The tip of a sword grazed her elbow. Leyla wished for Grinja to parry every blade aimed to kill her, yet a sudden scream of pain from Fayeth told her she’d made the wrong wish. She should have protected her lover, not herself.
Enraged, Leyla wished to remove every nearby soldier who intended to harm Fayeth from the world. She wished it with such intensity that when the wind calmed itself, and she discovered the elf leaned against her legs, they stood alone.
Neither the captain nor the soldiers were anywhere to be seen. The only proof she had for the brief battle was the blood Nathaniel had bled onto the road.
Leyla threw Grinja into the woods, so she wouldn’t have to touch the demonic blade a second longer. No mortal should have an item of such immense power in their possession. The dagger would corrupt anyone.
Furore appeared in Grinja’s trajectory, caught the sword which transformed into its original dagger shape, and bared her fangs at Leyla. She didn’t look like an elf or a soldier now. She looked like a winged demon.
“Brutal. The gods aren’t going to be pleased with little me now. Oof, no, they aren’t.“ Furore grinned the happiest of grins.
Leyla didn’t care if the gods burnt Furore out of existence. She fell to her knees and hugged Fayeth with all her might.
“I love you. I love you for who you inspire me to be. Please, please, don’t tell me you were wounded because of my cowardice.”
Mercy
“You want me to lie then?” Fayeth snorted and tried to hide her smile, but even through the pain in her leg, she couldn’t. Leyla was alive and well.
The girl may have deceived her, but she’d saved Fayeth from getting captured after she’d gotten a little too drunk again. She swore she’d never touch the pixie cider, unless there was a party or special occasion. The brew dulled her senses.
“Where did they cut you?” Leyla tore the lower half of her shirt off. “I need to put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.”
“My leg.” Fayeth ran her hand across Leyla’s stomach and grinned. “You’re very attractive when you wear torn shirts, Leyla. You ought to do it often, every day.”
Leyla pulled the emerald dress away from her legs to uncover the wound, and Fayeth giggled. Sadly, Leyla didn’t seem to care about anything else than bandaging her right leg when she’d found the wound. She wasn’t even gentle, despite how Fayeth ran her fingers along her cheek to tease the girl.
The succubus interrupted their private moment by landing next to them. Fayeth would have cursed Furore out for misleading Leyla, and stealing her away, but she remembered how she owed the spirit an apology. Or, well, she owed the new goddess of love an apology if she wanted to see Syvis and Leyla content.
And she did. She’d already lived a full life by many standards, but there were two women who would lose out on one of life’s greatest offerings if she didn’t beg Furore to forgive her. A degrading and demeaning task, set before her, but at least she could start with a smaller step.
Fayeth lifted Leyla’s chin and distracted from her leg with a peck on the lips. “I’m sorry I drove you away. Rather than treat you like a prisoner, I could’ve treated you like a guest in my home. We could have shared my bed.”
Leyla straightened the bandage, applied enough force to it to make Fayeth groan, and tried to look down to check she was doing it right. But Fayeth fixed her green eyes with her own and held her gaze.
“Would you like to give life in my village a shot, or would you prefer to travel the world?” Fayeth asked and blushed at the idea of adventuring together with Leyla. They would discover plenty of hidden places to defile as a couple. “I haven’t been anyone’s queen in centuries. As long as I can hide my ears, I think I’d dare to go anywhere with you by my side.”
“Why choose?” Leyla smiled and kissed her. “We could do both. We’ve got time.”
“I’ll try to grant you more,” she said as she broke the kiss to face Furore. The succubus stood behind an easel with a brush in hand and observed them.
“Oh…? You haven’t forgotten me?” Furore pursed her lips. “Guess this painting goes to the scrap pile then.”
Fayeth crawled away from Leyla, who didn’t allow her to get far before adjusting the bandage, and bowed to Furore. She bowed so deep that her forehead touched the road. She hadn’t begged anyone for anything, for as long as she could remember, yet here she was.
If she didn’t convince Furore to extend Leyla’s lifespan, their time together would be too short. It may be a whole lifetime for Leyla, but it would be insufferable for Fayeth. She’d lost thousands already. She didn’t need to lose another.
“Furore, goddess of love, I beg you…” Fayeth hated groveling for the spirit, and the fact that she could hear Furore’s brush move against the canvas on the easel didn’t make the situation any more palatable. “I beg you to forgive me. Not for my sake, but for my daughter’s and my partner’s sake. It’s unfair for them to get dragged into our quarrel. When I made you swear to leave Syvis alone, I did not fully understand the extent of your awesome power. I—“
“Oof, I like that. Awesome power,” Furore said. “Indeed, I do have awesome power. Far beyond your understanding, mortal. But don’t let me interrupt you, go on.”
Fayeth’s eye twitched, but she continued because Leyla was there to support her. The girl stroked her back. She may not know why it was necessary for Fayeth to degrade herself to the spirit, but she didn’t interject or make it harder than it had to be.
“I would appreciate if you could grant us a way with which to extend a mortal’s life, and find it in your heart to show me mercy. I do want my daughter to enjoy true love in her life,” Fayeth said. “I would love to have it in my own as well.”
Furore snapped her fingers, so the easel vanished, and approached Fayeth with heavy steps.
“Look at me,” Furore said and extended a small sack towards her. Fayeth stretched her hand out to accept the gift, yet Furore snatched it away. “I need you two to make a promise to me, first.”
“Both of us?” Fayeth asked. She would prefer to keep Leyla out of further dealings with this goddess.
“Anything to help Fayeth,” Leyla said, like a fool. A sweet, loyal fool.
“I require worshippers. Millions of them. In exchange, I’ll restore elves to their former glory.” Furore grinned the most sinister grin Fayeth had seen on a face. It didn’t allow room for doubt about how Furore was a succubus through and through. “Promise me to go south, rebuild the city the volcano destroyed, and construct a grand temple for me. If you do that, and plant these seeds in the soil there, Leyla will live as long as you, Fayeth. Not a second longer. Syvis will find true love with Nimue.”
Fayeth held her hand out, Leyla raised hers alongside it.
“I promise,” they said in unison.
“Tell everyone.” Furore dropped the bag of seeds into their open palms. “That love has a new ruler.”
The goddess of love vanished and left Fayeth and Leyla with a spare moment of privacy.
An Empire for Two
The clouds on the blue sky made Leyla think of dragons as she laid on her back in volcanic soil, and whether she would ever encounter one of the giant beasts in real life, or if they only existed in dreams.
She’d seen more of the world than she’d expected she would when she’d picked Fayeth. She’d also enjoyed greater freedom. She’d even been entrusted with considerable responsibilities when it came to the reconstruction of Lho Allanar. The city and its workers always needed someone to oversee it.
“Slacking on her sixtieth birthday,” Fayeth said and shook her head as she came walking up the hill. The elf hadn’t aged a day. She was as beautiful as when Leyla had been in her twenties, but here on the coast she wore a lighter pink dress fit for the warmer climate. “You’re no human. You don’t get to retire for another century or five.”
“If I’m no human, what am I?” Leyla touched the tips of her own ears. Furore’s strange apples hadn’t made them
grow pointy.
“An honorary elf, silly.” Fayeth sat down by her side and offered Leyla another of the black, round fruits. In the beginning, when Fayeth hadn’t put enough faith in Furore to believe that Leyla would live as long as her, she had forced her to eat several of the fruits in a single day. Leyla’s diet had almost solely consisted of the black apples then.
“You sure she meant for me to eat them?” Leyla asked, sat up, and pulled Fayeth close to her body by wrapping an arm around her waist. “I think she only said we needed to plant the seeds.”
“I know you hate their taste, but eat it for me.” Fayeth pushed the apple into her hand, Leyla refused to grab it.
“Is this what the city used to look like?” Leyla asked and looked down at the construction happening around them in the volcanic soil.
On the horizon, on seaside cliffs, she could see the imposing architecture of the palace they were trying to restore to its former glory. But the elves and their hired workers were building roads, farms, and houses everywhere between the hill and the palace too. She and Fayeth had set in motion an ambitious project that would take decades to complete.
“Lho Allanar was large, even in my day, but if they finish everything we have planned, it will be twice or three times the size of the old city.” Fayeth took a bite out of the black fruit. “How about I feed you, since it’s your birthday?”
“What did you have in mind?”
Fayeth stuck her tongue out. She hadn’t swallowed any of the fruit. She’d left the pieces.
“I’m into it.” Leyla giggled, kissed her partner, and ate the salty pieces of fruit which extended her lifespan.
Fayeth tried to take another bite of the apple, but Leyla wouldn’t have it. She wrestled the elf to the ground, hugged, caressed, and worshipped her with lavish kisses.
If Leyla and Fayeth hadn’t been too preoccupied with each other, they might have seen transparent stone pillars rising on the hill around them and reaching for the sky. Someone had plans to construct a new temple on that very hill, but they hadn’t finished the design yet. One day, they would.
Welcome to the New Age
“Two hundred years, and Itrix doesn’t redesign his Scarlet Kingdom. No new decorations, nothing,” Furore said as she materialized in the vicinity of the chambers where they stored baby demons.
She hadn’t visited the demon realm since her most recent banishment, shortly before she’d usurped the goddess of love’s power. Since it hadn’t changed, however, she found her way around without issue.
Nonetheless, the lava which poured down cliffs, the sound of tortured souls which screamed in vain, and the endless links of rusty chains and spider silk everywhere could have been exchanged for something original.
If Ithrix visited Lho Allanar, he would envy her. The city may not last for eternity, like the Scarlet Kingdom, but its citizens did worship her. And these days Lho Allanar had become a sight to behold.
Furore snuck across the treacherous pathways carved out of the cliffs, with Grinja in hand, and approached the entrance to the baby chambers. Luckily, it seemed the demons saw no reason to guard their young. She slipped under the entrance’s archway without slowing down.
Yellow, organic growths in the shape of spheres sat on the blackened walls. She didn’t pay them much heed, and walked deeper inside, before she saw baby demons floating inside a couple of the growths. It must be how her kind grew their young.
Furore had never taken an interest in babies in the past. She hadn’t needed one, and she hadn’t had any herself either. They brought unnecessary trouble.
This time was different though. She meant to create life. The mortals who ruled the world had proved difficult to persuade and control. If she could find someone young, someone malleable, she could guide that individual in the right direction.
Perhaps she started too young if she picked a baby, but time was on her side. She may as well be immortal.
And she couldn’t deny that she had a certain curiosity to scratch too. Could she create a mortal in image of herself? If that mortal had children of their own, would Furore have a new species that obeyed her every whim?
“Intruders? Why would there be intruders in my corridors?” Someone muttered to themselves around a corner as Furore arrived at an intersection.
If Ithrix captured her in his realm, he might imprison or kill her. To complete her mission, Furore stuck her arms into the nearest yellowish growth, grabbed the first baby she got her hands on, and pulled it out of the viscous sphere.
Goo clung to her skin as she fled with the young and leapt from the Scarlet Kingdom to the southern border of the Freow Woods. Night had fallen when she arrived in the world of the mortals. Lho Allanar lay quiet.
Furore turned the demon with lavender skin around in her arms until its triangular face was the right-side up. She was almost certain that the baby was female, yet doubted it would become another succubus. She couldn’t put her finger on why she thought so, but the baby had a somewhat odd aura.
It didn’t have wings either, upon closer inspection, and its tiny horns twisted forwards, while two short tails grew out of its lower back. It seemed very odd indeed.
The baby blinked, opened its eyes, and stared up at Furore with crystalline cyan eyeballs. It didn’t have pupils like a human, or fires burning in its blood-red eyes like Furore. Its gaze inspected her with an intimidating intelligence, as if it could read minds and found her soul lacking. She suspected then that she should drop the baby on the ground.
“I’ll call you Hope,” Furore said and ignored her own misgivings. “As in, I hope you don’t destroy my plans. You little shit.”
She booped the baby’s nose. The baby did not coo, cry, or laugh at the treatment like a human baby might have. It turned its head to observe the lights of Lho Allanar and wept.
To be continued…
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