Queen Yavara Ch. 39

"Double that."

"SIX?! Good Mother, Elena, you're supposed to work your way up!"

"I'm jumping into the deep end without knowing how to swim."

She smiled companionably. "Good thing you're a natural then. Gangbangs are all about group dynamics. Penises seem like really simple things, but they have feelings. If you favor one penis over the other penises, the other penises will feel left out, and that's when the other penises will begin to realize that there's mostly just penises there, and that's kind of gay. Do you have a notebook handy? I could deliver a thesis on this subject."

I laughed. "It's not the group dynamics I'm worried about; I have no problems reading people."

"The art, Elena, isn't knowing what they want, but knowing how to juggle all those sexual personas simultaneously. What if one man wants to treat you like a queen, and another wants to treat you like a whore? How do you get everyone on the same page while they're all inside you?"

"Is this a rhetorical question?"

"There is no correct answer. You must adapt on the fly. What you need to realize is that during a gangbang, the men are all very aware of each other. Balls are touching, cocks are slapping together, dudes are getting each other's jizz all over themselves. Your main goal is to make all those guys part of a team, and that team's goal is to fuck you brainless."

"I'm listening."

"Well, first you have to be a total slut. That's a prerequisite."

"Check." I smirked.

She giggled back. "And second, you have to either decide to join their team, or be the antagonist. Both are fun. The former means you're one-hundred-percent on board the moment the pants come off. You can be the slave, the queen, the happy-go-lucky slut, the student getting learned, the master teaching her pupils, etcetera. If you're the antagonist, you're making it a competition between the men and you. This is where things can get... nasty."

"I am intrigued."

"I thought you would be. You see, the antagonist either is the victim or the competitor. A victim makes the act a 'them vs me' situation, thereby making the group's goal to humiliate her, force her to come against her will, and make her confess things she doesn't want to admit. That's the powerplay. Now, playing the victim can be really fun, but it also requires a personality that you and I don't have anymore." She sighed ruefully, "When Brock raped my asshole that first night, I was such a good victim."

"Did you just get nostalgic?"

"There was a purity to my helplessness that I could never quite duplicate no matter how much I tried." She gave me a said smile, "The real worth of virginity is the act of losing it violently. But I digress. Since you can't really play the victim, your only other option as the antagonist is to play the competitor, and make them prove their worth as men. You goad them with demeaning language, they retaliate in kind, you try to emasculate them, they try to humble you. How you play it is up to you, but for me, it usually means lots of spitting, slapping, hair-pulling, biting, scratching, choking... you know, the good stuff."

"Uh huh," I said, "and preparation?"

"Stretching, douching, bathing, and enemas. Enemas are key. Contrary to popular belief, the female asshole doesn't lose its primary function the moment sex is at hand."

"I wondered how you always kept it so clean."

"Being a slut is hard work." She snickered.

"The hardest." I giggled back.

She sighed. "I wish I could watch you. I want to see the look on your face when all your holes are filled."

"Would it look something like this?" I laughed, then grabbed one of my ten dildos, stuck it in my mouth, and rolled my eyes back. Yavara didn't laugh. I peeked at her from the bottom of my eyes, and saw that her face had gone pale, and a scream was poised on her lips. I saw him in the reflection. He was standing in the doorway behind me, a crossbow in his hand. I leapt forward just as the twang sounded.

"ELENA!" Yavara screamed.

The bolt thudded into the dresser. I rolled behind the chair, snatched a dagger from within the cushion, and sent it spinning across the room. It struck the assassin in the collar, and he let out a grunt before spinning out of sight. I dashed after, my keen elven ears honed on every sound in the house. There was a click, and I dived into a roll. The twang came a moment later, the thud of the bolt in the wood, and I was rushing down the hall. Click. He rounded the corner. Twang. I stopped ten paces away from him, my breath ending in my throat. He stood there, the butt of his shouldered crossbow pressed near the knife that was still stuck in this collar, the end of the crossbow aimed at my bare chest. The bolt had been loosed. There was no way he could've missed, and yet, I knew it hadn't struck me. It took me a second to realize the searing pain in my palm. I glanced down, and saw that my fist was wrapped around the Nadi wood haft of a crossbow bolt.

"Did I just fucking catch that?" I gasped, and looked at my assassin for confirmation. He just stared back with wide eyes, then dashed around the corner. I zipped after him, closed the distance in less than two heartbeats, and tackled him. He rolled us over, brandished a dagger, and stabbed downward. I caught his wrist at the apex of his strike, locked my elbow, and drove my knee into his groin. Air shot through his clenched teeth, and he doubled over. My elbow gave out, and I carried him up and over with my knee, sending him crashing above my head. I snatched an ankle, twirled around, and jumped on his back. He tried to scrambled to his hands and knees, but I wrapped my thighs around his waist, and struck his knees with my heels, flattening him like a folding chair. Then my hand was on the hilt of my dagger, the blade in his collar, and I pried it through muscle and sinew beneath the flesh until he was moaning in agony, and the point was aimed toward his throat.

"Yield!" I snarled.

His hand shot for his ear, but I was so much faster. I snatched the earring that was dangling there, and ripped it from its piercing. Before he could make a move to the dagger lying just out of reach, I grabbed it from the floor, stabbed him behind the shoulder, and sheared the blade through the connective tissue there. He shuddered with pain, and the arm went limp, the fingers grasping uselessly. With his other arm trapped beneath his body, and my knife punched deep in his right trapezius, he'd lost the mobility of everything downstream of his shoulders.

"Yentian? Kecerian?" I yelled for my guards, though I was sure they were dead. When silence answered me, I knew it was true. I looked down at the assassin. The blue blood that seeped from his wounds told me that the high-elf skin he wore was but a biological costume. He was a changeling, either a doppler or an incubus.

"Cyanide?" I mused, looking at the earring in my hand.

He didn't answer.

"I'll let you take it if you tell me who sent you." I said.

Again, he didn't answer.

"You think you can wait me out?" I asked, "Yavara saw what you did. She'll tell Leveria, and the queen's guard will be at my door in less than five minutes. Don't make me give you to them alive. Even you don't deserve that."

He just closed his eyes. I sighed, and waited for the sound of bootsteps on the cobblestones outside.

LEVERIA

The assassin was a doppler, and his true form was a strange amalgamation of dawn-elf and human. His body was covered in tattoos and scars, the blindfolded skull inked on his throat labeling him as a member of Drastin's Shade Syndicate. As such, his tongue, penis and testicles had all been removed before he'd reached manhood, and the marks on his flesh bespoke horrors I could only imagine. Even if he could talk, he never would. But he could still scream.

"Oh, I needed this." I sighed contentedly, and plopped his severed finger into the box, "You must know that it's nearly impossible to find willing partners in this escapade. You would think the queen could just go to the dungeon and find someone, but even the lowliest of us have rights." I selected the scalpel from my box, and placed the point of it beneath the man's pinky toenail. "I envy Yavara in this regard." I paused, and frowned, "In many regards, actually, but this one in particular. Ruling a country of beasts where might is right allows her a degree of freedom I simply do not have. She sent all of her potential political adversaries to their deaths, and they went willingly. I couldn't even send my political allies to get me a cup a coffee."

I slowly pushed the blade beneath the man's toenail, and he whined between his clenched teeth. I began methodically sawing, and he finally sounded the scream I wanted to hear. I smiled, and pulled the blade out.

"She doesn't want to admit it, but she always intended on being a tyrant. And though being a tyrant grants you ultimate power, the legacy is always one of ruin. Alkandi made the exact same mistake. It wasn't orc tribalism that ended the first Alkandra, though that is a theory many Highland intellectuals like to spout. No, the vacuum she created was simply too great to fill. I mean, who could take the place of a god-queen?" I pinched the toenail, and pried it upward. The man screamed again, thrashing in his binds.

"So, I can take some solace in the idea that Alkandra Part Two will succumb to the same fate as its first iteration. It's a small comfort though, for it is likely that the Highlands will be gone long before then, and the only remnants of my people will be the lucky few that Yavara transforms." I ripped the nail off, and the man's scream ended in a sputter. "Perhaps they'll keep a few of us as novelties in the Alkandran zoo. We are an exceptionally fair race, so there will be a market for Highland pleasure slaves. Will that be our lasting legacy then? To be bred for beauty?"

I selected the snippers from my box, and angled the man's pinky toe into their jaws. "Ah, but why worry about uncertain futures when the present is so fascinating? Did you in all your life imagine that this present would be your future? I'm sure you did, being in your profession. I admire your composure." I squeezed the handles, and savored his crescendo of agony until they snapped shut. I extracted the pinky toe, and plopped it in the box.

I smiled at the man. "In case you haven't realized the game by now, I'm not going to stop until all of you is in this box." I tapped the lid of the box, "Then I'm going to return you to your sender. You don't know who sent you—you probably just got an envelope with a name—but it was King Albert Dreus who paid your tithe. Who else could it be? Lucas Ternias still hopes to sway Elena to his side, but Dreus only sees the threat she poses." I laughed, shaking my head, "And I should as well! Elena went from an asset to a threat the moment she turned on me in the Noble Court, and now she's the most dangerous person west of the Highland Rift. God knows I should kill her, but ah... love. Have you ever been in love?"

A tear rolled down his cheek as he stared at the ceiling.

"You have?" I asked, surprised, "I take it that was before all the..." I motioned to the stumps where his man parts used to be, "...but of course it was. I am happy for you, you know. Many go through life without ever knowing love. You should consider yourself a lucky man." I said, then sliced his heel tendon, and watched in fascination as it rolled up his calf, and he screeched. It was like we were connected by rubber bands.

"Isn't it strange how there is always an option we refuse to take?" I posed, "That we must try to navigate the plots like a rabbit in a snake's den, when simply dumping fuel in the snake hole and lighting a match is always an option? All the nobles are in the Noble Court every day. The lords, the barons, and the dukes. They bring their bannermen in to protect them, but who do they leave to watch the door? The royal guards. It would take nothing but four metal poles to bar the doors, a bucket of oil, and a torch." I laughed to myself, "All the machinations and intricacies of governance, and total power can be bought at the hardware store. What stops me, I wonder? What stopped any of the kings and queens of the past?"

I chose a serrated blade, and isolated the man's right thumb. "I guess it's because total power is no power at all. Do I take joy in stepping on an ant? Of course not. And so we go back to the topic of tyrants, and the ruination of nations by a megalomaniacal cult of personality. Yavara is Alkandra, and Alkandra is Yavara, but the Highlands is the Noble Court. From the royals to the humblest of lieges, it is a bureaucracy more bloated than a whore's belly, but it is my life." I slowly sawed the man's thumb off, enjoying the way his flesh split evenly, the sinew tore, the tendons snapped, and the bone cleaved. I marveled at the circular clean stump left in its wake, marrow leaking from the circular bone, then I plopped the thumb away, and continued my soliloquy once he was done screaming.

"Some say there are no such things as winners and losers in life, that we all suffer equally no matter our station. A woman in fine silk feels a pain just as acute as a drunkard beneath a bridge—that's what 'they' say anyway. 'They' are fucking losers. There are definite winners and losers in life, because life is a game. You may choose the game you play, you may choose how you play it, but you must play, and you either win or lose. The Noble Court is my game, and I refuse to lose it. Killing everyone... well, that would be just flipping the board, and that's what losers do."

I pulled out a hand-drill, pushed the sharp end against his kneecap, and began cranking away. I had to wipe the sweat from my brow when I was done, and the poor man had burst a blood vessel in his eye. "In truth," I sighed, "there's a—"

The man's scream reached a new octave, and I waited patiently for him to finish.

"Sorry, did I interrupt you? My manners have been slipping as of late. I'm always on edge." I giggled to myself, "But as I was saying, there's a different game at play here. Elena—the woman you tried to kill—I'm in love with her, and she's in love with me, but she's also in love with my sister. My sister, who is the hated enemy of my nation, a demigod, and apparently the best fuck in the world. Quite the conundrum, huh?!" I laughed, tousling his sweat-soaked hair, "It galls me that I would willingly be part of this love triangle, but as I said before, love is... well, love is really stupid. Now I'm stuck in a juggling act of trying to win an unwinnable war, keep my people from rebelling, keep the Noble Court from ousting me, and keep Elena from leaving me for her sister. And I'm losing at every game, by the way. Now you see why I'm so stressed out." I clenched my fist around a hammer, "I'm just spread so thin, and at any moment, I could snap!"

I brought the hammer down on his other kneecap, striking it again and again until it split. He couldn't even scream anymore, just thrashed around in his binds, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, his teeth red. I wiped the sweat from my brow, sighed, and sat down next to him. Lighting a cigarette, I felt the sweet nicotine poison fill my lungs, and I slowly let it out.

"Smoke?" I asked, proffering one for him. He just stared up at the ceiling, his lower lip quivering. I shrugged, and put it back in the box.

"It would feel rude not to ask. Manners and all that. Which reminds me, I really should thank you for providing me with this experience." I eyed him inquisitively, "You're obviously a man who's seen a lot of pain; can I ask you a question? On a scale of one to five, how good am I at torture?"

He didn't answer.

I prodded his shoulder with my knife, "If you answer me, I promise you there's an overdose of opium at the end of the tunnel. Come on, everyone wants a happy ending."

His bound wrist twitched, and he raised all five stumps on his right hand.

I frowned. "That's just you being polite. No way am I that good after only my second try. I respect honesty, assassin. "

The stump of his thumb closed, holding up the other four.

I beamed delightedly. "Four out of five? That's a solid 'B-!' What do I need to change to get that up to an 'A?' Sensory deprivation? Water torture? Contortion? Is the mutilation getting dull? I know it's my go-to; I think there should be horror with agony, but maybe... ah, but you can't answer me, and I've been talking your ear off!" I giggled, prodding the place where his ear used to be, "We'll call it a night, shall we?" I put the cigarette out on his left nipple, and stood up. "Same time tomorrow?" I laughed as I cleaned my tools off, and began putting them back in their box. The horror that came over his face was sweet, and I savored it for a long time. This man had almost taken Elena from me, and I knew myself well enough to know that I had leaned on her so much that she'd become my crutch. If he had killed her, I would've... I didn't want to think about what I would've done. My smile slowly faded from my face.

"Life is a game we play, indeed." I whispered, "And we are all pieces on each other's boards. You were just a pawn that King Dreus was willing to sacrifice, but King Dreus is not my opponent. King Dreus is one of my pieces, and he has outlasted his use." I covered the flame of the torch, and the room dimmed to blackness. "Do you want to know something, assassin?" I whispered so quietly that I could barely hear it, "I've already mapped out my endgame. Here are the moves—are you listening? They are: Adrianna, Zander, Matthew, Arthur." I smiled to myself, "Then I'll play the knight, and... checkmate."

End of Part Eleven.