Chapter 12- The Fall of House Faline, pt 2
Beinbalkr watched Aldrnari and Deild lead their small group in the direction of the private chambers of Matron Forelain. As soon as they were out of sight she walked into her office and returned with the largest meat tenderizer any of her maids had ever seen. It was a gift to her from a young gentleman caller a few hundred years ago when she had been a young maiden much like these girls standing before her now.
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She had saved the young officer's life during a skirmish on the surface with wild Animals made of a sleuth of bears, packs of wolves, leashes of foxes, droves of pigs, and several coveys of avian. They had taken to living in northern Annwyn in a makeshift Animal town, called a Kykvendiborg. As if Animals could understand the concepts of civilization. They were made to be owned, and ruled. There was just no way they could or should live without the firm hand of a Prime telling them what they should do and how they should live. Only with a strong fist could the Animals be drug out of the mud and made to have some semblance of sophistication. At least, that is how she used to think, how she had been taught to think before the raid.
Before the battle commenced, she saw Animals of many different species coexisting. Females that were clothed in dresses, aprons, and blouses with sarong skirts. Males that wore their various clothing according to their trade crafts. All of the fabrics were made with plant fibers like cotton, or fur like wool. Scattered in the streets of the markets were plates and silverware, blacksmith shops offered farm equipment and larger knives, swords, axes, halberds, and other martial weapons of war. There were glass blowers, silver and goldsmiths and every type of crafts she had seen in her own city of Idavollr. It was evident to anyone that wished to accept the truth, that Animals were just as sophisticated and cultured as any Prime race. And yet, as she stood there in horror at the massacre that was happening before her, she watched male and female Animals die side-by-side protecting their city and their families.
It was during that conflict that she had her eyes opened. She watched shops and markets burn. The town hall doors blocked and locked closed with the elected Council still inside before the building was set on fire. Males were slaughtered in the street while the females were drug out of their homes, shops, or businesses by their hair or dresses. They were thrown into the street alongside their dead husbands and sons and then they were stripped and raped in front of their children. The scene was horrifying and grisly, and yet, it didn't keep her from using her wooden meat tenderizer on a wayward pig that charged in and almost gutted the young officer nearby.
On instinct and in fear for her life and of the beasts killing rage, she swung her mallet, in defense of the soldier so hard that it broke on the pig's head. As it danced away, dazed from the impact, she tossed the broken handle away and jumped on it's back and bashed it's brains in with her skillet. The officer was so impressed and thankful he commissioned a dvergr blacksmith to make an enchanted mithril maul, fashioned into the likeness of a meat tenderizer. When the weapon was completed, he gifted it to her along with a proposal to court and marry her. Both young and stupid, she thought him not her type because he wasn't as pretty as she wanted her eventual husband to be, so she turned him down but happily kept the hammer as repayment for the tenderizer she'd lost.
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"By the goddess!" Istas, a tall, heavily muscled she-wolf growled at the sight of Beinbalkr's hammer, "I didn't know you served in the militia!"
"I didn't," Beinbalkr answered defensively at the accusation, but then purred proudly as she hefted the maul, "I was only ever a maid that worked my way up to Cook, and then became our Lady's Pantler. This was a gift for saving a soldier's life once upon a time when I was young like you all. I call it the 'Tenderizer'..."
"Yeah, I bet anyone hit by that thing is tenderized alright, if not completely pulverized," Svartsilki giggled as her two larger humanoid eyes blinked a split second before her other six smaller eyes did.
Beinbalkr smiled as she scanned her troop starting with Istas. The she-wolf was tall with short white fur on her belly and breasts that hid her nudity well unless she was in heat. Down her legs, arms, and back her fur was much longer and thicker. She had a long white mane of wild hair that fell to her buttocks, and no matter how the household staff attacked it, it was never tamed. As a matter of fact, they had stopped trying to groom Istas when it seemed to become increasingly frizzy and uncontrollable the more they brushed it. Her eyes were different colors, her right being a dark silvery blue while her left was a bright glacier blue/green. Her face was the only part of her that was denuded of fur revealing skin that was black with a silvery undertone while her eyebrows and eyelashes were long, thick, and white. Her triangular ears were long and pointed, and hung out over her shoulders very much like Alfar ears, however they were covered in short white fur while long hairs covered her ear canal to help keep dirt and grime out of them. Lastly, she also had a long, white, fluffy tail that grew out from between her buttocks and wagged gently back and forth helping her keep her balance as she walked on Animal hybrid hind legs with five toes and claws on each pawed foot.
No one gave Istas a weapon, she didn't need one, her brute strength and her claws were deadly enough. Standing over six feet tall, she was head and shoulders taller than almost every woman in the room except of Svartsilki and Gloa, the only two Sven'dahl scullery maids standing just to Istas right and left.
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The Sven'dahl, the goddess Arachne's final and most special creation. They were meant to be reflections of her, of her terrifying beauty, and her will. However, in the end they were still only Animals, and insects at that, which the prejudiced Svartalf just couldn't accept. Soon after the Sven'dahl's creation, the goddess Arachne disappeared from the mortal plane.
Later when the Church was asked where their goddess had gone, High Priestess Serephvahl I announced that their goddess Arachne had left the mortal realm to return to the low depths of the Abyss to prepare a place for her people, the Svartalf. Since then, the authority of the Sven'dahl within the Temple of Arachne was marginalized, and finally, in the year 2345, less than a thousand years after their creation, High Priestess Serephvahl II banished the Sven'dahl from the church while Queen-Matron Lucustihl Nigrumarce exiled them to the lowest depths of Svartalfheim.
House Faline, like many others, purchase Sven'dahl as fodder for the House Militia's. However, upon seeing Svartsilki and Gloa's astonishing beauty Matron Faline had them assigned to Beinbalkr as maids. They were both still very young, each less than forty Animal years old, which meant that chronologically they weren't quite twenty yet. They weren't sister's, but they looked as if they could be. They were both very beautiful, a necessity for their kind. Bought from the lowest and therefore the most impoverished depths of Idavollr, they were sold into slavery by mothers looking to make money off the fact that Sven'dahl females birth fifteen to thirty offspring per pregnancy. It was rather mercenary, but then, it gave their children a chance for a better life than the ones they would find in the debauched slums of the lower precincts. Unfortunately the number of Sven'dahl eggs or children populating the slave markets was so numerous that it pushed their value down to nearly nothing. However, exceptionally beautiful females could still demand a hefty price depending on their subspecies.
——(!)——
Svartsilki and Gloa both had black skin as dark as onyx. They both had white hair on their heads that was pulled back into a single thick braid that fell down their completely humanoid backs. Otherwise their bodies were completely hairless and smooth. Svartsilki's eight eyes were glossy black orbs while Gloa's were crimson. Their faces were small and feminine, with sharp jawlines and pouty plump mouths. Long Svartalf ears stuck out over their shoulders and twitched and moved to track any sound they heard. Svartsilki's shoulders were narrow while Gloa's were broad, and were Svartsilki's breasts were small and easily cupped by her own hands Gloa's were very large and hung down like wine kegs a little more than halfway to her navel. Though some Sven'dahl have four arms and hands, both Svartsilki and Gloa only had two.
Both their rib-cages, just below their breasts, swept down to slim waists that then swept out to exotically broad hips and overly thick rear ends before curving down to what appeared to be thick thighs and abnormally long shapely legs nearly twice as long as their torsos. If it weren't for their hips and legs they would have looked exactly like Svartalf, and the fact that just below their navels their soft skin became the glossy hardened exoskeleton of a spider. Then there was the way their legs moved as they walked. Though their eight legs fit together so that they would appear humanoid, their individual legs moved weirdly as they tried to simulate natural musculature movement, and their crotches where their sexes were exposed was too wide leading to the gate of their walk being unnaturally sensual as the appeared to roll their hips exaggeratedly.
The final evidence of their species wagged up and down and to-and-fro behind them, almost like tails, but much stiffer. Connected to the base of their spines growing out from between their glossy black shell cheeks of their buttocks, adding to reason their hips were about four inches too wide to be natural, were small spider's abdomens that were glossy black with red hourglasses on the underbellies that could be seen through their thighs as they walked on two amalgamated legs. Because both girls were virgins, their abdomens were small, no longer than two feet long and no thicker than two feet in diameter at their thickest points. Of course that would change once they mated.
Svartsilki and Gloa's eyelids with fine white eyelashes blinked rapidly as they stared back at Beinbalkr. Realizing she was lost in thought she smiled and scanned over to look at the classically beautiful Kvedja before moving on to Raudr-daga and Byggja-byrr. The last three of her party were Svartalf slaves sold to their Matron to settle debts. They stood between five feet tall to five and a half feet, and each was slim of breast, waist and hips appearing more-or-less like the stereotypical Svartalf female. Unlike the Animals they were permitted clothing, maids attire, which was scanty ever since the young Lords Faline took over the House.
Trying to seem reassuring, Beinbalkr finally returned to Istas, "When we leave this kitchen we will be deemed patriots or traitors depending on who gains control of this House tonight. Let us pray it is our Matron Forelain. From here Istas and Gloa lead the way to the barracks. We must find Trina. Svartsilki you bring up the rear..."
Everyone nodded, then Beinbalkr commanded, "Okay then, let us begin then!"
