Author's note: This story is brief. All it really does is set up an idea that may or may not ever actually go anywhere ever again. But I like it.
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"What are they going to do with us?"
The three women had been captured as spoils of war when the menfolk of their city had made the gravely unwise decision to resist the expansion of the Wymhalt Empire. When the Queen's soldiers had entered the city they had, very politely but very firmly, collected together all the young women of marriageable age, married or not, told the least ripe and attractive two thirds to go home and then drawn lots among the remainder to pick the three who were now sitting in a cell that was luxurious and opulently furnished but undeniably a cell.
"I've heard that they make human sacrifices!" The second woman whimpered, trying to curl into a ball to maintain what was left of her modesty.
The three had been taken, in a very luxurious but sturdy and locked carriage with no windows, to the Wymhalt itself. They had been taken blindfolded from the carriage to this room, where they had been met by six beautiful but also very strong and insistent women who had stripped them naked and lead them into the adjoining room, where a large, steaming bath awaited them.
They had been bathed, more thoroughly than they had ever done before, and then massaged from head to foot with a light, headily scented oil before being dressed in light gowns that hang loosely but were snug enough to hang from features of which the women were suddenly self-conscious, and specially so without undergarments to control or conceal them.
"Hold your tongue!" The third woman snapped. She had been quiet throughout the day, with an expression that was carefully blank but which had from time to time revealed the seething fury and the wariness inside. "If they're going to sacrifice us there's precious little we can do about it. If they're going to rape us, as you seem so afraid of Enda, there's precious little we can do about that! All we can do is wait and endure, which is all women can!"
This unexpected display of fire roused an answering, perhaps angrier through a flush of guilt, fire from the first woman, Enda, who started to retort "That's all very well for you to say, Valda - you don't have anything to live for anyway!" But as she opened her mouth the door reverberated to the sound of the great locks and what must be a locking bar on the other side being removed, and the three drew themselves into themselves, one stoically but tinged with fear, one afraid, one somewhat petrified.
The door was thrown open by two of the Queen's muscular, lightly armoured guards, and in between them strode the same six women who had attended them earlier, carrying once more the blindfolds but also three soft leather collars, to which were attached three silken but obviously very strong ropes.
The third captive squealed and tried to fight, Enda nearly spat in their faces and even Valda closed her eyes involuntarily when the collar was closed around her neck, and in seconds all three were walking through the door, lead at a pace that none of them were comfortable with, blindfolded as they were.
Outside the doors they were stopped and, as their insides reverberated with the thud of the doors' closing, their feet were lifted one by one and soft sandals put on.
The sandals fit them snugly and securely, but did nothing to make them comfortable with the pace at which they were made to walk.
How long they walked none of them could have accurately guessed, but there were two staircases up and one down, at least three corners and all in an eerie hush in which only the tread of feet - their own shuffling and uneven, the guards' even and solid, the women attending them soft and steady - could be heard. Even echoes were smothered quickly.
Then they could sense that they were walking through another huge set of doors, and into a space so vast that it might have been open air. They were lead forwards, still at the same pace, then abruptly stopped and for a second there was stillness.
After that hushed second a feminine voice that was at once rich, powerful, seductive and imbued with a sense of wrongness that made their skins crawl said "Remove their blindfolds."
Light flooded back to the three captives, and they saw the Queen.
As one, their knees buckled and they dropped to the floor in overwhelmed awe and subjection.
The Queen sat on a throne carved from a single solid block of timber stained a deep blood-red, and with leather seat a brighter red. She sat tall and upright, and for the three captives she dominated the room so completely that no other details registered.
She wore boots of soft calf skin that wrapped lovingly around her feet and calves and ended at her knees. She wore a skirt made out of fine black kid leather that draped over her legs at mid-thigh. She wore a corset of finest silver mesh that wrapped around her torso from her hip bones to where they encased, caressed and lifted a pair of magnificent breasts, the nipples of which could not have been more than barely covered by the silken lining of the corset. She wore a necklace that supported a cascade of diamonds that descended in a triangle from the sides of her neck to just miss the abrupt thrust of the upper slopes of her breasts, and between those mounds rested a giant ruby set in a silver clasp that collected the two ends of the jet-black cloak that spread over her shoulders and cascaded over the seat of her throne. On her head she wore a crown of intricate silver lacework that encircled her head, dipped low between her eyes and rose into a circlet of spines like questing serpent heads.
Every detail was etched upon the captive's minds as their eyes were locked helpless upon the Queen, trapped by a magic that they could neither fight nor even comprehend.
