by Loki Renard
The crowd’s cries grew louder, but they were baying with glee, not horror. Not a single one of them came forward to help her. They were as prepared to cheer on the tyrant king as they were to cheer on the rebel who tried to free them from his grip.
This was nothing but entertainment, and she had become the grand spectacle. Stories of this would spread faster and wider than any of the stories of rebellion. Her rebellion was over. She knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt, even before Archon’s rough fingers found her clit and started to strum between her thighs, making her quake and shudder with the pleasure she wanted to hide.
Chapter 15
Human villages ran on human rules. Public fuck punishment was not a human custom, but it was Archon’s. He had tried to handle Iris privately, attempted to show her the error of his ways, but this little human brat did not learn easily. She had many chances to go to ground, to repent, to do anything besides continue this rebellion.
Archon was rather glad she had. He liked the way her ass looked covered in the hot red marks of his palm. Her skin was very pretty, and the way she squirmed and moaned was even prettier. Now her sleek hair was pressed up under his chin as he held her aloft and fucked her for the benefit of all present. As usual, her pussy was soaked, not only easily accepting his cock, but squeezing it every time he sank it deep inside her, miking him for all she was worth.
“You have been such a bad girl,” he growled on the upstroke before plunging her back down to the base of his cock. He loved the way her tight cunt felt gripping his cock with desperate need.
The baying of the human crowd excited him more than he realized it would. Archon had never cared much about humans. They were far from a dominant species, usually limited living on remote colonies, dominated by more powerful species. Sometimes they knew it, more often they didn’t. They had a tendency to keep their eyes on each other and forget about the possibility anything existed outside their own little worlds.
Right now, Archon liked humans very much. They made for an excellent audience. Their cheering and clapping was heightening his enjoyment as he let her down onto her tip-toes, pulled Iris’ hair, and arched her back, slapping his hips against her ass as he plunged inside her pussy.
This was hot as hell. Perhaps the most enjoyable sex he had ever had. This was probably what the dancing ceremony was supposed to be about, but he would never have enjoyed fucking a dancer the way he loved dominating this human rebel, crushing the will out of her sexy little body.
She kept wriggling, her hips grinding, her body taut with erotic tension. He could see the marks of his fingers bright and red against her flesh, curling over the top of her ass.
Archon could hold back no longer. His hunger for her was so intense that the notion of restraining his orgasm was unthinkable. Her hot, wet, messy little hole plunged forward and back over his huge shaft, pushing him over the edge.
Archon came inside her, his seed flooding her sex so fully it dripped down her thighs and onto the podium between her curled toes. The sight caused another swelling roar from the crowd, but the real triumph was Iris’ orgasm. Her shuddering, squealing climax was audible even over the cheering of the crowd, her whimpers blending with those same sounds.
They could hear her, but only Archon could feel the exquisite grip of her pussy lips wrapped around his cock, the inner walls of her sex pulsing with animal need, milking his seed deep inside her.
He pulled her from his cock and held her aloft, his hands on her thighs, spreading them wide, letting his seed drip from her sodden slit. It was a filthy, dirty, messy sight, and it brought the crowd to a climax of their own.
“Storm the stage! Take the alien! Down with the king!”
“Excuse me?”
The crowd turned, apparently without any kind of prompting. A new mood had simply swung through it, perhaps because the climax was over and they were instantly bored, or perhaps because it had finally occurred to them to feel guilty about cheering on the defilement of their messianic heroine. Everything was different after orgasm. Apparently that went for angry mobs too.
Iris pulled away from him in the chaos as Archon was left batting humans left and right, knocking them around and away like straw men. He saw her disappear between two men, slipping through all of them like a slippery freshly-fucked eel.
Chapter 16
Iris ran through the crowd, pulling her tunic down over her bare ass as best she could. She had to steal some clothing off a villager’s washing line and don it as quickly as possible, hiding her shame as well as her ass.
For a second time, Archon had taken her, and this time there was no keeping it secret. Everybody knew what had happened. Several had made sketches as it was happening. She knew that because she had paid them to make the drawings.
The story of Iris’ defilement would travel at the speed of gossip. She was sure everybody in the greater area already knew. Where she had once travelled in triumph, now shame dogged her every step.
“Bloody fucking Archon,” she growled under her breath as she marched along a small country road. “I should have stabbed him again.”
“Iris of the Burning Village?”
A soldier at the side of the road barked her name. There was no point denying it. At one time, nobody would have known her from a blade of grass. Now everybody knew who she was.
“Yeah?”
“You’re under arrest.”
“For what? For why? For what though?”
“Come with me, please,” he said, pulling out a pair of manacles and heading for her. Iris considered running, but the soldier had one of those powerful killing tools which worked at a distance and she was fairly certain he would use it.
“What am I getting charged with?”
“Incitement to rebellion.”
“Oh. Well. Okay. Fair enough.”
Why not finish a day of supreme humiliation with another round of captivity. Iris knew she had been testing fate all this time, and that in the end she would be destroyed the same way her family was. Some small, dark part of her wished the king would have just ended her when he was done fucking her. What was left for a woman with no family and no future?
Irons were clapped around her wrists, cold and harsh. She was marched back toward the village she had just come from. Archon was no longer there, but several soldiers were. She was put into the back of a barred wagon and driven along many long and dusty roads, day and night until the palace came into view, a beautifully spired building set atop a hillock surrounded by farmland. Once upon a time, she might have found the sight inspiring. Now it seemed to her to be another symptom of the king’s corruption.
There were stories about what happened to women who went to the palace. None of them were pleasant. Most palaces sat above townships, or in cities, because they were places where people were protected by royalty. Not here, though. No villages were permitted for hundreds of miles around to preserve the view.
The wagon rattled up the hill toward the palace, and finally in under a portcullis and down a ramp into the bowels of the earth. It was then that she realized the hill which looked so pretty from the outside actually contained a good bit of dungeon and human suffering.
She steeled herself to meet Archon once again. Of course in the end he had given up and simply had her arrested by guards. He’d gotten tired of having to actually track her down. No doubt these stoic looking mugs would soon be witness to another carnal display with her as the focal point. Iris tried to tell herself she didn’t like the idea of that.
He’d fucked her life up, and he’d fucked her right in the head. She was still dripping from their last tryst, a public humiliation which she might have gone out of her way to earn, might even have made certain was publicized, may even have told some people to keep an eye out for a nine foot tall cape stooping around pretending to be shorter and told them to tell him where she was.
She might have, in fact, gone from loathing him with all she was, to finding the vicious passion of their lovemaking the
most stimulating and invigorating experience of her life. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him hell for having her arrested like a common criminal. They both knew there was nothing common about her.
The wagon stopped inside the dungeon entrance, and the metal portcullis rattled as it was cranked back down into place, landing with a heavy clang. The guards climbed down from the wagon and moved around to let her out with lumbering, disinterested gaits.
“Git down,” one of them said, reaching for her with his big brutal hand. She slapped it away and jumped down out of the prison cart by herself.
“So, where is he?”
“Where’s who?" The guard had poor diction, and an even worse personal smell.
“I assume the young lady is referring to me,” a voice she did not recognize purred.
A tall figure came to meet her. He walked with smug swagger and tossed an ermine cape over his shoulder. But he was not blue eyed, and he did not have a single scale that she could see.
“You’re not Archon.”
“No. I am General Naxus. I rule this planet.”
“I thought King Archon ruled it.”
The mention of King Archon made the male lift his lip in a sneer of utter disdain.
“Occasionally. When he can be bothered. I am the one who has to deal with the fallout of his attempts at command. Hence, your presence here. You are to be incarcerated for the rest of your life. That’s the bad news.”
“And the good news?”
“The good news is that won’t be very long.”
She stared at him silently.
“Because I intend to have you executed,” Naxus offered by way of explanation.
“Yes, I got that,” Iris replied. Truly, her life was one long stream of bastards, one after the other.
“I apologize for the tardiness in stopping your rebellious rampage. We would have caught you sooner if the king hadn’t kept interfering.”
Chapter 17
Three times they had mated. Three times she had run away from him.
Archon was a good light year away from the planet when his heart began to ache.
At first he thought it was something he had eaten, but the longer it went on, the more he started to think that there was something seriously wrong with him. It was a feeling which did not quite feel like a physical feeling, and yet somehow it was also entirely physical.
He tried eating and drinking, but neither of those acts made him feel better. Indeed, his appetite was gone almost completely. He was uninterested in food, even the most delicately seasoned meats and finest cuts held little appeal.
Brimsley suggested that he might find solace in the bosom of one of the concubines, but Archon had never been particularly interested in the concubines in the first place, and now they almost repelled him. The thought of touching one of them, of being inside one of their lithe, nubile, willing bodies produced in him an even greater ache of something like loss.
He had the feeling that it would be better if he had the human, Iris, in his custody. It was gut instinct which informed that idea, which he did not understand. There was no need to have the female. They were heading away from her meaningless little planet at a speed greater than any she could imagine. She was a small, weak creature who had surrendered twice. That alone should have been enough to sate his interest. He had never fucked the same holes twice in his life.
Archon was not entirely sure why he had left. Maybe it was because his ship had to be called to pull him from the planet’s surface before he slaughtered a village after the crowd turned on him. Maybe it was because Iris fleeing again felt like a rejection.
It didn’t make sense to expect her to like him. He had brutally ravaged her, of course. He had punished her with sex. He had dominated her and tried to break her will.
But now he missed her.
There was only one thing for it. Archon went to the helmsman and issued an order.
“Turn the ship around.”
“Sire?” Smithers intervened upon hearing the order.
“We’re going back. I forgot something on the planet.”
“I’m sure General Naxus could retrieve it for you.”
“I am sure he could. But not a word of this to Naxus. I don’t want him to know that we are coming.”
“Oh, very good, sire,” Smithers said, barely raising a brow. This was acceptable behavior for a king. Trying to catch one’s subordinates off guard was half the fun of being royalty. Most of them were guilty in one way or another.
They arrived back around a week after they had departed, a round trip which was objectively, and perhaps even subjectively, a complete waste of time.
General Naxus met them at the palace landing pad, his armor shining aggressively into Archon’s eyes as he disembarked. As Archon ordered, they had not given warning of their return. Archon thought it best to not to. He did not quite trust Naxus, their sparring match aside, the general clearly had little respect for the crown. In fact, he increasingly seemed to regard the planet as his own little kingdom, an idea Archon intended to disabuse him of.
“Your highness,” Naxus said, bowing low. When he stood up, his teeth were bared in the sort of way teeth tend to get bared when one is trying to smile but is instead grimacing. “To what do we owe the repeated honor?”
“I forgot something.”
“Oh? What, pray tell can we do to get you safely on your honored way?”
Archon was certain that he was not imagining the very cool reception he was receiving. It stood out, because most had the sense to at least pretend to be glad to see him, but Naxus had been a renegade from the outset. What had once held some charm, now merely served to irritate the king.
“I would like the human. The girl. Iris. She comes with me. I should have taken her before I left.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Archon did not like to hear the word no, and as far as he was concerned I’m afraid that won’t be possible was just the word no all spread out.
“Make it possible,” he growled.
“She has been imprisoned for crimes against the king and the state. After your departure, she became ever more aggressive in her attempts to stir up rebellions. She was arrested a week ago along with fifteen other members of her group of rabble. She was sentenced to death along with the rest of them.”
“You don’t touch what’s mine,” Archon growled, his expression thoroughly fearsome. “You certainly do not attempt to destroy it.”
“You had left, my liege, and you said you had no interest in returning. She didn’t particularly seem to be yours. She didn’t seem to be anyone’s, for that matter.”
“That did not give you the right to take my human.”
“Your human? The one you used and abandoned? The one who found herself begging for the mercy of strangers who would not give it? I took her, and I killed her because killing her was the only merciful thing to do.”
And that was when Archon slew him.
It was not a considered act, nor a particularly dramatic one. The king simply took his weapon and fired it twice in quick succession, sending two bolts of hypercharged electric probes into the flesh of Naxus.
The general was dead before he knew what had happened to him, experiencing first an overloading of his neurons and then complete combustion of his physical form. In an instant, what had once been a general was now nothing more than a pile of faintly steaming ashes.
Archon looked around the war room, very much depressed by the action he had been forced to take, and the reason for it. The human was dead and gone, and now he was forced to face a kind of loss and loneliness he had not imagined himself capable of experiencing.
“You’ve killed the general, haven’t you.” Brimsley did not sound upset, simply a little tired and resigned. He had been out in the hall, inspecting the tapestries and trying not to overtly overhear anything.
“He needed killing. He killed my woman.”
“I was not aware you h
ad a woman, sire?”
“Her name is Iris, and he killed her.”
“Ah the human you were rutting with,” Brimsley said. “The other servants have informed me that there are humans imprisoned in the dungeon. Perhaps we should free them as an act of goodwill.”
Archon waved an uninterested hand. “Fine.”
“Sire, I know you are disappointed at the loss of your favorite, but there are many thousands more humans who could no doubt fulfil your desire for a disrespectful mate who dislikes you.”
“Brimsley…” Archon snarled the name with all the meaningless threat he could muster.
“Archon, you owe the girl a debt of kindness. Show mercy to those in the dungeons and perhaps you will find yourself rewarded.”
Archon very much doubted that. Being king was far less rewarding than he had imagined. He was ready to take the blasted crown and throw it into a spatial anomaly.
Chapter 18
“Did you hear?” Thalia was back from being tortured with news. She was a brawny young woman who never seemed to mind being pulled from the cell and taken off to be hurt for the amusement of those who incarcerated her. Iris admired her fortitude, and wondered how she might become as strong herself. Since her capture, she had felt spectacularly weak. Discarded by a king, captured by a rogue general, used and degraded and finally imprisoned, she was not sure that life could get any worse - or any better, for that matter. It seemed to her that existence had become something of a slow and tedious torture whether it took place in the dungeons or not.
In Naxus’ dungeons, every prisoner was tortured for several hours a week. Sometimes the torture was so terrible they would not survive it, other times it was simply menial labor. It all depended on the torturer and his mood.
Iris had been down in the depths of the royal palace dungeons for an indeterminate period of time. There were no day or night cycles down here, there was only the volume and duration of screaming, moaning, and general misery from her fellow prisoners.