Hegemony: Beginnings

He pulled, and pulled some more, until all the false flesh simply pulled free, and to his only minor surprise, he found the woman's iron grey hair had been bound to the mask, so that as the pulled, it too came away altogether. Lifting away the pale mask and attached wig, Selios simply dropped them to the floor to study the true face of his would-be mistress.

Rich black hair, lustrous and magnificently thick, had spilled forth when he had pulled away the mask, somehow contained by the mask and wig...it framed a face so exotic to Selios that he struggled to describe it to even himself.

Her skin was indeed dark - and Selio thought it very similar in color to the pastes that Immo cooks made using nuts, dark and richly brown - it was also smooth and firm, signs of youth rather than age, so her decrepit appearance had been a complete lie, she was clearly not old enough to be named 'hag'. At a very basic level, Selio knew she was beautiful by any standard, and felt a stirring within himself as he continued to almost mindlessly gaze upon her features - he had never seen a Tuzarene woman, but he did not think they would be so...perfect, so clearly aristocratic and exotic even in slumber.

He did not know how long he simply kneeled there, beside the bed that should have been his, staring at yet another mystery in a series of them that surrounded this woman. He had not woken her with his actions, but then a sudden gust of wind off the sea shook the wooden shutters, making them clatter noisily, and her eyes popped open immediately...to find him there, so very dangerously near.

Neither Selio nor the woman reacted immediately to this odd situation, but when one did act, it was she who did so. A knife, sharp and well made, she produced from under her pillow, holding it tightly in a hand that was not one he had seen before - of course, it made sense that the pale brittle hands of the hag had been part of her disguise, but he did not see how she could have hidden her obviously more youthful, dark skinned hands in the withered husks of bone and pale flesh that he had seen her using naturally before.

Selio, with a knife before his face, thought of such things, he feared death, as all men did - but she might, at best, leave his face somewhat scarred, and was in no position to threaten him meaningfully. With this in mind, he simply reached up and grabbed her hand by the wrist, and twisted it painfully with his calloused hands.

"You are a bundle of lies and mysteries woman. You will tell me what your purpose is, and by what right you possess Sigils of Authority. It is heresy that a witch might have such, but you have already overturned many of my earlier assumptions." Selio's tone brooked no dissent.

She bit him. Hard.

Snaring his wrist in her jaws, she pushed her teeth into his flesh deeply, deeper than he would have thought a young woman would have had stomach for - and caused him enough pain that his grip weakened for a moment.

That was all the time she needed, springing away from him, she slid off the other side of the bed, kicking the rich blankets onto him as she did so.

Stumbling slightly as he rose, Selio was bleeding - not badly, but the wound did sting, she would pay for that, he would make sure of it - he pushed away the blankets in time to see that she had acquired one of the trophy swords mounted on the wall to pair with her knife.

He also saw her.

She was dressed in some sort of flimsy translucent black silk...shift? It had long sleeves that flared out at the wrists, and a wide, shallow collar that almost reached her shoulders, and revealed the tops of her defined collarbones. The silk then followed the contours of her body closely, not quite hugging her flesh, but tailored specifically to it - eventually stopping very high on her toned thighs, not far from being downright scandalous.

Frankly, in Selio's mind, she might as well have slept in the nude - the silk thing only served to accentuate her figure and her assets, and hid nothing with its translucency.

What a body! His nostrils flared at the sight of it - so this was why she had hidden herself as an obscenely fat old hag, for she was in truth the exact opposite... Firm, young and perfectly proportioned, any man would desire such a woman as this. Her breasts were large, well rounded, and without any hint of sag, large dark aureoles capping each; her waist was cinched and toned, not soft like that of the women he had known intimately, and her legs were long, with wide curving hips and strong, well formed calves.

Selio consumed the sight of her with his eyes, and felt himself straining against the laces that bound up his breeches - the combination of adrenaline from danger and the woman's appearance was a powerful aphrodisiac, and it threatened to overwhelm Selio's senses.

The woman, however, was not apparently in any similar distress - she remained coordinated and capable, holding her two weapons in a posture that indicated that she knew what to do with them. Indeed, she had begun to advance carefully on his position, her eyes locked on him.

Selio mentally shook himself to clear the haze of lust that was clouding his ability to react - and considered his options. Some might consider him a lucky man, assuming he could overpower the woman easily enough - but he had met his share of strong women, one who had broken Bledor's arm in a fight, and cut Selio himself rather deeply, so he did not underestimate this one.

But he was unarmed, and that was a problem.

He considered his option, and chose one that might seem unusual for a man such as himself, but that he had used before - talk.

"You have not answered my question. If you kill or wound me, none here will have any reason to serve you, and will readily kill you. Do you think you will be able to escape here?" His voice was firm, and betrayed a hint of confidence - he had only just realized the truth of that statement.

"Silence oathbreaker, I may not long outlive you, but at least I will have the pleasure of slaying a savage and honor-less dog such as you." Her voice was nothing like before, when it had been gravel and dust, scratchy and ancient. Now it was smooth and rich, with an accent he was not surprised that he could not place. But her tone was steel - and that was no different than before.

His anger filled his words as he roared back at her, "Oathbreaker?! You dare to call me oathbreaker? I have broken no oath, Tuzarene whore! It seems I know the words of the oaths better than you, nowhere must I protect your secrets or serve you as a slave...only guard your person from harm and serve you as an honored vassal for a year and a day, no more!" She spit at his feet. "You know nothing. Tuzarene? You mistake me for a desert barbarian born in a mud hut? You think you know the words of the oath? The pact of the Hidden Guard was written in words of the mystic language of the One Empire Under the Stars, not the vulgar tongue I am forced to speak to you in! Vassal? Year and a day? Your translation is weak, and evidence of your savagery, I own you barbarian! The pact is eternal, do you think the old Emperors would have tolerated limited service from so strong an oath?"

Selio had tired of this, she had exceeded his capacity to argue - she could well be right, that his understanding of the oath's requirements were warped by its passage from father to child, and its translation from ancient Imperial tongues to the common speech of the Kingdom and the other tribes of these lands. He had managed to distract her from her full focus though, and had maneuvered while she spoke.

Reaching behind him, he simply tore free one of the high wooden posts of the bed and flung it at the woman with all the force he could muster - now was not the time to hold back.

She was fast, as he had expected she would be, to make up for the fact that she could never hope to match a man's strength, but not fast enough. She had only begun to duck out of the post's path when it struck her, and though the blow was glancing, the strength of his throw assured that it threw her to the floor regardless. The post had been long but not wide, and had struck her across the shoulder and on her left breast and arm, causing her to cry out in pain and release the sword she had stripped from the wall as she fell.

Selio was on her in a moment, leaping astride her thighs so as to prevent her from kicking or moving much, and the struck her in the abdomen with his balled fist - forcing all the breath out of her. He was then able to disarm her fairly easily, twisting her wrist so she would release the knife, and then tossing the weapon away to the far corner of the room.

So it was, that they lay there, in the deep of night, with the candles that lit the room guttering in the breeze that slipped through the shutters. He astride her, using his weight to hold her still, she, laying there, her chest rising in deep breaths as she refilled her lungs after his strike, her eyes half lidded, watching him.

He was excited. He could feel it so strongly that it hurt, and she had to know it too.

Selio Sagio Sajjhio, twelfth to the name, was completely in this unknown woman's spell - but she was trapped under his strength. Perhaps an unfair trade, but the question remained of who was in the weaker position...

He lowered his face to hers then, using his hands to grasp both her wrists as he bent at the waist to look into her dark brown eyes.

At least here eyes were not alien, deep, dark brown eyes he had seen before...so dark as almost to be black.

She said nothing, not a word, but her breaths grew shorter, and her eyes met his. He kissed her then, pressing his pale, dry lips against her soft, dark ones. He kissed her and kissed her, driving his tongue into her mouth eventually, dueling with hers in time as she responded to his invasion.

He could feel his beard scraping against the flesh of her face as he kissed her, the contact was like nothing he had had before - he felt everything, the press of her breasts against his chest as she took deep breaths between kisses, her hard nipples pressing through the thin silk of her nightshift and the cotton of his tunic...

Finally, they stopped, and he lifted his head up from hers. Both their breathing hard for a few moments, voices silent as they considered each other and the situation.

Her voice was no longer steel when she spoke, but it had a huskiness that betrayed her to him. "I need. Need you to help me. Once... once I could command the obedience of countless such as you, now... I swear to release you and your descendents from the pact. The Sigils give me that power, but only if you stand with me in my journey, my battle. If I die, it is unlikely any other will remain to remember the pact, so you will be free then as well as if I am victorious. I ask for you to do this, will you?"

Her desperation embarrassed him - because it made him harder. "What if I am just an oathbreaker? Why not make you my whore? I could break you, I think, given time...and even if I could not, it would be fun, I think, to cage you and fight you every time I seek to have you."

Her eyes widened - she was tough, but lacked a measure of true savagery, the kind that men such as Selio needed to live through battle after battle. She had no answer for him.

He lifted himself off of her and stood, letting her rise without interference, but he did kick away the trophy sword that still lay near them. As she rose though, in her sheer silk shift, he began unlacing his breeches, and when she had straightened completely - he found to his momentary surprise that she was almost as tall as he - he had failed to notice earlier when she had been armed. In her earlier disguise, she had seemed short - so he had assumed that that had still been true, but he liked his women either way. Smiling, he feasted on the sight of her again, this time spurred by the way lust glazed her own gaze and caused her to let her eyelids half drop...and he pushed down his breeches, letting them pool around his ankles.

Shortly thereafter, he had completely disrobed, leaving himself in the nude before the woman - his erect member pointing right at her. He stepped forward, and she simply stood there, her chest rising and falling, her arms hanging at her sides as she watched him approach step by step.

When he was directly in front of her, he slipped his hands around her waist, and nudged her towards the bed. She complied after a moment, and slowly he guided her until she stood with the bed behind her, and him in front of her... It was a simple matter at that point to push her back onto the bed with a single strong shove, so that she landed with a grunt on the feather mattress, while he grabbed her ankles, and spread her legs obscenely.

Seeing her like that, this strange, exotic woman with such a desirable body...lying on a bed, her legs spread wide to reveal her womanhood to him, spread so wide that her short silk shift had ridden up her thighs and was now bundled at her waist... It made Selios madly lustful, and he simply took her. She was wet, but not wet enough, and his precum was not plentiful at first, so his initial thrusts into her were painful for both, but he could not resist, would not wait. He wanted her now.

And he had her. His thrusts were so frenzied, so needy and powerful that the bed shook and groaned as it bounced off the far wall, and he could feel her squeezing him, her inner muscles tightening around his cock as he rode her like an animal in heat.

He finished quickly enough, the initial lust too much to contain, and he pulled out only just in time to send ropes of his white seed onto her inner thighs, her pelvis, all over her shift and even to her face and hair. Coating her in his release, streams of the sticky substance spattered all over her. Pulling out, he took several long breaths, closing his eyes to bask in the release.

She lifted her head to look at him, sighed, and laid back down as she brought a hand up to her womanhood - clearly to bring herself to the completion he had managed only for himself. He simply slapped her hand away and pulled her legs up so that her calves hooked over his shoulders. He was hardly done.

Thrusting into her newly well lubricated interior, he found himself able to continue at a much more reasonable pace, closing his eyes and enjoying the feeling of being inside this strange female that would simultaneously order him to and fro disguised as a hag, then seem to be a beautiful, exotic young woman and beg him to aid her. He feared that a witch's spell had ensnared his mind, and that he was falling deeper into her trap - but it was oh so pleasant.

She was moaning, softly, but moaning nonetheless - and he hoped that he was at least somewhat in control when he felt her tighten around his cock and shudder as a release hit her for the first time. He smiled slightly, and leaned forward, making her fold under him, her thighs pressing against her breasts as he thrust in and out of her in slow, steady strokes that he dragged in and out of her wet slit.

She was warm and sweaty now, the silk of her shift damp and sticking to her flesh, her eyes were completely closed and her lips parted slightly in an expression he had seen before. At least she fucked like women he had known. Though she seemed, if anything, a bit inexperienced - he had known only whores so far, and even expensive whores tended to have a bevy of experience behind their bed play.

Soon, Selio was trying hard to think of anything but how tight and wet she was, how warm she felt around him and how she tried to hold him inside every time he began to pull out. He was close now to his second release, and he wanted her with him, in truth he wanted her to scream his name - but he wasn't sure he could get her that bothered, or even that she would remember his name except when she had to.

Finally, he could control himself no more, and began wildly bucking in and out of her, and as he did, she began to gasp with pleasure, and he knew he had her then. After a few more powerful and quick thrusts, she trembled and shook as another release took her, and cried out in a tongue he did not know. He took that as his sign, and pulled out of her, and proceeded to spray her prone form with a fresh coating of his seed, though perhaps not so explosively as the first time.

He slumped down on top of her, his head on her stomach, his feet still on the floor. Selio could feel her chest rising under his head, and some of his own seed was now smeared onto his cheek and shoulder and chest where it lay across her wet and oozing womanhood and pelvis.

"Get off me." Her voice was not...unfriendly, but not gentle either. She retained a measure of command in her tone, even now - Selio wondered if the earlier desperation in her tone had been an act, those promises false. He didn't wonder about anything for long, because she pushed him onto his back and climbed atop him, positioning herself so her slit was right atop his face, and her head was situated above his cock.

Selio felt her lips tongue lazily stroke the side of his now mostly flaccid member, and he immediately felt a new stirring. Then she promptly pulled him into her mouth and began to really work on him - her lips wrapping around the head of his cock and her tongue swirling about the tip as she slowly sucked him in and out of her mouth. The sensation was amazing, she seemed reasonably good at this at least, and he found himself starting to return to full hardness as her spit lubricated his entire shaft. Soon, her hands had found begun to caress his sack, and gently massage his testes as she sucked on him. The combination had him breathing hard through his nostrils, and his teeth clenched as he heard his heartbeat in his ears.

He had closed his eyes at some point...and so he was caught off guard when she suddenly mounted him again, using her hands to grip his member and guide him into her slowly. Selio had little to do this time, as she took her own pleasure from him as he had had her before, and he once more heard the bed's wooden frame groan in protest - but from her powerful, rhythmic bouncing atop his cock, rather than from his forceful entry of her.

The smell was overpowering. He could smell her juices and his own, the room was saturated with the smells of their fucking, and he let the experience roll over him as he reached up and gripped the sides of her firm, cinched waist as she drove herself into a frenzy atop him. She wasn't just moaning and grunting now, indeed, she was just short of squealing, and within moments, they were both shaking with the need to release. She slid off of him, rolling to his side, and used her hand to bring him to finish as he slid his fingers past the swollen, flushed lips of her slit deep into her, and brought her to her own climax. She almost tore his cock off then, so tightly did she suddenly grip it as she shook with release.

Selio let sleep take him there, flat on his back on the bed, his legs dangling off the foot of the mattress, with a strange woman lying by his side, coated in his seed.