Prince Rasgen woke up alone. The bed was still hot where the warm body of the Contessa Lodira had fallen to rest after hours of their desperate, ravenous lovemaking. The memory of the taste of her breasts, her tongue, her lips, her sex, and the passionate heat that came from their wild shared thrusting in every position they could imagine, all came back to mind. When they finally ran out of stamina, he had fallen asleep with her beneath his outstretched arm, the scent of her hair lingering close still.
Somehow, she had crept out of the bed and left him behind. The sheets rustled around him as Prince Rasgen sat up. He looked over to the window where light was already shining, “I shouldn’t be surprised, this is just like her.” He shook his head, “Never much for goodbyes, never much for lingering… she’s probably been gone for hours, and all I can do is hope for the best.” He reached over and pulled the rope that would summon the half elf twins to his room again. One would draw a bath, one would go to prepare food, and in perfect synchronization, each task would be finished in time for the next to begin. ‘I wonder which one is actually the real slave?’ He pondered the question again for the thousandth time, it was a far more interesting question to him than how a collar had been slipped in the first place.
But again he dismissed the old question, and prepared to run his city, as he had done every day, for year after year.
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‘As somebody once put it, Yersin. The dead have no claim on the living. If you can make golems like theirs, or close to it, with the souls of the dead, then I will give you dead to work with. All I need is a war, and there will be plenty of that before we travel west again.’ Nua answered, the smile so broad that it ached.
“What could possibly make you laugh at a time like this?” Sobella asked with fearful eyes, ‘Has she lost her mind?’ She wondered, then relaxed as Nua shook her head.
“Just… I was looking around a little, and learned a little about the Tlalmok. They’re not quite what I expected. Strange to think of them as just being… people. Yes, they are fearsome and powerful by any normal standard. But in the end they’re, …only a different flesh. As to whether that makes me hate them more or less?” Nua shrugged, quietly leaving off what Yersin had come to learn.
Sobella shook her head vigorously, “No! They’re monsters! Monsters who exist only to ruin our lives!”
“Like you hated the bear you ate on the other side of the border?” Nua asked pointedly. “To them, we are just like that. Maybe they enjoy a bit of sadism… but that makes them more like people, not less. Think about the Komestrans being sold all over the great cities and beyond. I have pregnant Komestran slaves in my estate who don’t know if the father is a husband or lover, or whatever warrior who broke within the walls, found them wherever they were hiding. You were a slave before the love of the Prince freed you, surely you don’t doubt that those who made… unhappy demands of you, were people?” Nua knelt down in front of the demon elf and took her head by the horns, she brought the woman close, pressing one forehead to the other.
“Please believe me, I’m certain of this, they are not just monsters, they are people, all that they do, is just like us, they are another flesh, not some impossible existence that can never be overcome.” Nua whispered the words across the space of inches, “I don’t know how I can prove this to you…”
“You’ll get the chance…” Sobella whispered, and then shut her eyes.
“What?” Nua asked, cocking her head, only for Sobella to shake her head vigorously.
“No, nothing. Can you… can you hold onto me for a little while, I know they’ll call for us soon.” Sobella’s voice caught as she begged with eyes tight shut against the world around her.
Nua brushed the words off, “Alright… I will.” The wood elf assassin pressed her back to the wall, inching herself close against Sobella’s side, and letting the dark purple skinned demon-elf lay against her with the side of her head on Nua’s shoulder, propped up by the protruding horn. Nua leaned her head to the left so that the side of her head was on top of the dark hair of Sobella.
‘People? People… how can monsters be people? They eat us, they terrorize us, they torture us, how can they be anything but monsters?’ Sobella wondered on a loop until her eyes opened a little and she caught sight of the gloved left hand. ‘Death worshipper. She supposedly drains life from her slaves to punish them, everything we heard up until recently suggested she ruled them with terror. Is she a monster? Then again, what about Prince Rasgen? He might have protected Kaiji and Sado from harm, but what Nua says about her slaves, well that is most of any fallen city.’
She contemplated these things, turning them over and over in her mind, Nua’s statement, however bizarre, was so appealing, killing off the vision of the beastmen that she had as it would. She felt the desire to believe her quite sharply, keenly, until she felt herself start to drift off.
Just on the cusp of sleep, the warmth of the body beside her providing deeply longed for security, a pounding on the door began. Her red eyes popped wide open instantly.
Nua however, rose with easy calm and held out her right hand. “Come, it must be time.”
“It must be.” Sobella whimpered, taking Nua’s hand and rising with the slow stiffness that came from long hours in her crouched position, she nonetheless got up.
The thunderous pounding on the iron door came again. “We’re coming.” Nua announced, making her annoyance clear in her voice.
She snickered a little in spite of herself, the fading light that passed through the window told her that there was not much daylight left, shadows and half light were all that remained within the longhouse when Nua unlocked the door and took a step out.
The hyenawoman was there in front of her, “Your coat is looking very shiny.” Nua said of the mottled spots, praising it politely, “Did you bathe for the occasion?”
The hyenawoman raised her chin proudly and preened at the praise, answering in the yelping like voice of her species, she replied, “Yes of course, I wouldn’t show up dirty…” She snapped her vicious looking jaws shut when she realized the wood elf spoke to her with candid ease, as one might a peer. She glared down at the escort and thrust out two black hoods. “Put it on, meat.” She snapped down at Nua.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
‘Infuriating elf… by the god-emperor’s balls, I hope she hesitates.’ The hynawoman thought, only for the escort to hand a hood to Sobella, who had it over her head in an instant.
Nua imitated the gesture, and the world vanished. A sense of pride came over her in that instant that she had not expected. ‘Like the Dark Savior at her trial, I now face my own.’
“Sobella, take my shoulder.” Nua ordered , and she felt the hand descend over her, falling to the rough surface of her camisk. “Everything will be alright.” Nua tried to reassure her with a confident voice, but if it helped, Sobella showed no indication that it had.
“Now, follow the sound of my voice, and you will hear the story of how we taught you animals your place in the natural order.” The hyenawoman said, and Nua pricked up her ears.
She could hear the satisfaction in the hyenawoman, even the stooped forward way it moved had never disguised the arrogant sort of strut to its walk. Nor did the odd yelp and guttural growl from its throat hide its pride. She could tell the beastwoman was savoring the ritual.
Step by step, Nua followed while the beastwoman strode on at an inching pace, she could feel stares on her from different angles as well, ‘They’re preparing to feast again, we’re part of a procession.’
It wasn’t long before she heard the rattling noise of others walking behind her, shuffling steps, and she heard the sound of shuffling feet. ‘The ones to be eaten, we’re marching at the head of a column.’ She smelled the piss of those who lost control through fear, and heard the voices that must have been humans, dwarves, elves, and others of the most humanlike races.
Still the hyenawoman droned on, telling the story. “...So the stupid cattle fought in their feeble way, and perished, their hunting grounds became our ranches, and animals like you are fed the worthless grains and fruits your kind eat, and the last of them fled east to build the cities you now dwell in. Well, most of you. Luckily for you it’s useful to have a harvesting ground of free range breeding stock like yourselves, ones we can use to keep our stock here in good shape. The ones you’ve probably felt and heard at your back, come from one of our oldest ranches close to here.” The hyenawoman ended her story with a little laugh as her feet were firmly planted in the dirt. Nua stopped behind the beastwoman.
The smell of fear and sweat was thick in the air, the sound of men and women being yanked out of line behind them both, the rattle of chains clinking from the limbs they held.
Nua closed her eyes beneath the hood. She felt Sobella come closer.
The Hyenawoman who towered over them shouted over the cries of the captive stock, “We of the Silence feast, by the blessing of the emperor, we bear the honor of the second terror, and by the will of the eating god, we also eat!”
“We also eat!” The beastmen and beastwomen intoned.
Sobella could see nothing, but with her ears protruding through her hood, she heard the first cry. Desperate, she brought herself close to her escort, and while her body trembled, Nua folded her into an embrace, holding her securely as she could.
Beyond their sight, wails of pain echoed over Silence, claws and teeth tore open bellies and the odor of bloody, raw flesh rose into the air.
A woman’s feet slapped the ground as she broke and tried to run, Nua caught the sound of every step on the dusty ground, and heard the pain filled ‘oof’ as she was tackled by a beastman, followed by a screech of pain as claws pierced flesh, it went on until the living woman had been reduced to a body of flesh. The sound of bones snapping like twigs was paired with dragging, as living people dragged themselves through the dust, begging for mercy that did not exist for them.
The sickening sound of limbs, wrenched around and twisted away from their living owners, reminded Nua of a particularly ugly fight against a Devorian Harvester party, only this was worse. Worse because Sobella had already fallen to sobbing into her chest as she was forced to listen to it all.
Her sobs carried on through the last cries of pain, through the dripping sound of blood being caught in cups, past the last sound of bones being broken to get at the marrow within.
Nua however, entered a state of cold calm, the sound of the hellscape filled her only with conviction. ‘Yersin, have you been able to harvest the deaths here for your use?’
‘Of course, they were very kind to feed me so well.’ Yersin answered, she could practically hear him licking his pale lips within his realm.
‘Good. Then this was not for nothing, and I am as content as I can be.’ Nua answered.
How long they stood there, listening to the snarling, the growling, the wailing and gnashing of teeth as the cries of ranch raised humanoid races were ended in the town of Silence, Nua couldn’t tell. Though she could have counted the seconds from the pace of the tears that fell from Sobella’s eyes to run down Nua’s breasts until they found their way into red dust, making the earth beneath their feet into mud like the blood of the victims at their backs. It was not until the light of the sun died and torches illuminated the darkness instead, that anything changed.
She felt the eyes of the hyenawoman fall to her again. “They will have to do. I will have to be content that you are for the emperor.” The ruler of the town grumbled, “Go back the way you came, keep your hoods on, somehow I think… you don’t need an escort.”
“I don’t. I remember the way. I remember everything.” Nua answered with a quiet, tranquil voice. Then holding Sobella’s arm around herself, she led the sobbing demon-elf back just as she’d said she would.
At their backs, the hyenawoman watched them go, ‘Why do I get the distinct feeling she meant something else by that statement?’ She shrugged after a moment of thinking about it and coming to no conclusions. The smell of meat had the hyenawoman’s attention, and she went to join the feast.
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The day passed quickly for the Contessa Lodira, the passing landscape of the countryside provided a pleasant distraction at least. In the distance she saw farms and paddies aplenty. Forests that might have been as old as the land itself, dotted the distant endless horizon. Every now and then she caught sight of someone walking somewhere, sometimes several someones. Sometimes she glanced out the back window to watch the city recede further and farther behind her.
However, no matter what she saw, she found herself thinking of what she’d left behind. With no one to talk to, she talked to herself. “Just once I wish I could say goodbye to someone properly. But… you’re a coward Lodira, you always were, and always will be. Afraid of duty, afraid of responsibility, afraid of growing old… in the end, no matter who killed your husband, this is all your fault. If you’d just done things differently, not been so petty, maybe he’d be alive. Or at least maybe you wouldn’t have been assumed to be guilty by everyone, then you’d just marry someone else and…” She shrugged at the futility of her thoughts.
But they kept returning, hour after hour, day after day, long after Pas’en was behind, long after passing through small villages and towns belonging to the great city.
They were still with her as the carriage rolled through the low wall of the minor city of her birth, still with her through the winding, twisting streets of Ma’ken City, and all the way up to her family estate.
As the carriage slowed down, she saw what she dreaded most. A wrinkled old face with graying hair, he was thinner than she remembered him. But his back was stiff and straight, the gray hair on his head tied tight into a ponytail that gave his face an even more severe appearance. Unlike Pasenian nobles and citizens, his clothing was black and gray as the stone that made up the many buildings. Severe, in a word his lips were tightly drawn and his stance almost military like, arms behind his back and feet shoulder width apart.
Lodira took a deep breath as the one to draw the carriage descended, approached, and with a little clicking noise, opened the door to allow her to exit. She stepped down, her bright green and blue clothing stood out like a sore thumb on a hand with no other fingers. She put on a bright, wide brimmed red hat, and approached the old man.
He said nothing when she approached him. “Father… I swear, I didn’t do it…” Her eyes filled with tears, and then she saw stars as his open hand connected with her face.
She felt herself falling from the powerful slap and heard her father shouting at her, “You stupid bitch! You stupid, stupid whore! What use are you now?! What good are you?!” She didn’t need to see his hateful, furious, dark, and cloudy face to know his wrath. Nor did she need to rely on his vicious verbal assault. She felt his wrath well enough when he knocked the hat from her head, grabbed her hair at the root, yanked her up, and slapped her again, knocking her down to the stone a second time, while the wind took her hat as it rolled away.
The familiar feel of his violent hands made her briefly numb, and as the hat faded into the distance, rolling off the grounds where it was trod over by a passing horse before being carried farther away and well out of sight, a disconnected part of her thought briefly as she was yanked up for yet another slap to her face, ‘I liked that hat… I’ll miss it.’ Then she saw stars again, when he hit the other side of her face.