Disclaimer:
Everyone is over eighteen. If you are not deeply into fantasy pulp fiction, gender fluidity and pansexuality, you are in the wrong place. We are half way through the first book and I want to make one thing perfectly clear. It is possible to read this story as a metaphor for the transgender experience. Tallia goes from being a man to a woman and feels, for a time, she is cursed. I just want to make clear that however you read this story, it is not the intent of the author to throw any shade at actual transgender people. Yay transgender people! I support your journeys and hope that soon society as a whole will embrace you. I know that trans people take a lot of shit in our world and I hope my writing is never perceived as part of that. Much love!
BEHOLD! I, Thutmose-Neferkare, royal scribe, chief librarian and high priest of the divine Ra do bid thee welcome back to the seventh scroll in "The Saga of Tallia the Unwilling". And let me get this out of the way immediately -- there is sex in this chapter. In fact, there is hot, raunchy, often magical sex in most of the remaining chapters in this twelve-part book. So getteth off my ass, ye horndogs.
But that is not what we need to talk about today. No. I, the exalted Thutmose-Neferkare, would like to ask each and everyone of you the most important question you'll ever hear -- what will your afterlife be like? I know. I know. Death, lo, tis a drag. But let me tell you plain, friends, some of your afterlives are going to suck. No food, no slaves, no chariot, not even a place to get out of the heavenly rain. Every day I hear about good people who die unprepared for eternity. Yay, I'm getting all choked up just thinking about these poor unfortunate souls.
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Chapter Seven: Pulling Out Just in Time
In the camp of the raiding party, Zara Burning Horn tried to get some sleep. She slept naked inside a pavilion made of stolen silk, guarded by two of the bestial Sons of Arion. In a day or two, they would be back in Arion's fortress. She could report a complete success in her mission at punishing Jiu Shan. Doubtless, the wizard's only reward would be another mission to enforce his will. And then she would go forth once more to bring her hellfire to this world. The very thought made her smile.
Getting to the village had been, as always, the easy part. The raiders had travelled there through one of the wizard's portals to ensure surprise against the villagers. But there was no return portal so they had to hike home across the marshy headlands of the River Deng back to the fortress. It had rained every day, but then what did she care? She had been raised in the depths of hell. What this worse than that?
She hated camping with these beast-men mortals of course. The wizard's transformations had made them into lustful half-men barely in control of their savages wants. She certainly knew exactly what each of them wanted of her. Mother had chosen to send her into this world, after all, clothed in the flesh of a beautiful, lithe female form, albeit one with bright red skin and curving horns. But even possessing such beauty, the beast-men were too terrified of her power to try and force themselves on her. And rightly so. If the brutes tried anything, she would burn them to ash with demon flame.
What did occasionally gnaw at her was how little of her past she could actually remember. As she tried to recall anything about the days before she was summoned forth from hell by the wizard's sacrifices to her mother, she had to admit -- her memories were an odd patchwork of images and half-formed moments. In truth, she remembered little before she been called to this realm from across the void. She had vague memories of living in hell, but little specifics. Perhaps it had something to do with being summoned to the realms of men. She knew not.
In the end, what did it matter? She was not some ridiculous mortal but a demon spawned in the pits of the Queen of Hell. She knew her mission -- to serve her master and her mother. She knew her power -- she was a master of the shaping of hellfire. What else did she need in this life?
But then there were other memories that occasionally crept into the edges of her mind. She usually only encountered them while deep in dreams or on the edge of sleep, like now. She saw herself without her horns and crimson skin, riding a horse across an endless desert without a name. She was not alone in this magnificent waste -- there was another with her. He looked almost exactly like her, but was a bearded figure, handsome and high spirited who road alongside her. They laughed and raced the wind and each other. But where she had seen him or who he was or if he was even real -- she could not say.
She tried to push it all from her mind. She was Zara Burning Horn, hell-born enforcer for the wizard. She was the daughter of the Mother of Monsters, the Queen of Demons. She was death. She was fire. All else was irrelevant and ridiculous.
But even now, as she finally found sleep once more, still she saw herself laughing and riding a horse whose hooves threw up fine golden sand. She raced the sun to return before nightfall once more to... where? At last she found sleep, but no answers.
***
The days and nights began to drag out and blend together in the dungeons of Arion Three-Eyes. After Tallia's return from the arena, it was quiet and keeping track of time became more difficult. The cycle of sun and moon was increasingly a distant memory to the four prisoners. The only certainty they could muster was that they were fed gruel only once per day by the crow-man. Three feedings went by. If those corresponded exactly to a twenty four cycle, it became increasingly impossible to be certain.
This isolated wing of the dungeon was also becoming more and more horrid to inhabit. There was a chamber pot in each cell, but they had not been emptied since their imprisonment began and each was now full and foul. Insects teemed amidst the befouled straw. The air was a foul miasma of awful smells. Liandra had been left unchained, but Mela remained bound and her immobilization was clearly killing her. Her wrists were red, she drifted in and out of consciousness lost in a haze of exhaustion and delirium. And of course, her waste was all about her.
Hilarius also was starting to wear down and hours after the feeding in what he hoped were the late hours of the night, he contemplated a crazy plan. "We've got to get out of here," whispered the rogue to his cell-mate.
Tallia answered also in a whisper, "I want nothing more, but how?"
"There has to be a way out," said Hilarius lost in contemplation. "We've escaped from more closely guarded places than this. Let's face it... this is a terrible prison compared to the oubliettes of Yaath'Xin. The guards are little more than beasts, the locks are shit. I can pick them in my sleep."
