Vhamnya's Tale: Rise of a Dark Queen - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

“I won’t do it,” Vhamnya spoke grimly. “I shan’t.”

She sat in her room in the House. The bars, through which she had once wriggled, had now tightened on the window. The Chosen blocked the door, the stairway outside, and the halls below. Their spells drummed on her brow and heralded the wards they had cast to shield themselves. They had brought the whispers to heel, who now muttered in time and strengthened them.

“You must,” answered Mandr, who sat across from her bed.

Vhamnya thought of Pihtr, who even now she imagined down in one of the crypt-holes underneath. She thought of his cold and fright, huddled in the darkness, and even worse of not knowing why he suffered so. “You wish me to kill him? I won’t. Instead, you shall set him free. He will leave this place, even this city, and you shall never touch him again.”

Mandr sighed. With a frown he wove his finger together. “I’m afraid that won’t happen, Princess.”

“Why not?!”

His head lowered. “Because you chose him. He is your dearest person, your dearest thing in this world. Thus he is the price required of you.”

Vhamnya’s eyes bugged wide. “My price?”

“Yes, Princess. As I told you before, you must find someone,” explained Mandr. He upturned his hands. “You found Pihtr. You must seduce him. I think it fair to say you’ve done so. You must convince them to betray everything he holds dear.” His head lifted. “Did you or did you not convince him to forsake his priesthood and all else he knows, and flee with you?”

Vhamnya shivered.

Mandr held her gaze. “All that remains is that you bring him here, which you have, and then bind them to the black stone in the lower hall, and then sacrifice him to the Dark Lord. On that night the Dark Prince will appear and bless you, and you will become not just Chosen, but his Chosen daughter.”

“And what will you do to me if I refuse,” demanded the dark maiden. “Will you sacrifice me instead?”

Mandr again dropped his eyes. “How long are you willing to wait for us to give up, Princess?”

Vhamnya bit back a curse while her wrath flushed hot. Speechlessly she stared. Slowly her anger changed, replaced by fear that maybe she could not win herself out.

She reached out and touched Mandr’s hand. “Would you really treat me so?” she pleaded, and aimed her will into his heart, where his feelings dwelt, including his lust. “Do you really hate me so much?”

Mandr’s fingers twined with hers. He smiled. “Princess, you are doubtlessly the fairest woman in the world, and I would like nothing better than to yield myself to your holiest embrace, but right now you are foreheld for your Dark Father. I will willingly do so, after you fulfill the sacrifice.”

Vhamnya stared blindly, trying to foresee a way out of this trap, trying to will Mandr to change his mind, to deny the trap she was in and make the world something else.

When her hopelessness strengthened, so did the shadow. It darkened and drew near, as if it felt her grief. For the first time she thought it almost made a shape just beyond her sight’s edge.
For the very first time she spoke to it in her mind: please, what must I do?

The shadow chuckled and answered wordlessly, but she heard its voice in her heart. Vhamnya stilled, as if fearing to move, or even frozen by the whisper’s touch. Then she shut her eyes while tears welled.

“All right.” She shuddered. “I will do it.”

Mandr nodded. He grinned too broadly. “You are wise, Princess.” He rose. “You will not regret this.”

Vhamnya did not answer. She stayed sat, hunched, and looked at the floor until the handmaidens came.

They bathed her in rosewater, dried her skin with incensed towels, and dressed her in a shroud of dark silk. Then they combed out her hair until it fell to her calves and shone like burnished jewelry. They waited silently with her until the light faded and full night reigned. At last Mandr came back. The handmaidens bowed and filed out of the room.

“It is the new moon’s midnight,” he said, “when darkness rules the world. Are you ready?”

Vhamnya stood from her stool. She bowed her head.

Mandr answered the nod. “Follow me.”

She knew where he was leading, to the lower hall without light or windows, where the whispers shrilled in full glory. She stepped on the floor and found the Chosen fully gathered, bearing tapers of maiden’s tallow. Between their waiting rows she walked after Mandr, while two by two they knelt at her passing. At the other end waited the black stone, the Chosen’s altar to their Dark Lord, a rough obsidian slab with corners off-ground. Just beyond it, naked, and held by four priests, stood Pihtr.

A ring of five Chosen stood around the captive and the black stone, which Mandr joined. He waved Vhamnya to stand right before the stone, where she had no choice to but face Pihtr. Then he raised his hands: “The rite begins.” His voice rang off the walls.

Pihtr stared at her. All at once he went mad, throwing himself against his handlers. He coughed and frothed, but they had seemingly fed him a drug that deadened his voice and left him able only to spit and strangle.

Vhamnya opened her mouth and licked her lips. Around her the darkness hove near. It whispered reassuringly. Barely she nodded and began the first prayer:

“We dedicate ourselves to Graz’zt, our Dark Father,” she began, “He Who rules from Blessed Azzagrat, and from whom all our boons come.”

“Blessed be the Dark Prince,” answered the Chosen. “Blessed be His Kingdom Below and On Earth.”

The chant continued in chorus. At the second prayer the handlers dragged Pihtr to the stone and laid him over; back bowed, nakedness weak and bare. Before the third prayer Mandr handed Vhamnya a black steel knife, curved fanglike and sharpened on both edges. She held its hilt in both hands, between her and Pihtr. He stared at her with wrathful, sorrowful eyes.

She stepped near, and he thrashed again, nearly breaking his handlers’ grip. Mandr strode up, eager to see his rite unbroken.

“Hold him,” snapped Vhamnya, letting a note of annoyance creep into her voice.

Mandr took Pihtr’s arm, which let a handler step behind their victim and clasp his head back. Vhamnya stepped between Pihtr’s legs until her thigh almost touched his naked crotch. She kept her eyes on him, not letting them stray to anyone else. She wished she could tell him how sorry she was.

“In Graz’zt’s name,” she finished, “by this blade I give myself to him. By this blood I baptize and seal myself. By this soul I feed him. By my own soul I serve him.”

Tears welled in Pihtr’s eyes.

“Do it,” bade Mandr, grinning.

Vhamnya aimed the knife downward. “In Graz’zt’s name,” she repeated.

Then she twisted the knife and stabbed sideward. The blade caught Mandr just above his groin. His breath choked out voicelessly, to painfully even to protest. While the Chosen watched dumbly, Vhamnya stepped aside to gain leverage, crouched, and heaved upward. The knife’s edge slid through skin, plowed a wide wet furrow through Mandr’s belly, all the way to his breastbone.

Around her the Chosen panicked. The handlers struggled with Pihtr, who had freed an arm and was trying to roll out. The others shouted and bleated at her back; prayers forgotten.

Vhamnya ignored them all and loomed over Mandr. She stooped until her face lay over his. “You swore an oath once,” she whispered while his guts began to peek through the wound, “to give your body and soul to the Dark Prince.” She studied his wondering eyes. “This is how you fulfill it.”

She lifted her hips and sawed the knife across his ribs. Bone by bone she worked it through, awash in his blood while his limbs flailed and his innards poured forth on her feet. Then she dropped the knife and pulled apart his chest, reached within, and set her hand on his beating heart. She twisted, ripped, tore, until she drew it forth, spraying herself with his death.

Around her the darkness smirked. Then it dropped, so wholly and blackly that not even she could see…

…Vhamnya stood alone. The Chosen’s cries had hushed. No sound broke the silence. It was as if they had all vanished. Sightlessly she tried to look around.

Then the shroud she wore lifted off. She felt nothing grab it, only it rose & was no longer there. She was blind and bare, but for the cooling blood on her skin.

Behind her something stepped hear. Her head craned upward and bumped against an iron-hard chest. She spotted two green eyes that glowed downward at her.

She did not speak, but thought: “Are you my father?”

A pair of arms gathered round and circled her breasts.

“My father, my god, my lover…”

The darkness faded and showed Vhamnya lying on the floor beside Mandr’s carcass and the knot of handlers who struggled with Pihtr. Blood seeped from two-dozen gashes across her back and flanks. Her breasts looked almost shredded. These wounds, however, were nothing compared to what oozed from her orifices, which sizzled where it landed on stone.

“…seed-spiller, my flesh-reaver, my death-holder…”

The words fell from her lips as vilely as any poison, darkening the air that bore them, in a tongue unspoken by human throats.

“…soul-raper, my maiden-breaker, brother-slayer…”

The words followed a lullaby whispered by Old Night, at the world’s beginning when she wrapped herself back into her pale shroud and stared down at a nest of crawling afterbirth, amid which lay the child she has had born, a child conceived in mockery, from her seduction of the warlord of the greatest demon army ever to ravage the Outer Darkness.

“…mind-eater, my heart’s seducer, my heart’s betrayer, whore-maker…”

The words sounded like nothing, like the obscenity that dripped and sizzled from her thighs, like the convulsive fluttering of her hands, legs, eyes, and womb. They were love-words.

“…my god, my father, my lover…”

Around her rushed the Chosen. The grabbed her twitching limbs and lifted her clear from the gore.

“Does she live?” asked one.

“She raves!” answered another. One of them shoved a scrap of hide between her teeth.

Vhamnya spat out the scrap. It interfered with her chant, irked her, stirred her anger. “…my father, my god, my lover…”

“She fits!” shouted another. “Just like her mother!”

“Grab the knife!” commanded one. “We can harvest her blood and heart, at least.”

They set her back to the floor. Now they held her dark limbs steady for the blade.

Vhamnya stilled. Her pain vanished, but for the burning in her belly, bowels, and throat where the Dark Prince’s sap still flowed, sought, and took root. Her sight returned so suddenly that she saw two of the naked man above her; kneeling lower with dagger raised to gut.

“…My father, my lover, my God!”

A black sphere of force burst forth. It knocked everyone else against the hall’s walls. The few who did not swoon rolled and flopped, cried and held their bruised heads.  

In their midst rose Vhamnya, naked but for the filth covering her, to full height. Her body shone like an eclipse whose crown of light blinded even through the black shadow at her core. The Chosen stared as their breath died.  The lone woman who had regained her feet knelt will-lessly.

“I am…” growled Vhamnya: “Chosen!”

Her will crushed their minds, letting their thoughts, feelings, and wishes run out like blood through her fingers, like a banquet of tastes she could savor. She strode to the man who held the blood-knife, who whimpered while leaning blindly. Vhamnya knelt before him. She shoved a long finger up his nether hole, until she found his prostate. She teased him to hardness. Just when he shuddered, she thrust a newly sprouted claw through his bowels and impaled it. While he screamed, she bit down and devoured his manliness, bite by bite. She did not stop until she popped the nut-like organ into her mouth. Then she let him bleed out.

The rest of the Chosen lay like puppets with cut strings. Vhamnya ignored them. She left the crypt, droplets smoking on the stones, and went upstairs. She reached the washroom before the shaking overcame her limbs.

She came back to herself, huddled beneath a wall-fountain while its water poured over her shoulders, back, and hips. With head hung downward, she watched the last blood wash off her loins. The cuts on her breasts and sides had already healed, leaving only faint, slightly paler scars. Within her the burning had dulled, but not gone; still there, a mark of how she had changed.

She shut her eyes, and the darkness again took her. It was within her. It was her. Once again the pleasure overtook her: the feel of his claws on her breasts, digging into her hips, the tearing violation and hot junction, all of it, despite the pain, making her mind fog over and her womb writhe, as if he was still within her. It remained even in the aftertaste of the Chosen’s manhood she had eaten.

Vhamnya opened her eyes, and the shuddering stopped. She took a slow breath.

Suddenly, warnlessly, came tears. She hugged her own shoulders and sobbed. She was still herself, she realized, and more. She was changed. She asked herself what she had lost.

Much later, she staggered back downstairs. Amid the hall’s scattered bodies, a few stirred weakly. She sought among them until she found Pihtr. Vhamnya kissed him and felt the faintest breath on his lips. She looked inside his mind. Within, deep down, she found a tiny spark. “Please come back to me,” she pleaded. She willed it stronger.

Slowly Pihtr came back. He coughed. Then his eyes opened. They looked upward at her leaning over him; still dazed and enthralled by her. His mouth opened, but said nothing.

“Come with me,” Vhamnya bade quietly. She pulled Pihtr to his feet. He staggered, so that she had to hold him upright, but she drove him to the stairs, out of the hall.

Hastily she found him clothes, despite the ill fit, and a cloak. She ransacked rooms until she found a coin purse, which she shoved into his hand. Then she took him to the rear door, unlocked it, and threw it open.

Vhamnya turned him to face her and clasped his hands. “I need you to go,” she said. “Leave here, and leave Azpat,” she bade. “Never come back. Never seek me, and never speak of me. Do you understand?”

Pihtr blinked. Still he did not speak, but now his eyes darted back and forth as his thoughts began working. Vhamnya saw his memories flare back to life, read his betrayal and confusion.

She squeezed his hands. “I would run away with you if I could,” she explained, “but now I belong to Another, and He demands a heavy price for sharing.” She leaned down and kissed his brow. Then she shoved him outside. “Go,” she bade.

Pihtr stumbled into the lane. He swerved around and looked back. His stare fixed on her, pleadingly. He opened his mouth, and a wordless sob burst forth.

“Go!” shouted Vhamnya. Her word smeared the air. In the lane pebbles leapt and rattled. Pihtr flinched as a bruiselike welt appeared on his face. He glared tearfully, turned, and ran away.

Vhamna watched him flee. Then slowly she stepped inside and shut the door.

The End