The monster was panting deeply now. Its tongue lolled, coiling under itself and pushing into the guardswoman’s lips in a hideous kiss. His hips were moving faster. Harder. At last, hilting his impossibly massive cock within his helpless slut, the creature threw back his head and howled.
His balls tightened as he came, pumping gallons of his seed into his helpless breeding slut. The guardswoman moaned, her mouth opening wide, her lashes fluttering as she shuddered, her stomach swelling with the sheer amount of seed being pumped into her womb, darkness branding itself in the shape of an eye as the curse consumed her.
The creature snarled, crouching over her, the knot of his cock swelling, sealing his seed within his new slut tight. The guardswoman whimpered, twitching at the sheer force of her orgasm, drooling on the floor like an addict at last given their fix.
Luxia grinned, crossing her arms beneath her firm breasts. But even as she reveled in her triumph, something tingled at the back of her awareness. She looked about warily at the walls and towering glass windows.
A humming had filled the air, unheard due to the sloshing of the creature’s shaft within his mate. A sound that echoed through her bones, her infernal nature shivering against a danger she recognized but dimly. She turned away from the pair, her eyes drawn to the crimson windows that overlooked the courtyard.
And only then realized the glass was gone, and the world itself had turned red.
Confrontation
The clockwork doors that sealed the lair of the Red Mages buckled. The blow thundered throughout the room again. Again. At last, with a sound of rending steel and shattered sorcery, the doors burst open, slamming off the opposing walls with a sound like tolling bells.
The Duke of Ashes walked through the dust, his dark cloak whispering. His cane topped with a silver eye clicking off the floor. Pale as the moon, his eyes were sharp and his face oddly smooth, almost reptilian. His lips parted with a grim smile as his escort of orcish warriors moved past him and into the room.
His cane clicked off the glass floor that still pulsed and glowed. In the center of the room Strakken watched him, the magister’s red eyes burning in the depths of his white mask.
“At last,” the Duke said, laughing softly. “The mighty Strakken. Archmage of the Red.”
The Duke of Ashes, came the reply, muffled by the humming of the room. I expected more.
“I think my actions speak for themselves,” the Duke said. He glanced down at the glass floor and its runic engravings, then slammed the butt of his cane into it. Cracks fissured across the engravings, splitting apart the markings worked within it. A keening sound like metal scraping together shrieked through the chamber, then died. “I only destroyed your empire, after all. Ended the rule of man upon these lands. Took their women to breed a new world of the monster in its wake.
You have. I suppose congratulations are in order.
“Thank you,” the Duke said with a mocking bow. He glanced about the room. “And what were you attempting here? Some sorcery to stop me? A bit late, it would seem.”
Perhaps. There was no way to save Istanov after a certain point.
“Don’t fret. I’ll take good care of it.”
A pity the old emperor didn’t manage to kill you along with the rest of your people.
The Duke’s mocking grin tightened. His teeth grit before he smoothed his face anew. “Mockery will get you nowhere.”
I don’t bother with it. Mockery is Viana’s purview.
“Ah yes. Your enforcer. Where is she, anyway? The Witch wanted a new pet, and that bitch seemed like the perfect prospect.”
She is gone. They are all gone. I sent them away.
The Duke laughed. “There is nowhere in the world that will be safe for them.”
On that we agree.
The Duke’s grin faded. His brow wrinkled in annoyance. “Did you go mad from losing?” he asked, stepping across the floor, approaching the red figure, his every step crunching the broken glass. “The empire is done. Finished. There isn’t a human left unbred and unbroken from the sea to Cleavegrad. We’ve won.” He again smashed his cane into the broken glass. “Your spell here is undone. Nothing you can do will change anything.”
You fought this war well, Duke, Strakken said. You triumphed over the empire, though to be fair, you faced it at its weakest in leadership and unity. But don’t let that take away from the strength of your triumph. Indeed, Istanov is no more. You have defeated the empire. And yet, you have lost.
“What the devil do you mean, ‘lost?’” the Duke snarled.
You seem to be mistaken in your objective. You see, Duke, as I explain patiently to my own followers, you can win every battle, and yet still lose the war. And the fact is, your war was never about defeating Istanov. It was about the ascendancy of the monster. Of bringing them to a height over and above man.
“Ably done.”
Incorrect. For you see, for the monsters to wax triumphant over Istanov, there still has to be an Istanov. And you are mistaken in another way.
Strakken gestured.
My spell is already cast.
The walls of the room seemed to peel back like the set piece of a play, and for the first time the Duke’s eyes widened in true horror. A second layer of wall and floor was revealed, and on them the dizzying symbols were humming. Pulsing. The sound rising to a final crescendo.
The Duke whirled on Strakken, cane coming wide to cave in the sorcerer’s skull. Instead, no sooner did the silver eye touch the robed figure, he seemed to dissolve into sand. Laughter rang through the room. Inside the head of the Duke and his orcish guard. The orcs grabbed their heads as the sound of the chamber grew. Blood flowed freely from ears, eyes and nose. Their screams of agony joined the song of destruction reverberating through the tower.
And with a sound so loud it silenced the world, the room exploded.
The End
The sunlight seared Catherine’s eyes as she stumbled out of the tunnel after Arman. Her thighs were weak and the front of her gown was still stained with her juices.
“This way, Catherine,” he said, guiding her out.
She followed him listlessly. She felt numb. Dazed. Her head ached and her body burned in a strange sensation. She didn’t know what to think. What to do. What to say. It all felt so distant. Like she were removed from the world she lived in.
She slowed as she came into the open and raised her head, looking out over the rough foothills of the Barrier Mountains.
“There,” Arman said. “It’ll be a few days walk to Cleavegrad, but once we arrive, we’ll be able to start a new life, Catherine. Don’t you worry.”
She said nothing. Her eyes wandered down the cliffs and jagged slopes. Down, down, and to Moskov, nestled far below. It was impossible not to notice the city. Its carcass ripped apart by the siege. Buildings aflame or collapsed, smoke pluming into the air from all over it.
And the palace. The palace, sitting like a crown of jewels lording over the greyed realm of its lesser.
A crown that had begun to glow.
“Oh,” she said softly as the inner towers of the palace blazed with a crimson light. A light that dwarfed even the glow of the sun.
“By the gods above!” Arman breathed as he followed her eyes. “What is that?”
Catherine said nothing. She merely closed her eyes as a humming resounded through the world, ringing off the stones around her. Arman’s voice was barely perceptible as the glow grew stronger, his hysterical shouts lost.
She felt the explosion in the heart of the city. She exhaled as the blast rippled through the palace and Moskov, tearing apart what remained of the city, scouring it in a holocaust of force. Where the blastwave struck it shattered buildings and lifted homes. Its touch seemed to suck the colour from the land as if draining away all that gave it life. In its wake came fire. Hungry. Rolling over the landscape in a great surge of might.
Catherine felt the force rush towards her. She didn’t try and move as it thundered up the hi
lls. She welcomed it, and didn’t even last a moment as the blast struck, stripping away all she was in a sudden end.
The blast swept over Istanov. Growing. The world shook from shore to shores.
In a keep newly claimed, the gertling king Targi wondered what that sound was, looked out the window, and saw doom flattening trees and stripping the life from their branches. He screamed, and his quick-thinking wives grabbed him and what young they could, racing down the steps and into the bottom levels of the keep where dungeons now used as breeding warrens offered some protection from the doom racing across the world.
In Tauven Mur, a mind long lived spread through its hive and felt the shakings of the earth. A memory writ in its very essence stirred, reminding it of a time long past. A doom which came long ago. From every corner of the ruined village at the foot of the mine, horrors scurried out from under the sun and back into the darkness beneath the mountain, obeying the call of their queen, who knew too well the feeling and what it portended.
In her grove Cephara looked up from the writhing form of the girl caught in her vines, moaning and rutting against the endless pleasures inflicted on her shapely form. The plant woman’s eyes widened as the tang of dark sorcery struck her tongue. As the trees around her grove were felled. She screamed as the blast struck her, her arms rising, her lustrous green skin turning brown with rot and death.
Tatarod shuddered as across the once thriving port already ruined buildings groaned and toppled to the streets. The monstrous residents milled in wonder. The minotaur Gor staggered from his warehouse, his hose of a cock flopping, still slick from where he’d had his latest stock of slaves practice their oral skills for their eventual masters. His open robe fluttering, he looked past the tall cliffs that once protected the city and watched as the shockwave crested them, and came rushing down. Only fleeing to the waters and jumping in saved him, the blast rippling across the sea, shattering the ships of the Shadobbar merchants who sought to profit by the death of their rival empire.
In a cave against the cliffs, an empress lost moaned as she rutted atop the cock of a tentacled horror, her every hole filled. Memories of being the empress of Istanov, who once carried the hopes of her people had long ago been scoured from the mind of Damera. She knew nothing but the pleasures of her endless matings. Of being used and fucked and toyed with by the horrors she once abhorred. Her breasts swollen and milky. Her stomach stuffed with the spawn of some monster. And yet, as she rode the plunging tentacles of her newest mate, she saw the world turn red. Saw the wave of force roll across the world in flame and doom, and in a last moment of sanity before destruction tore her apart, she smiled.
The blast broke a land already darkened with war and horror. Toppled forests and every building that once stood tall and proud. It reached across the land and to the forgotten west where a people died, and ended that memory by shattering the standing stones where once a council was called and the end of an empire foretold.
Istanov heaved and buckled. A land ruined. A land laid to waste. A final death throe of an empire.
And not only new enemies would feel its hate.
From the walls of Cleavegrad, built into the very stones of the Barrier Mountains, one stood alone against the onslaught. The wizards of the keep had already fallen, their bones blasted to powder, flesh stripped away leaving only robes and amulets to clink onto the stones.
From the main keep, rising like a helmet behind the sheltering arms of the wall, Reegan Sinterfell, Royal Witch of House Corven, sorceress to the king of Heimsvak, resisted the tide of destruction. She stood alone where she’d once been behind every wizard she’d been able to muster to the keep. Her flattering robes whipped about her shapely form. Her arms were raised, power crackling from her palms as she fought to hold back the wave of destruction from washing over her homeland.
“No!” Reegan gasped, her brow streaked with sweat, the palms of her hands red and bleeding as lightning raced up her arms and into the sky, the force of the Red Mage’s spell pushing her back, feet scraping on the domed roof of the keep. “No! Amonothus!” she screamed the profane name. “Help me!”
Below soldiers milled. Many could simply stand, watching, dumbstruck at the doom that sought to overwhelm them, feeling for the first time the true impotence of sword and steel. Reegan grit her teeth, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes as death pushed her back inch. By inch. By inch.
“You fight well, Reegan.”
Her eyes flicked to the side. A woman stood nearby, her heavy dark robes doing nothing to mask the curves she sported. Her hood hung low, so low it hid her eyes, but her lips were lifted in a smirk. A shawl of silver spider silk sat on her shoulders, while trinkets, treasures and charms hung from her neck, belt and wrists.
“Goddess,” Reegan breathed.
Amonothus bowed. A sight Reegan had time enough to register before she was nearly thrown over by another ripple of the Red Mage’s spell. She turned back, grunting another desperate chant to hold back the wave of desolation.
“You’re doing well, I should say,” the goddess said, her voice the rasping whisper of a crone. Her charms chimed as she stepped around Reegan, surveying the force of the spell and the devastation warped by the shimmering wall of power. “But the Red Mages found some truly nasty sorcery. Old magic. Before magic. Such a pity.”
“Help… me…” Reegan gasped between desperate chants.
The goddess hummed. She lifted a finger ending in a nail hooked like an owl’s talon, running it along the crackling wall of power. “I could, of course. But I am a goddess, you know. I will expect payment for my services.”
“What… do you… want…?” Reegan gasped.
The hooded figure smirked and turned back to the shapely sorcerous. “You know what I want. Reegan. I want the king’s lovely daughter, soon to come of age.”
Reegan glanced at the goddess as she sauntered nearer. “I want you to educate the young princess in my ways. Teach her my powers. My lore. Bring her up to me, persuade her of my power, so that I might rise again.”
Reegan shuddered as that talon-tipped finger stroked her cheek. “Is that really so much to ask? For you to live? And Heimsvak too, I suppose.”
Reegan bit her lip, for a moment faltering in her counter spell. Amonothus was far older than the gods and goddesses mankind worshipped. Her true goals were unknowable. But even as Reegan stood there at the ramparts, she knew what she would say. That hesitating was merely prolonging the inevitable.
“Alright,” Reegan said at last.
Amonothus smirked. “Good girl. I’ll be waiting.”
The goddess leaned forward, and gave the startled Reegan a kiss. Even as their lips met the goddess dissolved, her body breaking off into a flurry of crows. Cawing, the birds swept away on the wind, a flock of darkness against the dawn.
Reegan’s tongue tingled, and words suddenly spilled from her lips. Words of power alien to her, but not to magic.
The Red Mage’s spell rippled. Quivered like a stone thrown into a placid pond. A sound filled the air. A screech like the very veil of reality was being torn apart. Hope bloomed in Reegan’s chest. Her voice rose, calling out the strange words with triumph rather than fear.
Wind whipped about her. Stormed about the peak of Cleavegrad. A clarion call, her counterspell echoing among the peaks. The crimson spell warred against her a moment more.
And shattered.
Reegan gaped as the wall of force broke like a mirror into myriad shards which in turn broke apart, dissolving into dust as the cold wind blew through the mountains.
Reegan’s legs suddenly buckled and she fell to her knees, panting. Her hands stung and ached. Exhaustion made her head spin and every inch of her tingle with pins and needles. But a turn of her head confirmed what she’d hoped. Snow still capped the peaks of the Barrier Mountains. Cleavegrad still stood proud and strong guarding the pass.
Heimsvak was saved.
A sound reached her ears, and she looked down into the courtyard
to see the soldiers cheering. She grinned and raised her burned hand, waving to them imperiously. She’d done it. This story would reach every corner of the kingdom within a week. The king would no doubt reward her hugely for this. Perhaps a dukedom even? She laughed throatily.
A sound that stuck in her throat when she saw a silver thread wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet.
She stopped smiling, waving. She shook her hand frantically until the thread came loose and drifted away on the wind and towards the distant Heimsvak. She grabbed her arm and pulled it close to her chest, looking down on the lands shielded by Cleavegrad.
A promise made with a god would be a promise kept.
She shivered in the moaning wind of the mountains.
Epilogue
The war wagon of the Duke of Ashes lay in ruins.
Once it had been a juggernaut. The rumble of its wheels as it was pulled by giant oxen the sound of doom come to the people of Istanov. From a hundred spikes were hung the banners of slaughtered noble houses, the heads of their leaders often thrust atop them to truly make the point. A testament to its build was that it was still intact despite the devastation wrought moments ago. Though the banners had been torn away, the wheels ripped from the frame and the wood grey like it had aged a century in a day, it still stood, solid.
The hatch into the wagon creaked and was thrust open, and the Red Witch climbed out.
Sultry, naked as sin, power crackled off her like an untamed storm. Her red hair coiled about her as she climbed atop the wagon, her firm breasts bouncing as she stood and looked about. Pity, mercy, and any other weak emotion had been burned from her soul long ago in the fires of a bandit keep, along with her old life and name. And yet, even she could only stare, agape at the destruction wrought by the Red Mage’s spell.
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