her husband like that again and she would kill anyone on the spot who tried. Since they started, Dusty had found her a very willing and quick pupil. She was so good that he if wasn't for his own growing strength he would have found her a very equal partner to him in which to spar with.