Up the long and winding Road of Penitents the line of women crawled, on hands and feet. Like all the Penitents traveling to beg for the Temple’s mercy, the women were stripped of all clothing and, like many other penitents, their hair had been shorn, but past that few had ever traveled the Penitent’s road like these women.

Their crawling was enforced, not by piety but by a curious arrangement. At the same time their hair had been cut, the women had been pierced and fitted with rings of silver in several places.

Firstly, each had had their noses pierced and ringed. From this, a short, thin chain ran, to the woman in front of her in the line, where it was attached to a second ring, piercing through the hood of her naked sex. The young woman, therefore, could not lift her head up from its bowed position, nor could she stop and rest, but had to keep crawling forward of else feel the tug of the ring in her nose. At the same time, she had to hope the woman behind her in line would not dawdle, or she would feel the painful tugging of the ring in her own sex.

Besides these two rings, the women had been further pierced and hung with rings through their nipples. As they crawled, these hung down, the silver bells attached to the rings jingling merrily, a light, airy sound in sharp contrast to the groans and cries of the penitents, muffled by leather wrapped wooden bits, strapped on so they would not profane this march with blaspheme.

Walking along the line of penitents were Sisters of the Temple. Armed with leather flogs, they kept the Penitents moving, though at a slow crawl that was all they could manage. The Sisters raised their voices in Hymns, to increase the spiritual benefit the women under their charge would receive from this arduous journey. Two days they had been on the Road thus far, and at their slow crawl it would be two days more before they reached the steps of the temple and received its mercy.

For most penitents, that would be the end of their journey. After prayer in the temple and resting in one of the pilgrim’s lodgings they would return to their homes. That would not be the case of these women. A year before, the Temple had declared their city and its people heretics against the temple. Rather than submit to the Temple’s justice, they had taken arms to defend themselves. Two weeks before, the city had fallen after a long siege.

The men of the city were put to death, as the fate of all rebels, but the women and girls had fallen into the hands of the victorious army as captives. As punishment for their heresies, the women had been condemned to crawl the Penitent’s Road and in this strange and degrading manner. But that would not be the end of their punishment. It was the decision of the temple that, should they be allowed their freedom again, they would likely stray once more from the path and fall back into heresy.

Thus it was decreed, after the completion of the road, the captive women would be immediately sent to the market, to the auction block and be sold into slavery. A good, firm handed master would see they did not stray again. Already the women wore the steel collars of slaves around their necks, reminding them that from now on, whatever lives they had had before, now they were slaves.

The line crawled forward, the women and girls hanging their heads low, whimpering, sobbing as they thought of their old lives, gone, and the hard new lives that now lay ahead of them...