In the Name of Entropy Ch. 01

author's note: This story contains strong elements of rape/nonconsent, but is still primarily fantasy. If noncon is not your thing, this is your warning.

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Queen Keliana woke up one morning and saw her first gray hair. Then she decided to declare war.

It would be done by the books, of course. Assembling her armies and marching them out would be expensive and obvious, and the only neighboring kingdom worth sacking—Dajar—would see her coming miles away. They'd have enough time to mount a defense, and both armies would get caught on the road somewhere in the middle. It would be a bloody, boring mess.

You had to do these things properly. She went to call the king of Dajar.

She pulled on her robe of silver and scarlet. Dajar's colors. She let it hang open a little in the front, her full breasts teasing the silky fabric. Gray hair or no, she was the most beautiful Queen in this half of the world, and one of the healthiest ladies at court. On the surface, she was any other beautiful blonde woman in her mid-twenties, with the exquisite care only available to the absurdly wealthy. In reality, she was sixty. The gray hair meant it was starting to show. She was running low.

Her crystal mirror stood on her balcony, looking toward the sunlit plains that spread across her kingdom: Hivra. It was a vital kingdom, lush and healthy and prosperous. Its last few wars had gone very well. Keliana knew how to negotiate, and when it came down to sheer numbers, the Hivrain were simply...better.

The crystal was shaped like a person; like her, and Jioh, the King of Dajar. She tapped it, and its unheard frequency ran across her kingdom. The crystal called to its sister in Jioh's chamber. After only a few minutes, he answered.

"Keliana," he said. "What an unexpected pleasure. If only all my mornings began this well."

He was half-naked. His chest looked sculpted out of stone, light brown and lightly scarred from the few times he'd engaged in war. Keliana was not immune to it. She felt some stirrings herself.

She allowed herself a smile. "My dear Jioh. I'm afraid the time has come to issue a contract."

Jioh's smile dimmed but didn't vanish. "Another war, so soon? You haven't gone through all your Phenian wine yet, have you?"

They laughed. Pheni had been a small trading country between the borders of Hivra and Dajar. Easy enough to ignore, but they had been so insistent on remaining neutral when Hivra needed to expand its borders. And its vineyards had been so beautiful. And they'd needed the entropy...

Pheni was nothing, now; and its entrocite veins had kept Keliana young.

"I'm diminishing," the Queen said. A lie, mostly. An exaggeration. "My entrocite stores are running low, and without a proper war, I'll run out before year's end. I need a big one. Not some conquest of a winemaking little hamlet. But a clash of titans."

Jioh's nostrils flared. "You want to invade my kingdom. You want to fight Dajar."

Keliana laughed. Waved her hand the way young women do. Let her robe slip a little more. "Of course not, darling! I'm not going to invade you. But the entrocite on the roads between our kingdoms has replenished, because we've been at peace for so long."

Jioh shrugged. "You use too much magic, Keli."

I could use it to wipe you from your balcony if you call me Keli again, she thought. But that would be foolish, and unprofessional besides. "Be that as it may, dear Jioh." She put the honey in her voice, gave him a full look of her sea-blue eyes. "What do you say? Full-scale campaign, take all the entrocite, split it sixty-forty towards Hivra?"

"Fifty-fifty."

She frowned. "But Hivra is bigger." Bigger, smarter, better-trained, she thought.

Jioh folded his arms. From his lean, muscled stature, she could see his erection in the crystal's magical projection. Maybe morning wood? Unless he was enjoying himself as much as she was. "Fifty-fifty, Keliana."

She'd expected as much, so she'd asked for higher. But she sounded very put out. "Oh, very well. I will have my scribes write up the contract, but do you mind if we hurry this one up? I really need the entropy."

Jioh bowed, almost mockingly deep. "Of course, your Majesty. If Hivra wants a war, then a war we shall have."

—

Jioh turned off his crystal. He grinned, but didn't want Keliana to see it. After a moment of thought, he summoned a servant to bring him proper clothes.

Hivra wanted a war. Of course they did. Keliana was hungry for conflict. Entropy powered her crystal magic—and Dajar used its fair share of it, too, he had to admit. But he was smarter than her. He'd rationed it, knowing the only big fish in the area was Hivra, and attacking them unprovoked was suicide. There had never been a good reason.

But now...

The servant girl arrived and Jioh pulled on his coat. "Thank you. Now bring me the witch."

The servant flinched. "Really, Master?"

"You heard me."

Entrocite crystals grew underground, all over the world. They fed off the despair around them, grew fat on it the way Jioh imagined Keliana did. He could see her gorging on the magic, inhaling it like a drug. He pictured that mouth of hers, and her tits... But she would never let him close enough to have her. Ever since contract wars had come into fashion, Kings and Queens rarely met on the field of battle. Jioh missed that. The feeling of power over another commander in the field. The look in their eyes when they knew they'd lost. Or better yet, when they kept fighting. That was when you truly knew a person.

He wanted to see that on Keliana's face.

His guards brought in the witch. Her name was Enva, and she was the deadly kind of beautiful he'd heard about. Slender and shapely, with long legs and dark hair. And those eyes, those burning orange eyes. She stood before him with her hands bound behind her back.

Jioh went up to her. "So. You're the last of your kind."

"Yes, Master," she said, softly. He liked that.

He slid his hand into her robes, grazing the soft flesh of her breast. She bit her lip but otherwise didn't react. "They tell me you're the real deal. That you can smell and track entrocite."

Enva nodded. "Yes, Master."

He kneaded her breast. He stood in front of her and unfolded her robes, and cupped both of them. She gasped, slightly. "Do you seek freedom from me, witch?"

"Above all things," she said, her eyes bright as dying stars, "Master."

He laughed. "I like your spirit. And I like your body." One hand trailed down, into the lower robe. He squirmed under the waistband and between her legs. Enva reflexively pulled away but he pushed further, and found her slit in the lower folds of her robes. She winced.

"I live to serve," she said.

"Good," he whispered. "When I captured you, I told you you would have a choice: serve me here, or serve my kingdom. That choice comes now."

Just like that, he pulled his hands away. Left her robes hanging open and stepped back. "We're having a war with Hivra. I need a third general, since I lost mine when we took Pheni. Queen Keliana has instigated this one, and we're fighting back."

Enva squirmed, but could not adjust her robe so it covered her pale breasts. "We're engaging in combat with the Hivrain?"

Jioh shook his head. "No. Normally, we would skirmish a bit, do as Keliana said, and I would lose a few thousand of my soldiers to her fighting. We'd reap the entrocite and share it, and we'd leave each other alone for another generation or so, and everything would be fine."

Enva nodded. "Until she decides to do it again."

Then he smiled. "Exactly. But this time, we have you. This time, we're going to mine the entrocite before she can. And then, we're going to take Hivra."

Enva raised an eyebrow. "That would mean war on the villages between here and Hivra. It would mean superior tactics to make up for your lacking army."

He didn't let that offend him; it was true. "It would," he agreed. "We need the despair to fatten up the entrocite, and we'll be killing off a lot of valuable farmers and traders. That's why it has to be one big push. Straight through the path to Hivra. Taking them for everything they're worth, and then the capital itself. And the Queen." He realized he'd been raising his voice. He realized he was hard.

Enva noticed this, but didn't comment on it. "And Master wishes me to be a general in this war."

Jioh nodded. "You will be my weapon of greatest destruction." Then he unfastened his pants. "But first, you will suck my cock."

—

Broad and Clay had known it would be a dumb job, working for the mayor. But Fal insisted. And once she insisted on a thing, that thing was done, so the boys went along with it.

She stood there in the mayor's house, hands nervous at her sides, with Broad and Clay on either side of her like grunts. Their fourth, Estoc, was in the town proper, taking her sweet time interviewing the locals.

"Right," the mayor said, looking at Clay. "Lord Nobright's got land over the town's biggest, most important bridge. And he ain't letting no one through. Says there's a war coming through soon, and so he's taxing everyone who wants to use it."

"So order him to lower it," Clay said.

Broad was quiet, as usual. Thoughtful.

"I did, obviously," the mayor said. "He won't budge. I told him, there's no war. Hivra just had one not a year ago, and we're still living fat off those spoils. He's being stupid. So I need you to go there and scare him into it."

Fal frowned. "Why is he so sure there's a war coming?"

The mayor was mayor-shaped. Balding, fat, with resplendent clothes that would be thrown out as soon as they saw a single loose thread. He put his hands up like Fal was the dumbest thing he'd ever seen, and her question came in second. "Hell if I know. Says he can smell it in the air or some shit."

Clay chuckled. "The entropy, he means. You can smell it if you've been in battle long enough. He means he's having a bad feeling. Probably a flashback to the last war."

"Great," the mayor said. "Whatever. Look, you're the mercs. This is the job. Get him to lower the bridge and I'll pay you double your usual wandering rate."

Fal thought about this. She looked at Broad, who had been silent since they got there. "What do you think, Broadsword?"

Broad paused. Then, "The guy's name is Nobright?"

Clay laughed.

The mayor was not amused. "It's an affectation. He's not bright, but he's one of the richest landowners in town. It's a nickname. You think he'd share his truename with me?"

"We're named after swords," Fal told Broad, like this wasn't much better. "Probably not so dumb." Then, before the mayor could really lose his temper, she stepped forward. "We'll do it. Double the rate, as you said. Just in case there really is a war coming."

"Pah!" the mayor spat. "Bloody contract wars. Can't see how much more magic Queen Keliana could possibly want. But yeah, fine. If it opens the place to trade again. Just get it done."

The town of Mindan was a small, riverside place, some miles east of Hivra's capital. Its people were nestled in the shadow of Queen Keliana's rule, her magic, her protection. Hivrain soldiers could be stationed there in less than a week, if an actual invasion occurred; but of course those hadn't happened in years.

Fal could see what the mayor meant. Mindan wasn't significant, but in the event of a war, its bridge over the river could mean an army passing through in minutes or days. Going down the hills and over the water would be suicide, if the bridge wasn't lowered. Not to mention the traders who came through from Dajar.

"Where's Estoc?" she asked.

Clay gestured to the end of the street, where the market was. "Making friends."

Estoc was, indeed, attracting yet another unwanted advance. She was tall and slender, like the sword at her hip. She carried herself with the utmost grace, and even Fal had to admit, she was basically stunning. Good thing she was the best rapier fighter she'd ever met, too, or they'd be in real trouble.

A young man had cornered Estoc on the edge of the market. Had the hulking posture, the leery grin. From their distance, Fal couldn't make out what he was saying, but Estoc didn't like it. He reached out to grab her ass, and she grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and had him writhing on the ground in seconds.

"Okay," Fal said. "She's fine. Let's go talk to Nobright."

"Jealous?" Clay asked. "I could grope your ass, too, if you want."

Fal just laughed it off. Men always thought women were jealous of beautiful women. Fal was curvier, had larger breasts and thicker legs, and had never apologized to anyone for it. She also handled her falchion well enough to fend off anyone who got too grabby. So it all worked out.

"Tell you what," she said. "We make as much money as the mayor promised from this job, you can grope whatever you want."

Clay grinned. Stepped up to her and slid his hand up her chest. "As if you'd stop me anyway?" He squeezed through the leather.

Fal bit her lip, smacked his hand away. "That's enough, you."

They stepped apart and laughed. She'd never slept with her teammates, but Fal loved to tease the boys. And Clay had always had her back when the fighting started, so she had no reason to think that would change.

Broadsword, on the other hand, merely raised his eyebrows.

One day, Fal thought, I'll get a real rise out of him.

—

Estoc looked at the man squirming on the ground. Put her boot on his chest. "What have we learned?"

He hissed. "Fucking bitch."

"Nothing, I guess," she said. "A pity." She stepped off him and continued on her way.

So far, she had interviewed two noblewomen, one innkeeper, and a handful of merchants. None of them seemed unpleasant or uncomfortable. All of them were quite taken with her, which she was used to.

Not one of them shared the feeling she felt. That tinge in the air. That familiar sensation, that she thought she wouldn't have to smell for some years yet...

Someone had signed a contract, and started a war. And the winds of war were blowing their way.

Estoc found the town's military barracks easily enough. It was pathetically small, which made her heart sink. But they were still Hivrain soldiers. The best in the world, depending who you asked. Certainly if you asked them.

She leaned on the waist-high fence outside their main building, smiled at the man on duty there. "Hey, soldier."

He winked at her, nodded. "Hey there, sword."

"Oh," she said, impressed. "You know my trade."

"I know that rapier," he said. "Or, actually, I think it's an estoc. Classy blade, and not Hivrain-made. Means you can handle it well. Means you also don't care if a Hivrain guard notices you're using a foreign weapon." He smiled, slow and lazy.

Estoc felt a flush of heat between her legs. Sword-talk always got her hot and bothered. "And you're just using the standard long?"

"Very long," he said, winking. He tapped his hilt in its scabbard, not bothering to remove it from his hip. "Yeah, we keep it simple. Haven't had much need for a real weapon in a while. Just to break up the small brawls."

"Mm," Estoc said. "So what'll you do if there's a war on?"

The soldier chuckled at her. "Get a notice from the Queen, first of all. She wouldn't declare anything without telling her territories to get set up." But he thought about it. "Then, well, I guess we'd be off to some Dajari village. Get to watch them take us with their machetes and rusted blades."

"Maybe chase off some farmer's daughter," Estoc suggested. Still smiling.

The soldier licked his teeth. "I make no apologies for what happens in war."

"Of course," she said. She debated telling him, but figured, why not?. "I'm a veteran, myself. Three campaigns."

He nodded, slowly. Suddenly respectful. "Very good. And you're still that pretty?"

"I don't lose," she said.

"Would you like to lose some time with me?"

"Only if you can tell me what year my estoc was made."

That got a laugh out of him. She saw the glint in his eyes, the hunger. He'd been given a challenge, and that challenge led to getting laid. So of course he'd try to guess. No one ever guessed correctly.

But he didn't have the chance. Before he could speak, the door to the barracks opened and another soldier stormed out. She was a Lieutenant, already red-faced and fuming.

"Soldier! Where have you been?"

The man jolted. "L-Lieutenant Venna! Right here, ma'am. Guarding the, ah, the..."

She sighed sharply. "Never mind that. We have last minute, and I mean last minute orders. The Queen's signed the contract without informing the Captains. Her people have already shipped out."

Oh, no, Estoc thought. She swallowed. Her hands curled into small fists. In all her years of contract wars, no monarch had ever been that foolish, that greedy.

The soldier went pale as well. "So...so what does that mean?"

Lieutenant Venna just sighed. "It means General Hellroth is going to be here in a manner of hours. And we need to be ready to accommodate him."

—

"Absolutely not," Lord Nobright said. He didn't even get out of his armchair. Fal was surprised he'd even let them come into his estate.

It was, of course, the largest property in town. Three wide buildings over gardens, with actual statues and topiaries. An iron gate, too. Inside was all luxurious foreign rugs, bookshelves twice the height of a man, and ornate portraits commissioned from the finest Hivrain artists.

Nobright didn't seem to care about any of it.

"If there is a war going on," Fal said, "Don't you want to be on the right side of it?"

Lord Nobright wasn't like most nobles she'd met. He was a veteran. His body was lined with scars of entropy, and still they glowed black-purple on his arms and back. Which meant he'd been in the field, maybe even underground, fighting for Queen Keliana in one of her many wars. Fighting so hard to get her entrocite, and none of it left for him.

He saw his kinship with Fal. He at least looked at her soldier-to-soldier. "Lady sword, I've given myself to Keliana's service time and again. She knows me practically by name. And I've been outside, I've smelled it. I'm telling you, there's a war coming. It'll come right through this town. They always do." He leaned forward in his chair, looking at Fal directly. "And this time, I'm going to tell them: fuck off."

"This is bullshit," Clay said, behind her.

"Easy, Clay," Fal said. "Of course it's frustrating for everyone involved." She gave Nobright a sad smile, put her hand on his leg. His eyes roamed her then, only that moment considering her body. She wasn't sure what he thought of what he saw.

Broadsword spoke up. "If there is a war, Keliana will send Hellroth here first. He's the most aggressive of her Generals."

Lord Nobright shook his head. "No way. Hellroth is too important to lose. He's a vicious sunofabitch, which means Keliana will save him for her closing hand. She'll send Barkad first. He's easier to manipulate. Pliable."

Fal stood and folded her arms. "Barkad's also desperately loyal to the Queen. If she gives the order to destroy the town, where will that leave us?"

Nobright looked at her a long moment. Then, slowly, he shook his head. "I'm sorry. But this matters more than the damned wars. It's a statement to the Queen. Sometimes, she doesn't get what she wants."

Outside, on the grounds of the Lord's estate, Fal watched the horizon. It did seem like Hivra benefitted from its wars. The countryscapes were lush and beautiful, like its people. They were healthy and people mostly got along...aside from just about every interaction she'd seen today. If she had to guess, she would have put money on there not being a war.