Something More

“B-bleathe…”

“Say it.”

“Nooo…”

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Yennefer had thought she had known the limits of outrage when she found herself chained to a straw-littered floor, her hands and feet transfigured into hooves. Again, she was certain she had felt she had reached outrage’s bounds when she was left in the barn stall for days, her bonds forcing her to eat and drink from a trough; her hands manacled, neck bent, head lowered to the ground, sucking at water like an animal; lapping up the mushy gruel they had left her with her tongue, leaving her hair matted and her face smeared.

No, Yennefer had thought later, her rage could reach no greater heights; abandoned with not so much as a pail to relieve herself, every step or shift in position calculated in the stinking, dampened straw to avoid the pile of feces she had eventually shed on the floor; the smell becoming so intolerable she found herself truly grateful when a “farmhand” came to muck out her stall. A week later, when she awoke to find the hateful mirror nailed to her door, leaving her no choice but to see her warped limbs, her swelling breasts, and the raven-tipped tail she had learnt to bat at the clouds of flies that were her constant companions; she had felt to the pith of her soul, that there could be no deeper outrage.

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“You want this. Just stand still like a good girl.”

“NO!”

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Yennefer had thought she could feel no more shame after what she estimated was the third week of her captivity, three farm hands unshackled her then dragged her, fighting, cursing, and tottering quadrupedal on warped, awkward legs to the pasture. The sun on her skin, the breeze caressing her nakedness, were almost soothing until, laughing, the men had brought a tub and a suds filled pale and began roughly scrubbing her down. Cruel hands and coarse brushes chafed her raw, groping, stroking, tugging her new tail, cackling among themselves. They hadn’t bothered to warm the water. When the damp and cold caused her by now obviously lengthening nipples to stand at attention, one of them had jeered, saying how nicely “the heifer” was coming along. She would have kicked him, bitten him, anything…but she knew there was no point, and the freezing water had sapped what strength remained. She followed passively, led back to her stall by a leash, face burning.

She achieved a new height of humiliation upon seeing her reflection. Scrubbed and pink, she could no longer pretend the stubble spreading from her pubis and armpits was human; that her areola, once a light pink, were not expanding across her breasts and darkening; that her tail was anything but a cow’s. The nature of her punishment clear, she reasoned that the pair of raw, pink spots lower on her chest were soon to be another set of nipples. But surely knowing what was to happen to her meant there could be no greater shame?

When the changes reached her face; when she saw her tongue, swollen, distended, poking absurdly from her too-small mouth, lips glistening not with gloss but with drool, she began to doubt. When she tried to call out, to speak, to form human words, only to find them twisted, thickened, and nearly incomprehensible; she knew she had been wrong in this, too. She had, at least, been able to force the cow’s tongue back inside her mouth. Perhaps that was a victory?

Yennefer was…or, rather, she mused, had been, a sorceress. Her hands and her mouth were her most vital instruments. Even if she had the strength, her bovine hooves and tongue could not shape the spell. This was not polymorphy, she knew. It was too slow, too agonizing. Then there were the marks. There had been days when she awoke, head muddled, with strange sores on her arms or buttocks. Marks she now recognized as inflamed injection sites. This was mutation. Why had it taken her so long to realize? Or had she known all along, and allowed herself to forget? She willed away the memory of Lydia van Bredevoort, of how her deformity had been utterly irreversible, with a whimper.

Yennefer was a sorceress. She had to remember this. Over the last two months, an insidious routine had begun to coalesce. She was left alone with her thoughts most of the day; nothing but creaking wood, wind whistling lightly through gaps in the walls, and the buzzing of flies to accompany her. She could not stop thinking. She lurched constantly between numbed boredom and a quiet, growing terror at the progressing desecration or her flesh; a transformation she couldn’t escape even when she closed her eyes. Her reflection could be banished, but the increasingly alien sensations from her body could not… the friction of fur on fur (black and white, of course, she observed with bitter humor) when she moved her legs. The hanging weight of her tail, the growing burden of her breasts, the choking tangle of her new tongue, even all the itches she could not scratch now that her arms had become her forelegs. It was impossible to ignore when there simply was nothing else to feel. Most troubling of all…she had begun to notice an increasing, indescribable…sloth to her thoughts. Even quickened by fear, everything seemed to move just a bit slower than it should, associations and words emerging ever so slightly too late. It was the boredom. The lack of stimuli. Surely.

All of this added up to an eagerness perilous close to gratitude when her keepers opened the door to carry out some function of this freakish travesty of a body’s upkeep. That had to stop.


She was Yennefer of Vengerberg. She was a sorceress. She would not succumb to this. She would not be their…pet. She considered, briefly, simply starving herself. But she had things to live for. People that she loved, and that loved her in turn. And there was always revenge to consider. Besides, they would simply force feed her. No. She would watch. She would wait. An opportunity would come. Help would arrive. Something would distract them. She was not an animal. She was not a cow.

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“It’s time”

“No.”

A chuckle. “What?”

She struggles to force the words past a swollen, bovine tongue. “I…von’t…thoo it. Von’t leth yoo” Her voice is deeper, she realizes. Would anyone recognize it?

An appraising look. A smirk.

“Suit yourself, Jenny.”

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Yennefer had thought she knew the sum of violation when she returned to consciousness, not in her familiar barn, but in a dark cellar, propped on all fours atop a grated floor. Her arms were bound below her, her spotted, hoof tipped hind legs…her legs…spread wide, as though in stirrups. She noted, with growing horror, that her captors had again supplied her with mirrors, now expertly angled to let her see every part of herself. Drowsy, her mouth hung open stupidly, a string of drool dangling from the full, unnaturally protruding lip of her lower jaw. And behind…Had her hips always been so wide? Her thighs so thick? Between the distended hips, the widening buttocks, and the black spot spreading from her otherwise white rear like a stain, she almost looked like a…no, she couldn’t think about that.

Then she saw her sex, swollen labia partially obscured with thick black hair. In this position, her meaty thighs spread wide, it was perfectly exposed. Unguarded.

Accessible.

“Time to make this heifer a real cow” A voice sneered.

There were men in the room with her. A particular tall one was holding a long, thin…instrument. A shiver ran down her spine, ruffling her new fur. Yennefer yelled, tried to curse at them with a mouth increasingly ill-suited for the simple humanity of language. They only laughed. The shorter one bent over. It was only then she noticed the smell. She had defecated while she was unconscious. This prompted another torrent of curses, groans, and barely comprehensible threats. The man that had bent over was wearing a strangely textured, very long glove. Unable to look away, Yennefer watched him scoop a handful of her runny, greenish manure into his gloved hand, rub it up and down the length of his arm. He approached her rear. She tried to kick, but the other man had tightened her restraints. Her limbs were completely trapped, pulled painfully taught. Ashamed and immobile, Yennefer felt the man slap her ass, tried to ignore the obscene jiggling.

Horrified, she could do nothing but watch as the man shoved his arm into her anus. Sharp pain. A sensation of something giving way, like silk tearing against the pull of a strong hand. A cleaving that brings no release.

Never had she felt anything like this. She feared that she would split, that her sphincter would surely tear, that her insides couldn’t possibly take more of his length. She wanted to scream, to fight…but all she managed as the intruding appendage pushed deeper and deeper into her mutilated body was a moan, her ass convulsing about the slippery limb. The man grunted, applying more force. She felt as if she were stuffed, or impaled on a spit. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t fight. Her legs simply wouldn’t respond. Something was wrong. This wasn’t her. She felt her rage receding, humiliation rising to fill the cooling embers of her soul. She was whimpering, sinking into a quivering, shuddering abyss; filled with the terrible ease of something not unlike surrender.

The pain was gone. There was only an uncomfortable tightness, a profound sense of violation; and bowel loosening, heart rending shame. He was inside her up to the elbow. The man grabbed something within her, tugged, she groaned again. There was no pain, yet she could feel intimate organs being squeezed and shoved aside at the whim of the trespasser inside her. Violation.

She scarcely noticed as another man knelt beside her, inserted a long snaking contraption past the swollen lips of her cunt. It penetrated, poking, stretching her inner walls uncomfortably before sliding deep insider her with a wet *schlick*. And then it was done.

“Congratulations, Jenny” The tall man had said. “You’re going to be a mommy.” The syringe that deprived her of consciousness was an old, dear friend; come to rescue her again.

In the months that followed, Yennefer concluded that the events in the dark room had been a dream. A more urgent nightmare within a numb, cloying one; a delusion brought about by fear, pain, humiliation, and the paradoxical idle boredom in which they were enmeshed. Convinced at last that obscenity was endless, that it had no depths to be sounded; she retreated back into pernicious routine. She was fed. Washed. She slept. She emptied her bowels where she stood, and felt nothing. She was nude before strangers, and felt nothing. She was mocked, taunted, and felt nothing. She did not speak. Why would she? Her words only made them laugh. Memory faded. Wakefulness faded. She no longer watched for opportunities, tried to worm information about her captors. It was simply too tiring. With one exception, even the mutation of her body had stopped. There was only numbness. Emptiness.

Save for the rare nights where she dreamed. Of what had happened to her in the dark room. Or of Geralt, her love. Of Ciri, her daughter. Then she woke, raged, battered herself sore against walls of her prison; choked, almost inhuman screams raised to the heavens. Whether the curses were meant for the world that allowed this to happen, for the captors that tormented her mind and desecrated her body, or for herself; the woman that had dared believe she was strong, that did nothing as she was violated, the woman meek as a cow for the slaughter in that dark room, she could not say.

As her one exception continued to mutate, the dreams seemed to occur more and more. The pert, girlish breasts that Geralt had loved were growing, and growing fast. Now nearly the size of her head, they had become a bloated, sickening burden that more and more threatened to jar her from the comforting fog that had enveloped her mind. A burden that promised only to grow heavier as her breasts continued to expand alongside the second pair budding beneath the first.

Then came the night of her miscarriage.

At first, she’d had no idea what was happening. A sharp pain tore her from a dream of Ellander, of a beautiful, willful girl that had called her mother. She rose, shakily to her feet, groaning against the weight of her double pair of melon sized breasts and the uncertain posture of her hips and spine. Another jolt, shooting through her abdomen. Then again, and again, in ebbs and pulses. And she remembered.

‘Congratulations, Jenny.’

Three painful hours later, a bloody mass lay huddled on the floor. Yennefer did not sleep again that night. She stood, trembling, as far from the thing as she could get in her cramped prison. What had she been doing? Three months. Three months of nothing. Of pretending this wasn’t happening to her. Of running from reality. Of doing whatever they wanted.

It came to her in a rush. The calculated humiliations, the degradation; everything down to the way they spoke to her, or did not speak to her, when they mucked out her stall. It was pantomime and routine, not just torture. A pantomime that she, in her cringing brokenness, had participated in. A pantomime meant to undo her through torturous repetition, reward, and punishment; mold her into what they wanted her to be. Make her a bloody cow.

And she had let it happen. Why had she not understood immediately? Had her mind grown so dull? This would stop. They could despoil her flesh, humiliate her, shape her into an obscene jest. They could violate her mind, taint her memories. But they could not unmake her. Not unless she let them. She would fight.

Her resolve lasted a week.

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She wakes to rosy dawn light. As always, she is greeted by the reflection of her twisted form. She mourns for a time, her breasts. It had been another productive night. The mutation had progressed far. She cannot call them breasts anymore, not truly. They hang obscenely, stretching skin taught, rubbing against the elbows of her forel-her arms. Her spine protests the unaccustomed weight. Four pale, veiny ellipsoids larger than cantaloupes, fused at the base into one grotesque whole; each dominated by puffy, dark pink areola and nipples half again the length of the thumbs she had once possessed, and at least as wide. She had resolved not to run anymore. To keep her mind sharp, even if horror and grief could be her only goad in this place. It is an udder, she tells herself. She has an udder. But the size is not all that has changed. There is an ache, deep within her. A bloated pressure that demands her attention, as if she had not peed in a day. This gives her pause. She has become so accustomed to simply peeing where she stands that the sensation confuses her, especially when the complaint seems to arise from the front of her body.

The mirror-door swings back and away. A stranger appears. A dwarf, though her posture forces her eye to eye with him. He smirks. There is a wide metal bucket in his hand. Her eyes widen.

“Vhath? Vhuth are yoo doink?” Just the asking is a struggle, and not only because of her warped mouth.

He laughs. The pail. The miscarriage. She understands.

“No! NOOO!” She kicks at her restraints, tries to bite, but her swollen tongue intervenes and she succeeds only in harming herself. The dwarf just curses, slaps her breasts. A knife piercing through her chest. He grabs a too-long nipple. Tugs with thick, meaty hands.

She moans. Her legs almost buckle. There is slickness between her thighs. He keeps tugging. A part of her she hates, despises -but above all- fears, hopes that he will never stop.

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Her first milking had stolen the fight from her, all notion of defiance obscured by a sexual haze of perverse relief. This continued, twice a day. Her volume only increased. The weight of her udder grew. She had never truly felt a cow, before, not matter how she changed. But now... The milkings left her wet, aching, yearning, mad with desire, but no release could come. She squeezed her fattened thighs together, moaned as she ground her rear against the wall. Recoiled at how much the noise sounded like a moo. But at dawn and dusk, every day, her first and only thought was of being milked.

But she was Yennefer of Vengerberg. She was not a cow. And she would end it.

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“It’s time” The dwarf says. Her breasts ached. Her nipples tingled in anticipation.

“No.” She meets his gaze.

A chuckle. “What?”

She struggles to force the words past a swollen, bovine tongue. “I…von’t…thoo it. Von’t leth yoo” Her voice is deeper, she realizes. Would anyone recognize it?

An appraising look.  A smirk.

“Suit yourself, Jenny.” She glares at him, narrowing her eyes into the predatory violet slits that had wiped the smirk off any face at which it was directed. But as he swings her mirrored-door shut behind him, she sees that the imbecilic droop of her mouth has rendered yet another act of rebellion impotent.

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All that follows is slow, creeping agony. For two days and a night, the pressure builds. For two days and a night, a fist grows within her breast. Farm hands come and go, replacing food and water, but none look at her, none speak to her; save at dawn and dusk, and that offer she refuses. She must. She will not become what they want her to be. The pressure builds, and builds, and builds. She cannot sleep. Moving is a torment, each swing of her fused mammaries sending razor edged tendrils through her breasts. She cannot lie down. The merest graze of a nipple against the floor is a cold fire.

She nearly chokes back a sob of relief when she sees she is beginning to leak in thick, white dribbles upon the floor.

But it isn’t enough. It is never enough. She moans until her throat is raw. She knows what she sounds like. But she cannot hold it in any more.

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That morning, the dwarf comes. She sees herself as he must see her. There is a wet, sour puddle on the floor before her. Her purple eyes are red, puffy, from lack of sleep. Exhausted, her tongue lulls carelessly from a jutting mouth still too small to accommodate it. A viscous strand of saliva bobs from a fat pink lip, threatening at any moment to join the spoiled milk on the ground.

“Is little Miss Jenny ready for her milking at last?” His voice is full of false forbearance. The mockery stings. How can mockery still sting? Could she do this? Could she give them this, and remain herself? She prays to Gods she had never believed in that this is so, for she knows she cannot hold out any longer.

She lowers her eyes. “Yeth” She feels the string of drool surrender to gravity alongside her own capitulation.

“Yeth” He repeats, smirking. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite make that out.”

She looks at him through drooping lids. Was this what he wanted? She had to give, but she didn’t know what to surrender. It was so hard to think with the constant pressure inside her…

“Yeth” She says louder, clearer.

“Yes what?”

“Yeth…I’m thready fohr milk.”

“Say please.”

It’s too much. She feels ready to burst. “Pleathe, pleathe milk me!” Had she meant for that to be a yell?

“But why would I milk you? I thought you were some high and mighty sorceress.”

No. They wouldn’t do this. Would they? Even with her mind dulled with mutation, exhaustion, and pain, she understands what he wants. She cannot give it to him. But neither can she hold out any longer.

She surrenders it, this last shred of pride.

“I’m a cow. Pleathe, pleathe milk muh-muh-mee.”

Feigned confusion. “You don’t sound like a cow to me.”

Always, there is something more to take. Something to cede that she didn’t even know she had. She gulps, her mouth thick with spit, begs forgiveness of Geralt and Ciri, for she knows she will never forgive herself.

“MOOOOooooo!”

It’s long, low, with all the breath she has left to give. And it is pathetic. The sound of a grown woman imitating a farm animal with all the enthusiasm of a child. But it seems to satisfy him. He sets the bucket down…

…and leaves, closing the door behind him.

Panic.

“Yoo pwomithed!”

No response.

“PLEATHE!”

She feels it. The rising in her gut. The itch and heat behind her eyes. The tremor of her diaphragm. She’s going to cry. They’re going to see. They can’t see! They can’t see her cry!

She is saved by the door swinging open once again. The dwarf has returned. He is holding something, in his hand. A long rope. He leaves the door open. Takes the pail away.

Into her pen, he leads a calf. It is very young, wobbling on thin legs. But it smells her. Smells the milk. Knows what to do. It steps forward.

Yennefer moans, too weak now to scream. Yet another obscenity.

It takes one of her long nipples, one of her teats, in its mouth. It’s not like the dwarf. It is firm, yes, but rough, with the stinging hint of teeth. It sucks, sucks with an energy she would never have credited to something so young and feeble. Fire moves up her teat. There is a queer dropping sensation. She can actually feel the warm liquid fill her…her udder. She moans again, but this time, not for grief. The pleasure is intense, nearly orgasmic. Her whole body shudders. She sighs, feeling the calf tug and pull, drain life from her breasts.

It is sublime. It is terrible. How long had she dreamed of this? A child at her breast? A young life, suckling gently at a nipple. Something of her body; beloved, trusted, something she would lend her strength. Protect.

Not this. Not this. Why must this outrage feel so sweet?

Her mind races, trying to find a channel to divert the relief, the bliss overtaking her. She thinks of Geralt. His gentle, expert touch. How her nipples had stiffened, risen to his loving ministrations. She imagines him tweaking a perky, pink breast. Imagines him sucking. Entering her. Taking her from behind. Anything. Anything!

But it doesn’t work. In her mind’s eye, a new image blots the fantasy, spreading like a cancer. Her breasts engorge, nubile buds becoming grotesque teats, veins crawling across the surface of ballooning, fusing, reddening udders that dominate her slim torso. Even then, even as this parody of what she was, she tries to persevere. But Geralt…she cannot see Geralt love her. Not as she is now.

She gives in. All thought ceases. She rides warm currents of pleasure through her udder. Paradise flows from the font of her teats to the mouth of the calf.

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When it is over, when they take her calf…the calf away, she feels as though she has died. She knows that she will never be able to summon the will to deny this perversity when next they inflict it on her. She will moan and whimper and shudder while they watch, laughing. She will play the cow, and hate herself, and feel such pleasure…

This is the Hell the street prophets and potentates had decreed was her destination. There was no escape tantalizing her from above, and no greater fall beneath her. Finally, truly, there would be nothing more they could take from her.

The dwarf returns. He holds an envelope, sealed with pink wax in the shape of a little heart.

“I was told to give you this, cow.” He holds it out to her, feigns puzzlement when she does not reach out to take it, chuckles.

“It’s from a dear friend. A copy of another letter left for a mutual acquaintance.” He opens it, holds it before her face. She is troubled at the effort it takes to force the symbols cede their meaning. But the meaning itself proves far more troubling. Dimly, impossibly, she recognizes the writing as her own.

‘Geralt,

I am sorry. I thought I could do this. I thought that with everything as it is, no more doom on the horizon, I could make this work. But I know now that I simply am not made for this life. Do not blame yourself. The blame is mine alone. I did love you, in my fashion. This is not revenge for past wrongs, this is not a game or a whim. I make this choice with a heavy heart but a clear mind. You will not see me again. Try to make Ciri understand.

Forgive me,

Yennefer’

No help would come. No one was looking for her. No one loved her. No one would even miss her. She shivers. Her legs give way. She wretches pale vomit upon the floor. She shrieks. Above all, in a reeking barn, in full view of the easy smiles of cruel men, Yennefer of Vengerberg weeps.

Always something more.