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Chapter 1718: It Twitches!
Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Her thumb traced the underside from base to tip in a single slow drag, and the twitch that answered was immediate.

"It twitches!" She announced this with far too much academic triumph for a queen between the legs of a man she wasn’t even the secret lover of, let alone a proper wife.

But in this very moment, all such inhibitions had been tossed aside. "The text was accurate! What about lateral pressure? Page fifty-two mentioned a correlation between circumferential grip variance and..."

She rotated her hand and squeezed gently from the sides, watching the reaction with the focus of a researcher cataloguing live data, and her ears swiveled forward as the tip swelled against her palm.

"Remarkable... The elasticity alone contradicts two established theories I read in the Moonshadow Archives."

"Elf Queen."

Sera’s voice cut across the cell, strained and clipped. Her hands pulsed golden light into the network of burst veins running Black Fang’s forearm, and she did not look up.

"I cannot stabilize her while you’re conducting a doctoral thesis on my husband’s cock right beneath my workspace."

Myrasyn’s ears clamped flat. "R-right! Right. Medical procedure. Focus, Myrasyn..."

Her scholarly composure lasted exactly as long as it took her lips to touch the tip.

The taste hit her tongue and her eyes went wide, then heavy, and the careful first lick she’d planned turned into a second that lasted twice as long.

Her ears rose on their own, slowly, helplessly, as something thick and warm and carrying a mana density she had never encountered in four thousand years of elvenkind registered in the back of her mouth.

She pulled back an inch, staring at the tip like it had personally rewritten her understanding of alchemy.

"The chronicle did not mention this," she breathed.

Then she leaned forward again, and the pretense died for good.

Quinlan looked down.

The Queen of all elves knelt between his legs with her tongue pressing flat against the underside of his cock, her eyes looking up at him through her lashes with large pupils, and the expression on her face had left the academic campus permanently and was currently residing somewhere it would never be allowed to return from.

She loved it.

Those big eyes of his, looking down at her from above while she knelt for him with her lips wrapped around something no queen should ever have in her mouth.

The warmth of his gaze hit her chest harder than any spell the dungeon had thrown at her in captivity.

’This will be the end of me,’ she realized with horror, her lips tightening as she drew him deeper. ’If I keep this up, I will never be able to stand with my head held high before the High Court and reclaim my throne with any shred of dignity. The queen who knelt in a cell and...’

Her tongue curled along the ridge and the sound that left her throat was involuntary, honest, and extremely unfitting for a monarch.

’...I’ll worry about it later.’

"You’re doing it wrong."

Black Fang’s voice came from above, flat.

Myrasyn froze with her mouth full. "Hah?!" The word came out muffled and outraged.

"The angle." Black Fang didn’t open her eyes. "You’re too stiff."

The queen pulled back with an audible pop and jabbed a finger upward at the woman draped over the man she was servicing. "What do you know?! You’re a virgin just like me!"

"I’m not a four-thousand-year-old virgin."

"Yes, and being a four-hundred-year-old virgin makes you an unquestionable professional in the art of lovemaking!" Myrasyn fumed. "Shut your mouth before I beat your all-knowing butt up, Black Fang! At least I studied the literature!"

Black Fang had already stopped listening. She took another bit of his blood to calm her hunger long enough to do what came next...

Which was...

Her hand sliding down from Quinlan’s chest, past his abdomen, slow and unwilling and looking at everything except its destination, until her fingers found the base and wrapped around it.

She didn’t squeeze. She didn’t stroke. She held it the way she might hold a railing she happened to be resting against, her purple irises locked on the far wall as if she was absolutely, categorically not doing what she was doing.

Lightning shot through Quinlan’s spine.

"You’ll never speak of what happened here." Her voice carried ice, her eyes still on the wall. "Got it?"

Quinlan nodded.

"Not a single word."

He nodded.

"Especially not to Vex."

He nodded faster.

Then her voice dropped, lighter than he had ever heard from her, lighter than anything the Venomborne Terror should have been capable of producing, so quiet he almost missed it.

"Thank you... for rushing to me."

Her fingers moved. A slow, careful stroke from base to midshaft, carrying a tenderness so foreign to the most feared woman on the continent that something behind Quinlan’s ribs tightened in a way the hunger couldn’t explain.

Quinlan instantly knew that Black Fang had zero right backseating Myrasyn like she had, for her movements were beyond awkward and clumsy.

Both of theirs were.

But he was about to ascend to a new state of existence nonetheless.

Below, Myrasyn had stopped even pretending.

The scholarly composure was a memory.

The forbidden literature, forgotten.

What remained was the Queen of all elves bobbing her head with her eyes half-closed, making soft, wet, contented sounds at the back of her throat that had departed from academia entirely and arrived somewhere far more honest.

She was savoring every inch of what the chronicle could only describe in dry text with the devotion of a woman who had found divinity in a place no scripture had ever pointed her toward.

"I wasn’t quick enough." Quinlan’s voice came quiet, his eyes on Black Fang’s face.

Her strokes didn’t pause. "You were." Flat and simple. "I’m alive and free."

"They hurt you." His voice hardened. "If I had been stronger-"

"I am fine." The words came rough, from a voice that didn’t know how to reassure. "I will be fine, when..."

She trailed off, and her fingers stilled against him.

Below, Myrasyn’s pace had settled, her eyes fully closed now, ears limp with contentment, and the quiet sounds she made between breaths painted the portrait of a woman who had found something she would not be letting go of willingly.

A breath left Black Fang that weighed more than blood or hunger.

"I know I can’t express myself properly. I know that I’m not normal. I know that even looking at me scares people." Her voice was low, barely a murmur, and the vulnerability in it sat so foreign against the serpent tattoos and the blood crusting her chin that the cell felt like it was eavesdropping on a confession it had no right to hear.

"To others, I am a scary monster more than a woman."

Her fingers moved against him again, barely, a ghost of pressure.

"But the truth is... I liked it."

"Liked it?" Quinlan asked.

The purple spirals in her eyes found his, and the hunger swirling behind them was entirely her own.

"The way you look at me when you see me... From the very first moment, when you were far, far beneath my strength. Even back then, I saw no monster gazing back at me when I looked into your eyes. Not a terrible, miserable creature. Just... a woman."

Her grip tightened for a single heartbeat.

"Your bet." Her lips curled into something too fragile to name. "I never thought it was possible, especially after you so arrogantly reduced it from a year to a month. But perhaps..."

She leaned in until her breath touched his cheek.

"...you might just succeed."

Every nerve in Quinlan’s body fired at once.

He pulled free of Myrasyn’s mouth a breath before it happened, and the queen’s eyes flew open at the sudden withdrawal as he released into the open air above them.

"N-no... Mine..." Myrasyn stared at the space where it had been, lips still parted, tongue still extended.

A sudden and inexplicable feeling of loss settled over her.

Wind caught the release before gravity could, sweeping every drop into a compressed sphere of air that hovered at chest height.

Black Fang’s legs unwound from Quinlan’s body and she dropped to the stone floor on her own two feet for the first time since the rescue. Her legs shook once, then held.

"Turn away." Her voice carried command again, rough and absolute.

They did. Quinlan turned. Sera lowered her glowing hands and turned with him, grinning slyly.

"Hmph! Enjoy, I suppose. You’re welcome!" Myrasyn wiped her lips with her tongue, trying to find any missed drops, and turned with an expression that still hadn’t recovered.

Silence held for three heartbeats.

Then the cell erupted in purple.

Light poured from every surface, blazing through cracks in the stone and painting the walls in swirling violet.

Black Fang stood with her back to them. Her palm pressed flat against her lower belly, where something that had not been there before pulsed beneath her skin in a warmth she could not explain.

"Quinlan Elysiar."

Her voice came measured.

"What does it mean... that I’m your Beloved?"

Her fingers pressed harder against her belly, where the warmth was spreading.

"Explain yourself."

...

It turned out that the cure brought with it unexpected side effects!

But now wasn’t the time to dwell, for the battlefield awaited the Primordial Villain!

It was time to finish everything!

Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem
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  1. Offline
    CreaTorDominion
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    Yet again, on behalf of the Primordial Villan readers community on ranobes, I appreciate Despawning. Thank you so much.
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  2. Offline
    Despawning
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    1727 Sacrilige!

    Archlich Vozen had raised grand armies of legendary proportions throughout his long life, and the purple-eyed corpses surging across the Fujimori line were an insult to every one of them.

    No binding scripts, no muscular enhancements, no bone restructuring. Black Fang had made no effort to turn the dead into glorious undead constructs.

    They were raw, unmodified, freshly killed meat walking on strings that had no business producing anything beyond a lurching shamble, and a dwarven captain she'd bisected seconds ago was carving through his own former comrades.

    "Sacrilege!" The word tore from the archlich in a screech that cracked frost on the nearest tombstones, gems flaring white along his chain.

    "She didn't modify a single one of them!" His gauntlet swept toward the horde. "Proper necromancy demands meticulous binding and restructuring to produce soldiers worthy of the craft! These puppets are raw meat running on fumes, inferior in every conceivable-"

    A vine the width of a horse's torso erupted from the earth beneath three of his shielded undead and crushed them into the dirt, necrotic shielding crackling apart like wet paper.

    Orianna stood with one hand raised and flower constructs blooming around her in a crescent of thorn and hardened bark, each pulsing crimson from the Bloodfather's mark.

    "Yeah, yeah. Constructs that stand on their own in seconds, ready to tear into high level enemies from the get go," she called across the gap, "are so inferior to creations that need months of tinkering in your disgusting crypts. I am in full agreement, lich."

    Another vine caught an armored corpse mid-charge and popped it inside its coils like a grape.

    "Puppets that fight with predatory instinct rather than shambling in circles waiting for orders?" She shook her head. "Your necromancy truly is superior."

    Then a sly smirk appeared on her lips. "Wait. Black Fang is actually a much more proper user of necromancy than you are, because she derives her powers from the One True Necromancer. You're just a dark mage who's only useful so long as you have decades of preparation time before you have to face anyone truly strong."

    "You dare-"

    "Quiet. I'm admiring the sight."

    Her gaze found the violet streak cutting through Fujimori infantry in the distance, and the professional mask she wore like a second skin slipped for a breath of naked reverence.

    "Marvelous... What an otherworldly sight," she murmured, too quiet for anyone breathing to catch.

    Her constructs drove forward into Vozen's ranks, and behind them the archlich burned as raw fury poured into his craft in tendrils thicker than anything he'd produced since the battle began.

    …

    Gorthrax the Eternal caught Elisabeth's mace on a barrier of pooled darkness, and the impact drove cracks through the necrotic wall and rattled the blue fire in his empty sockets.

    Elisabeth pressed through with divine light bleeding from every joint of her golden armor, and her second swing caught the Drowned King mid-charge on Gorthrax's flank.

    Holy fire sheared through rusted armor at the shoulder and flung the severed chunk free in a shower of sparks.

    "MY SHOULDER, YOU MISERABLE COW!"

    "Quiet, corpse." She was already pivoting back to Gorthrax. "Young lady, I hope this helps."

    "Stop trying to steal my kill and mind your own business," Iris hissed at the divine messenger of the Goddess as if Elisabeth was a drunkard in a tavern that stood in her way.

    "Huh?" the Arch Priestess gasped, full of shock. She was trying to help a valiant young girl against the terrible monster she was facing and instead she got told to mind her own business?

    For a moment, confusion was evident on her face.

    Then she shrugged. 'She lost a lot of blood. She didn't mean it.'

    The Eternal had yielded three measured steps during the next exchange. [Grasp of the Abyss] poured from his gauntlet in a wave that bent light around itself, hit Elisabeth's golden aura with the weight of a frozen sea, and cratered the ground between them.

    Elisabeth planted her feet and held, mace braced across her body, radiance pushing back against the dark.

    Then her eyes moved past him.

    The purple-eyed puppets were tearing through the Fujimori line.

    Gorthrax saw it.

    "Found a new target, little hypocrite?"

    Her radiance flared. "Don't talk to me, filth."

    "Let me guess..." A dry rattling escaped his ribcage that barely resembled laughter. "You'll find a way to convince yourself that she and the villain are somehow different? Somehow good despite wielding more potent evil classes than undead do?"

    "None of this is your concern, filth. I'll help you return to your grave."

    "Truly, you fanatics are the biggest hypocrites to have ever lived."

    Her mace came down hard enough to split the earth beneath his feet. The barrier he raised cracked but held, and the blue fire danced in his sockets.

    He'd found a nerve. He was in no hurry to let it heal.

    …

    Black Fang carved a corridor through the Fujimori infantry toward the elders' position, and everyone between her and that destination was a delay made of meat.

    Her puppet army flowed in her wake, purple-eyed corpses filling the gaps with her predatory grace, and the blue-skinned soul soldiers held the flanks in formations that kept the corridor from collapsing behind her.

    "She's breaking through! Stop her!" A samurai screamed and charged from the left. She cut through his guard and his throat in the same motion, and the cry turned into a wet gurgle that ended before his knees hit the ground.

    Behind her, the venom in the wound was already at work, purple-black tendrils knitting the throat back together in a wet crawl that wasn't healing so much as restructuring, sealing the gash enough for the muscles to function. The body sat up with purple fire where its eyes had been.

    A Fujimori spearwoman saw it happen and her weapon slipped from her fingers. "No... stay down. stay down..."

    She was directly in the Venomborne Terror's path, and she'd watched three soldiers try to run in the last thirty seconds and not one of them had made it four steps.

    "This... I-I can't do this anymore! Facing such an enemy is impossible!"

    The spearwoman cried and dropped to the ground, curling into herself with her knees against her chest and her arms around her skull.

    "Mama..." The word left her in a sob muffled against her own knees. "Mama, I want to go home... I want to hear your lullaby just one more time..."

    Black Fang reached her, katana dripping.

    The violet eyes looked down at the woman crying for her mother in the dirt, and whatever passed behind them lasted less than a breath.

    "A mother's lullaby.."

    She whispered under her breath and stepped over.

    Then she resumed the killing.

    The dead flowed past on both sides, close enough for the spearwoman to feel the menace radiating off dead skin, and not one of them touched her.

    She stayed curled on the ground long after the killing sounds moved past her, then cracked one eye open.

    Three of them had stopped mid-march, staring down at her with violet embers where their eyes should have been, patient and expectant, as if waiting for her to figure out what came next.

    The spearwoman looked between the three dead faces and understood. Her hands rose above her head, shaking.

    They bound her wrists behind her back, firm but not cruel, and as the rope tightened the spearwoman's gaze found the violet streak carving through the Fujimori line thirty meters ahead.

    "Thank you..." she whispered toward the woman who spared her life, tears running fresh down both cheeks.

    'Did crying for my mother like a pathetic coward actually save my life?' The thought hit her as the puppets marched her toward the rear of the formation.

    ‘Does the Venomborne Terror have a weakness for girls who cry for their mothers?'

    She looked back over her shoulder at the woman in black, who was splitting a Fujimori officer from collar to hip without any change in her expression.

    She couldn't tell. Nothing about that woman suggested she had any weaknesses at all.

    The clan's banners grew larger through the smoke.

    She found the Scarlet Lilies in her path before she reached the elders.

    Lalith was a couple dozen meters ahead with her back turned, sword crashing against Elder Tomoe's guard in a wild rhythm, the grey-haired woman a decade younger than Chizuru and fighting like every one of those years mattered.
    Bronnya held position to her left, absorbing a samurai charge on her shield.

    Void sat on the tanker's back with her eyes shut and her hat sliding sideways.

    Black Fang closed the distance in silence and swung for the back of Lilith's neck.
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
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      1728 Match Made In Heaven

      Black Fang closed the distance in silence and swung for the back of Lilith's neck.

      The void tore open between them and a wall of compressed nothing caught the purple blade six inches from Lilith's spine.

      "Grh!"

      Blood burst from Void's nose before the barrier even finished forming.

      The veins along her temples swelled so hard they cast shadows, both eyes snapping open as Black Fang's strike carried enough force that Void almost lost consciousness just from trying to stop her.

      Lilith felt the terrible killing intent washing over her and whipped around.

      "Bronnya!"

      The tanker moved to take over the fight against the elder while Lilith spun and brought her sword up just as the void barrier shattered.

      Black Fang's katana punched through and Lilith's blade caught it with a clash that nearly drove her into the dirt.

      "You want to die, lunatic?!" Lilith grunted through the strain.

      Black Fang's blade came back around in silence, angling for Lilith's throat with the same efficiency it had used on every body in the corridor behind her.

      Lilith caught it on her sword's edge.

      And the impact nearly buckled her stance on the spot. 'She became even stronger since we last met?!' she gasped inwardly in disbelief. 'No... She didn't gain more stats... She just became "better" as a combatant,’ she realized through gritted teeth.

      She managed to shove the blade aside and returned a cut that Black Fang slipped without effort, violet eyes tracking the are the way a cat tracked a moth.

      Two more exchanges. Every parry cost Lilith more than the attack it stopped. "What did you do to yourself?!"

      Black Fang didn't respond.

      "Please stop attacking! We switched sides, Black Fang!" Jallen's voice tore across the melee.

      The spearwoman was twenty meters right with her weapon braced against Tatsumi's overhead strike, boots sliding in the dirt.

      Black Fang's blade stopped mid-swing and her violet eyes settled on Lilith.

      "I killed Scar."

      Although she only spoke three words, the meaning behind them was clear to all: 'despite that, you want to become my allies?'

      Lilith's knuckles went white.

      Scar was out there right now, blue-skinned and spine-straight, commanding soul armies for the man who owned her soul, and the woman who'd helped put her there was standing close enough to touch.

      Seeing the hesitation, Black Fang got her answer.

      She lowered her katana and began walking by Lilith.

      "Go kill the undead, you're in my way."

      The Spellblade bumped into her shoulder. "You think I'll just do whatever you tell me to?"

      Black Fang's eyes settled on her, and the violet that stared back was so deep and so empty that Lilith felt she was staring death itself in the face.

      "Yes."

      But the Adamantite Adventurer held it.

      "You better think again, then!"

      "Orc boss." Void's voice came, and for once it was ragged, breatiNess. "Use your head, please."

      Lilith's eye twitched.

      "Let her have the elders!" Jallen shouted, catching the elder's next thrust on her spear shaft with a crack that split the wood. "She's got a vendetta while we're here just because."

      The follow-up nearly took her head off. "Let's go kill undead! We're professional monster slayers, not destroyers of the elderly."

      She was more than happy to get away from the ferocious elders who were pushing her to the brink of death with every attack.

      Lilith and Black Fang held each other's eyes.

      The battle raged around their stillness, Bronnya's shield ringing, Alexios doing the heavy lifting as he fought multiple elders at once.

      Lilith broke the staredown first, eyes full of dissatisfaction. "I join Quintan Elysiar and the first thing I get is this lunatic trying to cut my head off from behind..." she growled. "What a phenomenal start."

      Black Fang was already looking at Chizuru, ignoring the dissatisfied rambling.

      As she disengaged from the fight, Lilith couldn't help but look up, eyes landing on Quinlan.

      'Did that f#cker not tell her about our situation, or did she just ignore it?’

      Her eyes narrowed. 'I can't even decide, they're both crazy.’

      ‘The two killers of Scar, one more unhinged than the other.’

      She scoffed.

      ‘What a match made in heaven.'

      …

      The Fujimori front was collapsing.

      Black Fang's army had hit the line, and the combined force ground through samurai formations with the efficiency of a machine that multiplied with every kill.

      Alexios was at the center of the storm, swinging his longsword wildly at the elders until he sensed the surge of wrongness from behind. "Now what?"

      'He has a new power? Again?' He almost laughed at himself for the thought, but not because such a thought was impossible.

      No, at this point the old king half-expected Quinlan to turn up with a new power every other minute.

      What surprised him instead was...

      That bastard would happily watch Alexios die before sparing a single soldier from his women's side.

      He would be more than happy letting Alexios make a final stand even if it became a 1v5 against all the elders. So why were these creatures rushing to his aid?

      Then Black Fang materialized from the press of bodies at his right flank, katana dripping.

      'Ah.’ He glanced at the katana. 'It all makes sense now'

      The forces that came to back him up weren't Quinlan's.

      "Leave,” she ordered coldly.

      In fact, the forces weren't even here to back him up, Alexios realized wryly.

      He parried a samurai's desperate thrust without looking and kicked the man into the puppet behind him. The scream was short.

      "Leave? I was here first."

      "I don't care. The elders are mine."

      "That's where you're wrong, young lass. They're mine." He deflected a strike and decapitated the follow-up in the same motion.

      His gaze dropped to the Beloved mark glowing through her clothing, violet light pulsing with her heartbeat.

      "Bastard got even you, huh...? Is he really such a charmer? To be honest, I just don't see it."

      The katana was at his throat before the last word settled.

      He didn't flinch, instead standing with an unnatural, ominous blade against his jugular and an expression that suggested mild curiosity.

      Finally, he grinned.

      "Noted. No staring."

      The blade pressed harder. A bead of blood welled.

      "Go help your daughter."

      "Felicity?" His grin widened. "She's having fun with her friends. What kind of father shows up and ruins the party?" He tilted his head. "A deeply uncool one."

      Black Fang's expression didn't change.

      His hand rose and closed around the flat of the blade between two fingers, guiding it from his throat the way he'd move a branch from his path.

      The grin went away.

      "These fossils conspired with foreign powers against my kingdom and my people. Whatever vendetta you carry, I believe I deserve at least a piece of the pie."

      The old king did not navigate the political landscape of his rotten court for such a long time without having anything to show for it.

      Black Fang studied the king with her blade still in his grip.

      She pulled the blade free.

      "One."

      "One, huh? Hozumi is mine, then. But if you're slow, I'm killing them all."

      They split. Black Fang moved left toward Chizuru with her puppet army in tow, and the old woman's face went the color of curdled milk as the violet streak she'd been watching from a distance was heading straight for her.

      Alexios moved right, longsword low, and Hozumi's aged expression curdled.

      …

      While the elders were facing down two deadly executioners intent on seeing their heads roll...

      High in the skies, Quinlan was making his next move!

      Authors Note:
      I'm sorry for the delay, dealing with a bad headache. Hopefully I didn't make any mistakes in the chapters, but if I did, please let me know. Editor wasn't available to check quickly, so it wasn't proofread by anyone else beforehand.
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  3. Offline
    Despawning
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    1725 Damnation's Fang

    Black Fang dove headfirst down through the open sky with the battlefield rushing up to meet her and the wind tearing at her clothing hard enough to strip the violet comet trail into wisps behind her.

    A second into her freefall, her hand found the katana's grip.

    She drew it in a single motion and the blade rang free of the scabbard with a clean metallic note that cut through the wind like a second edge, high and sharp.

    "[Damnation's Fang]," she murmured, and her serpent tattoos moved.

    Every inked serpent on her body lifted from her skin in the same heartbeat, flowing from her shoulders, her back, and her thighs in dark rivers that converged along her right arm toward the hand gripping the katana, and where they reached the steel they bled into the metal and became part of it.

    The edge ignited in an infusion so dense the blade looked dipped in concentrated night.

    Purple-black venom threaded with necromantic script crawled the steel from guard to tip, and the serpentine patterns of her tattoos were still visible within it, coiling and shifting beneath the surface as if alive.

    Black Fang's eyes found the blade, and the difference struck her immediately.

    Her usual poison coatings wept, dripping and seeping in excess. She had fought that way for as long as she could remember.

    [Damnation's Fang sat on the steel in a film so concentrated and so perfectly contained that not a single drop fell despite the wind tearing at her from every direction. Every serpent tattoo that had once crawled her skin was compressed into a layer thin enough to show her own reflection in the blade.

    Her lips were curled.

    It took her a long moment to recognize the expression, because it did not belong on her face. She had coated her blade thousands of times, and not once had the act of preparing a weapon made her feel anything beyond cold readiness.

    But now...

    The woman staring back at her was excited.

    The realization hit her hard, and she who wore her expressions the way other people wore armor, rarely and only when strictly necessary, stared at her own little smirk in the purple sheen of a spell she had cast for the very first time.

    She forced her expression to return to normal, then her eyes left the blade and swept the battlefield below.

    The targets that mattered were easy to find from this height. The undead lords. Elvardian elites.

    The Fujimori elders locked against Alexios and the Scarlet Lilies.

    Chizuru looked up.

    The old woman found her through the smoke and the carnage, and the grief that climbed her weathered face was a soft, grandmotherly pity aimed at Black Fang as if she were something tragic falling out of the sky.

    "Child... My heart still aches..."

    What Black Fang gave back was hunger.

    The aura that poured off her swelled into the shape of a coiling great serpent.

    A serpent that had already chosen its meal and was deciding when to eat. The promise in those violet eyes was readable from the ground: I am coming for you, but not yet.

    You're dessert.

    Chizuru's composure broke.

    "What happened to you?!"

    Her sword arm dropped into a guard aimed at the violet streak screaming toward her, and when Black Fang's trajectory swept past the elders without slowing, the relief that cracked across the old woman's face came tangled with confusion she couldn't hide.

    Black Fang's eyes had already moved on.

    She found Ayame.

    Twenty years old and crossing blades with a creature even Black Fang struggled to kill.

    And she did it in a display so clean and so determined that the Venomborne Terror almost smiled for a second time.

    Kaede's head was Black Fang's to take, but Ayame had earned first rights as far as the woman was concerned.

    However, if the girl couldn't finish it, such generosity wouldn't be shown a second time.

    Then...

    "Quinlan Elysiar... This power. I'll test it."

    She twisted mid-fall and angled toward the densest cluster of Fujimori infantry and dwarven footsoldiers below the elders' position, close enough for every one of them to witness what came next, and hit the ground like a violet meteorite.

    "...and decide whether you deserve to live after daring to mark me."

    The Venomborne Terror perfectly ignored the fact that her branding was a result of circumstances Quinlan had no control over, and was already killing before the dust settled.

    Three soldiers died in her first step, the katana's arc so fast the violet trail it left in the air outlasted the men it cut through.

    The fourth raised his shield. The infusion ate through the steel and the arm behind it in the same swing, and the scream that started in his throat ended as her backswing opened it.

    "The venomous woman the reports spoke about!" A dwarven officer's cracked across the ranks. "Everyone, fall back and-"

    She split him from collarbone to navel mid-word, and the two halves of his body peeled apart in a curtain of violet-tinged gore that splashed across the soldiers behind him.

    A Fujimori elite screamed six soldiers into a shield wall. Black Fang went through them the way a hand passes through smoke, her blade finding gaps between shields that weren't supposed to exist, and the officer was dead with her katana in his spine before his wall knew it was missing half its number.

    The survivors turned to swing at her and found their sword arms ending at the elbow, cuts so clean the stumps took a full second to understand what they'd lost.

    The soldiers nearest the carnage noticed something worse than the killing: the Venomborne Terror was silent.

    No battle cries, no grunts of exertion, not a single breath loud enough to hear over the dying, just the wet whisper of a blade passing through things that should have stopped it and the soft thud of bodies folding into the dirt in her wake.

    A young Fujimori soldier threw down her weapon and dropped to her knees.

    "Please! Lady Hanako, I surr-"

    The katana passed through her without pausing, and Black Fang was three kills deeper before the body finished falling.

    Somewhere behind her, a dwarven footman's legs buckled and the dark stain spreading down his iron greaves had nothing to do with the blood on the ground.

    Men and women who had held formation against the uncanny blue horde all morning broke and ran from a single killer cutting through their center with a blade that burned violet and a face that carried no expression.

    The killing lasted less than ten seconds, and in those ten seconds the Venomborne Terror reminded every soldier on the field why the continent feared her name.

    When she stopped moving, the silence that replaced the screaming was worse.

    Black Fang stood alone at the center of a circle of the dead with her katana loose at her side and [Damnation's Fang] still burning in its serpentine patterns along the edge, and the ground beneath her boots was so thick with gore it had gone soft.

    Every living soul within thirty meters had become a corpse, and the nearest breathing enemy had retreated to twice that distance with the face of someone who would never sleep properly again.

    Her gaze lifted from the carnage and found the sky.

    Quinlan stood in the air above the battlefield where she had left him, and when her violet eyes found his across the distance between earth and sky, the pride burning in those red irises was so open and so shameless she could feel it in her chest before she could read it on his face.

    Their eyes held as she exhaled.
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
      + 1 ⋅ 0 -
      1726 Unholy Abomination

      The breath left her lips in a plume of white vapor that curled upward against the cold winter air, hot from the exertion, the bloodlust, the warmth still pooling beneath the Beloved mark on her belly. The faintest trace of crimson misted off the katana in the same updraft, painting the vapor pink.

      The Venomborne Terror stood in the ruins of what she had done with her dark hair falling across a face devoid of emotion, looking up at him through the rising heat of her own breath.

      Her hand pressed against her belly, fingers spreading across the Beloved mark, and the mark blazed violet beneath her palm, bright enough to burn through her clothing.

      The pulse that erupted from it shot upward toward the man in the sky like a flare.

      Across the circle of the dead, serpent marks seared themselves into every corpse's forehead in the same instant, violet brands that hissed against cold skin and burned bright enough to cast shadows on the soldiers standing over them.

      Then the dead began to move.

      A dwarven soldier outside the circle noticed first, and he released a frantic, guttural scream filled with the raw terror of a man watching a corpse sit up with violet light where its eyes had been.

      "T-t-t-the d-d-d-d-dead!"

      The corpses rose in perfect sync, and the first thing every living soldier noticed was how deeply wrong their movement was.

      Gorthrax's horde had been shambling across the battlefield, and everyone on this field knew what reanimated corpses looked like: slow, mechanical, predictable, bodies driven forward by will that was not their own.

      The dwarven captain she had bisected pushed to his feet with a fluidity that made the soldiers watching stumble backward.

      His legs found balance in a single motion and his body settled into a low serpentine crouch the captain had never once used in life, weight forward, his hand curled like a claw.

      Every puppet that followed rose the same way. The same posture, the same predatory economy, the same colled readiness that belonged to one person and one person only.

      Purple light burned behind their eyes with the cold patience of serpents studying prey, and the mindless shells that should have been lurching forward like every other animated corpse on this battlefield instead moved with the sharp, purposeful aggression of the deadliest woman on the continent, because that was exactly what was piloting them.

      The serpent tattoos that had crawled from Black Fang's skin into her blade had done far more than coat the steel.

      Every kill [Damnation's Fang] made deposited a fragment of that infusion into the wound it carved, a sliver of venom carrying with it a trace of the combat instinct and killing drive that the Venomborne Terror had refined into her very marrow.

      The corpses were empty, bereft of anything that had once made them who they were, but the serpent threading through their dead muscles did not need a mind to make them dangerous.

      It needed a predator's will.

      And the worst predator of all had given them hers.

      Quinlan's Beloveds had each claimed a different facet of the Bloodfather's power, most drawing on his elements and some on Nyxara's demonic traits.

      But Black Fang had reached for the darkest pillar of them all.

      The Venomborne Terror had become the Primordial Villain's fang, and what the fang cut, the villain claimed.

      Above the battlefield, Quinlan's Soul Reaper erupted without him having willed anything.
      Pale blue flames roared to life along the saber's edge with a hunger that pressed down on the field like a second gravity.

      The souls of Black Fang's slain answered.

      They ripped free of the corpses in pale blue streamers, tearing upward from the wounds she had carved, one after another after another, a river of screaming light that poured from the circle of the dead and rushed toward the burning saber in the sky.

      Black Fang's violet eyes remained on Quinian throughout the ordeal, and the look that passed between them as the souls streamed upward needed no words.

      The continent's most feared killer had activated the Primordial Villain's [Eternal Damnation] of her own accord and every soul she'd harvested was given to him on a silver platter.

      Ouinlan's saber drank them all. The lesser souls dissolved first, their pale blue fire feeding into the blade.

      The [Necromantic Codex] appeared - still without Quinlan having cast anything himself - and the fusion began.

      Dozens of weaker flames compressed into the few that had carried real power, officers and elites and commanders forged from the fuel of the rank and file.

      Then, the saber released them.

      Pale blue flames cascaded down from the sky like falling stars.

      Where they struck the ground beside Black Fang's purple-eyed puppets, bodies began to form. Blue skin stretched over new bone. Faces took shape. Armor condensed from flame into steel, and soldiers who had been dead seconds ago opened their eyes for a second time, except these eyes burned pale blue.

      The dwarven captain materialized first, intact and upright, standing beside his own bisected corpse that crouched in a serpentine stance with purple fire churning behind its dead eyes.

      The soul looked down at the two halves of the body it had been ripped from. The body looked back with an expression that had never belonged to the captain in life.

      One kill.

      Two soldiers.

      Officers and elites followed, each reforming in pale blue skin beside the purple-eyed puppet that wore their face, and every living soldier watching the circle understood what Black Fang's kills truly cost.

      She split you in half and put both halves to work.

      The body served her. The soul served him.

      Despite Quinlan having his lips covered by Synchra's armor, Black Fang could tell.

      She could tell far too well.

      The grin that crossed his face.

      His eyes danced with something warm and insufferably smug, and the Beloved mark on her abdomen pulsed with a question so clear she could feel it in her teeth.

      Having your belly marked isn't so bad after all, is it?

      Black Fang's eyes narrowed at him so dangerously the nearest puppet flinched, then she looked away.

      Her gaze found Chizuru.

      The old woman took a step backward. It was involuntary, the first uncontrolled movement the elder had made in decades, and the color that had already drained from her face finished the job until she was ashen from jaw to hairline.

      "You unholy abomination... May the Goddess show you the light...”

      The katana twirled once in Black Fang's grip, a slow serpentine revolution that caught the pale blue light falling from above and the violet glow burning from below and scattered both across the ashen faces of the Fujimori elders, and when the blade settled its tip was leveled at the old woman's heart.

      "Kill."

      One word from Black Fang, barely louder than a breath, and both armies moved.

      Purple-eyed puppets surged forward from the circle of the dead in the same instant the blue-skinned elites broke into a disciplined charge beside them, two forces born from a single massacre launching toward the Fujimori line in perfect, terrible synchrony, and the battlefield that had gone silent in horror found its voice again in screams.
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  4. Offline
    Despawning
    + 1 ⋅ 0 -
    1723 Bastard Just Drugged An Entire Race

    "WHERE IS KING RAGNAR?!" A dwarven commander's scream tore across the battlefield all of a sudden. "He was fighting the Villain! WHERE IS OUR KING?!"

    No one answered him.

    The dwarven commander grabbed the nearest elf by the collar and shook her, but the woman crumpled in his grip with tears streaming down her face and nothing behind her eyes except the golden warmth still ringing through her blood.

    "SNAP OUT OF IT!" Another dwarven officer on the coalition's left bellowed at the elven line dissolving around him. "THE BATTLE ISN'T OVER, FIGHT!"

    His words bounced off a thousand backs already turned toward the sky.

    Whatever the elves were seeing was invisible to every other race on the field.

    There was no golden light, no warmth, no ancestral voice in the blood of anyone who wasn't born an elf.

    To the dwarves and Fujimori, hundreds of thousands of their allies had simply broken after Quinlan spoke a few words, becoming weeping messes.

    They were dropping their weapons and gaping up at the man in the sky with the glazed devotion of addicts getting their fix, and the only word any of them had for it was brainwashing.

    But exactly because of this, the battlefield didn't share the collective elven paralysis.

    Dwarven steel found Quinlan's soldiers, and the Fujimori banners hadn't wavered once, their soldiers pressing harder into every opening.

    …

    Alexios laughed.

    He'd stopped being surprised somewhere around the fifth impossible thing
    Quinlan Elysiar had done in the past month alone.

    The shock had worn through entirely, ground down by one absurd display after another until outrage took more energy than the King of Vraven had left to give, and what remained on the other side of all that exhaustion was just amusement.

    Pure, bone-deep amusement at the fact that this arrogant young man could not stop bending the world to his will no matter what anyone else did to stop him.

    "Simply can't help himself, can he?" Alexios shook his head and raised his longsword toward the Fujimori elders closing in around him, grinning. "Orchestrating these scenes must be in his blood."

    His gaze swept across the elves crumbling throughout the melee. "He truly is
    Devil of the Drug Department. Bastard just drugged an entire race."

    Then his eyes landed on the elders. "Lost a lot of allies all of a sudden."

    Chizuru's blade settled into a low guard. "Elves always were mere backliners."

    Alexios chuckled and twirled his longsword in a lazy are. "Yeah, sure, whatever helps keep your inner peace. At your age, it's important to keep your heart rates down."

    "We're younger than you!" Tatsumi, the youngest of the five Fujimori elders, shouted, and was ignored as Alexios stepped forward.

    I've been able to tolerate a lot of things these days, but there's a limit. Letting that bastard up there be your executioner is one such thing I won't permit."

    His sword leveled at the Fujimori line. "The joy of lopping your heads off is my privilege."

    Tatsumi moved into formation at Chizuru's right. "You speak as though you re on his side. Need I remind you, Alexios? You and the Primordial Villain are arch enemies."

    "Arch enemies?" Alexios's eyebrow rose. "I can't stand his guts and he absolutely deserves to get roughed the hell up. But to call him my arch enemy?"

    He swung his blade experimentally, checking if it lost any sharpness. Then he looked at the man, and his voice lowered. "You're talking about the man who took great care of my daughter when her father was lacking."

    "No!" Tatsumi snapped. "I'm talking about the man who is single-handedly endangering the Valorian family's hegemony!"

    The amusement on Alexios's face dimmed into quiet calculation, and the grin that remained had nothing funny left in it.

    "What about your role in Ayame Fujimori's enslavement?"

    Hozumi's voice came from behind Chizuru's shoulder, dry and unhurried, the eldest of the five speaking for the first time. "All our records indicate the Primordial Villain is a most vengeful man. You signed Ayame's enslavement with your name. Do you truly believe he won't kill you for it? Won't enslave you and your lineage?"

    Alexios stopped smiling and began walking forward, the lazy ease bleeding out of his posture with every step.

    The air around him pressed outward, the soldiers nearest to him stumbling as the aura of the Warrior King of Vraven rolled over the Fujimori front with the weight of a near thousand years of rule behind it.

    "All of that," he said, his voice stripped of levity, "is my business."

    His eyes swept the elders. "You have betrayed the crown. You sided with the nation currently invading my lands. No matter how you twist my life, no matter what you dangle or threaten, one thing will always remain constant."

    His longsword's tip lowered toward Hozumi. "You will be executed. Your lands seized. Your ancestral titles revoked. Your family names struck from the records of the Valorian court, and every holding you've built across the generations handed to the crown."

    His gaze moved on to Chizuru. "I will bury the Fujimori clan so deep in history that your next generation won't know you ever were more than filthy street beggars."

    "Alexios!" Chizuru's voice rose. "I understand all your anger, and we're willing to make never before seen concessions, but don't forget! We did what we did because our hand was forced. You know that. Our deal about the Heavenly Restriction-"

    "All of our deals are null and void!" Alexios roared and launched forward.

    "You will die of old age within months at the latest!"

    "Then I can finally get some rest!"

    Steel met steel across the Fujimori front.

    Lilith watched the collapse sweep across the field with eyes that couldn't help but move back to Quinlan, as if pulled by gravity.

    "He certainly knows how to make an entrance... What a showoff," she scoffed, but for once there was a small smirk on her face as she spoke of the man who had taken so much from her.

    …

    On Bronnya's back, Void's eyes were open.

    That alone was worth noting, because the Void Mage kept them shut through entire battles at times. The violet irises found the man in the sky and stayed there, lazy and unblinking, as the aura rolling off him washed over her and settled somewhere behind her ribs.

    "…Warm,” she murmured. The quiet curl at the corner of her lips said everything she wouldn't, and her eyes drifted shut.

    Her hat tilted forward and fell off, forcing Bronnya to catch it and plant it back on her skull.

    A moment later, with a tired sigh, Void spoke again: "You should back the gramps up. Three young women, watching an old man fight alone. Shameless..."

    "Hah?" Jallen's brow rose a fraction. "You mean WE should back the king up? The FOUR of us?"

    "No. You." Void adjusted her hat. "Recharging."

    Jallen's expression flattened another degree, which was impressive given where it started.

    She knew full well that the Void Mage had more than enough man in reserve to fight at full strength for many more minutes and had simply decided she'd worked enough for the time being.

    "Scar will scold you," Bronnya said over her shoulder.

    "It's just a short break.." Void murmured, then conceded, "If she pouts too much, I'll get on my knees and apologize like those frantic elven women are doing to the big guy. Their kowtows are immaculate... worthy of study..."

    "You really have zero shame," Bronnya muttered.

    Void said nothing, and her breathing had already evened out.

    …

    On the eastern front, Kaede’s sword arm had stopped mid-swing.
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
      + 1 ⋅ 0 -
      1724 Sentencing!

      On the eastern front, Kaede's sword arm had stopped mid-swing.

      The pressure that rolled off the man in the sky hit her chest like a battering ram and her boots slid backward through the scorched dirt, the cursed blade screaming in her grip as it dragged her arm sideways toward the source with immense hunger. It wanted him dead.

      Across from her, Ayame and Blossom had stopped momentarily as well, their eyes turned skyward.

      Kaede's teeth ground together.

      "Soldiers!" Her command cut through the ranks before her breathing had steadied. "Aelindra was one councilwoman! Not a queen, not a general, one seat on a council of many, and seats can be filled! The tides are even, the war is not won by circus shows! Maintain formation and fight with honor!"

      “..."

      "Lady Kaede..."

      "Yes, my lady!"

      Just like that, her troops steadied. The Fujimori banner snapped forward.

      Across from Kaede, Blossom stood perfectly still with her gauntlets at her sides and her ears angled toward the sky, her blonde tail a blur behind her that hadn't stopped since Quinlan took to the air.

      She had watched Myrasyn's entire performance with wide, shining eyes that belonged at a festival and not a battlefield, and the pure, unfiltered awe on her face made it abundantly clear that the dogkin had fallen completely and irrevocably in love with the queen's display.

      The voice, the authority, the staff coming down in that brilliant arc, the dramatic pause before the sentencing, all of it. Blossom loved it the way only Blossom could love something: wholly, immediately, and with her entire body vibrating to prove it.

      Then Ayame's elbow found her side.

      "Blossom. She's about to charge us."

      The whine that left the dogkin could have shattered hearts across the continent, and she tore her gaze from the sky with visible anguish before turning back toward Kaede.

      Her tail did not slow down.

      She planted her feet, straightened her back in one sharp motion, and raised a gauntleted fist above her head the way Myrasyn had raised her staff.

      Her chin lifted, her chest puffed out, and her brow furrowed into what she clearly believed was the same regal severity the queen had worn, an expression that on her face landed somewhere in the vicinity of a kitten trying to look like a lion.

      "Kaede Fujimori!" she announced across the melee, and her voice rang with all the authority a bubbly dogkin with a tail wagging at terminal velocity could produce.

      Several soldiers on both sides stopped fighting to look at her.

      She had clearly decided she was going to perform her own version of the queen's sentencing whether the battlefield was ready for it or not, and the mimicking motions she made were alarmingly accurate in form, her free hand sweeping out in a near-perfect copy of Myrasyn's gesture, her posture rigid with ceremonial weight, every movement studied and precise.

      "For the crime of making Blossom look away from Master's incredible moment!!" Her voice carried genuine conviction and her ears were vibrating with excitement.

      She held the pause.

      It was the exact pause Myrasyn had held before delivering the sentence, timed well and carried with real commitment, and it would have been genuinely impressive if the girl holding it could stop her smile from breaking through.

      "The sentence is punishment!"

      Ayame stood beside her with a flat expression.

      "You mean death?"

      "Death!!!" Blossom gasped, realizing she made a grave mistake.

      "Because she made you look away from Quin, not because she betrayed and sold me? Your oldest friend?”

      Blossom's head whipped toward Ayame and the regal posture evaporated in an instant. "That too!"

      The dogkin evaluated her lacking performance without bias. "Blossom needs practice. Natalie and Poppy will help her!"

      Then her eyes snapped forward, the warmth drained from her irises, and the adorable girl who had been playing queen vanished into the void between one heartbeat and the next.

      …

      Across the battlefield, elven soldiers who had dropped their weapons stayed where they'd fallen, kneeling or standing slack with tears drying on faces still burning from the warmth in their blood, and the armies around them let them be.

      Dwarves and Fujimori had bigger concerns than allies who had stopped swinging.

      The coalition's councilwomen moved through the paralyzed ranks with ashen faces, grabbing shoulders, barking orders into ears that refused to hear them.

      One seized a kneeling archer by the breastplate and hauled her upright. The archer looked through her matriarch with wet eyes, sinking back to her knees the moment she was released.

      Another slapped a sobbing mage across the face hard enough to split her lip, and the woman took the blow without blinking, her hand still pressed to her chest where the warmth lived.

      They had lost their army.

      The undead hadn't paused.

      Gorthrax's horde ground forward with the same dead inevitability it had carried since the first corpse climbed to its feet, because mindless things don't feel dread, and the lords commanding them saw no reason to waste time.

      "I'll kill him after I kill you!" The Drowned King's voice tore from his rusted helm as his mount crashed through the melee toward Iris.

      Iris parried the swing and let the impact carry her boots across the dirt, grinning through the blood running down her face. "Didn't know corpses could dream!"

      The Drowned King's mount reared with a shriek of grinding metal, and the fury that poured off the undead lord doubled the pace of every corpse within fifty meters of his banner. "I'll tear your mouth off!"

      "I don't need to cast spells to beat you! Aim for my limbs or something more valuable, retard!"

      "I meant I'll shut you up, you braindead cunt! You have no grasp on language itself!"

      "Grasp language? What nonsense are you blabbering about? All I need to grasp is your hideous skull to break it apart!"

      "ARGH!" The lich screamed in frustration.

      "ARGH!" Iris screamed a battle cry, swinging her sword with all her might.

      …

      Above the battlefield, Black Fang watched the chaos with her violet eyes.

      "Are you done?" she asked, not turning toward Quinlan.

      He chuckled beside her, golden light still rolling off him in waves. "No. But you can go."

      His grin sharpened. "Have fun."

      Black Fang stepped off the air without a word.

      The Beloved mark on her skin blazed bright purple the instant she dropped, the light burning through her clothing and painting a violet comet trail behind her as she fell toward the battlefield with her hair whipping upward and her serpent tattoos pulsing in rhythm with the mark, every channel in her body flooding with a power that hadn't existed before today.

      It was time to see what a Beloved Mode Black Fang looked like!
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  5. Offline
    Fadeyi
    + 0 ⋅ 0 -
    This queen doesn't have children?
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    1. Offline
      Despawning
      + 0 ⋅ 0 -
      No, she’s a virgin.
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