She paused there, just out of sight of the cliff. “Go make sure he’s there,” she hissed at Lugin.
“Alright. But only because you licked my balls so well,” the imp cackled. Julyana rolled her eyes at the memory of that debased act as the imp flapped away. Taking a slow, deep breath she reached into the satchel and fetched out a bottle. She poured some of the cream into her hands and carefully rubbed it over her, all the while murmuring the words of power the imp had taught her. A shiver raced across her as the invisibility spell worked, again that sweet warmth of power surging up from deep within her.
The imp fluttered back, landing on a branch. “He’s there. Careful sweet cheeks. He’s armed.”
Julyana felt a shiver but suppressed it. “I’ll be fine,” he murmured, and slowly moved through the forest. Her heart pounded as she climbed the path that ran along the cliff. Her bare feet pricked faintly on roots and sticks, but the pads of her feet had since grown tough enough she barely noticed it. So many changes, she mused. She felt again that chill. That sense like she was slipping away, becoming something, someone, that frightened her. And yet, in another way, thrilled her.
Julyana was so caught in those reflections, she didn’t realize she was at the cliff until she stepped around the bend and found the bandit staring right at her.
She froze, her heart flying into her throat, and that was all that stopped her from screaming. She stood stock still, naked before the rough bandit in his old, ragged leather tunic and threadbare cloak, his eyes dim. For a moment he simply stared, then he turned away and back to the road.
Julyana felt a breath escape her. He hadn’t seen her. Or, rather, couldn’t. The spell worked. A thrill of excitement and giddy power raced through her. He couldn’t see her. She listened to him mutter about noises in the marsh. He unscrewed a flask and took a long, loud pull.
She felt something different, then. A tension coursed through her. Her smile turned hard. She extended her hand towards the bandit and shouted a word of power.
The bandit jumped, then screamed as rings of light sprang into being, tightening around his arms, legs and chest. He fell onto his side, struggling, pupils tiny dots in his terrified eyes. And oh but it felt good to see that. To see the fear in the face of the man who had helped kill her husband. Who had taken her handmaiden and driven her into the swamp. Julyana smirked and spat a word, dispelling the invisibility.
Nothing would compare to the pleasure she felt at seeing the bandit’s eyes widen with shock as she seemed to step out of thin air. Her body gloriously naked, her crimson hair wild and tangled, her ass still stained with the wug’s seed.
“Who-who are you?” the bandit squealed.
“Quiet,” Julyana spat, flicking a finger. The bandit screamed as the bands of magic tightened around him. “You’ll speak when I tell you to. Not before.”
“Yes! Yes, please. Please don’t hurt me!”
“Oh?” Julyana said, taking a seat on a stone. She cocked her head, relishing in the man’s fear. In her power over him. “Then you’d better satisfy me.”
Laughing, Lugin winged out of the darkness, perching on a tree branch like some monstrous crimson crow. The bandit glanced at the imp with even greater horror and frantically nodded. “Anything! Anything!”
Julyana smirked, flushing slightly with delight. She extended her foot. “Then crawl here, worm, and kiss my foot.”
She fairly squirmed with delight as the bandit wriggled towards her, desperately kissing her foot without even seeming to notice the filth on it. Leaning back, Julyana took a shuddering breath of pleasure. But she had to focus. “Alright. That’s enough.” She kicked him off her foot. “Now. Answer me truthfully, or else I’ll make you suffer.”
The bandit’s frantic nodding was almost imperceptible from his trembling.
“Good. You and your friends robbed a carriage along the highway a while ago. There was a woman with it. Where is she?”
“The whore?” the bandit said.
Julyana’s hand convulsed into a fist, the magic bindings tightening fiercely. “Never call her that!” she screamed as the bandit thrashed with pain. She surged to her feet, towering over him, her hair writhing like crimson serpents arcing with static. “Where!”
“Th… the keep!” the bandit gasped. “Took her… to the keep!”
“Where is it?” Julyana snarled. She squeezed her hand, the bandit gasping in pain. “Where!”
“N-North! Past the old arches!” the bandit gasped. “Please… can’t… breathe…”
“Where?” she snarled, her fingers flexing. “Where in the keep!”
“D… dun… geons…”
“That’s it,” Lugin breathed, stroking his rock hard cock as he watched her rage. “Squeeze the fucker good. Look! He’s turning purple!”
She nearly killed the man then. Crushed him without touching him as he writhed at her feet. But something held her back. Despite the imp’s questioning look, she lowered her hand. No. She was not a monster. She would not kill as these men had done unless she needed to. But oh it was hard. It had felt so good to squeeze the man. To crush him until his bones creaked and he gasped for breath.
Julyana looked down at him contemptuously. “I’ll let you live,” she said.
The bandit looked up hopefully. But she wouldn’t let him off that easily. She smiled darkly and stepped over him. She squatted over his face, her cum stained ass parting to show her puckered backdoor. “But only if you clean out my ass. I had a wug fuck me earlier. Now, I think it’s fair you lick it up, worm.”
She delighted in the expression of disgust as he stared at the drying seed along her loose asshole. But she enjoyed the glance of terror he cast her a moment later far more. Hesitantly, the bandit raised his head, his tongue sliding from his mouth to stroke her inner ring.
“Mnnn, yesss,” Julyana moaned as the bandit slurped at her ass. “That’s it. Lick my filthy ass. Taste that? The wug enjoyed fucking me so much. And do you know why you won’t? Why you’re cleaning his cum from me? Because you’re less than that. Less than a wug. Get your tongue in there!” she ordered, settling her ass atop his face, grinding it against the prickle of his unshaved cheeks. “Lick it nicely or I’ll crush your bones to jelly! Lick me out, you stupid shit!”
The bandit moaned beneath her as his tongue slid along her sensitive inner ring. The depravity of it, the triumph of making the men who had sought to kill her lick her out instead was a sensation she couldn’t describe. She grabbed his hair, yanking him against her soft ass. She ground herself against him.
“Get your tongue in there. Oh yes,” she moaned, stroking her cunt. Sliding her fingers inside of her fluttering pussy. “Eat me out. Taste his seed in my ass! Oh yes… fuck… I’m going to cum. I’m going to cum with you licking my filthy ass. Ah… Yes… Yes! Fuck! Yesss!”
Julyana moaned as her pussy shuddered around her plunging finger. She screamed, shoving his ass between her soft cheeks viciously as she came.
Panting, she released his head, climbing to her feet. She glanced down contemptuously at the bandit’s flushed, dull face. She smirked and fished another potion from her satchel.
“Drink,” she ordered, upending it over his head.
Some splashed on his face and the stones, but the bandit was desperate enough to get a fair bit in his mouth. Even as she corked the potion, she could see it beginning to take effect. The bandit’s eyes dimming, his jaw going slack.
“He won’t remember anything?”
“Nope,” Lugin said as he flapped back to her shoulder. He looked down at the bandit with annoyance. “You shoulda just killed him.”
Julyana swallowed. She didn’t want to say how tempted she was to. She shook her head. “I’m better than them,” she said hoarsely.
“Oh really?” Lugin grinned at her. “Was that before? Or after you let a demon fuck your pretty pussy?”
“Shut up,” Julyana said without feeling. Adjusting her satchel, she turned north. Through the mists, she could
just make out a winding hunting path. Firming herself, she pushed forward, away from the cliff, and deeper in the Nightmire.
Hostage
Once upon a time, the Nightmire had been patrolled. Once upon a time, it was an invaluable road connecting half of a kingdom whose name is forgotten. Once upon a time, a keep had been built to house soldiers and to stand watch over the narrow highway.
And once upon a time was long ago indeed.
Julyana knelt among the brambles which bordered the old path, looking at the ruined fortress. Battlements had fallen in and the tower had crumbled to ragged shapes furred with moss. Outer walls stood alone and tall and hollowed out as a skull.
Yet life lived in the old, broken keep. Fires burned here and there, faintly glowing through the waning mist of the Nightmire. The gates had been raised up and reinforced, and figures could just be seen in a small window serving as a watch.
“Lotta guards I bet,” Lugin mused from her shoulder. The imp plucked the cigar from his mouth and flicked some ash from the tip. “Buuuut I bet you could take ‘em,” he said with a grin. “Blast your way in there and slaughter the lot of them. Maybe make them fuck each other before you do.”
Julyana shook her head forcefully. “I… I just want Nina back. Safe. I don’t want to have to hurt them.”
Lugin laughed. “You know that’s a lie. You want to make them suffer.”
Julyana tried to ignore his jibe. But she did want to hurt them. She wanted them to burn. She wanted them to suffer for what they did to Lord Novor. To Nina. To her. But she could accept that. What she couldn’t countenance was how much she knew she would enjoy it. She shivered at that tantalizing sense of power just at the edge of her thoughts. How good it would feel to wield magic, to see their fear as they gazed up at her. Fear and awe the moment before she struck them down. She shook her head forcefully.
“I just want Nina back,” she hissed.
Lugin rolled his eyes and sucked at his cigar, smoke billowing from his mouth like from a chimney. “Fine.”
Julyana reached into her satchel and fetched the invisibility cream once more. She slathered it over her luscious body, biting her lip as the warmth of the magic rolled over her sensitive skin, tingling against the jutting tips of her nipples and the pearl of her clit. She pushed the pleasurable sensation to the back of her mind, and moved out from cover.
The gate was far too large for her to manage, but she doubted the bandits used it anyway. Soon enough she found a secure postern gate. She touched it and eased it open slowly, peeking through the doorway.
A group of bandits sat around a small fire in the ruined watch house. Julyana held her breath as she pushed the door open a little more and slipped inside. One of the bandits raised their head and looked her way. Julyana clenched her fist, feeling the blue fire of magic cluster in her fist, ready to blast the man dead in an instant. But the bandit merely grumbled, stood, and pushed the door shut again.
“I hate the wind here,” he groused as he rejoined the others.
Julyana exhaled. It took more than she wanted to admit to banish the magic in her hand and leave the guards unmolested. The doorway to the courtyard had long since lost its door, allowing her to creep through and into the broad open grounds. A few guards stood on the broken walls, though Julyana wondered why they bothered. The mists made seeing anything approaching the keep near impossible.
Sounds came from the inner keep, the large building in mildly better repair that the rest of the place. Opening the door just enough to slip inside, Julyana took in the grand hall.
Several large tables had been drawn up in the massive room. What must have been the entire bandit band sat on the long benches. Coarse laughter rang into the high rafters of the ruined hall. Slabs of meat, breads and cheeses lay across the tables. At the head, in a throne that had once housed kings, sat the bandit chief.
Julyana stared at the coarse, mustachioed man in his seat, a shapely, frightened young woman on his lap, his hand around her waist and pulling her firmly against him. Julyana trembled with anger, recalling his cruelty with Nina, but forced the thought away. Her eyes flicked across the room, but saw not a trace of Nina. The dungeons, she reminded herself, walking across the room.
It felt so strange to stride so brazenly through the chamber of her enemies. Her shapely body naked for all to see, yet unnoticed. It was a heady feeling. She felt giddy, almost drunk as she passed within a handbreadth from the bandit chief.
A doorway at the end of the hall opened to a long staircase. With the same daze Julyana walked down it, her feet slapping on the cold stone. Colder still the further she went down, the dark pressing around her. The floor levelled off. A torch flickered in the dark. Several rough men sat at a table, eating and laughing with each other.
Something called Julyana on. Past the men and into the cold cells. Rusted iron doors stood forlorn along the passage. She headed for the last. The stench of suffering and pain and filth clogged her nose.
The last cell was open. Julyana stepped inside. Stared.
Nina lay slumped against the wall like a cast off doll. Her dark hair was matted with filth and her body stained and smudged with seed. Red welts covered her once tanned flesh, now greyed and wasted. Bruises splotched her, half her face swollen from some blow.
Julyana knelt beside her, pulled Nina into her arms. Her hand shook as she brushed Nina’s hair from her brow. Nina’s head lolled limply. Her skin was cold. Too cold. So horribly cold.
The guards jumped at the sound of a scream so filled with anguish it chilled even their cold hearts. They grabbed swords, racing for the far cell. They stopped, frozen.
Julyana crouched over Nina’s body, clutching the handmaid’s corpse against her chest. The very walls of the stone glowed pulsing red. The iron bars beside her ran molten from the magic searing through her. Slowly, Julyana rose, her red hair writhing, sparks crackling off her and the metal bars. She stood, still clutching Nina’s body. She turned towards the stunned bandits.
She saw red.
She heard screams.
Vengeance
The keep burned into the night. By the flames which danced and crackled in the towers and inner bailey the haze of the Nightmire was cast into a golden hue.
Devar stared, slack jawed. The sentry had woken an hour ago with a start atop the cliff. He didn’t know how he’d fallen asleep, or why his mouth tasted like he’d licked a slimy mire stone, but he’d quickly darted to his feet and raced back towards their hideout.
Only to arrive to this.
“By the gods,” he croaked.
A hand landed on his head. Twisted. Devar heard his neck snap even as his head was spun about. In the split second before he died he saw a tall, thin man in a cloak dark as a starless night standing behind him. A wide brimmed hat pulled low shadowed his face, and in his hand was a cane topped with a silver symbol of a reptilian eye.
The man released Devar, the bandit crumpling to the ground. Tapping his cane again the old stone path, the man’s deep eyes wandered across the burning ruins.
With a soft splash, several wugs crawled out of the marshy waters and padded up behind him. “In there?” he asked.
The wugs croaked an affirmative.
“Hm,” he mused and pushed forward. The door to the old keep gave way with ease, falling at a touch to collapse in a blaze of sparks and ash. The charnel smell of fear and slaughter breathed out. The flickering flames revealed the splash of blood across the crudely mortared stone of a small watch house. The sentries lay scattered in pieces, their faces twisted in the screams of their final moments.
The light of the fire flickered off the silver eye atop the man’s cane as he walked through, poised and composed as if off to the opera. The next door revealed a courtyard of ruins. More fires, these black with a chill, bluish flame that burned even on the stones. Men lay dead, ripped apart or aflame. A stable had collapsed under its own weight and now burned in a shapeless pile.
As he approached the doors to the g
reat hall he heard the voice. A shrill, broken laughter more a sob than anything. At this, a small smile flicked on his lips and he opened the doors of the great hall.
A banquet had been held not so long ago. The meat had yet to attract flies, and what bread and cheeses that hadn’t been cast to the floor sat half eaten on the tables. A great bonfire blazed, feeding on the corpses of several bandits. Other bodies hung from the ceiling and rafters, some spiked on wicked looking steel as if hurled there by a furious hand.
The sound of laughter and weeping grew as he crossed the floor, cane clicking on the stone. An old throne of a long dead king sat at the end. A body was there. He glanced over the flayed, fleshless thing, the head staring with wide, horrified eyes now glazed in death. The man had seen death in many ways, and knew it had come slowly and oh so painfully here.
He glanced down to the figure crouched at the foot of the throne. A woman, her pale, shapely figure bared and splashed with blood. She sat, holding tightly another woman’s body to her breast.
An imp crouched on the back of the throne, his bowler hat cocked and a cigar smoking from his grinning mouth. He looked up sharply in surprise as the man walked out of the darkness. Lugin scrambled to his feet and flapped down to Julyana, nudging her.
“Hey sweet cheeks. Company.”
Julyana raised her head, cheeks streaked with tears through ash. She stared at the man in black and laughed again. “And who are you?” she asked with a cracked smile. “The bandit’s master?”
“Hardly,” he said. He lifted his cane, stroking the reptilian eye thoughtfully. “You did all this, then?”
Still smiling, still holding the battered body to her, Julyana rose. “That’s right,” she said hoarsely. “Want a taste then?”
She flung out her hand, a comet of blue fire blazing between them. The man in black barely seemed to move. He simply flicked his cane, striking aside the magic. The spell careened away, demolishing a wall with an explosion of power.
The Pillaging of an Empire Page 10
