Queen of the Dead Fortress

Borrum's voice brought him sharply back to reality.

"Cleric, what do we have to fear, here?"

Nathaniel forced himself to think. "If the door opened that easily, there may be others here - orcs or even worse, although nobody has yet known about anything worse surviving."

"Magic?"

"There may be traps," Nathaniel admitted. "But I would not be able to detect them." But even as he said that he knew he was lying.

The entrance-way to the fortress Graskan was empty and clean. Not even any dust on the floor. There were several small and one large exit, and they took the large one. There was no map for the fortress that anyone had ever found so they were guided by hunches and, sometimes, by randomly tossing a coin.

They worked their way up, never relaxing or lowering weapons and never finding a light source until they had climbed what they estimated as being nearly to the top of the battlements and they finally found a room that was not empty.

The roof was covered in some form of glass and let in pure, clean light. There was a throne at the far end, but the room seemed too small and modest to be a throne room for Wizards.

The walls were carved, not smooth, and there were suits of armour and racks of weapons around the entire periphery. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed, but there were the skeletons of armoured men strewn about the floor, weapons clean and bright clasped in skeletal hands.

There were five more exits from the room, none of them covered by a door or by a hanging.

"Spread out," Borrum said, in an uncharacteristically hoarse voice. "Cover the exits."

Moving with unexpected discipline, those closest to each exit did so, none leaving themselves too exposed but each five members of the party managing to tear their gaze off the room.

The others began to step cautiously through the space, staring in wonder around them, all feeling the skin-prickling fear of magic that had made men wait so many centuries before daring to investigate any of the remaining fortresses of wizardry.

Only Nathaniel stayed where he was, locked in place, staring into the room, not entirely sure where he, or his body, were. His hand crept up to his neck to clutch at the necklace through his clothes and his lips began to form syllables that he had never before uttered and never before imagined as he read out the spell from the scroll, whispering phrases that had not been pronounced correctly since the mage-war which had ended the reign of wizardry and destroyed half of the fortresses.

There was a moment, after he had finished whispering, when he felt balanced on the edge of a precipice so high the clouds and the eagles drifted far below him.

Then Doman, who had ventured closest to the throne, screamed.

All eyes whipped towards him and were in time to see him shrivel and desiccate, skin shrinking over bone and muscle evaporating, in just a heartbeat turning from a powerfully built fighter into an ancient mummy.

Then he collapsed, dust puffing from his crumbling joints as what had been a skeleton released its grip on his ankle and rose from the floor.

She had the body of a rich sultan's dancing girl, slim-hipped, large-breasted, wide-waisted and long-legged, her skin flawless and tinted olive and most of it exposed.

She wore a red cloak shot with silver and gold threat and fastened about her neck with a brooch in the shape of intricately entwined serpents.

Her hair was almost to her waist and held off her face by silver combs above each ear.

The only other thing she wore above her waist was a fine silver chain attached at each end to two gold rings, one piercing each full, fleshy nipple.

Bracelets and bangles hung heavy from each wrist and ankle and her fingernails were long. A band of fine silver mail wrapped around her hips, descending from a heavy gold chain about her waist, but her shapely legs were barely covered and her feet, painted with flowing patterns, were not covered at all.

She laughed like breaking glass, lifting her arms to admire her freshly animated form, flashing a smile filled with sharp, pointed teeth from a face that was crafted for beauty but wore a mask of cruelty.

A ranger's arrow struck her directly between her breasts and was gone, leaving no trace of its existence.

She laughed again, pointed a taloned finger at the ranger, and he vanished in a pillar of white fire that burned for half a heartbeat and then was gone, leaving only fine ash and the memory of a scream.

Borrum, who was not in her line of sight, whipped a dagger out of his belt and Nathaniel, even across the room, recognised it with the clarity of the newly awoken as an artefact, a dagger made and enchanted to pierce spells and destroy defences.

The cleric had not once imagined that he did not, alone, possess all artefacts carried by the expedition.

He also saw, as Borrum drew back his arm to throw, all that had happened to him.

He saw the enchantment that had slowly woven itself about him since the orcs attacked, he saw the spell laid on him by the scroll and the necklace.

He saw, even further back, the long years of waiting of the Wizards' Malefitorium, a book more powerful than ever imagined, as it had been passed down through the men of a family naturally gifted in magic until one day it would find itself in the hands of one able to return it to a home.

He saw all this and realised he had been a mere puppet since his birth and had been directed over the past week without a thought for his own desires or whether he may even have been a useful ally instead of a body to be used and then discarded.

He saw that and he saw also the full horror that awakening this fortress would be and he raised an arm and, with a flick of his fingers, drove wakefulness from Borrum's mind and made him slump senseless to the floor, the artefact dagger dropping from his fingers unthrown.

Nathaniel had seen even more. He had seen his family's birth as offspring of a Wizard, and would see his birth-right regained.

The woman turned to look at him, smiled even wider, and purred "I, Elconcelj, have a husband again, at last."

Horror had seized some members of the party, caution others, but at this Avisha's self-control snapped and she gave a shriek of rage, a long knife leaping into her hand as she herself leapt not for the woman but for Nathaniel.

She had barely even moved before the skeleton in front of her leapt to its feet and easily blocked her knife on its sword.

The battle was short and hopeless. The skeletons could not be killed, merely destroyed piece by piece.

Only G'mor, the largest member of the party, who wielded a battle-axe in each hand, had any success, his axes smashing straight through the skeletons, shattering arms that tried to block and sending pieces of bone scattering everywhere. But even he succumbed to weight of numbers.

Those thieves or rangers who tried to flee, to find a better battle-ground, were trapped in the complete darkness of the fortress corridors and butchered.

Only those who tried to stand and fight were not killed outright, and even some of them perished.

Of the heroes only E'layor, who chose a circular shield and long curved scimitar, and G'mor survived.

Of the thieves, only Avisha and Carak lived. Borrum did not regain consciousness in time to take part in the fight and was the only one not wounded.

Of the rangers, none survived.

The woman laughed again when G'mor was finally felled by a blow to the helmet from a monstrously tall skeleton wielding a mace in one hand and a sword in the other, and Nathaniel finally felt the last vestiges of enchantment fall off him.

He waited as the woman walked towards him, absolutely certain that he could feel destiny unfolding about him.

"You came," she purred, reaching out and parting his clothes like water down his chest, the fabric falling to either side to reveal the necklace, ruby glowing brightly, where it rested on his skin.

She didn't touch it, placing her hands on his chest instead, palms over his nipples and fingers spread. He felt his sexual drive, that had been suppressed through years of study and single-minded pursuit of this moment, awaken with the rush of a burst dam, making him stagger backwards, the world suddenly bright, clear, and limned with silver light.

The woman giggled and pushed forwards against him, the rings through her nipples pressing into his flesh as her hands moved to slide his tunic and jacket off his shoulders, the chain between her breasts cold yet burning into him.

Then he had his back against the wall and they were kissing, hard, Nathaniel's lips bruising while her hands worked at his belt and pushed his pants and his under-clothes off his hips.

He was already hard, impossibly fast, and he braced himself while she lifted herself up, let his shaft slip between her legs and dropped onto him, the fine mail around her waist bunching up between them.

He howled into her mouth and bucked up into her, thrusting with instinct and no skill while she rode him with skill and design, the ruby around his neck glowing bright enough to shine through his closed eyelids and the rings and the chain on her chest burning fiercely into his, searing her presence into his heart.

He came violently and copiously, shooting into her tightly clenched tunnel while she held him until he finished and slid down the wall nearly insensate, slipping out of her still hard.

She stood for a moment, looking around the chamber at the patiently loyal skeletons, the bleeding, dead and unconscious intruders and the throne she had not seen for a millenia and more, and nodded in satisfaction.

#

Nathaniel awoke in a luxurious bed, with sun shining through a glass roof above him and fine silk over and under him.

For a moment he stared about him in shock before remembering, then his face was split by a grin at once childish and fierce. He threw off the sheet above him and walked naked across a floor strewn with rugs towards the only other furniture in the room, a huge standing wooden dresser.

Before he could open it a voice interrupted him.

"I hope my husband slept well?"

He turned to see her standing in front of a door he had not previously noticed, wearing a woven gold belt about her hips, a diaphanously sheer piece of silk hanging from it to her ankles and no cloak, leaving her bare save jewelery from the waist up, heavy breasts sitting easily on her chest. The rings in her nipples, and the chain between them, gleamed bright.

Looking at her, Nathaniel felt himself grow hard again.

She looked at this and laughed, delightedly.

"Is my king ready to service me again?" she asked, teasingly.

Nathaniel grew even harder as she glided across the floor towards him, hips swaying from side to side.

He swallowed in a suddenly dry throat. "I am king?" he asked.

"You are my husband," she replied as she drew near to him, looking him directly in the eyes. "You are my king."

He felt elated, a fierce joy at having reached a life goal that was only ever vaguely there in his mind.

She reached out and cupped his testicles, squeezing them gently, making him shudder and groan.

He was filled with a sense of power and of potential. He could sense not just her hand on his genitals, as she began to massage his shaft, but her heart beating inside her chest and the fortress Graskan around them, ancient and empty.

He stretched his chest and felt a strange sense of something else stretching at the same time - something connected intimately with the magic and the stones of this place.

As she placed both hands upon him, cupping him with one and stroking with the other, he failed to notice the connection between desire and knowledge as she dropped to her knees before him, opened her carmine lips and slid him between them.

He braced his knees and felt the fortress around him, beneath him, and in a strange way inside him even as she took him deep inside her throat.

As one hand constantly massaged his balls, the other held him securely at the base of his shaft while she slid him out of her mouth, swirled her tongue around his engorged head and sucked him back into her throat, swallowing him until her nose touched his belly.

As the pressure pooled in his loins he felt himself on the verge of a revelation, as though the fortress had something to tell him, if he could only listen in the right way.

He shuddered as she drew his shaft slowly over her pointed bottom teeth and probed the head with her tongue.

As he felt on the verge of a breakthrough, as though there was a great secret he would understand if he could only concentrate on it hard enough, she gently squeezed his balls harder and sucked him to the back of her throat and he groaned, shuddered and came as she quickly pulled him out of her mouth and let him spend himself on her chest, his milky seed splashing onto the inside slopes of her breasts.

As he gasped to a finish, somehow not losing his footing and falling backwards, the sense of impending discovery faded and was forgotten.

She rose gracefully to her feet, his seed glistening wetly on her perfect skin, and kissed him, sliding her tongue possessively around his mouth.

"You need to be dressed like a king," she said, pulling him towards the dresser and throwing the doors open.

When they left the room he was wearing white silk robes shot through with gold threads, and gold sandals. She had insisted upon threading an engraved silver ring over his cock and his balls and the pressure was giving him a permanent erection.

"We can't have you unready, ever again," she had said with a bright-eyed giggle.

She had not cleaned his sperm off her chest and it glinted wetly.

His robes did not close over his chest and a large expanse of skin was bare.

As she lead him through the fortress corridors, a glow from the stones themselves the only light, he couldn't keep his eyes off her figure. He had lived his life in a small village and in cloistered colleges, but even he had been exposed to women, dressed and nearly so, and there had never been, in his experience, anyone to match her perfection.

As she turned a corner he caught a glimpse of the side of her breast, swelling from her body proud and full, and the constant erection from the ring around his genitals ceased to be a distraction and became something to glory in, to draw power from.

At the same time he saw the connection between the magic of the fortress and her impossible perfection and when they entered the throne room he was walking more upright, his belly flatter, his chest fuller, his skin stretched tighter across it.

When she stopped and turned around she surveyed him for a second and a satisfied, proud gleam entered her eye and her tongue flicked across her lips for a bare second.

"This is the throne room, she said, opening her arms and gesturing expansively about her. "From here, we could rule the world."

The space was huge and sat under an arched ceiling of pure crystal, formed in one single sheet and untouched by the centuries.

At the far end, a raised dais rose five steps from the floor and on it were two massive, ornately carved thrones side by side.

Around the walls were more suits of armour, most of them empty, and racks of weapons of all cultures.

"Trophies," she said with a satisfied smirk, following his gaze.

"Trophies from all the lands and armies conquered by this fort!"

She raised her arms and twirled, laughing delightedly, the chain between her nipples whipping out.

Nathaniel walked into the room slowly, gazing around him with wonder and a little awe as Elconcelj stared at him expectantly.

He approached the thrones slowly, feeling a tingling mix of fear and excitement running through him.

Unseen behind his back, Elconcelj's predatory grin grew wider.

As he gazed at the thrones he felt a return of the tingling sense of imminent revelation he had felt in the corridor, knowledge on the edge of his brain and seeping through as impulse and instinct.

As he slowly neared the thrones, oblivious to anything else in the room, he found himself drawn inexorably towards one of the apparently identical stone chairs. He could not explain why but he found himself standing in front of that one throne and knew absolutely it was meant for him.

He turned and lowered himself into it, feeling the centuries-old stone match him perfectly.

He blinked, waking up from the verge of a dream or, perhaps, settling back into it.

Elconcelj was standing in front of him, almost close enough to touch, with a half triumphant and half triumphal expression on her face.

"It suits you well, my lord," she said, staring at him with bright, hungry eyes. He settled back, the stone as comfortable as a feather bed against his back, laying his arms along the arms of the throne, feeling inside him the strength and arrogance of the fortress.

Impulsively, he said "come here," and swept his robes away from his still rigid shaft.

She only needed a step to stand directly in front of him. She knelt with her knees against the base of the throne, leaning towards him with her hands sliding along his legs.

Her heavy breasts pressed into his groin and were squeezed around his shaft.

His seed on her chest had not dried at all and lubricated him as she squeezed her breasts harder around him and slide further up his chest, sparkling eyes fixed on his.

She dropped her head and kissed his bare skin, then slid her tongue down his flesh as he felt his cock grow even harder with the wet pressure of her breasts sliding down it.

Her mouth reached the head of his cock and engulfed it, sliding easily down over him until, incredibly, he was embedded deep in her throat without quite understanding how.

She pulled back and off him, licking her lips as she left him clean of his seed but wet with her saliva.

She pushed his knees together and, spreading hers, straddled him, sliding forwards until she was pressed against him, squeezing her breasts and the hard chain between them into his chest as she pressed her mouth onto hers.

She lowered herself straight onto him without needing her hands, settling him deep inside her with her knees fitting perfectly into the throne.

He felt so deep inside her there could not be any space left, but when he experimentally pushed upwards he felt a shift inside her before his head pressed into her limit.

She groaned, her eyes fluttering, then whispered "Let me do the moving, my lord."

The throne didn't seem made for the occupant to take an active part in proceedings. As she began to move on, over and around him he settled back and luxuriated in the feel of her heat and firm flesh.

She squeezed him deep inside her and his mind felt itself lift, the sensations from his body becoming no less real but a background to what he was really feeling, which was the fortress Graskan.

For the first time, sitting in the throne of the lords of the fortress, he felt its true extent as it squatted on top of the mountain, spreading over the rock but also tunnelling deep into it, an organic structure with roots spreading deep underground.

He could count the number of rooms and know which ones were most bathed in the life magic of the fortress. He knew how many servants had been awoken and how many remained dead, waiting upon him to fully realise the strength of his magic and recall them to his service.

Elconcelj lowered her head to his nipples and his consciousness expanded again, this time reaching out of the fortress and into the forest and the rock, realising how the gardens which once had surrounded the fortress had died and over time had all trace of their existence removed by decay and weathering, and he resolved to return them to their former glory.

He felt his body near completion and his consciousness returned to it. He felt Elconcelj, feeling him about to explode inside her, begin to withdraw to spend him on her belly, and he clamped his hands down hard around her waist.