by Mark Albany
A dagger flickered into existence, piercing the flesh of Abarat’s forearm. The elf screamed in agony, looking down to see Aliana, just barely recovered, there to contribute.
“Now, Grant!” Ali shouted.
I wasn’t about to hesitate. My sword was glowing with power as I drove it forward in what I could only hope was one last stab, driving the blade down into his chest.
A shower of sparks exploded as the weapon impacted a shield that Abarat had managed to put up as he struggled to free himself from being bound, raving and foaming at the mouth as he fought against his end with every last breath.
My muscles strained as I pushed down harder, driving the sword further into the shield, drawing more sparks. Every inch was a battle.
Until the moment that I could feel the point pressing home, piercing through Abarat’s robes easily and cutting into his chest, just a little to the left of the center and driving home. I pushed until I could feel the ground below him stop the point of my blade.
I knew for a fact that I had cut into his heart, but the elf refused to die. At least for the moment. Braire’s wolf realized that the fight was over, releasing Abarat’s hand and pulling away, licking his chops and watching the elf reach up. He looked to Lyth, who was standing over him, holding her sword.
He wanted to say something, his lips were moving, but I couldn’t understand it. The seconds ticked by and I could feel the power waning to the point where he had no power to speak up. His whole body relaxed, and his eyes drifted shut.
He looked peaceful. I couldn’t say I liked it. The elf had put too many through horror and death to look peaceful in death, but there was little that I could do to change that.
I looked up to the others, panting for breath as a silence fell over the throne room, with nothing to be heard but our breathing.
“Is... is it over?” I finally asked, looking around.
“Yes,” Aliana said, pulling herself up and dragging her dagger free of Abarat’s forearm, looking up to me. “I believe it is.”
I looked down at her and realized that there was something different about the woman that was kneeling next to me. She was still unmistakably my Aliana, but there were differences. Her skin was a little fairer. Her eyes were back to their normal, natural color.
It took me longer than I was proud to realize that her wings were gone. As were her horns. Her ears were pointed, but that had always been true of her. She didn’t look like a djinn anymore, but rather more like an elf.
“What... happened?” I asked, looking around.
Aliana looked down at herself, touching at her skin, feeling for her wings that were no longer there, almost as surprised as I was.
“Abarat said that he had cast the curse on her,” Norel said. “It was meant to bind her to him. Now that he’s gone... well, I guess there is no more curse. She’s an elf again.”
Aliana pushed herself up to her feet, looking like she almost didn’t believe it before letting out a shriek of joy, jumping at me and wrapping her arms around my shoulders, still squealing like she didn’t realize that there was a dead elf laying at my feet.
“Now to answer the question,” Lyth said, looking around, trying not to celebrate victory too early. “Has killing Abarat cleared the rest of the army of his attack?”
“Well, I would say that we could open a portal to find out,” Norel said. “But... well, if Aliana is no longer a djinn, I’m not sure...”
“I can do it,” Aliana said quickly, disentangling herself from me. “Well, the power is mostly gone, but with what can be used still in this room, I can get us out. I might need a little help, but it is possible. I know I can.”
I nodded. “Well, it’s worth a try at least, yes?”
She nodded, quickly moving over to the center of the throne room where the stained glass was still casting runes on the pale silver marble ground.
About to join her, I realized that Faye had moved over to where Abarat was laying. The others went to join Aliana, questioning her ability to make the portal, but Faye and I remained behind.
Faye was still holding her spear in her hand, looking down at the elf before spitting on the corpse and driving her spear down into his chest, twisting her weapon inside a few times.
“Just making sure,” she explained.
I shrugged, not really caring what was done to the dead elf as Faye jogged over to where Abarat’s spear - now reverted back to the form of a scepter – lay. She picked it up, brushing some dirt from it before taking me by the hand to join the rest of them. She handed the scepter to Lyth as we approached.
“This is yours, I believe,” Faye said with a small smile.
“It’s been a long time,” Lyth said, taking the scepter almost reverently. “Although... yes, I suppose that it is mine. Or was, anyways.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Faye replied, leaning in to place a small kiss to the queen’s cheek before we turned our attention back to Aliana.
All of our power was needed, despite what could be gathered from the room, but with nothing holding her back now, Aliana was finished with the portal in under a minute, and when we were dragged into it, there was almost none of the discomfort that I remembered from the previous trips. It was smooth sailing, and in a few seconds, my eyes opened to reveal us back at the battlefield, not far from where we had landed the night before.
And the vision that greeted us could not have been more different.
The armies were still there, but the imperial soldiers were hiding behind their shields as they watched the pandemonium that had befallen their enemies. They almost didn’t even realize that we had returned as we looked out into the field of the undead. The monsters had turned on one another, attacking each other with the same ferocity that had been directed at the imperial army not so long before.
Even the golems, hellhounds, and all the other larger creatures were joining in the fighting, having almost forgotten that there were humans and elves not fifty paces away that could be fought as well.
“What the fuck?” I asked, looking around, trying to make sense of it all.
As I spoke, a few of the soldiers realized that we had returned, quickly sending one of their number running back to the camp.
I barely noticed. We had hoped that killing Abarat would take the coordination of the monsters away, but I had expected there to still be a fight to drive them back.
And while there might be a battle later, for now the creatures appeared to be content to just tear each other apart.
The sound of hooves beating on the ground brought our attention back around to the sight of the emperor riding our way along with about a dozen of his men. The man himself quickly dismounted, jogging over to where we were standing.
“I assume that I have the six of you to thank for this?” the emperor asked.
“It’s... difficult to say,” Norel replied, tilting her head. “I am fairly certain that we didn’t intend for this to happen.”
“Well, so long as they are slaughtering each other, and not us, I’ll thank you anyways,” the emperor said with a laugh. “We’ll be leaving the troops here to consolidate the position, but as of right now, I am considering this a victory.”
“Sounds about right,” Aliana admitted, looking at the man.
He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes like he didn’t recognize her, and yet he did. Even so, he had no questions that he wanted to ask us at the moment.
“I would suggest retiring back to the camp,” the emperor said. “From there, we can return to the city. As victors.”
I nodded. “I’m sure we could do with the rest.”
“Not only that,” the man said, shaking his head. “I won’t let it be forgotten how all of you contributed to this victory, from the very beginning, fighting for the soul of this empire, even when I was absent, even when I was under Abarat’s control myself.”
Norel looked around and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, someone needed to do it.”
“And you did,�
�� the emperor said. “Come, now. A hero’s welcome awaits every one of you!”
25
It was good to be back in the palace, I had to admit. With things struggling to return to normal after the battle and the destruction that had torn through the empire, there was a great deal of work to be done, even with the monster horde having mostly torn itself to pieces.
But we were back in the palace, in the quarters that had been assigned to us by the emperor and enjoying some well-deserved time off.
Of course, it wasn’t all relaxation. I could feel my body tensing up, a light sheen of sweat touching my bare skin as I looked down at Aliana, her head between my knees, her head bobbing gently as she took my cock into her mouth.
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered, letting my head drop back to where I could feel a hand gently rushing through my hair.
I looked up to see Faye smiling down at me before placing a light kiss to her lips. She didn’t look quite like Faye, I realized, with a pair of horns coming from her head and wings flapping gently behind her. She looked suspiciously like Aliana had as a djinn.
“I thought you might miss the old look,” she explained with a small grin, lightly running her fingers over my chest, leaning in to place kisses to my neck and my shoulders.
The others were laying on the same bed, having had their own turns with me and each other. Having reached their own personal limits of satisfaction, they were content to watch while pressing together, touching and stroking each other idly.
All but Aliana, who had found renewed vigor to bury my cock in her mouth as one hand cradled my balls, gently massaging them. The other was between her own thighs, toying with herself as she let me fuck her beautiful lips.
While it had taken a little getting used to, Aliana’s own elation over being herself again, finally after so long, was infectious, and I found that I loved her elf form even more than the djinn, although as Faye said, I might sometimes miss the old form a bit as well. I was glad she had brought it out to play as she watched the elf pump her mouth full of me.
But Aliana wasn’t going to be simply satisfied with me in her mouth, I realized, with her giving me a couple more bobs before pulling herself up, drawing her green locks behind her head as she eyed me hungrily.
“You taste good,” she moaned, climb up to straddling my hips.
I reached out, taking the hand that had been playing with her pussy to my lips, gently sucking on her fingers.
Her free hand reached down to pull my cock up to her warm, wet sex, and moaned luxuriously as she sank down on it.
A smile touched my lips as I looked up to her, cleaning her fingers off completely as she rode me, starting slow but quickly building up the pace.
“You taste better,” I said, my voice thick with need as I watched Faye, still looking the part of the djinn, lean in, taking one of Aliana’s breasts in her mouth, sucking on it gently as her hand reached up to toy with the other.
I reached out to lay my left hand on the fae’s ass, squeezing gently and letting a gentle flow of power rush into her sweaty skin, smiling as she moaned and pressed herself back into my fingers while refusing to relinquish her control of Aliana’s breasts.
Both felt like they were on the verge of a climax, and as much as I wanted to make it last, I had been holding myself back all afternoon, wanting to enjoy the taste and feel of each of them before finishing. There was little I could do to stop myself now. I leaned back on the bed, gripping Aliana’s hips with my right hand, guiding her to ride me harder, faster, my hips rising to fuck her back with each stroke.
She gasped, eyes rolling back and a moan escaping from her throat as her body clamped around me, her warm wetness coating me as she tried to milk me for every drop I had as my cock twitched inside her, hip bucking upward as a roar rumbled up from my chest, joined by Faye’s cries of ecstasy, which were muffled by Aliana’s breast still between her lips.
I needed a long while to bring myself down from that particular high, feeling all five coming together with me, kissing, touching, and enjoying each other’s presence and basking in the afternoon sun.
A smile touched my lips as I looked over the gorgeous women that had been such a large part of my life, having driven me from mediocrity, into danger and through it, always helping and guiding me.
“What do you think we should do next?” I wondered, breaking the silence with a question that had been hanging over our heads for the past few weeks after the battle.
They all needed a moment to think about it, even though I knew that it had been on their minds for a while now.
Lyth was the first to speak. “I’d like to return to the fortress. It’s been a long time since someone that actually belongs there has returned. I might like to restore it to its former glory. There are a great many secrets to be discovered in that place.”
“I’ll go with you,” Faye said. “It’s about time that any sign that Abarat ever occupied the place were erased from memory, bringing it back to the state that it was meant to be. I might even be able to find some of my people to help.”
“That sounds like fun,” Aliana said with a giggle. “I would like to study some of that fortress, see how it was built. I was a student of the magics back before the war. I would like to return to that.”
“I was the same,” Norel said. “Finding something worthy of study in the imperial archives should not be too difficult, especially in the sections of elven literature.”
Braire shrugged her shoulders. “An odd idea, but I would like to return to the continent across the sea. Find our kin there, maybe help to establish a connection with them again.”
“That would be interesting too,” Lyth said. “I think I might join you in that.”
Aliana looked up from where she was laying on my chest, placing light kisses to my skin. “What about you, Grant? Is there anything pressing on your mind that you would like to get done now that your services are no long required to keep this empire afloat?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You all forget that I was little more than a slave before this all started. I had few aspirations aside from surviving the winter. Now... everything has changed, and as I look out into the world, all I want to do is... well, be with all of you.”
“Well yes, that was something of a given,” Norel said, grinning as she leaned in to place a kiss to my lips.
“There is plenty to fill your lives now that the war is over,” I said softly, unable to keep myself from smiling. “I would like to be with you as you fulfill those needs, and maybe I’ll find something to do with myself along the way.”
“I like that,” Aliana said, laying her head down on my bare chest once more. “I like that quite a lot.”
About the Author
Mark Albany is a fan of epic fantasy and living life to its fullest. He hopes to embrace such story telling as Game of Thrones and Venom in this tale, and add one more spot of fun in your life.
For fans of Mark Lawrence, Will Wight, David Estes, and Brandon Sanderson.
Check out my Facebook Group if you’d like to chat more!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2474767712539848/
And I started a newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/MarkAlbany
