Gamila approaches the wooden cage openly.

"Hey. Are you alright? What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Everything's wrong!"

The woman looks up, peering between the planks to see who she's talking to, and it's not someone she knows but it's someone she can trust. It's someone she can show weakness to.

"I did everything a girl's supposed to do!" she sobs quietly. "I followed all the rules. And it didn't matter. I still ended up... here."

"What's your name?"

Sniffle. "Nera. Nera Falei."

She wipes her eyes and blinks at the hooded figure outside the cage. Sees a girl's face in shadow, pretty.

"Who're you?"

"I'm a friend."

This isn't one of her persons-of-interest, then. That suggests a next move, to Gamila, but she needs more information first.

"I heard that this place got a new owner recently. How has that been?"

"Awful."

Nera's fists clench.

"Master Lotep was kind. He'd give us breaks, if we needed to heal, or sometimes even if we just needed to cry. He'd let us get away with socializing. If we did well, sometimes we'd get treats... Ever since Master Nye took over, we, we, there's no mercy. He's terrible. Strict. We behave or we starve, no exceptions, no rewards; I'll probably get beaten if the manager catches me out here not washing; Master Lotep never begrudged us taking a moment out here to breathe."

She shudders.

"I just couldn't..."

"Couldn't what?" Gamila asks gently.

Nera simply shakes her head.

"I feel guilty, you know? I'm glad when it's not me. I just sit there, listening to it happen to the girl in the next room, glad that it's happening to her and not to me, and I just... I needed to breathe."

"Are the men who usually come here the nasty ones? Did that also get worse, when Nye took over?"

Nera gives Gamila a look like she's an idiot.

"Of course the men who come here are nasty men. They're men who lay with whores. A good man would never indulge himself at a place like this."

Gamila keeps the scowl off her face.

Not her fault. Not her fault.

"Hm. Has anyone new been brought in recently? A pair of sisters, recently convicted of fraud, maybe?"

It takes a moment for Nera to parse the question.

"...do you know the twins? I dunno about fraud but they showed up when Master Nye took over. I haven't talked with them yet. The new rules... and also those two have been... extra busy."

A shiver runs down Gamila's spine. That's... not proof. Not proof, but she already believes it. It's a hell of a coincidence otherwise.

"Nera. If you could escape this place, would you have anywhere to go?"

Nera worries at the question in her mind for a moment.

"...I don't know. But I'd take my chances."

Alright then.

"Eroding Ray."

A stream of colorless mist flows out from Gamila's hand, striking the corner of the wooden cage. Where the mist touches, the wood evaporates, until a hole large enough for a person to walk through appears.

"Prestidigitation."

(Disguise: 17)

Gamila peers at Nera, then waves a hand over her head and body, adjusting her own hair and coloration to match Nera's.

A Disguise Self would be much better. Gamila is slightly shorter and has a fuller figured, more obviously healthy body than Nera, and is younger in the face. But Disguise Self only lasts twenty minutes and she doesn't have it hung anyway. She can keep a Prestidigitated disguise up for as long as she needs.

Gamila starts undressing.

"Take my clothes and get out of here. I'll take your place and give you a decent head-start."

Nera stares in wide-eyed, disbelieving wonder and fear as the cage is breached, then desperate hope as the stranger gives Nera her clothes.

The spell that is Charming her mind shivers under the strain of all the suspicions and questions and concerns she would have about this if she wasn't Charmed, but the allure of freedom has seized her and she is just going to go along with this, actually.

She steps through the hole in the cage. She takes the clothes and puts them on, and the cloth feels strange on her skin after so long without. She takes the simple leather band from her own neck, a cheap, symbolic slave collar that has only one purpose: to mark her and serve as a reminder and to entice the men who see it. She hands that over in trade.

Then she puts up the hood of the cloak and bolts, forgetting even to thank her savior.

Not bothering to watch Nera go, Gamila slips through the hole in the cage, and puts the slave collar on her otherwise naked self.

"Make Whole."

The hole in the cage reforms into intact wooden planks.

Gamila heads for the rickety staircase. She ascends, enters the second floor, and hurries to Nera's room.

There are eight rooms on the floor in total, arranged strangely in the available floorspace. Upon entering from the washing cage, one must pass by the proper stairwell that descends into the lounge below and the office above. A zig-zagging hallway divides the first four rooms from the other four, the rooms stuffed into the available space haphazardly and no two of them exactly the same size.

                |             |
                |             |
                |____         |
________________|_   |||||____|
|        |___||||    |        |   /\
|        |       |       1    |   ||
|   6    |   5   |   |        |  ALLEY
|        |           |________|
|______  |_______|   |        |
|                    |   2    |
|   7    |    _______   ______|
|________|   |       |        |
|        |       4   |   3    |  STREET
|   8        |       |        |   ||
|________|___|_______|________|   \/

Nera's room is labeled as room five.

Room one is occupied by a girl curled up in the corner. Room six is occupied by a customer and the girl he is fucking. Sounds of sex can also be heard from rooms two and four. Rooms three and eight are empty, presumably belonging to the girls in display-cages downstairs.

From inside room five, there is little to dampen the grunts, moans, whimpers and slapping flesh echoing out of room six.

Gamila waves a quick Prestidigitation over the pillows in room five before arranging them to make a seat facing the doorway. She seats herself with her back to the wall, listening to the sounds on the other side of it and feeling a flutter of butterflies in her stomach.

Her heart is racing, her bare body flush with a strange feeling between anxious anticipation, excitement, and preoccupation. The urge to touch herself wars with the worry that the woman on the other side of that wall is... suffering, and praying for someone to save her. It doesn't sound like she's struggling, but it wouldn't, would it. It doesn't sound like she's actively participating either, but it wouldn't, would it. A slave girl is expected to meekly accept whatever is done to her, whether it be intensely enjoyable or worse than death.

Surely most men would prefer a woman with some lust in her? The majority come to a place like this because it costs less money, not because they prefer a meek and passive slave to a skilled and eager lover. Right...?

In any case, Gamila can't blow her cover until she has all the facts. She isn't sure what she's going to do, when she makes her move, but she fully expects whatever it is to draw attention from the Eyes.

The man in room six finishes, and shortly after that, leaves.

A few minutes later, the woman comes out, shuffling in front of Gamila's doorway on her way to the bathing cage. She doesn't notice or look at Gamila.

A few minutes after that, another scruffy, unwashed man arrives in the hallway, and enters room one. The slave inside whimpers but says nothing as he starts in on her. While he's busy in there, another man finishes and comes up the hallway, rotating out as new customers arrive. The girl in room six passes the girl from room four coming the other direction in the hallway.

And then a man arrives at Gamila's door and leers at her as he enters the room.

The fluttering in her belly hasn't gone away, and neither has the hot, eager ache between her legs.

She looks up at the man that's going to fuck her and... stops herself there. Nothing else about him matters. She could evaluate him, think over how attractive or not-attractive he is or think about how much she would or wouldn't want to spend her time on his lusts for other reasons... but she doesn't have to. Her evaluation of those things is irrelevant in the current situation.

And there's something gloriously liberating, something Chaotic, about that.

Something that almost outweighs the man himself being repulsive. As the man approaches, her belly flutters and her loins throb, and it doesn't matter that it's the situation rather than the man in the situation that's fueling her arousal, because she's aroused either way.

And it's beautiful. Her sexuality is expansive enough that there is room within it even for scum like him.

The man, seeing that he has been assigned a particularly beautiful slave, disrobes eagerly.

He grabs the slave and drags her pillow seat away from the wall, tipping her onto her back. He gropes her ass with rough hands, slapping her pubes with his erection as he pushes her legs apart. Then he aims himself and thrusts in.

A shuddering gasp tears itself from the man. Wet. Hot. So slick. His shaft slides in with a lack of resistance he's never felt before, and yet her walls embrace him as tightly as any tearful virgin. It's strange. Wrong. But so much better. He lifts her hips and starts pounding into her.

She waves a hand over his crotch, cleaning him off as he penetrates her, just in case. Prestidigitation last an hour. It's still up. She doesn't need to recast it to do that.

And then she just closes her eyes and enjoys.

The man collapses onto her as he drives himself into her, licking at her flesh with his mouth and mauling with his hands, breathing her in and-

He spills himself into her, grunting in her ear.

After another moment, his flushed face darkens in anger and humiliation.

He's been cheated. That was over way too fast and it's all the slave's fault for feeling and smelling so good weird. He raises a hand to strike her.

Gamila lets him. It does approximately nothing to her. She offers up a small pained gasp, without any real feeling.

In fact, it is alarmingly difficult to stop herself from... trying to help. It has nothing to do with the man, but rather... the pattern of the mistake he is making. She can envision it, growing like an invasive weed through the man's mind. He is angry and he takes that anger out on her, despite that she and him agree, are united in the feeling that that didn't last long enough, and it isn't that he thinks she's judging him, he thinks she's a slave. Rather, he can't see her as an ally in the first place. He can't see even the possibility that sex could be collaborative.

She pities him.

But she has bigger concerns. She maintains her cover.