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Queen of the Dead Fortress

By: Falcinator



Author's note:

This is a classic example of how characters have a bigger say in writing the story than the author does. This did not go the way I expected.

On the other hand, I rather like the outcome I got.

I intend to continue this universe, if enough people like it.

Remember, dear readers, if you want more from any author, vote, and leave comments. Emails are also acceptable.

#

The way up the mountain was torturous and long, and their leader insisted they move fast during daylight hours and be established in camp well before sundown. 

This gave Nathaniel a lot of time each evening to study, either as the sun was going down or by the waning light coaxed out of the old suncloth covering his hat. 

The ancient tome he reverently unwrapped and rewrapped each evening was the last known book of The Wizards' Malefitorium, and was the main reason he was this expedition's healer/scribe.

The other fourteen members of the party, hunters and fighters and hardened rangers and temple looters, viewed him with an undisguised mixture of dismissive contempt and amused tolerance, most of them only accepting his presence because their employer demanded a written record of the journey.

The four fighters, members of the cockily swaggering hero class which had arisen since the time of the Wizards, treated him as a combination of weak younger brother and personal saga writer.

The only one who viewed him as a dangerous inconvenience, and made no secret of the fact, was Avisha, the notorious thief-assassin whose form-fitting, light-absorbing suede and rough silk clothes held more knives than a smithy and whose overt and violent femininity made everyone unbalanced and wary save her lover Borrum, a flint-faced warrior-tactician who was, as far as it was possible with such a disparate group of strong-willed individuals, their leader.

In truth, Nathaniel cared little for any of their opinions. 

He was employed to do a job, and he conscientiously kept the expedition log every day, but he had accepted the position - in fact, secretly stacked the cards in his favour - because when they reached the long-abandoned fortress Graskan, he had to be there.

He had read and re-read the Wizards' Malefitorium many times already since inheriting it from his grandfather but he pored over its vellum pages with fresh interest now, looking for any clue, any hint of promise, that he hadn't already seen.

His luggage also contained scrolls and books which contained the common myths, stories and histories (and few enough clues to tell one from the other) about the fortress Graskan but it was the arcane Wizards' Malefitorium, written in an almost lost script, in a tongue nobody living knew how to pronounce, which their financier, and Nathaniel himself, believed to hold the best clues to the ancient stronghold of evil magic and worse men.

The fighters gave him a wide birth when he was studying it, the rangers made warding signs to his face and Avisha's normal cold contempt flared into hot hostility.

Only the rigidly disciplined Borrum made no sign that he distrusted the last remaining remnant of the lore which had lain waste to the land centuries ago.

Even common peasant tricks like Nathaniel's suncloth hat, and even his healing arts, were viewed askance in the book's company.

A week into the journey, Borrum had drawn Nathaniel aside one night and quietly requested that he do his studying in his tent from then on.

Nathaniel had, mostly, complied.

It suited him to be by himself anyway, away from the illiterate, muscle-bound or professionally cruel men and woman of action. Lying in his tent, alone with the book, he could ignore them and even drown out the rhythmic grunting and slapping sounds of Borrum and Avisha having sex in their tent and the nightly token and cautious ribald comment from one of the heroes.

When they had climbed far enough for the trees to be thinning out, they were attacked as the dark closed in.

The invaders were the short, stunted and ugly but strong remnants of the mountain orcs who had served the old masters of fortress Graskan, and had not the wit to fashion bows or throw their spears.

Facing the experience of the expedition and Borrum's organisation, half of them had fallen to ranger arrows and two even to Avisha's thrown knives before they came within striking distance. The heroes, finally showing the skill they were hired for, made short work of any who came through the ranger's arrows and close to the fires. 

Borrum and the others, standing as the second line, didn't even need to raise their swords and the only wound sustained by a member of the group was a nasty gash on the upper arm of the hero Doman, who fought with a wickedly curved blade in each hand and had dispatched five of the orcs.

Crouching behind the fighters, grasping his staff in one white-knuckled hand and praying that he would not need it, Nathaniel had unconsciously clasped the Wizards' Malefitorium in his other hand and been shocked to his core when it seemed to move, squirming as though waking up and sending a pulse up his arm that left it tingling several moments after he had snatched his hand away.

He was still staring in disbelief at his hand when the heroes bellowed for healing. Shaking himself violently, he bundled the Wizards' Malefitorium in it's wrappings as he hurried to give aid.

The wound on Doman's arm had not impeded his ability to behead the orc who gave it to him and would heal well enough with a rough bandage, but Nathaniel had been better trained than that. He set about cleaning it with boiled water and a splash of quatro-distilled Vodka that made Doman's jaw clench hard enough to make the veins in his neck stand out.

The hero refused to let Nathaniel sew the edges of the wound together, so he used a small amount of a very precious powder which fused the two halves. 

Borrum let him finish with Doman and then ordered the company into a guarded circle.

"Cleric," he said bluntly. "Start talking."

"Orcs," Nathaniel started, equally bluntly. "They have survived the centuries, but they are diminished. In the days of the Wizards, they were larger, smarter, faster.

"It has always been known that remnants survived around all the old fortresses, and philosophers have argued about what this means about the nature of magic. We still have a week's march to get to the fortress Graskan. We may encounter larger and more deadly orcs before we reach it."

There was a brief moment's silence before the ranger Cilar slowly asked "There is more magic, near the fortress?"

"That is what we think," Nathaniel replied. "Before us, nobody has ever visited an intact fortress, but we know that all the destroyed fortresses have orcs and other magical beings inhabiting the upper slopes of their mountains."

"Cleric," Doman said, in a careful voice, "my arm is nearly healed."

It took several seconds for the implications of this to seep into the other's minds and when it did, Borrum almost had to restrain Avisha from killing the cleric where he sat.

Clerics know many charms of healing, of cleansing and of reviving, but although they do make wounds heal faster and bones knit straighter, they are not so effective that the poor suffer from not being able to afford a cleric's services.

To have a deep wound almost healed meant magic, and none of them could entirely restrain the impulse to skewer a suspected wizard upon whatever weapon they held in their hand. Even Borrum had to exercise a great effort of will to prevent himself half drawing his sword.

Nathaniel simply sat and watched them calmly. He had been hoping fervently, since the expedition began, that he would begin to feel the magic as they ascended and had worked hard to ensure they viewed his knowledge and the Wizards' Malefitorium as vital to the success of their expedition.

None of them would turn back - greed and personal pride would see to that.

Finally, Borrum broke the tense silence. "Cleric," he said in a low growl. "I suspect you were expecting this. We need you, and so far you haven't shown me any cause to distrust you. But I will cut out your tongue if I need to.

"Now, everyone get to bed or on guard, and quick about it. We will need to be doubly alert from here on in."

Nathaniel went quietly to his tent, and wisely chose to read by the light of a candle.

The next day was hard. Swords were kept loose and bows were carried in hand. The rangers moved in a loose cloud about the body of the travellers, visible briefly on either side or ahead or sometimes behind but never seen. The heroes, used to charging at vaguely seen shapes among the trees, became jumpy and short-tempered until Borrum ran ahead and had a low word with one of the rangers.

From then on, they moved further out and were not seen.

They made camp before sundown and nobody was in a friendly mood - the heroes were grumpy and sullen, the rangers were withdrawn and kept apart, and the thieves and explorers were twitchy and nervous. 

Nathaniel retired to his tent early and for once did not read the Wizards' Malefitorium before sleeping. He did, however, rest his head on it. 

The next day he began to see flashes of familiarity in the land around them. 

That day had set the standard for the days that followed. The second day, the trees thinned towards scrub and the rangers gave up hiding and spaced themselves around the party, within easy shouting range.

Nathaniel stopped reading the Wizards' Malefitorium each night, but he still slept with his head on it and each day the terrain became more and more familiar. As the nights passed, he began to dream but not to remember.

They were not attacked again, at night or during the day, but Nathaniel started seeing mounds of strange-shaped rock that he was almost sure were trolls that had lost their life as the magic faded.

Nobody relaxed their vigilance and nobody failed to react when, as they approached an overhanging cliff that hid the mountain above them from view, Nathaniel suddenly stopped and shouted a warning.

There was a very intense and very still moment before Borrum, very evenly, said "Cleric?"

Nathaniel had reacted from a feeling of sudden panic and could still feel a mixture of fear and helplessness that would have opened his bowels if it were not so faint.

He glanced around, not seeing a confirmation on anyone else's face - no surprise, no consternation, no superstitious fear of magic.

If there was magic here, only he could feel it.

Slowly, the answer began to shape itself in his head.

"We're near an old guard post," he said cautiously, feeling the hard certainty of personal knowledge where there should be only supposition.

"It may be inhabited and it may contain treasure."

That decided it for Borrum. "Where?" he asked bluntly.

Nathaniel turned, seeing the clues in the landscape slotting into place, knowledge that made his blood run cold.

Where had he read this? The Wizard's Malefitorium said nothing about guard posts with magical aura traps, and neither did any other record!

Nonetheless, the knowledge drew him and he headed off along the cliff face.

"This way," he said, only half sensing the rest of the party fan out around him.

The guard posts of the fortress Graskan were not made to be obvious and the keen eye of a ranger spotted the door almost before Nathaniel did. 

He approached it as if in a dream, as the rest of the party divided their attention between the rocks and scraggly bushes around them and the height of the cliff face above them.

Nathaniel pressed on the rock around the door, finding ancient yet not eroded depressions in the rock, awakening ancient and faded magic.

The door started ponderously breaking open but stopped before it had cleared the lintel, the magic spent.

Now the entire party felt the excitement of incipient discovery mingled with the fear of ancient horrors, and blades were drawn and arrows nocked as the raiders, with pry bars and brute strength, forced the door open.

No light could be seen through the door, so torches were made and passed around. The station was not occupied and at first nobody could see any other door, until the entrance to a staircase was found hiding around a corner.

There were several rooms extending back into the cliff and one obvious common room. The stone was unnaturally smooth, prompting most of the party to make surreptitious peasant warding signs, but there was little left of any cloth and only a few wooden items, a table and several chairs, survived.

There was no armour and the only thing of interest was a scroll discovered in a stone alcove in one room. It was given to Nathaniel, but he absent-mindedly put it in his pouch for later study.

The cleric was feeling strange, a faint tingling in his hands and feet and a sense of dislocation which had started when he first felt the guard station's guarding wards and which seemed to be growing slowly stronger.

The staircase went steeply upwards and culminated in another stone door which was, thankfully, easier to open.

When they passed through they could see, looming on the horizon, growing from the mountain less than half a day's march away, the fortress Graskan.

They stood and stared at it in a mixture of awe and anger until Borrum quietly said "We sleep in the guard station tonight, and enter the fortress tomorrow. Get a move on, everyone."

They divided up the rooms among them, spacing themselves out for protection as well as for their first real taste of privacy since reaching the lower slopes of the mountain, and it was then Nathaniel remembered the scroll.

From the outside it simply looked like vellum that has survived longer than it should, with an ancient and cracking leather thong tied around it.

He untied it carefully, managing to keep it intact, and unrolled the vellum with gentle fingers.

Wrapped inside it there was a necklace consisting of a small ruby, cut without facets, mounted in silver and strung on a thin silver chain.

Nathaniel picked it up vaguely, his attention already on what was written on the single sheet of vellum.

His heart skipped a beat as he saw, written in the same dead script and tongue as the Wizards' Malefitorium, a spell to reveal the secrets of the fortress Graskan. 

He picked up the sheet in shaking hands, forgetting that one of them was still holding the necklace, and read it through, his lips moving slightly as he almost sounded out the syllables.

Hidden behind the parchment, the ruby on the necklace began to glow softly but it is doubtful he would have noticed were it in plain view.

The sense of dislocation deepened, the tingling in his hands and feet growing to an itch through his entire body.

He raised his eyes, staring almost sightlessly at the far wall, looking, although he did not realise it, straight at the throne room of the Fortress Graskan.

The tingling became an identifiable sense of restlessness which centred on his belly and his hips and made him feel twitchy and impatient without knowing for what.

The wall he was staring at began to seem vaguely translucent and he caught fleeting glimpses as of shadows moving in its depths.

As he stared, transfixed, it seemed he could recognise shapes in the shifting play of light and shade and saw orcs over-running human armies and devouring the bodies.

He saw great mages unleashing fire and lightning upon their enemies, and foot-soldiers perishing in agony as the marrow in their bones turned to hot lead.

He saw slaves carrying huge dishes at lavish banquets and dancing girls in startling clarity as they writhed, dressed only in veils or in chains or in lengths of gossamer silk, their long legs and full, heavy breasts stirring passions he had rigidly controlled through all his years of study and left him aching for consummation.

At the head of the table he saw a mighty throne, and in the throne he saw a figure almost lost in the shadows, despite fire-light and torch-light shining on long calves, glinting off the angle of a naked thigh and caressing the slopes of richly curved breasts.

He saw the figure, whose head was lost in darkness, look directly at him from the depths of the stone and the spans of centuries, and catch and hold him with eyes glinting vivid green.

She raised one arm, long and slender, and beckoned, and in his mind he heard her say "Come to me,little boy, and be my slave."

He shuddered violently as he came inside his britches, and was asleep before he had finished shaking.

The morning was bright and the mountain air was clear and crisp, but Nathaniel's mind was none of those things. 

He felt as though he had not slept at all and was troubled by vague recollections of dreams of warfare, of feasting and of frantic orgies, dreams which, no matter how hard he tried, yielded up no more details to his recollection.

Nonetheless, even he found it easy to maintain the brisk jog which Borrum set as they approached the fortress Graskan.

All but him moved in a semi-crouch, the rangers with arrows nocked to strings, the fighters with swords drawn and the thieves and explorers with staffs held ready or knives in hands.

They saw no movement, however, before they reached the sheer walls of the fortress - not even the scuttling of a lizard or fleeting shadow of a bird. 

They stood a stone's throw from the fortress walls and stared up and about, momentarily at a loss.

"Well, cleric?" Borrum asked.

Nathaniel shook himself and stepped closer, eyes scanning, trying to dredge up every clue he had ever encountered. 

The walls were nearly a bow-shot high and although they looked like rough-hewn granite they were smoother than glass, giving almost no resistance to the touch, and no seams visible anywhere.

As hard as he thought, his mind drew a blank on an entrance. Finally, he turned around.

"We look for a door," he said. "Then we try the grapples."

In the end, they did not need to debate how to get a grapple over the battlements. When they found the huge gates, stone banded with blackened iron, they found a small gate set into them. When Nathaniel tried the latch, it moved as though made yesterday.  

The hero E'layor pulled him back so sharply his feet almost left the ground and the party scattered in a circle around the black opening into the fortress Graskan.

For a tense moment, there was no movement except the air.

"Torches," Borrum ordered, and the thief-explorer Carak sidled forwards along the wall, lit two torches quickly using flint and steel, and hurled one inside, waiting five heartbeats before hurling the other.

They all stared intently into the darkness, the rangers sighting along drawn arrows, before Borrum nodded curtly to the hero G'mor, who approached the door obliquely, slid inside with the door itself to his back and slid around it like a striking python, reporting quickly that no movement was visible.

The others entered in order of martial ability, those with spare hands carrying torches, and rapidly fanned out inside what turned out to be a huge, roofed-over space, the roof high above them and the walls disappearing into the gloom.

After terse words from Borrum the party split up, four groups each with one hero, one ranger and one thief headed out, leaving Borrum and Nathaniel alone by the doorway.

Nathaniel would much prefer to have been left alone.

Thinking was becoming difficult - despite the fact he had never been here, there was an air of familiarity overlaying everything and he was certain that whatever they discovered, he would already know.

His hand almost strayed to the necklace around his neck and he experienced a wrenching second of dislocation as his mind tried to think why he had put it on and, at the same time, tried to prevent him from realising that he had. 


Queen of the Dead Fortress Ch. 02



Author's Note: 

If you haven't read the first one, go and do so, now.

I mean it.

Really.

Done that? 

Right.

This contains non-consenting mind control and sex. Quite a lot of it.

If you're not happy with that, move on.

If you are: read on.

#

Queen of the Dead Fortress 2: Lord and Master

#

Nathaniel stood in morning sunlight on the topmost tower of the fortress Graskan, his chest bare above a luxuriant, intricately embroidered silk sarong. 

He stretched his arms to the sides, feeling his new warrior's muscles, that he had gifted to himself with his thoughts, pull and settle with a feeling of power that made him laugh out loud. How could anyone's muscles give true power compared to he, who was master of the fortress Graskan? 

Nathaniel stretched out his mind, dipping into the fortress beneath him. He could sense every servant, old or new. Every corpse had been reanimated successfully, including those skeletons damaged by the desperate heroes Nathaniel had arrived with. The ancient servants spoke their ancient tongue, dead now but intelligible to him, who was their master. He could sense too the two mighty-thewed heroes E'layor and G'mor, and the warrior-tactician Borrum, who had treated him with such contempt on the mission to find the fortress but now served him with true and unbreakable loyalty.

And he could sense ... he had to close his eyes to luxuriate in how well could sense Avisha. The former thief-assassin, once Borrum's lover and now his personal bodyguard, was standing behind him. He turned around to gloat over her properly.

In place of the form-fitting black silk and suede clothes she had once worn from neck to wrists and ankles, with soft leather boots and gloves, she now wore no clothes at all.

Leather straps festooned her body to hold her multiple knives and short swords to her hips, thighs and across her belly and back, but there was not one scrap of fabric about her person. Even her boots had been replaced by leather soles held on by more leather straps. Nathaniel had made sure that straps crossed between, and accentuated, her firm and high breasts. It amused him to make her display herself even more than nudity already was.

Every strap was gleaming black, which contrasted nicely with Avisha's milky white skin and reminded Nathaniel entertainingly of her previous garb. There was a silver chain connecting rings through each nipple. Inserting the rings had not made her so much as flinch. 

Nathaniel fucked her at least once a day. It amused him tremendously to have her as his submissive bedslave after the long days she had spent in open hostility, and the nights she had noisily fucked Borrum in their tent.

Her eyes were hard, lifeless, but not dead. Taking her will had taken some of her initiative as well, reducing her effectiveness as a thief and even as a protector, but her abilities to fight were only improved by removing all of her self-interest.

He reached up to cup her breast, enjoying the feel of the firm round flesh in his hand. She did not react. 

He reached down. She was dry. With a thought from him, she was wet enough for him to push a finger inside her. She still did not react. He laughed. If he wanted a reaction, he merely had to think and she would be collapsing, helpless with lust. But this was as amusing as still having her chained in the dungeons.

With his finger still inside her, he sent his mind out again. The fortress Graskan still had no new servants who were loyal of their own volition, but all the reanimated warriors and servants were there because they knew the benefits of serving a mage, and the dancing girls had all willingly accepted their positions as bedslaves in return for physical perfection, eternal youth and the delights of elevated lusts.

Nathaniel was confident that, in time, more would come to realise that willingly serving a mage was preferable to losing their self and serving anyway.

He withdrew his finger from Avisha, then licked it idly. The magic constantly coursing through him gave him a near-permanent erection, almost as effectively as the silver slave ring that Elconcelj, before he had realised her ruse, had placed about his cock and balls. But now it was because he was Master. 

He turned his attention to Elconcelj, who was kneeling submissively with back straight and shoulders back to accentuate her breasts. 

He stepped forward, parting his sarong. She opened her mouth obediently, carmine lips stretching to accept a cock appropriate to his station. She took him easily into her throat. He usually had her use her hands to give him as much pleasure as she could, but it sometimes pleased him to simply use her as a receptacle. She no longer had any capacity to scheme against him, but demeaning her like this still gave him a gloating feeling of triumph.

He received less physical pleasure when using her like this, but it did mean that he could stand here and fuck her mouth for quite some time before ejaculating into her.

Later, he strolled through his domain, Avisha pacing silently behind him and Elconcelj walking docilely in front with a fine silver chain leading from his wrist to the filigreed silver collar about her neck. He had added his robe, but left it open across his muscled torso. 

He, alone of everyone in the fortress, carried no weapon, not even that most useful of tools, a small knife. What need had he of weapons? He could destroy everyone with a thought, and there was nothing he needed tools for that he could not do with his mind. 

Even the maids they passed, cleaning the floors on hands and knees, with perfect, available, nubile bodies and the ever-present hope of being noticed and taken as a personal bedslave by their master, carried sturdy knives at their hips. He had once taken one of these maids - he had no idea which one - against a tapestry, holding her knife against her throat and wondering if her fear would become stronger than her loyalty. It had not.

He descended far into the fortress, to the bedrock from which it grew. To the troll breeding pits. The unrecognisable, misshapen figures they had passed on their journey to the fortress had indeed been dormant trolls, most of which had since woken up. They could only move during daylight hours, when the sun did not interfere with the flow of magic, but they were getting progressively stronger and would soon be active at all hours. Those dormant in the fortress itself were already that strong.

The massive troll guards on the doors, each one easily dwarfing all three humans, bowed as low as their structure allowed. 

"MY LORD." Their voices were formed by air blowing through flexible stone pipes. They were frequently indecipherable to human ears, and sometimes screamed, but were equally as often surprisingly beautiful. 

Inside the pits, living rock grew slowly, tended by trolls who shaped it until it gained sentience and stepped free from the walls to join the growing ranks of Nathaniel's army. None of the buds were as yet recognisable, but Nathaniel knew they would be ready to harvest within five years. He was content to wait. No army could breach the walls of the fortress Graskan while he was resident, so he would wait until he could send his armies out to pillage and to bring back tribute and fresh slaves and servants.

In upper levels, the orcs were bred. Orc mothers screamed as they gave birth, the first generation already ready after three months. Each orc baby already showed that it would be stronger, meaner, and more intelligent than its parents. The dumb things that had attacked the human party heading towards the fortress had, when Nathaniel was enthroned, crawled terrified up to its walls, driven by ancestral memories they did not understand. They served Nathaniel now, through fear or compulsion.

The generation currently being born would know true loyalty.

In the fortress' massive courtyard, a couple of wagons, crewed by reanimated servants and escorted by reanimated warriors, had returned carrying food bought from (now terrified) farmers in the closest villages. Common folk where, as Nathaniel knew, better at keeping the important oral histories than learned folk where. Even if the histories were inaccurate, the essential truths were preserved. The most important essential truth here was: Fear the mage, and bend the knee. Nathaniel had not even bothered to give these servants knowledge of the current tongue. They had not needed it.

He returned to his throne room, strolling leisurely through the fortress Graskan, revelling in the hive of activity around him as the ravages of time were prepared and the army rebuilt. 

He had barely sat upon his throne when a commotion in the main courtyard drew his immediate attention.

Borrum lead the party into the throne room, G'mor and E'layor following them with drawn blades. 

Six warriors, dressed identically in garments similar to the old armour of the fortresses, escorted five women - all young, all beautiful, all wrapped demurely in travelling capes of good quality.

Nathaniel's eyebrows rose. There was no fear or anger here. There was ... excitement? He sat up straighter, casting his eyes over them to spot the leader. It was not, as he had assumed, one of the warriors, all of whom bent their knees and their heads to him.

The tallest of the women stepped forwards, her eyes bright, her hair gleaming black and her face set in an expression Nathaniel was startled to recognise as adoration.

"My Lord!"

Nathaniel was too surprised to respond.

"My Lord, my name is Talienal. We received word of your mission to the fortress Graskan, but barely dreamed to hope you would succeed!"

Nathaniel had to work hard to hide his disbelief. He waved a hand. "Continue."

Talienal bowed her head humbly. "My family served the fortress Graskan and its lords for three centuries before the mage wars. We were sent into safety so we could preserve memories and documents for the day when an heir to the lords of old would arise again."

She looked up, eyes shining. "We began our journey as soon as we knew that an heir had been enthroned!"

Nathaniel didn't try to stop himself from laughing out loud.

He let his eyes roam over the party. The warriors looked strong and capable, with armour and weapons in good condition but clearly not just for show. They all knelt with their heads bowed, in two rows flanking the women.

The women in turn were all young and slender, all wrapped in their travelling cloaks but their faces promising nubile delights. None of then had at any point looked worried, or uncertain. None of them had stared at Elconcelj, kneeling docilely at his side with her naked breasts and silver collar and nipple chain. None of them had glanced twice at Avisha, standing at his other side in her beweaponed nudity. 

Talienal was staring at him with devotion. The other women had their heads lowered, but not so much that he could not see their shy but devoted smiles.

He leaned forwards in his throne. "How would you serve me, Talienal whose ancestors served mine?" 

She stepped forwards, undoing the tie at the neck of her traveling cloak so it fell off her shoulders to pool on the floor behind her. "However you would wish me to, my lord."

Nathaniel's eyes bulged. Underneath the cloak, and above her fine suede boots, she was wearing only a diaphanous silk skirt hanging from a belt of delicate gold chain low on her hips, a filigreed gold collar about her neck, and a fine gold chain between her nipples. Each nipple was capped by a ruby that glittered like fire. 

Her body was as perfect as Elconcelj, who had the benefit of Graskan's magic. Her skin was blushed with an olive tint and seemed to glow in the sunlight pouring through the throne room's high windows. Her waist was narrow, her hips wide. Her thighs were firm and fleshy, her arms slender but with a hint of strength. Her breasts, joined at the nipples by the fine gold chain, were bulbous but firm, jutting out from her chest without sag and swelling sideways enough to gently touch each other.

Nathaniel rise to his feet without thinking of it as his cock rose beneath his robes.

He forced his feet to stay where they were. He tore his eyes away from Talienal to look at the other women. As one, they undid their cloaks and let them fall. They were dressed as Talienal, with silver instead of gold and no gems over their nipples. Each one was as beautiful, but Talienal outshone them all.

Nathaniel had to laugh in pure delight. He walked down the steps from his throne to the floor, stopping in front of Talienal. 

He reached out to grab one breast, revelling in the silky warmth and the weight in his hand. Talienal sighed happily.

"You are the first servants to come to the fortress Graskan reborn," he said, glancing around at the warriors and the women. "The first of many. You, Talienal, will sit with me at dinner this evening and serve me in my bed tonight."

She dropped her eyes, blushing. "I am unworthy, Lord."

#

The larders of the fortress Graskan were not empty. Caravans sent out into the world had returned moderately successfully, but they were mere additions. When the magic had reanimated servants, it had also restored the food piled in the fort's vast larders. The inhabitants of the forts had, for the first month, lived on food as old as the mage wars.

That evening, the cooks prepared the old and the new for a banquet as sumptuous as any the fort had experienced in the old days.

Nathaniel had not had peers, only servants. There had been no minor lords in a wizard's fortress, and even the most trusted servants, had still been servants. When the lords of the fortress Graskan gave banquets, they sat back and watched in amused tolerance as their lessers acted out a circus of hedonism.

Talienal's attendants danced, writhing sensuously in perfect synchrony, breasts swaying and bouncing as they contorted their bodies in erotic shapes, caressing themselves and acting out sexual acts and climaxes so realistically that their imaginary partners were almost visible.

The existing dancing girls were free to eagerly attend to, and take their pleasure from, the men - the reanimated servants and the new heroes - so that the cushion-strewn seating pits in the banquet hall became a writhing mass of orgiastic excess.

Through it all, Talienal attended devotedly to Nathaniel, feeding him choice morsels, holding his cup, stroking and caressing him coyly, keeping him aroused and indulgent.

"Your attendants," he said, gesturing at the girls as, in unison, they spread their thighs and their feet wide and mimed fucking themselves on a cock rising from the floor, "Send them to Borrum, G'mor and E'layor, later. Send two to Borrum. I'm feeling generous."

"Yes, my Lord," she breathed happily in his ear. 

"And who is the leader of your guards? He can enjoy Avisha's body tonight."

"You are generous beyond compare, my Lord."

"Yes," he said, stretching his legs out, feeling his erect cock shifting beneath the silk of his robes as he gestured for her to give him another sip of wine. "I am."

The food was past but the festivities not slowing down when Nathaniel abruptly rose, cupping his hand around Talienal's taut buttocks. "Continue!" He declared, waving an arm. "I am taking Talienal to my bed."

Talienal purred into his ear. Behind his back, she made a series of complicated hand gestures. Her four attendants stopped their dancing to sink into full prostate bows towards Nathaniel. When he had left the banquet hall, they silently sought out Borrum, G'mor and E'layor, gently but firmly extracting them from their current attendants. One of Talienal's guards, Linnaeus by name, silently fell into step beside Avisha, who made no visible recognition of his presence but whose body language indicated she was treating him as at least as much a threat as a comrade.

They reached Nathaniel's opulent quarters. He sealed the doors with a gesture. 

"You two have fun," he laughed, waving towards the smaller antechamber with its bed for his bodyguard.

When the doors to the main bedroom had closed, Avisha's martial responsibilities were finished and she turned on Linnaeus like a tigress, ripping at his clothes.

#

Talienal had not stopped caressing Nathaniel, over and through his robes, for the entirety of the walk to his chambers.

When the door closed behind them, she began coyly undoing the sash about his waist. He let her, while walking them slowly towards the bed.

She began caressing his naked chest, making awed sounds as she ran her hands over bulging muscles.

His robes were discarded on the ground, leaving his cock jutting arrogantly from his hips. 

With a gasp of wonder, pleasure, and awe, she sank to her knees. He stared down at her in gloating delight as she reached up with both hands to hold him, opened her mouth wide, and reverently slid her lips over him.

He groaned as her warm, wet mouth engulfed him. She managed, with difficulty but determination, to work her mouth entirely over him. She rested for a moment, then pulled back slowly, sucking all the way.

As her head drew back he could see, past the thickness of his cock, her proudly thrusting breasts. His hands itched to seize and squeeze them, but he restrained himself. The feel of her mouth was too good.

Nathaniel could come as often as he liked, of course. He contemplated forcing his seed into her mouth and making her swallow, but no. She was so adorable and worshipful, he did not want to take her mind from her. He would leave her whole. She would remain the first to serve him willingly. 

He stretched his arms above his head, luxuriating in the sensations as her attentions to his cock - and his balls, he was mildly surprised to notice, her fingers tickling and cupping him - made pressure pool in his groin. Those balls her fingers were delicately wrapped around began to feel heavy. 

He groaned to encourage her. She bobbed a little more quickly, then pulled back and off him completely, looking up at him impishly as she licked her lips. 

He was almost disappointed, but he felt like humouring her at least this once.

He took her shoulders, pulling her easily to her feet. The golden chain between her nipples caught on his cock and began pulling it upwards. He did not free it. She gasped and then groaned, biting her bottom lip, her eyes fluttering closed as the rings through her nipples were tugged sharply downwards before the chain slipped off his cock and her breasts bounced back up again.

Her eyes dropped modestly as her head rose near his.

He dropped one hand to the golden chain. Experimentally, he tugged it lightly downwards. She groaned again. He pulled it lightly towards him. She swayed a little, but the main effect was to stretch her nipples. He pulled further, so her breasts shifted and stretched towards him.

Her eyes rolled back behind her closed lids and she groaned as though having an orgasm, making his cock leap.

He suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to be inside her woman's cleft.

He roughly moved her towards the bed. Her eyes opened. For some reason, he stopped.

"Please, Master," she said humbly, almost looking up at him. "May I beg a boon of you?"

"Name it." Yes, he definitely felt like humouring her.

"May I ride you? I am eager to give you as much pleasure as I can, by the actions of my body."

He laughed out loud. Oh, she was magnificent!

He climbed backwards onto the bed, lying down and folding his hands behind his head. "Climb onto me, lovely Talienal."

She scrambled onto the bed, crawling up with her knees spread either side of his legs. She bent her head to kiss along the length of his cock again, then walked her knees up until her hips were above his. She lifted his cock up, then had to gracefully rock back onto her feet and lift herself to get high enough to place him at her entrance.




Queen of the Dead Fortress Ch. 02



She slowly lowered herself down, his swollen head pushing her lips apart. She gasped, bit her lip and lowered herself a little more, no trembling at all in her thighs as she balanced above him. 

Her flesh parted around him. She gasped, took a deep breath, then lowered herself a little more. He watched with fascination. It was the first time he had seen a woman ride him of her own free will. His slaves took him easily and quickly, although their bodies reacted.

The sight of her struggling with her own body's reactions was the most erotic thing he could remember.

She remained poised, kneeling on the balls of her feet, her knees bent sharply yet holding her weight effortlessly, as she took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. Biting her lip, she lowered herself a little more, gasped, and stopped, beginning to sweat. 

Glancing down, he confirmed that she had not yet taken in his head, and still had to spread wider. He grinned with satisfaction.

She took another deep breath, and pushing downwards abruptly, finally splitting around his head and taking him in past the narrow collar at the top of his penis.

She shuddered, gasped, and her legs wobbled. Feeling mischievous, he pushed his hips up slightly while watching her face.

Her eyes flew open, she shuddered, and her knees buckled. She crashed down onto him, taking his entire length in one instant. 

The breath flew from his body as her sheath, as tight as a fist, rammed down around him until he hit hard against her limit.

She screamed, throwing her head back and her shoulders following, her back arching unbelievably, her hands flying to her breasts and crushing them.

She screamed again, with more pleasure this time, then almost fell forwards onto him. 

Her eyes, when he looked into them, were wide, staring, and glazed.

He rocked his hips experimentally. 

She shuddered, eyes rolling back, and mauled her breasts harder. Then her hips began to twist, bending him inside her and making him groan involuntarily.

By the gods, she was fantastic!

He took his hands from behind his head and wrapped them around her waist, just to feel the touch of her skin.

She began moving, taking her hands off her breasts to place them on his chest, leaning forwards to give herself something to brace against as she lifted her hips off his, shuddering and groaning as he slid out of her, making a tortured gasp as she dropped back down over him.

He grinned, using his hands to urge her on.

Still gasping with every movement, she tried to find a rhythm, slowly beginning to move more, getting used to his girth and length and beginning to fuck herself upon him with eagerness.

She seemed to be surrounded by a faint glow. He wondered if he was imagining that because she was so much better than any of his slaves. 

She began bouncing up and down. As she did, she lifted her hands off his chest, her fingertips drawing over his skin with lingering caresses, before starting to sway, beginning to dance above him while using her legs to lift herself up and down, fucking vigorously as his cock, thicker than her wrists, stretched her open.

She began moving in the fast, writhing, undulating, intensely erotic dances her attendants had used. 

He suddenly realised they were the same dances his reanimated slaves knew. He had seen that earlier, but he hadn't thought to wonder about it. How did they know, so precisely? 

In fact, how did they know about the chains? 

His eyes were drawn to the gold chain swinging and jumping between her swaying breasts. He felt an urge to reach for it, but a stronger urge to keep his hands where they were, on her hips, and just stare at the chain and the nipples it pierced. Each nipple was capped by a small ruby. They seemed to burn his eyes, but he could not take his eyes off them.

She was incredible. She was dancing madly, writhing with perfect control, while at the same time fucking him with the most intense, tight, glorious cunt he had ever experienced.

He groaned, feeling the heat rise in his chest and his face but unable to take his eyes off her breasts. Between his hands, her narrow waist twisted and bent, her skin running over his fingers. Somehow, that too was intensely erotic.

He wondered muzzily how she was doing it. That caused a brief pang of worry. Shouldn't he be the one in command? 

He tried to seize her waist with his hands and hold her still, but his arms seemed too weak to move and he was distracted by the bouncing, swaying motion of her breasts and the sinuous writhing of her torso. The rubies capping her nipples seemed to be burning into his mind.

Then he tried to move beneath her, to fuck her, to break her rhythm, but the weight pooling in his balls was too great.

With a desperate effort of will, he tore his eyes off her breasts. He found himself staring at her face. 

Her eyes opened wide and looked straight back at him.

"Oh my Lord, you are magnificent!" She gasped, her hands dropping once more to his torso, her fingers digging in to his flesh and her sharp nails, as if by accident, stabbing at his nipples, unbelievably causing a surge of pressure in his cock.

"Don't look at my face, look at my breasts," she cooed, throwing her arms out wide and shimmying her shoulders. The suggestion was enough to make him drop his eyes. The rubies caught him again, dancing and swaying atop the most beautiful pair of breasts he had ever seen.

Dimly, he tried to cast his mind out, to summon help. There seemed to be a fog all around him. 

With a supreme effort, he reached out to Avisha. 

Lust exploded all through him as he experienced everything she felt - tied to her bed by ankles and wrists, arms and legs spread wide and stretched, while Talienal's guard captain, Linnaeus, fucked her with as much skill and tirelessness as Talienal was now fucking him, and with a cock almost as gigantic as Nathaniel had made his own.

With a cry of helpless lust, he tore his mind away and back to his own body, only to realise that he was teetering on the verge of coming, and that two rubies dancing madly atop two perfect breasts were becoming his entire world.

Yes! Coming! When he spurted his seed into Talienal, he could take her mind! She would be his!

Suddenly he urged himself on, giving in to the immense pleasure she was pouring into his body.

"Oh, yes, Master! Come inside me! Fill me up with your seed! Oh, Master, I beg you!"

He shouted loudly enough to echo inside his huge, tapestry-strewn bedchamber and his body convulsed off the bed as he exploded, pouring an almost impossible amount of his seed inside Talienal's lithe, welcoming body.

He screamed, the explosion becoming painful as Talienal did not stop fucking.

When he collapsed back onto the bed, lungs heaving, he was staring sightlessly but still fixedly at Talienal's nipples. 

She stopped her dancing and her fucking, settling down around him with a groan that contained within it lust, gloating and triumph. She slowly bought her hands in to her belly, pressing over her skin with fingers spread, gasping as the pressure massaged her insides around him.

"Ah, yes," she said. "You are inside me now."

With the last energy he had, Nathaniel desperately threw himself, through his seed, into her. It was nearly the first trick he learned. He knew he could take a woman's mind as easily as blinking. Through her, he could take the mind of any man who came inside her. 

He threw himself into her mind, and felt a great, vast darkness open up in front of him. He tried to stop, but found himself falling. His mind screamed but the sound was swallowed up by the hot, wet, silky blackness all around him. 

He suddenly exploded into the light again. It took him a second to realise he was looking through her eyes at his own face. He made one further effort to take control, but there was nothing against which he could push or pull. 

She lifted her hands to her breasts, and squeezed. 

He felt that. He felt everything her body did - he felt her full, ripe, breasts sitting heavily on her chest, and he felt the metal chain between her nipples. He felt their weight in her hands. He felt her body - slender, young, full of energy and youthfulness and femininity. He felt her powerful thighs spread wide and his body between them. And he felt the incredible pressure of his still hard cock inside her. He felt it all, and it was wondrous, and he tried to scream again.

"Dearest cousin," she murmured, her voice sounding strange inside her own head. "Such a naive boy. All you had was the Wizard's Malefitorium. We had so much more. You should have done more research."

She reached down once more, pressed her hands over her belly, and breathed out with a happy sigh. He felt her take control of every servant of the castle. He felt them, their final tenuous connections, suddenly gone and given over to her. He railed and sobbed, to no avail.

"Ah, so delicious! What a body Avisha has! Hmmm, I could let Linnaeus know he could stock fucking her now, but oh no, I want to experience that! I want him to continue as long as he can, while I watch! Oh, my, the fun you must have had, little boy!"

She reached up to her nipples and carefully, delicately, manipulated the ruby-capped rings until she could withdraw them. He felt the erotic shudder that passed through her body, and felt his own cock throb inside her in response.

Did that mean he was still connected to his body? Did that mean ... But no. He could no more make it move than he could make her move.

She held up the gold chain in front of her eyes. The chain, the rings, and the two small rubies. With another quick manipulation, the rubies were separated. "So glad I remembered those," she murmured, before placing them carefully to one side. 

"Now, this chain. This chain dates from the original times. This was worn by consorts to the Lords of Forts. Now, it will be worn again."

She bent down. He felt every sensation as she pinched one nipple, drew it up, and pushed the gold rings through. He screamed, and he kept screaming when she punctured the other.

It was the last sensation he ever knew, before she snuffed out his mind with a casual thought.



Queen of the Dead Fortress



Borrum's voice brought him sharply back to reality.

"Cleric, what do we have to fear, here?"

Nathaniel forced himself to think. "If the door opened that easily, there may be others here - orcs or even worse, although nobody has yet known about anything worse surviving."

"Magic?"

"There may be traps," Nathaniel admitted. "But I would not be able to detect them." But even as he said that he knew he was lying.

The entrance-way to the fortress Graskan was empty and clean. Not even any dust on the floor. There were several small and one large exit, and they took the large one. There was no map for the fortress that anyone had ever found so they were guided by hunches and, sometimes, by randomly tossing a coin.

They worked their way up, never relaxing or lowering weapons and never finding a light source until they had climbed what they estimated as being nearly to the top of the battlements and they finally found a room that was not empty.

The roof was covered in some form of glass and let in pure, clean light. There was a throne at the far end, but the room seemed too small and modest to be a throne room for Wizards.

The walls were carved, not smooth, and there were suits of armour and racks of weapons around the entire periphery. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed, but there were the skeletons of armoured men strewn about the floor, weapons clean and bright clasped in skeletal hands. 

There were five more exits from the room, none of them covered by a door or by a hanging. 

"Spread out," Borrum said, in an uncharacteristically hoarse voice. "Cover the exits."

Moving with unexpected discipline, those closest to each exit did so, none leaving themselves too exposed but each five members of the party managing to tear their gaze off the room.

The others began to step cautiously through the space, staring in wonder around them, all feeling the skin-prickling fear of magic that had made men wait so many centuries before daring to investigate any of the remaining fortresses of wizardry.

Only Nathaniel stayed where he was, locked in place, staring into the room, not entirely sure where he, or his body, were. His hand crept up to his neck to clutch at the necklace through his clothes and his lips began to form syllables that he had never before uttered and never before imagined as he read out the spell from the scroll, whispering phrases that had not been pronounced correctly since the mage-war which had ended the reign of wizardry and destroyed half of the fortresses.

There was a moment, after he had finished whispering, when he felt balanced on the edge of a precipice so high the clouds and the eagles drifted far below him.

Then Doman, who had ventured closest to the throne, screamed.

All eyes whipped towards him and were in time to see him shrivel and desiccate, skin shrinking over bone and muscle evaporating, in just a heartbeat turning from a powerfully built fighter into an ancient mummy.

Then he collapsed, dust puffing from his crumbling joints as what had been a skeleton released its grip on his ankle and rose from the floor.

She had the body of a rich sultan's dancing girl, slim-hipped, large-breasted, wide-waisted and long-legged, her skin flawless and tinted olive and most of it exposed. 

She wore a red cloak shot with silver and gold threat and fastened about her neck with a brooch in the shape of intricately entwined serpents.

Her hair was almost to her waist and held off her face by silver combs above each ear.

The only other thing she wore above her waist was a fine silver chain attached at each end to two gold rings, one piercing each full, fleshy nipple. 

Bracelets and bangles hung heavy from each wrist and ankle and her fingernails were long. A band of fine silver mail wrapped around her hips, descending from a heavy gold chain about her waist, but her shapely legs were barely covered and her feet, painted with flowing patterns, were not covered at all.

She laughed like breaking glass, lifting her arms to admire her freshly animated form, flashing a smile filled with sharp, pointed teeth from a face that was crafted for beauty but wore a mask of cruelty.

A ranger's arrow struck her directly between her breasts and was gone, leaving no trace of its existence. 

She laughed again, pointed a taloned finger at the ranger, and he vanished in a pillar of white fire that burned for half a heartbeat and then was gone, leaving only fine ash and the memory of a scream.

Borrum, who was not in her line of sight, whipped a dagger out of his belt and Nathaniel, even across the room, recognised it with the clarity of the newly awoken as an artefact, a dagger made and enchanted to pierce spells and destroy defences. 

The cleric had not once imagined that he did not, alone, possess all artefacts carried by the expedition.

He also saw, as Borrum drew back his arm to throw, all that had happened to him.

He saw the enchantment that had slowly woven itself about him since the orcs attacked, he saw the spell laid on him by the scroll and the necklace.

He saw, even further back, the long years of waiting of the Wizards' Malefitorium, a book more powerful than ever imagined, as it had been passed down through the men of a family naturally gifted in magic until one day it would find itself in the hands of one able to return it to a home.

He saw all this and realised he had been a mere puppet since his birth and had been directed over the past week without a thought for his own desires or whether he may even have been a useful ally instead of a body to be used and then discarded.

He saw that and he saw also the full horror that awakening this fortress would be and he raised an arm and, with a flick of his fingers, drove wakefulness from Borrum's mind and made him slump senseless to the floor, the artefact dagger dropping from his fingers unthrown.

Nathaniel had seen even more. He had seen his family's birth as offspring of a Wizard, and would see his birth-right regained.

The woman turned to look at him, smiled even wider, and purred "I, Elconcelj, have a husband again, at last."

Horror had seized some members of the party, caution others, but at this Avisha's self-control snapped and she gave a shriek of rage, a long knife leaping into her hand as she herself leapt not for the woman but for Nathaniel. 

She had barely even moved before the skeleton in front of her leapt to its feet and easily blocked her knife on its sword.

The battle was short and hopeless. The skeletons could not be killed, merely destroyed piece by piece. 

Only G'mor, the largest member of the party, who wielded a battle-axe in each hand, had any success, his axes smashing straight through the skeletons, shattering arms that tried to block and sending pieces of bone scattering everywhere. But even he succumbed to weight of numbers.

Those thieves or rangers who tried to flee, to find a better battle-ground, were trapped in the complete darkness of the fortress corridors and butchered. 

Only those who tried to stand and fight were not killed outright, and even some of them perished.

Of the heroes only E'layor, who chose a circular shield and long curved scimitar, and G'mor survived.

Of the thieves, only Avisha and Carak lived. Borrum did not regain consciousness in time to take part in the fight and was the only one not wounded.

Of the rangers, none survived.

The woman laughed again when G'mor was finally felled by a blow to the helmet from a monstrously tall skeleton wielding a mace in one hand and a sword in the other, and Nathaniel finally felt the last vestiges of enchantment fall off him.

He waited as the woman walked towards him, absolutely certain that he could feel destiny unfolding about him.

"You came," she purred, reaching out and parting his clothes like water down his chest, the fabric falling to either side to reveal the necklace, ruby glowing brightly, where it rested on his skin. 

She didn't touch it, placing her hands on his chest instead, palms over his nipples and fingers spread. He felt his sexual drive, that had been suppressed through years of study and single-minded pursuit of this moment, awaken with the rush of a burst dam, making him stagger backwards, the world suddenly bright, clear, and limned with silver light.

The woman giggled and pushed forwards against him, the rings through her nipples pressing into his flesh as her hands moved to slide his tunic and jacket off his shoulders, the chain between her breasts cold yet burning into him.

Then he had his back against the wall and they were kissing, hard, Nathaniel's lips bruising while her hands worked at his belt and pushed his pants and his under-clothes off his hips.

He was already hard, impossibly fast, and he braced himself while she lifted herself up, let his shaft slip between her legs and dropped onto him, the fine mail around her waist bunching up between them.

He howled into her mouth and bucked up into her, thrusting with instinct and no skill while she rode him with skill and design, the ruby around his neck glowing bright enough to shine through his closed eyelids and the rings and the chain on her chest burning fiercely into his, searing her presence into his heart.

He came violently and copiously, shooting into her tightly clenched tunnel while she held him until he finished and slid down the wall nearly insensate, slipping out of her still hard.

She stood for a moment, looking around the chamber at the patiently loyal skeletons, the bleeding, dead and unconscious intruders and the throne she had not seen for a millenia and more, and nodded in satisfaction.

#

Nathaniel awoke in a luxurious bed, with sun shining through a glass roof above him and fine silk over and under him.

For a moment he stared about him in shock before remembering, then his face was split by a grin at once childish and fierce. He threw off the sheet above him and walked naked across a floor strewn with rugs towards the only other furniture in the room, a huge standing wooden dresser.

Before he could open it a voice interrupted him.

"I hope my husband slept well?"

He turned to see her standing in front of a door he had not previously noticed, wearing a woven gold belt about her hips, a diaphanously sheer piece of silk hanging from it to her ankles and no cloak, leaving her bare save jewelery from the waist up, heavy breasts sitting easily on her chest. The rings in her nipples, and the chain between them, gleamed bright.

Looking at her, Nathaniel felt himself grow hard again.

She looked at this and laughed, delightedly.

"Is my king ready to service me again?" she asked, teasingly.

Nathaniel grew even harder as she glided across the floor towards him, hips swaying from side to side.

He swallowed in a suddenly dry throat. "I am king?" he asked.

"You are my husband," she replied as she drew near to him, looking him directly in the eyes. "You are my king."

He felt elated, a fierce joy at having reached a life goal that was only ever vaguely there in his mind.

She reached out and cupped his testicles, squeezing them gently, making him shudder and groan. 

He was filled with a sense of power and of potential. He could sense not just her hand on his genitals, as she began to massage his shaft, but her heart beating inside her chest and the fortress Graskan around them, ancient and empty.

He stretched his chest and felt a strange sense of something else stretching at the same time - something connected intimately with the magic and the stones of this place.

As she placed both hands upon him, cupping him with one and stroking with the other, he failed to notice the connection between desire and knowledge as she dropped to her knees before him, opened her carmine lips and slid him between them.

He braced his knees and felt the fortress around him, beneath him, and in a strange way inside him even as she took him deep inside her throat.

As one hand constantly massaged his balls, the other held him securely at the base of his shaft while she slid him out of her mouth, swirled her tongue around his engorged head and sucked him back into her throat, swallowing him until her nose touched his belly.

As the pressure pooled in his loins he felt himself on the verge of a revelation, as though the fortress had something to tell him, if he could only listen in the right way.

He shuddered as she drew his shaft slowly over her pointed bottom teeth and probed the head with her tongue.

As he felt on the verge of a breakthrough, as though there was a great secret he would understand if he could only concentrate on it hard enough, she gently squeezed his balls harder and sucked him to the back of her throat and he groaned, shuddered and came as she quickly pulled him out of her mouth and let him spend himself on her chest, his milky seed splashing onto the inside slopes of her breasts.

As he gasped to a finish, somehow not losing his footing and falling backwards, the sense of impending discovery faded and was forgotten.

She rose gracefully to her feet, his seed glistening wetly on her perfect skin, and kissed him, sliding her tongue possessively around his mouth.

"You need to be dressed like a king," she said, pulling him towards the dresser and throwing the doors open.

When they left the room he was wearing white silk robes shot through with gold threads, and gold sandals. She had insisted upon threading an engraved silver ring over his cock and his balls and the pressure was giving him a permanent erection.

"We can't have you unready, ever again," she had said with a bright-eyed giggle.

She had not cleaned his sperm off her chest and it glinted wetly. 

His robes did not close over his chest and a large expanse of skin was bare.

As she lead him through the fortress corridors, a glow from the stones themselves the only light, he couldn't keep his eyes off her figure. He had lived his life in a small village and in cloistered colleges, but even he had been exposed to women, dressed and nearly so, and there had never been, in his experience, anyone to match her perfection.

As she turned a corner he caught a glimpse of the side of her breast, swelling from her body proud and full, and the constant erection from the ring around his genitals ceased to be a distraction and became something to glory in, to draw power from.

At the same time he saw the connection between the magic of the fortress and her impossible perfection and when they entered the throne room he was walking more upright, his belly flatter, his chest fuller, his skin stretched tighter across it.

When she stopped and turned around she surveyed him for a second and a satisfied, proud gleam entered her eye and her tongue flicked across her lips for a bare second.

"This is the throne room, she said, opening her arms and gesturing expansively about her. "From here, we could rule the world."

The space was huge and sat under an arched ceiling of pure crystal, formed in one single sheet and untouched by the centuries.

At the far end, a raised dais rose five steps from the floor and on it were two massive, ornately carved thrones side by side.

Around the walls were more suits of armour, most of them empty, and racks of weapons of all cultures.

"Trophies," she said with a satisfied smirk, following his gaze.

"Trophies from all the lands and armies conquered by this fort!"

She raised her arms and twirled, laughing delightedly, the chain between her nipples whipping out.

Nathaniel walked into the room slowly, gazing around him with wonder and a little awe as Elconcelj stared at him expectantly.

He approached the thrones slowly, feeling a tingling mix of fear and excitement running through him. 

Unseen behind his back, Elconcelj's predatory grin grew wider. 

As he gazed at the thrones he felt a return of the tingling sense of imminent revelation he had felt in the corridor, knowledge on the edge of his brain and seeping through as impulse and instinct. 

As he slowly neared the thrones, oblivious to anything else in the room, he found himself drawn inexorably towards one of the apparently identical stone chairs. He could not explain why but he found himself standing in front of that one throne and knew absolutely it was meant for him. 

He turned and lowered himself into it, feeling the centuries-old stone match him perfectly. 

He blinked, waking up from the verge of a dream or, perhaps, settling back into it. 

Elconcelj was standing in front of him, almost close enough to touch, with a half triumphant and half triumphal expression on her face. 

"It suits you well, my lord," she said, staring at him with bright, hungry eyes. He settled back, the stone as comfortable as a feather bed against his back, laying his arms along the arms of the throne, feeling inside him the strength and arrogance of the fortress. 

Impulsively, he said "come here," and swept his robes away from his still rigid shaft. 

She only needed a step to stand directly in front of him. She knelt with her knees against the base of the throne, leaning towards him with her hands sliding along his legs. 

Her heavy breasts pressed into his groin and were squeezed around his shaft. 

His seed on her chest had not dried at all and lubricated him as she squeezed her breasts harder around him and slide further up his chest, sparkling eyes fixed on his.

She dropped her head and kissed his bare skin, then slid her tongue down his flesh as he felt his cock grow even harder with the wet pressure of her breasts sliding down it.

Her mouth reached the head of his cock and engulfed it, sliding easily down over him until, incredibly, he was embedded deep in her throat without quite understanding how. 

She pulled back and off him, licking her lips as she left him clean of his seed but wet with her saliva. 

She pushed his knees together and, spreading hers, straddled him, sliding forwards until she was pressed against him, squeezing her breasts and the hard chain between them into his chest as she pressed her mouth onto hers.

She lowered herself straight onto him without needing her hands, settling him deep inside her with her knees fitting perfectly into the throne. 

He felt so deep inside her there could not be any space left, but when he experimentally pushed upwards he felt a shift inside her before his head pressed into her limit.

She groaned, her eyes fluttering, then whispered "Let me do the moving, my lord." 

The throne didn't seem made for the occupant to take an active part in proceedings. As she began to move on, over and around him he settled back and luxuriated in the feel of her heat and firm flesh. 

She squeezed him deep inside her and his mind felt itself lift, the sensations from his body becoming no less real but a background to what he was really feeling, which was the fortress Graskan. 

For the first time, sitting in the throne of the lords of the fortress, he felt its true extent as it squatted on top of the mountain, spreading over the rock but also tunnelling deep into it, an organic structure with roots spreading deep underground. 

He could count the number of rooms and know which ones were most bathed in the life magic of the fortress. He knew how many servants had been awoken and how many remained dead, waiting upon him to fully realise the strength of his magic and recall them to his service. 

Elconcelj lowered her head to his nipples and his consciousness expanded again, this time reaching out of the fortress and into the forest and the rock, realising how the gardens which once had surrounded the fortress had died and over time had all trace of their existence removed by decay and weathering, and he resolved to return them to their former glory. 

He felt his body near completion and his consciousness returned to it. He felt Elconcelj, feeling him about to explode inside her, begin to withdraw to spend him on her belly, and he clamped his hands down hard around her waist. 




Queen of the Dead Fortress



Her eyes opened wide a second before he purged his loins deep within her, where his seed belonged. 

Then he said, impulsively, "It's time to visit my former colleagues."

#

The dungeon in the fortress Graskan was large, and well equipped.

The surviving members of the party were naked, healed of their wounds and chained upright, hanging by their wrists from chains attached to metal girders arching overhead.

The reanimated skeletons were filling out with flesh, becoming gaunt men with scraps of clothing hanging off their bodies.

They were armed with whips and pokers and were making harsh, dry, crackling sounds that were not yet voices or laughter as they tortured the humans.

Wounds healed as Nathaniel watched, but the pain clearly did not fade with the marks upon their skin.

Their heads were hanging exhausted but as Elconcelj and Nathaniel entered, heads came up and instant rage flashed into all five faces. 

Borrum had the discipline to remain silent but the heroes bellowed with rage and Avisha screamed abuse in a gutter patois that Nathaniel barely even understood.

Elconcelj laughed, contemptuous and dismissive, and with with a wave of her hand made Avisha choke on her words.

That shocked the others into silence and for several heartbeats the only sound was the choking and gagging of Avisha before she sagged in her chains, struggling to draw breath.

"Such a pity the others had to die," Elconcelj said musingly as she surveyed the five. "But Graskan will take other servants, in time."

That roused G'mor, who lunged forwards against his chains, uselessly, and snarled "We will never be your servants, devil-spawn!"

Elconcelj's head whipped around, eyes suddenly flashing with anger. "The devils wish they could have spawned my kind!" she snapped. "And you will be the first to bend your knee to me!" 

She raised her hand, fingers spread and rigid, and he froze, becoming suddenly slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, standing with blank face and stolid patience in his chains.

Elconcelj lowered her hand to point at his groin and he stiffened, growing, thickening and rising to point rigidly forwards, fat and long in proportion to his mighty physique.

E'layor shouted "Do not dare, woman!" but she locked his jaw with a wave of her hand.

He continued to make angry noises behind his clenched teeth and the skeletons leapt forward with glee, swinging whips and clubs against his thighs and flanks and shoving hot pokers into his nipples.

Nathaniel waved them back vaguely, staring at Elconcelj with a growing sense of understanding.

As she stalked towards the impassive G'mor, she jerked at the silk skirt she wore, discarding it on the ground, leaving only the belt about her waist.

"You, oafish man, will be the first new human slave for the fortress Graskan arisen," she hissed. "And I will be the instrument of your enslaving, and your manhood will be the instrument of your undoing!"

With a motion of her hands, she made him spread his trunk-like legs and squat. She stepped up onto his thighs, turning around and lowering herself, reaching between her legs to grasp his giant cock and raise it towards her puffy and glistening lips.

She could not simply slide onto him and had to press him inside her, wriggling, gasping with pleasure as his girth forced her lips apart and she steadily forced herself down onto him. 

She raised her hands behind her head, locking her fingers behind his neck to give her support, and, grinning at Nathaniel, said "I may keep this one as a pet."

Nathaniel, watching with a raging and unsatisfied erection, thought Yes, you should. After all, I will be having pets of my own.

As Elconcelj bottomed out on G'mor with a deep groan of satisfaction, Nathaniel felt his gaze drawn irresistibly to where Avisha hung, naked, sweat-sheened and chest heaving as she struggled to regain her breath.

"Have the satisfaction of knowing that you were right to not trust me," He said as he approached her.

She tried to spit at him but her throat was too dry.

Experimentally, feeling the fortress give him knowledge, he raised his hand and pointed at her and made her entire body aroused, face and breasts flushing and nipples erect.

"Stay away from me, wizard-whore!" she managed to gasp out, before he flexed his hand and twisted her womb inside her, making her legs curl up as she tried to double-over in her chains.

"You could resign yourself to your fate," Nathaniel said distantly as he moved his hand experimentally, tormenting her with arousal crawling over and through her flesh like a hundred tongues licking her inside and out, "or you could welcome it. I've heard how much you enjoy sex, at night, in your tent."

Borrum, who had closed his eyes and willed himself to absolute stillness, betrayed himself by a brief clenching of his jaw muscles.

"Either way," Nathaniel continued as he stepped forwards, opening his fingers wide and spreading lust throughout her entire body, "it will happen to you."

Avisha was gasping for breath, trying to draw in air to feed her self-discipline, but not even a lifetime of training, focus and survival in the face of threatened rape and slavery could help her against the magic of the fortress Graskan, which ripped through her defences with the subtlety of a troll's club.

Nathaniel was vaguely aware of Elconcelj was vigorously fucking herself on the unresisting G'mor's gigantic cock, face set in ecstasy as she drew herself all the way up then dropped back down under gravity, slamming onto him and ramming the head of his cock into the entrance of her womb.

He took the final step towards the shivering, sweating Avisha and reached out to cup her swollen mons, sending a quake right through her that forced a gasp of strangled pleasure through her clenched jaws.

He slipped a finger straight into her and felt her grip it instinctively. He followed it with another finger, then forced another in against the pressure of her clenched walls as she shuddered and she fought to pull away against her body pushing forwards. 

He withdrew his fingers and impulsively sniffed, then licked them. She tasted slightly tart, but heady.

He undid his robes, letting them fall away from his permanently priapic cock. 

She tried to look at it and laugh scornfully, but her body's reaction choked her from saying anything.

As he slowly walked around her, enjoying the sight from all angles, she managed to recover enough to gasp out "You doe-eyed fool! Do you really think she won't use you up and then discard you when she's had enough?"

His mind split between complete self-assurance of his own destiny and complete adoration of Elconcelj, he dismissed her question with a mocking laugh as he reached around her from behind to flick one engorged nipple with his finger, making her shudder and her womb spasm with need.

She collected enough of her mind to say, as he grabbed her hips from behind and lined himself up with more gifted knowledge than experience, "Then tell me why the queen of the fortress wears a chain!"

He rammed into her and her anger and her objections disappeared in a storm of lust that shredded her mind and left her as helpless in the face of her body's arousal as G'mor was in the face of Elconcelj's enchantment.

She was hot and tight, clenching him fiercely, and as he forced his way deep into her he felt a swelling sense of power, the magic in the fortress curling around and within him like a thing alive, making his nerves sing with greater than mere sexual arousal.

He laughed with pure, feral, predatory joy as he began slamming into her with force but no subtlety.

Unseen and unheard by him, Elconcelj, who was taking her pleasure from G'mor in her own time, goading his body into greater arousal even as she denied it completion, felt the wash of Avisha's helpless lust and without noticing began to force herself onto the hero's giant cock in a desperate attempt to satisfy her own.

The magic stormed through all four bodies, spilling over to make the other prisoners shudder and sweat and the still gaunt skeletons gibber tonguelessly and lash them with renewed frenzy.

The two chained prisoners, man and woman both, didn't have enough self-awareness left to notice as their minds were burnt clean, returned to a child's blank slate, all will and self and autonomy turned to so much ash.

Elconcelj was swept along on the tsunami, knowing only the moment - her own lust, the over-bearing arousal of her body, the pain in her bouncing breasts and burning thighs and distended tunnel, and the raging fire in her womb.

Nathaniel felt, for the first time, what it truly felt to be master of the fortress Graskan, to have control of all the magic woven, stored and channelled through its stones and to have access to the vast repository of lore it had acquired through its long centuries of occupation.

He laughed like a man demented, but like an emperor demented, feeling the long and empty but never dusty corridors in his mind, the battlements unsullied by war or time, and the servants gone to skeletons but waking up, needing only the touch of a true master to reanimate them fully.

He reached out to them and throughout the fortress Graskan fallen skeletons rose to their feet, growing muscle, sinew and organs, growing skin and, over it, clothing made whole. In the dungeon room, the servants began to laugh and sing and dance around the hanging prisoners, whipping them with renewed vigour.

Nathaniel felt the fortress awaken around him and allowed himself to cum, shooting a prodigious quantity of his seed into the muscular thief.

As he came, the other three came as well.

Avisha's scream mingled with Elconcelj's and the deep, elemental, animalistic grunt from G'mor as he poured himself into the violently spasming witch.

The captives continued to shake, Avisha wracked by violent after-shocks that shook her hanging, sweat-drenched body as Nathaniel stepped backwards, carelessly sliding out of the thief-assassin's body, and Elconcelj fell forwards, popping off the massive hero's giant shaft with an anguished groan, sprawling on the floor on all fours.

Nathaniel looked around with his eyes and the eyes of every servant in the castle, and with a flick of thought he sent his magic through his seed, his essence, into Avisha's body and into the void that was her mind, writing there the mind of a loyal and fierce defender of the fortress Graskan and its ruler.

He also felt a void - a tiny absence. He turned to where Elconcelj knelt on hands and knees, nearly spent, defiant to the last but will crumbling as she saw the defeat of the plans she had hatched before the last ruler of the fortress Graskan had burnt themselves out in the final days of the Mage Wars.

"You were trying to enslave me," he said to her upturned, defeated face.

"You were trying to take the fortress Graskan from me.

"You were trying to distract me, to dilute my influence upon your skin once you found you couldn't control me directly through your womb, so you could trap my mind with your greater knowledge.

"You thought that by keeping my mind clouded, you could work at me until you took Graskan from me."

He stepped forwards until he was standing over her and could see the last traces of hope and defiance die in her eyes.

"Tell me, Elconcelj," he asked, mockingly, "why do you wear a chain?" 

He reached down and took hold of the chain that she wore, the chain that, piercing both of her nipples, marked her as a mage's bed slave and personal pet, and jerked savagely, squeezing a cry of pain from her lips and tears from her eyes as she was hauled to a kneeling position by her nipples.

"But don't fear," he said. "I won't hold it against you. Soon, you won't even be able to hold such thoughts."

Her head was on level with his groin and, submissive now, she opened her mouth and guided his still engorged cock inside.

She performed dutifully to the best of her skill, using her hands to cup and caress his sac and to massage and stroke his shaft as her tongue, her lips and her teeth danced over him.

When he consented and came, she swallowed as a slave should then knelt with her eyes closed and, helpless now and resigned, accepted as his will followed the path of his seed inside and through her, shredding her thoughts, flaying her will, destroying her and recreating an adoring slave in her place.

When he had finished, Elconcelj was no more and Elconcelj gazed up at him with worshipful lust and awaited his command.

With G'mor's seed inside the slave, it was a simple matter for Nathaniel to follow the essence back to its source and create a soldier from the husk that awaited.

He stretched, feeling his body sing as he moulded it into a true warrior-mage's weapon, hard and muscular and regal, skin flowing as muscles grew and settled beneath it.

He focused his attention locally and felt Avisha's body from the inside, feeling what she felt, feeling her long, powerful legs and hard stomach, the burning ache in her stretched arms and the fire that lingered in her breasts and deep inside her.

Yes. It would be fun to play with that one. With a thought he made the chains fall away and refreshed her body, letting her stand tall again.

He turned her head and looked at Borrum through her eyes - at her lover, whose body she knew so well. He stepped her forwards to wipe the sweat from his face, noting the spasm of pain and cold anger behind his eyes.

Yes. This one would be a valuable asset. And seducing him, then taking him, would be so much fun. 

Nathaniel withdrew from control of Avisha's mind, letting her perform the seduction herself, but he stayed inside her. It would be fun to savour that experience, as she used her body to make his betray him.

Nathaniel smiled in his own body, and focused once more on the adoring face of Elconcelj, staring up at him.

Ah, yes. There was another hero still for her. He would watch that, as well.