"Elana Arya Murday, First among the Virtuous,  you have been chosen amongst your peers to be given to the Gods."<br/><br/>The words still echoed in her head every time she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep didn't want to come. They had drugged her before, with sweet mulled wines, containing milk of the poppy, so she would cease resisting.  Now she led them to believe she was drinking it, but secretly poured it down the sink.<br/><br/>Her room was in the tallest tower  in the city now. Comfortable and luxurious beyond anything she had experienced before, not that she had had a tough life as a merchant's daughter. Two female servants attended her three times a day, bathing  her, massaging her whole body with scented oils, bringing food, and straightening up her room. She wasn't permitted the use of books, parchment or paper, and ink. She was allowed to sew and embroider, to sing and make music. Feminine things, dainty things.  The pox on those!<br/><br/>Lana, as her friends and family called her,  was terminally bored at one hand, and on the other, tremulous at the knowledge that she was to die in three days time.  The next three days would be spent getting ready for the happy day... of her murder.  Oh yay!  First came the day of the baths where she would be stripped of  every hair on her body except her head, and paraded through the ceremonial baths of blood, salt water, milk, and once again salt water. After which she would be oiled and displayed before the council to ascertain one last time the perfection of her body and her virginity. She grimaced in distaste at the idea of a bunch of old men gawking at her hairless private parts held open by the Maester to verify the intact condition of her hymen.  Oh, why oh why had she not just let her father's friend Yorren fuck her last spring when he was a little drunk and very horny?!  He was handsome and well built, but she had gotten a terrible case of the giggles when she had beheld his tumescence, a thick purple thing which had almost pulsed with his arousal. Alas, between her giggles, and his drunkenness the erection had failed, and Yorren had laid down on the couch to sulk where he promptly fell asleep, his cock now slumped over a thigh, a mockery of its former priapic glory.<br/><br/>No, instead now she would be allowed to spill her virgin blood all over some piece of ancient machinery which seemed to get recharged by it, and another year of well controlled weather would bless the valley below with bountiful harvests.<br/><br/>She stood by the window overlooking the valley, and watched shires of the little people spread between the fields. The windows were narrow and wouldn't allow an adult to slip through, so the idea of doing away with herself were foiled. Beside, the consequences to her family if she did take her own life would have been rather terrible, a wonderful deterrent.<br/><br/>Lana walked away from the window, and for what had to be the thousandth time began to inspect every tile, every stone, every case for a secret passage way. The ancients who had built these structures had built in all manner of tech wizardry which she had studied, even though it had been forbidden , especially for women. She had been careless and was caught, and lo and behold elected as 'First among the Virtuous' when they had raided her room, and discovered her sketches, calculations and writings.<br/><br/>Despite all her efforts, she had not been able to crack the secrets of her prison, but she knew better than to cry out with the rage she felt. The last time she did, they came in, held her down, and forced a sleeping draught down her throat which made her sleep for two days.<br/><br/><a class="username" data-user-id="929" data-username="@InfernoLucien" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/929/">@InfernoLucien</a>