The Twins of Old Kartong

Old Kartong welcomed no one, not truly. But the guards stepped aside anyway, because they recognized them. Savalga and Tataru. The sisters who weren’t sisters. Two big, musclebound, barbarian tiger-bitches from the Wastelands. Born under the eye of a ruined empire, raised on combat and crude jokes, suckled not by mothers but by mercenary lodges, they had long since made the termite-spire city their home. Or perhaps their hunting ground. There was no difference in Kartong.

They marched straight to the Maw, the sack between them wet with what remained of their bounty. Inside were two heads, a set of hands, and a pair of severed testicles tattooed with a spider cult’s marks—proof of the kill, proof of the prize.

They dumped it on the floor with a thud that spattered the dice pit. “Coin,” said Savalga. “Now,” growled Tataru, tugging one paw up to pinch her twin’s nipple ring with a hard, predatory twist. The other snarled, bit her ear, kissed her deep. They laughed into each other’s mouths. The bounty was paid. In gold. Heavy and hot.

They swaggered through the lower levels, boots slick with mud and oil, hips swaying like blades sheathed in striped fur. Every male who saw them knew the scent: blood, musk, sex, power. Some looked away. Some followed. All of them touched themselves before the day was over.

They drank from longhorns in a broken-down arena tavern, puffed from a clay bowl laced with banded lotus resin, the smoke rising in lazy spirals around their fangs. They bet on a pit-fight between a rhino and a crocodile armed with chain-knives. They won. One tiger took the coin.

The other took the gladiator. She suckled him in the shadows, pulling his cock into her muzzle until he moaned, grinding against her breast and twitching at the edge. Then she spat on him and stood up, licking her lips. He cursed. She blew him a kiss.

“Earn it next time,” she whispered, slapping his thigh hard enough to leave a bruise.

The crowd laughed, even as the gladiator shivered in frustration, his cock still wet and throbbing. No one left a mark like a tigress. And no one forgot her, not in Kartong.

They ascended. A layer up, they devoured charred meat from bone, gnawing and grinning, the grease slicking their fingers. In the alleys, screams rang out—someone robbed, someone rutted, someone punished. They didn’t turn their heads. Kartong screamed every hour. It was part of the rhythm.

A layer down, Savalga leaned against a rusted iron table as a pierced rat with a jeweler’s eye drove a needle through the hood of her clitoris. She didn’t flinch. She growled. Her sister, nearby, leaned against the wall flicking her nipple ring absently, waiting her turn.

Back above, Tataru lay belly-down as a jackal tattooist painted glyphs of conquest around her tailhole. She grunted as a second male took her from behind after the inking, her chosen method of payment.

She liked to scream when she came. When she emerged, sweat and ink still staining her inner thighs, Savalga grabbed her breast and suckled once, hard and fast. The tattooist’s seed was still leaking. Neither cared.

They climbed. The city rose around them, stairs that bent sideways, ladders that ended in rope bridges, walkways built of scavenged bone and cloth.

They walked barefoot, tits out, laughing. They bought new daggers.

They bought grilled snake on a skewer made fresh on a black saber. They shared it, biting from opposite ends. When the need came, they squatted in an alley, spread their cloths, and pissed, two twin golden streams hissing against stone. One raised her tail, grunting happily.

A rat watched. He smirked. He made a joke. He didn’t get to finish it. Tataru broke his snout with a flat-palmed strike. Savalga snapped his wrist like it was chicken bone. “Watch your betters, but keep your tongue behind your teeth,” Savalga said. “Unless you want it pulled out and mounted.”

Two layers up, they stood at the threshold of The Howl’s Backdoor, one of Kartong’s nastier little clubs. The swine guarding the door leered. He reached for Tataru’s tit. She let him. He gave it a greedy squeeze. She didn’t break his wrist. This time.

“You’ve had your fun,” she said.

“And you’re about to have yours,” he grunted, stepping aside with a hand full of nothing and eyes wide with fear-lust.

Inside was chaos. A cheetah girl danced on a platform, bare and sweaty, her eyes wide with glittering fear. A zebra mare shrieked with each bounce of the panther impaling her from below. A wolf rutted her ass from behind, knot swelling as her hooves kicked in rhythm.

Gold changed hands. Mouths drooled. Savalga and Tataru watched, unimpressed. “This city hasn’t changed,” Savalga said. “Good. I’m not here to grow soft,” Tataru replied.

They paid a gelded jaguar to massage them, oils worked into striped shoulders, claws trailing lazily down scarred thighs. He tried to linger too long. Savalga bared her fangs.

He moved on. In the bathhouse, the two tigers finally spoke, voices low and thick with smoke. “I’m glad to be home,” Savalga muttered, stretching her arms behind her head. Tataru slid a claw along her own thigh. “Not as glad as I’ll be tonight.”

They locked themselves into one of the spire’s upper chambers; a room bought with coin and blood, walls patched with silk and hammered bronze.

They smoked banded lotus until the air shimmered. They stripped. They howled. A length of carved fruit, thick and firm, was strapped between them with leather belts. Savalga mounted Tataru, grinding until they both grunted, fur slapping wet.

They kissed, bit, snarled, screamed. Tails wrapped. Breasts collided. Thighs soaked. They fucked like tigeresses who had no emperor. No leash. No law. Only each other.

The city itself trembled under the weight of their howling. And by the next morning boast would have returned To the wasteland, To hunt, battle, kill, win...

...and do it all over again.