This post contains: Straight sex, amazoness, elves, prostitution, death?
Lilly And the Raven
By Writefag34
Part 1: The Powerful
Chapter 1
The Change
If you were to look at me now, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe I used to be a noblewoman of Al Zitti, one of those exotic wives of severe military diplomats, eating daintily from delicate china in the Empresses' grand dining hall so that my corset wouldn't feel tighter from the food. Rarely seen in public, for they are rarely let out of the house, and always to be revered and respected and admired from afar. Every little girl should have dreamed of being me. I was born of nobility in Eel'Dora, married off to an even more noble figure in the military off across the ocean in the east, a hapless sacrifice on the altar of international commerce. But that was my life. I was bred to be the head of the household, but always subservient to men. I hated the life, but knowing there was no escape, turned that hatred into productivity in my wifely duties. I really was the model noblewoman, proud, aloof, beautiful, and submissive. All of this made my downfall all the more spectacular, the humiliation and disgrace on my husband and my family all the more complete.
My husband was a powerful sorcerer in the employ of the Empress herself. Though the generals had higher rank, my husband's work was more important than theirs. It consumed his life, and always threatened to encroach on mine. When I was married off to him, the papers that made me his legal property arriving the day before my ship, I had never seen him before. He was not an ugly man, but he was thirty-five years older than me, myself being seventeen at the time. I was a rebellious and hateful girl, always shunning my domestic education, but learning it nonetheless at the threat of the whip. My friends and my cousins, all of them completely without my rebellious air, perfect subservient whores as they were meant to be, were all horribly envious of my marriage. My cousin had been married the year before to some awful landowner, so I was not the first, but mine was the most lucrative and potentially profitable marriage in Eel'Dora in decades. My mother, father, brothers, and aunts spend months pounding it into my skull that I must be absolutely the best wife to ever grace the upper crust of imperial nobility. I knew nothing of culture in the east, and nor did anyone else I knew. I was going blind and unwillingly into a new life thousands of miles from anything I knew, but I was resigned to it. What choice did I have? What choice, indeed...
When I arrived in Al Zitti, my husband was still an apprentice of the head sorcerer, but still had vast wealth and connections that my family sold me off to attain. “Ah, my beautiful daughter knows the Serpent Generals personally, has dined with them, surely you can accept these terms...” The people I loved had sold me off for bragging rights. Bitterness cannot describe what I felt. For the time being, my husband lived in a huge, opulent estate deep within the imperial city, miles upon miles of elite guards armed to the teeth with swords, bows, pikes, and powerful magic of my husband's design between us and the encroaching beastmen hordes. I threw myself into my new duties with zeal as I had nothing else to do in this beautiful, empty, boring place. My first duty, of course, was to consummate my marriage the very night I arrived, blinking wide-eyed under the harsh sun of an alien world. Ah, what a vision I was that night! Among my belongings that I carried with me was the traditional evening garb that a woman was to wear to consummate her marriage and again on each anniversary. Mine my mother had made herself from delicate pink silk so soft it made my skin coarse as stone. It wrapped around my chest—I was very buxom for a girl my age and the bubble-thin fabric clung so tight my nipples could be easily seen pushing against it in protest, the fabric of the insubstantial garb slipping lower and lower, exposing more of the soft flesh of my breasts as I walked-- and clung to my narrow waist, my wide hips, and hung loose just below my high buttocks. What little of the fabric existed was held on by two straps so thin they were almost impossible to see against my creamy white skin. My lips were full and looked moist with the delicate red paint I had put over them, the pink of my tight, tiny robe made my green eyes light like emerald fire as I stared at myself in the mirror. My long, pointed ears were adorned with jewels and the rest of me was completely naked. I had never been so under dressed in my life, even when sleeping. I was nervous beyond measure, mostly because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I could only get subtle, embarrassed hints in incomprehensible language from my prudish mother, and of course my cousins and friends would never admit to premarital sex if they had it, even to me, the rebellious girl who would more likely encourage them than oust them. It seems so silly now, looking back on it.
My anxiety was heightened by the fact that my husband was a Human, and I was an Elf. What disturbed me more than being forced to break the strongest of taboos in Elf culture, interracial sex, was the pure mechanics of it. I was taller than my husband by a head, even though at seventeen I hadn't finished my growth spurt. Among his people, he was considered moderately tall and in excellent shape, but my limbs were larger than his, though soft, smooth, and supple things in contrast to his chiseled, bulging muscles.
His body fascinated me, even long before we retired to our shared bedroom that night. I had always been a very horny girl, from the very moment something in my mind clicked into place and I became interested in boys and learned the words that described what I could do with them in private. I had wanted to do it, had longed for it. But immured in a mansion prison, the chance never came. Despite considering myself such a rebel, I still found I was too arrogant and full of high status to lower myself enough to have sex with a servant or the stable boy. But I certainly thought of it. On those interminable, boring days where I sat in my beautiful room and stared out of my window at the city below I would think about going down to the stables, laying naked in the hay, the beautiful young stable boy (though he was at least ten years my senior my pomp still demanded I refer to him as boy) climbing on top of me and showing me all the ways in which I could be a good wife. Once or twice I found myself walking shakily down the stairs in the direction of the stables, my whole body quivering with excitement, guilt, horror, and lust, but would always turn and run back up the stairs, and my fantasies would become darker each time. Eventually, I no longer seduced the stable boy but he seduced me, coming to my chambers with some false excuse and wooing me into my bed in such a way that I didn't even realize I was giving in to him. Eventually, he dispensed with the excuses and came barging into my room as I slept. As the years wore on, I would find myself staring at soldiers in the streets and wondering if all the tales of them raping noblewomen for sport were true, and hoping that they were. But I only pined, and hoped, and lusted uselessly. I had to wait until I was married to finally get what I wanted. I had to wait until...today.
It was rather disappointing, all in all. Nervous and embarrassed, I blundered from one thing to the next, totally unable to negotiate the size difference between us. He kissed me and I didn't know how to react, he groped my breasts roughly and massaged my behind, and I felt only mild curiosity and wonder. I tried to do what he directed me to, wondering when I would feel something other than nerves and stupidity. Of course, I had only a faint idea of the pleasure contained between my legs, and that night I only sucked dumbly on his member, waiting for something to happen. Within minutes I tasted the salty, acidic paste of his seed in my mouth and summoning all my strength, will, and training I swallowed it as he told me to. He seemed pleased, and that, my mother's voice told me, was all that should matter to me. I lay beside him awake for hours in my gorgeous pink slip with my face painted (but no doubt smeared around my lips) and my ears bejeweled and tried to suppress the overwhelming hatred I felt for him. All the hopes I had for all the tantalizing rumors, all the naughty, forbidden words so full of promise were lost to me forever because of him.
For a long time, I hated all men, and I made no effort to hide it. But Al Zitti is a city of men, by men, and for men. The only women ever seen in public for more than a glimpse were prostitutes, who were barely tolerated only because the soldiers required their services and soldiers outnumbered the nobility who despised the whores one thousand to one. A rebellious noble wife simply didn't exist. Those who appeared from time to time promptly disappeared as mysteriously as they came, and if they ever reappeared again they hid their face and spoke not a word, terrified eyes peering sharply out from under black veils they never removed. I scowled at my husband's friends, his colleagues, the other noblemen we entertained. I resented the way they fondled their wives, dressed them up like the whores they purported to despise, with such zeal that I frightened myself. But I did not feel pity for these frail figures, grafted to the sides of their husbands. I did not wish to see them released, or to even have their conditions improved. I hated them, too, because I saw myself in them. For all the resentment I poured out with my face, the acid on my tongue and the haughtiness in my gestures, I was one of them. I trailed behind my husband like a dog on a leash to the houses of other lords. Gone were the elegant taffetas, corsets and gloves of lace, full, flowing skirts and elegant slippers of Eel'Dora. What few I had brought with me sat unused in my armoire, my husband insisting that I looked like a matron in them, that I must wear the latest fashions of his people, now that I was one of them. These fashions resembled what I had worn for him that first night and felt naked in quite closely. Close fitting tubes of fabric that hung loose about the chest, always threatening to slip off as they had no straps. I wore the skirts as long as my husband would allow, down to my knees, as long as they were skin tight. On my feet were shoes made of wood and wrapped in leather with heels that rose five inches and hurt my feet terribly. I wore as much jewelery as I could to cover up, but I still felt exposed. I could only take comfort in the fact that the wives of the other lords wore even less than I did.
I knew from my training that being a wife was essentially being a showpiece, but I had never been prepared for this. My hate burned in me, the flames fanned every day as some new annoyance or some new indignity was visited upon me. I took to seeing to it that the house was absolutely immaculate all of the time. I drove the servants like cattle. All of them were women, and older than me, but I didn't let that stop me. I shouted at them, and occasionally slapped or whipped them, releasing all my pent up rage but finding that there was more rage than I could ever slough off. Anything could set me off, from a misplaced vase to a spot of dust on a counter top. I would rage and rage, and the servants would complain to my husband that I was a mad woman, but my husband didn't care. He was too busy. His superior had been killed six months ago, we had been married for a year by this time, and his life had been utterly consumed by performing both his own duties and those vacated by his master. He worked all hours of the day, sleeping as little as possible and paying as little attention to me as he did to the pleas of the servants. He had not so much as run a hand over my breast since that first night. He began to bring his projects home with him, working on them in the cellars or spare rooms. As time went on his work spread to more and more of the house. Potions, alchemical devices, scrolls written in a language I couldn't even begin to comprehend, artifacts, weapons glowing faintly green or red, as if the metal was alive. These things terrified me, but more than that, they were an absolute mess. In my madness I desired complete order, complete control of my environment, and he was destroying it. Destroying it as he had destroyed my previous life, destroying it as he had destroyed my hopes and dreams of carnal pleasure, destroying it like my dignity, my upbringing, my shame. He expected of me what every man of the Empire expects of his wife, what any Elf man would have expected of me if I had married one of my own people instead—to yield to him. To allow him to do as he would, do be another beautiful thing in his house full of beauties. Well, I was the rebellious one! I would not yield, not this time. I had always raged, but in the end done as was expected of me, but no more!
I should say that up to this point he had not yet destroyed marriage for me completely. Part of me still believed that it could all change, once he wasn't so busy. I still entertained my fantasies of the stable boy, and occasionally I would look up into that face from my youth in my imaginary moment of climax and it would be the face of my husband. But of course, a man who descended from an entire race of destroyers could do nothing but destroy. I came home one night from the home of one of the few noblewomen in this city whose presence I could endure, her name was Estelle and she was an Elf like me, though not transplanted. Her mother was from Eel'Dora but Estelle was born and raised in Al Zitti. So I was feeling somewhat amiable, warmed by wine and decent company, and ready to go to bed. As I approached my bedchamber I heard voices, one of them was my husband's and another one was a woman. I knew the voices of the servants and it was not one of them, and they were speaking in low, sensual tones to each other. The man's questioning, the woman's meek and supplicating. I was filled with terror and fear as my hand closed on the door latch and I slowly opened the wooden door, still half expecting to see my husband engaged in polite conversation with a colleague. But of course he wasn't. It took me a moment to grasp what I was seeing, for I was at once struck by the absolute beauty of the woman sitting in my husband's lap. She had turned her body to look over her shoulder at me as the door opened, and her blue eyes looked like huge sapphires set in her face. Her huge lips were painted a deep purple that made her face utterly irresistible. Gigantic, perfectly formed, flawless breasts hung heavy from her chest, themselves looking like exquisite jewelery as they glistened with moisture in the low lamplight. Her waist was so narrow she looked like she wore a corset, even though she did not, her hips were even wider than mine, her bare buttocks so ample they looked stuffed like a feather pillow. As my eyes drifted this low I saw that they had already begun their passion, even though the girl still wore her skin tight black dress, now crumpled around her waist, and the heeled shoes so steep I couldn't fathom how she walked in them. My husband's throbbing member pulsated inside of this girl, looking so perfectly formed in that orifice it was as if the girl was just another piece of jewelery, designed to fit him perfectly and be yet another beautiful thing adorning his luxurious lifestyle. All of this I saw in an instant, the image of that absolutely flawless girl, barely older than me, sitting in my husband's lap, being pierced by his manhood. As my husband fumbled for words and tried to push the girl off of him I saw the money on the night stand, next to the girl's handbag. So—his exotic bride was so undesirable that he put aside his principles as a nobleman and went about when she wasn't home, fucking whores in the bed they shared. I was shocked to find that I was utterly wounded by this, even though if you had asked me an hour before I said I would not care. I merely closed the door on his excuses and left to lay on the couch in the drawing room. Not long after, I heard the girl moaning louder and louder, until she was shouting obscenity in her ecstasy. She was mocking me. She hadn't cared that her client's wife had come home, she had stared at me defiantly and kept herself rooted in place as my husband pushed at her. Now he had destroyed everything. Marriage was in utter tatters, and the ecstasy I knew must exist in sex was confirmed, and closed off to me forever.
But what could I do? Despite all my rage, I could not bring myself to scream at him, smash his instruments, rip his parchments—besides, that was just yet more chaos, and I feared the repercussions. I remembered the half-whispered rumors of the noblewomen explaining another woman's utterly cowed behavior after such recent wild behavior, remembered the low threats of the men to their wives, which the trembling women seemed to have no doubt would come true. I did not want to risk the barbaric sort of justice that could exist in a place ruled by its military and men. In less than a week, my anger had been completely replaced by an absolutely hopeless despair. I longed for death, for release. The world held absolutely nothing for me now. I would never go home, marriage was a sham, and I had nothing to do all day but write longing letters to my cousins, shout uselessly at the servants, and be paraded before strange men in states of dress that ever approached nudity, to have them gawk at the rare sight of an Elf woman's body, but would never touch it or violate it the way I wanted them to.
The day at last came when I would do it. I would kill myself, and I would give it as poetic an end as I could. I went into the cellar, where my husband worked his alchemical experiments, hunched over manuals beside beakers and tubes of glass for hours, mixing this and that. I had no doubt that his work was for the military. I knew that he worked on poisons, and on potions to make soldiers even more fearsome. I had no way of knowing which was which, so I told myself I would merely pick the most vile looking one and if I did not die I would choose another until I guessed correctly.
The cellar was a ghastly place now. Before it had been a damp, cool place that smelled strongly of the cedar barrels of liquor stored here, and the torchlight reflected off the endless rows of vintage wines in the walls was beautiful. Now it was a swirling chaos of glass, books, strange liquids, glowing stones, and puddles of wax that had once been candles. The air was rank, putrid, difficult to breathe, and I could see by the light of my torch on the ceiling that the whole space was being filled with a faintly green fog that clung to the rafters. I walked to the table arrayed with potions and looked down at it, reading the labels but finding them unintelligible, written in technical language I could never have understood with my lady's education. I turned the pages of the single book that lay on the table next to the rows of vials, only a few of which contained liquids. I recognized my husband's handwriting in this volume, and though the language was again incomprehensible to me I could see that they were notes, probably about the things arrayed on this table. One page caught my eye because the language seemed plain, rather than mired in symbols and diagrams.
- The female soldiers are capable, but not enough...there simply are not enough men in Al Zitti to keep back the hordes. Gen. R. wants some way to make the females stronger. Magnus was working on this.
- Found Magnus' notes. The elixir was nearly complete, but there are side effects. Attempting my own concoction.
- Didn't work. Perhaps the essence of Dvergr's blood was too much for her? Try remixing.
- Better. The side effects are still unacceptable. What could cause a growth like that? Must abandon this for now to make a batch of salve to aid the soldiers wounded in the most recent attack.
I was mystified and highly intrigued by these notes, but I looked away after reading this. What did it matter now, anyway? I had come here to die.
And so, my hands trembling, I reached out and picked up one of the vials that contained a ghastly looking green liquid. It had the consistency of oil and smelled, I can put it no other way, like death. This had to be it, the poison I had heard him talk about, strong enough to fell a full grown troll with one arrow dipped in his miraculous water of death. I was about to drink a hundred arrows worth. I licked my lips and briefly wondered how he would react when he found me dead on the floor in his lair. I imagined him stripping the clothes off of my limp body and sliding his member into my mouth and down my cold throat...I shook my head to throw off the image and with one burst of willpower, before I had a chance to reconsider, I put the vial to my lips and threw my head back. I cried out with my mouth closed, trying desperately not to spit the evil concoction out. It burned my mouth just as surely as if I had put my tongue to the torch, and as the liquid raced down my throat that heat spread to my whole body. I clutched my throat and coughed, stumbling backwards into a table of glass, knocking over empty beakers. The sound brought racing steps on the stairs behind me, and my husband appeared, his sword naked in his hand. I was shocked, for I thought he was not at home. His face changed from rage to bewilderment when he saw me, bent over double, coughing so violently I though I should soon see blood on the ground before me.
“Stupid girl, what have you done?” He cried, rushing over to me and snatching the vial from my hand. A faint green residue clung to the sides of the vial still, and he made some sound of surprise and rage as he looked at it, to the table where I had taken it from, and at the vial again. He wanted to say something more, to curse me again I could tell, but he raced to some other random table and began to blunder through its contents. Meanwhile, my whole body was on fire, pain like I had never experienced before coursed through my veins with every ragged, thunderous beat of my heart. The heat began to gather in my crotch, leaving the rest of me tingling. When feeling returned to my face I could feel that tears were pouring out of me in rivers, fire clung to my lips where I had gripped the vial, my arms trembled uncontrollably, my stomach and my breasts ached like I had been mercilessly beaten, but always the heat continued to intensify between my legs until I realized the deafening sound in my ears were my own ragged, desperate screams.
Just when I thought I would pass out from pain, my husband reappeared at my side and held a cup to my mouth. I was grateful, thinking it would be water to extinguish the flames inside of me, but as the liquid flowed in and I began to swallow it, I saw that it was orange and seemed to glow as if he held a light beneath the cup. I felt a brief spasm of terror to be drinking another potion from his tables, but then I realized that it must be the poison. He was killing me, putting me out of my misery, or punishing me for transgression. I didn't care. I drank deep, and the pain didn't seem to matter any more. Soon I would be dead, and my husband was good for something after all.
But I didn't die. I sunk to the floor and cried, feeling suddenly cold after the fire that had raged through me. My husband was shouting at me, cursing me, condemning me, but I could barely hear him. I fell into darkness, and had unsettling dreams.
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