Queen Yavara: Epilogue

The ladies of the court were festooned about the opulent temple, mostly fucking each other, but some were entertaining important guests. This place was Alkandra's main attraction for foreign dignitaries, and a king's ransom was paid to have access to it. It was Leveria's strongest diplomatic tool, and also her greatest weakness if Elena ever decided so.

"Certiok Terdini? Is that you?" the woman herself asked from a few floors up.

"Is there another old she-orc bitch you let ruin the atmosphere here?" I growled up at her.

Elena giggled sonorously, and finished fucking one of her nine daughters with a few orgasmic thrusts, then left the poor girl quivering in a puddle of her own making. She raced down the steps, skipped over to me, and embraced me tightly.

"You know you're always welcome here," she said, parting with a kiss on my brow.

"I suppose it's good to make you ageless sluts stare mortality in the face every once in a while." I grunted, though I was smiling.

"Well, mortality has such a wizened and stoically beautiful face; why wouldn't we?" Elena said charmingly, and took my hand in hers. We walked through the heavenly atrium, passing scenes of lust and debauchery that were so beautiful they should've been painted. The hybrids were living pieces of art, and they created masterpieces with their joined bodies. The woman beside me was likely the most sought-after of them all, for unlike Yavara, Elena rarely left the temple. Perhaps a street commoner would get lucky with the free-spirited wife-queen, but Elena's list of cliental was very short, and consisted of the most powerful men and women in the world.

"Why did you come here, Certiok?" Elena asked.

"I want to talk to you."

"My ear is always available to you."

"I wanted to talk to you about what's going on in the summer isles."

Elena stopped, and frowned down at me. If I was anyone else, there would've been a blade in my throat in that moment. "What about the summer isles?" she asked cautiously.

"Yavara let it slip that Princess Trenaria was going there. Princess Trenaria is supposed to be in Terondia." I gave her a disappointed look, "Elena, why would you ever let Yavara in on a conspiracy? The woman has the tact of a bull."

"And enough magic to level a city block." Elena glared at me, "Are you going to tell Leveria?"

"That depends. What are you planning?"

Elena's jaw twitched a little. "Democracy," she muttered.

"Goddamn it," I sighed, "did Esmerelda write another manifesto or something? I told Leveria not to transform a rebel leader, she knew it was stupid, but all you had to do was put her balls in your mouth and suddenly rationality goes out the window. This is why governing by dick-sucking ability is a bad idea," I glared up at Elena, "but not as bad an idea as letting commoners vote!"

"I came up with the idea on my own, if you must know." Elena said, then paused to wave to her passing hybrid mother and Headmaster Dog-Meat, before turning back to me, "And it's not a true democracy, but a republic where the hybrids rule by consensus."

"Ah, so it's just a selfish power-grab. Now I see why Yavara agreed."

"It's more nuanced than that." Elena said, "Remember how the last Alkandra collapsed? One woman dies, and everything goes to shit! If god forbid, Leveria befalls some accident, or is assassinated, or just gets too drunk one night, then what? We all just sit around and wait for Alkandi to reincarnate? That could take a hundred years! And in the meantime, everyone with the hint of a claim will vie for the throne, and whoever gets it isn't going to give it up to an infant incarnation! That is how totalitarian dystopias are formed. We can't be ruled by the whim of one woman. The Dark Queen can still be a figurehead, but levelheaded minds must be the ones to steer this ship."

I let out a long sigh. "Why can't anyone just leave well enough alone?" I gestured around us, "You're in fucking paradise, and you're dissatisfied."

"Things can always be taken away, Certiok. This won't last forever." She chewed her lip nervously, "Are you going to tell her?"

"I don't know."

"You know you don't have to fear me." Elena said, squeezing my hand tightly. Her eyes were so earnest, but I would be remiss to think she wasn't capable of having me murdered in the street.

I squeezed her hand back, then pulled away from her.

Though Castle Alkandra was always in my sight, it took me four hours to get to there from the hybrid temple. By the time I reached the massive staircase leading to its main entrance, my legs were so shot that I could barely feel them. I ordered a palanquin to carry me up the one-thousand steps, and I paid with cash since my pussy was less then worthless, and a gummy blowjob would maybe buy a candy-bar at best. My carriers took me past thousands of citizens traveling to and from the massive capital building, as well as opportunistic dark-elves dressed as hybrids to fool unknowing tourists out of a few hundred coins. Dark-elves used their bodies as currency, but they still needed retirement savings for when their tits got saggy. We past novelty merchants, weapons vendors and drug dealers, all of them operating legally. The laws Adrianna (the original Adrianna) and I had put into place in the second iteration of Alkandra had been carried over to the third. Nothing was illegal but slavery, rape and murder. As I watched the city become small in my back window, I wondered what Adrianna would've thought of Leveria's empire. Even after all this time, I still missed her. Brock and Trenok were just faded memories to me, remnants of an era long gone, but Leveria had built this place from Adrianna's blueprint, and every stone seemed to evoke a memory of her. If she were still alive, she probably would've been very-much like Elena.

I turned forward as my carriers brought me through the massive double doors, and into the atrium of Castle Alkandra. Unlike its pyramidic counterpart across the river, this atrium was as raucous as the streets below. There were dead bodies in the corners, people fucking against the pylons, and beasts fighting in the middle of makeshift boxing rings and gladiatorial sands. Instead of taking the safer route offered for diplomats, I stepped out of the palanquin, and nimbly made my way through the chaos, knowing just when to duck and stop to avoid being trampled or decapitated. I got to the other side unscathed, then walked past the two armored trolls that guarded the royal wing, and into the royal chambers.

Princess Adrianna was waiting outside her father's office, sitting in a chair made of her redheaded servants. They were teenage dawn-elf virgins, as Adrianna had very particular tastes, and their faces were consumed by her succulent bronze glutes as she lounged upon them. Two women feasted upon her ass and pussy, while a male dawn-elf was deep-throating her cock. She cruelly held his face against her crotch, not allowing him to do anything but suck and swallow as she watched him from behind her smoldering cigarette.

"The walking dead returns." Adrianna sneered when she saw me.

"How's your leg, dear?" I grumbled back.

"Bruises heal, but there's no cure for being an old cunt."

"Nor is there for being a stupid one."

Adrianna grinned wickedly at me, yanked the teenage boy's head back, and sprayed his face with fountains of cum. The young willowy man opened his mouth and moaned delightedly as he was besmirched by royalty, then screamed in agony when she put her cigarette out on his tongue. She locked his head between her strong legs, and held his mouth open, making him take the pain until the embers were all extinguished. When his screams died, she placed a loving kiss on his lips, and their joined mouths glowed with her healing spell. The man crawled away, and Adrianna stood up from her seat of women, her juices stringing from their pristine pale faces.

"Leave us," she commanded, and her three virgin pets crawled away. "I know why you're here." She growled at me.

"And...?"

She chewed on her lip, her black and blue eyes narrowed at me. "Mom says you're untouchable, but I wonder if the penance would be worth it just to hear you scream."

"You've seen what your father does to traitors. I'd hear your mortal screams echoing in hell. Kill me, and Daddy won't need permission from Mommy to do what she's wanted to do for a century, you uppity cunt."

Adrianna grinned wickedly at me. "I hope you live long enough to see what I'll do to her."

There was a loud bang behind the office door, then it flung open, and an extremely terrified Prestira Tiadoa came running out, topless with semen sprayed all over her chest. "They're fighting!" she yelled, and slammed the door behind her, "Your dad and my mom! They're not fucking around! We need to get out of here before they blow the whole fucking castle up!"

There was another explosion, and the stone walls of the castle shook to their foundations. Prestira put her hands overhead and scrambled down the hall, but Adrianna just stood there, flexing her fists. Little tendrils of flame coursed along her veins, and the dust around her settled upon her translucent shield.

"Adri!" Prestira cried from down the hall. Another boom, and the immense wall before me formed a crack all the way to the ceiling.

Adrianna just stood there, looking at the door. "This could be our chance, Tira," she muttered, "if they weaken each other, I can finish them off. Mom will bow to me after that; she'll have no choice."

"That's my mother in there!" Prestira shouted.

"And it's my father," Adrianna said softly, "someone needs to die, Tira."

"It'll be you." I said, "If you go in there, you'll come out in pieces."

"What do you know, you daft old cunt?!" Adrianna snarled at me.

I just smiled at her. "The corpses those two bitches have made between them would stack higher than this castle. You're not ready for this, little girl. You're not even in the same league."

Adrianna's posture relaxed. Prestira ran over to her beloved and took her by the hand, and they both fled down the hallway, and out of sight. I took a deep breath, walked over to the door, and flung it open.

The entire eastern wall of Leveria's office had been blown away. Papers floated from the high ceiling, every piece of furniture was on fire, and the two dueling queens were lurching against each other in the throes of violent ecstasy. Their hands were in each other's hair, their mouths were wrapped and consuming voraciously, and their bodies heaved back and forth as they jockeyed for position, fucking each other's holes in a battle of dominance. Yavara inevitably submitted as she always did, and their kiss became more impassioned as Leveria alternated the holes she fucked until they locked together in paralytic orgasm, and collapsed onto the floor with a sigh.

"This isn't over!" Yavara gasped, "We are coming back to this first thing tomorrow! You can't keep treating me like trash!"

"You love to be treated like trash!" Leveria snarled.

"Fuck you, you delusional cunt!" Yavara growled, and stood up, semen leaking from both her gaping orifices, her cock wet with Leveria's juices, "I'm not going to just take your bullshit! I am a goddamned queen, and I will be fucking treated like one!"

"You missed a high-profile diplomatic meeting so that you could get fucked by a tattooist!"

"You call that a meeting?!"

"You're an Alkandran! Things are expected of you!"

"I'M NOT YOUR GODDAMNED WHORE!"

"THEN STOP ACTING LIKE ONE!"

"Hi." I said.

Both women stopped, and looked over at me. Their expressions immediately softened, and their postures relaxed.

"Hey, Certiok," Yavara said, slipping back into her toga, "I was just... I was just leaving." She walked over to the door, then stopped, and turned around to look at her sister. "You drive me crazy, but I still love you, Leveria."

"And I love you too, Yavara," Leveria smiled back, "we'll talk about this in the morning."

"See me tonight with Elena?"

"Just for fun."

"Just for fun." Yavara echoed with a smile, and left.

Leveria ran her hands through her hair, and let out an exasperated sigh. "God, what a mess this all is. What can I help you with, Certiok?"

"I just came to talk."

"I was just about to begin organizing my itinerary, but..." she gestured helplessly to the papers floating everywhere, "siblings fight, I guess."

"I wouldn't know. My father killed all my brothers. He was afraid of them challenging him."

She smiled wryly. "Your father was a very wise and forward-thinking man."

"Until Brock Terdini ripped his throat out."

Leveria waved her hand dismissively. "If a foreign power conquers me, then that is god's will, but if I die getting stabbed in the back, that is my fault."

"What was all this about?"

"You should know, you were there." Leveria grumbled, extinguished the fires from a sofa, and collapsed in it. She patted the spot next to her, and I shuffled over to the couch, and sat into the plush cushion. "I rather like this new window me and my sister made," Leveria mused with a chuckle at the forty-foot-tall hole in her wall, "it gives a really nice view of the Alkandran Bay."

"I suppose." I muttered. The moon shimmered off the dark waters and danced with the thousands of candles glowing from the ships in port. A warm summer breeze wafted humidly into the room, carrying the tang of sea-salt.

Leveria lit a cigarette between her teeth, and sucked the smoke in deeply. "Do you remember when the Lowland fleet came here?"

"How could I forget?"

Leveria laughed. "What a strange day that was for me. It was my first day as the Dark Queen, and I had to fight a battle I had personally designed to be impossible to win. I had to fight myself, and I won. That is the true test of life, Certiok, and most people fail. You must best yourself at every opportunity, or you will become weak."

"Sounds exhausting."

"Oh, it is," Leveria sighed, and let out a plume of smoke, "but it's worth it."

I looked up at the Dark Queen, and sighed. "Leveria, everyone's betrayed you."

She cocked her head, and smiled. "I know. I know all about the summer isles."

"You do?" I raised my brows, "And you're just... letting it happen?"

"What is Alkandra, Certiok?" She prompted, "Is it the people, the land, or the culture? No. Alkandra is three women. I am its mind, Yavara is its beating heart, and Elena is its conscience. Alkandra is three lovers in a teenage romance. The highs are epic, the lows are disastrous, and the middles are just the drama-filled stages of discontent between raging arguments and mind-numbing makeup sex." She gestured broadly out toward the sparkling city, "This place is in a permanent state of flux. It will never be finished, the dream will never be realized, and the destiny will never be fulfilled. The three of us will fight, break up, start a war, make up, fuck like crazy for a century, then do it all again."

"What's the point?"

Leveria shrugged. "Love, I guess. That's all this is. Just the cyclic nature of falling in and out of love over and over," she moved her finger in a circle, "but we'll always keep coming back to each other, because the highs are worth the lows, and the lows are pretty fun anyway. Such is the nature of life from the perspective of a spoiled immortal." Leveria grinned at me, "To all the rest of you, it must feel like total bullshit."

"No, we do the same, just on a smaller scale, with much smaller stakes." I narrowed my eyes at her, "There's going to be a war soon, isn't there?"

She nodded. "We need to clean out the bad blood. That fucking daughter of mine for one... god, she's great in the sack, but she is trouble. Oh, and Prestira is such a fucking enabler, so she's gotta go. Esmerelda too, need to get rid of her before she stuffs Elena's head with anymore idealistic horseshit."

"You're going to fight all of them?"

"Yavara will come around to my side. She's not really part of Elena's hybrid cult, and she hates the idea of democracy."

"A lot of people are going to die."

"A lot of people are dying right now." Leveria said, flicking her cigarette, "Nobody gives a damn."

"I don't think Yavara and Elena will forgive you if you kill their children."

"Which is why I'm not doing anything to stop them." Leveria winked at me, "You shouldn't have prevented Adrianna from going after me, Certiok. She knows who she's fucking with; let her dig her own grave."

"You're pure evil."

Leveria smiled at the thought, then shook her head. "You know, I don't think I am. If I may be so bold, I think I'm quite benevolent."

"I know you."

"Yes, I rape, torture and kill with pleasure, but I also made the greatest city the world has ever seen, and I've united all of Tenvalia. I think when all is said and done, history will look very favorably upon me. Of course, I'll be the one writing most of it."

"'Why everything now sucks,' by Leveria Tiadoa Alkandra."

Leveria laughed, and put her arm around me. "Goddamn it, Certiok, I wish you'd just let me bite you! I don't know what I'm going to do when you're not here to call me on my bullshit."

"I'll be with my ancestors; why the hell would I want to stay here with you?"

Leveria's smile fell. "Certiok, I've already told you. I've been on the other side. There's nothing."

I just smiled, and pinched Leveria's cheek. "Just because you weren't aware of it, didn't mean there wasn't anything there, Leveria. N'shiliok foctuna gritanilok farcio; it's an old Protaki saying. It means 'there is no such thing as nothing.'" I tapped her forehead, "Your memories are transient, for they die even as you live. Your identity is a construct of your memories, and so it too will die. Everything you know and everything you ever felt will fade away, but you are eternal. If you have died and come back, then there wasn't nothing in that nothing; you were there, weren't you?"

Leveria shook her head, and a tear rolled down her cheek. "Thank you for that, Certiok."

"You're welcome." I smiled, and snuggled into her arms. The summer breeze was sweltering, but my old bones needed another soul to keep them warm. I had lived a very good and very long life, and I just wanted to rest for a while.

FURIA

I put down the letter, looked out at the Gratoran Wall, and let out a cloud of thick marijuana smoke. In my travels through Balamora, I realized just how insignificant Tenvalia really was. Balamora was nearly five times the size, and filled with wonders that were so gargantuan and alien that they seemed to come from another planet entirely. The Dark Queen might've been the most powerful being on Tenvalia, but even when Yavara had the combined abilities of herself and Alkandi, she couldn't scratch the surface of the deific prowess it must've taken to make the behemoth I now stared at.

The Gratoran Wall was a mountain range. A manmade mountain range, made by one man. A woman, actually. The shear rock walls went a mile high, then became jagged snowcapped peaks that towered over the landscape. On one side of the Gratoran Wall, were the rolling hills of the many dwarven princedoms. On the other, was nothing but desert for thousands and thousands of miles. That was the orc empire, and if I squinted, I could almost see the steel city of Hektinar glinting off the horizon as the sun set behind it. As for the wall itself, flocks of valkyries and tribes of wildlings roamed the many peaks, which provided ample pastures and excellent defense. The wall was a divider, but those who lived atop it lived atop the world, and there was no division for us; only vast expansive sky.

"What are you thinking about?" Soraya asked me from the bedroom.