by Loki Renard
He pushed on through the overgrown paths, hacking at vines and bushes with a machete. The sound of Sabine and Tim chattering behind him was starting to become little more than background noise, the same as the chirping of birds, which stopped abruptly when they drew near and he began to slash at the undergrowth beneath the trees where they nested.
Out of the general twittering of the conversation, one phrase stood out.
“Ohhh! Shiny!”
“So pretty!”
Maxim whirled around, machete in hand. “Sabine! No!”
They were only ten feet behind him, but it was ten feet too far. Sabine had never seen a gate open before, so she didn’t know how it looked when the air began to sparkle and shimmer as if it were becoming water. She was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, turning her head toward his shout all too late.
A second gate. A temporary field anomaly. Isodor must have somehow perverted the main gate into splitting itself and throwing an offshoot right to the place they were. The technology to do that didn’t exist in Ere—but it almost certainly now existed in Centillion territory. Isodor had handed the Centillions the means to warp time and space and reach foes anywhere on the planet, but Maxim couldn’t worry about that in the moment. All he cared about was saving Sabine.
He ran toward her at full speed as the world opened up next to her. She was looking at him now, standing stock still even as he yelled at her to run. She didn’t see the arms reaching for her. She had no idea she was being captured until Isodor himself lurched out of the glowing array, grabbed Sabine and hauled her back beyond the gate.
Maxim hurled himself at the shining space, but as quickly as it had opened, it closed and Maxim dived into the dirt, tasting bitter earth and rubble. She was gone. He had failed her. All his promises to protect her meant nothing as the world zipped itself back together and left him crawling impotently in front of the space where she had been standing.
“Oh, no!” Tim cried out with all the anguish Maxim felt as he stood silently, brushing the dirt from his clothes, his teeth gritted with anger and fear. “My friend!”
Chapter Nine
“Let me go! Let me go! Maxim! Help!” Sabine shrieked the words at the top of her lungs, but none of them did anything. She could already tell that she was back in Ere. The colors were different in a way that was indescribable, and yet immediately obvious. It was as though a kaleidoscope had been twisted and the world had fallen into place with a strange new brightness.
“Silence!” Isodor thundered. “You are hysterical, Princess!”
Him. It was him. He’d taken her. She took one look at him and let out a shriek of elemental fear.
“Let me go!” She tugged free of his powerful grasp and stood panting and wild-eyed, looking around for a means of escape. There was none. They were in the labyrinthine gate room, surrounded by soldiers who caught her when she tried to flee.
“What do you mean, let you go? I have rescued you, you stupid wench!” Isodor growled the words at her, his large form looming over her, his body’s shadow cast by the gate blocking out all light and hope.
“Rescued me from what?”
“From the catastrophe of the gate, of course. You were trapped in the other world. You had no way back. I brought my armies through to rescue you.”
“I wanted to be trapped! I fled there on purpose! I didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to marry you!”
She would never have had the courage to say such things to him in the past, but now she was too frightened, too angry, too… everything to contain herself as she usually did. She would not stay silent, not anymore.
Isodor’s eye narrowed at her. “You speak foolishly and impetuously, Princess,” he growled. “I will put it down to hysteria and confusion, but if I hear you say such things again, I will not be so merciful.”
“I don’t care if you are merciful or not!” Sabine shrieked at him. “I don’t care about you or for you at all. You are pure evil!”
For a moment, she was sure he was about to hit her. Hard. And not in the way Maxim would have whipped her rear, but in the way a brutal man deals with a woman who has bruised his tender ego. She braced herself for it, almost wanting the pain. She was overcome with shame at having allowed herself to be torn away so easily. Maxim had warned her not to go near the glimmering surface, but she had ignored him and now she had ruined everything. The look on his face as she was pulled away was one that would stay with her for a very long time. She had seen fierce protective rage, and something she’d never seen in his eyes before—fear.
The moment passed and Isodor did not hit her. He turned to his guards and growled an order.
“Take her away and confine her until she comes to her proper senses.”
“I won’t ever come to my proper senses,” she spat. “Because you make the whole world mad.”
The guards took her by the arms and pulled her away. Sabine kicked and bit and struggled against them until two more came to take her legs. She was hoisted into the air, struggling and biting for all she was worth, though it did absolutely nothing to change her situation.
“Curse you, Isodor!” she shouted at him as she was carried away. “Curse the woman who bore you and curse every breath you have ever taken!”
* * *
She was confined to a small room, nothing like her palatial chambers. She shouted at the guards to call her father, or take her to the king, but their faces were blank and they did not respond. It was as though they themselves were some kind of AI, blindly acting according to Isodor’s will.
There she stayed for hours, perhaps days. Water and food was delivered, but nothing more. She wondered if she might be left to rot there forever. She must have angered the general greatly, and he was not a merciful man. Perhaps he had decided to do away with her completely. Perhaps he was planning her execution.
When the door finally opened a very long time later, the general himself filled the space. Days of solitude made her almost glad to see him, for a split second before she regained her senses. He was a great bulky beast of a man, now wearing a metallic mask over the worst of the scarring, his one eye looking at her with a piercing gaze as she sat up on her bed and tried to look as composed as possible, even though she was still filthy from both her attempted escape and the grime of being kept captive without a facility to wash.
“I apologize for the long wait, Princess,” he said in that horrible growl of his. “It has taken me some time to untangle events. My friends in the other world have become more accommodating of late, and I believe I finally understand what has led you to this outrage.”
“You! You are…”
“Silence!” he shouted at her. “One more word and I will have you gagged!”
She fell silent as the general began to pace back and forth in front of her, his hands behind his back.
“You have been lied to, Princess,” Isodor said. “You have been led astray and must now be put back on the righteous path.”
She screwed up her face and would have cursed him again, but for the malevolence of the look he shot her.
“I have seen the footage of your first day in the other world, Princess. You went through the gate and into the city, where you were approached by a man who called himself a guardian. He claimed you for Ere. Within an hour of meeting this man, you were taken to another territory and there you were… shall we say, made a woman. No, I cannot say that, can I? He did not keep you as a princess, or even a common woman. He kept you as a pet. He took your virtue and he defiled you, and he somehow convinced you that these things were for your benefit.”
“He had to… he…”
“He is the one you consider your savior,” Isodor continued. “Though it was I who rescued you from the world you were trapped in. I could have taken you on any day and at any hour long before you fled Ere, and yet was merciful and waited for our wedding night. And still, you prefer him. The man who took you and rutted you as if you were nothing at all. I was willing to wait for your hand. H
e was not willing to give you his, and yet he took your maidenhead.”
“It wasn’t like that… he had to sleep with me because my virginity would have been scanned and…”
“You were trapped in a sick world with a very sick man who was trusted only as an exile,” Isodor said. “The moment the gate closed, I knew what had happened. You had been stolen, Princess, and you had to be retrieved. You may hate me for that, curse me for it, but it is the truth.”
He looked at her with his one good eye, the other hidden behind the mask and she looked at him for perhaps the first time without any judgment clouding her gaze. His words had unsettled her, and there was something to his tone that spoke to genuine belief in what he was saying.
Without the distraction of marked flesh, Sabine suddenly realized that Isodor had been—or really, still was, handsome. Did that matter? Did it make him any less evil? No. But it did mean that she was suddenly seeing him differently.
“I am sending some ladies in to wash and dress you properly,” Isodor said. “And then we will go before the royal court.”
* * *
The next hour passed in a haze of warm baths and fine clothing. As she was once more pampered in the manner she was accustomed to, her every need taken care of, Sabine’s thoughts started to turn on themselves. Had she been too hasty in leaving Ere? Had she been too hasty in judging Isodor? Was Maxim the true evil? As she remembered everything he had done to her, how he had fucked her mercilessly, made her kneel, taken liberties with each and every orifice, taken her in public besides… were those the things she should have hated him for? If so, why did she still feel flush after flush of heat between her thighs when she thought of them?
“We’re so glad to have you back, Princess,” one of her serving girls gushed as she manicured Sabine’s fingernails. “We were all so worried about you.”
“Thank you, Tilly,” Sabine smiled. “It’s good to be back.”
The frightening thing was, she almost truly meant those words. It was good to be attended to again, to be treated as the highest in the land. It was good to be spoiled and cossetted.
Once she was fully attended to and dressed in a very fine spun gold gown, she was escorted to the throne room, where once more, her father was notably absent. Asking after the king had not yielded any kind of response from anyone, and her heart sank all the more when she saw that his throne was occupied—by Isodor.
“Where is my father?”
“All will be revealed in due course, Princess,” Isodor said, waving her question away. “We have more pressing matters to attend to. You have been trespassed against, and amends must be made. Bring the prisoner!”
The last words were bellowed at the guards, and upon hearing them they swung a side door open and Maxim was dragged in, sagging between two guards, bloodied and obviously beaten, his face twisted with fury.
“Maxim!” Sabine cried his name and tried to run to him, but was restrained by Isodor, who placed a large hand around her upper arm and held her close.
Maxim seemed to be half insensate, but at her cry, he lifted his head and his green gaze focused on her through a haze of pain.
“Sabine,” he said through cracked lips. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry will not begin to be enough!” Isodor stood and glowered down at the prisoner with a fearsome gaze. “You have defiled the princess, taken her maidenhead, turned her into a toy for your pleasure. You sought to deprive Ere of her most beautiful jewel. You used and abused this royal woman, and for that you must pay!”
To Maxim’s credit, he glowered right back, refusing to cower even though his life clearly hung in the balance. He straightened between the guards and put his weight fully on his feet. He bore the marks of torture and torment and Sabine’s stomach churned as she beheld him. It was difficult to keep looking. She wanted to turn her head away, but she didn’t want him to feel as though he faced Isodor alone. All doubt as to his integrity had fled her mind the moment she laid eyes on him again. How could she ever have questioned him?
“You are the lord of lies,” Maxim snarled in a hoarse voice. “And you will not win. Sabine… believe me… whatever he has told you… he does not care for you. He cannot care for anyone besides himself.”
“Silence, traitor!” Isodor thundered his rage. “You have defiled the princess of the realm. The punishment for that is death.”
“No!” Sabine cried out. “You must not kill him.”
Isodor turned on her, his massive form moving with more agility than one might expect. “Why? Because you love him still? After all he did to you? All he took from you?”
“He didn’t take anything from me. He was trying to save me. There were swarms of drones like locusts and there were people who took advantage of me…”
“Of which he was one. He treated you little better than an animal.”
“You can kill me,” Maxim bit out. “But she’s mine in her heart and her soul and there is nothing you can do to change that. Not ever.”
There was silence, a deadly, frightening silence in which Isodor stood simmering like a volcano.
“Perhaps not,” Isodor said. “You always did have a way of taking my toys and breaking them, brother.”
“Brother?” Sabine frowned. There was something in the way Isodor said the word that did not imply brotherhood in anything but the familial sense.
“He did not tell you, of course,” Isodor snarled. “Yes, that cur is of my blood. We were born on the very same day in the very same hour. He is the other side of my coin.”
She stared at Maxim, a sense of confusion throwing her feelings into disarray. “He’s your brother? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Would you say as much if he were your sibling?” Maxim snorted disdainfully as he wiped a smear of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “He is the reason I volunteered to go to the other world. I could not stand even to be in the same realm as he… but this is irrelevant. If we are to speak of family, ask him what happened to your father, the king.”
Sabine turned her gaze on Isodor, who finally deigned to answer the question.
“The gate collapsed, trapping you both in the other world. The king was beside himself with anxiety. Unfortunately, his heart could not handle the strain and he passed away.”
“The strain,” Maxim snorted. “Yes, that must have been the cause. It’s strange, Isodor, how many people seem to happen to spontaneously pass away when you are near.”
Isodor screwed his face up in anger. “I did not kill him. Nor did I have him killed. I do not care if you believe me. You were always suspicious, but your paranoia has only grown over the years. I am less a brother to you than some specter of evil.”
“Correct,” Maxim growled. “And a dead king proves my suspicions.”
“He would not be dead were it not for the shock of thinking his daughter was forever lost. If you had not failed in your task to return her…”
“Then the poison you no doubt gave him would not have taken effect? Do not waste your lies on me, Isodor.”
They were shouting and snarling at one another, but Sabine was silent, consumed by tears. Her father was gone. Forever. She would never see his face again, never feel his embrace and it was, in all likelihood, her fault. For all the arguing the men were doing, the fact remained that if she had simply married Isodor in the first place rather than running off to the other world, her father might still be alive.
Tears blurred her vision and began to run down her cheeks as she sank to the floor, weeping for her loss. What a horror this had been, and all for an attempt at freedom. She should have known better. She should have known that she would never, ever find any kind of respite.
Somewhere in the background, she heard their argument continue. Isodor was explaining at high volume how he had been crowned king in their absence, and had immediately decided to come and rescue her, according to him, or capture her, according to Maxim. Perhaps both stories were true. Perhaps Isodor had thought himself staging a re
scue, even as she fled before him.
“Princess Sabine,” Isodor addressed her directly. “You must be the final arbiter. It was you who lost your maidenhead, and your father. It was you who was most wronged. What will the fate of this wretch be?”
“Spare him,” Sabine sobbed. “Please, King Isodor. If you have any mercy in your blood, spare him. I have lost enough.”
“And you wish to lose more, no doubt,” Isodor snorted disdainfully. “A woman of the true blood would not be sniveling on the ground. She would call for the axe man directly and stand watching to ensure that the traitor’s head was removed. I wonder if you are even your father’s daughter. Your mother’s reputation was hardly unsullied, nor her mother’s before her. A line of sluts has occupied this castle for generations. You are no different.”
“That’s enough!” Maxim pulled away from the guards and ascended to the dais. Several men rushed forward to grasp him, but Isodor waved them away, preparing to fight his brother.
There was no fight to be had. Maxim was not coming to assault Isodor. He crouched down, wrapped his arms around Sabine and pulled her close, smearing her dress with dirt and traces of blood. She sank into his embrace, her tears flowing freely over his shoulder as she wept for all she had lost, and all she still had to lose.
“Are you satisfied now, Isodor?” Maxim snarled the question.
“I am,” Isodor replied. “I thought, perhaps, she was a victim, but now I see nothing but a willing whore. I am relieved I was spared the tedium of marrying her, the sniveling little wretch. I no longer need her to take the throne. It is already mine, and I do not need you as guardian either, dear brother, for the gate stands open and the worlds are now joined. You are both utterly obsolete. Take your little harlot princess and do what you will with her. My interest has already waned. Get out of my sight.”
Chapter Ten
A month later…