Part 1: The Princess in the High Tower
Breaking through the walls of the castle was the easy part. Vorpal's claws made quick work of the brick and masonry, like a child burrowing a questing hand into a sandcastle, and she tore her way inside. The soldiers had been alerted, of course. Around a dozen ran across the square from the guardhouse, joined by others from the bases of the castle's many towers, all dressed in red and gold, the livery of the Regency of Alfor.
Vorpal sighed. She brought the full height of her body to bear, unfurling her leathery wings, her crest bristling, her long tail whipping the air. For a moment she remembered the time when she had been a true dragon, before her transformation. Then, she had flown the skies, a terror to humans and other monsters alike, unstoppable, despite all the heroes sent against her. In another time, she would have been smashing into a castle to despoil it of its gold and jewels, to add to her precious hoard.
But that was in the past.
A jabberwock now, she was still an object of fear, though perhaps of a different kind. The soldiers, poor pitiable creatures, came to a halt a good number of feet away from her and looked at each other, none of them eager to be the first to engage her.
Vorpal drew in a great breath, her ample chest heaving. Then she breathed out – but not the fire of old. No, this was just another of the strange changes that the Queen of Hearts' magic had worked on her body. Thick pink mist, glowing, pungent with the sweet scent of sugar and musk and fairy-floss, flowed over the armed column in a wave.
The soldiers fell writhing to the ground and Vorpal chuckled to herself. This form still felt unfamiliar in a lot of ways, even so many years after her transformation, but one could not argue with its effectiveness.
The soldiers pulled at their armour, stripping themselves of it, greaves and cuirasses and jerkins all. Then half-naked they fell on each other with hungry mouths and hands. The Regency employed both male and female soldiers, but the pink mist of the jabberwock's breath brought with it such uncontrollable lust that those under its influence cared little whether the gender of their partners coincided with their usual desires.
Vorpal sniffed and turned her back on the writhing, panting pile, then with a single sweep of her powerful wings she was across the square. Yes, that was the tower Dovedale the Cheshire Cat had spoken of. She wrenched the door clear off its hinges, locks and all. Foolish to show the way to your most precious possession by covering the doors with such puny defences, capable of hindering only human threats!
With half-flaps, half-leaps, she scaled the great curving stair. She met with more soldiers, but those who did not immediately flee from her received a blast of her sweet pink breath. Vorpal brushed them aside, but not before the smiling mouths of her tentacles sought to wrap themselves lasciviously around their lust-filled and writhing bodies.
Vorpal's body suddenly twinged with a familiar, frustrating ache, but she pushed it away angrily. Of all the changes to her body, this insatiable desire was the most annoying. Other jabberwocks took pride in the intensity of their lewdness, the uncontrollable need of their lust. But for Vorpal, who had once been a dragon, the feelings were unwelcome. A proud daughter of the dragon race, reduced to a slobbering, lowly creature? Her new sisters, of course, did not see it that way. They looked at their lewdness as the source of great dignity and took delight in being the most lascivious of the monsters of Wonderland.
Ah, but that was the thing, wasn't it? Those were the rules of Wonderland and Vorpal had lived outside of the mysterious demon realm most her life. If she hadn't stumbled upon that strange door, been tempted to see what was on the other side, thinking that there was treasure hidden there...
The treasure. Of course. She must not get distracted.
She tossed aside another soldier and came at last to the final door atop the tower. More locks, but these she peeled off with her claws delicately. She could not just tear the door away like before – she might damage the treasure waiting within.
She stuck a claw in the final lock, prised it out and then slowly pushed the door open.
Candlelight within. A bedroom, walls decorated with lavish tapestries and crossed swords and shields, filled from corner to corner with exquisite wooden furniture – a dresser, a great many wardrobes, a bookcase, a suit of armour beside it – but most gorgeous of all was the great four-poster bed in the centre of the room, draped with pale blue silks. A sleeping body made a mound beneath the coverlet – a long, slender body, topped with a mass of long blonde hair which lay across its lace pillow, as gold as the exquisite embroidery of the coverlet. The top half of the mound rose gently with the rising of breath. Good. She had not woken her.
The Princess of Alfor. Yes, Dovedale had been most descriptive.
"You must be gentle, Vorpal my darling. She is sought by the Queen of Hearts, after all, and must be treated like the most precious pearl. The Queen wishes her to be brought to Wonderland in all her pure, untouched beauty, with not a single golden hair unplaced."
Vorpal had been surprised by the request. "But what does the Queen want with the Princess?"
Dovedale giggled. "Why, I was sure you knew the story, darling! Weren't you a denizen of the human world for so very long? But perhaps the story is only well-known here in Wonderland. Well, the Regess of Alfor has long been famous for her hatred of lewdness of every kind. Abandoned by her lover, she was, poor thing, and since that day she has hated even the thought of the joys of sex. Why, she even went so far as to enact an edict that no citizen of her country is permitted to perform any sexual act beyond..." – and here the Cheshire Cat giggled again – "...beyond the position where the female lies prone beneath the male, and they may not do so for pleasure but merely for the begetting of children! And even then no more than once a month!"
Vorpal frowned at the look of melodramatic shock on the Cheshire Cat's face. Was the thought of going a whole month without having sex truly so terrible? And surely it was a delight best left for one's husband...
Dovedale continued. "The Regess' unwholesome purity and arrogance have long displeased the Queen of Hearts. And so she wishes to teach her a lesson."
"Her daughter," said Vorpal. "Dovedale, I don't wish to refuse the Queen's order, but if the child is going to be harmed..."
The Cheshire Cat's slitted amethyst eyes went wide in shock, both at the thought of someone refusing an order from the Queen of Hearts and that such an order would be murderous in intent. "No, no, no, my darling. Set your heart at rest! The Queen merely wishes to mould the child into a creature of supreme lewdness. She will be returned to her kingdom, unharmed, and show her people and her mother the foolishness of refusing their natural lewd desires." Her lunate grin reappeared, twice as large. "Since you became a jabberwock, have you not found life so much more fulfilling?"
"Well," said Vorpal and she left it at that. She did not wish to attempt explaining to such a flighty creature as a Cheshire Cat the complexities of her situation. Of course she desired sex and was susceptible to erotic feeling... her body was designed for just that. But every time she had been tempted to ravish a lost traveller or other incautious human, something had held her back.
