The Lineage Ch. 10

His voice, pitiful, weak, and most importantly - sobbing, all muffled as he spoke into her chest.

"Zenna... gods, Zenna... forgive me... how could I do such a thing to you... screaming at you in such a way when... it was all my fault. Had I never found you, you would have never had to gone through any of this... you wouldn't have to suffer at my harsh voice or be mistreated by anyone in Underhill... gods, gods, Zenna please find it in yourself to give me another chance... everything I screamed at you that day was just... I was just in the heat of the moment... I didn't mean it... and to think that could have been the last words I ever said to you... I just..." he cried out loudly into her bosom, his voice echoing throughout her entire body.

He peeled his face up and stared up at her. What was once the clandestine appearance of strength and resilience was little more than a humbling mess as he cried against her. "Did you not hear me? I was out there, howling your name down every street every day until I went hoarse and drank myself into a stupor only to go back at it again the next day. Everyone stared at me with disgust... I was just a useless drunkard roaming the streets howling to my heart's content because I couldn't bring myself to admit I may never see you again. I can barely even remember my own wife's face anymore I've been away from home so long because I wanted nothing more for you to come home, as well... gods Zenna I've never been so ashamed of anything in my life... please, gods please just give me the chance to make it up to you... gods, little lady, please don't ever make me worry about you again, pleeeasseeeeee..." his voice finally trailed off into nothing.

Against his chest, he could feel the elf beginning to heave. Against his face, he could feel her tears falling down on his skin, wiping away his own. Against his heart, he found hers beating in sync.

Without another word, Zenna fell down to her knees and wrapped her arms around the knight and pulled him in close. The two stayed like that for minutes on end, each draining themselves of every tear they had in their bodies and ringing their throats until they ran out of sounds to make. The group behind them could take no more and let tears fall also, making sure to embrace each other lightly.

With forgiveness given, both knight and elf helped each other to their feet until Zenna was pressed up against Throydill as if she were his daughter, returning home after rebelling against her father. Marcus lightly laid his head down on her beautiful bed of hair and let it rest a while longer. They finally, begrudgingly separated when the knight pulled himself out of her grasp. Even though she was still crying, it was certainly with a smile on her face now.

"I have..." Marcus paused to wipe his mouth, "...something else I want you to see. I made it the night you disappeared, and I wanted to give it to you for when I found you again," he reached into his pocket, taking out a single piece of folded parchment. He unfolded it and handed it to her. Although it had been dirtied and stained by mud and dirt these past few weeks, Zenna knew all too well what piece of paper it was. The horrendous handwriting right in its center was all-too-familiar to her.

I find love.

Zenna held it in her hands and studied it intently. She then glanced back up to Marcus, "what about it? I just wanted to leave something so you know I didn't disappear into thin air... that I hoped I might someday return..."

"I know you did. I want you to read what I wrote," he nodded down to the piece of paper again. Zenna glanced down and saw there was another line added, far neater than her own scribble. And, to her dismay, far more complex. Her eyes darted across it endlessly, yet she hardly seemed to react. Her fingers grew uneasy as she gripped the paper and mouthed slightly.

"Read it out loud. I want to hear you say it."

"U-umm..." she shifted uneasily, her eyes continuing to decipher the text.

"It's just one sentence, and I wrote it far neater than you wrote yours. What's the problem?"

With a tiny voice only audible to Marcus, she begged, "c-can you just tell me what it says?"

"Why? You have eyes. You tell me what it says," he said in a voice loud enough to alert those around them. Zenna shivered a bit and gripped the paper in frustration. Under her breath, he could hear her speaking quietly, barely even qualifying as a mumble. He squinted in confusion as she seemed to be speaking with an increasingly rapid yet desperate pace.

"Out loud, please. Why is this a problem?"

"P-please just tell me what it says... please..." she begged again.

Realization was slowly setting in on the knight, who furrowed his brow in surprise, "Zenna... can you...?"

The elf shamefully raised her head, and without even saying anything, the answer was written in her eyes.

"Marcus... I... I can't read..."

The entire room grew heated with sorrow, with the queen barely getting out, "Zenna... no..." while the rest wallowed in silence.

"How... how is that possible?" the knight questioned.

"I... I can't write either... that's why the note I left is so short and terribly written I was barely able to get that much together. My... my father forbade me from learning... claiming that 'any demon that can read and write can create incantations,' so he never let me attend school to learn. He even threatened my mother when she tried teaching me in secret to the point I feared for our lives... please don't be upset with me... I just never need it, is all..."

"NO!" a voice loudly shouted from behind them, making both draw their attention to the source. Sienna, with a stern yet wet look in her eyes, stomped over to the elf and took hold of her arm. "Not good! You need to learn! I good reader! I teach you, elf!" she finished with a smile. Zenna was speechless.

"N-no! No!" Talley piped up, also rushing forward. Before the elf could speak, the maid had taken ahold of her other arm, causing the paper she held to fall to the floor. "I better reader! I teach you!" she glared across Zenna's expanse to Sienna.

"Bad! I will teach! Not you!" Ain darted over without provocation. With the elf out of arms she instead grabbed her by the shoulder, locking her own arm around and pulling her away from the other maids. Not to be left out, Fey didn't even bother announcing herself and grabbed the elf's remaining shoulder and pulling forcefully.

The four of them began to walk away from each other, pulling the elf as they went. Her bones creaked loudly under the opposing force. Sienna and Talley were especially painful, nearly ripping her hands off her wrists as they went. Ain and Fey pulled inversely to each other as well, separating the little lady's shoulders from the rest of her skeleton. All four continued threatening the other, shouting it should be they and they alone who would be educating the elf. Marcus and the royal family watched the spectacle in awe.

Yet, beneath the girl's threats and groaning as they used all their might to pull, another sound made them cease almost immediately.

The sound of tears hitting the marbled floor.

With the elf's head down, her hair covered her face. Yet as the maids stopped pulling on her, it was obvious Zenna was shaking. Her chest heaved every few seconds as she sobbed. Immediately the four women released her, looking at their own hands and at each other in regret. Sienna approached the elf as she still held her head down and spoke softly into her ear.

"Elf? Is okay? Did we hurt?" she questioned in her broken common tongue. Zenna made no answer aside from taking her arm up to wipe her face.

"Elf, please speak, what is wrong?" Fey came up to her other ear. Although it took a moment, Zenna raised her face so everyone could see it from under her hair.

Yet, they were stumped when they saw a smile, not a scowl, on her plush lips.

"What happened? I thought we hurt her?" Talley asked in her native tongue. The others were at a loss.

"Zenna! Why smile? Are not hurt?" Ain pulled on her lightly to get her attention. Strangely, Zenna giggled a bit and opened her mouth.

"No... you didn't hurt me... I'm... I just... never thought I would have people... fighting over me... it feels so nice... b-but... maybe instead of fighting over me, you could all show me how to read and write... please?"

As her words danced among their minds, the four maids turned their scowls upside down and surrounding the elf gleefully. Their taller frames let them all share a spot atop her blue hair, beaming brightly.

"Yes! We teach you!"

"I help! I help teach!"

"Yes! Let me help!"

Zenna sniveled once more, "you all can... you all can... thank you so much..."

Not to be left out, Marcus leaned in and embraced the elf as well, taking the maids into himself at the same time. Marianne then rushed across the room to do the same, then Mare, Trinas, and finally the two royal sons, once again smothering Zenna beneath their weight. The elf was positively radiating something magical at that moment, as no one present felt compelled to release her, even when her tiny voice called out...

"C-can't breath... getting crushed... please get off..."

Yet she could not deny that magical feeling pouring back into her as well. All the while, the forgotten-about piece of paper the elf would one day learn to read herself laid peacefully upon the floor:

I find love.

And I'll find you, my precious little lady.

-10 Years Later-

The sun-streaked colors of orange and pink hung across the sky as the sun just barely kissed the stone horizon. The shadows grew long, cast by the walls hugging the city's edge, still keeping its inhabitants safe as they had for thousands of years before, and as they will for thousands of years to come. People of the capitol began their night life, either returning to their families at home or venturing out to the various bars and gambling halls along the city streets.

Above these streets, the palace still reigned on high, a shining pillar emphasizing the kingdom's might. From here, everyone in the royal home could gaze out at the marvelous, ever-changing sight before them. Every day something had changed, no matter how minute the difference may be. People had felt their fighting spirit restored and, as a result, set about changing their kingdom to always be better than the day before. With each passing year it only grew more crowded than it had before and, someday, there would be more people living outside the great walls than in, when its capacity was surely reached.

At the very top of one of the palace's highest towers was a balcony. Simple, and otherwise unremarkable as the royal building had countless balconies just like it. Except, this one was different, special even - as it served to allow one specific woman her own personal view of the city as it changed before her. Day by day, minute by minute - every time she gazed out across Underhill's capitol, her fiery eyes saw something different.

A crying sound filled the room, taking her attention from the setting sun.

"Hush, now, don't you whine," the woman began her lullaby, pulling in close the tiny new spark of life to her chest. It was red-faced and openly wailing towards the ceiling, yet she continued smiling down at it, undaunted. She continued her song as the little thing made an imprint on her chest with its head. Slowly but surely, it calmed itself down and opened those pale blue eyes for her to see. She cooed when it laughed up at her.

"She's just as beautiful as her sister, but that's no surprise with your genes flowing through her veins," said the woman behind Zenna. The elf blushed brightly, making the baby giggle in her arms. Her free hand came up and held her reddening face.

"You flatter me too much, Versas."

"It's true. I mean it. She'll be breaking hearts one day, for sure. Just you wait and see."

"She has your eyes, though. No need to sell yourself short," the elf commanded, and the palace chef laughed heartily.

Zenna turned to the sitting woman, who stood and collected the babe from the elf's arms, coddling it against her chest. The pair glanced down to see the teething little thing biting her mother's finger. The two parents smiled at each other again before Zenna walked back out to the balcony, resting against the railing as a cool breeze whipped through her hair, which had grown substantially longer in her many years in Underhill, from her shoulder blades down to her enviable rear. As for the rest of her, Zenna was still a spectacle to behold, even as her youth was ending, and the effects of age were only just beginning to appear.

So much has happened in the last decade that the elf felt her head spinning just picturing it. Underhill's queen walked around town with a swollen belly, her four maids in tow only months after Zenna's arrival. With the walking billboards announcing the curse's end, the message spread like wildfire throughout the kingdom, with throngs of women who had not yet borne child nearly throwing themselves at the well-equipped elf. Some of them were hesitant at first, especially when they got an eyeful of how much the elf had to offer, but every woman who went through with it ended up satisfied, and heavy with child, spreading their story as they went, drawing in ever more women. The king had joked about making a waiting list with how populated Zenna's chambers would be on a nightly basis, yet how woefully slow the process remained.

The men, especially the husbands of these women, were understandably apprehensive at first. A strange woman, inside their loving wife? Their girlfriend? Even if it were just their sister, brothers tried to make them resist the elf. It took months, if not years for some people, for hearts to change. Yet it was not simply about the sex alone that Zenna considered when readying herself to give a woman her child. She would often spend hours or days speaking to them, learning their story, and finding love between the two. No child should be brought into the world under the curse called sex, and instead be brought about by a loving blessing.

Over the years Zenna would come to impregnate tens of thousands of women, sometimes the same woman more than once. Every race was somehow compatible with her legendarily potent seed, as evidenced by the swollen bellies of humans, elves, dwarves and - to everyone's surprise, orcs and lizardkin, races who should, by all biological accounts, only be able to procreate amongst themselves. No worldly science was capable of explaining it, yet countless walking, talking examples littered Underhill's streets, homes, and schools.

Who knows? Maybe there genuinely was some magic in that little elf.

As prophesied by the old sage, after Zenna made love with any woman, not only were they guaranteed a child, but the curse on them had broken, and she could bring a child into this world from any man. So, it was now typical for an Underhill family to have, on average, three or four offspring, most of them being from the family patriarch - yet the first was almost solely the product of one woman. Although this number was skewed on occasion by some outliers, for example Zenna's very first, Sienna and the other maids, who all had at about five children each from the elf, sometimes coming in twins. Even as Zenna stood there that night, gazing over the kingdom - Ain and Fey were working on their next progeny.

Joy spread throughout the kingdom like the plague, infecting everyone it touched. Mighty feasts were held in the palace's hall on a near-weekly basis, people more energetic and hopeful than they ever thought they could ever feel again. People from all over the world came to visit the once prosperous kingdom, once thought doomed, on the rise again, a force to be reckoned with. Underhill's future would be secure for centuries to come.

As guests of the kingdom would eat in the hall, while one being that always sat at the top of one of the two tables held a commanding presence. The glitteringly beautiful thing would always be stacking plates high as her eyes, often having a crowd around her watching in amazement, or even just to bask in her glow. As the country's population grew, the feasts only became more intricate to feed the growing crowds, as well as to sate this one creature's appetite, which was put to the test countless nights, even against entire orc tribes. Zenna never lost - never.

A younger face presided over these many feasts. King Trinas and his queen had retired only within the last few years, satisfied that their kingdom's safety was now guaranteed. They spent their days raising their twin half-elf sons. Their oldest son Gamlen now reigned as king, along with his beautiful wife, who was from a foreign kingdom and, as such, never had the curse imprinted in her body. When the royal couple wasn't performing their lordly duties, they spent their time raising their three children. And although it would never be recorded in any history book - the middle child of the three did have a bit of elf running in his veins.

Marcus and his wife had been awarded a large estate as a reward for securing the future of the kingdom. From their massive farm they were able to overlook their many acres of crop and livestock, alternating between tending their farm or raising their two new children. Marcus would often visit the city, and although he would not admit it - it was primarily to pay his favorite elf a visit. Even if she had an ocean of women clawing at her, Zenna always cleared her schedule for him. She would even sometimes come out to his estate to visit the retired knight and his wife, and to see how her and Nya's son was enjoying farm life.

As for herself, the elf was also offered whatever reward, title, or prize she could think of, but to her, the satisfaction that she was finally loved for herself, and not her body, was more than enough. The feeling of being loved, and someone to be thankful for, overwhelmed any material desire. Of course, Zenna could never deny the absurd amount of flesh she often found herself buried within - a reward all on its own. Countless nights people near the palace could hear sounds of ecstasy falling across the rooftops like rain.

Zenna smiled at the world before her as the very last rays of sun disappeared over the horizon. Versas departed with her child and allowed the elf to her own, but not before glancing upon her once more. What was once a hated and loathed creature was now cherished by an entire kingdom. Her heart never stopped growing, to the point it could smother the kingdom with its enormity. Her only regret was not having enough years to spread all the love she had within herself. It would not happen within the elf's lifetime, perhaps even taking centuries, queen Marianne's foretelling would inevitably come true; as generation upon generation of children was born, they would live, grow, and spread across the world, the cycle repeating until there were millions of people within every race who all shared one thing in common:

They could all trace back their lineage to one very special elf.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to read my first, genuine piece of work. As I remain a beginner writer, the above text is far from perfect, and I can readily admit my own faults. Mainly, I struggled with consistency on this work. In future endeavors I hope to provide more consistency with story, pacing, quality, release schedule and chapter length. I ask you leave your own advice and takeaways in the comments below so I can learn from my mistakes and better myself. It is through you I learn the most.