Mistress Amber

Lady Lasyrrix sits across her throne, back against one rest and legs hooked over the other. Her loose purple robe leaves little to the imagination, but then she isn't one for modesty. The demoness's luxuriant azure figure is on full display, her massive breasts and wide hips and full thighs and fat buttocks a feast for my eyes. Her coiling black hair, like living oil, glistens where the bright flames cast themselves across its fibres. Those terrifyingly clever eyes, a searing kind of dark purple, pair with a perpetual smirk and seize my full attention.

The throne room is not exactly a room. It's more like a balcony roof, atop the peak of her noble castle, in the second-largest and second-highest of the massive inner chambers of the bleak city known as Anthexxia, currently drifting towards Sirius. The roof is ringed by black iron fencing about six feet in height, with equidistantly spaced braziers burning white with flame. Her throne sits at the end of a long carpet of golden thread, a huge black chair all cushioned and wonderfully sculpted with gargoyle faces placed beneath a fabric-covered canopy (though it never rains, for there is no weather).

It's good she's not human. My knees are starting to hurt, to be honest. It's been maybe ten minutes, kneeling here in the middle of that carpet, under the watch of her guards (as if she needs them). The bulky minotaur men -- concubines when she desires such -- watch my diminutive, pathetic shape with some amusement; I must look funny, kneeling fearful of her every word, her every smile, remark, chuckle, titter.

She turns the page every few seconds, reading through the novel with lightning swiftness. Is it good enough? Will she be pleased?

The idle slamming shut of the book, printed and bound by the impish pressers, draws me back into this bizarre reality. Lady Lasyrrix is smiling at me, a devilish glamour of a smile. She moves like water, planting her bare feet down on the long golden carpet. Her breasts, each the size of my head on a six-foot frame, jiggle distractingly, their pierced nipples shimmering in the reflected firelight.

'I like it,' Lasyrrix says, angelic and sensuous. 'Another good story! Although you've clearly never experienced womanhood, but no matter; if the concern becomes sufficient, I might' -- she bites her lip, and flicks her wild gaze from one guard to the other -- 'change up your assets a little and have my boys here give you some work experience.'

The demoness winks, and reclines into her throne. On either side of her, the great minotaur guards share a look, amusement and lust combined. Lasyrrix waves a hand, dispensing of the printed tome, which puffs into thin air; she extends that now-empty hand to one side, expectantly.

Within a moment, the guard on that side has produced his foot-long semi-flaccid cock, a bestial thing like that of a monstrous horse's. Lasyrrix takes it into her waiting hand, licking her lips at the inevitable.

'Maybe something oral-focussed, next time,' she says, as the other guard draws near. 'It'd be easy for you to experience first-hand, after all. They do say, don't they? Write what you know.'

I take this as my cue to leave, and nod my head and rise. 'Yes, my lady. I'll, uh, think about your request.'

'Doesn't have to be cock, you silly little virgin.' Lady Lasyrrix chuckles, now gripping a near-erect minotaur in each hand, each more than two feet in length. She looks up wet-eyed at her guards, tongue tasting her lips. 'Though, I certainly wouldn't blame your interest...'

Blushing and admittedly, as ever, a little bit aroused by the beautiful demoness, I scurry away into the depths of her fortress-palace. The maids are about, gossiping and slowly cleaning, though the process is purely for show -- demons do not shed skin, and lesser races in this place obey a different set of "rules".

They consider me with the passing interest that all inhabitants of Lasyrrix's realm do. Who is this human, who has an audience every other week, with the Lady herself? She does not fuck him, nor harm him.

It's the same as the maids: an aesthetic. Demons are all about aesthetics, that's the number one rule. They're every bit the prissy show-offs that humans were...are, I suppose. What becomes popular amongst the most powerful trickles down. In this case, having lessers "clean" your estate, for whatever reason.

If anything, given the fact that the maids are largely non-demonic in nature, they likely produce the very dust and dirt they happen to clean up. But I digress...

*

My apartment is on the third floor, three down from the balcony level which Lasyrrix occupies most hours and days. It's a pleasant enough space, albeit mostly black; a large rectangular chamber with a bed, dresser, wardrobe, mirror, writing space -- including my old PC from back home, powered by ethereal energies -- with an adjoining bathroom and a balcony looking out upon the second level of Anthexxia.

I stand there for a time, before the black-iron balustrade. My ears prick with the faint echoes from below, the exciting terrifying chaos of this place's underbelly, wafting up through dark channels hewn into the space-faring rock.

The fortress-city Anthexxia, the bleak city, is monumental. A vast interdimensional spaceship-nation, vaguely double-pyramidal in shape but squarely peaked rather than pointed. To look out from my balcony, into the ever-warm air of the infernal place, thick with fragrant exotic smokes and smells, is to witness many palaces much like that of Lasyrrix.

And to look down is to see the roads between them, the second-level slums with their brothels and taverns and sex and sex and sex and sex. That's what this is, in truth: a monument to lascivious debauchery. It paints the air, douses everything with a kind of moreish filthiness.

Somewhere below, somewhere above, in one of the many other cities, are the people I knew on Earth. Being used, being abused, being bred, being raped, being adored. It's chilling, to sit in this ebony tower, somehow separate from that. Lasyrrix is every bit as sex-obsessed, but she's fair-handed to me. I entertain her with my brain, not my body. Safe in her castle, I'm nobody's but my own.

For the moment, at least.

With that thought in mind, I start writing anew.

*

There is a hierarchy, in Palace Lasyrrix.

Naturally, the Lady herself is at the very top, literally and otherwise. Demons do not sleep, and do not need to eat, but gain a kind of metaphysical satiation from the bodily fluids -- breast milk and semen -- of other beings. Demons included, in fact; the urge to include all life within their cities is a matter of exoticism and aesthetic, not a necessity. I struggle to think that human men and women are more beautiful than the various non-humans, but I can't begin to grasp the minds of these alien beings.

Beneath Lasyrrix is her daughter and scion, Amber Dominite. Traditionally, the children of nobles branch off and form new cities, but Amber is uniquely placed. Where her mother entertains herself with minotaur phalluses and smut stories, Amber enjoys domination, control, and conquest. But there is no conquest for a scion of a mere noble, and so the degree of conquest shrinks.

Unable to conquer worlds, she conquers minds, bodies. Amber lives a double life: on the one hand, the head maid of her mother's palace; on the other, a dilletante socialite with a rapacious attitude for destruction. Always dressed in her maid outfit, disarmingly fitting a submissive rather than a dominant, the title that she keeps is "The Queen of Maids".

Her gang -- subservient to her, dominant over others -- consists of similarly rapacious demons and dominatrices. Thynelleph the Unconquered, a nightmare; Verelyn Bleakmourne, a forlarren "queen"; Telshvala Ash'Karne, a man'ari; Anabella Blackheart, an Apophis; Alannah of the Ancient Grove, a wild dryad "nectar queen"; Jezzana of Tidespring, an Amazon "matriarch"; Tytana Glacios, a frost queen; Morrigan Moradris, a dark elf. A flame-maned horse demon, a grey-skinned forsaken nymph, a corrupt draenei, a daemonic snake-woman, a centauress dryad, a tribal queen, an empress of ice, a blackhearted sorceress. By rights, they occupy almost the same standing as Amber. Their names have every bit the power of arcane incantations.

Beneath Amber and her gang are the heads of house -- the head cook, head guard, head whatever else there happens to be. Many of the roles are esoteric, and the "head" of a particular division may, in fact, be the only occupant. The head alchemist, for instance, or the head enchanter.

Below the heads of house are the actual staff, including the maids. The brash minotaur guards (not the lucky ones who stay within reach of Lasyrrix) at the door and in the corridors, the many cooks, the various labourers.

And at the bottom is where I sit, alone. It may not seem that way, because of how high up my room is, but the reason for my elevation is strictly to keep me out of reach. Demons are not stupid, despite being venal; what use would a writer be, if given to the sexual urges of the manifold folk of the palace and city beyond it? Lasyrrix may joke about me receiving "experience", but the truth is that it's an all-or-nothing proposal. Sex here isn't like sex on Earth, sex between humans; sex here is a drug, and just about everyone finds themselves to be an addict.

Outside my room, outside of the clean corridor which connects my room with Lasyrrix's balcony, I'm nothing but meat. And meat in Anthexxia, as in all bleak cities, has a tendency to get devoured wholesale.

So here I remain, in relative comfort.

I'm free to go anywhere -- even outside -- but the consequences could ruin me. If I lose my capacity to write, I'm out of the palace. If I get captured by some rapist, then who knows if Lasyrrix will even bother sending help for me? What if the rapist belongs to another palace, or a higher palace? There are just too many risks.

So here I remain.

*

Until I don't.

After tea, sitting on the balcony, the urge soars. No matter how bright the room lights, no matter how soft the sheets, how nourishing the food, there's no equal to being able to roam. I was never one for roaming before, back on Earth, but I used to go walking. And when I was imprisoned, it was by choice, in the confines of my bedroom, to work on my novels.

This imprisonment is neither chosen, nor strictly necessary. I'm free to leave, if I want to bear the consequences.

My sole advantage is being interested in the architecture of this place and learning, over these many months of practical solitude, the various ways in and out. In a cloak for concealment, paired with my relative shortness compared to many of this place's occupants, it's a simple enough matter to descend the many levels and slip out of one of the exits.

The guard on watch, a burly hulk of an orc, clad in plate armour as black as night, doesn't so much as look at me. I step out onto the black flagstones on the western (I guess?) side, finding them warm under foot, and breathe the free air.

Smoke and spices, musk and sex. Ale, spirits, sweat. Foreign smells, inhuman smells. On the road beyond the western entrance, taverns and theatres and pleasure bars stretch on along a great wide road, in time orbiting another palace, another estate of a demon noble. Not demon "lord", as such, for that regards a particular manner of demon, a kind of demigod; rather, simply one of great importance, for one reason or another.

Misogynistic as it sounds, as I understand, Lasyrrix literally fucked her way to the top. Which, here, is something both men and women (and, of course, the half-types, the futanaris, the shemales) manage quite regularly.

Cloaked as I am, making sure the Lasyrrix house crest is obvious on my front, I play it safe, travelling only to the nearest of the large public houses. "Narglarn's", so it says on the swinging sign at the front, is a triple-storey pub raucous with sounds, cheering, jeering, cat-calling, mocking, laughter.

I'm forced to squeeze through cramped ranks of patrons, crowded around circular tables, forming standing groups where such isn't available. The smell is potent, heady, musky; male or female, the inhuman inhabitants of this world stir something in the hindquarters of the human soul, something feral and primal and dangerous. That the reaction hits me with women, I'm fine with, but it's disturbing how readily it comes in the presence of men, or the "women" who carry something extra.

For whatever reason, the bar isn't especially packed. I manage to slip onto a seat, catching the attention of the barkeep, a huge orc woman with liquorice-coloured skin. She smiles oddly at me, comes up before me, and says, 'What can I get ya?'

'Your strongest ale?'

'Got coin, boy?'

I glance nervously up at the tall woman, who must be halfway to eight feet. Her outfit is black leather and lace, fetishised apparel; this one must be a black orc, judging by her skin tone and the fact that she's so large, and is unmistakeably in possession of four mammoth breasts, one set above the other. The leather corset leaves an arch of exposed flesh for her belly, which is a muscular washboard, leading to two half-cups for each set of breasts, their nipples covered by black heart-shaped pasties; her dark crimson areolae, however, are so wide and large that the heart pasties do little in truth, but maybe that's the point.

'Sure,' I say, reaching into my cloak. I've got an endless supply, in fact -- one of the special coin-purses distributed to the house staff of Lasyrrix, so long as they don't overdo it. 'This enough?'

I place a fat gold doubloon on the counter, provoking a click from her pretty mouth. The orc woman is beautiful, full-lipped, sharp-featured, with a scar across her right eye, splitting the brow. Her hair is undercut on the left side, shaven down to her scalp, where a tattoo of a serpent consumes its own tail, swimming as if alive. The hair itself is dark violet, growing long on the other side and the back, reaching halfway down her neck.

'More than. Where'd you get that?'

I make a subtle show of flashing the crest on my front. 'Lasyrrix.'

The orc slides the coin back. 'Shoulda said.' She departs along the bar, and fetches up a glass. Noting a gap in the publicans closer, I slip off my stool and whip around to it, leaning again over the high bar counter.

'You're not taking my money?'

'You new or something?' She gives me the stink-eye, pouring a thick black stout into a clean, crystal flagon, like a German mass. 'Amber'd flay and tan me, kid. I always serve her pets.'

It's probably daft, but my mouth goes ahead of my brain. 'I'm not Amber's?'

The two men appear, at that moment, seemingly from nowhere. I'd think nothing of it if not for the fact that the barkeep suddenly turns back, beer spilling over the top of the flagon, while this muscle-bound minotaur and some pig-faced red orc sandwich me between themselves.

'Dixon,' the orc woman says. 'Farrell.'

'Ears not working me so good in old age, Narg,' the red orc says. He gives me a grim smile, revealing an eye-patch, a scruffy greying beard. 'This'n say he's not Amber's?'

'Kid didn't know what he was saying; of course, he's Amber's. Why'd he be here otherwise?'

'Could be Lassy's.' The minotaur shrugs his massive, impossible shoulders. He must be nine feet in height, dwarfing even the barkeep. 'She don't give two fucks. 'sides, ain't heard of no humans of import in that house.'

The black orc kills the tap, planting the glass down. She slams her hands on the counter. 'Look, you two idiots are going to get yourselves flayed if you touch him.'

Silence, then evil. The minotaur grabs her throat, effortlessly slamming her face against the bar-top. He leans over, putting his weight onto her throat and jaw, stifling any loud response. 'Careful, Narglarn. Wouldn't want to think you some scab bitch, would we? Red Terror sure wouldn't like that.'

Nobody seems to notice, or care. Are there no bouncers, or anything? I try to stand, climb atop the stool, but the red orc seizes me with a single arm, pulling me tight against his bloated belly, pushing the air out of my lungs. Fuck.

'No running, morsel. We got ourselves a date, innit.' He chuckles, snorting like a pig.

The minotaur proceeds to lift and slam Narglarn's face against the bar, then pulls away,

barging aside anyone in his path. I'm hauled along by the red orc, struggling in vain against the strength of something vastly, inhumanly superior. Somebody shouts and suddenly Narglarn is on her feet, rushing atop the counter of the bar; she leaps at me and the orc, but the minotaur is terribly fast, managing to skewer her side on his horn and fling her about in a wide arc, knocking her into a crowded table.

'Get fucked, scab bitch,' he shouts, snarling, hot breathe flaring from his broad nostrils. 'Anyone who thinks themselves brave'll be on the wrong end of the Red Terror, let it be known. Don't fucking interrupt.'

Cowards that the publicans are, the most anyone does is see to Narglarn. Me, a mere human, lacks the importance to be saved or helped. I'm easily carried out the side entrance into an alleyway with lots of metal crates and dumpsters, empty beer kegs, assorted trash.

The minotaur slams the door and the red orc throws me down behind a dumpster, pushing me against the wall. 'Now then, morsel,' he says, chuckling, smirking, 'you don't gotta cow to the demands of those tyrannical demons no more.'

'I...I don't?'

He pats my head, ruffles it, as the minotaur walks up beside him. 'Nah, mate.' The pair smile at each other. 'You're part of the Red Terror now, ya hear? We treat our humans well.'

I try to push up, but the orc presses down on my head. The minotaur snorts, the pig-orc laughs brutally. I'm...I'm not sure I want to be part of this "Red Terror".

'No need to go anywhere, lad,' the minotaur says. 'Initiation starts here, now.' He reaches down and grabs my hand, forcing it up against the bulge in his tan shorts. 'Me and Dixie'll break you in just fine.'

Fuck. No. Shit. I try to yank away, but I'm powerless. Dixon, the red orc, pats my head. 'Go on, son. Take hold of destiny. You humans always love how it tastes...'

I try to pull away again, only to be thrown across the alleyway. But upon landing, I'm free, my captors for some reason absent. Head spinning, I clamber up onto my feet, finding a rather different scene unfolding. The red orc is cowering, kneeling before a towering flame-maned black horse-woman, a thing of dangerous beauty and power. A sylvan centaur, a wild dryad it must be, blocks one end of the alley while a dark lamia, an Apophis, blocks the other.

Behind me towers a woman with snow-white skin, her hair an arctic blue, eyes coldly aglow, and beside her a beautiful horned thing with ashen flesh, dangerous red eyes. The minotaur, Farrell, has a great hoof upon his chest, pressing deep into the fur and muscles, belonging to some alabaster goddess with great wings and horns. At the door to the pub, a bronze-skinned amazon stands guard, arms folded across her heavy chest. Opposite her stands a pale dark elf, black hair coiled dangerously, outfit leaving little to the imagination.

And central to it all, in the eroticised black-and-white lace of a maid, stands Amber Dominite, hands on the wide curves of her hips, namesake-coloured hair flowing as living fire, golden-orange and glorious. She shakes her head wistfully, slowly taking in the scene, before ultimately settling on me, a pair of gemstone eyes swallowing my world.

'You hurt my friend today,' Amber says. Her voice is a song, gravelly and sensual, divinely feminine yet commanding, firm, a black treacle voice. 'Narglarn is hurting, seriously, because of you.'

I find myself eyeing the men, but Amber doesn't take her eyes from me. She lifts a neatly trimmed eyebrow to me. 'Well, Peter? Are you just going to gawp?'