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The Amazon known as Artemis was no stranger to incarceration. After all, she had been a prisoner in hell.
Tall and athletically built, with a mane of red hair that was bound in pony tail that flowed down to her lower back, Artemis stood chained to a stone wall in one of the sublevels of the Royal Palace. Her hands were bound at shoulder height by manacles set into the masonry behind her. Her feet were likewise chained to pins in the floor.
She still wore the battered remains of the armour she had been subdued in, rents in the form fitting metal revealing cuts and grazes. The torso section had been designed to fall sheer from her hips and down between her thighs, so that she had the full range of movement in her waist and long legs. The latter were protected by stylized, thigh high boots made of silver metal mesh. Her arms were bare, and the armour’s chestpeice was tailored so that her ample cleavage was generously displayed. The reasons were practical as well as aesthetic – no woman with a bust like the red head wanted a blow to the chest piece to leave her boobs completely imprisoned in a crushed mass of metal.
After she had been made to watch Diana’s humiliation in stripping for Vandal Savage and Deathstroke, Artemis had been brought down here and left for almost four days. Her only contact had been with the guards who came with food and water for her, and they never spoke to her. Following an incident on the first day when one of them got to close while offering her gruel on a spoon, they never approached closer than three feet either, content to extend the rations on a fixed pole and empty them against her sternly beautiful face from a distance.
She was fed and watered three times a day. Sometimes the men would deliberately let the contents of the bowls spill over her body, and make lewd comments on how the thin gruel clung to her full curves. You’d think after several times they would get tired of that sport, but no.
She wondered what the rest of the world was doing about what was happening here. She wondered even more about exactly what those happenings entailed for her sisters. Unfortunately as a member of a warlike tribe of the Amazon nation, Artemis was only too aware of the usual fate of warrior women who fell into the hands of enemy males.
The Amazon flexed her muscles periodically, keeping the circulation flowing in her limbs, and also in preparation for any chance to escape. Their captors had treated her more serious injuries, but had not bothered to tend her many bruises and superficial cuts from the fighting. She endured those pains stoically.
For the hundredth time, it seemed, she replayed in her mind the short but brutal battle at the taking of the islands.
In her memory, she heard again the wail of the alarms that warned her sisters too late of the invaders. The frantic scramble, the confusion of how they had penetrated the islands' security turning to anger at the attack. The amazons were teacher, poets, artists and writers; but each and every one was a warrior- they responded decisively with centuries of experience in battle.
Not that it had made any difference.
Then invaders were organized, well armed and ruthless. The women of Themyscria had fought with all the courage that their traditions demanded, but ultimately the odds had been too great. The enemy had the advantage of surprise, they controlled the initiative, and most decisively, they were backed by beings whose power was as those of demigods. With Diana and her fellow superheroines incapacitated by the early taking of hostages on the outlying islands, the battle was over almost before it had begun.
She had not been anywhere near the main beach when the invaders had landed. Those few Amazon captains who escaped had given her brief but horrific reports. In her nightmares of the past few days, she had imagined the platoon of amazons patrolling the beach at dawn confident in their warning systems. Small bands of mercenaries had crept from the surf and lain in wait for the patrols to pass, then all around the island they struck synchronously.
Each Amazon patrol had six warriors and a captain, and each advanced party of mercenaries 6 men. Pouncing from their hiding spots, they struck amazons off their horses with shots from electrified staves. The women screamed as they fell, their armour useless against the energy discharge that skittered across the metal surface, finding its way through the chinks so it could bury its burning fangs in their flesh.
Outraged, the Amazons had struck back. Some fought with swords and spears, some with automatic weapons. The Amazon’s bullets and missiles had been deflected by energy shields worn by the attackers. The warrior women adapted swiftly to martial arts that used leverage and balance, but by then it was too late. Beings like Mammoth, the hulking giant who could lift small ships, were dragging fighters from their horses and knocking them out with a single blow. Others such as Psion the degenerated telepath rendered warriors helpless from afar. Pulled down to the sand the defenders where bludgeoned ruthlessly, the mercenaries waiting until they were barely conscious to shock them into submission. The golden stretches of beach had sounded with the sounds of metal crunching against female flesh, and the screams of women in pain and rage. Not content to swiftly best their female opponents in combat, their attackers went about tearing the armour from their bodies. With the energy weapons scrambling their nervous systems, the captives were left in painful helplessness as the men loomed over them.
The first men to experience the pleasure of beautiful Amazons at their mercy in over 3000 years, it was clear these scum intended to take full and vile advantage of their position.
This tactic was deliberate and effective. Probably, Artemis had decided, it had been devised by Deathstroke. Unable to leave their Amazon sisters to the fate of being humiliated and ravished, warriors had hurled themselves at the invaders rather than falling back to regroup.
Artemis twitched fitfully as she imagine blue clad figures standing over helpless Amazons writhing and screaming in agony from the shocks, half naked as they were slapped and punched into submission. While their limbs twitching feebly their minds would still be alert, able to see the men pawing at their comrades as they felt their own firm curves mauled.
Boots at their throats, choking them, the men had kicked their captives brutally, with all the contempt of males who had overcome superior power and skill held by females. While the coarse yellow grains clung to their backs Amazon women had felt the men’s hands running over their bodies, slapping their faces and their firm proud breasts to bring cries of outrage more than pain. The hired soldiers were silent and faceless yet the Amazons could sense their pride as they violated their intimate spaces with rough gloved fingers. Even more grotesque were the attentions of those like Mammoth and the absurdly named but no less dangerous Baron Blitzkrieg, who spouted abuse and hideous laughter as they inflicted physical degradation.
Lacking powers to help in their villainy the common mercenaries relied on their stun rods. The men had used them sadistically, applying them at low power to the women’s bodies. Following preset instructions, each group picked one woman to suffer while her sisters were forced to watch helplessly, hurling curses and challenges or begging to be allowed to take the screaming woman’s place. The tapered legs and full breasts of those chosen had been bathed in terrible agonizing light while the victims’ screams echoed across the island. Some groups had been given special devices to attach to the prisoners that had burrowed into their nervous systems, torture implants that left the victim howling in pain.
As the battle advanced, the prisoners taken were treated to the full measure of Mans anger. They were beaten with rifle butts as they heard their fellows battling for their lives. Finally the captured female patrols were left tightly bound on the beach or tied to trees watching in horror as the submarines surfaced and men in blue uniforms poured onto the shores of their home. Deprived of the chance to do more violence, the guards watching them took the time to let the women know the full horror of what they would face when the battle was over
By the time the fighting reached the main city, the invaders already had the civilian hostages secured, forcing the bulk of the Amazon’s forces into surrender as they were compelled to lay down arms to protect their guests.
Artemis had been among the last to fall, when the battle had converged on the royal palace. Diana was missing, most of her warriors were already down or captured, but the red head had never been one to accept defeat graciously. With a dozen warriors she had stood at bay against ten times as many mercenaries. They knew the situation, knew by then the hostages would keep Diana and her fellow super-beings impotent. But Amazons were used to fighting against the odds.
Surrounded and pinned down, they had made their stand in the rubble of the courtyard. By then they had armed themselves with heavy ordinance, capable of penetrating the mercenaries’ shields and forcing the men go get in close, the last fighting a vicious hand to hand combat where the warrior women had the advantage speed, strength, and skill over the common grunts. But not in numbers. Body to body, their armour shredded and flailing with their balled fists and deadly feet, the Themyscian warriors fought tooth and nail and fell screaming as they went down under the press of attackers. It had taken five of them to finally bear Artemis to the ground, with her ears full of the screams of wounded men and struggling women. Even through the men’s masks she had been able to read the lustful joy they felt at pinning her lush body with their own. A fist had smashed into her jaw and she had seen stars as her companions howled in anger as they too were subdued.
Without warning the men had released her, springing back as she regained her feet with the swiftness of a jaguar. Only when she had spied the blue and orange form of Deathstroke the Terminator had Artemis understood why they had let her up.
Deathstroke. The man’s fighting skills were legendary even among the women of the Amazons. It was said he had bested Diana’s powerful sister Donna Troy in combat, and had even proved troublesome to Diana herself. Artemis had faced the vigilante Batman hand-to-hand before and lost, and Deathstroke was reportedly even more formidable.
No personal shield here - Deathstroke would shun such cheats, she had known, at least against a non-meta opponent. They had met with a flurry of blows - punches and kicks that could have killed a normal human outright. So fast in fact that the watchers could barely see what was happening. Artemis was accounted the most fearsome hand-to-hand fighter of her race after Diana herself, but she was already battered and Deathstroke was fresh. She had not expected to win, so she wasn’t disappointed.
Though to be fair, neither was he.
It had taken him 62 brutal seconds to bring her down. All she could remember after was the sound of his fist pummelling her, the pain of nerve clusters being expertly targeted. She thought perhaps she tagged him once. The rest of the fight just a matter of how many times he hit her before she could not stand. Over and over, his fist smashing into her ribs, into her gut. Twisting her arm to double her over as his boot exploded into her breasts, making her scream. She recalled spitting blood as she refused to fall, making her mouth taste like metal. Another kick had taken out her leg, driving her to her knees, and then the boot again, making her abdomen a place where pain ruled.
She had lain coughing up blood, feeling ruptured inside. Bruises and cuts covered her. Her long red hair was matted with her own bleeding. When she struggled to push herself up for the final time a snap kick had made her right arm dead below the elbow. Only then did he draw his own staff, arming the charge it carried.
'Fall down,' he had said.
Artemis had swayed, pulling herself up to her knees, but could only spit in reply. She found her voice to scream as the power slammed into her barely covered breasts, knocking her onto her back with her legs under her. She had tried to pull herself up again, covered in bruises, half-dead.
Brave, but dumb' he had added, and fired again. She thought she heard herself shrieking as the power arced through her. That lasted until finally the strength of her will surpassed that of her flesh, and darkness had claimed her.
That had been four days ago.
With a clank the door opened and two mercenaries entered Artemis cell, dressed in their non-descript uniforms. As before they moved with the assuredness of trained soldiers, but the red head could tell by the tension in their bodies and most especially between their legs that they were excited with this duty far beyond a professional level.
Without speaking one of the men came over. Stooping down he laid something of the floor, a roll of thick cloth which he pushed to reveal, as it opened, a square mat about three feet along each side, and sewn with strange symbols around a bright gold circle. Keeping his eyes on the lovely figure before him, he stood up again and backed over to the door.
Artemis made no outward sign of interest, but simply watched the carpet impassively.
Within the woven circle, lights swirled and an image began to take shape. It coalesced slowly but inevitably, finally giving itself the form of a tall and not unhandsome man, with sharp intelligent features and white hair swept back to either side. He was naked save for a loin cloth, but though she had never seen him in human form in anything but an immaculate Armani suit Artemis recognized him immediately.
‘The White Magician,’ she said evenly, but her hands worked a little in their bonds at the sight of them man who had once consigned her to the bleak afterlife. For a moment she was taken back to years ago, when she had held the mantle of Wonder Woman after besting Diana in competition. Only after had she learned that it had all been an elaborate sham of Queen Hippolyta to save her daughter from the gruesome death forseen for the Amazons chosen ambassador. Hippolyta had saved her child by tricking Artemis into taking up the mantle, eventually dying horribly as the magic empowered White Magician had used the shape of a Daemon to literally beat her do death. For a moment she felt an itch where he had skewered her through the abdomen with one of her own arrows.
Then she smiled coldly. ‘How are things in hell?’
‘Very well thank you,’ said the dead man
standing before her. ‘Torture,
pain, endless reruns of Gilligan’s
‘I hope you’re getting your fair share of dismemberments and ass-rapings,’ Artemis quipped.
‘More, actually. The dark powers who granted me the strength and magic of a Greater Daemon were not pleased when their gifts failed to reward them with dominion over this little cess pool of a world.’ He smiled. ‘Though I am allowed an hour off each Thursday for killing you when you stood in my patrons’ way.’
Artemis kept smiling. ‘Why don’t you step out of that circle and untie me and have another crack at it,’ she offered, standing up straighter and pushing out her ample chest to highlight its fullness. ‘Who knows, if you do a good enough job they might even let you be the daddy sometime
The men either side of the door smiled under their masks. The reports were right; this bitch was feisty.
‘Alas, the terms of my being here are quite strict. I am simply to help those who have arranged your coming entertainment – it seems when the sorcerer Felix Faust conveyed a message and the Lords of Hell were amused enough by the request to grant some help in “questioning you”.
***
In a room not far away, the two watchers observed Artemis discussion with her old foe.
‘Why did you gather the White Magician, of all people? Surely we have enough devices to make that haughty slut suffer,’ one of the two men asked of the other.
His companion smiled. ‘This is her particular fear; being returned to the tender care of the demons from whom she once escaped. And besides, I’ve always wanted to see just how well earned the reputation of these creatures is, especially with a gorgeous bitch like this one as their subject.’
In the cell the magician turned to the two men, who stepped forward, clearly eager to begin.
‘Well,’ said the first, ‘lets see if we can learn a thing or two from those devils of the netherworld. But if I am not satisfied, I am going to take it out on that slut personally, mark my words.’
‘Of course,’ chuckled his companion in agreement.
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