In front of us, a town burned, the citizens screaming in agony.
Well, the ones who hadn’t been lucky enough to die near-instantly, anyway.
“Filthy peasants. Not one of them looking after themselves properly. That fat pig is better off dead if this is the best he could do with his chattel.”
The Vermilion Queen sneered at those she saw as beneath her, and I merely nodded my head and bowed with the others, keeping a stoic expression. I hated this bitch.
So yeah, Kaoru Yamano here. The meaning’s all messed up when I put my family name last, but Zhong insists that putting your family name above your own stands out too much. Annoying, but he’s right. So I switched it up while we were in the central lands, taking in the part of the world best known for riches, culture, and diverse beauty.
Those lands were now in flames as the Vermilion Queen sought to claim a larger portion of them. And maybe if she didn’t automatically kill everyone who she deemed to not be “perfect” enough, she’d actually have something to show for it.
As it was, everything she disagreed with, from choices in food to how one dressed to the color of one’s skin or eyes was a heresy to her. And she loved nothing more than burning everything she saw as heresy.
My little group just watched, knowing that she’d at least have to take a break to give birth after this. She loved mating and being pregnant, but hated raising children. So she’d winter in the Vermilion Palace every year, give birth, get pregnant again, then campaign from spring until autumn, repeating the cycle and taking a month or two to recover her shape in between pregnancies.
Only her ladies-in-waiting “mysteriously” vanished when she came across a village she actually liked. The men had already been sent away to war, we told her, leaving us to starve without them to work on feeding us and our unborn babies. She cooed and soothed, saying she would see us to a better place, then put us in fancy gowns instead of peasant clothes we’d taken from the refugees of her own lands and had us made into her new personal retinue.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I was just grateful that not only did she buy that line of feces, but her former retinue had been more than pleased to get away from her. There’s always a few that turn out to like the power, or get twisted by the abuse. We’d have to be very careful to ferret them out as we evacuated the Vermilion Palace.
The west was a dead land now, completely empty of people as we’d evacuated the scant population into our own territory. Life was already a little hard for us in our hidden villages, but turning away those in need simply wasn’t an option, even if it meant everyone had to cinch their belts a little tighter to feed the extra mouths.
Well, that was going to change soon.
A small splash, and I could see the Vermilion Queen’s waters had broken. Nodding to my fellow conspirators, we got to work right away. The woman screamed bloody murder as she gave birth, complaining all the while about how it hurt, and exclaiming that she’d execute the soldiers who’d knocked her up.
Honestly. As if she hadn’t done this yearly for the past three centuries or so. Even I wasn’t this bad when Song was being born, and she’d come a couple weeks early because we were on the run from a massacre. Plus she was my first. That was thirteen babies ago now, and I’d long gotten over the fact that it hurt. Doubly so because smart cultivators learn how to reduce pain through meditation. I’d gotten to the point where it wasn’t uncommon for my labor to culminate in a few… well, happy little pops, we’ll say. Still hurt, but that pain wasn’t some all-consuming tide.
But this spoiled little bitch had to make it out as if every push would kill her, so we humored her whims, protected our hearing, and made sure to dodge the flares that came out from her while she whined and raged.
Finally, a cry came out that wasn’t hers. We presented her with a daughter, and she just ordered her to “take care of it” while we returned to the Vermilion Palace.
Finally. For a moment, I was ready to kill her here and now.