Queen Yavara

Chapter Fifty-Six

YAVARA

I was in the midst of a great silence. It was deafening. The world around me seemed to pulse with it, fading in and out like the cadence of waves. Blood ran from my sister's nose and mouth, and pooled onto the hollow of her throat. Her eyes were bloodshot and dull, staring at the ceiling. She was dead, and I didn't feel anything. There was no catharsis, nor release, nor even a settling of peace. There was just emptiness. It was then that I realized how much of me was actually her. The sum of my soul that belonged to Leveria Tiadoa was filled with my hatred, self-loathing, insecurities and doubts, and that sum totaled more than any other; even more than Elena. Even more than Alkandi. I hadn't been healed of all the anguish Leveria had dealt me; it had just been carved from me like a tumor crudely cut out, leaving me lesser than I was. The silence blared in my ears like a warning, and my heartbeats pounded like the ticking of a clock.

"You with me, Alkandi?" I whispered.

Silence answered.

"Did you do that, or did I?"

Again, nothing.

"I guess the real question is, what would Yavara do?"

Only the wind from the open window sounded in the room.

I smiled to myself. "No answer, huh? I guess I get to decide then. Any objection?"

Nothing.

"At least I asked." I leaned forward, and took Leveria's dead face in my hand. Her heart still pumped, and there was still something going on in what was left of her brain. She was dead, but there was enough left to be called 'life.' I reached behind her, scooped the pink matter off the pillow, and tossed it into the hole in her head. Then, I uttered the incantation.

LEVERIA

I opened my eyes. When had I closed them? There was a void. Blackness. No... not blackness, for blackness was something. This was nothing. A space of emptiness between moments. Death. I had died. I could feel it, a numbness, a discontinuity in the center of my consciousness. A before, and an after, but not an in between. A chasm that I had not crossed, but simply appeared on the other side of. I was so cold. I didn't even remember what warmth felt like. I didn't remember anything.

There was a creature beside me. A woman? Yes, a woman. Was she dead? She looked dead. Her skin was a sickly pale, and her eyes were distant, and she was lying still next to me. Orange eyes? That seemed strange to me, but I didn't understand why. Where was this place? What was it? Everything around me was plush and pink, void of edges and hard surfaces. Cushions. Pillows. I remembered these things. I glanced down, and saw an array of strange objects littering the cushion I rested upon. These were things I could not logically grasp yet, but they engendered a strange feeling within me. The thing that lay between the strange objects was my body, and I could understand that it was mine even if it felt detached. Conceptually, I could reason that there were fingers attached to hands attached to arms attached to shoulders attached to chest. I could then reason further that these attachments carried a common connection to me—whatever I was—and that I, the consciousness that inhabited this... whatever this was... I could control my fingers. I sent a signal down my arm, and extended one finger. Yes, I could do that. It required quite a bit of effort, but I had autonomy over this body. This body that somehow did not feel like

mine,

but something that I had just entered. Had it been someone else's before? No... no, I seemed to recall that I... whatever "I" was... I used to use this body. Though it seemed modular to me, I deduced that I could not in fact leave this body, though I obviously had just left it only moments ago, and so... ah, it didn't matter. For now, I needed to only focus on gaining control of the shell I currently occupied.

I wiggled one finger, then the next, then the next, then the next. The last finger was different than the others, and moved strangely. Ah, it was my thumb. My memory was coming back. I wiggled one toe, then the next, then the next, then the next, then the smallest little one at the end. I did the same with the other foot, then extended my heel forward, and felt a satisfying crack in my ankle. Ankle, heel, foot; these were identifiers I could remember easily, but what were the things attached to my toes? Little white and pink shiny things that seemed to grow from the tips. Blades? Yes, they seemed like blades. A blade as I understood it, was a flat and sharp thing, and that described the things coming out of my fingers and toes, but... hmm... it didn't seem right. Nails. They were called "nails" for some strange reason. I angled one nail against my opposite foot, and moved it across the flesh. I felt pain, and immediately comprehended it. Pain was easy. Pain and I were very intimate.

A flood of memories came back to me. The pain I had endured, the pain I had caused, the pain I relished and the pain I abhorred. The memories were fractured at first, just simple flashes of recollection without context, but they became more vivid by the second, until whole paintings were being displayed in my mind. I had inflicted and received so much pain. It was like I was trading it my whole life. I loved it, this trading of pain, this giving and receiving. It was a game, and I loved games. Who was I? A gamemaster of pain. But who? There was a memory... a crown being placed upon my head by an older man. Had I caused him pain? Oh yes, I had caused much. Had he caused me pain? Yes. He had caused my first true pain. Father. A memory flashed before my eyes. I was a little girl. I was playing alone in my room. Father came in. He walked funny, staggering every step. He stank of alcohol. I remembered that after that night, he never drank until his last dying days, but that night, the miasma of whisky that came from him was so strong that it filled the room. He looked down at me, and smiled. It wasn't a fatherly smile. He locked the door behind him. There was nothing after that, but I remembered the pain, and that seedling of pain blossomed in me, becoming something beautiful, something terrible.

But I was always terrible. There was an even earlier memory of pain. Not the first pain I endured, but the first pain I inflicted. I remembered standing over the crib of a babe. It was a girl, and her head was bald except for wisps of blonde. 'Yavara,' I had cooed, 'it's your big sister. It's Leveria.' Leveria—that was my name. And this woman next to me... was she Yavara? The memory came back into focus. I had a twig in my little hand. How old was I? Six. Yavara was only months old. I smiled impishly, and dangled the twig into Yavara's crib. Her big blue baby eyes widened in wonder at it, and she attempted to grab it. I pulled it away, and giggled. She giggled too. I extended the twig into the crib once more, and gently poked her nose. I giggled, and she cackled delightedly, squirming in that fat little way babies do. I poked her belly, and we both laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. I poked her in the eye, and she screamed. She shrieked so terribly that it seemed to split right through my skull, and I laughed. I laughed with more pleasure than I ever had.

From those two memories, I reconstructed the person that I was until all the pieces of my timeline were in place, and the only void space was the moment of nothing between my conversation with Yavara, and this instance right here. I looked at my little sister. Though she was staring blankly at me, the sheets beneath her parted mauve lips moved subtly with her breaths. She was so near to death. It had taken everything to bring me back. With a groan, I flopped one arm to my side, purposefully curled each finger around a pillow, then flopped the arm back so that the pillow was secured before my chest in both hands. With the utmost effort, I rolled to my side, atop my sister, and pressed her face into the pillow. She didn't struggle. She just lied there while I shifted my weight onto my chest, and suppressed her ability to breathe. After a minute, one of her legs kicked a little. After two minutes, the kicking stopped. After three minutes, it started kicking again. Goddamn, how much longer would it take? After four minutes, her foot went still.

"You still alive, Yavara?" I asked. I pulled the pillow away. She was staring blankly at the ceiling, her orange eyes like glass, no light behind them. I put my finger over her mouth, and felt the faint wind of breath coming from her. "Shit," I mused, "good lungs, but I guess you're used to holding your breath though, huh?" I chuckled, and put the pillow back over her face. Why were their splotches on the pillowcase? I wiped my brow, but I wasn't sweaty at all; I was practically freezing from death's chill. I put my hand to my cheek, and felt wetness. I'd been weeping? Why? It didn't make any sense, but even as I thought it, fat tears poured from my eyes, and splashed the pillow beneath me. I knew what grief was. I'd felt it keenly before, and so this pain was familiar to me, and it was the most unwelcome pain. It knotted in my chest, and squeezed like a fist around my heart, pulling everything down deep into the pit of my belly.

"No," I hissed at Yavara's glass eyes, "no, not for you! Not for you!

Not for you!

" But I could not kill the pain, and I could not swallow it. It washed over me, taking me completely, and I could only bury my face into my sister's breast, and vent the pain with deep sobs.

"I won't say it!" I bawled, "Goddamn you, I won't say it!"

But the pain broached no argument. It built and built until the words bubbled unbidden from my mouth, "I'm sorry."

My tears splashed upon Yavara's vacant face, wetting her pallid cheeks and blue lips. Her breathing was slowing, each exhale like a numeral in the countdown. It wouldn't be long now. The pain within me ebbed away, and left a cold solemnity. I knew what I had to do. With what strength I had in me, I crawled up my little sister's body until my crotch was pressed around her face.

"Sorry about the taste," I muttered as I shakenly elevated myself upright, "but that's what you get when you have your entire kingdom run train on me."

I clicked open Yavara's mouth with my thumb, pinched her tongue, and brought it out. "If you die, this is going to look really, really bad." I mused, and lowered my clit to her mouth. I gasped when the wet plush flesh pressed around me, but my pleasure was only momentary. As I settled atop my lifeless sister's face, I realized I would have to do all the work for the both of us.

"I am not a necrophile." I said to myself, and began grinding across Yavara's tongue, "Not yet. Hold on, baby sis; I'm coming for you."

I thrusted and shimmied, driving my hips forward and back, grunting and groaning with the exertion of it. The stimulus was present, but there was nothing about what I was doing that was even remotely sexy to me. I tried degrading my sister, but it only made me feel guilty. I tried encouraging her, but it felt disingenuous. With each labored motion, her breath that heated my sex became less and less frequent, until half a minute had gone by between soft exhalations.

"Come on!" I hissed, tears of frustration falling from my eyes. "Goddamn it! Make me fucking come, you stupid slut! I know you can do it!"

But there was nothing. My motions weren't sinuous and sexy, but jerking and rigid, and my mind wasn't soft with bliss and desire, but sharp with urgency and panic. I dug my fingers into the pillow, and tried moaning like I would in lust, but each sound was an affectation, and I gave up after the third utterance.

I closed my eyes. "Elena," I whispered, "I really need your help right now." I took one breath, then another, and let them slowly out through my mouth. I felt the panic wash away, and a peace come over me. An image came to my mind. Elena was in bed with me, all tangled in the sheets. She'd been wonderfully abusive towards me all night long, and as the golden dawn caressed her bronze flesh, an apologetic little smile formed over her plush lips. I giggled, and crawled up her body, enjoying this moment of tender dominance, savoring the way she so willingly submitted after being so controlling. I made a seat of her breasts, and outlined her lips with my thumb, whispering of what dirty things those lips would soon be doing. She got impatient with me, and grabbed two fistfuls of my ass. I yelped in delight as she shoved me forward, and I bit my lips and moaned splendidly when I felt her tongue.

"That's it." I whispered in both the memory and the present, "Right... oh god, right there." The tip of Elena's tongue upended my engorged clit, and drew it out with a come-hither caress. She played with me coyly, drawing such sweet patterns upon me, never moving past the point of teasing pleasure. It drove me wild. When I couldn't take it anymore, I balled my fists in her hair, and rode her face for all it was worth, forcing her muzzle to smoosh around my leaking petals. The glint in her eyes was alight with the satisfaction of making me lose my composure, and she rewarded me for my defeat, consuming me sloppily, mouthing around my soft parts and plunging her tongue deep inside.

"Elena!" I cried in both past and present, sounding a tenor that was nearly mournful in its tone. I grasped my breasts, my nipples hard through my fingers, and I bestrode her face, kissing her with my other lips, exclaiming of my pleasure with each breath. The feeling within me built, rising steadily and inevitably, taking me higher and higher. It compelled my back to arch, to present my breasts to the sky as I tilted my head back and exalted. I was hot all around her tongue, sweltering and pulsing, wetting her lips and nose with my nectar. She didn't show any mercy. She feasted upon me without restraint, driving me further and further into my mania, stripping me of all senses but the sensations she poured deep into me. Ecstasy swelled within me, ballooning from my core, moving like electricity through my nerves until it was firing from the tips of my fingers and toes! I looked down at the woman doing this to me, and stared with disbelieving, wonderous eyes.

"I love you!" I whispered, and I didn't care that it was the sappiest fucking thing in the world to say when coming. I said it, and she winked back, and pushed me over the edge.

ELENA

"Die, you motherfucker, die, die, DIE,

DIE!

" Huntiata screamed, stabbing his sword into the open mouth of the wolf. Blood poured from its gouged-out eyes and crushed nostrils, but still it gnashed and snapped, wrathful and ferocious to the very end. It lurched forward and bit a grotesque chunk out of a soldier's leg, and he went down shrieking. The warg silenced his agony with a crushing forepaw, splattering me. I drove my blade into the warg's throat, and ripped across. A great gout of crimson flowed onto the stone floor, and the beast went still, blocking the corridor with its body. The red eyes of its brethren peered out from behind it, then disappeared in a flash of shadow down the steps.

Huntiata took in a huge breath, and slouched on his sword. We were in the servant's wing of the castle, on the third floor. The battle for the castle had started in the atrium, where the entire elven force had barricaded themselves before each entrance of the castle's four wings; the royal wing, the guest wing, the noble wing, and the servant's wing. When the wargs came through, all four forces were immediately overwhelmed. I didn't know how the others were fairing, but we'd been pushed backwards up three flights of stairs, and had lost at least two-thirds of our men along the way. I didn't know how many of the enemy we'd killed, but it seemed to have been enough for our pursuers to seek out easier prey. But then again, I didn't know.

"Mom?" I asked, panting heavily.

She shook herself back into awareness, and glanced at me. "Yes, Dear?"

"You OK?"

She blinked, then said, "I'm fine," very plainly.

"We need to regroup with the others," Huntiata growled, hobbling over to me. He'd gotten a chunk of his foot bitten off on the way up, but he managed to act like it wasn't bothering him.

"You want to go back down

there?!

" a soldier screamed, gesturing to the corridor.

"It's our only chance!" Huntiata snapped, "If we're able-bodied, we must fight! If we don't win, we will die!"

"Just give us a fucking second!" a watchman gasped, clutching his bloody side.

"We don't have a fucking second!" Huntiata roared, "Every second we waste, ten men die! We need to..." He trailed off, and cocked his head. Everyone else went silent. There was a scraping sound like metal on stone. Suddenly, all the daylight that had shone through the western hallway's windows went out. I slowly turned around, and looked out the window beside me. Where there had once been a landscape of the Bentius Bay, there was now a pair of red eyes surrounded by black fur.

"Oh, shit." Huntiata muttered, and all hell broke loose. The wargs smashed through the windows, burst through the surrounding stone, and leapt into the hallways. Men disappeared into the mass of fur, and their shrieks cut through the growls and snarls of the feasting beasts. I snatched Mom by the hand, and sprinted toward the felled warg at the corridor's entrance. Huntiata ran alongside us, and the surviving five soldiers ran behind, none of them looking back. I squeezed past the dead wolf, and dragged Mom through the space. Huntiata hacked his way through its side, and two soldiers flowed in after him. The other three men tried to get into the space Mom and I had passed through, but they all tried to get into at once. Stuck shoulder-to-shoulder, they jostled in a mania of panic before they were suddenly ripped backwards in a trifecta of screams.

We sprinted down the stairs, stumbling over piles of our own dead, maneuvering past the great corpses of wargs. We got down one flight of stairs, the next one, then we were smashed against the wall in a sudden flux of fur and muscle, and a horrific crunch sounded. Someone shrieked next to me, and I squeezed my Mother's hand, and yanked it toward me. I half-expected it to be the only part of her that came with, but the rest of my Mom came surging after, and we wriggled through the flailing mass of wolf, and burst out from the other side. Huntiata was with us a moment later, a brand-new slice across his cheek that exposed his teeth, but he didn't seem to notice. He just hobbled along as fast as he could while the two screaming soldiers bought us precious extra seconds.

The atrium was empty when we sprinted into it. Hundreds of bodies littered the four entrances to the four wings, and very few of them were wargs. The three of us hugged the wall as we circumnavigated the expansive room, our eyes shifting to every dark corner and alcove. It was strange how silent it was. Not twenty minutes ago, this had been a scene of raging battle, and now it was a graveyard. Our footsteps echoed in the stony confines, and our shadows moved across the walls. Our breathing was tight and rapt, but still it could be heard like thunder from our lips. I squeezed Mom's hand tightly, and she did the same, our grips fused together. Huntiata led the way with his sword on guard, leading his shuffle with his half-foot. We came to the royal wing entrance, and peered down the corridor.

Scores of dead littered the luxuriant carpet, and blood splattered the walls. The stained-glass fixtures had all been shattered, and the cold winter light shone through in beams that contrasted the pervading blackness between them, blinding us to what lay beyond. Huntiata shuffled forward, pinning his back to the wall. We followed after; our weapons held tight against our breasts. We made ourselves small against the wall, hiding our side profiles behind the stone columns that framed each empty window. Huntiata made it to the first window's edge, and ducked beneath the beam of light. He slipped to the other side, and peered out of the edge of the window. A great black paw suddenly shot out of the window, and seized upon Huntiata's midsection. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened, and he shrieked. He shrieked with a pitch I didn't think he was capable of reaching, and it was so shrill that it cut right through my head. The massive paw ripped away, and Huntiata's entire front was ripped away with it, strings of sinew and intestines stretching from his gored belly like gum. He folded in on himself, all of his abdominal muscle removed, and he gurgled into the carpet.