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Introduction:

I hope you guys are enjoying the series. As some of you may know, there's a link on my userpage which will bring you to Smashwords, where you will find the entire book (this is Book Five) in pdf form for free. Anyway, please leave comments or feedback!
Part Fifteen: Who You’re Meant to Be

Chapter Fifty

ZANDER

“Make way for the queen!” the crier yelled. One goblin rang a bell, another blared a farting trumpet, a third struck a snare with a military cadence, and the crowd roared with laughter.

“Make way for the queen!” The crier yelled again. The trifecta of successive noises sounded, and the laughter and jeers answered once more.

“Make way, make way, make way!” the crier yelled atop the float, zealous and gleeful with his role. He was dressed in the traditional garb of a Highland officer, though his trousers were missing, and his cold-shrunken cock was bouncing wildly as the wheel beneath him struck the uneven cobblestones. The band that proceeded him were all dressed in a similar mockery of Highland pomp; their hats askew, their skinny green legs poking out from the uniformed shirts. They marched in an exaggeration of military bravado as they played their instruments purposefully terribly, much to the amusement of everyone, including the officers who once wore those very uniforms. The vampires watched the parade from their perches atop the roofs, their red eyes swimming with amusement beneath their black cowls. The transformed men and women no longer bore an inkling of who they once were, and instead cheered along with the rest of the beasts as the parade made the bend toward the castle.

“Make way, make way, make way!” the crier yelled, swinging his baton animatedly, “Make way for the queen of the Highlands!”

It was becoming difficult to differentiate Leveria Tiadoa from the mud she crawled upon. She was caked in brown and black, her blonde hair matted to her neck and back, her voluptuous figure moving like an earthen silhouette against the street. It was difficult to tell with all the waste hanging off her, but it appeared that she had a pair of cow horns tied to her head, and her swollen belly was decorated with fake bovine udders. Yavara walked behind her sister, a leash in one hand, a whip in the other, a wide, evil grin stretched across her face. She wore her customary outfit of leather boots, corset, and a thong, each garment as black as her hair and the obsidian crown that circled it. It was like a vision from my past. The Dark Queen had returned, and yet, there was something wrong with it all. There was no control. Yavara did not laugh sardonically, but cackled insanely, swept away by the chaos she perpetuated. Alkandi had been the queen of chaos, but Yavara was just another slave. Ever adaptable, my little Yavara was, always shaping herself perfectly to the situation, but never shaping the situation itself. And if she couldn’t shape herself? What if the situation was too overwhelming? Well, then Yavara went mad. I glanced at the crawling Leveria, then at the crowned skull atop my staff, and sighed at its grinning visage.

“You seem displeased, Zander.” Arbor said beside me. We stood alone in the high northwest tower, watching the revelry unfold below us. “Is this not what you wanted?

“It is, actually.” I said with a shrug, and began packing my pipe.

The forest spirit took my pipe from my hands, and tossed the loose tobacco from the tower. Before I could object, she’d grown a new leaf in the palm of her purple hand, dried it, and sprinkled it into my bowl. She put it to her lips, and I lit it for her. After taking a deep inhale, she let the cloud cascade from her lips, and into the frigid air.

“I enjoy smoking much more than I ever thought I would.” Arbor said, “When I was bodiless, it puzzled me that mortals would willingly put poison into their lungs. Not only poison, but addictive poison. Now, I understand. The flesh is meant to be damaged. It is pleasurable to be self-destructive, and at times, to be destroyed by others.” She ran her fingers along the needle marks that tracked her left forearm along the vein. “I enjoy narcotics greatly, even though I know it kills me a little. I enjoy having sex with my children, even though I know it is warping us.” She looked out at the parade, “I enjoy seeing Leveria suffer like this. She would have chopped down my forest just for the wood, and killed my daughters just for being in the way. I do not know if it is just, but it feels very good.”

“That’s Alkandra.” I muttered.

“I daresay we will not see the true Alkandra until the horde’s arrival. In three nights, this place will be pure anarchy.” Arbor took another hit from the pipe, and sighed contentedly as the smoke flowed from her. “I do so enjoy these delights, Zander, but I fear their influence upon me. Right and wrong used to seem so easy to define, and now it is so very hard. That is how I know I am becoming corrupted.” She watched the plumes disappear into the air, “It is not like before, when Elena’s seed took hold of my mind. It is a willing descent into depraved and carnal things. Every day I make the wrong choice, and every day I feel less guilty about it.”

“Maybe you’ve just gotten a new perspective.”

She smiled at me, and it wasn’t the usual coy curl of her lip, but a lecherous smirk, one that looked wholly wrong on her stoic face. It made her beautiful in a terrible way, her angelic features corrupted with the devil’s grin, and it stirred me greatly.

“A new perspective, Zander?” She giggled, “I am a new woman entirely. I am evil, I know I must be, for it arouses me to imagine the tortures Leveria will endure at the hands of her sister.”

I slid myself closer to her. “I never pictured you for a sadist.”

Her grin turned even darker. “It arouses me to imagine being Leveria.”

LEVERIA

It felt like I was crawling across hot coals. My hands and knees were rubbed raw, and every scrape and bump along the muddy cobblestones was a torture upon the open flesh. My arms and legs quivered with the strain of moving one more inch forward, but I dared not stop, for I could feel the lashes Yavara had already dealt across my back, and the deep stings propelled me ever forward. When the parade had first started, I’d been horrified of the leering faces that lined the promenade, the tens of thousands of beasts whose hatred burned in their eyes and edged in their laughter. When the first clumps of mud and waste struck my flesh in wet splatters, I thought I must’ve crawled into the deepest pit of hell. Now, I realized I’d been at the doorstep.

I’d crawled a mile since then, and I hardly noticed the crowd that cheered me on. The stinking refuse that pelted me was as innocuous as rain now, for it hung from my hair, covered my flesh, and saturated my nose and mouth. I was shit. If there was any benefit to the muck that plastered me, it was to guard against the cold. Oh, the cold. Not only did it numb my fingers and toes, but it stiffened every motion, making me brittle where I might’ve been soft. My flesh broke easily, my muscles bruised readily, and my joints stiffened arthritically, seeming to grind against the bone they were socketed within.

But by far the worst torment I endured, was the pleasure. Oh, Yavara wouldn’t have it any other way. It wasn’t good enough for her that I be humiliated, brutalized, and ravaged. No, I had to enjoy it too. She had taken a page out of my own playbook. My belly was distended with the fluid she’d pumped into my ass, and that warm concoction sloshed with every motion, carrying the aphrodisiac deep into my bowels. The girthy plug held everything inside me, making certain I soaked up every drop of pleasurable poison. Every humiliation I endured, I fetishized; every pain I felt became a kink, and by the time I rounded the final bend of the road, I’d become the lowest piece of filth in the city.

“Moo for them.” Yavara demanded.

“M-m-m-moo!” I whined, loving and hating the laughter that answered me.

“Louder!” Yavara yelled, and the lash struck my back.

“MOO!” I screamed, my spine bowing in equal parts pain and pleasure, the welt on my back tingling with torment and titillation. Spit leaked from between my gritted teeth, and I barely held myself upright.

“Keep moving!” Yavara snapped, and her whip cracked across my back once more. I was compelled forward, the cowbell around my neck clanking loudly, creating a harmony with the other heavy bells that hung from my pierced nipples, stretching my tits to my elbows. It was agony, but every time my back arched, one of the bells dragged against the ground, and the stimulation it sent to my nipple lit a felicitous flame in my chest.

The jangling bells sounded as I rounded the bend. When I saw what lay before me, I collapsed in despair. The boulevard opened up into an expansive highway. Towers loomed over the street, and tens of thousands of beasts lined the walkways and waved from the high windows and balconies that seemed to stretch into the winter sky. The entire world seemed to follow the trajectory of the highway as it narrowed to a dot, and there on the horizon, stretched the arena. My destination.

The whip sung across my back, and I was spurred back into my crawl. The bells jangled, the crowd cheered, and the crier announced my arrival with even more glee. I followed my marching band, staring from the tops of my eyes through mucked hair that was clotted into dreads, stumbling on hands and knees that I could no longer feel the surface of, but I could still feel the pain. It was the only thing that kept me upright. I was pelted ceaselessly from the windows above, splashed with waste thrown from chamber pots, and caked with mud hurled from the children that laughed gleefully at my state. Yavara’s arcane shield protected me from the bricks and stones, but she let in the rotten fruit and shit. And even as I endured the barrage of grotesque volleys, I was aroused. Terribly aroused. My bovine moos were dripping with moans, and the more I was degraded, the more I suffered, the more I was humiliated, the sexier I felt. I was a silhouette of disgust, a celebrated and scorned symbol of debasement, and I felt strangely beautiful. It wasn’t just the aphrodisiac that sloshed in my belly. Someone else had awoken this side of me long ago.

“Thank you, Elena.” I hissed under my breath. The only parts of my flesh that could be seen through the layer of muck, were the tear tracks that ran down my cheeks. Tears of horror. Tears of ecstasy. “I know you will get me through this.”

And so, I crawled. I did not shuffle along like a broken cow, but slinked sexily down the highway, my hips swaying, my shoulders hunched. I licked the muck from my lips, and grinned at those that lined the walkway. When I made eye-contact with them, their faces froze, and an expression of confusion came across them. It was only for a precious moment that I would capture them with my stare before a piece of garbage struck my head and severed the contact, but it was enough. Whoever that person was, they would know I was not broken. I would never be broken. And contrary to what Yavara had said, there would be no seven days of retribution for me, for there was someone in the city waiting to grant me my final mercy. I had kept my mouth shut about Adrianna. She would make sure I continued to.

It took me an hour to get down the promenade. The last hundred yards were the worst. The fatigue that had been held at bay suddenly seized my limbs when I was so close to the end, and even Yavara’s whip could not spur me to move. It was only when two orc attendants came to my sides to lift me, that I found the strength to get back on my hands and knees.

“No!” I snarled to them, “I will do it!”

They were taken aback by my ferocity, and I savored the uneasiness in their eyes. I grimaced, lifted myself shakenly from the ground, and slowly plodded my way to the entrance of the arena.

There were six figures waiting for me there. They were like angels standing in the midst of hell; bronze beauties of platinum hair, adorned with silken white robes that reflected the light. The hybrids. Carried by the mechanical motion of my crawl, I moved ever-closer to them, my broken nails scraping against the cobblestones, my raw knees and feet dragging afterward. I could identify them now. The tallest among them was Eva Alecia, the infamous entertainer of Alkandra. Beside her was a shorter and bustier woman; Soraya Poneria, who was the treasurer of the kingdom. Watch Commander Faltia Dafian stood strongly and stoically beside Soraya, the voluptuous Populations Director Brianna Dedaclia had her weight shifted on one hip, the slenderer Agricultural Liaison Kiera Lestria carried herself with an easy posture, and the graceful Magistrate Furia Augustinia stared at me with blue eyes full of hatred. I didn’t have to guess why. My heart bottomed my chest when I noticed who was absent. I had kept my mouth shut, but Adrianna hadn’t.

Yavara yanked on my leash, and I collapsed onto my belly with a groan. She walked past me, her boots clicking away without even pausing by my sprawled-out body. “Where is Adrianna?” She demanded.

The hybrids all looked to Furia. Furia opened her trembling lips, and whispered back, “Ask Zander.”

“I am asking you, Furia.” Yavara said gently, though I could tell by her posture that she was terrified of what the hybrid would say.

Furia closed her eyes, and rivulets of tears ran down her beautiful cheeks. “It was not Prince Matthew who betrayed us. It was Adrianna. She confessed, and Zander executed her.” Furia looked right past her queen, and stared a hole through my head. She lifted one finger, and pointed it at me. She didn’t say anything else, but simply stood, and pointed. That simple gesture infused me with more terror than I’d felt throughout my procession. These hybrids were not Highlanders anymore. There was not an ounce of Adrianna’s old loyalty in them. I would suffer. I would feel every ounce of pain Yavara had promised me.

Yavara’s fists clenched, and the very ground beneath her tremored. She turned around, and looked at me. “Hybrids of Alkandra,” she hissed, “our royal guest has had a long journey. See that she’s treated with the utmost of Alkandran hospitality.” She yanked my leash, and I was sent sprawling forward. I tasted mud and dirt, and coughed into my arms. An iron grip rooted itself into my hair, and my head was ripped upward. Eva’s sneering face greeted me. She wound my hair around her wrist, and twisted it viciously. I twisted with it, crying out in pain, landing awkwardly on my back. The morning light shown dimly through the overcast sky, then darkened when six shadowy figures surrounded me.

“I believe our royal guest is in need of a bath.” Furia hissed, her half-tattooed face drawn in solemn wrath. She pulled her white robe from her shoulders, and it cascaded down her body, displaying her bronze beauty to all. Her tattooed cock was hard, but still she aimed it downward, and with a grunt, she unloaded a torrent of urine onto my face. The crowd cheered around us, but no one in the circle cared. I gasped and gargled, the taste of her piss infecting my palate, suffusing my sinuses. It washed the filth from my face and hair, and saturated my flesh with warmth. It felt so good. It was like heaven had opened up from above just to shower me. Eva pulled her cock out and washed my neck and breasts; Kiera snaked hers out and doused my swollen tummy; and Brianna, Faltia and Soraya all squatted over me to shower off the rest. I couldn’t help myself. I moaned in delight, and lounged in my bath of degradation, aroused beyond de***********ion by the abasement I found such pleasure in. I opened my mouth to catch Furia’s stream, and drank from it like a fountain, savoring the sweetness that comingled with the rancid flavor. When the last flow dribbled out, I was left clean and sparkling, stinking wonderfully of their ammonia. Then the air was suddenly sucked from my lungs, and I was folded viciously in half. Eva’s foot was planted in my swollen belly, her heel squishing into my guts. She grinned into my bulging eyes as she twisted her foot, adding more and more of her weight onto my midsection until I finally popped.

I screamed. The plug shot from my ass, and all the fluid that had been pumped into my bowels was released at once. It gushed out of me, smelling of the nectarous aphrodisiac at first, then becoming fouler until it was a miasma of filth. I was shitting myself, and I was orgasming violently from it. Waves after waves of pleasure crashed upon me, and as volumes of waste spurted from my loose anus, my thighs quivered in delight. When I found my breath, I screamed out in ecstasy, and stared in transfixed horror and arousal at the sputtering brown stream that was being birthed from my second pleasure-hole. My stomach deflated, the last squirts farted from me, and I fell back with a splash into the puddle of piss, and groaned. The hybrids all stared imperiously down at me, their genitals swollen with desire, but they did not violate me. One by one, they walked away, until only Furia was left standing over me.

“Is this what Adrianna would’ve wanted?” I whispered hoarsely to her.

She placed her foot on my udder-adorned belly, and pressed until I sharted the last remnants of fluid. When I was gasping for air, she was hovering right over my face, all of her weight on her kneeling leg. “Adrianna’s dead.” She whispered back, and spit in my face.

ELENA

I hadn’t slept for more than an hour in the night. Every time I close my eyes, an image of Leveria and Yavara floated behind them, and my mind began to torture me. It wasn’t just the thoughts of my loved ones that ailed my sleep, but the terrible sensation of my consciousness slipping away at the precipice of slumber. I was immediately ripped back in time, lying on my back with the tower above me, the world swimming in hues of fading purple, the icy water taking me, a thought in my dying mind, a single neuron firing away like a candle desperately sputtering before the void. Then… darkness. Nothing. A depthless expanse that I had been a part of, and not a part of. A part of nothing seemed contradictory, but it was what I’d been. I didn’t experience it, or perceive it, or even notice it at all, but I felt it now. Nothing. The horror of it was still so fresh, and yet, like a dream that had been so vivid a moment ago, it was fading. Gone. Nothing. I had known it, but I could not recall it anymore.

“But I will know it again,” I whispered into the night. “that horror. Like a lost memory, it will come to me before the end, and I will be petrified by it.” I closed my eyes, and tears streamed down my face, “I would face a thousand years of torture just to delay the end. Oh god…” But there had been no god to greet me. Or perhaps there had been. Perhaps that nothing was God, the indifferent end of existence, a name for something that was no longer. God. Nothing.

I would’ve given anything that night just to have someone hold me, but I was alone in Lady Jonias’s upstairs bedroom, and my voice was still too weak to scream for her.

“Elena?” Her voice came. I opened my eyes. It was dawn outside; the grey winter skies illuminated by the backing of the eastern sun. I nearly wept.

“Elena?” Lady Jonias asked again, “Did you shit yourself again?”

I turned, and looked down. I hadn’t expelled any fluids in the night, but I could feel my bladder pressing hard against my pelvis. With a groan, I threw my weight to the side, and spun off the bed. I landed with a painful thud on the floor, and gasped. Lady Jonias was there a second later to scold me and help me up, but I waved her off when her hands pawed at my shoulders.

“Let me.” I grumbled. With the utmost effort, I managed to bring myself to my knees, then lift my torso upright on shaky arms. It was enough. I was still too weak to lift my head up, but from its dangling position on my neck, I could see my chamber pot in my periphery. Dragging my knees across the boards, I slowly plotted a course to the pot. It took all my strength just to get there, and after a feeble attempt to slap it open, I realized I would never get into the necessary position to squat over it. It was enough. With a groan of victory, I collapsed onto my belly, slapped the top of the pot, and pissed all over the floor. Needless to say, Lady Jonias was not pleased.

After a very rough bath that left my skin raw from the sponge, Jonias held my hand, and guided me through my first steps. My ankles didn’t want to stay rigid, and I cried out numerous times when I rolled them, but I savored the pain, the sweet sensation of life coursing through me. After a half an hour, and a tirade of insults from my caretaker, I was able to walk on my own two feet.

“You’ll have to stand up and do it every hour on the hour.” Jonias instructed as she helped me into my wheelchair, “Within a week, you won’t need this chair anymore.”

“I’ll be done with it by nightfall.” I grunted.

She scoffed. “You still can’t even piss by yourself.”

“What time is it now?

“Six in the morning.”

“Fine then. At six tonight, I’m going to walk up your grand stairs without even using the railing.”

She snorted. “If you can walk up the stairs by six, I’ll…”

“What?” I grinned up at her, “You’ll give me a big fat kiss?”

She smirked down at me. “I’ll push you back down them, you insolent little shit.”

“Then I’ll be a paraplegic, and you’ll have to take care of me for the rest of my life.” I snickered, snuggling myself into the chair, “I guess you like wiping my ass.”

She dumped me forward, and I was sent sprawling onto the floor. Her heels clicked past me as she walked to the far end of the room, and flung open the door. “Come now, Your Highness! You wouldn’t want to be late for your own coup!”

I raked my fingers against the floorboards, and growled. Looking back, the wheelchair seemed like an unscalable cliffside looming over me, the greasy wheels threatening to slide the entire contraption away the moment I clumsily threw my weight on it. I sighed, and gave my caretaker a pitiful expression. “Please help me.”

She sneered at me. “You can do better.”

“Pretty please with sugar on top?”

She pointed at the chair. “Come on, Ranger. You can do better.”

I looked back at the wooden chair, and gritted my teeth once more. I grabbed the wheel with my right hand, and slowly brought it toward me. After taking a deep breath, I lurched forward, extended my left hand, and snatched the other wheel. My forehead struck the frame of the chair, and stars burst in my eyes, but I kept my grip. With a whine of pure distress, I unclenched my right hand, and lurched forward again. The wheels spun, the chair began to roll away, but I kept my left hand firm just long enough to barely get my chest onto the seat before the chair whipped around the pivot I’d made. I stopped the momentum with my dragging knees, and lurched once more to get my left arm onto the seat. Then, with both elbows propped in front of me, I shifted my weight forward and up until I was dangling with my belly on the edge. I reached up, grabbed the back of the chair with my right hand, then my left, and hauled myself forward. The chair threatened to tip forward and fold me backward, but I managed to bring my thighs up just in time to shift the balance in my favor. Having conquered the momentum of the chair, I took a deep breath, and let it out from my flaming lungs. My entire body was pouring with sweat, my hair was matted, and my clothes were damp and hot, but I had done it. With just a simple twist of my body, I was slouched back in the chair, and facing Catherine Jonias.

“There,” I wheezed, “you fucking cunt.”

She stared back at me; an appraising look on her face. “Very good,” she said, “very… very good.” She turned around, “You can wheel yourself around now, Your Highness.”

“That’s my reward?”

She looked back at me. “Reward? I believe I was punishing you.” She turned back to the door she was about to exit, “Besides,” she said, “if you want to climb stairs, you’d better be able to sit in a chair.” And she shut the door behind her.

ADRIANNA

When I awoke, Esmerelda was watching me from the corner of the room. The grey sunlight shone in beams from the window, bringing about the cold morning. It seemed unusually brutal, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the covers and wait until night fell, but my ranger training kept me from indulging myself.

“Watching me again?” I groaned sleepily.

“You talk in your sleep, you know.” She said softly from the corner.

“I do?” I asked, getting to my elbows, “And what do I say?”

“Just a name. Over and over and over again.”

“What name? Furia? Alexa? April?”

“Gloria.”

I froze, and ran my tongue over my teeth. No, not teeth. Fangs. I glanced down at my body. It was a splendor of silken vampire flesh, contouring over shadows of muscle and impossibly-full breasts. I looked back at Esmerelda, and saw that she was quivering from head to toe, her hand wrapped white-knuckled about a wooden stake.

I sighed, and transformed back into my elven body. “Esmerelda, I—”

“Stay where you are, Adrianna,” she said carefully, “do not move from that spot.”

“Look, I—

“Stay. Where. You. Are.” She said, raising the stake threateningly, “One false move, and I’ll burst your heart.”

I rolled my eyes, jumped to my feet, ran across the room, and snatched the stake away from Esmerelda in the time it took her to blink. “This is oak wood, you dimwit,” I growled, throwing the stake into the fire, “You need Nadi wood to break vampire flesh.”

She tried to scramble away, and I snatched her by the hair, and tore her head back so that she was forced to face me. “This changes nothing, do you understand? Nothing!”

“It changes everything!” She snarled, “You think I don’t know who Gloria Titus is? You think I’d let a fucking day-walker into my camp?! Get out! Get out now, or I’ll—”

“Enough.” I said, and placed a firm hand around her jaw. “Enough, Esmerelda. You’re being childish.” I let go of her face, and traced my hand down her throat. “You’re in no position to make threats.”

“Neither are you!” She hissed, “I have an army out there!”

I smiled pitiably. “You had an army.”

She spat in my face, then delivered a hard kick to my groin. I doubled over, and she sent a knee crashing into my jaw. I flipped backward with the momentum, caught myself on the ceiling beam, and redirected my bodily force back at her. My feet slammed into her chest, and she slammed into the wall. Air blasted from her lungs, and she crumbled into a heap, her lips gulping as her diaphragm spasmed. I wiped the blood from my mouth, grabbed the wood axe from over the fireplace, and walked over to her.

“Don’t!” She mouthed, unable to give voice to her scream with the wind knocked from her lungs. I raised the axe overhead, and brought it down. The axe thudded, and Esmerelda jolted. The blade was imbedded into the wood between her legs, a fraction of an inch from her inseam. I knelt beside the axe so that our eyes were level.

“It’s my army; it’s your cause. If you want to get into Bentius, then you’ll do as I say.” I placed my hand over her heaving chest, “After we kill Ternias and all his noble friends, you’ll be in charge, and you, Esmerelda, are going to appoint me as your ambassador to Alkandra. Sound good?”

She heaved in a breath, and wheezed, “The Dark Queen won’t care if you’re my ambassador. She’ll kill you anyway.”

“Eh… things are about to get really tense between Alkandra and Ardeni Dreus. There might be another war soon, and uh… well, I might’ve inadvertently started it. Anyway, Yavara isn’t going to want to be fighting on two fronts, so she’ll probably have to eat this one.”

Esmerelda blinked. “Did you just say there’s going to be another war?”

I shrugged. “If everyone keeps a level head, there shouldn’t be any problem, but… that’s not going to happen.”

YAVARA

Leveria’s screams carried over the roar of the crowd. I cast healing spells when she needed them, and she needed them frequently, but I otherwise left her alone for now. It would be unfair for me to take the spotlight from her. There was a long line of beasts that formed from the dugout that eagerly awaited their turn with the queen of the Highlands. Most of these were men and women who had been hand-picked by the hybrids for their service to the civil advancement of the nation; the others were picked for their massive cocks, though a giggling Brianna noted that they had performed vital services to Alkandra’s ruling hybrid elves. Now, they performed that service for my sister.

I sipped my wine in the luxury box of the arena, but I was not enjoying it. After what Zander had told me, there was nothing but bitterness in my mouth.

“I’m surprised Leveria didn’t tell you,” he mused.

“She probably thought Adrianna would kill her to keep her from talking. She was hoping for a quick out.” I hissed into my wine, “I wonder what else she hid from me.”

“She’ll break eventually.”

“‘Eventually’ might be too late for Leveria.” I said, “She lays her plots years in advance. Adrianna knew what kind of woman she was dealing with.” I fought the wrathful tears that threatened my eyes, “I can’t believe she betrayed me.”

“You can’t?”

I glared at him. “You don’t know what she and I shared.”

“Enough hatred to start a war or two.”

“We’d moved past it. We were… we were on even ground.”

Zander shifted in his chair. “Adrianna was a complicated and conflicted woman.”

“She never stopped being Thomas Adarian.”

“Perhaps. She was many things, but she was above all, fiercely loyal.”

“Loyal?! She betrayed me, and you killed her before she could know my vengeance!

Zander blinked, and it was the closest I’d ever come to seeing him flinch. “I did,” he said after some consideration.

I felt my rage cool in my veins, and I took two successive breaths to calm my heart. “You always think you know what’s best for me.”

“I do know what’s best for you.” He downed the rest of his wine, and poured himself another glass, “She’s played her part in your life, now let her go. Don’t think on what she took from you; think on what she gave you.” He gestured to the city, “She gave you this, for one.”

“And would’ve had it destroyed.” I growled, “Arthur and his fleet haven’t yet rounded the Alkandran Horn; he doesn’t yet know what has befallen his father and brother! We can’t hardly claim ignorance when we cut off his brother’s head in the arena!” I gestured disgustedly toward my sister, “After that, he won’t care about her confession.”

Zander chuckled, and nodded toward Leveria. “You have to give it to her, she’s damn good.”

“Yes, I’m sure she’s feeling very pleased with herself right now.” I muttered into my wine glass, irritated that its contents had disappeared so quickly. “Have you told Certiok yet?” I asked.

“I have. She was nearly as devastated as the rest. More than others, perhaps, since Adrianna carried her child-to-be, and Trenok’s only living heir.”

“She’s strong.”

“But not unbreakable. No one is.” Zander said, and I didn’t like the way he studied me.

“What?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Zander…”

“Did Arbor tell you?”

“Tell me what?!”

“Of course she didn’t,” he muttered, “Furia will tell you then.”

“Why don’t you just fucking tell me?” I snapped

“I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news twice.” He said, “Especially when your temper is this hot.

I eased myself with another breath, stuck somewhere between anger and dread. Given the successive subjects of the conversation, I had a terrible feeling about what it was Furia was going to tell me.

“So then,” Zander coughed, “what will you do with Arthur?”

I shuffled in my seat, uncomfortable in every position. “Try to talk to him. If that doesn’t work, well…” I poured myself some more wine, and contemplated my screeching sister. “For the sake of his nation, I hope he’s willing to talk.”

LEVERIA

I had been cleaned after my parade. They readjusted my bovine headwear, and redecorated my belly with udders; apparently, I was to be a cow all day long. After extracting a blood sample from my finger, they took out a syringe bigger than my arm, filled it with Yavara’s aphrodisiac, and plunged the needle into my anus once more. I screamed then, my eyes growing wide, my bottom lip quivering. I felt the warmth suffuse my rectum once more, flood through my bowels, wash away the filth of my innards before dumping into my belly. They pumped me so full that my midsection swelled as though pregnant, and then they pierced my septum, and hooked a bullring through my nose. They looped a chain through that ring, and led me out into the arena on my hands and knees.

I had never seen so many people in all my life. A hundred-thousand beasts roiled in the stands, their numbers stretching to the rafters, their collective roar thundering in my ears. I wanted to cower in the shadow of the dugout, but I was yanked by the chain, and the pain propelled me into the cold sunlight. Eva was waiting for me. The hermaphroditic hybrid was dressed in black leather straps, each strap covering her where she was modest, and revealing everything obscene. She wore high-heeled leather boots that went to her thighs, and carried a flail in her leather-gloved hands.

Your Highness,” she hissed with an evil grin across her black-sheened lips, “you honor us with your presence. Let me show you to your throne.”

She took me by the chain, and guided me to the platform at the center. I went willingly, knowing by the glint in her steely eyes that she would relish my defiance. To her credit, she was fair with me in a twisted way. If I did not resist her, she did not punish me. She walked me up the wooden platform, and presented the contraption I would be tortured in: stockades for my wrists and neck, and stirrups for my knees to keep my legs spread wide open. The terror gripped me when I realized what position I’d be put in, and I tried to flee. It was a mistake. Eva yanked me by my fresh septum piercing, sending me sprawling on my face with my nose searing in agony. Then, she moved behind me, her high-heeled boots clicking on the boards, and the crowd roared in anticipation of what was to come. I looked back just in time to see her raise her leg, and I opened my mouth just in time to scream. She stepped on me. No… she stepped in me. She shoved all five inches of her hard, pointy heel into my puckered anus, and the pain cut through me like a hot knife. The terrible pleasure followed. I screamed a soprano note that pierced the winter air, and the people of Alkandra harmonized with me. Needless to say, I obeyed her from that point on.

She forced me to bend over before putting me in the stockades, then she forced my legs painfully apart before putting my knees in the stirrups. My back couldn’t hold me in such a position, and it bowed to let my grotesquely-distended belly sink low. My pelvis followed after, presenting my plump backside high in the air. Eva grabbed my head by the cow-horns, and pulled it up so that my neck craned, and I was forced to look upon my audience. She shoved a block of wood beneath my chin to hold me in that position, then grinned as she presented me with a hand mirror.

“You look so pretty today, Your Highness,” she sneered, showing me my reflection. I supposed I did look pretty, actually, but like how a whore looks pretty. Rouge flushed my cheeks, red lipstick sheened my mouth, and dark liner framed my eyes. The septum piercing and cow-horns gave my portrait a sluttiness that had a bedroom appeal, though to be honest, I wasn’t feeling too naughty. The face staring back was etched in horror, and I knew from my experience of being the torturer, that the expression was more arousing than even the most lecherous of smiles.

“Yes,” Eva hissed, stroking my hair behind my ear, “you look absolutely wonderful.” Her cock had risen before my face, its bronze length throbbing, its tip pulsating and leaking. It was only an inch from my mouth, and I hated myself for enjoying the scent wafting from it. “Ah, I wish we could, Your Highness.” Eva sighed regretfully, stroking her shaft in her gloved hand, “But I have orders from the boss. We’re not to touch you until the seventh day.” She pouted her black-sheened lips, “It feels like a lifetime from now. I suppose it is for you.” She squeezed her cock hard, and moaned as a dollop of cum bubbled from her tip, and secreted onto her finger. “But for you,” she whispered, “I’ll let you have a little taste. It’ll be our little secret.” She brought her gloved finger to my lips, and pushed it gently into my mouth. It was remarkable how little resistance I gave, and even more vexing that I so enjoyed her flavor. Was it the poison sloshing in my belly, or was it that she tasted so much like Elena? Either way, I couldn’t stop myself from sucking her finger as it retreated, and I was greeted with her evil smirk when I looked up at her. “Our little secret,” she snickered, “yours, mine, and all our friends.”

She stepped out of my vision, and I was greeted with the sight of… me. I was enormous, fifty feet wide and thirty feet tall, my image displayed in crystal clarity on the largest mirror I’d ever seen. It shimmered with magic in the sunlight, broadcasting the reflection shown from Eva’s hand-mirror for all to see.

“Do you like it?” She asked, “It was my idea. I think it’s the single greatest idea anyone’s ever had, if I may be so bold. Now everyone gets to see all the up-close action in all its vivid, gritty detail.” She knelt beside me, and adjusted her hand-mirror so that we were both in the frame. She smiled brightly next to my horrified face, and the crowd delighted in it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and everything in between,” Eva called, her voice magically projected for all to hear, “I give you, Queen Leveria of the Highlands!” The crowd roared back at us, and she beamed, the pleasure-centers on her face alight. “Soraya is probably so jealous of you right now.” Eva said only to me, adjusting the mirror so that my entire situation was displayed, “She wanted to be the first to get on the jumbo-mirror, but even she wasn’t willing to do the things you volunteered to do.”

Volunteered.” I growled.

Eva’s eyes alighted. “Ah, so she does speak! I was wondering if Yavara had cut out that silver tongue of yours.” She pulled a gemstone out of a pocket in her collar strap, and pressed it to my throat. “Do you have anything to say to the wonderful people of Alkandra before we begin?”

I hocked until my mouth was full, and spit in Eva’s face. The crowd hushed, but Eva didn’t even blink. She just grinned, the droplets of spittle running down her nose and cheeks, cornering her lips.

“Yavara be damned,” she whispered to me, “I’m proud of you, Leveria.” And she grabbed me by the hair, and pressed me into a heated kiss. Before I could even think about biting her tongue off, she’d released me, leaving her decadent flavor on my palate, and my lips burning with her touch. My shocked face was broadcasted to the masses, a black sheen of fresh lipstick smeared across my mouth. The crowd lauded the move, and Eva mouthed a faux apology to the royal box, where my sister’s tiny figure could be seen waving her forgiveness.

“Now,” Eva called, “on this first day of Retribution, we honor those who were instrumental in building this city. In remembrance of Alexa Jenania…” Eva swallowed a knot in her throat, “…in remembrance of Alexa Jenania, we celebrate the construction leaders who built this city with their bare hands. I give you: Joh Proudfoot, Sloka Terdini, Jisha Protaki, Hosika Aska, Bracie Leshtana, Foshia Broacktia…”

Eva announced each name with her showman’s gusto, and the crowd applauded each as they appeared from the dugout. There were ten, then twenty, then thirty, then forty, then fifty. She didn’t stop calling names until seventy-four beasts stood in line before the platform, and at the very head of them, was Joh Proudfoot. He was a massive brute of a man, and oh, he had the bottom half of a black stallion. When Eva finished the last name, she beckoned him to come up, and he trotted proudly up the steps, each clop of his hooves sounding louder and louder, seeming to beat in cadence with my thundering heart. Eva sauntered over to him, nothing but lust in her eyes as she gazed upon the monstrous man. He bowed lowly to her, and she took him by the hair around his bald pate, and kissed him deeply. His hands moved down her body, obviously knowing her curves by memory. She had lain with him before, but… how?! For when I glanced between his legs, my jaw dropped.

It was a literal horse-cock. It was engorged and curved, cylindrical and pulsing with veins, looking more like a muscle than a penis. It was enormous, nearly as long as my arm, and the balls behind swung like globular clappers. Joh finished groping Eva, then she separated from him with a wicked grin, and moved between his hind legs. She squatted low beneath him, her ass bulging deliciously just above her high heels, and with great care, she took the behemoth into her mouth. I gawked. The entire audience gawked. Eva whined and gagged, squirming in the struggle, but inch by inch, she took the equestrian organ down her throat, bulging her neck, bulging her gullet, then nestling it easily into her esophagus, the heavy, sweating nuts relaxing on her face, shrinking and ballooning with blood pressure. She kept him inside her, her posture rigid and upright in its squat, her cock throbbing in the air, her mouth humming delightedly as her throat began to swallow. Joh groaned, his forehooves clopping pleasantly, his masculine upper body flexing with spasms. Eva held him for a minute, then slowly withdrew. The bulge moved back up her gullet, back up her neck, then flowed from her mouth. She coughed cutely, and the crowd applauded her show. If my hands weren’t bound, I might’ve too. She ran her hand covetously up the wobbling length of spit-sheened horse, then rotated about her wide hips to smirk at me.

“That was for your benefit, Leveria.” She giggled, “I don’t want him going in dry.”

She needn’t have; I was practically drooling down my thighs. It wasn’t until I saw the evil tilt of her smirk that I realized what she meant. Then, my legs began to quiver in their stirrups. Joh clopped over to me. He moved out of my periphery, and behind me. I couldn’t see him behind the stockade board, but I could feel the heat of his body as it moved over mine. Suddenly, two massive hooves thudded onto the stockade board, and the crowd cheered. His shadow loomed over me, his human torso displayed in its muscular glory, his hands coming down to take two grips of my bull horns. I whimpered. Tears streaked down my cheeks. I wanted to beg for mercy, but my lips wouldn’t form words.

Eva slinked beside me, and rested one elbow on the boards. She held the mirror to my face, and asked with a sardonic smile, “Are you ready?”

I shook my head, and laughter sounded from all around. Eva pinched my cheek, and giggled. Then she looked up at Joh, and winked.

I felt it. Hot and throbbing, wet and hard, the flesh pulsating and smooth. It moved between my cheeks, splitting my crack, running its underside through me. Oh, it felt amazing. The hot girth nestled into me, the throbbing belly rubbed along my salivating pussy and puckered anus, teasing the entrances. But as good as it felt, the terror was ever-present, and my insides seized into a knot of anticipation. Back and forth, back and forth, he rubbed me, mingling Eva’s spit with my juices, learning how I would wiggle and bend in reaction to him. Then, I felt him slide away. Eva bent low, and slid the mirror beneath me. From an upward angle, I saw my distended belly and bound thighs splayed out on the screen above, and I saw the fat brown piece of horse angling until the thick tip was in line with my puckered, swollen anus. I took two successive breaths through my nose, and held them deep. The crowd hushed. Joh’s forehooves pivoted against the board, poising for a sudden lurch forward. I opened my mouth to scream, but the breath was ripped from my lungs.

He entered me. At first, all I felt was the pressure. My pelvic floor bowed inward, my anus pressed into my body, and my flesh was pulled taut across my flank. Then, I felt the penetration. My resistances broke, and he burst suddenly into me. My pelvic floor shot back with released tension, and my reamed asshole sucked the first eight inches of him into me. Pain. Pain like I couldn’t believe shot through me, surging into my bowels, knifing into my guts. On the screen, I saw the brown horse cock sink deeper and deeper into me; nine inches, ten inches, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—oh god, how much more?! My rectum was filled to the point of bursting, every smooth surface stretched thin, every nerve firing into my spine. Deeper, deeper, deeper, he sank into me, pushing past my second sphincter, burrowing into my colon, burning into my bowels. My insides uncoiled around him, clinging to him like a fleshy sleeve, gripping him with muscles that were tensed in agony. His balls finally squished against my pussy, and he groaned above me. I screamed.

Eva moved beneath us, and angled the mirror to show the details of what was happening to me. My pussy was squished into itself, no room for it with all the cock packed inside of me. I couldn’t even see my asshole; only the shadow of indented flesh that was stretched near to rupture around the thick column of cock that pierced me. He held his rod deep inside me, not moving, only savoring the way my innards formed around him. I could feel his heartbeat in my torso. Though my belly was already distended with aphrodisiac, I could see his bulge in it. The image added horror to my fever of pain, but with that, came a horrible fascination. Seeing my body so deformed, seeing it so ruined, and feeling intimately the effect of that ruination, it… it… it turned me on so fucking much. And as Joh began to pull out, and I watched my anus begin to outturn with him, my arousal was only heightened.

My rectum prolapsed, the pink glistening flesh clinging to Joh’s shaft like a condom as he exited, rolling into a ruinous coil between my cheeks until his tip popped free. My innards eased back into place, the pressure within me released, and my body breathed a collective sigh of relief, but I was hardly paying attention to that. No, I was only staring with wide eyes at the close-up shot of my asshole. It was gaping around the prolapsed flesh, a wide tunnel of ruby and pink that descended into delectable darkness. I squeezed my anal muscles, and the hole flexed loosely, barely coalescing. It was ruined, fit now only for horse-cock. I was a broodmare. It was then that I felt the vacancy within me, and the poison that sloshed into my belly turned that vacancy into a hunger. The memory of the pain was still fresh within me, but that poisoned turned it into a memory of pleasure just as intense! Oh god!

Eva panned the mirror up my body, around the stockade board, and to my face. She giggled at me above it, her eyes alight, her black lips peeled in a giddy smile. “Well, Your Highness?” She prompted, “Tell the people of Alkandra what you think of a thick, filthy horse cock.”

I slammed my trembling lips shut. Eva gave Joh a look, and he pressed his tip back against my gaping shithole, and began to prod it gently. My guts turned over. My rectum opened. My asshole winked in its exhausted state, and my pelvic floor popped with spasmatic flexions. My body had betrayed me, and my mind was following suit.

“Tell them what you want, Your Highness.” Eva whispered, “You’ll never get what you want unless you ask for it.

I bit my lip. My mouth opened anyway. My breath fogged into the cold air. My nipples were so stiff. My clit was so hard. My flesh teemed, seeming to crawl upon itself. “I…” I whimpered, “I… I want it.”

The crowd began to cheer, but Eva silenced them with a raised hand. She stooped low, getting right next to me, putting the mirror right in my face so that I could see my surrendered expression. “I know you can do better than that, Your Highness,” she sneered, “you were fucking Elena Straltaira for months. Show us all the dirty slut you really are. We’re not in the Highlands anymore; no one will judge you here.” She snickered, and ran her finger around my lips, “Hell, we might even like you after a while, so be a dear, and moo like the fucking cow you are!

“I want his big fucking horse-cock deep in my slutty asshole!” I whined, “I want him to fuck me until I shit cum!

They cheered me then, louder than ever before, and Eva’s face alighted. Joh pressed into me once more, and I exalted in delight. He wasn’t slow this time. He rammed into me with long, deep thrusts, piercing my hugging insides, using my sphincters as fleshy cuffs to grip his impaling length. Over and over I was gutted, my belly bulging with his girth, my insides forming and squirming around him to make room as he hollowed me out. I was drooling. I was panting like a bitch. I was bucking against him, pressing my ass into him, forming my body against his so that I could feel every surface of him. I was losing my mind. I was in hell. I was in heaven. In and out, in and out, in and out. My world was nothing but the sensation of being impaled, being stretched, being filled so completely that the air was forced from my lungs with every thrust. It was ecstasy. It was agony. I was screaming with every breath, wailing to the sky through an ovoid mouth, seeing nothing through tear-filled eyes. My anal walls were stretched so thin that I could feel every vein within his cock pulsating against me, every contour running through me, every subtle change in girth that reamed so terribly, so wonderfully.

“God, look at that face!” Eva moaned in front of me, panning the mirror to show everyone my reflection. My eyes were glazed, my tongue was lolling in my gaping mouth, and my lips were curved in a stupid smile. Eva stroked her stiff cock frustratedly, seemingly caught in a dilemma. She looked over her shoulder at the royal box, then she looked back at me.

“Let me suck it.” I moaned.

Eva’s blonde brows went up. She put the mirror down, and slid it back between my legs.

“What did you say?” She asked, looking conspicuously around as if someone was listening to us.

“I said let me fucking suck it!” I moaned louder.

She smiled bemusedly. “You really wanna?”

“It looks so delicious.” I hissed, lathering my lips.

She actually looked uncertain of herself, and knotted her gloved hands together. I panted like a bitch on her cock, fuming it with my hot, moist breath, letting her sense what I could do.

“It’s just a blowjob; it’s not like you’re really fucking me.” I moaned.

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Do you just do whatever she says? Some fucking mistress you are!” I groaned as Joh retreated, my prolapsed flesh sucking about his exit, “Besides,” I whispered breathlessly, “Elena said I give the best blowjobs in the world.” Joh surged into me once more, and my lips peeled back to reveal my ecstatic grimace, “Better than Yavara’s by a mile!”

“By a mile, you say?” Eva quirked her lips.

“By a thousand miles!” I growled as Joh’s tip reached the end of my colon, “So what’s it gonna be, Eva? Are you gonna take what you want, or are you just gonna be Yavara’s little bitch until the end of—” My taunt was forcefully silenced by Eva’s cock, and oh, it was delicious. Her tangy flavor saturated my palate as she slid along my tongue, penetrated my throat, and moved down my neck. She tried to be dominant with me, but I was already so thoroughly conquered that there was nothing left to take. So, as she fucked my face with a fury of blasts, trying with all her might to break me, I consumed her cock with tenderness and warmth, squeezing it into the hot wet embrace of my throat, wrapping it dotingly with my tongue, slurping it lovingly with lips that formed so tightly that my cheeks were stretched hollow with her retreat.

“Oh, fuck!” She gasped, heaving into my face, smooshing my muzzle against her crotch, rotating and grinding to savor the way her organ felt imbedded deep into my esophagus. “Oh my god your fucking throat feel so good!” She cried, “Goddamn it!” She gripped my hair, and face-fucked me with desperate drives, pounding into my tender throat, bulging down my neck. I was plugged at both ends of my digestive tract, and both my partners felt like they were trying to touch tips in the middle. My back bowed with the intensity of it, bending further and further until my belly nearly brushed the ground. It was agonizing, and yet, the ecstasy roiling through me pushed away all thoughts of pain. I was dripping between my jiggling thighs, my nectar forming a puddle, my pussy aching to be filled alongside my ass. My need was desperate, and so I sucked Eva for all she was worth, trying to entice her with my doe eyes to go further, promising even more pleasure with the mouth between my legs than the one between my lips.

“Look at you!” She moaned, smashing her pelvis harder and harder into my face, “Mmm…the queen of the Highlands sucking my fat fucking cock. You like it, don’t you? Yeah? You like how my fucking cock tastes in your slutty little mouth?”

I nodded, rotating my lips, rewarding her for her aggression with my insidious submission. Oh, she knew now that she was ensnared in a trap, but she was weak-willed, and there was only one way of getting out of it.

“Now you’re just my goddamn fuck-toy!” She cried, “God, you look so fucking hot with my fat cock jammed in your slutty little mouth! Oh fuck! Just fucking suck it, you stupid elf slut! Suck it, suck it, suck it, oh GOD!” Her voice became higher and higher with each insult, spoken with less and less conviction until she sounded like a little girl, and she was practically sobbing the last words. Then, she came. She came with a cry of dismay, unable to stop herself from blowing. She pressed her pelvis hard against my face, squished my nose and mouth against her crotch, buried her throbbing meat down my neck, and exploded into my belly. I hummed as I swallowed continuously, drinking of her, milking her, tenderly sapping her of every drop until she was quaking in the knees. From a distance, nobody knew that she had come so easily, for when she pulled her cock out, all the evidence was gone. But I knew, and she knew, and that was all that mattered. The look she gave me was priceless. It was awed, perplexed, angry, aroused and satisfied all at once. She couldn’t hold the expression for long. She couldn’t look at me. She turned to the crowd.

“Who wants to teach this stupid whore how to suck a cock?” She yelled, “She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

The crowd laughed, and Yavara waved annoyedly at her hybrid master of ceremonies, but only me, Joh and Eva knew the truth of it. When she looked back over her shoulder at me, she was frowning, all those wonderful expressions settling into a conflicted stare. “By a thousand miles.” She muttered, “Who would’ve thought from a high-elf? I guess you really are Yavara’s sister.”

“No,” I grinned back, grinding my ass against the horseman impaling me, “she’s mine.”

Eva laughed genuinely, then waved up the next man. I had seventy-three more beasts to please, and if they were half as good as Joh, it was going to be a very special day for me. I mooed like a cow in heat as the next man lumbered up the walkway. This one was an orc with a missing leg, though I daresay he nearly had a third. The orc sneered at me from his tusked mouth, undoubtedly hoping to see me quail before him. When he saw me licking my lips, he was quite perplexed. Of course, he didn’t care too much about that once I was gagging on his thick green pole. Ropes of spit fell from my chin, tears fell from my eyes, and the crowd got the face of suffering they all wanted to see when Eva pointed the mirror at me. They couldn’t hear the way I was moaning in delight, nor could they feel the way my insides flexed around the cocks inside me, squeezing them for all they were worth, beckoning them deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

I writhed between their poles, lurching back and forth, wriggling like a stuck pig, and squealing like one too. The poison sloshed in my distended belly, the shape of Joh’s cock forming beneath it, the shape of the orc’s forming in my neck again, and again, and again. They ratcheted up the tension, driving harder and harder into me, turning my high-elf grace into a deforming mass of jiggling flesh and rippling fat, the alabaster skin turned rosy with their impacts, my holes turned to gaping tunnels with their penetration. Over and over, harder and harder, faster and faster. I was losing my mind. My eyes were rolling back. I was inhaling panicked breaths through my nose as my diaphragm heaved. God, they were so deep. I’d never felt a penetration so intimate, so unnatural and perverse. They raped virgin nerves, ravaged maiden flesh, and outturned my vile insides for all to see. I leaked continuously from all three holes, thick strands of clear fluid stretching from me to add to the growing puddles. The ecstasy ballooned inside me. The orgasms that came weren’t the usual crescendo of sensations, but waves after waves that crashed into me, each one cresting higher, bringing me deeper and deeper into my own mania until I was insane.

Joh burst inside me, then ripped his cock out. My ass was so ruined that my prolapsed fleshed didn’t even coalesce, but simply stayed yawning as it poured thick gouts of hot milk. The rest of his sperm ended up splattered all over my back. I wiggled in delight, moaning around the meat in my throat, savoring the way the hot rivulets ran down the sides of my breasts, and dripped from my nipples. The orc in my throat pulled out, and I nearly yelled at him for being so rude. Then I saw Eva’s evil smile, and Joh moving around my periphery, and I understood.

Joh trotted before me, his massive member swinging between his hindlegs like a knocker. He mounted the stockades once more, and aimed his shaft at my mouth. Eva was there to broadcast the entire thing, angling the mirror to get the perfect view.

“Look at that big stinking cock,” She whispered covetously, stroking the stud’s shaft, then cupping his balls, “it was just all the way up your ass, Your Highness. Do you know where it’s going to go now?”

The crowd oohed. Eva put the stone against my throat. I swallowed nervously, and whimpered, “My mouth?”

“That’s right,” Eva giggled, “this horse-cock that’s all covered in your shit juices is going deep down your slutty princess neck. You’re going to taste everything. We’re going to do this with all of our distinguished citizens today. First, they’re going to fuck your ass gaping, then they’re going to clean themselves off in your mouth, then they’re going to dump the rest of their cum into your little princess pussy until you’re overflowing. How does that sound to you?”

She put the stone against my throat. Again, I swallowed nervously, and whimpered, “Can they also come in my mouth?”

“What?”

I grinned at my own reflection. “I asked if they could also come in my mouth! They get to come in my ass, they get to come in my pussy, but are you telling me your honored guests don’t get to make me swallow their thick, creamy loads?”

Eva snatched the stone away, but the damage had been done. The crowd was silenced for a moment, only the rare questioning call filtering from them. Eva looked nervously behind her, then up at the royal box. She puzzled over the situation for a moment, then brought the mirror back to her face.

“You heard the queen!” She cried gleefully, “Everyone gets to come down this slut’s throat, starting now!” And she thrusted Joh’s massive shaft into my face, and forced it into my mouth. His girth was so great, that my jaw strained to take him, and his length was so great that I couldn’t stop myself from gagging. Snot bubbled from my nostrils, spit foamed from the corners of my lips, and tears filmed my bulging eyes. To everyone watching, it looked like I’d been punished for my insolence, but Eva knew, and Joh knew; I was sucking him like a whore on her last penny. Even as he breached the bottom of my esophagus, and his musky nuts nestled on my chin, I was moaning as I slurped him, trying to draw him even deeper. I loved the taste of my ass on his cock, I loved the scent of my filth in my nostrils, and I loved the texture of the film that coated his shaft. I savored him like a delicacy has he stuffed me like a sow, and I watched Eva the whole time, aroused and satisfied by the confusion that crossed her face.

How could she not know? It was so easy to abandon all dignity in the heat of such degradation. What else was I supposed to do? Pride meant nothing anymore. All that mattered, was the beast within me. Not the literal beasts that bored into my holes, but the monster that teemed beneath my very flesh, the whore that reveled in the depraved and horrific. The teenage girl who had fucked her father so many years ago. The woman who had raped and tortured her own mother. The lover who had tamed an Alkandran hybrid. I could dominate with my submission, command with my slavery, and destroy with my surrender. I didn’t need dark flesh and magic to be a dangerous lover; I just needed my cunt, ass and mouth. I gave it to them all day. I gave them my everything. They tried to break me, they tried to ruin me, they tried to bring me low, but they couldn’t, because I was already there.

ELENA

Jonias had put a perception spell on the both of us to get us past the city watch, and into the merchant district. She was disguised as an older woman, and I was disguised as her chair-bound husband. She led the way as I wheeled myself down busy roads, which were now renewed with commerce since the war was over. We ended up at a tavern that had no name. Once inside, she took the perception spell off herself, but only changed mine. When I looked into the glass, I nearly yelped when I saw myself. I was me again. No… I was who I had been; a high-elf girl of just over nineteen years; my skin as pale as snow, my nose and cheeks smattered with freckles. It was amazing how something as simple as skin color could change everything about a woman’s appearance. Though my bone-structure was the same, my features seemed much softer, less severe and undramatic. I turned my face this way and that, hardly recognizing the woman who looked back at me.

“Hmm. I almost forgot how much you looked like your mother.” Jonias mused.

“Don’t say that.” I scowled.

“And why not?” came a familiar, indignant voice. I whipped my head around to see—well, who else would it be? Mother sat alone in the corner of the tavern, smiling a small smile. I gawked at her, then stood up, and immediately fell face-first into a table. I smacked my head on the table top, and was knocked out cold.

ADRIANNA

The old mining village was but a dot on the late afternoon horizon. The rebel army moved through the barren snow-covered fields, a long column of loosely-held formations. I led the column beside Esmerelda, both of us bestriding fantastic horses. The raids of the noble’s estates had leant the outfit the finest steeds in the land, and even the lowliest of the rebels rode a horse that was worth more than their entire village. It would take three days to get to Bentius, and I imagined most of it would be done in silence. Esmerelda didn’t seem too keen on talking to me, and I felt like I’d said all I needed to say to her. We trotted along the dirt paths between the prairies, the Western Sea buffeting us with its wintery gales. It howled eerily with the wind, and the sound seemed to carry high into the sky, changing pitch to create discordant harmonies. Every once in a while, we were misted by the death of a mighty wave, and the salty water filled our nostrils and planted grit into our hair. It was not a pleasant way to journey, but the royal scouts were watching the inland areas, and we needed surprise on our side.

“Stop.” Esmerelda said.

I halted my horse, and gave her a questioning look. Her head was tilted to the side, her keen blue eyes searching the eastern horizon.

“What?” I asked.

She held up one finger, her eyes narrowing. “Have you heard of the Night Wolf?”

“No.”

“He is a beast that snuck over the Knife River at night. They say he is so terrible, that the Dark Queen exiled him.” She scanned the ridgeline, “He is a warg-rider, a pack-leader of nightmares, and his wolves feast upon the flesh of women and children. His packs have been prowling around our base, preying on our own scouting parties. After one of my scouts returned without any of the others, I dared not send out anymore. She told me what they did; death is a mercy with him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gorlok.”

Her gaze shot to me. “You know this creature?”

I snorted. “Know him? I poisoned his dog kennels, killed his second-born son, and burned his homestead to the ground three times, and that was only when I was a ranger. As governess, I fucked all of his daughters.”

Esmerelda blinked at me. “I can’t believe I put you in charge of my army.”

“Neither can I.” I chuckled, examining the ridgeline. It was impossible to see anything through the mist and snow, but I thought there might’ve been a shadow that paced slowly above. “How many does he have?” I asked her.

“At least a hundred, maybe more.”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to peer through the haze. There was nothing to see, but I knew it wasn’t so. The hairs on my neck were standing high, and I felt the unmistakable prickle of prey-fear crawling up my back.

“Well?” Esmerelda asked.

“They’re following us.” I murmured, “A scout is shadowing our movements, waiting for us to make camp. They’ll strike tonight.”

She let out a long breath through her nose. “We don’t stand a chance against them, Adrianna.”

“I know,” I smiled, showing the hint of my fangs, “that’s why you hired me, isn’t it?”

“It will only take half of them for us to be slaughtered. Even you can’t kill them all.”

“You don’t know orcs, Esmerelda,” I said, spurring my horse forward, “I’ll only need to kill one. Make camp on the beach, and put your backs to the sea.”

“Where are you going?!” she yelled after me.

I trotted up the ridge, and into the fog. “Hunting!” I yelled behind me.

ELENA

When I came to, Mother was frowning above me, her face lined with concern. “All that ranger training, and you can’t even get out of a chair without knocking yourself out,” she muttered, “go figure.”

“Nice to see you too, Mom.” I grumbled, and struggled upright in my chair. Jonias’s magic shrank the welt I was forming above my left eye, and pulled some of the grogginess from my mind. I was seated in the corner of the tavern, the shadows concealing us from the sunlit foyer. Mother was wearing common clothing, though she kept on her lavish jewelry, which rather made the attempt at subterfuge a waste.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

She raised her brows. “Helping you become queen, of course.”

“But… why?”

“Because you are the rightful heir. Lucas Ternias’s coup makes him an invalid. The proper transfers of power must be respected.

“Ah, of course.” I mumbled, and adjusted the fork atop my napkin. Her hand rested atop mine, and I raised my eyes to meet her gaze.

“I heard about what you did to save Queen Tiadoa,” she said, “very few people would’ve done that.” She beamed at me, “I’m so proud of you.”

I blinked back at her. “Is that all it took? After all this time, all I had to do was die?”

Anyways.” Jonias interjected loudly, “We’re here to discuss our plans for ousting the despot. We have only four days before the army comes back, and—”

“I fucked Leveria.” I said to Mom.

Her perfectly-plucked brows raised another fraction. “What was that?”

ANYWAYS!” Jonias growled, “Lady Straltaira has numerous connections with the artist guilds, due to her generous patronage. She’s already agreed to leverage them to begin graffiti campaigns in the lower wards. The reason that we’re here now, is to coordinate with some of the local shop owners to—”

“She told you I was her secret agent, right?” I growled across the table, ignoring Jonias, “Sent out to gain the favor of the enemy? Well, that’s not exactly how it went down. See—”

“Elena, could you shut your fucking mouth for—”

“—see, I was sent out to find Yavara by King Tiadoa, Mom, not his daughter; did you forget that? This was back when she went missing, remember? Well, I found her. I found her, and she fucked me, and I transformed into a cock-wielding dyke, and I was me for the first time in my fucking life!” I slammed the table with my palm, and Mother flinched. “I wasn’t some Highland agent. All it took for me to betray my country was for Yavara to suck my cock! After that, I was onboard one-hundred-percent. I was Team Alkandra’s number-one cheerleader, and I got right to doing what Alkandrans do best. I fucked the filthiest whores, and I got fucked by the biggest studs west of the Knife River. Oh, the things I did, Mom. I’ve been fucked so hard that my insides came out, and I’ve come so violently that I pissed all over my face!

“Elena, shut the—”

“DO NOT INTERRUPT YOUR QUEEN, CATHEREINE!” I roared, then snatched the knife from the table, and pointed it at my stunned mother. “But where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about how I fucked the queen of the Highlands! You see, she had me captured, then she tortured me for a little while—because you know, Leveria’s such a fucking peach—then she raped me, then she tortured me again, then I bit her tongue out, then she offered me a job. And why did I accept that offer? Well, because if I didn’t, she was going to fucking kill you!” I drove the knife into the table, “And then you know what happened?! We fell in love! That’s right! While you were taking orders from Leveria, I was filling her royal cunt with my fuck-juice until she was overflowing! How noble she was, how proper and stoic, how elegant and prim. Truly, a model traditionalist who would uphold the sanctity and dignity of the crown. Well, until she was gurgling my fuck-stick after a sweaty bout of ass-fucking! Or until she was cutting off the pieces of a prisoner while he screamed for mercy, but besides all that, she was truly the posterchild for elven propriety; someone to look up to; someone you wished was your daughter.

I twisted the knife into the table. “I died for that woman. You don’t even know who she is. You don’t even know who I am, but I’m done hiding from you. Now, do you still want me to be your queen?”

Mother mouthed silently; her face pale, her eyes wide. Finally, her lips formed a word. “Yes.” Then she stood up sharply, and left. I watched her walk away, nearly as dumfounded as she was.

“So… you were actually an Alkandran traitor the whole time.” Jonias mused, “I fucking knew it. I told Lucas, ‘that Straltaira bitch isn’t that good a liar,’ but he wouldn’t believe me. Well, anyway,” she sighed, “I guess it doesn’t matter much now. The war is over, and we didn’t win.” She glanced up at me, “Was that tantrum at least cathartic for you, you spoiled brat?”

“Immensely.” I muttered.

“And all that stuff about Leveria… was that all true?”

I nodded.

Jonias screwed up her lips, and puzzled over it. “Well, she’s dead now. Anyway, your mother snuck twenty-two bannermen into the city with her, so that brings our numbers to seventy-one. I already have the painters making propaganda posters and the musicians writing ballads that sing of… well, not the truth, obviously, but… a flattering version of it. Your name will begin to spread like a virus soon.” She sipped her tea, “Herpes would seem apropos."

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Just remember what you owe me, Elena.” She said coolly, and slid the check over to me.

YAVARA

The day’s festivities were over, and Leveria had been dragged to her cell in the bottom of the arena, where she would be given the night to recover as best she could. I’d toyed with the idea of depriving her of sleep, but I’d known first-hand how it dulled the senses in even the most extreme of circumstances, and I wanted her to be alert. Lucidity made it all so much more visceral. It was why I was very glad to be drunk when Furia told me what she had to say.

“Brock went peacefully,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Most people would count themselves lucky to die how he did. I never knew him, but I could tell, you know. When Adrianna—” she caught herself, and more tears threatened her eyes.

Brock. April. Two lives I’d thrown together through my hatred of one man, now both dead to save him—or her. Now she was dead too. I thought Brock had been dead to me, but just knowing he wandered the earth was a comfort in its own right. He hadn’t even lasted a week after my abandonment. I rubbed Furia’s shoulder, vaguely aware of how numb everything suddenly felt. “Go on,” I whispered.

“When… Adri- when Adria- when Adrianna talked about him, she did it with begrudging respect. I don’t know. She didn’t hate him like I thought she should’ve. I’m sorry, Your Highness, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” her brow furrowed, “or well of traitors.”

I pulled her tighter, tears running down my cheeks. “The only thing you shouldn’t speak, are the words ‘Your Highness.’ How many times, Furia?”

“I’m sorry… Yavara.” She sniffed.

“I don’t need you to hate Adrianna. I understand what it’s like to love someone even after you know you shouldn’t. You’re not betraying me by loving her memory.”

“I’m betraying Alexa.” Furia hissed, “All the others hate her… Eva especially, and oh god, Faltia! When Zander told her… the look on her face! Yavara, I should hate Adrianna just for that look! I’ve never seen someone die so much inside!” She balled her fists in my skirt, “I should hate someone that evil.”

“No.” I whispered, bringing her to my bosom, “She was not evil. She was honorable and good, and that’s what makes it hurt.” I planted a kiss atop her head, and felt her tears wetting my breasts. “Brock was not a good man, but he was honorable in his own way. I am not honorable, Furia. I am not good. I am pure evil.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am.” I sniffled, “I wish I wasn’t. God, I wish I wasn’t, but it’s long-past time pretending that I was ever anything else.” I held her tighter, needing her grief, needing someone to share in mine. “My sins are beyond the counting, and I’m just getting started.”

Furia touched me gently on the cheek. “I know you can change. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” Her fingers trailed to my lips, and stayed there. “The wars are over, and the atrocities have been written. After Leveria has been punished, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.” I whispered, “Looking at my future is like looking at a hole. So many people were supposed to be there, and now they’re just… gone.”

“I’ll be there,” she said softly, “Eva will be there, Faltia will be there, Soraya will be there, Kiera will be there, and Brianna will be there.” She traced her fingers down my chin, down my neck, and rested them over my heart. “You are not evil, Yavara. The difference between love and hate can be as simple as forgiveness.”

I took her head in my hands, and tilted it so that her face was inches from mine. “I forgave Thomas Adarian. I will never forgive Adrianna.”

Tears cascaded down her cheeks, but she managed to nod. We kissed then, long and passionately, and our hands moved beneath each other’s clothes to explore the other’s body. When she was sated, she rested in my arms for a while. I held her tightly. I held her too tightly. She peeled herself from me, and left me alone in the night.

It was strange how easily hate could turn to love. They weren’t that far apart, really; it was familiarity that was the secret ingredient. I had hated Adrianna, but I had known and understood her, and she had known and understood me, and that familiarity had turned my hate to love. I knew she didn’t feel the same for me, but there was a closeness, an intimacy of souls bound by our interwoven pasts. I did not have that same bind with the others. I had relied on Adrianna to be my bridge to them, and now that that bridge was gone, I could keenly feel the space between them and I. I wondered if I could ever build a bridge to span it, but I had the terrible feeling that space would only grow wider with time. In that moment, I hated Zander for doing what he’d done, because in that moment, I was sure I would’ve forgiven Adrianna even after everything. The Dark Queen showed no mercy to traitors, but Yavara just wanted a friend.

I stared up at the ceiling, wondering if Leveria was getting any sleep. I knew I wouldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, Elena’s face swam into view.

“Are you thinking about her too, Leveria?” I whispered to the ceiling. “I know you are. We can share this moment together then, and we won’t be alone.” A tear trickled down my cheek, “In truth, I feel closer to you now than anyone else still living. We have so very much in common. We’re sisters, queens, and enemies, but most importantly, you understand what it means to love Elena. That’s a connection no one else shares but you and me.” I swallowed, “We’re both loners. I never had true friends—only Elena; the rest were just people I smiled with. Maybe I had Prestira for a little while, but I really don’t know how to make friends. I love my hybrid children, but I will never be one of them. They see me as an outsider, and sometimes as an intruder. It hurts, this solitude. I wish I could ask you how you deal with it. I wish I knew how you’re dealing with Elena’s passing; you seem so strong. You can take the burden on your shoulders, but I break so violently.” I sniffled, “I wish we could share the burden together, but the last of my forgiveness is sapped away, and I know you never had any. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that Father loved me so warmly, and you so coldly. If he had only loved us as he should’ve, maybe we could’ve loved each other as sisters should. I really need a big sis right now.”

The ceiling above didn’t respond. I swallowed my grief, and whispered, “Alkandi?”

No answer.

“Alkandi, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“I really need some fucking help right now.” I hissed, silent tears running down my cheeks, “Give me some guidance. Show me a sign. Everything feels so wrong, and I can’t shake the feeling that it’s me.”

But there was no reply. Alkandi was me, and I was her, and I offered myself no solace in the lonely night.

LEVERIA

They’d had to carry me out of the arena. I was so used and wasted that I couldn’t even lift my finger to call for help. They tossed me unceremoniously into a cell beneath the arena, and left me with nothing but a loaf of bread and a chamber pot. It wasn’t like I needed the latter; I’d emptied my enema-washed bowels several times during the day, and several times, Eva had gleefully stuffed a syringe up my ass, and filled me to the brim once more. Now she watched me from between the bars of my cell, not speaking.

“What?” I finally croaked.

“You’re not who I thought you were.”

“No one ever is.”

She snorted as if I’d told a joke. “You’re a tough bitch, Leveria.”

“I have to be.”

“Most women would break.”

I smiled weakly at her. “I’m not most women.”

She smiled back. “No. You’re like me.”

“Not really.”

“You sure?” She undid the latch, and opened the cell door with a creak. She shut it quietly behind her, then sauntered over to the bed. “Do you wanna cuddle?” She giggled girlishly.

I glanced at her leather-bound cock.

“That’s not what I meant.” She whispered softly, and eased herself into bed next to me. She slipped beneath the sheets, and nestled herself into my arms. “This is what I meant.”

I sneered at her. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What?” She whispered, caressing my cheek.

I touched her chin, and moved my finger to her lips. “You couldn’t break me up there, so now you want to break me here. You almost look like Elena, but not quite, and you don’t move like she does. It won’t work.”

“My, my, I am speaking to a master after all.” Eva sighed, and pondered the shape of my mouth with dangerous interest. “So tell me, Leveria; what is it like to really torture someone?”

“Why don’t you ask Yavara?”

“Because she’s not like you or me.” Eva whispered, “She inflicts pain to ease her own. I don’t feel any pain when I hurt others, but…” she traced her finger along my collar, “…I don’t know how to take the next step. It’s all sexual to me, but you… you’ve crossed the forbidden line.”

I brushed her hair behind her ear, and drew my finger across the earlobe. She shuddered a little, and I smiled knowingly. “You feel pleasure here.”

“Yes.”

“Then that is where I would start.” I whispered, pinching the lobe lightly, “I would be gentle at first. You might even enjoy it. Then, I would make it hurt just a little but more. Then a little bit more, then a little bit more, then a little bit more.” Eva whimpered as I pinched harder and harder, “Increment after increment, I will increase the pain, knowing how you will react, playing you like music until you finally—”

“Stop!” she cried.

I released her ear, and smiled. “I deal in pain the same way I deal in pleasure. That is what it means to be like me. The forbidden line is dealing in horror. You see, I won’t stop even after you beg. I won’t stop until I’ve reached the pinnacle, and then… what? What do you do when a person can no longer feel any more pain? Well, you remove both pain and pleasure from them.” I made a scissors motions with my fingers, and clamped it on Eva’s ear, “Then, they are less than they were a second ago. Then, they know horror. That is the ultimate control. You are God to them, and they bow and break to your every motion.” I planted a loving kiss on Eva’s parted lips. “So,” I whispered, “do you really think you’re like me?”

“No,” she whispered back, her breath shuddering, “not yet.”

“Not ever, Eva.” I sighed, and rolled over. “You’re a good girl with a bad side. You have no idea who I am.”

“Maybe I just need someone to push me that extra step.”

“No one’s watching us right now. You could gag me, tie me down, and do as you please.” I looked over my shoulder at her, “If I were you, and you were me, I wouldn’t have to think twice. I’d start with your cock, then move to your pussy, then your nipples, then your fingers and toes. I’d keep your eyes so that you could see what was being done to you. I would only blind you after I’d removed your nose, ears and lips, so that the mutilation of your face was the last thing you ever saw.”

“Just talk.”

“Believe what you wish, Eva Alecia. You mean nothing to me.” I yawned, and snuggled into my sheets, “You were easy to beat today. Such a disappointment.”

It wasn’t anger that crossed her face, but a strange rejection. She fiddled insecurely with her leather gloves, like she felt like an imposter with them on. Then her expression flattened, a contemplative look forming across it. A broad grin slowly crept upon her lips. She looked at me, her teal eyes twinkling. “You are a master indeed, Leveria Tiadoa.” She said appraisingly, “I should’ve respected you more; now I realize that I’ve waltzed foolishly into the lioness’s cage.” She laughed, and looked dotingly upon me, “I’ve never met a more dangerous woman than you. I would say that Yavara should kill you right now, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”

“No.”

Eva nodded, and backed away. “What’s coming for us, Leveria?”

“Death.”

“Just talk.”

I smiled at her. This time, she did not smile back. She closed the cell door, and left in a hurry. In her wake, there was only silence. My smile faded. I turned to the ceiling, and snuggled into my bedsheets. I would think of Elena tonight. She helped me get to sleep.

ELENA

I’d met with more artists, musicians, playwrights and thespians than I’d ever wanted to. It was clear that Lady Jonias delighted in their company, and they obviously reveled in her generous patronage, but I found them all to be very boring. The artists were all clinically depressed, the musicians were all drug addicts, the playwrights were all drunks, and the thespians were all sluts. There wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t fill a cliché. Or perhaps I was just jaded. In retrospect, they were all very kind to me, and eager to show their support. Maybe I was bothered because they were so enamored with the high-elf noble I was presented as, and not the woman I truly was. I had stopped pretending to be someone different ever since Yavara had changed me, and I’d forgotten how terrible it was to wear a mask over my own soul. Even in the Noble Court I hadn’t needed the mask. It was only with Mother that I’d worn it.

I’d spent the whole day ruminating on the things I’d said to her, and wishing I hadn’t. I loved my mother, truly I did, and I knew she loved me despite all that I wasn’t. I could’ve just left the relationship stay comfortably as it was, but I had to go and wreck it for my own self-centered satisfaction. I wasn’t sure if I could look at her again.

It was well-past dark by the time Lady Jonias wheeled me into the great hall of her manor. She illuminated the room with a quick spell, and the vast staircase shown before me.

“Well?” She asked teasingly, “Didn’t you promise me you’d climb up the stairs by six tonight? It’s eleven, so I’m sure the added rest will make it that much easier.”

I was too exhausted to play the game. I raised my hands in surrender, and slouched back in my chair.

Lady Jonias laughed musically. “Making grand promises you can’t keep. You’re already halfway to being a proper queen. Now, you just have to find a minority group to blame for your failures.”

“Or she can fulfill her promises,” came an all-too familiar voice from the alcove. I turned my head to see Mother leaning against the archway, watching me with her steely eyes.

“What are you doing?” I sighed.

“My house was burned down, Elena.” Mother said, walking toward us, “I don’t have a place to stay in Bentius. Lady Jonias was kind enough to offer me one of her guest rooms.” She stopped on my right side, and smiled to our host. “I can take it from here, my lady. Thank you.”

I groaned. “Mom, I meant what the hell are you doing?”

She looked down at me, her face set in a grim frown. “Being your mother.” She took me by the hand, and with surprising strength, she hoisted me out of the chair. I cried out, the pain lancing up me from my feet to my neck, every inch of me rigid with misfiring signals. I pitched forward, but Mother held me upright, bracing me against her shoulder. “One step at a time, Elena,” she said, throwing my arm across her back, “it might seem impossible, but that’s only because you haven’t started yet.”

“Let me go!” I growled.

“No.” She said simply, and hauled me forward. I dragged my feet against the carpet and slouched in her embrace, but she kept her back rigid and her shoulders high even with my weight bearing upon her. She carried me to the landing, then began ascending the steps. “One step at a time,” she grunted, sweat shimmering on her forehead, “I know the first step is the hardest, Elena. Take it whenever you’re ready.” She heaved forward with each ascending footfall, her breath puffing from her chest, her face flushing with exertion, but still she moved onward.

“You think this means something to me?!” I snarled.

“It means something to me,” she said with a heave, and stumbled forward. She caught herself on her hand, straining to keep me upright. With a lurch, she hoisted me back into position, and recommenced the climb. “Whenever you’re ready, Elena,” she gasped, “take the first step.”

“Fuck you.”

“Whenever…” she growled, her entire body shaking with the effort, “you’re…” she fell to one knee, and the shock of the impact moved through her, and into me. She cried out, blood staining her dress, but she just planted her foot beneath her, and pushed us up one more step. “…ready!”

I lifted my leg, and plopped my foot before me. With the utmost effort, I shifted my mass forward, and daintily place weight upon the appendage. Mother still carried most of me, and my leg shook with the strain of it, but I managed to keep myself balanced atop my right foot. Mother heaved us up another step, and I raised my left leg, and slammed my foot awkwardly in front of the other. One step. Mother heaved again, and I took another, this time, adding more weight to the leg. Mother heaved a third time, and again, I flopped my foot before me, and added weight. For twenty more steps I did this, until I was nearly walking all by myself on the last one. When we got to the landing at the top, I pitched forward in exhaustion, and Mother couldn’t stop herself from falling with me. We collapsed in a heap, our clothes plastered to our bodies, our hair hanging in disheveled strands.

“Lady Jonias?” Mother called weakly.

“Yes?” She responded, her high-heels appearing in my vision. She stood above us, looking both perplexed and amused.

“Please help me up.”

Jonias struggled to get Mother to her feet, then Mother did the same for me. She hoisted my arm across her shoulders, and I moaned an objection.

“Oh, shut up.” Mother grumbled, and waddled with me into the guest bedroom. Jonias followed in afterward, but Mother graciously refused her help. I was too tired to complain anymore anyway. Mother dropped me on the bed, and I went unconscious the moment my face hit the pillow.

ADRIANNA

The wind howled off the Western Sea, and the wolves howled from the east. They were far away, maybe ten miles. If I could hear them, it meant I was within their hunting range, and the brethren they called for would not answer if they were stalking prey. I knew I had been followed. The sun was setting over the ocean, though it was impossible to see behind the mist. Only the grey dusk light hinted at its position. It was the moon that illuminated the world now, bathing the snow, the blanketed pines, and the sky in pale monochromatic blues. My breath fogged from me. The air burned my flesh with cold. I pulled my hood up, and tightened the drawstring. I dismounted my horse. My boots crunched in the snow. The sound carried across the rolling hills, and disappeared behind the ridgeline.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. An answering sound came. My horse shifted nervously, its eyes wide, the panic rising in them. Crunch, crunch, crunch. My horse stomped into the snow, its hindlegs bucking, its hindquarters twitching. Crunch, crunch, crunch. The silhouette of a great hunched back appeared over the ridgeline. The moonlight caught it, shimmering its fur in silver, glinting from its ivory fangs. The light twinkled in its red eyes which had no pupils nor irises, only intensified centers that were focused on me. My horse screamed, and bolted. Its gallop sounded for five strides before there was a horrific roar, and a gurgling screech. I didn’t bother to look behind me. I knew I was surrounded.

There were five of them, three of them bearing orc riders. The jockeys snickered and giggled to each other as they approached, but I didn’t heed their taunts. My mind was only focused on my breathing. One breath, then another. My hands closed around the grips of my daggers. One breath, then another. The wargs circled me, their red eyes glinting with hunger, their great maws exposed behind their snarling lips. One breath, then another. Their teeth were each longer than my stretched hand, and sharp enough to punch through steel. One breath, then another. Flesh hung from their black gums, women and children turned to rotten meat. One breath, then another. The air fogged like smoke from them, the stench of their lungs coming closer, and closer. One breath, then another. Their paws tensed. Their backends dropped. One breath, then another. Their legs flexed. One breath, then another. They charged. One breath, then another.

I fell to my back as the beasts collided over me, their paws scraping at the space I used to be in. I rolled beneath one, stuck my blade in its belly, and sheared across. His guts opened, his tearing flesh sounding like rent clothing, his shriek sounding like a crow’s bale. I rolled out from beneath his dropping awful, and jammed my knife into the forepaw of another beast. Before he could swipe at me, I’d ducked under his chest, shoved my blade into his throat, and slashed him from jaw to chest. Hot blood sprayed black upon the snow, and I jumped out from beneath the collapsing beast just in time to run head-first into another. Great jaws snapped at me, a finger’s breadth from taking off my nose. I repaid her by shoving both blades into her eyes, and rolling atop her rearing head.

The rider was very confused when I popped up in front of him, but his confusion didn’t last long. His head rolled off his shoulders, and I jumped from the dying steed’s back to a summersault into the snow. I came up from my roll into a leap, and soared clean over the fourth warg’s snapping jaws to tackle his rider. One slash across the throat splattered me with his blood, and before he even knew what had happened, I was gone. I leapt from the back of the warg, flew through the air, and landed before the final wolf and rider.

“Highland bitch!” The orc roared, pulling on his beast’s reins. The great wolf reared onto its hind paws, standing twelve feet high, blocking the moon with its behemoth profile. The other surviving wolf circled behind me, her great paws crunching over the symphony of gurgled wails sounding from her dying pack. Crunch, crunch, crunch. She was only a stride away. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I pulled off my hood, and turned around.

The warg stared back at me. She had a scar on her face that ran from a notch in her ear, to a line in her jaw. It blinded her in one eye, but the other was a glimmering red, its center alight and intelligent. It was kindred. It was Alkandran. I knew this beast better than I’d known my own mother. I extended my hand, and placed it upon her massive forehead. She snarled for a second, then bowed. I dared to slide my hand down her snout. She opened her mouth, displaying the scores of daggers she had for teeth, the rotten elf-flesh still strung between them. She licked the back of my hand, whimpered, and dropped to her belly in submission.

“I am no Highlander.” I said to the orc, not bothering to look at him.

The orc stuttered for five seconds before he managed to utter, “A-a-a-a-a-hyrbrid?!”

I turned then, but I didn’t look at the rider; I looked at the great male warg he clumsily mounted. It was comical, really. It was like watching a mastiff begrudgingly bear a toddler upon its back, wondering how long it would have to wait before he could shake it off. The woeful expression on his fearsome face bespoke years of mistreatment from a hand that did not understand. And so, all it took was a simple extension of my fingers, and the warg shook his rider off like the nuisance he was, and lumbered over to me. One scratch behind the ear put him on his back, and one stroke across his great belly caused his tail to wag.

“I wish I could’ve spared the others,” I muttered, “but to truly gain the respect of a hunter, you must prove yourself worthy.” I looked at the orc for the first time, “You never earned the right to ride him. You broke him when he was young, and made a slave.”

The orc blinked at me, then looked at the warg. “Ripjaw?” He asked dumbfoundedly.

“His name isn’t ‘Ripjaw.’” I said, running my fingers through the thick fur, “He has no name; none that you can speak, anyway, but the closest translation in our tongue is ‘Jala.’” I glanced back at the orc, “And what is your name?”

“Ferjok.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course,” he whispered reverently, “one of the nine matrons. Furia the Just, Eva the Punisher, Soraya the Punished, Alexa the Builder, Faltia the Commander, Brianna the Merry, Kiera the Gentle, Adrianna the Wise, and Elena the Lost.”

I raised my brows. “They call me wise?”

His jaw dropped. “You are Adrianna? You are the governess of Alkandra?!”

I beckoned the beasts to rise, and hopped on the back of the female. I paused for a moment, in awe of the power the beast so easily harnessed. Every motion sent ripples up the muscles in her shoulders, the rises in tension moving me with ease. I looked over the side, and marveled at how high I was off the ground. I raked my fingers through her mane, and had to suppress a gasp when she purred. The vibrations rolled through her like an earthquake, and rumbled between my straddling legs. Oh, I understood now why the dark-elves of old rode these things. They were more than magnificent.

“Sasha is not her name, but it is the closest thing to it in this tongue.” I murmured, stroking her mane, “And she is mine.” I gestured to the male beside her, “Jala is not yours, Ferjok; not any longer. If he lets you ride him, it will be by his choice. If you try to force yourself upon him, it will be the last mistake you ever make.”

Ferjok looked from me, to the warg beside me. He took one step forward, and the wolf swiped without a care, and tore Ferjok clean in half. The top half of the orc flew screeching into a snow bank, and the bottom half took one more step forward, before stumbling to a stop.

“Come, Sasha. Come, Jala.” I said to the female and male before they could feast, “We have better prey to catch.”

ZANDER

I washed my face in the basin. The cold moon was high in the window behind me, illuminating my chambers in pale light. Arbor lay in my bed; her plump mauve body concealed in a feathery shell of wings. There was a flash of shadow, and a moment later, Drake Titus was standing behind me in my reflection.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” I asked bemusedly, “It doesn’t work when I literally saw you coming miles away.”

“Have you ever turned your back on a cat?” He asked with a feline smile, “They can’t help but stalk.”

I grunted a humorless laugh, and turned around. “Well?” I asked, “Did you bring me answers?”

Titus’s smile faded. “I did, but first, I have questions.”

“You already know too much.”

“I have a question about you, specifically, Zander.” Titus said, and gestured for me to sit.

“I’ll stand.”

He nodded. “Yavara is a… well she was a good woman, at least. She’s at least a kind-hearted woman when it comes to most people, but she’s… fragile. You once told me that Yavara wasn’t like the other incarnations, and you thought that was a good thing. Do you still feel that way?”

I looked out at the full moon, and considered my words very carefully. “Yavara isn’t fragile. She’s strong like an oak. Her spirit can take a great burden, but it cannot bend, and when it reaches the breaking point, it snaps violently. Yavara is a good woman, until she isn’t. Alkandi was never a good woman, but she was always flexible. Her spirit bent easily, but it never broke. She could stretch herself indefinitely. If you were to ask me four days ago who I thought would be a better Dark Queen, I would’ve told you Yavara.”

“But now…?”

“Just tell me what your mother found, Drake.”

Titus held up two vials of blood. One was marked with a ‘Y’ to indicate Yavara, and the other was marked with a question mark. “It took Mother only a sniff to identify Alkandi’s spirit in Yavara. She wasn’t sure why I had brought her a sample of the Dark Queen’s blood. Then I showed her the other vial. She drank it, and ruminated for a tortuously long time. She then asked me for Yavara’s sample again. After tasting it, she concluded that I must’ve mishandled the samples.”

“Explain.” I muttered, dreading the inevitable answer.

“She immediately could tell that the other sample was Leveria’s; siblings are easy to detect. What confused her, was why Yavara’s blood tasted like two different people. This was a distinction I could not taste myself, so I asked her what she meant. She said the sample I’d given her tasted like Alkandi at first, but when she studied the spiritual undertones on her palate, there were two flavors.” Titus paused for a moment, then said, “She then asked me if I had accidentally contaminated Yavara’s sample with her sister’s, for the spiritual flavor of Alkandi was exactly that of Leveria’s.”

I nodded. “And then what did she say?”

“That I was a foolish boy who couldn’t even close a vial properly, and that all the education she paid for was wasted on me. She then chased me out of her library, and that was that.” Titus finished. He glanced at the two vials, then at me. “Obviously, I never had access to Leveria’s blood. It was you who took it.”

“Yes.”

“And so…?” Titus asked, peering at me with keen interest.

I let out a long, slow breath. “Leveria Tiadoa was supposed to be the Dark Queen.”
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