Sowing Discord Ch. 01

Ziryha drummed her nails on her table as she watched the banquet unfold in front of her. She was immensely bored and only the effort of maintaining the magical illusion that cloaked her from the party's view was really keeping her awake at all. She was the only Rakshasa in Empress Rebeccah's inner circle and one of only four non-humans in the room. Much as the Korblin Empire touted its egalitarianism, humans had all the hereditary wealth and power. Many elves and Tarqael lived within its territories but they were sorely under-represented in this room. Even Ziryha's presence here was contingent upon her magical gifts and talents, and had nothing to do with fairness or equality.

She honestly didn't care about any of that as an issue in and of itself. To her, the bigger issue was that the Empress' hypocrisy was childish and embarrassing. The Korblin Empire existed as it did specifically because it respected power, unlike some— Ziryha paused her frustrated musings as a strange scent reached her nose, and she raised her head. She sniffed again, and the fur on her ears stood up on end. Magic.

She bolted up on her feet and strode forward through the veil of her illusion, appearing before the assembled guests for the first time. Several of them jumped a little, startled to see the pale-skinned and dark-furred Rakshasa appear in their midst out of nowhere.

"Ziryha, what are you--" The Empress rose to her feet, scowling at Ziryha's intrusion but she paid the woman no mind. One of the serving staff in particular stared at her worriedly, a tall man with a patchy beard. The one that she'd noticed the scent coming from. She met his eyes, and he scowled, casting aside the tray of wine glasses he was carrying and withdrawing a carved wand made out of what looked like marble from his jacket. The mage raised his hand and chanted, wand glowing purple.

Ziryha cursed under her breath, invoking both her own innate Rakshasa magic and also fishing into her pocket for a pouch of dispersal powder. People were scrambling, the mage was levelling the wand at the Empress as the air crackled with electricity, and Zirhya barely managed to undo the tie on her powder in time. She blew most of the sparkly magenta dust into the air and spoke the command word.

A bolt of lightning arced through the air from the mage's wand, heading towards the Empress. As it travelled halfway across the room, it diverted towards the cloud of powder, splitting and discharging into it. The electricity buzzed heavily in the air around Ziryha as it forked towards her, the charge zapping her ears painfully and making her fur stand on end. A moment later, Zirhya's conjured knives stabbed the mage in both of his wrists and shoulders. He cried out in pain and dropped the wand to the floor, and a moment later was mobbed by several armed soldiers. The Empress retreated to a corner of the room surrounded by guards, and the guests flew into a panic.

Zirhya put the remains of her dispersal powder away and made her way through the crowd. Several people eyed her suspiciously and when she approached the ring of guards surrounding the Empress, they stopped her.

"Stay right where you are, cat," he scowled at her, and several of his fellows also eyed her suspiciously.

"Is that Zirhya? Let her in, you oaf," The Empress' voice cut through the din and he winced as though he'd been the one Zirhya had stabbed. He stood aside and Zirhya walked up to a very displeased Empress.

"What the fuck was that?" she hissed angrily, scowling at Zirhya as though the assassination attempt had been her fault and not something she'd just prevented.

"An assassin," Zirhya replied dryly, crossing her arms and returning the scowl. "That's why you have me here in the first place, Your Majesty."

"Don't you--" The Empress started, but then stopped herself, sneering a little. She closed her eyes, exhaled, and took a moment to compose herself. "Your fur is standing on end. It looks ridiculous," she finally said quietly.

Zirhya blushed, glancing down at her tail and seeing that it was a total poofball. She tried to smooth it down a little bit, repeating the process for her ears and hair but she still felt a bit of static crackling off of her. Hair and fur still clung to her fingers and she gave up after a moment. "His wand. Let me inspect it and I can probably tell you who made it." she asserted, straightening up a little.

"Yes, of course," The Empress said with a dismissive wave. "I don't care that nobody was hurt, I want to know how this could happen."

Zirhya decided not to point out that the assassin was very very hurt. Whether or not Empress Rebeccah knew it, the implication was that people who weren't useful to her weren't people at all. "That's a little outside my field of expertise, your Majesty, but I'll tell you what I can."

Rebeccah nodded at her and addressed a military captain who was approaching their fortified corner. "Captain, make sure Zirhya gets possession of that man's wand. We're going to convene a security meeting later tonight and you're going to be there, Zirhya." She cast a final warning at her.

Zirhya bowed to the Empress and left, following the captain towards the group of soldiers surrounding the injured assassin. None of the guests were eating dinner anymore, the ones who weren't leaving the room were accosting the soldiers to demand answers they didn't have. The glowing white wand was still on the ground where the assassin had dropped it. Two soldiers were standing over it but neither seemed eager to touch it. With the captain's assurance, she walked up to the wand and snatched it up, folding it delicately into one of the silk napkins she'd swiped off one of the tables. People were still looking at her distrustingly. Most people knew that the Empress had a Rakshasa attendant, but it sort of hovered in an area that was half rumour and half public record since she rarely let herself be seen. No doubt that she'd now have a much greater degree of unwanted notoriety, after stopping tonight's attack.

As she slipped through the door to the dining hall, she immediately concealed her ears and tail with a quick illusion. She had to make herself a little bit taller to properly conceal the ears, and she had to keep her tail wrapped around her leg, but it was a simple illusion that she maintained frequently, often changing subtle details about her fake human features so that nobody came to recognize the disguise.

She passed by agitated soldiers and courtiers, slipping around them as she headed towards her laboratory. She allowed herself to get her hopes up for just a moment, and the instant she did, they were shattered.

"Excuse me, Miss? Where are you going?" Some goon in a palace guard outfit accosted her, no doubt feeling agitated over the fact that he couldn't find something useful to do with his time, and so deciding to harass someone instead. Guards and soldiers were always like that. The profession attracted people who weren't satisfied unless they were either kissing a pair of boots or bothering someone.

"Business for the Empress," she said with a scowl, starting to conjure a new illusion to go along with the one she was already maintaining.

"Can I see some proof of your identit—"

"Hey! What are you doing out here, soldier!" The captain from before stepped around the corner, scowling at the soldier accosting her.

"I, err," he stuttered, looking nervously over at the captain. "Sir, just making sure she's who she—"

"Leave her alone and get back to your post, she's got important business for the Empress to attend to." The captain scowled at the soldier bothering Zirhya, and he went extremely pale.

"R-Right... sorry miss..." he mumbled. Zirhya wasted no time and pushed past him, directing her illusory captain to disappear back around the corner he'd come from. Hopefully there was nobody there to see the illusion appear and disappear but she hardly cared if she confused some poor staff member. She made it back to her isolated corner of the Imperial Palace and created the key to the door and inserted it into the lock. She'd designed the lock such as that it was completely impossible to open with a normal key. It could only be operated by a Rakshasa or some other mage who knew how to make ethereal constructs. She reformed the shape of the key into the lock to fit the inner workings of the mechanism, and then twisted the entire thing, opening the door with a clank. The heavy enchanted iron door swung open, and she stepped inside, sealing it shut behind her. No reason to present nosy palace-dwellers or soldiers with a chance to snoop around inside.

The debris of her latest research project dominated the left side of her laboratory. She'd been working on a way to control and contain a magical heat dispersion reaction in a reliable manner. The spells she knew and had been able to locate were all unstable and tended to cause chain reactions, freezing everything in an erratically expanding area. Useful for indiscriminate destruction, not for putting out fires or targeted executions. The project had been stagnant for almost a full year, Zirhya's main projects and responsibilities had shifted away from the academic towards the political, lately.

She headed towards the other half of her lab and started tidying up the scattered reagents and magical devices. She cleared a spot on a workbench and placed the napkin with the confiscated wand on it to get to work. She made steady progress, identifying the marble it was carved from as being from the Wild Plane, but the enchantments upon it reminded Zirhya of some she'd seen from an Elven magic guild out of Lek.

"E-Eminence?" a tiny ghost of a voice interrupted her focus, and she blinked. It was coming from the next room over. She wondered if she'd... Oh, right, she did. Standing up, she walked over into the next room, and saw a slender feminine boy wrapped in a bondage gear, suspended in the air. Her apprentice and assistant, Rhillcyyen. He was blindfolded and had chains around his wrists, ankles, and torso that went up to the ceiling. She'd left him there that morning, and had actually intended to come back and set him free quite a bit sooner, but had gotten dragged into the banquet wherein she'd prevented the Empress' assassination.

"Eminence? Back?" he asked again, head swiveling, though his blindfolded made the gesture pointless. The little bit of motion made him sway gently in his chains, and Zirhya couldn't help but smirk and enjoy the helpless boy's quandary for a moment. His voice was soft and androgynous with a little bit of a boyish edge to it that he'd worked quite hard to get just right. He was wearing a bunch of bondage gear to stop the chains from digging into his skin and under that, a frilly shirt and pants that he'd bought for himself.

She wordlessly placed her hand on his inner thigh, sliding her fingers underneath the bunched up legs of his pants and running them along his smooth skin. Tarqael skin was firm with very little give to it but Rhillcyyen had a rigorous skincare regimen to keep it softened up. It was as smooth as polished glass, and Zirhya enjoyed the sensation of running her hands along his sensitive thighs for a moment. Like most Tarqael, there was a slightly greenish cast to his translucent skin, and under enough light, one could see several spiderwebs of lines like the veins of a leaf laid out overtop of one another. He whimpered softly, no doubt deducing that it was probably her, but not quite positive either. She teased him like that for a little, enjoying the feel of him and the little noises he made. She grabbed his ass through his pants in her other hand and squeezed. His butt was soft without being jiggly, and she sank her fingers into it. She dug her nails in a bit and grinned happily as her rough treatment made him squirm.

"Eminence..." Rhillcyyen whined, vibrating with pleasure and anxiety. His subtle motions were making him sway in his chains, and Zirhya finally laughed softly, ceasing her teasing so that she could pull free his blindfold.

"Hanging in there, seedling?" she asked playfully, grabbing him by the hair and raising his head so that she could plant a kiss on his forehead. His coarse, vaguely grass-like hair was closely shorn on the sides and long enough to flop over his forehead on the top and in front. She gave it a bit of a tug just because she liked to be rough with him, and grinned down at him.

"Y-Yes Eminence," he murmured, biting his lip. "Gone. Long."

"No whining," she scoffed, and slapped him hard across the face. The hit sent him spinning in his chains for a bit and he yelped softly, his head snapping to the side. It would have been a rather punishing strike on most people, but Tarqael were as resilient to physical punishment as Orcs even though they were often less than half the size. When she grabbed the chain to stop Rhillcyyen from spinning, she grinned in delight at the clean handprint she'd left on his face. Resilient as Orcs, but, much to Zirhya's personal amusement, Tarqael skin sure did bruise nicely.

Steadying him, she undid the chains around the leg harness, letting him awkwardly stand at an angle, half-suspended as she undid the chains around his torso and shoulders. He sighed in relief, wriggling his way out of the restraints and gear, stretching his stiff arms and legs as Zirhya leered at his body. Rhillcyyen had been much more feminine when Zirhya had met him, and had identified himself as a girl in much the same way that an Elemental Incarnate might tell a human that their name was 'John.' She'd not only taught him magic but also helped him tinker with his, body and presentation until he'd achieved his current girly boy look.

Rhillcyyen whined as soon as he was free and darted over to a jug of water on the shelf in the playroom. He chugged down half of it with a gasp, and then darted into the bathroom without saying a word. Zirhya snickered at him and left him to it, returning to her laboratory to study the strange wand. She sat back down at the workbench and tried to remember where she'd been, staring at the alabaster stick that had nearly killed her Empress.

"Eminence?" Just as she started to remember where she'd been with her work, Rhillcyyen's soft voice came from the door to the playroom. She looked up at him and saw that he'd changed into a slightly more formal outfit modeled after the palace serving staff, with a too-tight jacket and pants that Zirhya had specifically sized to show off his butt. He'd affixed one of the many flowers he grew into his hair. This one was a large purple balloon-shaped flower with a five-pointed bloom, one of the wider flowers from his little garden. He'd placed it further down than he normally did, trying unsuccessfully to cover up the handprint that Zirhya had left him with. She almost wanted to make him take it out, but she liked the slightly genderbent look of a flower in her boy's hair so she decided to let him keep it. Wasn't like anybody who glanced at him wouldn't see the imprint for what it was.

"Commotion?" he asked, gesturing towards the door where an occasional agitated shout could still be heard.

"Yes. Someone tried to assassinate our Empress just now," Zirhya replied with a sigh. Rhillcyyen's eyes went wide and he looked back and forth between Zirhya and the door several times.

"Us?" he asked.

"No. Someone else tried to kill her and I have no idea who. It's a bit of a problem." she grumbled, analyzing the wand. She stopped what she was doing suddenly, looked back up at the boy standing in the doorway, and scowled. "Did I say you could get dressed you little himbo?"

Rhillcyyen blushed and looked down at his feet. "No, Eminence. Thoughtless. Again."

"Take that crap off and get over here." He nodded and rushed to disrobe, neatly removing and folding his uniform tightly. He placed all his clothing in a meticulously neat pile at his feet and scampered over to Zirhya's side. She held the wand out to him. "What does this wand do, seedling?"

Rhillcyyen peered at the device, gingerly took it from her, and puckered his lips in thought. "Electricity."

"Yes. Anything else?" she asked, watching him closely. He cocked his head to the side a little and stared intently at the wand. Suddenly, his eyes went wide, and he squawked in distress, tossing the wand back onto the workbench and snapping his hands back as though it had suddenly gotten red hot.

"Rot. Decay. Dark." he whispered, shivering and wringing his hands together as though trying to scrub a clinging malaise from them.

"Blight?" she asked, moving the wand back into the center of the table. Rhillcyyen nodded at her, looking rattled and distressed. Zirhya had suspected that there was some element of infernal magic in the wand but she wasn't as sensitive to these things as Rhillcyyen was. "I was afraid of that. Do you have idea idea who could have made something like this?"

Rhillcyyen shivered and nodded, squirming uncomfortably. "Devil."

She looked up at him suspiciously. "Really? A Devil made this? The Blight is that pure?"

"Yes." Rhillcyyen nodded solemnly, still staring at the wand. "Devil. Warlock."

"Well isn't that lovely," Zirhya muttered, slumping back in her chair. "Now I've got to stop some Devils from killing that bitch and making her into a martyr, and then we still have to depose her."

"Martyr? Motive?" Rhillcyyen asked.

"It's probably her sister Candice. Rebeccah gets killed by Fiendish forces, makes the family look nice and righteous. Good for succession. I suppose that's where we'll have to start investigating." Zirhya brushed some of her hair out of her face and looked over at Rhillcyyen, feeling some of her sadistic impulses rising up. The urge to hurt and fuck her boy was starting to simmer in her blood and in her cock as it usually did when she got stressed. She let the feeling be for now, stoking it and waiting for it to boil over so that she could relish in his suffering properly.

"Accusation. Foolish."

"I know that you brainless—" Zirhya grumbled and flicked Rhillcyyen between the eyes. The boy winced and pouted but didn't pull away. "Of course I'm not going to just go and accuse the Empress' sister of assassinating her. Shit, I probably can't even mention who made the wand, Candice will get paranoid. What a mess."

Rhillcyyen didn't comment, he just sat there, still pouting over the recrimination he'd received like a scolded puppy. Zirhya snorted at him, feeling a little seed of pity for him but stomping on it before it could sprout. She took the wand and placed it into a drawer, then gave Rhillcyyen a purposeful look and snapped her fingers. "Sit. Now," she commanded, pointing at the workbench. He blushed slightly but did as she asked without hesitation. He hopped up onto the workbench and shyly looked down at her, keeping his legs together.

Zirhya slammed her fist down into the meaty part of his thigh, making him yelp in surprise. He tried to open his legs for her but she got several more punches in, her knuckles leaving tiny little dark indents on his pretty thighs. His legs open, Zirhya made eye contact, admiring the sparkling golds and purples in his iris as much as she admired the apprehension and lust in them. She grabbed his elongated clitoris, teasing it further out of its hood and starting to squeeze and pull on it.

"Eminence!" Rhillcyyen whined, hips bucking and legs trembling.

"Yes, seedling?" Zirhya pulled harder as she asked the mocking question. "Does my little himbo like it when I do this?"

"N-No... Y-Yes... Overwhelmed..." Rhillcyyen gasped as she kept up the pressure. With a sadistic smirk, she brought her other hand up and flicked the tip of his clit. He howled in pain, the sharp sound triggering the noise-suppressing enchantments upon the laboratory. He squirted a little bit out of his hole, starting a bit of a puddle on the workbench. Zirhya wasn't sure if most Tarqael were squirters, but Rhillcyyen certainly was.