Tales of Alavern 01 (Non-Canon)

Tales of Alavern:The Man, the Queen and her Island

Prologue

The Great Mother stared down at the isles she had created so long ago. The long-lived women of the isles, her people, had suffered greatly at the hands of cruel tyrant men and so she had gifted them ferocious strength and skill in battle to win their freedom. Once their freedom had been won, she had closed the island off from the rest of the world through her power and gave the women one final gift. A magic pool, with which they could offer their blood and receive children that they would be able to raise in peace. She smiled down at the strong warriors that had grown from the pool, and had thought they would be able to live peacefully forever but something had gone wrong.

The children born from the pool had started becoming fewer and fewer over the years. Within the blink of a god's eye, the children soon came from the pool no more. Her people would die out if nothing could be done, but the pool could not be recreated or re-energized. It had simply taken too much out of her during her creation. The Great Mother would not simply stand by and let this be though. Her people would not merely exist and die, they would live and thrive! She puzzled for another generation, trying to come up with a solution until the last of the children from the pool had become adults.

She had run out of time, and the epiphany she had sought after had eluded her. Without the pool, there could be no more children and without children, her daughters would wither and fade from the world. She watched with tears in her eyes as she saw one of her daughters approach the well and cut her hand, offering blood that would never form a child despite their sincerest wishes. There was no other way for a child to be born on an island without men...

Suddenly, the Great Mother had found her elusive epiphany! Men had been the ruination of her people before, why could they not become the hope of her people now? She sought her entire world for a man, asking the spirits of the lands to show her a worthy male but despite the magic and wonders of her world, too many of its people were still too primitive. Men the world over had thought their natural strength made them above women, who needed great skill to defeat them in battle. She could not find not find a worthy man in her universe, but her people needed her.

Desperate, she broke the taboo and dipped into the Source of All. She screamed in agony as she forced her power into another universe where it did not belong, but her scream turned to joy as she found a world with a man just right for her needs. She saw him, teaching a young girl how to punch and praising her efforts with kindness. This man was not only strong, but he was kind and fair too. What she was about to do to him was not fair at all, but she was desperate. She hoped he would find it in him to forgive her sin this day as she used her great power to pluck him from his home and place him on the isles of her people. He would be her people's great hope, as long as he could survive them....

Chapter 1

Cyrus groaned, tasting sand in his mouth as he slowly came to. He found himself sprawled out face-down on a beach somewhere as he opened his eyes, feeling groggy and weak like someone just barely getting over a bad flu. He spit sand out of his mouth as he felt the tips of his fingers hit by gentle waves. The cool spray of the ocean washed over him as he looked over calm and beautiful blue-green waters of whatever sea. The weather was perfectly lukewarm as he struggled to get onto his feet, somewhere in the low 70s if he had to guess, and the heavy clouds in the sky shielded him from the rays of the sun. He wasn't really used to dealing with humidity, having grown up in the desert city of Las Vegas, but between it and the color of the clouds it was clear that rain was inevitable today.

He looked around, seeing several boats on the water near an island a bit of a distance away and thick trees a short distance behind him. He tried desperately to remember how he had gotten there in the first place, but the last thing he could remember was working out alone in his room. He looked himself over and realized that he was still wearing the plain black t-shirt and simple workout shorts from his routine. He didn't even remember passing out or falling asleep, so either he was suffering from some form of memory loss or he had been abducted. He hoped that he was safe and had just conked his head somehow.

He fixed his gaze on the calm waters of the ocean, ebbing and flowing until his attention was drawn by the rustling of trees from behind him. He turned in time to see two women emerge from the trees, both of them wearing some form of armor straight out of a fantasy game and carrying swords that completed the look. One of them had bright blonde hair while the other had fiery red hair, and both of them had stunning figures that were all curves and well-earned muscle. The blonde one pointed at him and began speaking.

"See, captain?" she said, turning her head towards the redhead. "A man. Just like they're described in the legends." The redhead glared at him while the blonde seemed to almost study him, as though he were some kind of ancient artifact. Cyrus nervously smiled, holding up a hand in greeting.

"Uh...hello there." he said, hoping to come off as friendly. "My name is Cyrus. I'm from Las Vegas and...well, I can't seem to remember how I got here. Could you possibly help me?" He looked at the women as the redhead whistled and several more women in the same armor came rushing out of the trees towards him, pointing honest-to-god spears in his directions. In truth, he felt a little conflicted.

He had always found strong, self-assured women to be extremely attractive but the literal threat to his life that they were making with their weapons was only reminding him of bad times that he had dealt with during his life. It was taking a bit more than he wanted to admit to keep his temper under control. He hadn't done anything wrong and he was being treated like a wanted criminal, apparently just for his damned gender.

"Alexis, secure him. This is a grave and unprecedented matter, so we need to consult the queen before any further action is taken." the redhead said to the blonde. The blonde, Alexis apparently, quickly rushed forward, producing a pair of old-fashioned metal shackles from behind her back. In one fluid motion, she twisted his arms behind his back and slapped the shackles on him. It didn't really hurt, but Cyrus couldn't help his growing irritation.

"You could have just asked me to put my hands behind my back." he growled out, his anger bubbling to the surface and barely under his control now. "I get that I'm apparently not supposed to be here and you need to be careful around me but there's a limit." Alexis looked at him with genuine surprise on her face while the red-headed captain glared him down.

"Be silent, Cyrus from Las Vegas or I will make you." the captain growled back at him. She snapped her fingers and the various women with the spears surrounded him on all sides, keeping their weapons trained from a tactically safe distance. "Keep the prisoner moving, and keep your guard up. There are too many unknowns to risk anything. Am I understood?" she shouted out to her troops, receiving a unified 'Yes, captain' in return.

Cyrus's bare feet became coated with wet sand as Alexis pushed him, forcing him to move forward as his new guard moved together in a near perfect unison with them. As they moved into the trees, Cyrus did his best to wipe some of the sand from his feet using the grass but was thwarted from anything by the constant pushes forward from Alexis and the occasional prod with one of the other women's spears. He grumbled his frustrations wordlessly and the captain shot him another glare.

"So what are your names?" he asked, uncomfortable with the silence. "I've already introduced myself, and I know that she's Alexis..." he said, crooking his thumb over at the blonde.

"I said be silent, man." the captain spit at him, spewing his gender out as though it were the most foul-tasting thing in the world. "You may speak only when questioned. Understood?"

"No." he said resolutely, garnering looks of shocks and a few quiet gasps from the women surrounding him. "I had the common fucking decency to introduce myself, I'm being cooperative since you're clearly part of some law-keeping force in...wherever the hell this place is but if you don't start treating me like I'm a person instead of some rabid animal, I'm going to get real uncooperative real fast."

The captain's eye went nearly bloodshot with rage as she looked back at him, clearly unused to any sort of resistance or insolence from anyone but to his surprise she didn't come after him. She kept her distance and took a very deep breath, held it in and let it out slowly before she even bothered to respond to him.

"You are a rabid animal!" she said darkly to him. "You are owed nothing! Worse yet, you are a man. The same scum who abused and assaulted our foremothers. We will not be silenced or deceived by you!"

"And how many men have you actually met before today?" he replied, still walking forward despite the fact that the captain had gone totally still. "Because based on the bits of conversation I've heard and your own words, I'm betting that I'm the first man you've ever seen. That any of you have ever seen. So don't even think you can pretend that you understand a damn thing about me before you've even gotten to know me, captain."

The entire guard company stopped for a second, stunned at his words and the audacity he had shown to their captain but at this point he was beyond caring. He was beyond sick of dealing with people judging him based on idiotic factors like his skin, gender or clothing. If they didn't want to listen, then he'd meet this queen and sort this whole thing out by any means necessary. He kept walking as though his company hadn't stopped dead in their tracks and they quickly caught back up with him. He felt one of them punch him in the back with a fist and smirked.

"So queen, huh?" he said, chuckling at their new attitude. "That's kind of surprising. Most monarchies in the world are gone now, or at the very least out of power. Usually they got kicked out via a bloody uprising due to abuse of their power." he said very casually, eliciting yet another growl from the red-head and another punch to his back.

"Our queen is righteous and fair. She has earned our loyalty and our respect more times over than I can count. She is everything to us! Now shut up and walk!" the captain said to him, her patience clearly having been strained.

"I can only promise to do one of those things effectively." he snarked back immediately with a grin on his face. "Though to be honest, I am actually looking forward to meeting this queen. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and find out that I'm not the only one on this stupid island with any basic...sense of...manners.." he stuttered out as the trees quickly cleared out and he saw the beginnings of a beautiful city. His feet suddenly found themselves on expertly crafted stone streets instead of grass and dirt, and he found himself unable to move or speak even a single word.

"I told you shut up and walk." the captain said to him, pushing him forward once again and nearly causing him to stumble onto his face. "Though I suppose I should be happy that the one you chose to do effectively was shut up." she said to him, flashing her own smirk that he completely missed. His attention was completely focused on the city before him, a city unlike any he had ever seen before.

Chapter 2

Brianna, red-headed captain of the queen's royal military police, kept her eyes fixed on the man they were currently escorting. She hated admitting the pride she felt at the man's fascination with their buildings. The savage had probably never seen anything so well-constructed in his pathetic life. Without the tyranny of men and with the guiding hand of the Great Mother, her people had built a city on the largest of their isles that melded together perfectly with the natural environment.

Sandstone was used for the roads they currently walked on, and various other stones had been experimented with for the other buildings. The city was colorful, the buildings between the paths they walked on covered in various colors and stones like Jaspers. The only uniform part of them had been the blue roofs they had painted in honor of the Great Mother who freed their foremothers from oppression all those generations ago. Lamps, crafted from metals and illuminated through the use of a foreign magic brought to them before the Great Mother had encased their islands in a protective barrier began to light up as the sky grew darker from the lowering of the sun and the clouds in the sky.

Curiosity filled Brianna's head for a moment as she observed the man taking all of this in, and she wondered if men still lived in hut and small houses made of sticks, mud and loosely connected stones. It would certainly explain his awestruck look very well, but there was something about the way he was taking this all in that had struck her as odd. They passed by several more streets before it finally hit her. It was the lights. This man barely even registered that the lights were there. They should have seemed an impossible marvel to him! How was this reaction possible? Was he faking it?

"This is some of the most artistically beautiful architecture I've ever seen." he said to no one in particular. "Are those agates? How on Earth did you make a building with freaking agates?"

"Our buildings are that fascinating to you?" Alexis asked, somewhat mirroring Brianna's thoughts. "All of the marvels of our island, and it's merely the buildings that fascinate you?"

"Well yeah." he responded plainly, looking over his shoulder at Alexis. "I mean the sandstone roads make sense from a cost standpoint but they're a bit of an eyesore and the streetlights seem a bit too old-fashioned. They don't really match well with the incredible sight of the buildings surrounding them. Now, they'd probably work well if you went with an Art Deco style, but..."

"Enough." Brianna said firmly. "Alexis, gag him. If I have to hear him yammer on for even another minute, I'm going to break protocol and stab this man before we can consult the queen." Alexis looked back at Brianna, giving a silent nod before producing a black handkerchief from a pouch on her belt and tying it into the man's mouth. He made noises of protest that brought a smirk to Brianna's face as she pushed him forward against his wishes. The noises vanished after a final groan of acceptance of this new fate of his and they continued their march towards the palace.

Word had spread fast when they first brought the man into the city and now the man and the guards surrounding him were the subject of gossip the entire city over. From windows and rooftops and occasionally even the sides of the street, women from all over were staring in wonder, dread, fear and more than a little curiosity over the first man to set foot on their islands in nearly a thousand years. Brianna couldn't truly blame them, as this was the first worthwhile event to happen in just as many years since the Great Mother had erected the barrier to protect them, but gossip and whispers had always annoyed her.

She heard the man silently grumble and couldn't help but wonder if he shared her distaste for spectacle or if he was just being sore about the gag. Either way it didn't really matter, but she was keeping her mind distracted from her rising irritation as the whispers and gasps got louder and more frequent. Thankfully, the castle soon came into view. The pristine white building rose up well above the roofs, sporting its own blue roof that had been inlaid with gold, melted from long-abandoned treasure reserves.

It filled her with a sense of pride and anticipation every time she came to it to report to and occasionally merely visit her queen. Her heart had always been faster when she stood before the queen, though she chalked that up to nerves. She was always worried about whether she was doing a good enough job as captain, whether or not she was making her queen and friend proud of her. Worrying about it would solve nothing though, so she simply resolved to do everything to the best of her abilities.

The guards at the gate gaped at the man with the black cloth gag in his mouth rolling his eyes at their reaction. Brianna stepped up, snapping her fingers to get their attention back on their duties and wordlessly motioned for the guards to open up the gate. They gave her a quick salute and hustled to get the massive, beautifully ornate wooden gates open. The man's eyes went wide again as he beheld the royal courtyard. Flowers and trees had been painstakingly planted to give the illusion that the courtway had somehow managed to occur naturally, like the palace and everything attached to it had somehow managed to grow out of the very ground without disturbing any of the plant life.

She pushed him again, making him walk forward as she saw one of the messenger girls dart out from behind the gate and make a mad dash towards the palace. Brianna smiled warmly, pleased she wouldn't have to wait for too long for the queen to arrive. Once she had seen the situation for herself, they could decide what to do and this whole debacle would be over that much quicker. She would be happy to return to normalcy, where she would stop petty troublemakers and not have to deal with disgusting men on days where she should have only worked for half the day and then come here to spend time with her good friend.

Brianna stopped the company and their prisoner right before the steps into the palace proper, turning to her troops with a stern gaze. They all knew from experience to take up formal positions in preparation to see the queen, lining up in a particular formation that still left the man surrounded. Alexis stayed right behind the man, her hand keeping a firm grip on his upper arm as he let out a frustrated sigh. Brianna stepped up to the man, stopping inches from his face and spoke.

"Count the seconds, man. Once the queen has been informed of our arrival, your fate will be decided. These are likely to be the last moments of your life. If I were you, I would enjoy them as much as I could." she said sternly, glaring at him with the coldest look she could muster. The man proved annoying once again when his only reaction to her was to slowly roll his eyes and shake his head slightly. Brianna clenched her fist and nearly lost herself to her urge to punch the disgusting creature in its smug face, but was stopped by the sounds of heavy breathing and frantic footsteps.

"The queen..is...expecting..you..Captain." the messenger girl she had seen run inside earlier panted out in exhausted breaths. "She says...to come to the..throne room."

"Understood." Brianna said, quickly turning to face the girl with a practiced neutral expression. She motioned for her troops to follow her and they all escorted the man inside of the palace proper. Brianna had grown up playing inside these halls and knew them like the back of her hand. A left, a long walk down a hallway, a right and one final left lead them all to the throne room.

Brianna's breath caught in her throat for a second as she saw the queen sitting at her throne, reading some parchment that carried in her hands. Her queen was a sight as always, her body just as well-toned as Brianna's but with an air of infinite grace and elegance. Her long silver-white hair cascaded behind her shoulders and framed her pointed face perfectly. She was dressed in a barely formal gown, a sheer black with a golden trim pattern inlayed into it.