Palace of the Amazon Queen

"Indeed, but you've made heavy use of the latter and little of the former. I do not mind our time abed," he put his hand on hers and made her stroke him between his legs, "but I am first and foremost a sorcerer, and a lady's amusement second."

"Then show me your powers of sorcery. Summon for me a catspaw that will rid me of this arrogant queen."

Nabolazur sighed and idly stroked his plaited beard. "Are you set upon this path?"

"I am. Are you going to do as I asked, or shall I get the knife?"

"Very well. I will do your bidding."

At last, the sorcerer accepted the offered robe and put it on. "Follow me," he commanded in an insultingly imperious tone as he strode into the next room. There, he seated himself beside his traveler's chest and drew out a heavy book bound in brass and leather. He undid the clasp and laid it out in front of him.

"We will find the answer in here," he announced. He opened the book, and the first page was covered in a foreign script Lahuzzar did not read nor recognize. The sorcerer ignored his curious stares, instead pouring a deep blue powder into three bowls. He then called for boiling water and began to brew a sort of tea for himself. When at last the tea was steeping, he turned to the next page.

Lahuzzar peered over the sorcerer's shoulder at the book. One page showed a monstrosity with the head and arms of a man, but the body of a viper. Nabolazur turned the page and Lahuzzar's eyes were immediately drawn to the image there, for it was of a beautiful woman, seated in the nude with a pair of bat wings unfolding behind her. Lahuzzar felt his pulse quicken and his cock grow hard beneath his kilt. She was so beautiful, so alluring, he dared to hope that the sorcerer was about to make her come real. Lahuzzar wanted to bed with her more than the queen.

But alas, the sorcerer turned the page again. This time, Lahuzzar felt himself recoil in disgust. The page showed another monstrosity, a grotesque mockery of man and beast. It looked up at him with eyes of cruel hunger, long talons dripping with blood and viscera.

"Yes," Mother breathed over Nabolazur's other shoulder. "That one will do."

Nabolazur smiled. "Step back. This will be dangerous and I would hate for either one of you to get hurt."

Their allotted time for bathing passed quickly and soon enough the Amazons rousted Bromm and the men from the pool. Serving men appeared with jars of sweet-smelling perfume, which they applied to the men with impassive faces. Standing naked in the palace courtyard as a dozen or more Amazons watched, Bromm felt increasingly awkward. In addition to the guards and servants in the courtyard, more faces peered from doors and windows around the courtyard.

Turning his eye to his companions, he could see they were both alike. All three of them were tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-haired, with thick beards. There, Bromm found the most difference. Broceld, the Wildman, had a beard that was as wild as he was, hairs extending in every direction as if he were a cat struck by lightning. The Varayazdhi man, Phrahat, as he had bemusedly introduced himself, was at the other extreme. His beard was well groomed and oiled, plaited and curled with expert care.

"Come," Pythira ordered with a wave of her hand, and guards fell in around them as she led them from the courtyard naked. They passed a gaggle of serving men and three Amazons watching with amusement and Bromm realized how many times he had seen such a scene before, but instead it had been with himself watching nubile beauties being led to the palace or brothel suite of some fabulously rich pirate lord.

They entered a hallway fit for a queen, with richly colored tapestries on the walls and a roof carved and painted to show an Amazon warrior hunting seawolves from the back of a hippocampus. Looking down at his bare feet, Bromm saw that the floor covered in a many-paneled mosaic of an Amazon story he did not recognize. Pythira stopped at a tall set of double doors made from ebony. With both hands on the bronze door handle, she hauled one door open and directed the men to enter.

Bromm was the first to enter the queen's chambers and found it opulent enough to be any of the pirate lords' mansions he had been in. The walls that were not hidden by tapestries were decorated with garishly colored frescoes. The floor was made of varnished panels of tropical darkwood, while the stone ceiling, supported by painted red columns, was itself painted with a beautifully rendered scene of an Amazon queen being crowned by a divine figure who could only be Torthun, the guise that Arvoran wore among the Amazons. A great chandelier of gold and brass hung from the ceiling, its arms sculpted to look like tree branches that held flowering sconces where the burning candles were set.

The far wall of the chamber was pierced with doors and set with cabinets both large and small, made from both woods native to the Amazon Isles and more distant sources, such as the tall armor cabinet made from white elden oak from the elven forests primeval.

The doorway through which they had entered was flanked by two guards in polished silver cuirasses and plumed helms. Two more stood guard ahead of him, behind a set of couches and low tables set with gold and silver objects studded with gemstones.

At the center of the grand chamber was a canopied bed with velvet curtains and silk sheets, and in the middle of it knelt Queen Kannitara, her knees spread apart and her eyes dancing with delight. The queen was naked but for her golden crown, her hands cupping a pair of large, firm breasts that hung from her toned chest. Her olive skin was oiled and glistened in the candlelight and her dark gold hair hung loose about her shoulders. Her sex gleamed wet with oil, the close-cut hair above it darkened by the wetness. She smiled as the three naked men entered her bedchamber.

"Welcome, playthings," she whispered in a sultry voice heavily accented with the lilt of the Amazons. "You have done well, Pythira," Bromm heard the queen say. Her speech was a strange dialect of the Amazon tongue, perhaps one unique to high courts, but Bromm thought he understood well enough. "Beards on all three of them. I like beards."

Pythira crossed to the queen's bed and bowed. "As you commanded, my queen." She was stiff and stone-faced, but the queen ignored her discomfort.

"Who should I take first?" she wondered aloud, her eyes wandering over each of them. Phrahat and Broceld were still stroking their cocks to get hard, so the queen's eyes settled on Bromm. "You," she said with a pointed finger. "Pythira, ensure that the others are ready for me when we are finished."

With a sigh, Pythira stepped between the other men and put a hand on each of their cocks. Bromm paid them little mind as he stepped past them to the queen's bed. She beckoned to him and indicated that he should lie down with his head facing away from the others. She then mounted him with her future bedmates in full view while she rode.

She straddled him with his cock in her hands, her golden crown and its jewels gleaming in the candlelight. Bromm felt as if the world was at his fingertips. She stroked his cock three times, then lowered her sex onto it. Her pink flesh swallowed his cock eagerly, and Bromm lay back as he sank deeper inside her. The queen moaned softly as he penetrated her. She planted a hand on either shoulder and began to ride, her wide hips grinding sensuously on his own and her big breasts bouncing in time with her motions. Bromm watched them with fascination, his hands holding the queen's wide hands and ample ass.

The queen stared ahead at Broceld and Phrahat, who were now standing with their hard cocks in their own hands. They watched the queen's riding with great interest, hardly needing to stroke their own cocks anymore. Yet Pythira stood there dutifully ensuring that her queen's playthings would be ready to sate her desires.

Bromm put them out of his mind and turned his attention back to the queen. She was riding harder now, her head thrown back in exultation. He grabbed the queen's breasts in his hands and began to fondle them. The queen merely smiled at his fascination and Bromm thought of Turasi and her bemusement. The queen's were bigger and firmer, but he found them equally delightful. Kannitara sat back on his cock, bracing herself with hands on his knees and she bounced atop him.

He matched the rhythm of her riding with his own thrusting up into her, feeling the smooth softness of her silken sheets on his back as much as the smooth softness of her silken sex on his cock. Bromm sat up, pulling the queen in so that he could kiss her breasts. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders as he showered her tits with kisses, spreading his legs wider so that he could continue to penetrate deeply into her. She shoved him away suddenly, pushing him back onto his elbows as she rode him vigorously and let her tits bounce freely. The queen moaned with pleasure as she did, her face flushed and her brow dripping with sweat.

Bromm pulled the queen close again and clasped her to him in his arms, then rolled her over onto her back. Her crown came loose from her hair and fell onto silken pillows, but the queen paid it no notice. Instead, she smiled in delight at Bromm's fucking, her big breasts heaving with each stroke of his cock. She lay back and released him from the embrace. So released, he propped himself up on his fists and watched his cock thrust in and out of her. He felt himself building to a climax and increased his vigor, hearing the slap of flesh on flesh echo about her grand bedchamber.

Bromm looked up to Pythira, who stood impassively stroking the cocks of Broceld and Phrahat, then to the four guards, who stood equally impassively, except for one younger woman who sneaked a curious look at Bromm out of the side of her eye.

Bromm often enjoyed fucking for an audience. It was a common activity in the brothels of Torvuls and other ports, done out of voyeuristic exhibition as often as out of necessity in crowded debauches. He thought of his crew, still whoring themselves out at the docks, and what they would think if he could see him fucking a queen of the Amazons. He remembered a night at the Black Lotus with its most expensive courtesans, as his crewmen crowded around to watch her perform. It was only the most memorable of many such nights in brothels from Sostrum to Jalara.

It was such experiences that were in his mind as he fucked and drew closer to coming. He felt the cum rising in his cock and embraced it. It was why the queen had summoned him, anyway. It shot out of him before he could think to control it, filling up the queen's warm sex with sticky seed. Bromm thrust several more times as he slowed his pace, then he dismounted and sat cross-legged next to her. The queen sat up on her elbows, looking to Bromm, then over her shoulder to the next two men.

I've come in a queen, Bromm thought. Add that to the list. He looked down into the queen's eyes. She lay sweaty and satisfied on the silken sheets, beads of perspiration dripping down her face and chest. The queen idly played with one such bead of sweat as it rolled onto her breast.

Out in the hall came a thud and the sound of something metal clattering to the floor. Pythira rolled her eyes in exasperation, but the queen was uninterested.

"Who's next? Perhaps you, with the curly beard. What is your name?"

"Phrahat, your Grace," he said, stepping away from Pythira with his hard cock in his hands. "It is my pleasure to serve, especially one as beautiful as you."

Then, from just outside the door, came a terrified scream, a great crash, and a roar that set Bromm's hair on end.

Kannitara swore in the Amazon tongue, Phrahat cursed in Varayazdhi, and Broceld's eyes went wide with surprise. "What the fuck was that?!" he gasped.

In answer, the doors shuddered under a mighty blow. All inside stood stunned in silence. Bromm clutched a silken pillow to his chest, still breathing hard from his exertions atop the queen. The door shook again and broke apart. A terrible black clawed hand reached through and fumbled about for a hand hold. It was thrice the size of any hand Bromm had ever seen, the Garexian giant he exaggerated for his tavern tale included.

Another hole was punched through the other door by a second hand and two evil yellow eyes peered through the gap. The second hand reached through the newest aperture and linked with its mate. Together, the great clawed hands tore the doors off their hinges and into the room stepped a creature of nightmares. It crouched as it slipped through rent portal and extended itself to its full nine feet as it drew into the queen's bedchamber. Its skin was mottled and black to dark gray, with a wet and leathery look to it. The monster walked on two legs, with two long black arms swinging low beside it almost to the floor and dripping blood as it walked. Blood dripped down its thick, bloated torso. Grotesque feet, webbed, clawed, and tracking blood and some terrible, otherworldly mire with it as it walked, carried it slowly and inevitably forward. Between its legs swung a hideous bloated imitation of a man's cock, hard like those of the men it hunted. On the creature's back and thighs, Bromm could see bumps like those of a toad. All of which made sense when he saw the head.

Two yellow, slitted eyes flicked about the room from a massive toad's head. The monster's head was split by a wide mouth festooned with horrible, razor-sharp teeth stained with blood and matted with the viscera of someone unfortunate enough to meet it up close. The terrible yellow eyes flickered across first the Amazons, then Kannitara's would-be lovers, and finally to Bromm. The monster let loose a sibilant hiss and Bromm felt his legs shake underneath him.

With a mighty roar that shook the walls around them, the monster seized one of Kannitara's door guards about her head and flung her into the floor headfirst. She struck the floor with a terrible crash, her cuirass striking the wood and ringing like a terrible silver bell. The other it seized in its massive, clawed hands and squeezed tightly. She squirmed its grasp, her arms and spear pinned uselessly. Bromm saw the trapped spear flex in the monster's grip.

The other two guards rushed forward with spears and shields readied, but they were too late to save their companion. The monster's fist clenched tighter, and with two terrible cracks the spear snapped in half and the Amazon warrior's form went limp in its grasp. The monster flung his latest victim aside and bowled over one of the onrushing Amazons with the corpse. The other struck home with her spear, carving a white wound across its left leg but failing to pierce its leathery hide.

Pythira ran from the bed toward the armor cabinets at the back of the room, while Broceld ran screaming in terror. Phrahat fell back in fear, his eyes frantically searching for a weapon. Kannitara hopped up from the bed and backed away in terrified consternation. Bromm cursed himself as he fought to move himself to safety or the attack. Anything was better than sitting uselessly on the bed.

The monster batted aside his attacker's second strike and lunged forward. One great clawed foot came down on the prone Amazon's head. She screamed a death cry and then spasmed underfoot and went still. But the monster paid her little heed. Instead, its eyes went to the fleeing Broceld and its toothy maw unhinged.

From its mouth shot a long, sticky pink tongue that struck Broceld square in the back and wrapped itself around him. The Wildman shrieked in terror as the tongue retracted, yanking him violently across the room and into its mouth. He went in headfirst, his naked legs flailing about as the terrible jaws closed on him in a spray of blood and spittle, and the legs went limp. The remaining guard took an involuntary step backwards in terror.

At the same time, a terrible stench began to pervade the room, seemingly emanating from the monster's mouth. It was sulfurous and acrid, stinging Bromm's eyes and nose. He could see the wavering guardswoman physically shake off the assault on her senses.

The monster gulped and Broceld's legs disappeared down its gullet. Kannitara's last guard caught hold of herself and used the distraction to ram her spearhead into the monster's armpit. The point drove home, and she twisted, her face a mask of determination and fury masking absolute terror. Black blood boiled oozing from the wound and fell to the floor, where it sizzled and crackled on the wood. The toad creature let out a strangled cry of agony, no doubt choking on the unfortunate Broceld. She discarded her shield to put both hands on her spear as she pushed it further into the monster's flank, but it turned on her in a fury.

Its tongue lashed out again, wrapping itself around the guard and immobilizing her completely. The monster's clawed right hand flashed, and the brave guardswoman was quite literally torn to shreds. But in an act of good fortune, her sword and scabbard, still attached to part of the belt, flew to Phrahat, who caught it by the hilt and drew the blade.

He held it in front of him in a fencer's stance, staring down the monster. Its toad head shook slightly back and forth as it cleaned its claws of the guardswoman's remains and brushed the mangled mess aside with one toe. Favoring its injured side, the monster lumbered toward Phrahat.

Bromm, still crouched on the bed in a state of blind terror, was jolted from his catatonia by an arrow that flashed just past his head and struck off the creature's thick hide below its eyes. It stopped, those terrible yellow eyes locking in on the archer, who Bromm saw was Pythira. The Amazon had opened her queen's armory cabinet and armed herself with the royal bow and a quiver of arrows. She already had another arrow knocked and let it fly.

This time, the creature ducked low, and the arrow stuck into a thick tapestry behind it. But the shot was not entirely in vain, for Phrahat lunged in and struck the monster's bony knee with his blade. He broke through its flesh and the sword struck bone. Thick black blood oozed from the wound, but the monster was undefeated. It reached down with its good arm and closed one hand around Phrahat's neck. He flailed about desperately, but the monster's grip was iron.

Another arrow struck home, just below the creature's eye and riding up its thick hide to skip off the yellow orbs hard enough to leave a mark. The monster shrieked in pain, batting at the injured eye with its injured arm, which only made it more pained and more angry.

That was the end of poor Phrahat. The monster lashed out with the hand that clutched him, slamming his repeatedly into the ground. The wooden paneling cracked under the onslaught and somewhere in the flailing, the man went limp in its grasp.

The queen, at last stirred from her stupor, ran to the armory cabinet as well and armed herself with a spear and sword. Still naked, she threw the sword to Bromm and shouted "Get up! It's already wounded, now let's kill this demon!"

Bromm jolted into motion as the blade landed on the silken sheets in front of him, staining itself with a pool of the queen's sweat. He grabbed its jeweled hilt as the queen rushed past him into battle. The broad, straight blade was beautiful but unfamiliar, and Bromm found himself wishing desperately for his enchanted saber, now stowed away somewhere known only to the Amazons.

Another of Pythira's arrows streaked past him, sticking into the monster's leathery neck as it lumbered forward toward the queen. Bromm cast his thoughts aside and leapt from the bed, sword in hand. The queen was already engaged, her first spear thrust batted aside by the monster.

Kannitara stabbed at its wounded knee, but the monster grabbed at her with its long arms and drove her back. Bromm's charge carried him into its reach and he ducked underneath its flailing claws to deliver a blow to its injured knee. The monster turned its attention to him and its tongue lashed out again, narrowly missing him and striking the floor with a sickening wet slap. The stench emitting from its mouth became even stronger, nearly overwhelming even his sailor's nose. He felt himself gag, but fought down the urge to vomit, as did the queen. She twirled her spearhead again, dazzling the monster before she slashed at its claws.