by Mark Albany
“I don’t blame him,” Faye said, grinning from ear to ear as she eyed us, and Braire in particular, still brazenly and nakedly sprawled over the rug. “Being in a place like this, I’d want a rough fucking in me as well. Was that it? You wanted to be able to say that you fucked in the Emperor’s quarters?”
“I’m not going to lie,” I said, retrieving my shirt from where Braire had tossed it. “That did factor into my decision.”
“You let me know if you start making decisions like that again,” Braire grinned, biting her bottom lip before deciding to pull her clothes on as well.
“Will do,” I replied with a smirk.
“Well, then, now that we’re all… dressed—” Norel starting to say, taking a moment to watch me pull my shirt back on. “Shall we finish the job of finding a way into the throne room?”
“I have nothing better to do, really,” I mused aloud, rolling my shoulders as my shirt came over them. “I say we get it done.”
“How industrious of you,” Aliana said, coming over and placing a light kiss on my lips and standing on her tip toes to reach my ear for a whisper. “If you feel like exploring more places that you can fuck in, be sure to have me with you as well.”
“I’ll try to bring as many of you as possible,” I replied with a small smile, keeping my voice low, knowing that pretty much everyone in the room could hear me anyway. “The more the merrier.”
17
The night passed quickly. Unlike all the other nights where a battle was anticipated, I didn’t feel the chilling knowledge that I could be dying the next day. Well, I could still feel it, but there was a certain peace that filled me at the same time. It wasn’t something that overwhelmed all my thoughts to the point of permeating my dreams as well.
There was a danger coming my way the next day, and while that was almost a certainty, I also knew that I needed a good night’s sleep to be prepared for it. My sleep wasn’t dreamless, but as my eyes opened, I could feel them already starting to slip from memory.
I had fallen asleep in Faye’s room, with Aliana finding herself snuggled in next to me on the right side and Norel on the left, with Braire coming in behind Norel. It was something of a pile, but a pleasant one.
Faye was already up by the time that I woke up, and in fact, it was her closing the door behind her as she stepped into the room again that woke me up, though it took me a few moments to realize that. She didn’t look like she was trying to be silent, but not overly loud either, which indicated that nothing was happening yet. The sun had only just started to crest the horizon, if the pink sky outside was any kind of indication.
I pulled myself up slowly, gently disengaging myself from Aliana, Norel, and Braire, noting that Lyth had found herself a place to sleep off of the bed on an ottoman that was larger than most of the beds that I’d seen in my younger years.
“Good morning,” Faye said, smiling as she noted me on my feet and getting dressed again.
“Right back at you,” I replied, yawning and stretching slowly. Faye indicated me over to where a bowl of scented water was waiting for me to wash my face in. “Where were you off to?”
“Just making sure that the emperor wasn’t entering the city at first light,” she replied with a small smile. “The news is that he hasn’t passed through the walls, but that could probably change at any second.”
“Agreed,” I said, splashing some of the cool, refreshing water into my face, letting the shock of it wake me up fully. I could hear the others starting to wake up as well.
“Do you think we’ll succeed?” Faye asked, coming in closer to me and keeping her voice low for the first time since she’d entered the room. “How good do you think our chances are?”
I shrugged, trying not to show that the very same question had been on my mind the night before. “The way I see it, we have to succeed. We can’t fight a war against the emperor and Abarat at the same time. This needs to happen if we are to advance in our cause. Failure is not an option. Don’t let it abide in your head. We are going to succeed.”
Faye nodded, though I could tell that my words hadn’t had the desired effect of lifting her spirits. The hint of doubt in her mind had faded, though, replaced with a steely sort of resolve. And that was all that was really needed, I supposed.
Aliana was the first to notice. A sense of urgency suddenly filled her as she passed by the window. After a few seconds, I could hear it too. With the windows open, the sounds of the city outside could be called a low drone that you eventually just didn’t hear anymore, but in this moment, I could hear it starting to swell.
“He’s coming through the gates,” Aliana said softly, turning to the rest of us. “We don’t have much time.”
The rest of us quickly prepared for the fight that we knew was coming. I didn’t have much to prepare, and neither did the rest of us, I realized. Aliana had her daggers to be called when she needed them, as did Braire, who also had her runed stones to call up her beasts when they were needed. Norel had her spells to call on, Faye had her sword that could change into pretty much anything that she needed it to, and Lyth with her all-important sword.
Nothing else really important to bring into the fight. I couldn’t tell if we were overly prepared or not prepared enough, but this was all we were going to have.
We all started moving through the passages without much more by way of conversation between us. Not much to say, I thought with a soft chuckle. All four that I was bonded with had the same thought, and Lyth appeared to as well, as even in the darkness, I could see a small smirk on her lips as we started heading deeper into the palace.
As we stepped out into the hallway, all six of us had a sudden moment that caught us in our tracks as one of the doors into the emperor’s quarters opened, revealing a young girl, a servant that looked like she had been sent to prepare the quarters for someone to take up residence, from the billows and wood that she still had in her arms.
She saw us suddenly, and the logs that were in her arms came clattering to the ground. Lyth was the first to react, jumping forward with lightening speed to quickly clamp her hand over the girl’s mouth to stop her from screaming.
It was effective, as what was going to be as loud and pealing as an alarm bell came off as muffled and barely audible.
“We mean you no harm, girl,” Lyth said softly, making sure that the girl understood that she meant that, but still keeping a hand over her mouth. “If you answer our questions honestly, you’ll be let go without any trouble. Nod if you understand.”
The servant, barely a day above fifteen, nodded quickly, her eyes still wide open as she stared at the six of us like she had just seen a dragon strolling through the halls of the palace.
“Is there anyone else in the Emperor’s quarters?” Lyth asked, keeping her voice calm and collected. It was a good question, one that I didn’t even think was needed. If there was anyone else in the quarters that we were planning on walking through, it meant that we were going to be delayed by having to find another way through. A delay that we really couldn’t afford here.
But the girl shook her head quickly, and while we weren’t going to be taking her at her word, she didn’t seem the type that could lie that convincingly under these circumstances. I let out a soft sight of relief as she looked around, wondering if Lyth was going to keep her word.
“Are you here because the Emperor has entered the city?” Lyth asked. It never hurt to make sure, I mused, and the girl quickly nodded in response.
“We won’t hurt you, I promise,” Lyth said quickly, apparently ending her questioning by placing her forefinger on the girl’s forehead. Her eyes rolled up to the back of her head and she went suddenly limp, dropping down into Lyth’s waiting arms as the elf pulled her in and gently laid her down on the ground.
“She’ll sleep for a few hours,” Lyth explained in a hushed voice as we started moving through the hallway toward the quarters, which were, as the girl stated, empty as we moved through them quickly, easily finding
the door to the hallway hidden behind one of the old emperor statues, requiring little more than a push to get through. I supposed that the design had been with escape in mind, meant to be quick and easy but hard to find if you weren’t looking for it specifically, and we were quickly on our way to the throne room.
The place still took my breath away, even as it was the second time that I’d seen it. I assumed that some sort of magic had been used to build it, as the sheer scope of the place spoke of years and years of work from hundreds of skilled workers to put it all together. It was large enough to host a full army inside, or at least a couple hundred men. The scope of it felt altered somehow as it stretched on.
For the plan to work, we needed to be a good deal closer to the entrance than at the throne itself, and we found ourselves starting to move through the hall, watching the door. We had made good time, but there was no point in not being vigilant at the moment. I honestly couldn’t believe how empty this place was, but I assume that it had been prepared days in advance and left empty so that there was no feeling of usurping his birthright as the Emperor entered the room himself. The place was isolated against invasion of all sorts, physical and magical, meaning that once the doors were sealed, they could only be unsealed from the inside again unless someone wanted to tear the room down. It would be providing us with some much-needed privacy for what was to come.
Once we were in position, Lyth dropped down to the ground, sitting on the marble cross-legged as she lowered her head, appearing to be preparing herself for the fight that was to come with a little bit of meditation, and possibly projecting herself into the rest of the palace to see where the Emperor was. Aliana, Braire, Faye, and Norel all shared a quick conversation before Braire headed off to one of the corners of the room, pulling the runestones from the pouch that she carried them in, appearing to start developing some kind of strategy.
Aliana, for her part, came over in my direction, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling herself into me, her wings coming in to wrap around me as well.
I avoided the horns at the top of her head carefully and placed a kiss to her forehead, pulling her in close to me.
“You know, I could tell what you and Braire were doing last night,” she said to me in a hushed whisper. “Well, it wasn’t like either of you tried to hide it from us.”
“Can that sort of thing be… hidden?” I asked, tilting my head, genuinely curious.
“Well, anything is possible,” Aliana replied after a pause as she thought about my question for a moment. “But that’s not the point. The point is, I could feel it as well. I could feel the intensity of what the two of you were sharing, and I don’t want you to think that I’m jealous of that or anything, but you should know that once all this fighting is over and we’ve won this, I will be taking you aside, somewhere private, and we’ll be having a repeat of that between you and me. I assume that you and I will both need to recover a bit too, and I think that the best way to do that is you pumping me full of that delicious cock of yours.”
There was a spike of arousal, and I couldn’t tell if it came from me, or if it was just a reaction to what she was feeling at the moment. I cleared my throat, trying to bring my mind back to the matter at hand instead of my sudden need to make the throne room my newest of interesting locations in which to have sex. I finally managed a nod as my hand drifted down to give Aliana’s ass a firm squeeze.
“You’d think that I wouldn’t need any more reasons to come out of this alive and on top,” I whispered back to her, kissing her cheek teasingly.
“One can never have too many incentives to win, my love,” she murmured back, pressing herself enticingly into me before taking a step back.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, still needing a moment to catch my breath, but I was quickly distracted from my distraction as I realized that Lyth’s eyes had just opened.
“He’s here,” she warned, jumping smoothly up to her feet. She hadn’t brought her bow, I suddenly realized, meaning that she was fully focused on her task of breaking Abarat’s control over the emperor. Besides, she was rather skilled in the use of that blade anyway, meaning that she would have little problem if she was needed to put up a bit of a fight before, during or after.
I pulled my sword clear of the sheath and, following in the lead of the other members of our group, moved around behind some pillars to conceal myself. Faye would be tasked with sealing the doors once the Emperor was inside, along with whatever his retinue was, leaving it to the rest of us to guide the man himself right into the trap that was being laid out for him by Lyth, Aliana, and Norel. Braire and I would handle the retinue, and Faye would step into whatever role she was needed for. I thought that it would involve helping them with the Emperor, but one might never know what would happen.
I closed my eyes, feeling a spike of sensation rushing up from my stomach as I was caught offering up a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening as I could hear the doors being opened from my hidden position.
18
Hidden behind one of the pillars as I was, I couldn’t see what kind of formation would be coming in for us to deal with. There weren’t a lot of people in the world that could match the tone and precision that came from the march of a group of Lancers in formation. They were in the classic double file that was supposed to fall back and around whomever they were protecting should danger come about. They were the vanguard, a show of force to take the will out of anyone that had violence on their minds. I could hear the hooves of a horse trotting in right behind. Considering that I’d never seen anyone riding through the palace before, I had to assume that it was the Emperor.
Through the cacophony of marching and trotting, I couldn’t hear much else as I leaned back against the wall as I looked gripped my sword tighter, evening my breathing out. My heart was beating so loudly in my chest that I knew that it had to be heard by the men that were marching through the throne room not ten feet away from where I was standing.
I sucked in a deep breath, hearing the massive doors of the room starting to be pulled shut. A handful of others closed a lot quicker. I assumed because they were a lot lighter than the main doors at the front, though those shut too, and a flash of runes could be seen rushing across them, sealing them all in with us in the same room.
If that wasn’t an indication that it was time to start this thing, I didn’t know what else could be. I needed another breath before I stepped out from behind my pillar, seeing that the rest of the team of six were doing the same at almost the exact same time.
And we hadn’t even planned that, I thought with a small smirk, feeling the fire of battle about to start filling my veins, pushing a pulse of power into my sword and watching with some satisfaction as the runes started to pop out with a dull white light.
I didn’t know what I was expecting when I saw the emperor. The man had always been a bit of a mythical figure who hadn’t left behind any representations of his visage. No paintings or statues, leading me with no idea of what he might look like.
And yet, when I saw him, I wasn’t disappointed. The man looked like a hero out of a story book. He was astride a powerful white-haired war horse, with its tail done up in a near braid, the mane left and a silver face plate with a long horn at the crest.
The man himself was an impressive specimen. His eyes were a clear blue, hair was a long, flowing brown, his beard matching the color, with hints of grey starting to show around the corners. He was wearing a brilliant-looking silver plate and mail, coating him from neck to toe, his steel-tipped boots tucked neatly into a pair of gold stirrups. The man wasn’t wearing any spurs, which spoke to the training of the horse that he was riding, I supposed, though it looked light and twitchy despite its impressive size.
The emperor had broad shoulders and was holding a similarly silver-colored helmet under his left arm, with a longsword resting in its sheath on the same side. Tall, powerfully built, classically handsome with a powerful beard that was just classical enough to improve
his already good looks while adding a good deal of authority to his figure.
The man looked over at me, looking more curious than alarmed as he brought his mount to a stop with the gentlest of tugs to the reins. His eyes narrowed further as Aliana was the next to meet his eyes, and he stopped in place, watching as Lyth stepped out of her hiding spot, blade in hand and a grim look on her face.
“Kaelyfth,” the man said, his hand moving instinctively toward the weapon at his side. “I was under the impression that you were no longer of this world.”
“Rumors of my death were… greatly exaggerated,” Lyth replied, looking calm and unsurprised that the Emperor seemed to know who she was.
Which was the exact opposite of my reaction as I narrowed my eyes, looking around between the two of them as I peered back at Lyth before my attention was drawn back to the Lancers who had quickly formed up to protect their war, raising their shields and weapons as they realized that they were surrounded. There were twenty of them all told, with a handful of what looked like ministers and advisors that were remaining in place near the doors that had shut behind them.
The man chuckled softly, pulling his weapon clear from the sheath at his side. There was something odd about the blade itself. At first glance, it didn’t appear to be that impressive of a blade. None of the gold and silver gilding that I was expecting, but as I looked at it a moment longer, I realized that there was a shimmer starting to come off from the sword, blackening the blade and making it like it was cold made into steel. There was power coming from it, I realized, enough that I could feel it from this distance. The whole room felt like it had lost a good deal of the heat that had been making its way inside from the point that the sun had started to rise.
“Well, then,” the emperor said, still chuckling. “I suppose that we’ll have to rectify that unfortunate misunderstanding.” He turned to the Lancers, pointing his blade around the room. “Kill them all, but leave her to me.”