A Panther’s Fall, a Man’s Patience, and the Cracking of a Provado
This Gorean Fan Fiction was generated using Chat GPT alongside the RP logs.
Please note that the Gorean Saga is a fictional series, and its world, customs, and values may not align with modern societal standards or moral principles.
Gor is Copyrighted by John Norman
They had left Tempest in the cage too long.
Nearly two weeks without proper food, her panther-lean frame had withered to skin and bone. Her ribs pressed against her marked skin like sharp reminders of the life being scraped out of her. She could barely curl into herself anymore; every movement hurt. Her once-powerful voice was reduced to a broken, rasping whisper. Even her legendary rage, her panther fire, barely flickered.
The slavers came and went—arguing about feeding her, discussing her as if she were livestock. Some mocked, some shrugged, some talked profit, some talked punishment. None cared.
None except one.
The ubar had tossed her a piece of dried bosk meat and a bowl of water—rough mercy, but mercy nonetheless. She devoured it so fast her stomach cramped, tears slipping down her gaunt cheeks. For the first time since her capture, she muttered a faint “thank you.”
But it wasn’t the ubar who changed her fate.
It was the man who came after.
He arrived with the calm interest of someone who had seen too much of life to be shocked anymore. He stepped to the bars and studied Tempest with an intensity she resented instantly—and yet couldn’t quite ignore.
“Tal, girl,” he said to her. “Do you speak?”
She hissed at him. “I talk.”
Her provado snapping like it always did—sharp, defensive, feral.
It didn’t scare him.
It intrigued him.
The conversation that followed should have been like the dozens of others she endured: figures circling, teasing, threatening. But his curiosity wasn’t predatory. It was discerning.
And Tempest felt it.
She hated that she felt it.
But she felt it.
When he turned to leave—calmly, rationally, as though she were just another wild thing not worth taming—something in her broke.
“WAIT!”
The word tore from her throat without permission.
He turned slowly, a brow raised. “Did I miss something charming you wish to say, Tempest?”
Her heart hammered painfully. She crawled to the bars, driven by desperation and something else she couldn’t name.
“If I promise not to kill you…” she whispered, shaking, voice cracking.
“…would you take me?”
His eyes narrowed—not with cruelty, but with the careful consideration of a man who understood bargains and broken creatures far too well.
“All you offer is not killing me?” he asked.
“No.” Tempest swallowed, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. “I… will serve you. As you wish. If you free me. I won’t run. I won’t kill you. Chain me—my hands, neck—whatever you want. Just… let me out of this cage.”
It was the closest she had ever come to submitting.
Her provado hadn’t just cracked—it had shattered.
And he saw everything beneath it:
the fear, the exhaustion, the loneliness, the hunger—not just of body, but of purpose.
He didn’t rush. He didn’t take advantage.
He simply studied her quietly, like a scholar studying an ancient, wounded creature that still had claws.
“I am sorry about your sister,” he told her softly. “And I see what this cage has done to you. But a Panther bending words to escape is not the same as a Panther choosing a Master.”
She shut her eyes. Tears ran down her face unchecked.
“I know nothing of the life you offer,” she whispered.
“But if it is better than this cage…”
She drew in a shaking breath.
“I… will become yours.”
The words cracked her open.
And he felt it.
This was no act.
It was surrender—fragile, terrified, real.
He scribbled something on a scroll and slid it between the bars.
Tempest stared at it, confused, as he said:
“This states that if the Slaver cannot sell you—if they fear your claws or your temper—they are to send for me. I will pay double the price for you.”
Her breath hitched.
It was not freedom.
But it was a future.
“A get-out-of-jail card, girl,” he said with a soft smirk. “If you truly meant what you said.”
Then he stood.
Turned.
Began to walk away.
And Tempest felt her heart crack open so suddenly she couldn’t stop herself:
“FINE!” she shouted after him, voice raw with something dangerously close to longing.
“BE GONE WITH—”
But the sentence never finished.
Because she realized, mid-cry, that her fingers were clutching the scroll to her chest like a lifeline.
For the first time in her life, Tempest’s provado wasn’t enough.
For the first time, she wanted someone to look beneath it.
And he already had.
And she already knew:
He would come back.
He had seen her.
Truly seen her.
And Tempest—Panther, warrior, wild thing—
had finally… finally… given in.
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