Drexa moved through the corridors of what she had come to look upon as her underground castle with a relaxed glide. All was proceeding as it should, which allowed her a moment to revel in the power she now wielded. The fools of her old home never understood. They were too comfortable in what they had built. Balance was all they cared for, whether it was balance between them and the land they had tamed or balance with one another. They were happy with the status quo and that was something that Drexa found she could never be. Life there was suffocating and the people there had become increasingly insufferable.
All she did was ask, "Why hide?" There was no longer any need to stay in the wastes hiding away from the rest of the world. They weren't a group of refugees from the land of mortal men trying to survive anymore. They were powerful, building on the magics and sciences of their forefathers There was nothing to fear from the primitives who were still using oils to light their homes. Adar could destroy them all and rule as they should. Greater animals always ruled over the lesser, and it was only right that Adar take that place. Indeed, it was an abandonment of the rules that governed the universe that they did not.
But they hid, literally and figuratively because they lived in fear of what they were. In their own way they continued to live in the cloistered bubbles of their own making. They even refused to explore magic to its fullest potential. Unnatural creations? Magic itself was natural, as was their ability to manipulate it, therefore it stood to her reason that whatever they created with it was natural. If it was too far outside the natural realm, so much the better, as a new and better balance would be found.
But they dismissed her, at first trying to reason with her as though she were a petulant child, then by ignoring her, hoping she would simply give up the truth. Finally, when she set out to prove that truth, in even the smallest of ways, talk had turned to punishment. They had proven themselves truly unfit to have the power they did.
So she left. She left taking the seeds of that knowledge with her. She searched the world for a place remote enough to go unnoticed, but close enough to the magic pools she needed to draw from and with enough of the primitives to draw from and spread apart enough to where, by the time they knew what was happening, it would be too late.
The primitives of Adar would learn that her path was superior. And if that meant they had to be ground under heel, so be it.
After they learned, so would the world.
She entered the cavern closest to her chambers. It was massive, hollowed out by the elements and the centuries. Lit from the ceiling by the sheets of white light, she walked one of the paths between rows and rows of her creatures. The air was warm and cloying being so close to the ley lines, creating an environment perfect for them to grow. They all glistened in the light, the pink and gray membrane encasing tooth and claw nourished them and let them slumber until she called upon them.
Scattered about were female primitives nestled where they would birth and the sounds of their animal heat echoed through the chamber. One sat on her knees, hand between her legs, middle finger frantically rubbing as she whined and stared at the ceiling. Still another stood, short with hanging breasts, toes digging into the dirt while a cocoa-skinned woman had her mouth locked around the other's clit, digging her nails into her thighs as the other birthed. Drexa couldn't tell who was happier.
They owed her a debt for even that. She rarely made mistakes, but in her first experiments she'd paid no heed to their psyches because she simply didn't care. Pain and the threat of it did indeed drive the meat to obedience and did force it to accept the changes she required, but it also eventually drove them insane, making even the breeding meat difficult to control. In her zeal for her plans to bear fruit she'd ignored the basic truth that beings were hard-wired with an ability to avoid pain and resist it, finally giving up sanity to do so. Practicality demanded change.
But pleasure? The mind had no defense. It was rare to find anyone who could resist over a long period. Most surrendered quickly, happy to give up their petty little existences in favor of her work and perpetual reward. Why tend a field all day or worry for your next bill at the mercantile when you could simply fuck, orgasm, and obey? Others tried to fight; others that thought they had things that mattered more, but drown them in lust and joy long enough and they all eventually stopped trying to fight their way from it.
She put her chambers close to them simply because she loved being so near her creations. They were her children in so many ways. As she approached the other end of the room the gray, black-veined curtain of flesh parted to her inner chambers. Here she had carved a small slice of Adar with her magics as well as the belongings she took with her when she exiled herself, turning this and that to her needs. It resisted as well, as all things wanted to stay what nature made them, but she bent them with little more difficulty than the meat. The rock in the room was now smoothed, bleached, and shaped to take on the appearance of the light marble stone favored there while the floor was smoothed black. Tapestries adorned the walls and at the opposite end of the room on either side between the dais upon which the long couch she playfully considered a throne rested were passages to her laboratory and one of the ley lines that fed into this place.
Also accenting the room were the lovely women, all nude and in various stages of fucking, some changed and some not, with some carrying her children and some not. For some it seemed that emotion drove them with one another, while, for others, it was simply an animal release. All stopped in mid act as they noticed her. For them, to directly look upon her was rapture. They waited eagerly for any whim from her lips. Even from them she felt the scope of her power. They were hers. They would fight to the death for the chance to feel her touch.
Her own eyes went distant for a moment, forgetting the scene. There was something in her mind that felt like an itch at the base of her brain. There was power not unlike hers at the edge of her ability to sense it. Rather than it igniting fear or anger in her, she could not keep the happiness from her face. Someone had come. As she tried to sort through the hints from her senses she found there were many someones. The meat among them didn't matter. It would be torn asunder one way or another.
The others? She knew someone she needed would come eventually. They were predictable in that they would come. They were also predictable in that she knew that they would not have come in force enough to crush, or even oppose her, as that would have required engaging more of the world than any of them wanted to.
In short, they were perfect for her uses. In fact, as they drew closer, one seemed a curiosity worth investigating.
Come to me.
One noticed her smile through her happy haze. "Have we pleased you, Mistress?"
She was taken from her reverie by the sweet voice to look upon the blonde nestled between two others on a bed made of several soft animal furs piled on the floor in a mix of black, brown, and gray. "Always, my pets." Drexa looked upon her as she absently caressed her ripe belly, belly button protruding as a hint of just how full of one of her children the girl was, milk dripping from her breasts, making trails as it wandered down her body.
Drexa noted then that she was no more immune to the temptations of than any other mortal soul. Her mouth began to dry with a thirst only those weeping breasts would slake. "Make room for me."
As they scurried to do so, she smiled.
Meat had many uses.
***
At sunrise the party had set out again, this time Maylin riding with Deres. They made good time, though they had remained relatively quiet until breakfast had finished, no one wanting to truly break the peace that was still to be found They were now on a more traveled path, having just investigated a small trading post. Not that Neral and those troops with her would have preferred it to be a burning wreck, but that at least had the virtue of being expected by their experience. It was easier to deal with than the eerie calm that shrouded it as they approached. Even the animals seemed to stay away from anywhere the creatures had been.
Inside, it was much as Maylin had described what she'd witnessed in the village, with anyone who had resisted eviscerated by animals. That Maylin described those animals having once been human chilled to the bone. Faces had been frozen forever in pain, fear, and panic. The sight and sound of insects staking claim and the stench of death was everywhere. "It could have been worse for them," she'd said soberly more to herself than anyone else. That it was probably true by any sane soul's reckoning helped nothing.
As they left, they noted that tracks still covered the road, mashed together certainly, but they were clear enough if one knew what to look for. Running footfalls, misshapen footprints, and the telltale of wagon wheels painted a picture. Then there were the bodies and carcasses on the side of the road scattered about. The creatures found a group fleeing, or perhaps a caravan leaving the post not long before it was attacked. The remnants of humans and beasts remained along the road and examinations of both suggesting it had happened not long before as bodies were still warm as Neral and Kress examined them.
"We could catch them, sir." Kress said, closing the eyes of an older woman who would no longer be using them, bloody paring knife in hand. Kress admired her. She had no hope with such a weapon, but she gave her last anyway. "Maybe."
Neral shook her head. "Not in a bum's rush from behind. "We'd probably end up like them." She called to Maylin who who had been wandering, almost scenting the air like an animal herself. She walked over calmly, deciding to focus on Neral's dark eyes rather than any of the carnage around them.
