Queen Yavara Ch. 57

"So," she started awkwardly, "I guess we should address the elephant in the room. I am no longer the Dark Queen. I guess... uh... I guess it was a temporary condition." She wiped the sweat from her brow, and laughed nervously. "But I guess I'm cured of it. I... uh... I met with Alkandi yesterday... I know that doesn't make a lot of sense because I was Alkandi incarnate, but... uh... well..." she trailed off, her cheeks flushed, the rest of her face clammy and pale.

Holy shit, you are bombing. I growled in her mind. Didn't you practice this?!

Shut the fuck up, please. She hissed mentally back, and cleared her throat again. "The point is," she said, her tremulous voice carrying over everything, "I am no longer the Dark Queen. I have passed that mantle to my sister... or rather, Alkandi passed the mantle to her—I didn't really have much choice. Well, I mean, I did, but it was... Ok, restart." She laughed again, though it sounded like a sob, "So the woman we've all been raping and torturing for the past four days, the woman that represented the worst of elven imperialism, the woman who hunted you down like you were animals, the woman who raised an army to commit genocide upon you, who massacred our horde down to the last man, who singlehandedly wiped out two generations of fighting men after her country had signed a peace treaty, who launched the entire Lowland fleet against us to annihilate us down to the last baby... that woman is now your queen." She giggled, her voice carrying over the pervading silence, the deathly-still voices of the tens of thousands. I glared at her, my rage vibrating from every pore in my body, and she only giggled more, trapped in a hysterical fit. "So, anyway," she managed to get out with a few desperate breaths, "everyone... everyone give a warm welcome to your new ruler, Dark Queen Leveria Alkandra!"

Yavara grabbed the crown from the stunned wizard at her side, and delicately placed it on my head. Then she shuffled over to the other side of the Black Throne, and stood there, failing to keep a straight face. I just knelt there for a moment, hating her with every fiber of my being before I stood up, and turned around.

"Good people of Alkandra," I said, donning a confident smile, "I am... well, I suppose I don't need to introduce myself; my sister did a fine enough job of that already. I had a whole speech written up, but... I think I'll just speak from the heart. Good people of Alkandra, I am your daddy. Not your patriarchal father figure, no—I am your daddy, and you all... you're my bitches."

A murmur went through the crowd, then silenced.

"Good people of Alkandra," I scoffed, "there's nothing good about any of you. You're either societal outcasts or wild savages. I hunted you like animals because you are animals. You're a herd of inbreeds who selectively fucked based on muscle-mass for centuries. You know who else does that? Cows. And you wonder why you were slaughtered."

A chorus of anger simmered from the crowd, and the hybrids looked back at me with perplexed horror on their faces. I just smiled, basking in the outpouring of hatred, then I clapped my hands together, and a great telekinetic boom shot through the crowd. They went silent once more.

"People of Alkandra," I sneered, masking how hard I was breathing; that spell really took it out of me, "I am not Yavara. I will not be nice to you. I will not take your feelings into consideration. I will rule you like the bunch of unruly little bitches you are, and I'll fuck you good and hard just like a good daddy does. But also like a good daddy, I'll protect my bitches. No one else fucks my bitches unless my bitches want to get fucked. Now there's two fat-dicked johns coming here to double-stuff your bitch-asses. My only question is, are you going to bend over and take it?"

The crowd was silent.

"Are you?!" I snapped.

There was a dispirited 'no.'

"No?" I laughed, "NO?! You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like a little bitch playing hard to get. You want the Lowlanders to fuck you, don't you?"

"No!" came a more impassioned roar.

"Oh, you don't want it?" I laughed, "Maybe I've got some bad bitches here after all. Well, are you just gonna take it?"

"No!" They roared louder.

"Bullshit!"

"NO!"

"Oh yeah?!" I yelled, holding my arms out, "Well, they're coming anyway, and somebody's gotta get fucked! Who's getting fucked?"

"They are!"

"I said who's getting fucked?!"

"THEY ARE!"

"AND WHO'S GONNA FUCK 'EM?"

"WE ARE!"

"I SAID WHO THE FUCK IS GONNA FUCK 'EM?!"

"WE ARE!"

"THEN LET'S FUCK THOSE BITCHES!" I roared, my fists raised overhead, and all of Alkandra roared with me, screaming their stupid war-cries, dancing their stupid tribal dances, pumping their fists like a pack of fucking morons. But I didn't hold them in contempt; no, I loved their stupid savagery, their single-minded tribal mentality, their quickness to sex and violence. It was power, oh, it was power! I could feel the magic pumping in my veins, but it was nothing compared to the waves of energy I felt from that stupid, roaring crowd. I knew these people. I knew what they wanted—what they needed. Yavara was a pretender, but I was the real fucking thing. I would be brutal. I would be cruel. I would kill with impunity, rule with an iron fist, and make this pack of beasts into a tool—a sword—and I would carve my name right into the flesh of history with it. No one would even remember Yavara after I was done. No one would even remember Alkandi. The only Dark Queen would be Leveria. The warrior males were all dead, but the warrior females still lived. I would breed the strong ones, pump out the pups one after the other, and raise a horde the likes of which had never been seen. I would smash the Lowlands, take Ardeni Dreus as my own, and then turn my eyes westward.

I glanced back at Yavara as the crowd worked itself into a frenzy. My little sister was looking at me with a strange mixture of emotions. There was fear, there was awe, and there was desire. Fear for who I'd always been, awe and desire for what I had become, and fear once again for what I would become. Oh, she knew then. She saw it, she heard it, and she felt it. The crowd had never moved like that for her, nor had they ever roared like that for her, nor had they ever shaken the ground like that for her. The only time they'd done it before was when I was on the sands of the arena, and they only did it for, yes, just for me! She knew then what the future would hold for her; not ten years down the line, but twenty. If Alkandra survived this battle, Yavara Tiadoa would be the last queen of the Highlands.

"It's a sight to see, isn't it?" I called back at her.

"You certainly got them riled up."

"I wasn't talking about them, Yavara." I smirked.

I turned around, and beckoned to the hybrids. They all looked upon me with awe as they ascended the steps, the crowd's roar billowing upon their white robes like a great wind. When they reached the top step, I grabbed Furia by the hair, tore her head back, and plunged my tongue in her mouth. The crowd's roar when up a decibel when the strongest of the hybrids wilted submissively against me, writhing in a feminine dance as her cock stood rigid, her mouth humming lecherous moans as she drowned in my lust. I ripped off her robe, exposing her nudity to the tens of thousands, then I wrapped my hand around her stiff cock, trailed my other beneath it to penetrate her pussy, and I carried her onto my lap as I sat upon the Black Throne. She spread her legs out over the arms of the chair, and reached behind her to snake fingers through her ass-crack, and into my codpiece. The people gasped and cheered when she revealed my raging cock, and their cheer only became louder when she pressed it to her tight anus, and sat all the way down. She broke her kiss to scream out in delight, and all of Alkandra adulated her for taking every thick inch inside of her.

I put the gemstone to my throat, and told the people of Alkandra, "Watch me, you degenerates and whores. Watch what I'm about to do to the Lowland fleet."

I grabbed Furia by the hips, and I fucked her. She bounced off my lap, squealing and gasping with every rebound, struggling against me to maintain some semblance of dignity and grace. It was futile. With the energy of the crowd propelling my thrusts, I pumped into the poor hybrid bitch with such violent fervency that every hard ranger muscle was turned to jelly, and all her stoic masculinity was turned into slutty faggotry. She blubbered and wailed in delight, her stiff tattooed cock bouncing off her belly with every skin-jiggling thrust, her supple breasts turned to blurred globes of motion. The people cheered her on as she was dominated, and she basked in it, reveling in a side of her sexuality that only I could unlock. I fucked through her tight clenching insides, buried my shaft deep into her delightful filth, and panted into her ear until my breaths were cries, and my cries were screams. She suddenly arched her back away from me, presenting her breasts to the world as her splayed thighs quivered in euphoria. She sustained a high, true note, and her prostate convulsed in celebration of my cock until it finally released. Hot white seed shot from her pulsating tip, and with every violent thrust I dealt into her convulsing shithole, she sprayed herself. Her belly, her breast, then her face and hair; all was splattered in her thick orgasmic seed, and she wriggled in delight of it, linking her hands behind her head, thrusting her body forth for all to see what was being done to it. I came with a final ferocious plunge into her tightest channel, and filled her to the brim. She quaked in another orgasm, this one from her feminine organ, and the crowd lauded her for spraying her clear nectar onto the Black Throne. I groaned in pleasure, and took her by the throat. She turned her face to kiss me, but I just grabbed the back of her head, wrenched her face skyward, and licked the cum that she'd sprayed on her cheeks. She wasn't my lover; she was my toy. I had no equal in this world. I was above them all.

ZANDER

No one noticed me in the frenzy. I was an afterthought, a background character that would be painted into shadow when this moment of historical debauchery was eternalized. 'The Conquering of Furia,' they might call it, though Furia had already been conquered very thoroughly the night previous, just not so dramatically. As the viewer of the painting marveled at the renaissance depiction of power-driven sodomy, he or she would study the way Leveria's fingers sunk into Furia's pliant flesh, the way Furia was splayed out like a trophy, the expression of orgasmic surrender on Furia's half-tattooed face, and the expression of evil on Leveria's climaxing visage. Then, the viewer would likely see the look of solemn acceptance on Yavara's face as she bore witness to this ravaging, a ravaging that was quite metaphorical for her. I wouldn't be surprised if the artist was commissioned to paint another masterpiece, this one titled, 'The Last Queen of the Highlands,' with Yavara bearing the same blissful expression of surrender on her face as Furia now had on hers, and Yavara splayed out like a victorious prize wrapped in chains and contorted in whatever compromising position Leveria desired.

But what the viewer would likely never notice in the painting, 'The Conquering of Furia,' would be the expression of existential release that I felt when Leveria's plump tan ass made contact with the ebony wood of the Black Throne. It was as if layers of clay had been peeled away from my soul, and the suffocating dampness that had caked me for so long was simply washed away, leaving me naked and free. The agelessness that had petrified me disappeared, and I felt my flesh and muscles relax into a gentle sort of decay. The lines on my face were undoubtedly clearer, and the hair on my head was undoubtedly grayer. The ravages of time that had been held back now worked on me with impunity, but the pain was so sweet. My joints eased into states of wear, my back bowed into a curve of exhaustion, and my hip ached with the twang of impingement. I was dying. I was dying very quickly. I had perhaps a few more weeks before I finally withered away to nothing, and I was fine with it. I was perfectly at peace.

A smile crawled across my lips, and I receded further into the shadows. "Thank you, my love." I whispered to the skull that topped my staff. She grinned back at me, and I kissed her ivory brow.

ARBOR

I had lived in flesh for too long. My connection with the forest was weak, and my mind was cluttered with thoughts of sensation and emotion. When I placed my hand on the bark of the pine tree I was perched upon, I recognized it, but I did not know it as I once did. The tree did not have a way to identify itself, nor did it have a consciousness that animals could recognize, but it had an awareness. Soil, sun, water and wind; these were the things it projected out from its being. It wasn't a centralized state of mind, but a mosaic of mindfulness that ran from its roots to its leaves. This tree was hundreds of years old, and it had a memory. The rings within its bark bespoke the seasons of plenty and the seasons of less, the cold nights and the warm days, the passage of the sun, the abundance of rain, and the flavor of the winds and air. This tree could tell me that a volcano had erupted on the other side of the world fifty years ago, for this tree could remember the way the ash filtered the sun. This tree could tell me that nine fox dens had lived beneath its roots since it was barely a sapling, and that two of those dens had succumbed to starvation during the winter. This tree could tell me about every insect that crawled upon it, every worm that slithered around its roots, and every woodpecker that had wounded it. This tree could tell me about its grand neighbors, the other pines, and though the tree could not form opinions of its kin, it was aware of which ones provided stability from the strong winds, which ones were competing for resources, and which ones had created a symbiosis with it. Simply by touching the tree's bark, I could see the connection this tree had with every other in the forest, the network of roots that stretched for thousands and thousands of miles. That network had more connections than all the neurons in the human mind, and it created a consciousness of itself. But that consciousness was missing its soul.

Come back, it said to me. It did not speak, nor beckon, nor even request in any sense of mortal understanding. It was simply generally aware that the forest was sicker than it had been before, and it was because its mother was not tending to it. It was something Yavara could not understand. She had accused me of stunting my children, of being a slaver and not a mother. She looked at nymphs, and she saw hands and feet, breasts and buttocks, and she assumed they were like her, and had her desires. She could not comprehend that my children were of my mindfulness and spirit, that they were meant to grow and live and die within the cool soft shade of the forest canopy, never knowing the extremes of their biological functions. Serenity and bliss were things they understood intrinsically, but freedom and individuality were corrupting ideas, a rot upon their simple minds that would lead them inevitably to succubus corruption.

Come back, the Great Forest whispered, and I felt a strange horror at the prospect. Going back would mean leaving this realm of sensation and experience, and to become a transient caretaker of the woodlands once more. Going back would mean disconnecting from mortal delights; from lust, pleasure, violence, pain, exhilaration and terror, and settling into something like slumber. I would lose the mortal awareness of the present, and time would become a blur as my mind meandered about the realm of roots, gently doting upon every nook and cranny, every hovel and hole. Why did I fear it? Because it was death. I had been dead all my life.

Come back, it whispered again. I closed my eyes, and tears cascaded down my cheeks. It was so vivid, this mortal perspective. My spiritual self could know the molecules in the soil for thousands of miles, but it could not understand the coarse caress of bark on my palm, the wind whispering through my hair, nor the chill upon my flesh. It was a passive observer—compassionate, but not empathetic. There was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to place all of my soul into this prison of mortal flesh, and live a visceral mortal life from beginning to end, but that would simply be a lie, a momentary escape. I was Arbor. I was no one at all. I was the forest, and the forest was me, and we were I, and we were no one. Peace and serenity, not freedom and individuality. Peace and serenity. Peace.

"I am coming back," I whispered to the tree, and touched my brow to its bark, "but you will not join me. I am so sorry."

And though I spoke the words intimately against the white pine's trunk, I could not hear them from my own lips, for they were stolen by the thunder of hooves beneath me. Like a river of gold, the Highland cavalry flowed through the trunks of the pine trees, following the remnants of the highway they'd carved through my forest so many centuries ago. Their beasts were domesticated creatures, born in a barn and raised in irons, their ears unable to hear my call. They rode with gnashing teeth and anxious neighs, pounding their ironclad hooves into the earth, kicking soil into the air. The dust created a fog over the endless river of men, dulling their gilded shells. Orders were shouted and barked, banners were raised, and steel shone from their weapons, glinting like a warning. These creatures were so very detached from the earth they'd come from. They would kill their own mothers, and not even recognize the murder.

I looked to the other branches, and saw my daughters and sons standing in the treetops, their natural camouflage concealing them from the riders below. They needn't have bothered; the elves didn't even think to look up. My children looked to me, waiting. I watched the river of golden men, and wondered what I was waiting for. I realized with a smile that I was just afraid. Being mortal was such a sweet experience. I planted my hand against the tree, and requested its sacrifice. It accepted my request.

There was a groan, then a creak, then a crack. I stepped off the branch, and into the canopy of another tree as the great white pine swayed, then fell. The great cacophony of snapping branches sounded with its mighty doom, accompanied by the sudden screams of men. There was an earth-shaking boom, and the river of gold was dammed.

"Now." I whispered, and all my children heard. The great pines fell like a collapsing cathedral upon the ranks of men below. The thick trunks punched massive lines in the elven ranks, crunching the golden men as if they were cans. Boom, boom, boom; they fell in succession, cascading dominoes of pine that killed dozens of men at a time and halted the entire cavalry, dividing them into little pockets of packed-in squads. The screams of horses carried over the echoing thunder, and the screeches of wounded men sounded almost as loudly. Such suffering, such terror, such agony. I was not as disconnected from it as I wanted to be, but the time for mercy had passed.

"Kill them all." I said, and my children descended from the treetops with wooden daggers in hand, and began the slaughter. The pockets of elves were penned in, stuck shoulder-to-shoulder against the broken trees and broken men, unable to lift their swords when the tree people dropped from the sky. My daughters were vicious. They had been tainted by battle already, and as they fell from the treetops, they screamed with the terrible exhilaration of the kill. They dropped upon the elves, and drove their daggers down again and again, and again, not stopping even as the elves shrieked in horror and agony, not stopping even as the elves begged and pleaded, not stopping until the elves golden shells were sprayed with their own scarlet, and my daughter's naked bodies were bathed in it. My sons were virgins to this kind of violence, and though they had been bred for soldiery, they were fatally timid. They dropped into battle, and balked, unable to deliver the killing blow when they looked into their enemy's terrified eyes. I did not blame them for it. Murder was something that came naturally to the humanoid races, but not to my innocent children, who were born to be caretakers and healers. And so, my sons gave their foes the critical moment they needed, and the elves did not show them the same mercy. They made their swords naked, and then bathed in my son's blood, splitting flesh and muscle to reveal entrails and organs. Our first casualties sounded their horrible death shrieks over the discordant rhythm of the chaos, and fresh tears wetted my cheeks.