[b][u][center]The Journey to Slavery
Part 1
For Lightsun168
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]








The rivers flowing from the semi-abandoned lands of southern Morrowind into the Argon Marshes were warm and gentle. The currents, unlike the former inhabitants of those lands, didn’t batter or buffet those that swam in them, nor were they filled with the sharp rocks that sliced unwary travelers along the coast. In fact, the only dangers to the rivers was the mud and hidden currents that could hide things beneath the surface or trap an unwary swimmer near the riverbed, drowning anyone that couldn’t breathe underwater. 

For an Argonian, however, that was no danger at all, and Arga and his companion, Geel-Sei – a warrior a year older than him – made their way upriver with ease, their tails and legs swaying beneath the surface to power them forward. The murky water made everything more than ten feet ahead all but invisible, but that was enough for them. 

Arga smiled as he ducked beneath a root, swimming near the bed of the river as he pulled himself along as much as he swam. Here and there a fish tickled against his fingers or swam beneath his stomach, but by and large, it was only the river that touched him. 

[i]This is where we belong. This is where we were always meant to be…[/i]

Not just in Argonia, not just in Black Marsh, but wherever the waters were. Unlike any other species, they were able to swim as they would without water breathing spells. Unlike any other member of the Empire, former or present, they could go from water to land and back again without any issue, without any difficulty. 

Were they better than the rest of the Empire? No, but they were better than the elves said they were. 

He looked toward the surface. Geel-Sei swam just ahead, his loincloth pulled back by the river and his green-blue scales barely visible against the faint light breaking through the river surface. The other Argonian pointed forward and left, indicating a turn, and Arga nodded his understanding. 

They still had a long way to go, and he couldn’t spend the whole journey just losing himself to the flow of the river. Once this journey was over, he might finally have his name. 

He swam, following in the wake of the older Argonian. They dragged themselves from root to root, hiding when the occasional boat floated overhead, then moving on when the shadow of the craft had passed. Further, further, further, until the current changed. No longer gentle, but pushing hard. 

They’d reached Lake Coronati, just on the other side of the border. Geel-Sei gestured for Arga to grab something and swam on, moving out of view, and the younger Argonian drifted down, finding a rock embedded in the bottom of the river and taking shelter behind it. The current broke against the stone, giving him a break from fighting against it. 

He didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes, a rope drifted downstream, and he grabbed hold of it as it slid around the rock. After giving it a tug, he felt Geel-Sei tugging it from the other end. He walked with it, climbing up the rope as it dragged him against the current. 

Once he was past the lip of the river and into the lake, the current eased. He followed the rope to the lakeshore, dragging himself free of the muddy water. Geel-Sei smiled at him from the shore, offering him a hand. 

“One day, you’ll be able to do that on your own,” the other Argonian said. 

“Heh, one day, egg-cousin, one day.”

Arga shook his head as he pushed himself to his feet, feeling the water sliding off him and shivering as the wind kicked up. Despite the bright sun, the southern end of Morrowind was a far cry from the warmth of their swampy homeland. There was nothing to cut the wind as it blew around them, and as neither of them wore much more than a loincloth, the chill settled quickly. 

Geel-Sei chuckled, nodding over his shoulder. 

“Come on, Shivers. The ruin of one of the elf city’s right past the shore.”

“Ruined in the war?”

“Mmm-hmm. They never came back. Come on, let me show you.”

Arga fell in step behind the other Argonian, the muck under their feet squelching with every step as they walked out of the lake and onto the shore. Sand followed, then earth, then the old stone of the streets that had once connected the city to the lake itself. Rotted wood scorched from the ancient battles still marked where the docks and other warehouses had once stood, and he shook his head as he imagined what this place had been years and years ago. 

[i]Once, they were part of the Empire. Same as us. But we were always the slaves, and they were always coming into the swamps to take more of us for their plantations…[/i]

That was what the history-speakers said, and Arga believed them. The rusted chains that still hung from the old wood looked exactly as the speakers had described, shimmering with the power of magicka that never entirely died. 

“Have you been here before, Geel-Sei?” he asked. 

“A few times, last year,” his friend said, chuckling as he looked over his shoulder. “If you become a raider instead of a shaman, you’ll join me next year.”

“Heh. I don’t have enough magicka for that yet.”

“You think you’ll give it up?”

“Why? I can do anything I want with my spells. All you do is swing that sword around.”

“This sword brought you quite a few treats last year, remember?”

Arga smiled despite himself. Yes, there had been quite a few things. New tunics, new foods, plentiful meats and spices for the people. They had all celebrated that first night when the raiders had returned with their spoils, and Geel-Sei had been kind enough to bring him a book and a knife. The other Argonian had hoped that the knife would matter more, but the book had been his treasure. 

He flexed his fingers, calling at his magicka for a moment. The heat in his veins burned brighter, a shimmer of light getting brighter in his chest before running down his right arm. He lifted his hand as the fire took form, flickering before solidifying into a ball of flame. It looked almost solid, gel-like, though it shimmered with the same light that bounced off the surface of the river back home. 

“Show-off,” Geel-Sei said. 

“Of course. Where’s the – oh…”

They reached the edge of the sand-dunes that surrounded the lake and the city was revealed. Though it couldn’t have been more than a quarter of what had once loomed over the lake, it was still more than the mud huts of the swamp villages. Old stone, seared black with fire and chipped with mighty strikes, still stood tall over roads that had been overgrown with grasses and other vegetation. Old stalls had been struck down, the wood remaining either petrified or long rotted away to a slime that the humid air wouldn’t let die. 

Arga stared down the plant-filled street toward the city center. An abandoned stone temple stood tall, multi-leveled in gray stone, with three broken statues that were tall enough to tower over the other buildings around them gracing the three levels of the temple. 

“Were those their gods?” he asked. 

“I don’t know; I don’t study the elves,” Geel-Sei said, shaking his head. “Besides, the temple was barren when we were here. Nothing good left there.”

“They worshiped people?”

“Why not? The Imperials worship their Nine.”

“Eight,” Arga corrected.

“Heh, only some of them.”

Strange, but if Geel-Sei said that was the truth, then he would accept it. He’d never left the swamp before this and Geel-Sei had. The books and the history-speakers were all old, and he trusted his friend to know more than he did. 

As they walked through the city, Arga couldn’t help but look at the scars that the old war had left behind. The ancient wars between the dark elves and his people – the Saxhleel, though they were known everywhere else as Argonians – had scarred both their lands, but while his people had merely picked up and moved, making their huts in other parts of the swamp, the dark elves had never come back. 

“They’re afraid,” Arga said. 

“Heh, we made them afraid.”

“No, I mean…they can’t come back. If they did, they’d see all this. The things we did, they don’t fade here. We can move, forget. They can’t.”

“We never forget,” Geel-Sei muttered. 

Maybe. Maybe not. But at least in the swamp, where the mud and the Hist consumed everything eventually, they could leave for a time and come back and pretend as if nothing had happened. The elves could not. Their homes of stone and rotted wood, even their shattered temples, still stood. They couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t there. 

In a way, he felt proud. For all the elves said that they were more advanced, that they deserved to take the ‘beasts’ as slaves, it was their advancement that made them more vulnerable. The Saxhleel could move on from their wounds, could heal and grow again. The elves could not say the same. 

Eventually, they reached what might have been a market at some point. Geel-Sei sat down on the rubble of old steps, and Arga sat on the ground in front of his egg-cousin. They got as comfortable as they could, and Arga smiled. 

“Did you fight here?” he asked. 

“Heh, not here, but further north. Nobody comes this far south; that’s why I brought you, Nameless.”

“I have a name!”

“An egg-name, heh. You skipped the ceremony twice.”

“I was [i]sick.[/i]”

“Really? Or were you shooting ice-darts at fish in the river?”

“…It was fire…”

“I knew it.”

Arga rubbed the back of his neck. He was supposed to have a Jel-name, a true-name, by now, but the ceremony where that was supposed to happen – when a Saxhleel was supposed to go to the Hist and taste the sap, and hear what their name really was – only happened once a year, and both times when he should have done it, he’d lost track of time in his magical studies. It was…hard to resist the pull of the magicka when it was running hot. 

It was why Geel-Sei had a Jel-name and he did not. It was also why Geel-Sei was considered more of a full adult, and he was still treated as less. 

“Anyway, it’s safe here,” Geel-Sei said, stretching out before pulling one leg up and over his knee. “Nobody’s going to find us here. And you can see what our people have done to these ‘masters.’”

“Yeah…we did a lot…”

“They deserved every last bit of it, you know. You know what they did to us; the history-speakers told you.”

“They did, they did,” Arga said, rolling his eyes. “They don’t shut up about it.”

“Heh, then tell me.”

Arga sighed, leaning back on his hands as he looked up at the sky. He imagined that they probably looked quite the pair in the middle of the ruins. Two Saxhleel, lizard-folk, sitting in the middle of a stone ruin. He was five-eleven, Geel-Sei five-seven. He was black scaled, with red marks along his eyes, palms, and the soles of his feet, while Geel-Sei was green-scaled with some blue along his belly and chest. He had horns along the side of his face, while his friend had feathers over the top of his head. 

They did not look like they belonged here. Not even slightly. His tail swayed back and forth as he spoke the stories. 

“The dark elves come whenever they need hands to do things that they don’t want to do themselves. They raid over the border, send their ships into our swamps, leap from tree to tree as they hunt us and take us to their homes of stone and tree. With metal and shackles, they trap us and bind us, forcing us to do their bidding however they like, and we can do nothing to stop them once they cross the border,” he said. 

“And that’s why the war happened. When the gates opened, when all the other things went to Oblivion for the Empire, that’s when we crossed the border and took back our pride. And our brothers and sisters.”

“And a lot of treasure, too,” Arga pointed out. 

“Well, yes. We had to take back some of the pain that they had given us all that time ago. They had to pay. Not just in blood, but in gold.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. 

“So, what do you think?” Geel-Sei asked. 

“I think that this place looks smaller than I thought.”

“Well, we did destroy most of it.”

“I know, I know. But…it’s different,” he said, looking around the ruins of the structures around him. “More…permanent, more powerful. It’s a place I would want to study, and understand.”

“Heh, careful there. You don’t want some dark elf to hear that and think that you want to be a slave.”

“As if I would ever be one of those. I have magicka.”

“And their shackles would steal that from you, remember?” Geel-Sei smirked. “But you’d be a pretty little Nameless in those shackles.”

“H-hey!”

“Hands tied up, so helpless. Just like that time I found you in one of the traps in the swamp.”

“That was an [i]accident.[/i] And I swear you set that up just knowing that I was going to be walking by.”

“I don’t remember you being that bothered when I was rutting your rump, egg-cousin.”

Arga groaned, rubbing the back of his neck again as his face burned in pure humiliation. That had been [i]one[/i] time over the course of their entire friendship. Just because he’d spilled his seed that one time – 

“I’m not some toy for you. Or anyone.”

“Only sometimes,” Geel-Sei said, shaking his head. “I saw the way that you were fondling the rope afterward…and I’ve heard stories that you might have been restraining yourself in your…private time?”

“…”

“You have, haven’t you?” 

“Mmmph…so what if I have?”

“Hehehe, knew it. You’d be a pretty little slave.”

“Hmmmph. But I’d be a better breeder of other eggs, back home,” he said with a small smile.

“Only if I don’t get the chance to do it first.”

“You have your sword. I have my spells. I think we know who wins.”

“Then how about we find out?”

He blinked as Geel-Sei got to his feet, the other Saxhleel stretching his head from side to side before pulling his blade from his belt. It was a curved thing – supposedly stolen from the land of the Redguards and passed down to the new warriors – and it was sharp enough that he knew that it could cut through scale and flesh with ease. Arga blinked as his friend flicked the blade up and down. 

“Quick match. A spar.”

“My magic against your sword?”

“Mmm-hmm. Let’s see who can really win here?”

“But what if –”

“I’ll use the flat, and you don’t aim for anything bad,” Geel-Sei said. “Come on. What do we have to lose?”

“…Heh.”

Arga smiled as he pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head as he cracked his knuckles. 

“Alright. But don’t be upset when I win.”

“Same to you, Nameless.”

It was just the same as they had always done. More dangerous weapons this time, admittedly, but they’d fought more times than he could count over the years. His egg-cousin was his primary sparring partner among the people, and they had a near-even count of wins and losses between them. Their wrestling had been the ruckus that set the old women to rolling their eyes and the older men to chuckling, it was so regular. 

Geel-Sei usually won, but that was because he was stronger, and a little bit older. Arga had never used his magic in the fights before, so he felt good this time. 

They took ten steps back. It was an advantage for him, he knew, but he doubted that it would last long. Geel-Sei was fast, and he would know that he had to close the distance quickly to avoid any of the longer-range spells. 

Arga set himself, one arm extended, profile, one leg behind him. His loincloth fluttered over one thigh. Geel-Sei extended his blade outward, turned more diagonally, tail whipping behind him. 

“Ready?” Arga asked. 

“Mmm-hmm. Count us in, egg-cousin.”

“Three…two…one –”

Geel-Sei charged fast, faster than Arga could react to. Before he could loose shock or fire, his egg-cousin was right in his face. He ducked the hilt of the blade coming for his forehead and spun to the side. His tail rose up to block the tail-sweep from the side, and he barely managed to get his hand up with a blast of flame that made the air sear with heat. 

As his egg-cousin pulled back, Arga did the same, stutter-stepping backwards to try and keep space between him and his opponent. He panted, shaking his head as he tried to think of a better spell. 

[i]Shock? Fire? Paralysis might work if I can touch him, but –[/i]

There was no time to think. Geel-Sei closed again, this time sweeping in with a sliding kick. Arga leaped to the side and hit the ground, but before he could get to his feet, that blade came down again.

THUNK!

It hit the cobblestone beside his head, throwing sparks from the dull end of the blade as he rolled and kept on rolling. Chop-chop-chop, faster than usual, never deadly, but always on the verge of knocking him out. 

It was only luck that Geel-Sei got so eager that he stumbled over a bit of stone. It broke the rhythm and Arga was able to get to his feet again. 

He went on the offensive. Fire and shock leaped from his hands, the magicka flowing visibly down one arm after the other. This time, it was the other Saxhleel that stumbled backwards, dodging out of the way of his spells. 

Despite the deadly situation, both of them were grinning like fools. He could feel the smile pulling at the edge of his mouth, and Geel-Sei laughed as he leaped and spun around the fire and blasts of lightning. 

This was what they did. 

This was their fun. 

Arga didn’t realize that he was closing the distance himself until it was too late. One second, he had Geel-Sei safely at the end of a stream of flame, the next, his egg-cousin was right in his face, a fist coming for his nose. Arga turned too late and took it right to the face, hitting the ground a second later. 

“Ha…ha…”

Geel-Sei stood over him, panting for breath. In a desperate attempt, Arga grabbed for his friend’s ankle, pulling on the paralysis spell…

And nothing happened. 

“Out of magicka, aren’t you, Nameless?” Geel-Sei said. 

“…Maybe.”

“You need to keep an eye on that.”

“Mmmph…”

“Still, good fight,” his friend said, tossing his blade to the side. “But I won. And I think I deserve a prize for that.”

“Mmmmph…is this the same sort of prize that you wanted to get me loose from those ropes way back when?”

“Nah. Your mouth will be good enough.”

“Mmm-mmmph!?”

He blinked as Geel-Sei stepped on his face. The long, scaly foot pressed down over his lips, pinning his head to the ground, and he shivered as his egg-cousin ground his foot back and forth, grinding the scales along the underside against his lips. 

“Open up, Nameless. Show me that you know your place, hmm?”

“You – nnngh!”

“Come on. You enjoyed it last time. Just give it a few licks; we’re already clean from the walk.”

He groaned, his face on fire as he slowly extended his tongue. It was embarrassing, but he still dragged his tongue along the other Saxhleel’s sole, pushing firmly from the heel all the way to the toes. And it was clean, no mud or muck to be tasted, and the river’s flow had washed all the sweat from the other man’s scales. 

But that didn’t make it any less embarrassing, nor did he feel any less humiliated as Geel-Sei dragged his foot back and forth along his tongue. He was using him almost like a rag, cleaning his foot off after the fight, and –

Well, it wasn’t hard to see what it was doing to him. 

“Looks like you’re enjoying this, hmmm?” Geel-Sei teased, flicking his tail toward Arga’s loincloth. “I see something twitching down there.”

“Mmmph…you’re one to talk…yours is coming up just as much as mine,” he said, nodding toward the rising shape in the other’s loincloth. 

“But I am the winner. I [i]should[/i] enjoy winning. Perhaps you merely enjoy losing.”

“Hmmph.”

“Lick again, egg-cousin.”

He groaned but followed Geel-Sei’s instructions, dragging his tongue up and down the other Saxhleel’s foot. The taste of scales and the faint bit of musk that was down there – so faint that the only reason that he noticed it was because he was so embarrassed – was enough to keep his cock rising, soon pushing his loincloth off to the side. It only throbbed harder as his friend shoved his toes past his lips, making him kiss them and suck on them. 

It was the helplessness and the lack of choice, he knew. That was what had gotten to him last time, and it was what was getting to him now. It wasn’t that he [i]liked[/i] submitting to someone else, but whenever he lost, it felt…kinda right, kind of good to be used like this. Like this was his punishment for losing. 

And it was…intense. 

“Mmmph…”

He tried his best to hold back the little moan that wanted to escape, but his cock showed how hard he was from licking Geel-Sei’s foot. His tongue danced between the toes, between them, and just beneath them, licking at all the little gaps and leaving them shining as the other Argonian pulled his foot back. Geel-Sei even rolled his ankle a bit, showing off how the drool on his toes ran down his foot. 

“Heh…I should have done this a while ago. You look good down there.”

“Mmmph…you’ll look better when I beat you, next time.”

“Heh, if you beat me,” Arga said, chuckling.

Geel-Sei smiled, only to shift his footing and straddle the prone Arga. The beaten Saxhleel blinked as his friend sat on his chest, that throbbing shaft right in front of his face. The tip was already wet as the other man pulled his loincloth out of the way, and it bobbed over Arga’s nose. 

“Look at that. I could just enjoy your mouth right now.”

“You – you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would. And you wouldn’t mind it that much, would you?”

“Mmmph…”

“Look at you. I bet if I looked back, you’d still be twitching.”

And Geel-Sei would be right, but it wasn’t exactly fair now, was it? Arga tried and failed to twist himself to freedom, only to be pinned in place by the more experienced warrior. The bobbing tip over his face started to form a new droplet of pre-cum, slowly hanging from the head on the verge of falling on his face. 

“Mmmph, come on, stop…”

“Mmm? Something wrong? Can’t your magicka stop me?”

“Nnngh…come on, I don’t want to wear that all day.”

“You could open your mouth for it.”

“Come on…”

Bob. 

Twitch. 

Drip. 

He blushed as he watched the string of silvery pre-cum dangle lower and lower toward his face. It was one thing to lick someone’s foot or get fucked, but it was something else to be marked with someone’s juices for the day. He kept twisting his head to try and get it out of the way, but Geel-Sei barely had to do a damn thing to keep him pinned. And it kept dribbling lower and lower. 

“You – you bastard, come on!”

“Hehehe, open uuuuup.”

“I’m going to roast your cock for this.”

“Mmm-hmm. Then why aren’t you fighting that hard?”

“You – I –”

Clap. 

Clap. 

Clap. 

The soft sound of mocking applause froze both of them in their tracks. The Saxhleels whipped their heads around to the source of the noise and saw – 

“Most amusing, beasts.”

A Dunmer. One of the dark elves. 

He leaned back against one of two guar, scaly pack animals used all over Morrowind. The Dunmer himself was shorter than either of them, maybe five and a half feet tall at most, but dressed in leather armor with a spear at his side and – 

[i]Oh, no…[/i]

And at his waist, hanging from his belt, were shackles. Shackles that were exactly like the pairs that he’d seen at the ruined docks. This elf was a slave-hunter, exactly like the stories that they’d heard about all those years ago. 

Geel-Sei slowly stood up, grabbing his sword from the ground. Arga rolled to his side, shaking his head. 

“We need to run,” he whispered. 

“Saxhleels don’t run from them. Not anymore,” Geel-Sei muttered. 

“No, no, he doesn’t – look at him.”

“He underestimates us because we’re ‘beasts’ to him,” his friend said, shaking his head and getting a better grip on his blade. “It will be his last mistake.”

“Is it just the two of you here?” the Dunmer asked, pushing away from his mount and lifting his spear. “If so, we can end this right now. Get on your knees and put your hands behind your back, and we’ll have this done. No muss, no fuss.”

“My people will not bend to slavery. Never again.”

“Hmm. Pity.”

Arga grunted as he tried to push himself to his feet. Geel-Sei would need his help. He didn’t know why, but the casual nature of the elf terrified him. But the fight had drained him, and he scarcely had any of his magicka back yet. He grunted as he got one leg under him, shaking his head as Geel-Sei charged. 

“Die, elf!”

What followed were three quick moves that he could barely track. First, Geel-Sei thrust swung the blade overhand, and the Dunmer sidestepped the swing. Second, the elf jabbed with his spear, stabbing through his egg-cousin’s wrists and forcing him to drop the blade. Third, he brought the blade of the spear around to Geel-Sei’s throat…

And fourth, and most easily seen, Geel-Sei stabbed himself in an attempt to bite the elf. 

“No…”

Silence fell over the market square as his egg-cousin rested there, impaled through the neck on the elf’s spear. The elf’s face was a picture of surprise as the Saxhleel burbled for a few seconds before falling silent in death. Arga couldn’t take his eyes off his friend’s body, even as the slave-hunter shook the other Saxhleel off his spear and sighed. 

“Beast. Didn’t know what was best for it,” the elf muttered. 

“Geel-Sei…”

“Are you going to be as foolish as your friend?” the elf said, turning to face him. “Or are you going to kill yourself by accident?”

“You murdered him…”

“If he had been a civilized man, he would have known not to move. His stupid bestial impulses – to bite, thrash, struggle – were what killed him.”

Arga slowly looked away from his friend’s body. He stared up at the elf, shock fading into something else. He slowly pushed himself the rest of the way to his feet as the slave-hunter sighed. 

“Don’t do anything stupid. I want to make [i]some[/i] money on this trip, and –”

He threw his hands forward, all the magicka he had streaming down his arms in a blast of heat and flame. A scream like nothing else he’d ever felt ripped out of his throat as tears rolled down his eyes, and he did not know if it was rage, fear, or sorrow that held him tightest in that moment. 

The flames burned so bright that he temporarily went blind. By the time that the fires faded and the sight came back to him, he hoped to see nothing but ash. Failing that, at least see some burns on the elf. 

What he saw was the elf standing firm, shaking his head. 

“Idiot beast; Dunmer are not bothered by flame.”

The spear’s blunt end swung around and hit the side of his head. Arga tumbled over and hit the ground hard, darkness closing in quickly. In short order, he was gone, left to hope that everything had been a horrible nightmare and knowing that it was anything but.










[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The beginning of a small prequel series to show how Arga the Argonian was enslaved. 

Tags: M/solo, M/M, Embarrassment, Teasing, Death, Argonian, Slavery, Dunmer, Morrowind, Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls, Foot Fetish, Referenced Bondage, Play, Friends, Dark Turn, Series,