by Reed James
“You can heal her, right?” I asked my step-sister, my stomach tensing.
“I don't know,” Kora answered. “I've never healed such grievous wounds.” She smeared her pussy juices on Aingeal's body.
The busty faerie whimpered. Her pink hair curtained her face, hiding her lush features. Her large breasts pillowed beneath her. She groaned as the flesh on her back knitted up, the burns fading until she had smooth, pale skin.
But no wings. They didn't regrow.
Kora's face grew grave. Her blue eyes trembled. “I'm sorry.”
Aingeal sat up, her large breasts swaying, pink hair tumbling about her normally playful face. Like Zanyia, she didn't wear clothing. Gold rings pierced her nipples, reflecting the strange moonlight of the perpetual night of Faerie. She sat beside Kora, her hands feeling her back, her face falling.
“I... I see...” Aingeal said. Then she looked to the smoldering corpse of the duke. My throwing knife had taken him in the throat. Iron was poison to faerie. His blood smoked and smoldered on contact with my weapon. “You killed him, my husband.”
“I killed him.”
Aingeal took a deep breath, pain crossing her face. “Good.”
I understood that pain. I felt it myself every day, the hole the fire left in my life. And in the life of my sister. Our parents and our younger sister both perished in those flames, killed by Prince Meinard because his daughter loved me. Kora and I were meant to die with them.
We didn't.
We were fugitives now, plotting to destroy him. And we had struck a mighty blow. We destroyed his Lodestone. Around us, the humans he'd enslaved and brought to Faerie were awake, no longer chained to his army of stone statues. They called out to us, trapped in stocks in the field around the smoldering remains of the Lodestone.
“Come on,” I groaned, standing up from the embrace of my sex slaves. “Let's start freeing them.”
“Yes, Master,” they both said with the same submissive tone as they looked up at me.
I glanced at the newcomer, dressed all in silvery armor. She had slung her ax and war hammer in loops on the wide, leather belt she wore about her waist. She wasn't human. Not with those bright, yellow eyes, like a pair of helidors, staring at me. She had an exotic cast to her face, the lines just different enough to be alien to any human features, delicate yet strong. She had a curvy body, her armor fitted to her bountiful flesh. Pure-white hair, not faded by age, framed her youthful face, cut short to sweep about her pauldrons covering her shoulders. The snowy locks contrasted with the midnight-black of her skin, such a deep, dark color that only made her eyes shine like twin suns, her hair to glow.
“Will you help... Eh...?”
“Ealaín,” she answered. “And, of course, I shall help free these poor souls trapped in these horrid contraptions.”
“Good,” I nodded, frowning. She had accompanied my sister and Nathalie when they returned from the distraction. Where had this warrior come from? How did she know so much about the amulet about my sister's neck? “Me and you'll head this way. Zanyia, take Nathalie and head the other way. Kora...”
My sister caught my eyes, giving me a sad smile as she hugged Aingeal. The faerie's purple eyes brimmed with tears. She looked so...normal now without her wings. Those graceful, sweeping butterfly wings that thrust from her back.
I wanted to kill Duke Gallchobhar all over again.
Clenching my fists, I marched past the smoldering remains of the treeman, a hulking giant that looked like a walking oak tree, whom I'd tricked into punching the Lodestone and destroying the magical artifact. Ealaín fell in at my side, her armor clinking.
“You are concerned about your sister's safety,” Ealaín said, her voice melodious and concise at the same time.
“You're a direct one,” I said, flashing her a smile. I couldn't help grinning at a beautiful woman no matter her species. I reached the first stocks, pulling the bronze pin that held the top of the restraining device to the bottom.
“Praise the Gods,” a sobbing, naked Zeutchian woman gasped. Like me, she had fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes that characterized our race of humans. She sprang at me, throwing her arms around my neck and smothering me in kisses.
She felt nice in my arms. Youthful. In another time, I would have kissed her back. Seen how far her friendly thankfulness would get me. But now wasn't that time. There were thousands of humans imprisoned here. An entire army enslaved by that bastard Prince Meinard.
“You are welcome, goodwoman,” I said, pushing her back, her round breasts jiggling, her nipples fat, pink, and begging to be played with. “But there are so many others in need. You have to help us.”
“Of course,” she said, her head snapping around. She spotted someone and shouted. “Karl!”
She sprang to a man in the next stocks, prying at the bronze pin. He had the look of her husband, his hair a sandier blonde, his body ropy with muscles from working the fields. What a shame. To enjoy her thankfulness while her husband watched would have been exquisite.
“You are staring at her like a dog at a bone,” Ealaín said. “You hunger for her that much?”
“I do,” I said, moving onto the next stocks, this one holding a young girl budding on the verge of womanhood. “And, yes, I am concerned about my sister. You just... appear, claiming that the amulet about her neck is the phylactery”—that was a word I'd never heard of—“holding the soul of the Biomancer Vebrin. The Vebrin?”
“I fear so. My mother felt the turbulence of its passage around the brightness of Radiant Kora.”
I blinked at that. Well, not at my sister being called Radiant. That was her title in the priesthood of Rithi, Goddess of Art. Radiant just meant she had finished her novitiate and was a full member of the clergy, mastering three of the art forms. The tattoos on my sister's body identified the three. Not the design, but the placement on her flesh. No, what shocked me was who Ealaín's mother was.
“You're the daughter of the Goddess of Art?”
“One of them,” she answered. “I am aoi si, birthed by my mother's congress with the Goddess Henta.”
“The hermaphroditic Goddess of the Hunt?” I asked, making sure I remembered that correctly. “I didn't know Rithi was her lover.”
“Rithi has enjoyed many lovers and created many wondrous children,” the Aoi Si answered. “My divine race being but one of them. Motherhood is an art form my Goddess has not neglected. All forms of creation enrich the world with beauty. Even your birth, Sven.”
I gave her a cocky grin. “I know. Masculine perfection distilled into my perfect chin and rugged looks.”
Ealaín arched an eyebrow. “Arrogance... Does that get you into women's pussies?”
“Often. Women enjoy bold men who seize what they want and can boast of great exploits.” I pulled at another bronze pin, working as we talked. “I get to add dueling a treeman and a faerie lord. Unlike other men, my exploits aren't false lies.
“I've done them.”
“Yes, you have. I saw the remains of your fight with the warleader.”
“Which one?” I asked. I'd fought two. One when I freed Zanyia and other slaves, and found that amulet. The second ambushed us the night before we entered Faerie. He controlled shadows and almost made me kill my sister with his trickery.
“Both,” she answered, freeing an older man.
“Thank you,” the man wheezed to her. “Thank you so much, blessed angel.”
The aoi si nodded to him and moved on with me. We left a wake of freed men and women, old and young. They spread out, freeing more and more of their captured kin and family. Entire villages appeared to be here, vanishing from the shadows of the Despeir Mountains. These were Prince Meinard's own people. He should protect them.
Instead, he brutalized them.
“You have passion,” the aoi si said. “It burns in you behind that playful and roguish exterior you like to project.”
“Of course I have passion.” I threw my arms out, anger swelling in me.
“Look around at this monstrosity. I despise the man responsible. I'm going to kill him.”
“A worthy goal,” Ealaín agreed.
“And now complicated. This amulet is why that shadowmancer attacked us yesterday?”
Ealaín nodded. “It appears a naga has made a deal with the Paragon to find the phylactery. It has been lost for centuries. The world all hoped it would never resurface. With it, the Paragon can restore the vile mage to life.”
My skin crawled. “And what is this... Paragon?” I knew that word from my studies at the University of Az back in another life when I truly was a carefree carouser and roguish seducer of women. “What is he the epitome of?”
“She is the Biomancer's ultimate creation,” Ealaín said. “She possesses all the things the warlock prized: strength, speed, intelligence, abilities. He created her right before his death. By the time she reached maturity, he was slain and his phylactery was long stolen. She's searched for it for centuries and, thanks to her deal with the naga, it was uncovered.
“The Biomancer makes a mockery of art. He takes something already beautiful and ruins it in his mad plan of perfection. It is like he found a master painting, one of Goth's or Kessavarie's works, and in his arrogance thought he could improve it. He would take it, along with something else, perhaps a statue carved by Istalia, and try to merge them. In his effort to stamp his own uniqueness upon them, he would ruin two already perfect works and produce something less, something that was missing that vital spark of natural inspiration.”
I shuddered. “You're talking about the monsters he made.”
Many of them plagued the world, strange abominations that were fusions of different creatures. Panthopuses roamed the woods and chimeras haunted the mountains. Things that didn't even have names, foul mergings of animals and plants, living and nonliving. With his magic, he twisted and perverted.
“And the amulet around my sister's neck contains his soul?”
Ealaín nodded.
“Okay, what do we do with it? Destroy it, right?” I shivered. Another task we'd have to complete. And one at odds with vengeance.
“How?” asked Ealaín. “It is a powerful object. My mother knows not. It is a powerful artifact. The elf who slew him had tried many ways before she vanished. Nothing worked. For now, it must be denied to the Paragon.”
“Then let's drop it into the sea and...” My words trailed off. “She can swim. Right.”
“And fly, survive extremes of temperature, toxic gases. The Paragon can thrive in any environment from brackish swamps to arid desert. She could dive to the deepest reach of the ocean and soar to the extent of the firmament above.”
“Las's putrid cum,” I growled. “Can she die?”
“All things can die.”
“That's something.” I yanked another bronze pin, freeing another person. I ignored their thanks, continuing on as I mulled this over. “That's why you're here?”
“Though Radiant Kora is beloved by my mother, She would not interfere in mortal affairs. But now things have changed. The phylactery is a threat beyond the scope of your petty feud with Prince—”
“Petty!” The word exploded from my mouth. “He burned our parents, our sister, alive!” Katriana's innocent face, a younger version of Kora's sensual features, blazed in my mind. Katriana laughing, smiling, her blonde hair flying behind her as she ran through the halls of our home, or her skirts flaring about her coltish legs as she leaped from the tree in our garden and landed on the soft loam.
All that joy extinguished in those flames. Reduced to ash and blown away.
Ealaín cocked her head. “I apologize. It was an ill-chosen word. I only meant in the grander purpose of the world, the dispute between a pair of humans matters little when compared to the rebirth of a monster who plagued our world for centuries and unleashed his mad monstrosities from Castle Drakin.”
“Petty,” I muttered and ripped out a bronze pin, freeing a grandmotherly woman.
“Thank you!” she sobbed.
I nodded, brushing past her. “Stopping Prince Meinard sounds more important to me than Vebrin returning to life.”
“Perspective is a unique thing, is it not?” she said. “From where I stand Prince Meinard seems of little consequence. But not to you. His shadow casts far across the world you see, swallowing it.”
I shrugged. “You're a weird one, Ealaín.”
She blinked her owlish eyes. “Am I?”
“Yeah.
“So,” I said, something tickling in my head, “you said an elf killed Vebrin and was looking—”
“Master!” screeched Zanyia.
Bounding across the stocks we opened, leaping over the freed men and women moving to help others, came my naked lamia. She moved like a cat, her pale skin almost glowing in the multi-hued moonlight. Her small breasts jiggled while her tail twitched back and forth, almost steering for her as she leaped.
“Master! Look up!”
I did, staring up at the brilliant stars shining down on us. Three moons hung in the sky, each a different hue. Though it was night, I could see like it was day and... I spotted them. Figures flying fast towards us. A hundred or more.
Faeries.
“Las's putrid cum!” I snarled.
Chapter Two: The Princess's Desires
Princess Ava – Echur, the Princedom of Kivoneth, the Strifelands of Zeutch
“What do you mean?” demanded my step-father, bursting out of his bed naked and flinging himself at Master Mage Shevoin. “Destroyed?”
“Yes, your Highness,” cowered Shevoin. An older man, his skin almost as pale as a Zeutchian, his hair graying. He came from the Collegiate Tower of Esh-Esh, skilled in magic, my father's closest adviser.
As my father stood trembling in rage, joy surged through me. I rubbed my naked thighs together beneath our mused blankets, feeling his forbidden cum leaking out of my pussy. I hated my father. He'd turned cold after Mother's death, withdrawing in on himself and embarking on his mad plan to restore the High King Peter's empire. None had succeed in the two hundred years since Peter's death. Only chaos reigned. Zeutch had been wracked by wars, the princes rising and falling trying to take control of the large nation while holding desperately onto their own pieces of it.
And then my father had found a way to imbue an entire army of statues. Nonliving soldiers made of hard stone destroyed his rivals. He'd conquered a dozen smaller princedoms in the last two years, swallowing half of Zeutch in the process. The Lodestone let him do it. Somehow, it gave the rare ability of imbuing to thousands of people while simultaneously robbing them of their will, making them utter slaves to my father.
“How fast can you find another Lodestone to enchant?” my father said, his rage already cooling. His passions never lasted long, whether anger or lust. He looked like pale marble in the silvery moonlight streaming through his bedroom window, his hair a pale blond.
“The mine has never found another piece big enough,” the mage answered. “I do not know if we ever will. The Lodestone was unique. That much magnetic iron found in a single rock...”
“Gods damn it,” Father said, his voice cold. “And what does that mean for my army? They were attacking Anaopeth.”
“They will be deactivated, of course,” Shevoin said. “Just like when you withdraw your will from your proxy and it goes still.”
Like me, my father was an imbuer, able to take control of inanimate objects with his soul. But only one at a time. It had perplexed me when Father found a way to control an entire army, then horrified me to learn how he did it.
But Sven had done it. My fiance, the man I truly loved, had stopped my father's foul machination.
I couldn't help but gloat right now even as I flew to my father, bounding naked from the bed and hugging him from behind. I pressed my small breasts into his back, hugging him, my face rubbing between his shoulder blades.
“You shall find a way to prevail, Father,” I said. “Your standing army is powerful. You have half of Zeutch u
nder your control. You don't need those statues.”
“Of course I do,” he growled. “I need my army to keep all the nobles in line while we expand. Without strong boots on their necks, sedition will whisper through my princedom.”
“It doesn't matter,” I said. “You must send reinforcements to the front as soon as possible. The army at the capital is closest.”
Then Sven will have nothing between him and sneaking into the castle to slay my father.
“It won't work,” growled my father.
“But it must,” I protested. “It's the—”
The anger burst out of him again. He twisted his body and struck me with his arm as he turned. Pain flared in my side as I stumbled back. I crashed into his chest of drawers. The wooden furniture creaked and rocked. I bounced off and fell onto my hands and knees. Tears sprang to my cheek.
The anger melted from his face. “Pater's cock,” he groaned, rushing to me. “My sweetling. I didn't mean to hit you.”
“I'm fine, Father,” I lied, such anger surging through me even as I stared at his cock swaying before me. It bobbed before my lips as he stood over me.
Lusts swelled through me. That spell he'd enchanted me with drove me wild. It made me want to pleasure him. He didn't know I'd learned the truth, and I couldn't let him think I was anything but a loving daughter.
“It was my fault for interfering,” I told him, grabbing his cock. The more I hated him, the more my body felt driven to pleasure him. It was so maddening. “Let me... soothe you. Relax you, so you can think.”
I sucked on the tip of his cock, unable to stop myself. Beyond the fact it was forbidden—he had raised me as his own daughter!—it felt so wrong to cheat on my true love. I would marry Sven, but I couldn't stop my lusts. That damned enchantment upon me had me aching for my father's embrace.
His dick twitched and throbbed hard in my mouth. He groaned, his hands sliding through my hair, caressing my blonde locks. He sucked in such deep breaths, the pleasure spilling across his face. He licked his lips, his fists clenching and relaxing as I pleasured him.
