Story #40: Strength Made Meaningless

Story #40: Strength Made Meaningless (Content Tags: Messy diapers, enslavement, fantasy world, classism, humiliation, degradation, mild bondage) The haggard boy struggled against the shackles, unflinching from the futility of freedom. Every lesson in his life had carried the adage of might making right, and while he still believed that to be true, his faith in his own strength had wavered. He couldn't even be given the honor of dying in battle, if there would be no battle to be had. His people were mighty warriors; they eschewed intellectual pursuits and instead lived a life of conquest and combat. Legends weren't written in any books, but instead were told around the fire, while a recently slayed beast cooked on an iron spit. Anything that their brutal culture could not provide, they would take from those that could. They were nomadic, more of a clan than a kingdom, and as these barbarians spread out, they lived off the land and pillaged those who would stand before them. In this region of the continent, they had become rather infamous. Perhaps not a threat to any large kingdom, but certainly an extant one to the hamlets and colonies that littered the coast. The boy again flailed violently against his bondage, hearing the rattle of the chains echoing throughout the dingy dungeon he'd been imprisoned in. He was strong, but not strong enough to break free of this bondage he'd been put in. Little did he know that this would only be the beginning of his shameful subjugation. The conqueror of his clan was the might of the Zanthen Empire. They were a magocratic society that saw both the arcane and the pursuit of science as the dominant force in the world. Because of their commitment to knowledge, their army had become the most formidable on the continent. Powerful warlocks, sorcerers, scientists and engineers were all a solid portion of their military's foundation. The cities of their empire were clean, efficient, and adorned with the finer comforts. When compared to the illiterate masses that made up most of the rest of the continent, and especially the barbarians, they had grown an exceptional superiority complex about their place in the world. To an average citizen of the empire, this little barbarian boy was likely seen on equal footing as a wild animal; with the tales of the clan's brutality, such an observation wouldn't be unwarranted. The barbarians were filthy, uneducated brutes that understood nothing of decorum or etiquette; they were of little social standing. The door to his cell finally opened, and a boy around his own age stepped in, accompanied by two guards. The boy was tidy, scrawny, and obnoxiously smug. "Ah, the chieftain's son... Funny, you don't really look like all that much...Though you smell something terrible!" The barbarian narrowed his eyes at the insult, but kept his mouth shut for the time being. "I too am of great importance to my people. I'm this empire's prince, and one day I'll be *king*...but you, you won't be becoming the next chieftain. In fact, your clan has been officially rousted. Some will be made to assimilate, others will be sold, and the rest will be too small and scattered to be causing any more trouble. You though...You're going to become my pet. You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?" The chained boy snarled, no longer able to contain his fury. "You don't know what you're talking about! Even one of our warriors could cut down a hundred of your puny magic men!" The prince looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected such a lowly creature to be capable of speech, let alone cogent sentences. His shock soon reverted to a sadistic glee though and he let out a pompous laugh. "That's precious! Absolutely adorable! Maybe I should let you see for yourself what your situation is. For both you and your clan." He gestured to the guards and then pointed lazily at the dirty boy in the dungeon. "Get him 'dressed' and we'll go show him. Don't bother washing him, he hasn't earned it yet anyways." The two guards came and unshackled him from the wall, though keeping his hands bound together. What came next was where the surprises really began though: they shed him of his dingy garb, but instead of giving him the type of dainty clothes that he'd expected, they began to unfold several giant white squares on the floor. He couldn't fight them with this kind of handicap, so he just had to go along with it; it wasn't until halfway in that he realized what this garment was supposed to be. His own people used something less refined, but this was no doubt a diaper! "W-what are you doing?! I'm not some mewling babe!" They stood him back up, his legs splayed out by the girth of the cloth around his rump and groin. They then attached a collar onto him that was engraved with runes and they uncuffed his hands. The berserk boy lunged almost immediately at the guard, but he was caught short and felt a whiplash from the sudden stop. He glowered behind him and saw the prince holding an ethereal chain made of some mystic light that tethered itself to the metal collar. "Ah, ah, ah. There'll be none of that, my loyal little pet. Perhaps after housebreaking, we'll have to look at obedience training for all that aggression." He was ensnared, and no physical force could break a chain conjured by something as alien to him as magic. He had no choice but to be marched along, waddling really, out of the cell that he'd spent the last several hours. Going into the palace proper was a humiliation of its own, as nobles and dignitaries gawked at his disheveled and domineered form. He was an animal to them, and with the collar and the diaper, it wasn't an image that would soon change. Worse, he could sense a deep rumbling in his gut; a gurgling, violent churning in his bowels. All he'd had was the slop that they'd fed him in that cell, and he hadn't been allowed a bathroom break since imprisonment. He hadn't been too proud to repeatedly wee into his loincloth, but he had been holding back from soiling himself, as that was an indignity too far. "Its as if you're waving the white flag of surrender with each bumbling step. Don't feel embarrassed about it, surrender is really the only smart option here. Our empire is even compassionate enough to allow most of your people to assimilate, as an underclass of course...Someone needs to shovel the dung after all, or mine the gems, or clean all the nappies.." The prince gave the back of the diaper a condescending series of pats to emphasize that last point. "...The remaining few that are disagreeable, or that are too primal for even the most menial of our labors, will be sold off to some other kingdom as slaves. No point in investing to reform a beast that remains stubborn and stupid." The barbarian wanted to tell the prissy prince to shut his mouth unless he wanted to lose some teeth, but instead, his response was an involuntary fart that rasped and sputtered wetly, echoing off the grand acoustics of the royal halls. His bowel control definitely wasn't as toned as a citizen of a nation with real plumbing; in the wildlands, he could just stop and find a bush whenever the urge struck, which actually helped to prove the prince's point about 'housebreaking' him. The prince grimaced at first in disgust, but that reaction softened into something more amused. "My, my...We might need to keep my little pet here in nappies indefinitely. So rude and mindless!" The barbarian hung his head in irate shame, focusing now on just keeping his diaper clean. He was soon led out into a massive courtyard, where he could see members of his clan grouped in small sections to be processed by the royal authorities. These were people that he'd hunted with and eaten with, people that saw him as the future leader of the tribe, and now all they saw was that he was submitting to the enemy, while wearing nothing but a collar and a huge diaper. The shame was immeasurable, and as the prince had said, his bulky diaper was indeed like the white flag of surrender; with this dishonorable defeat, this humbling enslavement, it was the end of his clan's dominance. Raw strength had lost. The prince suddenly kicked the boy in the back of that puffy diaper, causing him to tumble forward onto his hands and knees. The bratty noble circled him and scoffed, "Come my pet, I want to parade around you in your nappies, so that all those 'warriors' can see what happens if they're disobedient to their new masters." The ethereal chain again manifested and the prince began to very forcibly lead him along, making him crawl on the ground like the beast he thought of him as. He made sure that all the other filthy barbarians could see. The agony of the moment was too great and the barbarian stopped actively holding back his bowels. A massive turd began to make a gassy descent into his diaper, as he crawled along the dirt. He didn't even stop at first, continuing to crawl as that first big log pushed out the fabric of the diaper, making a sizable lump. With the floodgates broken though, the cramping became much worse; he was letting out loud, juicy farts with every inch forward that he crawled, as if he were gas-powered. It got to such a point that he had to stop and groan. The prince looked down at his 'pet' and then took notice of the lump he'd made in his nappy. "Uh-oh! What a shock, the dumb dirty animal made droppings in its nappy! Who could have predicted such an 'unlikely' outcome?" The barbarian couldn't appreciate the sarcasm, as his boiling gut was taking all of his attention; he began to grunt and had to go as far as sticking his bottom up in the air, while his eyes squinted and his lips became wet with drool. He began pushing out another big steamer, but progress was halted by the prince putting his foot against the backside of his diaper. "What a naughty baby barbarian you are! Making a big dung-pie in your nappy so soon! Being filthy and stewing in your own droppings must be something you barbarians enjoy, for you to do it almost immediately after being put in a nappy." The prince mocked, grinding his foot against the squishy bottom. The enslaved boy groaned louder, having to make an even bigger effort of soiling himself while being denigrated like this. His diaper continued to fill, the hot dung piling up rapidly and being pressed tautly against him by the prince's foot. To make matters more embarrassing, the smell had attracted flies, which loudly buzzed around the fumes radiating from the manure-packed diaper. A proud barbarian, destined and primed to be the great chieftain some day; knowing only that might made right...Now all that might was meaningless. He was but the house pet of a snobby, noodle-armed prince that had no respect for his strength and thought of him as a significantly lower caste.