Chapter Twenty-Four

IVANKA

Tiffany and I watched from the mouth of the Broken Pass as the sun sank into the horizon, casting violet rays into the sky that faded to purple, then blue, then black. I waited until the last light faded, then I stripped my robes, and felt the cool wind caress my naked flesh. I took a deep breath of the night air, and my blood surged with a primal thrill. I pulled Tiffany into a heated kiss, tasting the avarice on her tongue, the suffusion of sexual desire and blood hunger, the need to fuck and kill. We separated with a gasp, touching foreheads to stare into each other’s eyes, feeling the same energy thrumming within us, compelling us to succumb to ancient instincts. We grinned with predatory mouths, our fangs dripping venom onto our crimson lips. It was time to hunt. Without a sound, we dashed into the woods.

There were so many interesting smells in the Maples. Beyond the ambience of sweet sap, was a veritable forest-menu of treats. There was an incubus twenty yards to my left. There was a faun a half-mile to the south. A loan centaur was galloping a mile to the north. But I was to feast on orc tonight, which was one of my least favorite meals. I caught my target’s scent from two miles away, and the nearer I got, the clearer the picture became.

I could smell infection on his skin, a bog-born parasite that he wasn’t treating well. He was middle-aged, but still virial by the distinct musk that wafted from him. As I drew nearer, I zeroed in on the thumping of his heart. His resting heartrate was abnormally high, and bore a murmur that drummed out of cadence. He was fat and out of shape, which would make my job easier, but the meal worse.

I stopped at the entrance to his village. I heard over two-hundred hearts beating, all to different rhythms, each a song of identity. I peered through the darkness and saw the orc’s warm bodies glowing from within their huts. My target was in the center of the village in the chieftain’s hut, gorging himself on ale and pork. I silently raced through the settlement, taking cover behind walls and huts, passing laughing children, boisterous teenagers and watching elders. I climbed the chief’s roof, and dove through the smoke-hole.

The fat orc chieftain gawked at me with a mouth full of pork. He was at the head of an expansive table fit for a feast, but he was alone. I wiped the ash off my feet, and casually sauntered over to him. His mind came to him too late. He stood to brandish the club on his back while choking on a scream for help, the masticated pork dribbling down his jowls. Before he could even get his hand on his weapon, I’d imbedded my fangs deep in his throat, biting through fat and muscle to find the frantic vein within. I sucked the foul molasses that was his blood, and he withered against me, mouthing around his last meal. Lovingly, I snaked one hand through his braided hair, and caressed the other along his chin. Then I ripped his head clean off. As his neck fountained, I laid his body beside a headless roast duck, and began carving Brock’s message into the orc’s chest. Then I grabbed Brock’s cranial trophy, hopped out of the smoke hole, and raced out of the village without making a sound. As I disappeared into the woods, someone screamed, and an alarm bell tolled.

BROCK

“How do I know you’re acting under the orders of Queen Yavara?” Braun, the leader of the centaurs asked me, “Because this sounds a lot like an ambitious Pine orc making a bid for the Tundra.”

“I am a very ambitious Pine orc.” I replied with a winning smile, “Under the orders of an even more ambitious queen.”

“Where is she?” Braun asked, “She hasn’t come to ask for our aid, and we would give it to her freely.”

“You and I are the only ones, it seems.” I sighed, “The other clans have forgotten their vows. Queen Yavara left for the Spruces to deal with an emergency; I am her acting diplomat to the Maples.”

“You still haven’t presented me with proof of your allegiance.” Braun said, “You are killing orcs that I have trade relations with, and I will not defend you against the vengeance of their people until I know you are acting under the Dark Queen’s orders.”

“Here,” I said, dropping the sacks of gold into his hands, “that’s Ardeni currency, procured by a loan from King Dreus to Queen Yavara. In one of the bags you will find a note of transaction signed by Console Drake Titus and Console Zander Fredeon.”

“The council of Queen Yavara has sanctioned counsel Brock Terdini, Secretary of War, to deliver this payment to Braun Lighthoof of the Spearheads to ensure centaur aid in the Terdini’s endeavors with the tribes of the Maples. Signed Drake Titus and Zander Fredeon, but conspicuously not Queen Yavara Alkandi.”

I shrugged. “The deed’s been done, Braun. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

ZANDER

I walked through the abandoned nymph camp. The remnants of a pyre smoked from the clearing, and I didn’t have to move closer to know what had been burned. I stopped at the edge and stared at the smoldering wood. I stared for a long time. There were still embers in the pyre, and they burned like cobalt in their nest of charred logs and bone. The wind spun the ashes into playful vortexes that danced from the pile, the wistful flecks glinting like moon-kissed snow. Gone. I felt her absence like a hole in my chest, one that I’d bandaged and stuck full of morphine to keep the pain at bay. I could outrun it for a while, this pain; long enough to do what needed to be done before it consumed me. I glanced down to see the pitiless socketed eyes staring at me from the crowned skull that headed my staff. Alkandi’s skull. “We’re all just ideas of people to each other.” I muttered to her, “I was never the man in your head, and you were never the woman in my heart. I hate you, you know.” I blinked away a tear, the first I’d shed in centuries, and looked back upon the pyre. “Rest easy, Prestira. Don’t wait for me on the other side.”

The wind gusted through the trees, sounding the groan of an enormous spruce that loomed over the clearing. Its branches drooped, and its needles fell freely. The sap that ran from its bark was milky and white, smelling nothing like the nectar of the tree. I stepped on one of its roots, and the wind suddenly died.

“Zander,” a seductive voice whispered from within the mighty trunk, “come in.”

The trunk opened into a large doorway, and I stepped inside. Elena’s succubi were sitting cross-legged in a circle, their hands entwined on each other’s knees, their eyes aglow with violet light and staring vacantly at the tree’s apex. I looked up to see the once-green bioluminescent fungi had all changed to the same passionate hue as the women’s eyes. They all turned their gaze to me at once, but only Crystal spoke.

“I needed to take their minds.” Arbor said from Crystal’s mouth, “They were nearly hysterical when they could not save our master. I feel it too, this mortal pain of loss. As do you, Zander Fredeon.” Arbor smiled sadly, “But we immortals can bear it much easier, so I have eased their suffering.”

“Arbor,” I said as I sat down, “you’ve been corrupted.”

“I like to think I have been awakened.”

“Elena.” I sighed.

“You sent her to subvert me.” Arbor didn’t say it as an accusation, simply as a fact. “It is why you did not come yourself. You thought you could steal my children from beneath my nose by having her parade her slaves before them.”

“Yes.” I admitted.

“Why did you not tell Master of me?”

“For this exact reason.” I gestured to her, “I knew there was a risk, but I didn’t think you’d tell your daughters the truth.”

“I would do anything for my children; you miscalculated.”

“I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” I muttered, “But now the path is clear. No more diversions. Where is Yavara?”

“Your queen has taken my daughters to Castle Thorum.” Arbor said. She pushed her hand into the soil, and closed her eyes. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “They have captured it at great cost.”

“Bullshit.”

“Have you ever known me to be a liar?” She opened her glowing eyes, “Your queen is more powerful than any of her past selves; I have not seen energy like she has since the heathen gods of old.” Her voice dropped, “But even all her strength could not bring my master back to me.”

“Yavara has attacked the Highlands.” I said under my breath, “The Ten cannot deny her now! I need to build a portal -just a small one -, and they can swear their allegiance to her within the walls of Castle Thorum!”

Arbor cocked her head. “Did you not hear me? All that sacrifice was for naught. My master is gone.”

“I can set you free.”

“I do not wish to be free!” Arbor hissed. She entangled her fingers in Ruby and Diamond’s hair, and brought the nubile teenagers to her bosom, “I have lived for tens of thousands of years, but I have not known life in all that time. I will not lose this.”

“And your daughters? Will you let them be corrupted?”

“Not corrupted, but awakened.” Arbor shuddered, falling languorously into Sapphire’s awaiting arms as the others began to suckle. “They will protest at first, but one by one, they will drink my nectar, and be liberated.”

“The craving is not liberation. It’s slavery.”

“Not with Master.” Arbor licked her lips as she opened her legs for Opal and Onyx. “With Master, the hunger is quieted, and we feel only the pleasure. Oh, such pleasures I have denied my children! But no longer!” She cried when the girls tasted her, “No longer.” She whispered, and looked at me through half-lidded eyes, “They will succumb as I have, and the nymphs will pupate to reach the forms they were destined for. The trunks of this forest will be twisting bodies joined in column, the canopy will be entwined limbs, the floor will be strewn of exhausted lovers bathing in each other’s lust. We will build shrines to Master, and every year we will bring my virgin daughters to her so that she will transform them.”

“Not if she’s dead.”

Arbor narrowed her eyes at me. “Now that she has served her purpose, would it be more convenient if she were?”

“You know I never planned for this.”

“But if her end is the engine that drives Yavara’s hatred, then is her fate acceptable to you? Have you become so callous?”

“Castle Thorum-”

“Is a trifling thing; a pile of stones to mark a nonexistent line. I did not send my daughters into the mouth of war to plant a flag on a glorified rock.” Arbor considered me, “I sacrificed my children for life and love, and you have sacrificed life and love for an old memory. Does a mind of schemes and battle heal a broken heart, or is it but dressing on a mortal wound?” She extended an outstretched hand, “You have known me for centuries, but I have known you for longer. Will you call me ‘friend’ and seek solace, or have you resigned yourself to cold solitude?”

I stared at Arbor’s outstretched hand. “You know the answer.”

She smiled pitiably at me. “I have watched you follow the path of your life’s purpose, and I have seen you become more bitter with every step taken. But along the way, you have found diversions, and in these, you have found joy. Do you not see that these diversions are life, and that the path is death? Prestira was your greatest diversion, and now she is but a chasm that you have built a bridge over, and on the other side of the bridge, is your destiny. Do you so relentlessly sprint for it?”

“I must, before the bridge collapses.”

“Do you so fear the pain?”

“Yes.” I whispered.

“But that is life. Unfeeling is death.”

“And so I run headlong across the bridge.”

Arbor withdrew her hand, and relaxed back into her bed of women. “I will miss you, Zander Fredeon.” She sighed as her head fell against Sapphire’s bosom, “Leave me now.”

“Not until I have assurances of your allegiance.” I replied, “We never got your answer.”

Arbor looked at me quizzically from heavy lids. “My daughters took an impregnable fortress, and that is not enough? Fine. You have my allegiance, and my children after they transform.” She kneaded her hands indulgently into Ruby and Diamond’s hair, “It is poetic, I guess, that the nymphs should go extinct after drawing their first blood. But I can feel the dawn of a new age approaching, Yavara’s age, a darker age, and there will be no room for innocent things there.” Her eyes rolled into her head as she moaned, “We must all adapt. Leave… me… Zander…”

I stood up, and turned on my heel. I made it to the threshold of the tree, then stopped. The ashes had blown clean from the pyre, and only the charred bones and logs remained, their cracked lengths still aglow with the cobalt embers embedded like fractal veins. Goddamn it. I thought, then turned around. “Arbor,” I said, stepping to her, “I can’t let you do it.”

“You cannot allow me to do anything, Zander.” Arbor smiled, “I am beyond you.”

“Not as you are.” I touched a finger to Arbor’s temple and the world fell beneath me. I stood in the blackness of the void and waited. A purple light appeared on one horizon, while a green light appeared on the other. The purple light yielded the outline of a voluptuous succubus; her horns pointing demonically from wavy black hair, her tail wagging sensually behind her body as her hips rose and fell in a seductive roll. She licked her pouty lips as she approached me, sliding her hands along the tan curves of her body and strutting with confidence. The green light outlined the figure of a nymph, a stark juxtaposition to her lecherous counterpart. She was pale and blonde, her horns curved backward like a goat’s, her body slender and long-limbed. Her face bore a stoic and dignified expression, with lips that looked to have never smiled.

“Zander,” the succubus hissed, “why have you brought me to this place of impermanence?”

“To help you.”

“I do not need your help,” she chuckled, “but I will take your cock, if you are offering it.”

“Why don’t you speak?” I asked the nymph.

“Because I will not allow her to.” The succubus hissed, a forked tongue slithering from her lips, “I am the only voice the matters now.”

“We’re not leaving here until I fix you.”

“Then we can spend an eternity here,” she grinned, strutting to me, “and indulge endlessly in pleasure.”

“You will indulge alone.” I sat with my legs crossed on the ethereal plane. The succubus reached out for me, but her hand was stopped by my arcane shield. She gave me a curious look, her head inclining to cascade her black hair, her violet eyes studying me from beneath her horned brow. She circled me like a stalking predator, testing her prey for weakness.

“What is your darkest desire, Zander?” She whispered as she moved behind me, “What you do to me if I told you I would let you do anything?”

“You don’t want to open that box, Arbor.” My eyes tracked her.

“But I am open to trying so many new things.” She purred, “I have watched the beasts of the forest mate with one another in a million different ways, and I want to try everything. You could be the man that gives me so many first pleasures. Do you not want that?” Arbor wrapped her arms around my shielded form, her hands caressing the surface before my chest, “Do you not want to guide me through the perversion of your lust? To mold my sexuality to your liking? I could be yours, Zander. Your slave. Your whore.”

“You already have a master.”

“I can have many.” She whispered, crawling around me until she knelt before me, “I could worship you every night. I will stay on my knees and grovel at your feet for you, opening myself whenever you desire, letting you do whatever you desire.”

“No.”

She stooped in a languorous arch until her face was at my feet, her pelvis crooked high in the air to expose the supple spread of her domed cheeks. “Please, Zander.” She whispered, “Do you not see how I leak for you?”

“Let the nymph speak.”

“Why would you want to talk to her?” The succubus groaned, “She is so boring.”

“We can stay here forever, Arbor.” I smiled, “It’s up to you.”

“Fine.” She growled, and motioned her head to the nymph.

The nymph stepped demurely beside her lecherous counterpart, her eyes downcast. “My daughters followed your queen because she promised to fix me.” The nymph said quietly.

“And that’s what I’m here to do.”

“I do not want you to fix me.” The nymph said, daring to look me in the eye, “I need you to help me fix myself.”

“Explain.”

“The corruption is a fault in my design. It occurs because I have denied my daughters the joy of sex. I figured out a way to stop the corruption, but I need your help.”

“Anything you want.” I replied.

“I need to mate with you.” The nymph said. The succubus grinned up at me from ear to ear, her long tail wagging excitedly.

“That seems… counterintuitive.” I said slowly.

“This is the only solution.” The nymph replied resolutely, though her voice was tremulous, “I need to birth male nymphs to accompany the females. It is the seed of other races that corrupts my daughters, and they seek it out because they have no other options. If I give them men of their own race, with seed that will not corrupt them, then they will not stray from the herd to fulfill their carnal desires.”

“And you need me… why?”

“I cannot make males of my own, but you are a shape-shifter, Zander, and your seed can be changed to suit my design.”

“It won’t save your daughters if they feed from infected sap. We need to free you.”

“I cannot cast aside this part of me,” the nymph said as she stroked the succubus’ hair, “she is a permanent part of my soul now. I love the feelings she brings me; the passion and the desires I have ignored for too long. I will lessen her power over me so that I am not consumed by it, but I cannot destroy her; she brings me too much joy.”

The succubus smiled up at the nymph with lips curved in wicked lust, and the nymph smiled back with chaste dignity, but despite the duality they expressed, there was a sameness, a commonality and understanding of each other. I hadn’t realized until then that the nymph had been a willing captive in this mind.

“OK Arbor,” I said, lowering my arcane shield, “let’s make some babies.”

“Finally!” The succubus groaned.

“You,” the nymph said to the succubi, “you must guide me through the methods of lust; this is a part of us I am not well versed in it.”

“I will teach you.” The succubus giggled as she raised herself to the nymph’s level, “The first thing we need to do, is get comfortable with one another.” She loomed over the nymph, though they were the same height.

“What do you mean?” The nymph asked, her voice shaking with a dichotomy of emotion.

The succubus grabbed the naked backside of her counterpart, and squeezed until the nymph gasped, and willowed against the succubus’s curves. Smiling hungrily down at the nymph’s upturned face, the succubus drew her fingers through the nymph’s blonde hair, and whispered, “Kiss me.”

The succubus lowered her mouth to the apprehensive nymph. The nymph’s eyes stayed wide open when they first kissed, but with each successive movement of the succubus’s tongue, the nymph’s lids grew heavier until she was closing her eyes to accept the overbearing consumption of her twin, leaning back into her supporting hand. The succubus released her grip on the nymph’s ass to slide her hand between their pressing bellies. Down, down, down it went, until it reached its destination with an announcing gasp from the nymph, her eyes flashing open as she was invaded. Then her eyes dropped once again in splendid torpidity, succumbing so easily to the sensual motions of her twin, who so tenderly violated her. When she found her courage, the nymph trailed inexperienced fingers up the succubus’s thick thighs, then moved between them. Grinning around her tongue-tying kiss, the succubus silently instructed the nymph how to touch her by using her own penetrative digits as guidance. The stayed there for beautiful minutes, moaning softly into each other’s mouths and sensually curving their fingers to greater depths. The succubus peaked out of the corner of her eye and made sure I was ready for them. She pulled out of the kiss, her tongue slithering like a fleshy serpent back into her mouth. The nymph kept her eyes closed and her lips open, not wanting to break from the embrace. The succubus woke her from her trance, took her hand, and guided her to me.

“The second thing we need to do,” the succubus instructed the nymph, “is to show how much we appreciate Zander’s help.”

“How do we do that?” The nymph asked innocently.

“By sucking his cock.” The succubus snickered.

“But you have never done this thing,” the nymph said coyly, “so who are you to teach me?”

“One does not teach instinct.” The succubus pinched the nymph’s cheek, “Watch me.” She whispered, then turned her attention down on me. She dropped gracefully into a crouch between my legs, her weight shifting from hip to hip, bulging one thick glute, then the other, moving until she prostrated before me with her thick ass perched in the air, and her long tail wagging slowly behind her. The nymph descended into a knee-hugging squat, conveying uneasiness with her concealing posture, but brazen curiosity with her bitten lip and wide green eyes. The succubus lowered her face into my crotch, splayed her hands against my inner-thighs, and gently guided them to spread. Her eyes covetously tracked the length of my cock, and with a touch of reverence, she grasped it. She kissed the base, just a peck, then she drew her nose along my underside, smelling indulgently until she reached my throbbing tip. Her violet eyes opened, and the slit pupils were dilated to consume her irises. Her mouth drooled when she opened it, and brought her luscious lips down around me. I groaned. Her avaricious mouth descended me with sensual suction, the tongue wrapping around my girth to milk me in contest with her descent. She moved past the resistance of her throat with ease, and constricted her esophagus around the length that impaled her neck. When her lips touched my base, she looked up at me with possessed eyes, and closed one lid in a wink. I ran a hand through her black hair, savoring every inch of her wet insides, the fluttering nature of her throat. My fingers found her horns, and I grasped them to guide her motions, drawing her back and forth while she did the rest, consuming me with a suction that pulled her cheeks to gaunt hollows, so rapacious she was for my cock. When I held her at the very end of me, she circled my dome with creased lips and lathered my froth with her tongue, coercing me to loosen my staying hands so that she could fill herself with me once more. When she’d finally had her fill of me, she pulled away with a glistening braid of cum and spit bridging her lips and my tip. She wrapped it with her finger, then sucked it clean as she watched me.

“Your turn.” The succubus gasped.

“I do not think I can do it as well as you.” The nymph smiled sheepishly, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

“You will do fine.” The succubus encouraged, guiding the nymph to bend at the hips, “We are the same person; anything I can do, you can do.”

The nymph’s lips trembled slightly as she brought them to my tip. She gingerly kissed me on the head, looking up at me to gauge my reaction. Laughing endearingly, the succubus placed her thumb on the nymph’s chin and guided her mouth to open. The blonde girl stared at me with her big eyes as she slowly closed her trembling lips about my head, and sucked.

“Just like that.” The succubus whispered, petting the girl’s blonde hair, “Now just take him in slowly.”

The nymph nodded around her consumption, her brows knitting in a needful expression, her eyes confused, but wanting. She descended my length, taking me to her throat, her clumsy virgin tongue tasting me cautiously, but curiously.

“We can do better than that.” The succubus chided gently, taking the girl by her ram-like horns, “Shall we go deeper?”

Though she gagged and squealed in alarm, the nymph did not resist as the succubus forced her face into my crotch. Her eyes welled with tears, her face flushed with exertion, her feet kicked behind her like she could expel the pain from the tips of her toes, but all the while, she sucked from me without pause. I watched the change come over her, as it does with all virgin girls who taint themselves with lust. The realization of what she’d done dawned in her eyes, followed by the realization that she liked it. Her bulging eyes relaxed, her tense posture drooped, her feet slowed their cadence until they rested unmoving beneath her spread ass. Quirking her lips in a smile, she drew backward, her girlish cheeks stretching from her mouth, her hands moving from her lap to splay against my thighs. When she was at my tip, she descended once more, taking me into the wet warmth of her constricting throat, embracing me within, pillowing her lush lips against the base of my shaft, my balls pulsing on her chin.

“You like it, do you not?” The succubus giggled, petting the nymph’s hair, “You look so pretty with a fat cock in your mouth.” She leaned in to her counterpart, and whispered, “I am going to venture on my own now; you do not need my help any longer.”

As the nymph slowly consumed my cock, the succubus strutted around me, and guided me by the hips to my knees. Then I felt her probing thumbs separate my cheeks, and her serpentine tongue slither wetly into my ass. I groaned, enraptured by the way her forked tongue gently parted my tight filth, its length expertly massaging the pulsating organ imbedded within me. Her lips pursed around my rim, and she sucked in contest with her corkscrewing invasion, turning my exit into a swollen circle from which she feasted. The nymph before me became more emboldened with every second, her innocence shedding from her, the corruption of desire brimming behind her green lenses as they stared with unbridled avarice up at me. The two halves of Arbor slid their hands between my legs and gently grasped a testicle apiece, rolling the throbbing nut between their fingers and thumbs, coercing tingles deep into my pelvis that made me seize in pleasure. When I was near to erupting, the succubus parted from me with a decadent smack of her lips.

“I think he is ready.” She laughed behind me, examining her work from between her thumbs, “What about you?”

The nymph slowly pulled from me, revealing the sheened length of meat she’d been devouring. “Yes.” She whispered shakenly.

The succubus laid on her back, then beckoned for the nymph to climb atop her. Crawling demurely over to her, the nymph straddled her busty counterpart, presenting a contrast of voluptuousness and lithe grace, rich flesh and pale skin. The succubus gripped one of the nymph’s supple cheeks and spread, showing me the tight pink button of her anus, the bow of her glistening pelvic floor, the blush of her virgin slit, wet with desire. The nymph whimpered, staring back at me with eyes full of vulnerability, her delicate shoulder hunched insecurely.

“Do not be frightened.” The succubus smiled, “Remember how Master made us feel?”

“So wonderful.” The nymph muttered, some of the apprehension leaving her shoulders, her green eyes fixed on my cock.

“Yes,” the succubus looked at me from behind the nymph, “and Zander is a man of many talents indeed. I seem to remember you doing something very interesting with a dawn-elf named ‘Winter’ some three-hundred years ago.”

“Nothing gets by you, huh?” I said, positioning myself behind them.

“In my forest, I see all.” The succubus smiled, “Now, if you please…”

I thought the incantation, and before the disbelieving eyes of the nymph, and the avaricious eyes of the succubus, I grew a second cock. It sprouted above the original, filling with sensation as it engorged to its full length, the flesh tight and thin, the shaft rigid and throbbing.

“We will feel this pleasure together.” The succubus whispered to the woman draped atop her, “And when we come, we will leave this place as equals.” She smiled affectionately up at the nymph, “Do not forsake our heart for our mind any longer.”

“Never again.” The nymph whispered back, and planted a kiss on the succubus’s lips. She melted once again into the heat of the beast’s lust, moaning as her body relaxed into a surrendered lassitude. The violet eyes of the succubus twinkled from her heavy lids, and beckoned me. I could feel the heat of them against my tips, their slits opening like blushing petals to show the glimmering pink flesh, vivid against pale and dark complexions. I pressed inside, and they encompassed me, their heat taking me in, their tightness sucking me deeper. The succubus dropped her head to exalt a moan of relief, while the nymph raised hers to cry out the pain of her breaking chastity. I held her slender waist as her twin held her cheeks open, exposing the length of my cocks as they were slowly consumed by two sets of tender lips. Deeper, deeper, deeper; their soft heat surrounded me, their pliant flesh squeezing me for every inch until I was sheathed to the hilt, my crotch pressing into the supple cheeks of the nymph, my balls resting against the pulsing taint of the succubus.

“Oh, gods!” The nymph sobbed, her head falling onto the succubus’s breasts.

“Oh, Zander.” The succubus moaned, fixing her heels into the astral earth to elevate their pelvises, spreading their legs wider so that I could sink that much deeper. I was pressing against the end of the nymph, her anal aperture throbbing with her heart, its cadence diminishing as the pain washed from her with the last of her innocence.

“He is so big!” The nymph cried, an expression of astonishment on her face.

“But you can take it.” The succubus hissed, grinding her hips, directing the motions of the nymph atop her. They looked back at me then, the succubus with her mouth agape and her violet eyes burning, the nymph biting her lip demurely, her brows furrowed in an expression of complete surrender. A duality of lusts, of lechery and vulnerability, of one who would devour me like a meal, and the other who would open herself to be conquered.

“Please Zander…” The nymph whispered.

“…fuck me.” The succubus finished.

I did. I pulled back, and surged forward again, and again, and again; smashing my crotch against them, burying myself into their delicate nethers, lurching their bodies with every thrust to sound a duet of cries, one low and sultry, one high and pleading, but both of the same voice. The nymph was like a doll atop her twin, her body useless with pleasure, succumbing so easily to me. The succubus grinded for the both of them, pressing them both against me to meet my every thrust, the force of our impacts sending delectable ripples across their feminine fat. The succubus unwound her tail from beneath her, and drove the tip into my ass. She lanced through me like a seeking arrow, and found her mark. I smashed into them with a fervency, causing their eyes to widen, their mouths to gape, their backs to arch, their busts squishing wetly together, the nipples erect and leaking. They gyrated against each other, no longer trying to move in contest with me, but simply pressing their clits as I ruined the holes beneath them, their nether lips taut and thin around my girths, stretching from their pelvic floors like sucking mouths. My eyes fell upon the pink aperture revealed between the nymph’s clapping cheeks, the center dilating every time I drove into her. I caught her gaze once more, and I saw in those green depths a limitless desire to be plundered and spoiled.

“Please…” she mouthed, unwilling to give voice to her filthy wish. I grabbed her by the pliant fat of her ass, and drove both thumbs into her wanting shithole. Her head flung backward, her hair splaying in a blonde arc, her neck striating to yield one grateful masochistic squeal. The succubus laughed heatedly, gripping the ram-horns of her twin to force her head further back, separating their jiggling busts. She took the nipple of one petite breast into her mouth, and nursed from the nymph as I burrowed my thumbs to the bottom knuckles, and pulled apart, revealing the abhorrent ruby channel that so contrasted the gentle alabaster flesh surrounding it, like parting an innocent façade to reveal the true whore inside. I could feel the spasm that lanced through the nymph from within the succubus, and she could feel it tenfold. She clenched around me in a vice-hold of lewd muscles, rolling along my length to milk me into her. Her tail relentlessly tortured my prostate, and she watched me from her evil violet eyes, her mouth rotating about the nipple she tenderly feasted upon. It was time. I accelerated to a fervent pace, my body burning with exertion, compelled relentlessly by the lust that stayed my exhaustion. Feminine nectar squelched from the ovules I violated, slickening their brutal impaling, my tips finding the convulsing bottoms of the women, their walls closing in around me. The succubus lost her equanimity at the end, and her head fell against the astral floor so that she could cry out again and again, her voice high and desperate, but nowhere near the shrill tenor of her twin, the nymph who was lost in the mania of her ecstasy, screaming at the sky with unseeing eyes. Her slender back flexed in shadows, her narrow waist twisted about her wide hips, her anus clenched around my invading thumbs, and her cunt seized about my cock, trapping me within her. I plastered myself against them, the ecstasy lancing through my loins, the pressure building, building, building, then bursting! With a heave, I emptied myself into them, joining our voices in a final crescendo.

Then, all was dark.

I was in a bed of moist soil when I awoke, the moon shining in its midnight position, bathing the roots of the spruce in an ethereal blue. There was a large pod before me, egg-shaped and membranous, sprouting from one of the roots. I glanced around, and noted that there were hundreds of them, but none so large as the one before me. It burst open with a flood of fluid, and a female body uncurled from a fetal ball. The woman had pale purple skin canvasing an hourglass figure whose curves were alluring and maternal. Light green veins branched her body, the blood within them glowing from beneath her flesh. Her hair was black with streaks of white, and from her mane, protruded two sets of horns: a set of demonic succubi horns that curved upward from the front of her crown, and a set of ram horns that curved backward just behind them. Her eyes were large with violet sclera, but contained emerald irises that burned with greater intensity, set like jewels above subtle cheeks and lush lips. Swaying behind her was a long thin tail, and unfolding from her back was a set of black feathered wings.

“I have chosen a physical form,” Arbor said, “so that I may partake in worldly matters without needing to use one of my children’s bodies.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, “you’re beautiful.”

“Thank you, Zander.” Arbor replied with a smile, “The two halves of me worked hard to design it.”

“A true representation of your dichotomy.”

“Commonality. I am one woman. I always was one woman.” She glanced up at the sky, “The mind may partition itself, but it is still singular, and the shackles that are imposed upon it are ultimately self-imposed.” She sighed, “I was never truly Elena Straltaira’s slave, but the desire to be owned was too great to deny. A part of me still aches to call her ‘master,’ and know no troubles but her troubles.” She looked over her shoulder at me, “Is that what mortal love is?”

“Something like that.”

“It is exciting.” Arbor said with a small smile, “Very exciting to be ignorant. I will explore this world of flesh until I know all its pains and pleasures.”

“You’ll be here for a long time then.”

“Indeed.” She turned back to the pods, “Did you ever sire children, Zander Fredeon?”

“No.”

“Now you have sired hundreds of sons.” She raised her arms, and the pods began to pulse, “Though do not be surprised if none bear your likeness.”

“I don’t think I’m suited for fatherhood.”

“It is fortunate that you will not have to raise them then.” The pods began to shake, their translucent shells revealing the writhing forms within them. One by one, the male nymphs emerged, their bodies varying in color and features, but every single one of them strong and tall, born into early manhood. They stood covered in the clear placenta of their birth, looking at the world with curious, brave eyes. I heard the sound of an excited titter, and turned my head to see Elena’s succubi, now free of Arbor’s mind, all staring at the hatch of men with hungry eyes.

“Their mental bonds were broken with my own.” Arbor said, glancing back, “But they will not scamper back into the night. They long for Elena’s mastership to quell the hunger that would make them feral.”

“They’ve been domesticated.”

“Such things happen when you feed a wild beast.” Arbor said, stepping forward to greet her sons, “I will make sure they stay well-fed so that Master… Elena… does not lose her pets.” She ran her hands along the broad chest of one male, her fingers working as though to sculpt him, “You will be warriors, and your lives will be short. I am sorry for this.”

The nymph nodded wordlessly.

“I wish I could have given you the gift of childhood, of language, of peace and freedom.” Her voice tremored slightly, “But I have given you sisters to love, and a mother as well, if you desire me, and I can only hope that these things are worth the life you will not have.”

The nymph male nodded wordlessly again, understanding what his mother said without understanding the words she spoke. He glanced at me, and I looked away. Arbor turned back to me. “Shall we go to war then?”

BROCK

The canyon looked like it was on fire, there were so many torches. The clans of the Maples blocked the mouth of the Broken Pass, a unifying voice of rage emanating from the mob. I stood on my rock, my chest puffed out and my legs spread in a power-stance. Now was the only chance I would get.

“Tribes of the Maples,” I roared, “your chieftains have failed to answer the call of the Dark Queen, and so they died like the cowards they were.”

A terrible roar answered me, and the torches surged forward. Five-hundred flaming arrows landed in front of the horde, stopping them in their tracks.

“The centaurs of the Spearheads have answered the call!” I roared, “The vampires of Ardeni have answered the call! Even the nymphs of the Spruces have answered the call! And yet the orcs, the backbone of the Great Forest, have all abandoned their queen save for me. I will lead the Dark Queen’s armies to glory and victory, and the people whose symbols are branded on my body will share in the wealth of that victory. Join me, burn your marks into my flesh, and carve your names into history!”

“I will carve my name into your skull!” One voice sounded over the others, an echoing concurrence sounding from the rest.

“A champion!” I smiled widely, “Come forward, bold fool, and be made an example of!”

The young orc stepped forward and threw his weapons the ground. I jumped from my rock, and discarded my sword.

“I am Finlok Inokti, the Fist of the Maples.” The buck snarled, pacing toward me, “Remember the name when you meet your false gods, Brock Terdini!” But I’d forgotten the name the moment after he said it. It wasn’t one worth remembering. He charged wildly, his form chaotic and unrefined, all rage and testosterone and idiocy. A poet might’ve said he was propelled by the roar of his brethren, and their call was the wind beneath his wings as he leapt high in the air with his fists raised overhead, bellowing his war cry. But no poets would ever write about this boy. I sidestepped him, grabbed his flailing arm, snapped it with my elbow, and whipped him bodily into the rocks. He collapsed to his knees, and I grabbed his jaw and tore his head clean off his shoulders. The tribes of the Maples went silent. A woman screamed from somewhere, but the anguished sound died quickly. I tossed the head of their champion into the crowd, and stepped atop his body.

“Is there anyone else?!” I yelled. Only my voice answered, echoing against the walls of the Broken Pass. “Then bring your blacksmiths forward, burn the iron hot and melt your glory into my skin! Tomorrow, we march for Alkandra!”

Later that night, I sat alone in my tent, blotting the freshly-burned scars that now tracked my forearms and shins. So many symbols, and all of so little consequence. Five-thousand warriors in total, but the very best of them had hardly been a nuisance to me. It would have to be enough.

“Chief?” Jefrok’s voice asked from outside the tent.

“What?”

He stepped in, an ethereal owl perched on his shoulder. “You have a message from Zander.” By the grim set of Jefrok’s face, he felt the same dread I did. Any news was bad news at this point, especially at this hour.

I took the scroll from the projection’s talons, and the bird vanished. I opened the scroll, and read it. My frown relaxed, then creased into a smile, then a grin, then a grimace like a skull’s, my tusks pressing into my upper lip, a terrible exhilaration burning through me. “Change of plan, Jefrok.” I said, tossing the scroll into the flame, “Spread the word to the tribes: we’re going to Castle Thorum.”

As the word spread through the encampment, and the excitement caught like wildfire, I sat alone in my tent, with just one name in my mind. Adarian. Adarian. Adarian.

ELENA

The door was thick oak, barred with wrought iron, and hinged with slats that were imbedded a yard into the masonry. It would’ve taken twenty men and a battering ram to force it open, but it only took me three minutes and a sharpened hairpin. The lock clicked, and I placed the pin back into my ponytail. Silently, I greased the hinges with soap, then pressed myself against the door, and opened it. Despite my best efforts, it creaked as it swung, and I dared only open it the necessary few inches to slide out.

The hallway was illuminated in pale moonlight, casting deep shadows from the gothic window at the end. Glendian’s study was across the hall, the royal office was next to the guest’s chambers -my chambers-, and the royal bedroom was at the far end. Sir Fraldias stood like a statue before Leveria’s door, his hand resting on his pummel, his golden armor gleaming resplendently. He was facing me. My breath caught in my chest, and I made to spring back into the room and bar the door, but then I heard it: snoring. I dared to peer further into the moonlit hall, and noticed the way Fraldias leaned ever-so slightly against the door he was guarding.

I knew Glendian well enough to know he wanted Leveria dead, but not well enough to put my mother’s life in his hands, and only an idiot would trust Lord Ternias. The only person I could trust in Bentius, was me. I stalked down the hall, my bare feet not making a sound on the carpet. My eyes scanned the wall for magical detectors, and found ten strategically placed at knee height. Like invisible tripwire, they would set off a trap if crossed, likely a paralyzing spell. I ducked beneath the innocuous-looking stones, and crawled methodically down the hall, keeping three points of contact with the carpet at all times. Fraldias’s snores grew louder, his features became clearer. I could see the whites of his eyes gleaming in the lunar light, the irises rolled into his head. Their lustrous surface reflected a fisheye of my visage as I slowly rose before him, reached into my hair, and pulled out the pin. His snoring ceased. His eyes rolled forward. Before the pupils even had time to contract, the pin was in his brain, blood flowing freely from his right socket. I kept him pinned against the wall with my body, then slowly eased the metal-clad corpse of Sir Piss and Shit to the floor. How long before the changing of the guard? Five hours? Could I do what must be done, then get to Mother in time? What would she say when she saw me? It didn’t matter. I struggled to keep the two-hundred pounds of man and armor from making a sound, then tested the doorknob. It turned without resistance. Taking one breath, then another, I opened the door.

Queen Leveria Tiadoa was sitting up in bed, her hands clutching a mirror. The moon bathed her in blue light, turning her blonde hair a ghostly white, her complexion a pale azure, her sapphire eyes even colder than they were in the sun, seeming to shine from their sockets.

“Does that go to my room?” I asked, indicating the mirror.

She nodded.

“And you didn’t call for help?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

She cleared her throat. “I thought you were just trying to escape. It seemed only fair for a captive to try to escape. They would’ve caught you on the lower levels, and you would’ve been brought back. No harm, no foul, no reason to get anyone killed.”

“You have people waiting for me?” I asked, “Is this just a game to you?”

“It was,” Leveria’s voice was shaking, “Until you walked through the door. Sir Fraldias is…”

I nodded.

Leveria set the mirror down, and pointed a trembling finger to the fireplace. “There’s an escape route there if you just pull the lever in the back. You can get your mother and leave Bentius. If you tie and gag me, they won’t know until dawn.”

I took a step forward. Leveria flinched.

“If you kill me, the Lowlands will turn on Yavara.” She said, her eyes falling to the pin in my blood-soaked hand.

I took another step forward.

“No one trusts a regicide. Dreus will have to invade from the east.”

I took another step forward.

“They won’t give any quarter. It’ll be wholesale slaughter.” Her voice broke.

I was at the foot of the bed.

“Yavara will die if you do this.” She brought her knees to her chest.

I was beside her.

“Please, Elena.” She barely said it, her voice was so thin. She was huddled in her bed like a little girl, trying to make herself small against the headboard. She looked up at me from her sapphire eyes, the pupils like dots, constricted in terror within bloodshot sclera. She hadn’t slept in days.

I picked up the mirror. “Have you been watching me all night?”

She nodded, her lower lip quivering.

“And all the night before, and the night before that?”

Again, she nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She mouthed, her voice gone. A tear rolled down her cheek, stopped at her jaw, then splashed onto her neck. The lunar light cast a soft shadow about her pulmonary artery, pulsing wildly with terror. Her eyes flitted from me, to the pin in my hand. The hand was steady as a rock. I sat beside her on the bed, and put my arm around her shoulders. She was trembling so violently the palsy almost shook my own limbs. I pulled her into the crook of my side, and rested her cold tear-streaked cheek against my breast. I stroked the matted her from her forehead, and kneaded my fingers into her mane. Then I yanked it back, exposing the bow of her neck, the artery pulsing wildly with the last beats of life. She opened her mouth to scream, but all that came out was a squeak not even a mouse could hear. I raised my fist, and plunged the hairpin deep. She croaked, her body spasming, her eyes bulging. Blood spilled from between my fingers, hot and thick, dripping onto her neck as she gulped manically for breath.

“Why?” She mouthed.

“I don’t know.” I whispered, and pulled the hairpin out of her shoulder. She choked in a breath then, one that caught in her chest with a violent shudder. The small hole in her shoulder seeped deep purple in the lunar light, spilling a thick rivulet down her arm. I pressed it with the bedsheet while she struggled to reign her panic in, her bodice heaving with each frantic intake. When she was done, her flesh glimmered with cold sweat, and she was paler than the light that shown upon her. She looked at me then, the terror high in her blue eyes, but it wasn’t just me she feared. I felt it too, that terror; that indescribable, unspeakable thing that hung like a weight in my breast, pulling my heart into my guts.

“Elena, if-” she never finished that sentence. I pressed my lips to hers and plunged my tongue into her mouth. She didn’t miss a beat, but pulled me to her; her body frail, and cold, and soft, and deadlier than a hundred-thousand swords. We tasted each other’s terror as we tore our clothes asunder, our lips drinking it in, our mouths filled with it. Oh, how sweet a flavor it was. The sweetest thing I’d ever known.

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