by Tristan Vick
Never in a million years did he imagine that he would be in this position. Standing before the Nyctan’s holy religious leader, the Administratrix, Anaïs Nin, ready to strip down to nothing and engage in a ceremonial task of coitus clavis aurea.
The literal translation of “the golden key through sex” made little sense, but the implied meaning of unlocking the secret of the Gilded Master through a ceremonial fornication, was what the ritual was all about. It was also referred to as the ritual of the Chosen One.
For the sacred text read, “The High Priestess and the Lord of the Enemy realm shall, together, produce an offspring that, being not of one land or the other, shall inherit both lands and usher in a thousand years’ peace. But, should the child’s blood be spilled in the blood sacrifice to He who creates and destroys, the all-powerful H’aaztre, then this blood sacrifice will end in three signs–the final sign being the sign of the Yellow King, and every plague and calamity known throughout the lands will descend on both houses and bring forth the second coming of H’aaztre.”
Anaïs Nin glided up to Dakroth and he held out his hand. She took it in hers and curtseyed, as was the custom when engaging in the ceremony of the Gilded Master.
“If you are right, the child made of our union will either be a vessel for our Lord or, if the High Priestess deems it, be sacrificed and herald the coming of calamity, by bringing the Lord of Life and Destruction’s wrath upon us. In so doing, set the gears in motion to vanquish all those who oppose the Gilded Master, including the infernal Outer Gods who recklessly play with time and space against H’aaztre’s wishes. It is only H’aaztre who can bring stillness to time’s infinite march and rebuild the universe in his hallowed image.”
“If you will have my seed,” Dakroth said, quoting the lines of the Enchiridion by heart, “We shall bring forth the hybrid child as foretold in the Book of Eternal Light and the Gospel of Aldebaran, whose blood sacrifice will set in motion the final revelation of the prophet Haruk Ereshva, and bring about the return of our lord, the King in Yellow, Lord H’aaztre.”
Anaïs Nin bowed her chin, affirming Dakroth’s words with a slow nod. When she looked back up, their eyes locked, and without surrendering her gaze, her hands gracefully peeled off the layers of her ceremonial kimono, shedding each piece until she stood before the Emperor with her bare-naked flesh exposed.
He studied her porcelain white skin which practically lit up in the glow of candlelight. Her orchid pink nipples stood erect on her white breasts and her vagina, which was stapled shut with brass rings, glinted in the flickering light.
Dakroth shed his robes, too, and revealed his double pronged penis standing erect on his naked blue body. Taking the porcelain-skinned woman in his arms, he ran his hands down Anaïs Nin’s shoulder’s and then her bare breasts, as he admired the contours of her womanly form. Finally, he knelt down on both knees and kissed her taut abdomen, working his way lower and lower until his Prussian lips came to the first brass ring.
Her white flesh bristled with goosebumps and her ass tightened with both nervousness and excitement as the Lord Emperor’s wet, hot kisses quickly cooled on her flesh in the open air of the ceremonial chamber.
The fulfillment of a most ancient prophesy–the coupling of the Nyctan Empress and Dagon Emperor–and the half-breed offspring which was foretold in the pages of the Enchiridion was all coming to a head right here, in this very room. Both her people and his would write hymns to commemorate this day. The day they put aside their petty differences and came together to fulfill the prophecy.
Brushing the series of brass rings with his finger, Dakroth enticed a sultry moan from Anaïs Nin’s champagne colored lips. As he continued to tease and titillate her, she reached down and ran her long fingers through his silver hair.
In the Nyctan culture, sex was forbidden except for reproduction and ceremonial purposes. This qualified as the latter. But the amount of self-control required for the administratrix to remain true to her position, meant that even the slightest touch would trigger an orgasm. And no matter how hard she wanted to resist, she knew she had to give in to the ritual. If she didn’t give herself fully over to the act, it was her fear that the prophesy would not be fulfilled as promised.
The Lord Emperor’s left finger lit up bright red, then hot pink, but instead of using it as a laser weapon, he used it as cutter to slice through the rings, taking extra precaution not to singe the administratrix in the process.
One by one the rings fell away and the chastity belt that was sewn into her flesh from the time she was a child fell off and rattled on the floor.
After the last ring had been removed. Dakroth rose back up and scooped the administratrix up in his arms and moved her over to the bed. Laying her down, he slowly climbed on top and then began kissing her neck.
She closed her eyes and moaned, her hips thrusting upward into his with carnal anticipation. It was the first touch she’d received from a man in her entire life, and the raw feeling of pure lust surged through her and drove her into a fit of ecstasy. She reached down and helped guide him to his intended destination. As he penetrated the curtains of her sacred temple, she gasped out with libidinous delight.
Pleasure and pain flooded every square centimeter of her body and she chirped with sexual gratification as Dakroth revealed to her the true reason why he was considered the most virile man of the Dagon people.
Three hours later, they fell back onto the bed panting, both drenched in the residue of their sex laden encounter. Filled to the brim with the ecstasy of the illicit act they’d just performed, Anaïs Nin started laughing. It was overwhelming. Although Dakroth was a veteran when it came to sex, this was her first time. Because the sacred law was clear. As High Priestess, she was forbidden to have sex unless it was in the service of H’aaztre. As such, her loins trembled from the flurry of small orgasms that cascaded down her body, from the back of her skull to the very tip of her toes.
A strange noise rang out and Dakroth startled. When he opened his eyes, he found all seven Carcosan Virgins standing around their bed, hands raised in the air as though they were giving praise to their deity. They had shed their ceremonial robes and were all naked, apart for the gold paint they wore and the red markings on their bald heads that gave them an almost aboriginal quality. With their hands held up high, they stood in a circle, chanting the sacred hymns of H’aaztre.
Surprisingly, their womanly voices dropped several octaves, taking on the baser tones of the male vocal range, making their chants seem otherworldly as a consequence. Without warning, Anaïs Nin jolted and screamed out in labor pains.
Her primal grunts and groans seemed to entice a greater magic from within the Carcosan Virgins and, as they continued to chant, their hands and eyes lit up with golden white light. The more the administratrix suffered, the greater the energy grew, until, finally, the entire room was basking in the radiance of their strange magic.
Light streaming out of them like a ruptured plasma conduit, their chanting became even deeper and more alien. Dakroth tensed with nervousness at the unfamiliarity of the ritual, but sat watching, in astonishment, as Anaïs Nin’s belly began to swell with the life he had impregnated her with.
As the chanting continued, they spoke in the ancient tongue of the Oracle, and Anaïs Nin’s abdomen grew plump and round with child. The fetus’s growth, accelerated by the séance of magic, quickly grew to maturity in its mother’s womb. Before Dakroth knew it, Anaïs Nin looked as though she’d burst at the seams. Her screams, along with her agony, only intensified as the child came to term.
In span of ten minutes, Anaïs Nin was ready to give birth. She screamed out with labor pains and the tight wrenching cramps of relentless contractions that made her delirious with fear and laughter. It seemed she was going to lose her mind if the pain continued, but all Dakroth could do was sit off to the side and watch in astonishment as life grew inside Anaïs Nin’s body.
Finally, a midwife, dressed in the same red robes that the Carc
osan Virgins wore but with the addition of a golden sash around her waist, approached the end of the bed and began to attend Anaïs Nin.
The stout woman with sturdy arms helped the administratrix to the edge of the bed and assisted by taking hold of her knees and spreading her legs as the baby’s head crowned.
“Push, now!” the midwife shouted above the din of Anaïs Nin’s grunting and screaming. “Push,” she growled with a kind of urgency suggesting that if they didn’t get the baby out soon the mother’s abdomen would literally burst.
Dakroth slowly rose to his knees. He watched in jaw-dropping bewilderment as he bore witness to the strange mysticism happening before him. He’d never seen anything like it. And the light of the séance kept every gory detail in plain sight. Stranger still, the virgins’ naked bodies started swaying as they looked up at the ceiling, towards the heavens, their voices continuing the chants.
Blood gushed from Anaïs Nin and she grunted and groaned, fighting to push out the child. The midwife pushed her hand deep into Anaïs Nin’s vaginal canal and cupped the baby’s head, giving it a firm tug. The baby slid out into her arms along with a flood of blood-laced amniotic fluid.
The virgins all screamed out simultaneously in orgiastic delight and Dakroth startled. Looking at them, he noticed blood streaming from between their legs, running down the insides of their thighs, painting their porcelain legs in a glossy crimson of forking menstrual rivers.
The midwife slapped the infant’s back and brought air into its lungs. The small thing, silent a moment earlier, began to shriek with the pangs of being torn from its warm, dark home and brought into the coldness of an indifferent and hostile world. Holding the wailing infant in her arms, the midwife turned to Emperor Dakroth and held the child out to him. “It’s a boy,” she intoned with awe at the glory she beheld.
Dakroth received the child and, cradling it in his arms, couldn’t help but feel amazed at the sight of his progeny. And, for one split nano-second, he regretted what he had to do next.
One of the Carcosan Virgins approached him and, taking his hand in hers, she gently placed a ceremonial dagger in his palm. His eyes widened with terrible revelation as he looked down at the hot white blade and the golden hilt with elaborate etchings which displayed an ancient spell related to the blood sacrifice.
“You know what you must do,” whispered Anaïs Nin in a weary voice. “You must complete the ritual.”
Dakroth gazed down at the infant he cradled in one arm and, in that moment, when father and son’s eyes met, the wretched thing stopped crying. Its large, dark, Nyctan eyes blinked twice and then it smiled.
Dakroth, still numb from the shock of the experience, examined the small bundle in his arms, noting the baby’s flesh was the same color as his when he was born, a soft cornflower blue. In that moment, the baby cooed up at his father and Dakroth felt that infernal pull of compassion well up inside him.
“Could he not be a vessel instead?” Dakroth asked, gazing into the eyes of his newborn.
“If he were to be the vessel, I would know it.” Of course, Anaïs Nin lied. She somehow knew this child would be strong and make the perfect vessel for her Lord, but because he was the offspring of the Lord Emperor, the man she reviled more than anything in the galaxy, she couldn’t bear to force herself to raise his child. Instead, she deemed the infant unworthy. Which, in her estimation, was the right of the High Priestess. “I know it is difficult, but the child is unworthy. You know what you must do, Rhadamanthus.” Anaïs Nin smiled faintly, looking at him with her dark, alien eyes. Eyes that urged him to follow through with it, lest the prophecy remain unfulfilled.
There was no avoiding it. If he betrayed her now, he’d lose everything. He’d lose the peace he’d brokered with the Nyctans, he’d lose his throne to the child, and he’d lose his dignity for having fucked his enemy for nothing–a woman he despised but whom he needed in order to get to the next step in his plan.
Dakroth slowly raised the blade in his right hand, never breaking eye contact with the child for an instant, and readied for a swift strike. He’d make sure it was as painless as possible. After all, it was his son and he didn’t want his own flesh and blood to suffer needlessly.
This ritual–this sacrifice–was necessary; he knew that.
But, for reasons beyond his comprehension, he found himself struggling to go through with it. He’d taken thousands of innocent lives from more than two dozen worlds. He conquered entire civilizations, took their queens as his concubines, and slit the throats of their husband kings before their cowering, weeping eyes. Why should this be any different?
The emperor knew exactly who was to blame for his indecisiveness. His infuriating empress, Jegra. It was her DNA’s strange ability to rewire his own that had made him so weak. This alien ability to feel compassion, which she deemed a strength in her species, was only a hinderance in his. It made him question his actions. It made him second guess himself. Pathetic.
He shook off the emotion and quickly put all thoughts of sparing the child out of his mind. Saving an innocent life was what his darkling wife was good at. This wasn’t the time to grow a conscience. He had bigger plans. Plans that entailed more than just the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy. More importantly, plans that required a greater sacrifice than the mere blood of a half-breed child.
With his mind cleared of all inhibitions, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and brought the knife down. The infant’s cooing went silent and the only sounds to fill the room were Anaïs Nin’s awful moaning and the low murmuring sounds of the Carcosan Virgins’ voices as they hummed the final few bars of their haunting chant.
Once the deed was done, the midwife took the lifeless bundle from Dakroth’s bloody hands and whisked it away to god knows where. At the same time, one of the Carcosan Virgins brought him his robe and slipped it over his shoulders for him. The other six women gathered around Anaïs Nin and placed their hands firmly over various points across her body and transferred the glowing energy back into her.
Anaïs Nin’s eyes shot wide-awake and she gulped in a huge breath. Sitting up with the help of her team of virgins, she sat in the bed, panting.
She made eye contact with Dakroth but didn’t say anything. Instead, she slipped out of bed and put on her robes.
The procession of virgins guided her out of the ceremonial chamber and left Dakroth standing alone.
As he stood there, his mind racing, he felt sticky as the blood of his murdered son dripped from his fingers and dappled the floor with warm, gooey drops of crimson. “The tears of sacrifice lead to a father’s remorse,” Anaïs Nin had said to him as she had explained every detail of the ritual during their long conversation back in the throne room hours earlier. “But you will forget the child. For it is merely the first step in unlocking the mysteries of the Ancient Ones and in bringing back the God of life and destruction, H’aaztre.”
In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but think what have you done, Rhadamanthus? What in God’s name have you done? But his old self swiftly retook control and he growled, “No!” Getting a hold of himself, he added, “What was done is done. There was no other way.” He fought back the urge to let loose a torrent of sobs with every difficult breath and repeated, as if still trying to convince himself of the inevitable nature of the morbid ritual. “It is over. The prophesy has been fulfilled.”
31
Dirt and rust colored blood-stained Danica’s lavender skin. She stood upon the field panting heavily, a droplet of sweat running down her forehead and then dripping off the tip of her nose. Thessalonica’s languorous sun was steadily setting outside the arena. Its shafts of golden light streamed down through the open roof and pillars of the stadium and cut through the dusty haze, spreading out like the folds of an oriental fan.
Exhausted, Danica staggered forward, her legs trembling with fatigue as she fought to remain upright. Her fight wasn’t over yet. One contestant still remained. Across the heaps of slain bodies that littered
the blood-soaked sand stood a beast unlike anything she had ever seen before.
It had four mandibles resembling the legs of a crab, which stretched open to reveal an inner jowl with jagged incisors. Its beady yellow eyes gazed out from behind an intimidating brow that seamlessly rose into a ridged cranium. It sported thick, dreadlocked hair that was more akin to tentacles than actual hair. And it wore the modified shell of a dead beetle-like creature over a fishnet mesh hauberk, obviously the spoils of victory that it had adapted into its warrior outfit.
More intimidating than its menacing appearance, however, was the fact that it stood eleven feet tall, give or take a few centimeters for the thick, metal-toed boots it wore. Its veins wove themselves visibly through every strand of the taut sinews of its dense musculature, and through thick arms and legs like those of a body builder amped up on body-enhancing steroids.
Ishtar sidled up to Danica, tightening the straps on the bracers on her forearms, and looked up to see what it was that Danica was staring so intently at. When she eyed the beast, she groaned in protest. “Graddack. Not one of them.”
“You’re familiar with that thing?”
“It’s a Bakktu Danav,” she said, her tone instantly settling into a cold and controlled voice that Danica knew all too well. The voice of someone for whom killing came naturally. But for the first time since they’d been forced to fight together, it didn’t fill her with dread. Because, against that thing, she would need a killer by her side.
Danica knew that if Ishtar was already psyching herself up to fight the monster, then she meant business. Which meant this thing was dangerous. Really dangerous. If the creature could rile up the most vicious killer this side of the galaxy, then they had a tough fight ahead of them.