Queen Yavara Ch. 27

Editor's note: this story contains scenes of incest or incest content.

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TITUS

The sinking sun cast the sky in crimson, illuminating the thick fog of the marshlands in ethereal red, the helms of the Highland army barely glinting through the haze. I watched it through the silk fabric of my mask, the rest of my body submerged in a murky pool. Topographically, this part of the Highlands was not part of the 'high lands,' for it was flat marsh without so much as a tree stump to raise the elevation. The border was drawn after the collapse of Alkandra to ensure that no army from the Tundra could surge into the Highland kingdom without first wading through thirty miles of treacherous bogs and swamp. It worked both ways though, for while one could almost see Glacier Lake from this distance, the elven army was still ten days away. Ten miserable days of wet clothes, unsure footing, squelching boots and rot. Not to mention the parasites. The marshlands were home to the worst flesh-eaters on Tenvalia; mosquitoes, leaches, flies, spiders, snakes, and oh yes, now vampires as well. The sun crested the western hills behind us, casting a long shadow over the army.

"Father?" Ivanka asked beside me.

"Yes Dear?" I responded.

"Is it time?" Tiffany asked from my other side, glancing at what I was doing, "Who's your new friend?"

I stroked the carapace of the foot-long centipede, admiring the size of her mandibles, the clear poison dripping from the scarlet points. Her bite was said to be the most painful in the world, and one of the deadliest. Necrosis would occur within an hour of injection, and if the affected skin was not extracted in time, it would be carried into an artery, and the worst death imaginable would ensue. She crawled up my arm, her hundred little legs stabbing pleasantly into my skin, her antennae seeking, her mandibles clicking.

"I think I'll name her 'Gloria' after my dear mother," I smiled, guiding the creature along my shoulders and down my other arm, "they do share so very much in common." I opened my hand, and the insect crawled down my wrist, and into the moss. The sky turned from crimson, to purple, and the fires began to ignite in the vast campsite. "Now, it is time."

Hundreds of my children moved silently behind me. We took off our clothes and waded through the bog. We ducked beneath the muck and swam through the viscous waters. The task would've tired most beings, but our stamina was limitless, and our hunger great. It had been three days since we'd last eaten. We emerged from the other side, peeking over the bank at our quarry. A patrol of heavy infantry guarded the bank, about thirty strong. I ran my eyes along the perimeter until I found what I was looking for. Firewood couldn't be foraged so far north, and so what they had, needed to be stored, and far above ground in this wet terrain.

Ivanka, Tiffany I called telepathically, Do you see that scaffolding?

Yes, father. They responded in unison.

Burn it down.

Ivanka and Tiffany swam a hundred lengths down the bank, then emerged silently from the water. They slipped from tent to tent, always staying in the shadows the firelight created. The massive wood pile stood in the center of the tents atop a platform, the workers quickly assembling it before dusk faded to night. Tiffany raced around the tents and ripped an unsuspecting worker out of sight. Ivanka silently scaled the twenty feet of scaffolding, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the vision of the other three workers. She got to the top, then rolled a beam off the platform. It crashed onto the head of another worker, spearing him into the muck. The other two held their hands over their head and rushed for cover, afraid that the whole complex would collapse. Tiffany took a burning log from a nearby fire and tossed it to her sister, who tossed it onto the wood pile before jumping from the platform. She landed gracefully on her toes, and both sisters rushed back into the bog without making a sound.

The platform was engulfed in minutes. Every able body ran to the site, forming a frantic bucket brigade and rushing to fill their vessels in the bog. The heavy infantry troop sat and watched, unable to assist in their clunky armor. We swam beneath the murky water until we were right beneath them. I mentally signaled out twenty-nine of my children, and got us into position. There we waited beneath the depths for the right moment when every soldier was watching the bonfire. It came, and we struck. Thirty vampires leapt from the water like breaching amphibians; wet, sleek and silent. Only three elves managed to scream out, but the chaos of the fire yielded no witnesses. We quickly dragged the bodies over a nearby bank, and stripped them naked. We drank the bodies to husks and dumped the shriveled prunes in the water, where pale hands moved like lightening to grab the leftovers and crack the bones for marrow. Those that rested beneath the murk would play a later role, but now was not the time to reveal our hand.

Coming up on your right. Please don't eat me. Zander spoke into my mind. The wizard appeared as an elven scout, his staff disguised as a spear. With a twirl of his fingers and a thrust of his staff, the thirty of us transformed. One spell was a perception incantation to disguise our features, the other was more invasive. My body shrank two and a half feet to a squat five-six, my muscles and bones compressing into themselves.

"Goddamn!" I hissed, testing my fist and feeling every joint pop and crack. My children exclaimed in a similar manner, some of them brought to their knees with the pain.

"You'll get used to it." Zander whispered, sounding out of breath, "You'll need to hurry, Titus; I can only hold that many spells for twenty minutes or so." He produced a wooden box, and opened it to reveal scores of orderly vials. "These are the scents of your targets."

I plucked out three vials, and examined the contents. "You made sure the samples aren't contaminated?"

"I can assure you, they're directly from the source." Zander coughed uncomfortably, "Please don't ask how I got them."

I eyed the milky white fluid in one of the vials. "The things we do for queen and country."

We dawned our disguises and dispersed into the camp. Eighty generals meant around three targets per vampire, but I suspected we'd be lucky if half of us notched our second kill. The first would be synchronized to ensure all thirty were dead before the alarm bells tolled. Everything done after would be improvised. I trusted my children to act at their own discretion. Zander might've been more than willing to throw them away for the sake of a few more dead generals, but I was not.

Remember, I broadcasted, be smart; I didn't choose any idiots to be my children, and I damn-sure didn't choose any heroes.

Yes, Father. They replied in unison.

Droughtius's tent stood at the center of the camp. I wouldn't have known it from the thousands of other canvas tents, were it not for the fully-plated guards. I stopped about three tents away from it, and took a deep breath, catching the scents surrounding me. It was easy to become nose-blind in such a crowded place, and so, much like listening to one instrument in a symphony, isolating my target took some concentration. Droughtius was around fifty-five, in solid military shape, but had poor kidneys and a nasty tobacco habit. I recognized another scent as well: General Polantius, serendipitously having a meeting with his field marshal. I also couldn't help but notice the sour scent of Nadi sap on the bolts of his guard's crossbows. There were ten guards, five outside and five inside. The five inside had their crossbow cranked and nocked, but the five outside favored their swords. I reached into my satchel and found a piece of parchment. I rolled it up into a scroll and tied it together. I took five paces to the guards and stopped when one held up a hand.

"I have a message for Field Marshal Droughtius." I said, proffering the parchment.

"From whom?"

"Confidential, sir."

The guard eyed me with the suspicion he undoubtedly eyed everyone with. He finally grunted. "Well, give it here."

I stepped forward and held out the scroll. The guard kept his hand on the hilt of his sword and reached out with his other to grasp the scroll.

NOW!

I shot forward, gripped the guard's wrist, and tore his arm clean from the socket. Before he even had a chance to scream, I'd drawn my sword, decapitated him, and split the man beside him from crown to crotch. I dashed between the falling halves of the split man, impaled the gawking guard behind him, then twirled around and flung my sword end-over-end at the fourth guard. It punctured his breastplate, caved it in like it was cheap tin, then exploded from his back. The sword carried into the next man, struck him in the crotch, and finished its final rotation by splattering his head with the crossguard. The five bodies hit the ground nearly at once, the whole act taking less than a second.

Too slow. I frowned to myself. I rolled into the tent, shot upright, punched through the helmed skulls of two guards flanking the entrance, and brought their bodies together just as three Nadi bolts twanged from aimed crossbows. The projectile thudded into the backs of my impromptu shields, and I retracted my hands from the mush of their hollowed faces, tore the swords from their scabbards, and sent the weapons spinning like boomerangs into opposite corners of the tent. The two guards there were chopped in half, leaving only the final guard staring down the sites of his crossbow, not yet realizing he hadn't hit his mark. The two bodies before me dropped, the two bodies in the corners dropped, and the guard lowered his crossbow, blinking confusedly at me. I turned to my left.

"General Polantius?" I asked.

The old man mouthed soundlessly at me. I punched a hole through his neck, then turned to my right.

"Field Marshal Droughtius?" I asked as Polantius's head thudded against the table.

The field marshal stared implacably up at me. "I understand you have a message for me."

I nodded.

"And it's from the Dark Queen?" He asked gruffly, his quivering mustache betraying his terror.

I nodded again.

He cleared his throat. "Well for fuck's sake, deliver it then!" He roared, and I tore his head clean off his shoulders. His body slouched in his chair, then spilled onto the floor. Outside, the alarm bells began to toll.

"Are you going to kill me too?" The guard asked.

"That depends," I said, setting the head on the table, "do you have a lot of friends?"

"What?"

"Are you a popular lad?"

"I guess I am." The guard swallowed. "But I won't tell anyone a thing, I swear it!"

"You misunderstand me, my dear boy; I want you to tell everyone what you just saw, and don't be afraid to embellish! I am the greatest artist of death Tenvalia has ever seen! I am a ballerina of blood, a dancer of destruction, a... a..." I sighed, "...a poor poet to be sure. My name is Drake Titus -I'm sure you've heard of me-, and well..." I frowned down at the elven body I was stuck in, "...if you can believe it, I'm actually quite an imposing fellow. Tell your eleven lady friends that I was eight feet tall with jet black hair, eyes like rubies and the body of an Adonis." I thought on that for a moment, "Actually, tell your good-looking man friends as well. Tell them that after this silly war is over, they can find me in the crypts of Castle Alkandra, where I'll be hosting wonderfully lavish parties of the greatest debauchery. Oh, and do make sure to convey how charming I was, will you?"

The guard just nodded.

"Wonderful." I grinned, and patted his cheek. Then I spun on my heel, waltzed out of the tent, and dropped to my belly just before a score of Nadi bolts porcupined me. There was a gurgling moan in the tent behind me, and the sounds of an armored man crashing to his knees, then to his face.

"Goddamn it." I muttered, and sprung to my feet. I caved in one man's skull with a quick jab, snatched his halberd, decapitated another man, drove the blunt butt of the weapon through another's foot, spun, tossed the weapon in a wide arc, and toppled five men with the impact, the haft snapping and sending the heavy blade careening into a sixth man, folding him over before it exited his pelvis and chopped another man's legs off just below the hip. I grabbed a mace from the ground, disintegrated a man's shoulder in a fantastic spray of crimson, burst a man's head like a watermelon on the backswing, then ducked a sword that seemed to be moving in slow motion, and turned my assailant's knee backward with an indignant kick. I finished the motion by thrusting upward, and burying the head of the weapon into the jaw of a man would had been trying to chop me like firewood. The top of his head exploded like confetti, and I left the mace there, and grabbed his hand-axe as it slipped from his dead fingers. I pushed his body out of the way, grabbed a spearhead aimed at my chest, and split the man behind it down the middle. He stayed together for a moment, then peeled away to reveal a man with a crossbow aimed at my throat. I got my arm up just in time. I felt the impact, but nothing else. Nothing at all. The arm fell limp and useless to my side, the entire limb naught but dead weight hanging from my shoulder. It had been a very long time since I'd known mortal terror, but I felt it then. What an exhilarating thing it was. I imbedded my axe into the man's skull, took a sword right in the chest, then impaled myself down the length of the blade to tear out the bastard's throat. I ducked an axe swing, grabbed the sword in my chest by the blade, tore it out, and opened the axe-swinger from navel to sternum. His golden shell split to reveal the pink spaghetti of his insides, and he dropped to his knees just in time for my sword to pass over his head, and eviscerate the man behind him. Then I felt another pang, and my right leg folded beneath me. I dropped to my left knee, grabbed a spear, and launched it. It stuck the man who had shot me in the chest, and carried him screaming backwards, knocking over the men behind him like bowling pins. It was the path I needed. I dashed through the press of bodies on my one good leg, hopping like a fantastic jackrabbit as my lame leg flopped behind me. Then I was facing down fifteen men with wooden stakes, Nadi sap dripping from the sharpened tips. I dug my toes into the ground, pivoted, and launched myself into a tent. A very perplexed minstrel sat tuning his guitar.

"Play Raining Blood by Slayer." I gasped.

"I don't... what is..."

I shot out of the back of the tent and into the back of another one. One man stood gawking at me, while the other man leaned backward from his partner's crotch and opened his mouth to yell.

"Shh!" I hissed, holding a finger to my mouth, "Don't ask, don't tell."

I left the two terrified and confused men in their tent and limped onto the promenade. The camp was in absolute chaos. Tents were catching fire like kindling, scaffolding was collapsing, horses were stampeded, and men were running in every-which direction with no semblance of order. Officers screamed futile commands and pointed at one disaster, then another. Platoons of frantic soldiers sprinted past me without so much as glancing sideways, and I grabbed a spear from a nearby rack, and played the part of the wounded soldier as I limbed my way down toward the bog. Then I heard a scream in my head, and felt a century-old connection snap. Igor. No. I gritted my teeth, and limped a little faster toward the bog. Another scream, and another severed connection. Vladimir. Then another. Ivan. Then another. Monica. Melanie, Helga, Vasyli, Bella, Nikita, Sasha!

What the fuck is going on?!

Mages! Ivanka's panicked voice answered, hundreds of them, they came out of nowhere!

Time to abort! Fall back to the bog!

I dropped my spear, and charged toward the bank, no longer caring for subterfuge; it didn't matter with mages anyway. A Nadi bolt shot into my back, collapsing my shoulder. I kept my pace, ducking between gawking soldiers, smashing weapons out of my way with my one good arm. Another bolt hit me right in the ass, sending me tumbling to the ground. They surrounded me like wolves before a felled buffalo, their spearheads like gnashing jaws, the smell of Nadi on their tips. I could see the edge of the bog a mere fifty feet away. So close. So close!

Now! I screamed.

Hundreds of my children launched from the murky water and tore into the unsuspecting men on the shoreline. My body burst from the ergonomics it had been confined to just as Zander came into view, energy streaming from his hand and staff like tendrils of light that melted the armored imperials it sought. Tall, pale figures sprinted from the campsite, discarding too-small armor that hung from them in tatters. So few had returned. I growled, dug my good foot into the wet ground, and shot toward the shoreline. Three bolts thudded into my back, one hitting the spine. I collapsed in a heap. Boots surrounded me, blocking my view of the waterfront. The points of Nadi stakes scraped against the ground before me, their horrible green stench burning my nostrils. Then I couldn't see the points anymore, only feel them as they punctured my back again, and again, and again; each thrust seeking my heart, each one getting closer. In that moment, I realized I had never actually thought I was going to die. I wasn't ready. Oh god, I wasn't ready! Not now! Just one more day, one more hour, one more minute! Just one more-

Shut up, Dad! Tiffany snarled as she and Ivanka plowed through my attackers, ripping them limb from limb. I was hoisted between my daughters and dragged over the mossy rocks, the water shimmering in the fire of the campsite, safety, freedom, life! There was an explosion. Then there was light. Light that I could feel in my bones, light that tore through me like a blast of wind. Solar light. Hundreds of screams erupted in my head. Such horrific sounds, like the sounds of pig squeals after the fatal cut had been made. And it smelled like bacon, didn't it? The stench saturated my sinuses, and in my horror, I realized what it was! I lurched to the side, the support on my right dropping away, an indescribable screech cutting into my ears. My god, was that a woman making that sound? I couldn't discern it from the chaos of my mind, a discordant choir of tortured wails to accompany the blinding white heat that bathed me, that bubbled my numb flesh like sizzling fat on a cast iron stove. The support on my left was failing, whatever it was holding me seeming to droop on its own weight. I was on the ground again, or at least I thought I was. My eyes couldn't see, and yet, there was nothing but that terrible light, that terrible light and the screams in my head. But they were getting quieter. One by one, the screams dwindled away until there were only twenty. Then nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen... blackness. Sweet blackness enveloped me like a mother's embrace, taking me into its heavenly chill. Was it death? No, for death was nothing, and this oblivion was full of such bliss. I was in water. I was beneath the murky depths of the bog, but how had I gotten here? Oh yes, I'd been carried. Carried by...

Tiffany?

I'm here. She whispered, her voice so faint in my mind.

Ivanka? I asked, but I knew I would never hear her reply again.

Tiffany sobbed as she dragged me through the muck, leaving behind the sister who had been by her side long before she'd become my child. I didn't think she would ever forgive me.

ELENA

"...how is it that a woman who lived her whole life in nobility doesn't know a damn thing about fashion?!" Leveria bemoaned once again. We were in her closet, struggling through her extensive wardrobe.