The queen looked at me. Perhaps it was her welcoming beauty that gave me the courage to stare at her, but I struggled to move my eyes away from her.
“Few have dared to look at me like that,” the queen said, and there was the slightest hint of a frown. Yet there was also a strange appreciation in her eyes.
“Bow you head!” one of the demons holding me said, hitting my head with his sandy fist. It hurt.
“Aren’t you a succubus?” Lana suddenly said.
There was silence for a while.
I stole a quick look at the queen. Her face had gone ashen. Like she was in an internal turmoil of sorts.
“It has been a long while,” the queen said, and this time there was a shiver of anger in her tone, “since I was reminded of my true origins. I might have been a succubus once, but now my only true identity is that I am the queen of the sand people… you seem to know a lot about the succubi, have you met a succubus recently?”
Lana muffled a chuckle.
“An entire succubi army,” she said, “recently I have been only seeing succubi and their male demons.”
“Interesting,” the queen said.
“You seem to hate the succubi,” I said, stealing yet another glance at the queen, and in the process receiving a resounding slap on the head by the sand demon.
“Let him,” the queen said to the demon, “you can look up at me, all three of you.”
I glared at the stone demon and then turned my head towards the queen.
“Yes,” the queen said, “I hate the succubi. They are my greatest enemies.”
“But why?” Lana asked.
“Betrayal from the succubi… from my sister, my twin,” the queen said. She was looking away from us. There was pain in her unfocused eyes, like she was relieving a bad experience from the past.
“Your twin?” I said.
“She calls herself the queen of the succubi,” the queen said. “If not for her, I could have returned to life as a normal woman. But she realised of the powers she could possess if she stayed as a succubus, and because of her mindless ambitions, I became a succubus forever. I left her for the south, for she was beginning to treat like I was her servant. I found the sand people here. I united their tribes and they have made me their queen. It turns out my luck wasn’t so bad. For now I am protected by the powers of the Sand. I do not age. Of course, I do still regret that I did not turn back into a human. I can never return to the man I loved. Of course, it doesn’t matter now anymore. He probably died a long time ago. If I return to my original village, the one in which I was born, I would probably not even find his bones.”
So that was the story of the queen.
“If you hate the succubi queen, then we must be friends,” Danor said suddenly.
The queen looked at us as if contemplating us and what Danor had said.
“We are on a quest to bring down the succubi queen,” I said. That sealed the matter. A smile touched the queen’s lips, making her all the more beautiful.
“Then friends we are.”
The moment she said this that the sand demons let us go. They placed their hands on their chest.
“Friends of the queen are the friends of the sand people,” they all chorused together.
“So what brought you here?” the queen asked us, as the demons exited the hall. Sand from the floor shot upwards and formed three chairs in front of us. The queen gestured us to sit. The sand chairs were actually quite cosy.
We explained about the vessel we were after, and about the plans of the queen that we had come to know about from the dragon.
Arini pursed her lips.
“Well, in her initial endeavours to gain control over the succubi, my sister made a mistake while carrying out a powerful ritual which causes her heart to degrade a little every day,” Arini said. “My sister is making a fool out of the other succubi. I doubt the rituals are to awaken any goddess. It probably has something to do with mending her heart, or even perhaps with getting a new heart.”
“If we destroy the vessel, we’ll be one step closer to destroying the queen,” I said.
Arini nodded.
“I know of the location of the vessel. But it’s beyond my territory. Still, I marvel at the guts of my sister to use something so near me for her own personal gains. The desert beyond my own territory is dangerous. Evil lurks there. The south is even more dangerous. Even the sand people do not venture so far. And where is the dragon that you spoke about?”
“He disappeared after the dust storm,” I said, “we don’t know what happened to him.”
“That is bad,” Arini said, “that dragon would have meant extra protection. Still, because the quest you pursue is one that fulfils my own thirst for vengeance against my sister, I shall help you. Five of my best sand warriors would accompany you.”
We couldn’t believe our luck. What we had thought would kill us had actually turned out something good… a favourable factor.
“Would you like to become a human again?” I suddenly found myself asking, although I hadn’t meant to. I had been gazing too much at the horns of the queen. She was ultimately a succubus wasn’t she, protected by the powers f the Sand or whatever? She could be tamed. There were still black powers that controlled aspects of her. Aspects that she had succeeded in subduing, but which at some time might raise their ugly heads again.
“A human?” Arini asked with a frown. “I had long given up hopes of that. I do hate my horns and the wings. There are times at night when I feel a fear like there is a monster sleeping within me.”
“But wouldn’t making her a human again make her a mortal, sir?” Danor asked me.
“No, it wouldn’t,” the queen said, “I would still be protected by the powers of the Sand. As long as there would be sand, there would be me. But what puzzles me is how would you turn me into a human?”
I smiled.
“I am a succubi tamer, your highness.”
The queen led me to a different room, asking Lana and Danor to stay outside it. Apparently, no one had ever touched her in a long while. She even went to the extent of ordering the sand demons that formed the wall and the ceiling and the floor of the room to shut their eyes and ears. There were strange clicking noises all about the room, confirming that the stone demons had followed her order.
She was an inch or two shorter than me, and that helped. I went behind her and I grasped her horns.
She gasped as if not expecting the touch.
“It will be painful initially, but then it will free you of the black magic inside you. Are you ready, your highness?”
She nodded.
I grasped her horns harder. The wall inside her mind was an old one. And it was thick. The black magic had hidden itself deep within the walls. It had secured itself from the powers of the Sand which apparently subdued the black magic whenever it tried to come out of the walls. Apparently, the black magic had decided that the best way to survive was to wait. I began to dig through the wall. It was hard. The other succubi and demons that I had tamed didn’t have this thick a wall. I was beginning to feel much drained of energy when I finally I succeeded in breaking through the wall.
“Go away,” I said to the black magic. It refused. And it did something that no other black magic had done earlier, not in this fashion at least.
It attacked me.
I hadn’t expected that at all. On top of that I had asked the sand powers to hold themselves for a few moments as what I was doing was to the benefit of the queen.
My concentration broke. I felt like I had received a punch on the chest and I went flying backward and hit a wall. For a while pain possessed me. Then making sense of where I was I stood to my feet.
Except the queen was not quite the queen she had been.
Her skin had turned green and she was looking directly at me. Her horns were more prominent. Her face had become that of a demon, her fangs long and sharp. Anger glistened in her eyes.
The taming had gone wrong absolutely.
She grinned with malice as she approached me. She grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up. I tried to kick her but in vain.
“Help!” I somehow managed to shout. She was strong physically, very strong.
She lowered my head towards her mouth.
I felt helpless. Even if I cried Lana and Danor would not be able to help me. Even the sand demons had closed their eyes and ears as per the queen’s command.
Lower…
I could feel her foul breath now.
And then she bit me. Right at the cheek. Her fangs pierced my cheeks. I felt like an explosion had occurred, blowing off the side of my face. And then she flung me away. I landed roughly on the floor. I felt defeated, the pain itself was secondary. A notification popped up in my vision.
You have been bitten by a succubus!
You will soon turn into a mindless demon in a matter of seconds……..
……
……*%(^^*%%................
Your tamer powers have slowed down the process of you turning into a mindless demon.
You have three days of sanity and then you will turn into a demon.
I couldn’t be more relived. Three days was definitely way better than becoming a mindless demon right away. But the succubus apparently thought that she had sowed the seed of black magic in me and she observed me with much satisfaction. My vision blurred, my eyes watered. Blood streamed out of my cheeks. It was with sheer determination that I stood up.
I smiled at the succubus.
She was taken with puzzlement. I ran towards her at full speed and pinned her against a wall and grabbed her horns. She struggled and she bit me again on the hand and I bled. But I knew that being bitten once or more was the same. I didn’t let her go. This time I entered her mind with anger. I had already created the hole and the black magic was now spread all about the mind of Arini. The powers of the sand were fighting it, but the black magic had the upper hand since it now controlled her body. I went after it. It tired to attack, but it had spread itself too thinly over the mind of the queen. It was enough to keep the powers of the sand at bay but not me. After a short struggle, the black magic left. I came back to reality.
I slumped to the ground and so did the queen.
I lay there like that. My heart sank. In three days I would be a mindless demon.
Arini slowly got up. Had she been a normal girl she would have been unconscious for long, but the powers of the sand had full control over her, fuelling her.
She looked at me and then she felt over her head with her hands.
“What happened?” she asked and then her eyes went wide seeing that one side of my face and several places on my arms were covered in blood. I found myself chuckling.
“Your majesty, you bite.”
***
“Go on, tame everybody, captain,” Lana said the moment we entered the Sphere and were out of the earshot of the sand warriors outside.
I grimaced. Arini had tried to heal me with the powers of the sand. But the powers had failed. The best I could do right now was to complete the quest in three days and retire somewhere nobody lived so that I could go about doing whatever mindless demons did when they were not controlled by some master, and not harm anybody.
“The black magic was too strong,” I said. Lana took over the driver’s position on her own. I was thankful to her. I didn’t believe I could control the Sphere with my body in such pains. Lana made the Sphere travel at top speed for a good five hours. She didn’t speak to either me or Danor much in the time being. After I had been bitten she seemed angry at me. I didn’t blame her. She wanted her mother and her sister back. If I became a mindless demon before she could get them back, then the process would become much more complicated for her. She and Danor would have to complete the quest without me.
It was nearing night when we finally reached the spot on the map where the dragon had said we would find the second vessel where the succubi queen planned to keep a part of her soul during the ritual. It was an oasis in the middle of the desert. There was a large pond surrounded by quite a number of trees. The sight felt good. All we had been seeing till now was sand. As the sun began its final descent, Lana made the craft land on the ground near the pond.
The three of us went out, Danor requiring some help to get out of the entry hole.
“Where is the vessel?” Danor said.
“There?” one of the sand demons said. He was pointing right at the middle of the pond with his long arm. I peered hard and saw that there was some kind of a large flat stone at the middle of the pond that I had earlier missed. There also seemed to be some kind of a cavity on the upper surface of the stone or perhaps a shape of some sorts that wasn’t clear from the spot we were.
“I’ll go and see,” Lana said. She at once flew away to the stone.
“Can you take us as well?” I asked the stone demons. They promptly grabbed me and Danor with their long arms and flew to the stone and hovered just above it. I noticed a small grimace on the side of Lana’s lips, probably because now she was not the only one that could fly.
When I set my eyes on the stone however, my heart sank. There had been some kind of a statue, one with horns, in the cavity that was atop the flat stone. The cavity was designed perfectly to fit a statue. Somebody had taken away the statue, which I knew was the vessel we were after.
Lana landed on the flat surface of the stone, which was just an inch or two above the surface of the water in the pond. She put her hand in the cavity and looked up at us.
“What do you think, captain?” she asked me.
“It’s gone,” I replied.
“You think the dragon took it?” My heart suddenly leapt. Why, the dragon! Yes, he must have taken it. Maybe the matter wasn’t so bad after all? He must have come here fast, not wanting to waste any time. Plus, who else would want to take a statue located at the centre of a pond for no reason?
“It’s a possibility,” I said. All of us returned to the edge of the pond. I felt tired after all the events of the day. The stars began to appear. I cupped some of the water in the pond and drank it. It was sweet. I turned to the sand demons.
“Listen,” I said to them, “can you go in a radius of five kilometres around this pond and see if you can find the dragon or if you see anything strange then report it to me as well.”
The sand demons readily agreed, but they seemed reluctant to leave the three of us alone. They said they feared the spirits of the desert.
“Nah, we’ll be all right,” I said to them. “Lana is with us, after all. She’s powerful.”
“You really think I am powerful?” Lana said and she sounded dejected, as the sand demons disappeared behind some distant sand dunes. “The sand demons can easily make me captive, as they already did today. I can fight and I have strength, but I am powerless against anything that changes shape.”
“Yes, you should have asked one of them to stay, sir,” Danor said.
“Well, they are already gone,” I said. “So we better take some shut-eye, eh?”
I fell down on the sand just at the edge of the pond. It was cosier to sleep here than the Sphere. The desert was also cooling now that the sun was no longer up. Seeing me carefree, Danor and Lana too plopped down. I closed my eyes. My cheek had been screaming in pain a lot and it had gone more or less numb. Before I knew it, I was in the land of sleep.
***
Lanak Tanor
Class: Succubi Tamer
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Level: 11
Strength: 399
Health: 330/900
Mana: 450
Intelligence: 110
Mental carrying capacity: 495/550
Youth:280
Chapter 14: Lana
Mowa pointed at his shiny new horns. His usual grin of whenever he did something out of the ordinary hung on his lips.
“You want horns like mine?” Mowa said.
“But aren’t you a demon now?” I asked.
>
The grin left his lips. He frowned hard at me.
“Do not keep reminding me of that,” he said, and he looked away as though what I had said had hurt him.
After a moment, two ladies walked into the scene. One of them was Binni, the other my mother. They had horns and tails and wings. Both of them had a certain glow in their faces which I yearned to possess myself.
“Lana,” my mother said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “why don’t you become one of us now? See, your sister and Mowa both have such nice horns. Don’t you want such horns as well?”
“But I wouldn’t be a human anymore,” I said. At that point I recalled something, something that I had wanted to ask mother ever since I had found out that I was in reality a player who had decided to wipe her memory a long time ago.
“Mother,” I said with some hesitation, hoping she wouldn’t be hurt by my question like Mowa, “you never married in your life. Where did you get me and Binni?”
My mother stared at me for a while.
“Binni was a result of a mistake I made when I was young,” she said, “I found you as a child in the woods. Binni needed a companion and I had enough money to raise two kids.”
Was it the truth?
I looked at the surroundings of the four of us. Nothing was constant. This was a dream, right? This had to be. Yet, I felt like what mother had said was true. But how could that be possible within a dream?
And then I remembered. Mother had already told me everything one morning a long time ago. I had been sick perhaps, and I was lying on the bed with my eyes closed. My mother had feared that I would die without knowing the truth and she had said everything to me. Of course she had thought I didn’t hear, and all that she had revealed was more to empty her own mind of the burden. Over the years I had forgotten but today, inside this dream, I recalled it all.
Chains of a Succubus Page 16