by Renard, Loki
Aya glided toward the guardian. She had nothing to fear, for this could not possibly be real. None of these things happened in real life. Guards did not lay hands on her. Nobles did not remove their masks and let their faces be seen by anyone who cared to look. The king’s throne was certainly not a pile of ash upon the floor, and large, incredibly naked men who looked precisely like the guardian Kazriel did not call her forth to answer to them.
“I must have really overindulged,” she muttered to herself. “I don’t even remember smoking anything.”
The closer she got to the physical incarnation of Kazriel, the more her body quivered with strange recognition. He towered above her, eleven feet tall at the very least. She was not a short woman. She stood six foot tall and elegant with it, but Kazriel easily dwarfed her in mass and power.
The great creature’s hands felt real enough as he took hold of her and turned her around to face the nobles. Some of them looked away, but most stared at her. Very few people had ever seen her real face. Official portraits were released regularly, but her actual visage was reserved for the king and the royal staff alone. She looked back at them, feeling the strange sense of mutual shame that was echoed in their eyes at also being seen.
In the midst of the moment, a harsh slap seared her bottom. The physical contact was as unexpected as the hot pain that burst through her, making her shriek. In all her life, Aya had never been physically struck. She had barely been touched. The force of the creature’s hand took the breath from her lungs and made her wail long after the slap itself had landed. Shock, outrage, horror all rushed through her body and were translated into wailing anguish.
The creature was in no way apologetic for the pain it had inflicted. He stood there, his arms now folded across his great chest, his eyes gleaming with what seemed to be satisfaction.
“How could you?” She whirled about, clasping her rear.
“I have only just begun, Princess. I have awoken to find this world in pain. You have felt the merest fraction of it, but you will feel much more. You will be consumed by it. You will live it. Breathe it. You will pay for the sins of the throne.”
Aya had never been truly afraid before. She was her uncle’s favorite, hence her ongoing survival. The royal line had dwindled to near nothingness during Vengar’s reign. Once upon a time there had been hundreds of royals. Now there were only two. Or perhaps, one. She saw no sign of Vengar.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Kazriel closed the distance between them, his big hand wrapping around her neck, encircling her soft throat. His hand was so large and his fingers so long that it was not a tight grip, merely a firm and unescapable one.
“I’m innocent...”
The grip tightened and she fell silent.
“Do not speak, Princess. It is time that you listened.”
She took a breath, but did not speak again, and once more the grip loosened a fraction, rewarding her.
“Princess, you have failed your office, and your people, but you are the only surviving member of the bloodline and so you will have to be rehabilitated. You will make amends to those you have betrayed.”
“Betrayed?”
“Yes. Betrayed. Do not widen your eyes at me, Aya. Your station comes with responsibilities. From what I have heard, you live a life of reclusive luxury, far from the people you are meant to serve. While you wear golden dresses and feast on the finest foods, they starve and suffer.”
She knew that was true, and yet she did not know why this monstrous incarnation of the old legends of her world was demanding she do something about it.
“So you take me, strike me, deprive me of my dignity?” She was too bold to cower before this beast, even if he was a deity. She was beginning to believe that this was real. Still, that did not mean she was going to submit to it. Aya had never been a woman of faith, but she found belief in Kazriel’s grip. It was too firm to be a dream.
“What right do you have to dignity when you drank chocolate while your subjects were branded and destroyed?”
“Better them than me.”
Kazriel gave her an incredulous look, a strange thing on an immortal guardian’s visage, but she had stunned him. Such blatant self-preservation and disinterest in the welfare of her subjects clearly appalled him, but that was because he did not understand.
“I lived under the king, the same as they did. I was subject to his rule. I could not have made any difference in their lives. I was forced to protect my own. We were all abandoned to Vengar. Our guardian forsook us for over one hundred years.”
It was bold and brave to argue with the creature, but Aya was compelled to defend herself. The accusations cut deep, and clearly came attached to the promise of punishment. She had seen enough cruelty in her young life to know that she wanted no part of it.
“Your role as royal was to come to me, to pray before my statue, to submit your will to the greater good and to call me forth as savior of this land. It was never to eat treats in your chambers!”
With every word his voice rose and the intensity and power of his speech began to touch the world around them. The final phrase of his chastisement was bellowed so intensely the very ground shook beneath Aya’s feet. The nobles cowered and cried out in fear, but Aya held the guardian’s gaze and did not show fear.
Had she not been caught in its powerful grasp she would have fled, but the guardian did not loosen his grip. She was forced to stay there and bear the wrath of Kazriel. When she looked into his eyes, she felt him searching her very mind, ferreting out the dark little corners of her consciousness, finding her guilt and her fear and her misery—and her sins. All the dirty little trespasses only she knew about that stayed locked away in the secret recesses of memory were brought forth and seen by his dark jade eyes.
She felt the judgement of the god before her. The texts her instructors used to read to her had told her that she would one day answer for her life, but she had assumed she would be dead at the time. There was no indication that Kazriel would incarnate in her lifetime and demand she explain herself over the crumbled shards of the throne.
“If I’d said something, I would have been next to be branded. Vengar killed his own sons. I am but a woman. What could I have done?”
He looked down at her, his eyes glowing with the promise of fearsome discipline. There would be no escaping his wrath, she knew that, and yet she would do all she could. Having survived one mad king, she was hopeful she could handle an angry god.
“You could have done what the others did. You could have come to me. You should have come to me. You were raised to bring the sorrows of the land to...”
“I was raised to survive,” she interrupted him. “I was raised to avoid being branded, flayed, or beaten. My own father was another one of Vengar’s victims. My mother did not last more than a month after his death. I am the only one in the royal family who was permitted to survive.”
“You survived at the cost of the common folk...”
“And what of you?” she interrupted boldly. “You’ve been sitting up on that mountain sleeping while we were slaughtered. So maybe you should not have the nerve to come here and act as though this is my fault. I did what I could, which was very little. I kept breathing... what are you doing?”
He had taken her by the arm and twisted her about to face away from him. The muscles in his great arm rippled as it swept through the air to meet her bottom once more. The second slap was even harder than the first, and the pain blazed fiercely through her body.
“Oh, yes! Strike me because you cannot argue!” she cried out. “You failed us, Kazriel! Not I! You!” She gesticulated wildly. “Where were you before this moment?”
He swung her back around to face him.
“You dared not argue with your king, but you defy a god?”
“You’re supposed to be good. He was not.” A tear ran down her cheek. “You were supposed to save us, but you abandoned us. And now you come here, with all your power, and all your might
and you blame a girl who was but seven years old when she saw her parents die by Vengar’s hand. Shame on you, Kazriel! You would have done better to stay on your mountain and keep sleeping.”
The nobles began to stir at her speech. Their fear at the return of Kazriel had made their minds slow and their bellies weak. But Aya’s words roused them. Kazriel might be a god, but the princess was right, what could they have done against the might of Vengar’s evil?
“Hear hear!” one brave soul spoke up, and then another. Within seconds, there was such a rabble among the nobles, each of whom was just as convinced of his innocence as the princess was of hers.
“Silence!”
Kazriel shouted them into submission once more, his voice causing rock to crumble from the pillars and roof. The guardian’s rage might bring the entire structure down on their heads were they not careful.
A little smirk rose on Aya’s lips. She had touched the nobles, and now she felt their support. Perhaps it meant nothing in the grasp of a god, but a small victory was still a victory.
“You are all so ignorant!” Kazriel lectured them as one. “A god is not intended to run the lives of mortals. If I were to do that, there would be no free will. There would be no opportunity to grow. You would remain forever as infants. You are all capable of more than that. You have the seeds of compassion and greatness inside you. But you allowed darkness to reign and spread. I only rise when the mortals have so profoundly lost their way that there is no way back whatsoever.”
“I was born eighty years into Vengar’s rule. Don’t pin this on me,” Aya piped up.
“Alas, you are the one who must suffer.”
“Why? Because some walking statue says so?”
“You are spoiled,” he intoned. “You will be punished. You will be shamed. You will make your atonement in the eyes of the very people you betrayed, and they will be the ones to determine if you are ever worthy to take the throne.”
How could she argue with a god? His power was without limit. He could slay her with a single look. Aya trembled and lowered her eyes and made all the shows of submission she had so carefully learned when under the king’s tyranny.
“I would ask you one thing, Kazriel.”
“What is that?”
“If you believe in my guilt, put it to the people first. The ones who I was supposed to have protected. See if they believe I am guilty.”
“Very well.”
Kazriel scooped the princess up under his arm and carried her from the chamber of justice, down the steps of the castle and into the marketplace. It was quiet, for all activity had ceased at the shaking of the earth, but here and there faces were peering out, wondering what was happening to the nobles.
“Citizens! Come forth and judge your princess! Be she innocent, or be she guilty?”
Swung down onto her feet, Aya did her best to right herself and compose her features. The peasants now leaking out of the dark corners of stalls and shanties came with curiosity written on their faces, and reverence besides. They evidently had no problem believing that the guardian of all had risen from his slumber, captured the princess, and brought her before them. They almost seemed to expect it.
“Guilty!” they cried out.
Oh, god. They hated her. Aya was shocked. She had been told over and over that she was beloved of the people, but finding herself among them, it would seem they were not so fond of her after all.
“Tell me again! The princess who has lived in the castle all this time, is she guilty of crimes against the people? Or should she be spared the penalties of failure at her station?”
“Guilty!” they cried out louder.
Kazriel looked down at her from his great height. “This does not bode well for you, Princess.”
Aya shook her head. “I don’t care what they say. I did my best.”
“Guilty! She is guilty!”
The crowd was becoming a rabble, their volume and vicious voices making her tremble and press back against the guardian who had taken her to task.
“I didn’t know! It wasn’t my fault...” She stammered excuses, but it was too late. Kazriel had taken a rope from a nearby stall and was wrapping it around her wrists. In short order, Aya, princess of all Norvangir found herself tied to a wooden pole, her arms above her head, her thin gown doing nothing to hide her figure from the ferocious eyes of the crowd.
The so-called guardian, celestial being, mythical legend stood behind her, a length of leather in his hand. The crowd was furnishing him with myriad items to use upon her flesh, for they seemed to know what was going to happen before she did.
“The princess will be whipped!” Kazriel declared. “This is only the beginning of the atonement she will make to you, the true people of my lands. My children, you should have been safe and cherished, but the crown failed you. Now you will have the satisfaction of seeing the princess pay for her crimes against you.”
This was not fair. It was not her fault. Aya shouted that at the top of her lungs, but her objections were wiped away when the two-inch-thick lash of leather landed across her bottom with a wicked whipping motion.
She screamed and cursed Kazriel’s name, her fury more pronounced than her sorrow. This was not her fault, and these peasants, they had certainly never done anything to free themselves, whining curs that they were, nothing more than baying dogs to a brutal being who did not deserve to be worshipped by a beetle, let alone a royal.
“You are nothing!” she screamed as the leather bit twice, thrice, each time finding the curve of her bottom with accuracy. Kazriel had to bend and crouch low with every stroke to reach her lower curves, his arm rippling, his entire being focused on disciplining the rebellious princess who did not accept any blame for the actions of the tyrant king.
“I was as much a victim as any of you!”
“A victim who grew rich on the sacrifices of human flesh made regularly on her account. How much blood was spilled, Aya?”
“Who cares!”
She expected her cry to bring even more pain, but Kazriel dropped the lash and pulled her body from the ropes, handling her as if she were nothing more than a rag doll.
Aya found herself pushed back against the post, her hands held above her head, her legs spread by Kazriel’s great foot. Her thigh was cupped by his large hand, his fingers sliding up toward her sex.
Her tender pulsing flesh was on fire. The pain of the leather’s welts left her sensitive, and now the great beast was heading for an even softer part of her body. She wanted to think that he would not touch her there, not in front of this great crowd, but she knew Kazriel was capable of anything.
His palm cupped her pussy, his fingers rubbing her gown against her sex. It came away wet, the fabric sticking to lower lips that were sticky with a shameful discharge of desire she did not understand.
Aya’s body had been something of a mystery to her. She had known about the simple act of reproduction, but more than that, nothing. No man was permitted to touch her, of course, and none had risked the ire of Vengar to attempt to deflower her. She was a virgin, touched for the very first time in front of a baying crowd of filthy peasants.
Nothing about this should have been arousing to her. She had been shamed, whipped, lectured, punished. She had been blamed for more than she could bear. She should have been in tears, but when the guardian’s fingers slipped along her gown-clad slit, she felt a ripple of pure pleasure pass through her body. The tone of her gasp changed, and with it, so did the energy of the crowd. Perhaps the crowd did not love her, maybe the hatred of all things royal was too powerful for that, but it did not change the connection between the princess and the people. Her arousal was evident, and when Kazriel repeated the motion across her sex, not a man or woman missed the way her nipples rose under the sheer fabric of the gown, which now made the display almost more obscene than it would have been if she had been entirely naked.
“I don’t deserve this,” Aya moaned.
“You deserve this and much more.” Kazrie
l grasped the fabric of her skirt and tore it away from her in one rough motion, baring her sex to the world.
The crown princess of Kazriel, exposed in such a manner, had never been seen before in all the history of the world, but what could anybody do? Even if there were supporters among the angry crowd, the authority that held her there could not be contravened and there were many who believed she deserved this.
His fingers returned to the virginal flesh, stroking and teasing, pinching the soft wet bud of her clitoris so she bucked and writhed, her gasps carrying across the marketplace.
Flushed with intense shame, Aya knew she would never be the same after this. Kazriel was not merely punishing her, he was defiling not only her body, but the crown itself. Not one of the spectators who saw her now would ever respect her the way they had done before. This story would spread all over the land, and instead of drawings of her pretty face, it would be lewd sketches of her sex that spread from hand to hand in the taverns, stimulating men to spill their seed on the ink and paper as if it were the princess’ own flesh.
“You belong to the people,” Kazriel declared. “All of you. Your mind. Your body.”
For a frightening moment, she thought he might bind her to the pole and let the crowd have their way with her. It was certainly only his divine protection that stopped her from being taken there and then by a dozen cocks. She could see them in the hands of many of the men who crowded about her. The women had been pressed to the back, and only men were now allowed at the front, the strongest and most brutal of them stroking their angry thick rods at the sight of her.
“Kazriel... please...” She looked at the guardian with wide eyes. Why was she still so wet? Why was her body responding with this traitorous wetness that made his fingers slide back and forth along her sex with such ease?
“Please, what, Princess? Leave you to what justice you deserve? Your artificial innocence has no place here. That tender little hymen of yours deserves to be torn from you.” He pushed the tip of his finger inside her to emphasize the point, her outer lips gripping the end of his digit in the most lewd way possible.
