Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 1: Forty Paces of Freedom

Kanna's feet were bleeding. She couldn't see them in the dark—and she hadn't dared look down—but she knew that the soles of her feet had been cut open on the rocks. She imagined a trail of blood spotting on the ground behind her, leading that looming figure in the distance ever closer.

A low boom rumbled through the plain. Kanna did not realize it was thunder until she looked over her shoulder, just in time for a jagged vein of light to flash across the sky. The burst was strong enough to show the landscape for one glaring second. It allowed her to see the face of the tall woman who had been following her.

She saw only an empty pair of eyes. They glowed white like the moon, like the gleaming stare of an animal.

Kanna whipped her head forward again. She clenched her hand around the steel cuff on her wrist, but could not pull it free with all her strength. Through the pain, through the pounding of her heart in her ears, she ran full speed across the desert. She had no idea where she was going. She only knew that if she cut through the dark long enough and fast enough, that she would lose this shadow eventually.

Her feet grew numb. She ducked her head as she ran, wary of the lightning overhead, but she did not allow herself to slow her frantic kicks. Her self-made cloud of dust turned the air thick until it burned her lungs.

But then something shocked her into a standstill. It was so sudden, she nearly tripped into the sand.

At first, she was sure the shock had come down to strike her from above. It felt like a tiny lightning bolt running down the side of her body, a searing heat that started from the metal cuff around her right wrist and buzzed inside her bones—though it quickly swelled into every other part of her, too.

She winced and ignored it and tried to keep running, but with every staggering step, it grew more intense until she couldn't swing her arms. Her legs locked up. Her heels skidded against the ground. She cried out, but her voice was drowned by the sound of thunder.

Kanna fell face-forward into the dirt. The electric shock gushed through every branching nerve. Her muscles tightened and spasmed, her fingers digging into the ground without her consent. When she sucked in a breath to let out a scream, her mouth was filled only with earth.

In no time at all, a pair of feet appeared beside her. Though the pain was suddenly gone, it had also taken most of her strength with it, and Kanna struggled to look up at the tall figure that stood above in the dark.

A rope, swinging limply like a noose, dangled down from the woman's hand and tapped Kanna lightly on the face.

"I told you not to run," the woman said, but Kanna felt like it was the first time she had ever heard that animal speak. "Now hold still."

With some last reserve of energy, Kanna lifted her head. Her mouth full of sand and little else, she hawked everything she had at the tall woman's shoes. That mix of dirt and spit coated the old leather like a gritty soup.

Kanna closed her eyes, bracing for the kick.

But it did not come.

* * *

The woman's face was framed by the blackness of the sky. Her features were indistinct. Everything except her eyes had been smudged with the dark, and raindrops were flowing down from the back of her head, across her cheeks, down to where they dripped ice-cold into Kanna's own eyes.

Kanna blinked. The rain was mixing harshly with the warm water at the corners of her eyelids, the water that she had been trying hard to keep from coming out. She set her jaw. She did not move her gaze away, even as the woman—whose name was Goda, Kanna now remembered—hovered over her with an indifferent stare.