The Umbral Messiah Pt. 11

King Trjokar took great pleasure in casting off what little clothing he had worn - cape and belts alike joined a pile on the ground, until his massive body was on full display save for a small loincloth that clung to his massive bulge. Arrogant, confident pleasure seemed to radiate from his pores, while Rana walked around him invisibly, her eyes sweeping up and down his body. She glanced at Sari, who smirked at her. Rana arched an eyebrow.

"Now," King Trjokar growled. His meaty fist was closed around the handle of his longsword, which was as elegant and well made as the cleaver that Sari had borrowed was heavy and brutal and crude. "I think I will try and take you alive. You are quite fuckable, for a freakish Rebis girl."

Sari smirked. "So, no magic," she said. "Just skill to skill."

"That is correct," Trjokar said, stepping forward into the rapidly clearing center of his court. Sari took her place up. She gripped her sword, sliding her feet along the smooth stone floor of the palace. Her feet settled as she looked across the room at the bright blue orc. He smirked at her and Sari kept her expression on her face.

Trjokar sprang forward - the battle beginning with a single brutal swing at her head. The sword whistled past her as she stepped in, then drew the thick, cutting edge of her cleaver along the inside of his thigh and swept upwards in the same cutting motion, stepping aside as a splatter of blood gushed from Trjokar. He gasped, grabbed at himself, paled, then dropped to the ground. The puddle of blood flowed outwards at shocking speed as Sari stepped backwards, shaking her head slightly.

"Showboating asshole," she said, quietly, then lifted her gaze to the shocked orcs around him.

"F-Fuck...fucking...what?" Trokar gasped out.

"You thought I was just a toy, or just a mage at best," Sari growled, quietly. "Master Phenrig taught me a blade since I was ten." She kicked his longsword from his weakening grasp, then bent down and picked it up. "I think this is Queen Araktesh's?" She asked, holding it out to the aged orcs that had been the would be King's court.

The oldest of them gaped at her. Then he took the blade. "Yes," he said. "W-Who are you?"

Sari smiled. "Sari," she said.

Trjokar laid limp on the floor. The blood puddle kept expanding in the stunned silence.

"What's going on?" Charlotte asked the air. "Did we win?"

***

Queen Araktesh bowed her head the incremental degree that royalty could offer to commoners and clapped her hands before her. The only thing that kept Charlotte from being immediately executed by furious orcish guards at her utterly insulting lack of response was that the orc guards were all still gaping at Sari. Sari, herself, was just glad that she had been allowed to dress in her cloth and leather armor again - even if the temperature was rather brutal as the afternoon sun started to beat down on the side of the castle.

Queen Araktesh herself was a red skinned orcess of surpassing beauty, with dainty tusks, full breasts, and a body clearly more used to leisure than to the hard combat of, say, Raj. Her hair was luminously black and long enough to reach down to her deliciously cushy rump, while her clothing was as fancy as anything that Sari had ever seen: Beads and glittering jewelry woven together with golden fiber and silken cloth, all of which did very little to conceal anything on her figure...but worked together, instead, to enhance the tempting view of those full breasts.

"I will reward you, of course, with everything you could imagine," the Queen said, her voice husky and warm, a contralto that buzzed along Sari's spine. Sari felt her cock hardening as she gulped slightly, while Rana beamed at her.

"Ask for her hand. Her bed. Her firstborn!" Rana called out.

"Firstborn?" Sari whispered.

"Yeah, making it!" Rana licked her lips.

"Excuse me?" Queen Araktesh asked.

"Oh my Dragons!" Charlotte squealed. "The lock mechanism is so complex! The crystal is just half of it. I think..." She rubbed her chin. "Okay, I think I can get it done." She held her hand out and a purple fire swept along Sari's belt pouch and the Chanti crystal emerged from its container and swept to her palm with a loud slap. "Just give me a bit."

"Your friend is...rather distracted," the Queen said, quietly, her eyes looking somewhat scornfully upon Charlotte.

"In her defense, she's had a hard day. And she has lost much," Sari whispered. "Her, uh, betrothed was snatched by that Drakkon."

"Ah, the fell beast that my former general believed would protect us," the Queen said, shaking her head slowly. "He lured it here with the promise of a dozen virgins - and each of them is now pregnant with her children." She sniffed. "Not exactly a coherent position to take for someone who supposedly despises intermarriage as he does." She paused. "Did." Her head shook from side to side. "Even after all this, it is hard to believe he's dead. He served me for years..."

"Yeah he did," Rana purred.

"Did you say that...were those..." Sari's brow furrowed. "How can an orc have a child with a Drakkon?"

"It's a shapeshifter. A lusty one," Araktesh said, shaking her head.

Charlotte, her head jerking up, spun around. "Does that mean...?" She trailed off, her eyes shining with hope. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. The hope in her eyes made Sari feel her own upswelling of hope and excitement - even if...she knew that if Tanner was still alive, even if they got him back, there was still the fact that she and Charlotte had been together so many times. The betrothal oaths that Charlotte had taken had been sullied and torn beyond repair. But none of that mattered in that hopeful moment.

"What?" Queen Araktesh asked.

"Is it possible that...we had a man with us, Tanner, he was captured by the Drakkon!" Sari said - but her voice grew more muted and subdued at the expression on Queen Araktesh's face. She shook her head from side to side.

"I'm sorry. The Drakkon is quite picky. She does not spare males," she said, quietly. "That is why General Tjrokar took such a shine to her - she'd capture maidens and slay soldiers. Such he claimed." She sighed. "The male Tanner is dead."

***

Tanner moaned, her voice high and sweet as she rocked on her hands and knees, while the Drakkon's tail swept around her belly and her hips, holding her in place as the mighty beast thrust her cock deep into Tanner's tight, eager ass. Tanner's girldick slapped against her muscular belly as she cried out again and again and again. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me so hard!" She gasped, her ass tightening on the draconic shaft filling her. Her breasts - fully grown in after the long diet of Drakkon juices and magic - bounced deliciously with every single thrust.

Tanner was not sure how long she had been atop this spire. It had all blended together in her mind, a hazy slurry of sensual delights. Sometimes, she would be on her back and the Drakkon would close her thighs around her head, sitting and pressing her scaled slit to her wanting, eager tongue. Then, Tanner would drink of her, cupping the massive buttocks of her inhuman lover, her tongue delving deep into her sex and wringing forth more glowing pinkish fluids. Then the next, the Drakkon would be bouncing atop Tanner's girldick, impaling herself as she cupped and played with her full, scaled breasts...

Then things would shift around. After sleeping in her arms, Tanner would wake to find that the Drakkon's lusts had been reawakened during their long nap and she had slid into Tanner's ass during her slumber. Tanner would wake with a mewling orgasm, her back arching as she spurted her clear girlish juices onto the stone floor of the tower.

Now?

Now, she was on her hands and knees and feeling scaled hands cupping her breasts from behind as the Drakkon tugged and teased her nipples. "Mmmm, Tanner good," the Drakkon growled inside of her ear, grunting as she fucked harder and faster, her heavy scaled balls clapping against Tanner's now quite petite, hairless set. Tanner mewled in wordless pleasure, her girlcum splattering the stone floor beneath her as she arched her back, her eyes glazed with white heat as she was filled and filled and filled - filled because the Drakkon growled and thrust deep and came inside of her. Pink juices flowed around the tight seal around her ass, and splattered onto the ground, washing away whatever little girlcum that Tanner had released...much as the Drakkon had wiped away all of Tanner's masculinity, replacing it with her glorious new state.

Tanner panted, softly, her skin glistening with sweat as she looked out towards the ocean through eyes hazy with pleasure. "Dragons you're so good at that," she whispered.

The Drakkon made a happy, smug noise, then slid from Tanner. "Me sleep now," she said, then shifted - shrinking down until she was roughly the size of a small cat, curling up on herself, tucking her nose under her tail and closing her eyes. Tanner laughed, raggedly, and sat up, stretching, wincing as she felt a crick in her spine. This kind of sleep meant that the Drakkon was going to sleep through anything - which was a shame. Tanner had been thinking of how to get her ass down off this town...she had no idea how to explain herself to Charlotte...or...

The idea of showing herself to the dark eyed and beautiful Sari was almost too terrifying to put to words. In her minds eyes, she could feel Sari's eyes boring into hers. A Rebis girl too, huh? What gave you the right? The oddest thing was that imagining Sari pressing her back against a wall with her hand on her throat was...getting Tanner's girldick hard again. She blushed, hard, shaking her head. Of course, Sari would be even more offended at that. Imagine meeting a proper Rebis girl and not being able to control yourself around them?

That was followed up by the mental image of Sari punishing her for her temerity. Maybe it was a diet of nothing but draconic juices, but the first image for punishment was being forced to her knees, Sari's girlcock before her eyes, Sari growling: Well, it won't suck itself.

Tanner squirmed and shook her head. She had to focus. She had to focus and get off this...this...

Her eyes widened as what she saw beyond the tower finally processed through the haze of lust and pleasure and erotic fantasies. The oceans beyond had looked strange, and she hadn't been quite sure why until she actually focused and looked and saw what was there, rather than what she expected. There was a spread of black sail down there that made her blood run cold.

Ships.

Dozens of ships.

Flying the Corpse King's flag.

"Oh no," Tanner whispered, her face going pale. The first ships were already approaching land - and she saw a burning set of sails and spreading debris. They were sailing around the wreckage, coming towards the beaches. These ships had been built to ground themselves, crunching onto the shore. Skeletons started to leap from the black painted hulls, intermixed with who knows what else in the Corpse King's retinue of horrors.

Tanner turned to the Drakkon and started to shake her, desperately. "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!"

"Noooo," the Drakkon hissed, batting at her hands, closing her eyes and curling up even tighter, even less approachable. Tanner considered her many options. She wondered what, exactly, might get the damn lustful beast from its slumber. She had a lot of different ways she could approach this from the subtle to the gross to the downright lewd.

She chose the most direct option she had.

The Drakkon kept sleeping right until she tumbled off the side of the tower with a yelping squall.

***

"And...we...have it!" Charlotte squealed, clapping and jumping up and down.

The throne room of the castle rumbled and shook as the Chanti crystal rotated in the hidden socket that she had found. Invisible runes glowed to life along the walls, light flooding them and sweeping outwards in curlicues and whorls like liquid pouring down channels after a dam was removed. The pattern was intricate and fast and revealed half a dozen circular sockets that could be rotated on elegantly concealed pivots. Charlotte lifted her hand and spread her fingers.

"Magic flows along those channels - we just need to complete them like...so," she said, her fingers twitching as purple fire flared. That same fire bloomed on the four sockets, and they rotated in their place, and completed the pattern with a flash. The entire wall folded in on itself like a piece of paper, twisting out of the way and revealing a corridor leading backwards towards a set of stairs. Charlotte turned and bowed towards Sari, the Queen, and her chosen bodyguard for the moment, Raj. Raj being there meant that her daughter, Zarua, was standing behind her and glowering slightly.

"Tada," Charlotte said.

"Remarkable," Queen Araktesh said, quietly. "This was behind my throne for the...the entire time that orcs have lived here on the island?"

"Indeed," Charlotte said, laughing.

A distant blatting sound echoed in through the windows. Raj's brow furrowed. "That's the sound of an alert," she said. "If that old bastard's would be followers have-" she stepped to the window.

An arm, long and snake-like, lashed out and drove a dagger into Raj's sternum. Only thick muscle and orc-tough skin saved her as blood bloomed and she jerked backwards. The limb, jointed strangely and covered in leather, swept around and then hauled in a lean, limber, impossibly tall humanoid creature with gray green flesh and glowing yellow eyes. His, for it was a male, right arm was enclosed in a complex, bladed contraption with a series of glowing orbs inset with a kind of ratcheted slingshot, which he aimed at Zarua and fired in the same smooth motion. Zarua ducked and the orb hit the wall behind her with a harsh crump and bloom of fire.

"GHOULS!" Sari shouted, then sprang forward. She drew her staff from her belt, twirled it out, and swung it at the ghoul's head. The impact cracked against his temple and sent the creature sprawling - but two more ghouls were coming in through the windows, scrambling up. Cries and bellows of shocked combat were echoing throughout the entire castle. Possibly beyond. One ghoul rushed at the Queen, but Raj, her body coated in blood, sprang in and drove the knife that had been in her chest into the shoulder and neck of the ghoul, ripping its head off with sheer brute strength. The other ghoul sprinted at Charlotte who simply pointed at the throne, then pointed at the ghoul.

The throne lifted itself off the ground and smashed the ghoul into paste.

"Come on!" Charlotte shouted. "We have to get into the puzzle chamber! If we close the door from inside, then they can't get in! We have the crystal! They don't!"

"I agree, lets go!" Rana shouted.

Sari nodded. She rushed for the doorway.

"Sari!"

Whistle.

Thunk.

Sari spun.

Charlotte's eyes were wide. She stumbled forward, then fell to the floor, a few away. From her back protruded a heavy crossbow bolt, launched by another ghoul. This one was female and sleek and had entered into the room from the front doors. Charlotte's body glowed with reddish light and lifted upwards into the air, her head lolling as...into the chamber stepped the Corpse King.

The Corpse King, viewed in the light of day shining through the windows of the throne room, was more majestic and terrifying and arousing than Sari remembered. She towered at seven, maybe eight feet tall, her body a complex and delicate combination of many types of parts and limbs from who knows what graveyards, sewn together and animated with her own willpower. Her breasts were full and her cock was immense, and she was dressed in nothing but her own raw confidence. Flanked by ghouls, she walked into the chamber and smirked as she looked Charlotte over.

"Ah, my sweet," she said, quietly, while Charlotte's head lolled to the side. "You will make a find addition to my army."

Sari tensed.

"Sari. Run. Run!" Rana hissed. Her voice was fierce, her eyes desperate.

"Yes, run," the Corpse King drawled, quietly. Rana froze, then vanished. Sari realized, in that fleeting moment of confusion, that she had run. The Corpse King smirked, her mismatched eyes flicking to look into Sari's. "Your demon pet won't save you now, little one. Come out. I'll make it quite painless."

Charlotte's hand twitched, as if she was fighting against the ebbing of her life, against the magic that held her aloft. Purple fires flickered, intermingling with the red that washed over her. Her lips formed a word - and it might have been...

Run.

Sari reacted before her brain processed the noise. She sprang backwards as the throne room's secret door closed shut, smashing closed ten times faster than it had opened, the Chanti Crystal shattering into a thousand pieces as the door was forced shut. The wall between her and the Corpse King shook with a booming impact - and then a furious, female voice echoed through it.

"Run! Run as far as you can into the depths! I will find you, pupil of Phenrig! I will find you!"

Sari ran.

She ran into darkness, down the stairs.

She ran, leaving behind a mountain of bodies.

***

Sari ran and ran and ran. She stumbled down stairs, clattering and clunking, until she heard Rana's voice, calling out.

"Slow down!"

Sari didn't listen. She kept running forward as the darkened stairs reached a half circle doorway - and she almost pitched over the edge of a cliff that swept down into darkness. Only by flinging herself against the side of the doorway and grabbing onto it did she keep herself from falling and falling and falling. She clung, gasping, panting. Tears blurred her eyes and she took a moment to bury her face against cold, unfeeling stone. "Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it!" She punched the wall with a gloved hand, the impact echoing through her wrist.

"Sari," Rana said, her voice soft. "You can't lose it. You have to stay focused."

Sari stepped back from the wall she was caught on, her back pressing against the other side of the arch. She looked at the false woman that was standing in the open air beyond the lip of the stairs - and shook her head. "There's nothing left. The Corpse King is out there. Charlotte's dead. Tanner is dead. The orcs are conquered - the ship? The ship's probably burned to the fucking waterline. There's just me and this...this..."

She looked past Rana.

"This place."

The Chanti puzzle box had been well named. The interior of the ruin was a vast rectangular space. Stairs seemed to reach out from every wall, intersecting at bizarre angles and impossible geometries. The walls were made of a pale white stone, inlaid with faintly glowing crystals every few yards. But it wasn't the crystals or the carved walls or the impossible staircases that drew Sari's attention. It was the coffins. The sarcophagi. The row upon row upon row of them, situated along the walls, distant floor and distant ceiling. The place wasn't just a puzzle.

It was a graveyard.

A crypt.

"Oh," Sari whispered.

"The Ninth Dragon's servants have a sense of humor. What better to protect the reliquary of the dragon of life than the dead." Rana's nose wrinkled. She turned, then, to look back at Sari. "The Corpse King will be battering on the outside of this puzzle box with every bit of magic she has. We have to get the reliquary. If we get the reliquary, we have a chance."

Sari nodded. She edged through the doorway and stood on the lip of stone that thrust out into the open space beyond. She craned her head over, then saw a straight drop almost a hundred feet into coffins and sideways canted pillars. She looked up, frowning. "I think..." She said, quietly. "There's a set of stairs up there. If I could just get to them."