Sword of Anzul Ch. 01

As she was finally able to at least blink her eyes, the northerner assisted the princess in climbing up on the table and laying on her back. The tabletop was very cool against her skin, similar to the stones, and nearly as cold as the foreigner's touch. Could all three possibly be related? the princess wondered – she specifically tried to think of anything other than the actions being thrust upon her exposed, magically-controlled body.

Her head hung off one end of the table, its weight and lack of support causing her throat to be very prominently exposed. She thought of the sword at the betrayer's side and then realized that this is how she would be beheaded: face-up, likely magically forced to watch as the fatal slice befell her. Watching her own beheading would at least be the final torture of her life; then she would be able to walk forever beside her mother, the woman she had never known except in beautiful paintings and in reverent tales, the woman who had given her life as she was be born into this world.

Magically, her body was frozen into place upon the abnormally-cold table. The northerner's unnaturally-cold fingers stroked her warm, unprotected flesh, stroking slowly toward the source of heat at the juncture of her spread legs. She gulped loudly, holding back another cry of desperation, of fear, of anguish, of anger, of resignation. Yet when the red-haired woman pressed her cold fingers into her warm body, the cry was nonetheless released.

"Sir, may I cuff and chain the princess?"

"Yes, please, Tana." He was not within her area of vision, yet it seemed as if his voice surrounded her, as if he was speaking from all areas of the chamber at once yet in a single voice. She attempted to latch onto this mystery, yet was constantly distracted as each ankle and wrist was encased in rough, well-used leather, the ends of the cuffs securely buckled into place. Chains were quickly added: large, heavy chains, apparently connected to an attachment point on the underside of the heavy foreign-wood table. Yet how the chains and the cuffs had been produced so quickly when none of these items had previously been visible perpetuated the mystery surrounding the conducting of her mental torture.

Her wrists and ankles had been secured near the corners of the tabletop. Suddenly, except for her head and neck, she had complete motion of her body, and discovered that she had been secured in a manner which allowed her only scant movement of her limbs. Despite her attempts, she could not curl her hands and fingers back far enough to reach the buckles on the cuffs encasing her wrists.

There was truly no escape from this predicament. Without question, she was trapped here. She would be beheaded here, and would certainly die here moments later – perhaps even before her head came to rest upon the stone floor.

A mouth upon her left breast caused her breath to catch. The cold lips could only have been those of the strange foreigner, yet within the seal created by those lips, her nipple was surrounded by a seductive heat, and gently licked by a warm, pointed tongue.

"Enough, Tana!" the betrayer called out, and she could feel the northerner's reluctance in ultimately pulling away from the bare feminine flesh. "Bring the pillow."

"Yes, Sir." Moments after the naked slave strolled gracefully out of her vision, the princess saw the betrayer approach her, the sword in his hand. He was now as naked as she, his male lengthy sword pointing obscenely forward and upward, bobbing mesmerizingly with each step. In her chambers on that fateful night, she had found it odd yet intriguing, even though she knew instinctively that it belonged and would soon be buried deep within her all-too-willing body. Now, it was repulsive, hideous, and it filled her with a new sense of terror.

She struggled anew, causing him to stop and smile as he watched her repeatedly pull futilely at her bonds. From the expression upon his face, he clearly found the rattling of the heavy chains to be as enjoyable as the most heartwarming renditions of her favorite music, and felt a fresh wave of despair engulf her body and drown the final minuscule hint of hope which had been buried deep within her.

She lay motionless upon the table, breathing quickly through her parted lips, her head hanging limply over the edge, watching as an "upside-down" Tana approached with a wide plump black pillow and knelt to place it directly beneath her head.

The tears flowed anew. "One final wish, please," she pleaded despite herself.

"Yes, Princess?" he acknowledged.

"A blindfold, please."

"Denied."

Her sob was loud, and seemed to echo for days in the large chamber. Or, perhaps, it simply seemed that to her way given the situation.

Still kneeling, the northerner bent forward. Taking the princess' head between her hands, Tara kissed the quivering lips, gently brushing each with a warm, pointed tongue, providing a powerful counterpoint to the cold lips and hands.

Her body reacted, with more liquid desire trickling from within to anoint the mysteriously-cool tabletop.

She closed her eyes and tried to fill her mind with pleasant thoughts as the foreign woman stood and backed several steps away. She tried to remember the last performance of her favorite music, the recent early-morning ride along the banks of the nearby river with the stable master himself accompanying her, the great feast just days ago to celebrate another year of her father's successful and popular reign upon the throne, the scent of the air following last week's long gentle rain...

Her eyes were suddenly opened by magic, and in painstakingly-slow motion, each minute movement and detail clearly imprinted in her memory, she could only watch in horror as the impossibly-shard blade descended upon her vulnerable neck, with nary a sound escaping her lips even as they spread wide to allow a terrible scream to pass between them.

She heard the slicing of the air, as well as the clean break of every bone. But she felt only cold, a cold so terrible as it passed through her neck that even her toes seemed to suffer from the worst recorded case of frostbite – a terrible condition unknown in her father's land, but which she had heard of occasionally from those in her father's service who had dared to venture into the northerner's land. And as she marveled at how she could feel such a painful cold, she felt her own head falling, turning slightly in the air, and then landing with a dull thud upon the large plump pillow.

Looking upward, she saw her own neck, cleanly severed, leaning over the end of the strange heavy table, and she screamed – this time with sound.

The princess was still screaming as the betrayer lifted the bloodless sword and turned to walk away. She was still screaming as the northerner lifted the pillow – with her head still upon it – and carried her head away from the beheaded body.

...the body she could still feel as it flailed upon the cold table, fighting the bonds and causing the heavy chains to rattle loudly.

Eventually, the foreigner set the pillow down upon the edge of another large table, then righted the severed head and pointed it to look across the table and thus across the chamber. Magic prohibited the eyes from closing, and the princess was forced to see her own naked body continuing to battle fiercely against the inescapable bonds, her own chest heaving from the effort combined with her own screaming sobs.

It was a long time later when her sobs and screams finally ceased. As she blinked away the last of the tears from her eyes, she watched in horror and hatred as the northerner bent over the table upon which rested the pillow and thus her own severed head. The red-haired woman thankfully shielded the headless body from her view, and smiled admiringly. "Even without a body," she noted aloud, reaching out to hold her head in her cold hands once again, "your face is exquisitely beautiful, Princess, even with all the drying tears."

Despite the cold hands against her cheeks, she blushed profusely with both shame and anger. Then she saw the approach of the still-naked, still-aroused betrayer, and felt a nasty chill roll through the headless body across the chamber as it continued to futilely attempt to escape from this most horrifying circumstance.

The foreigner gasped loudly and smiled, closing her eyes, an expression of delight upon her pale-white face. "Your father screamed a lot as well," the betrayer informed her. "By then, there was no one else left in the castle who would come to his aid. There were many, many men who wanted to kill him on the spot, primarily those we had released from the underground cells, but my strongest and most loyal fighters held them all at bay for a while so that I could detail for your father exactly what I plan to do with you.

"If only you could have seen how he struggled against the cocoon of rope holding his beheaded body firmly to the very throne he has occupied for the past twenty-plus years!!! His struggles were very similar to yours, although yours were certainly much more enjoyable to watch – at least, from my point of view. But I will spare you the death which befell your father: I made him watch from his own chambers as his body burned in a glorious bonfire in the Main Courtyard, but he did not see it all, as the searing pain from the flames eventually overcame him, even though he was not breathing in any of the terrible smoke."

As she tried to comprehend the untimely and very unnatural death of her beloved father, the foreign woman suddenly kissed her fiercely and moaned into her mouth. It was clear that the betrayer was using his hand to grant the northerner a profound ecstasy, not unlike similar situations she had overheard from gossiping young servants over the years. Between the news of her father's death and her revulsion at the deep, passionate kiss by this cold northern woman, she felt her body fight anew.

Yet, without a neck, she could not even turn away from the illicit, unwanted kiss. With her body so far away, she could not even cover her ears in an attempt to block out the ever-increasing moans coming from the cold woman kissing her.

The fierce kissing finally and thankfully ended, but the cold hands pressed with more and more force on either side of her severed head as the northerner babbled loudly and incoherently in her foreign tongue. Only once before had she heard similar inarticulate sounds: spewing forth from her own lips during that forbidden night of stolen innocence, sounds which had been silenced – or, rather, simply muffled – by the betrayer's lips suddenly enveloping hers as he drove himself ever faster and ever deeper into her hungry, desperate body.

She was forced to watch as he changed position behind her, obviously replacing his hand with another portion of his body – the same portion which on that fateful moonlit night had almost instantaneously transformed her from regal princess to shameless harlot. He gripped the foreign woman's hips tightly, and with a powerful thrust entered his red-haired slave, knocking her forward so that she again kissed the sickened princess and squealed passionately into the royal mouth.

It may have lasted a few seconds, it may have lasted a few hours; the sickening ordeal seemed to the princess as if it went on forever. Her headless body battled viciously against the cuffs and the chains; even though it was a pointless effort, as she knew deep in the furthest reaches of her mind, it was the only means available to her to "resist" the ever-louder cries of passion, the fierce cold kisses, the increasing cold pressure against either side of her severed head... even as she was still aware of the unnaturally-cold tabletop beneath her now-distant body. The tears tumbled forth from her eyes like a pair of waterfalls, and she fought between parting her lips to sob openly and breath heavily, and trying to keep her lips pressed tightly together to prevent the northerner's pointed tongue from entering her mouth.

Eventually, with a series of loud grunts and a lengthy, primal wail, the ordeal came to an end. Memories flooded her mind again, forcing her to relive those once-beautiful moments when she had felt his nearly-crushing grip upon her hips, his final possessive thrusts into her all-too-willing body, the violent twitching inside her, the repeated volleys of his desire splattering deep within her. She remembered her tears of joy, both from her own thrice-repeated ecstasy and from the knowledge that she had been converted from a naïve girl to a true woman.

Between the heavy breaths from the perpetual struggles of her distant body, she wailed loudly from those now-painful memories, and the foreign woman's tongue snaked into her mouth yet again in one final, lengthy probe.

The kiss mercifully ended, although her face still cried and her body at last lay limp and exhausted, coated with a thick sheen of perspiration. "Was it just as fulfilling for you when my Master made use of your body, Princess?" the red-haired northerner asked with an evil grin between her own heavy breaths.

The princess spat in revulsion, and the foreigner simply widened her grin without even bothering to wipe her face.

"Sir, I believe the princess is jealous of me."

"Then she can clean me. Perhaps that will cast away her jealousy."

With her head separated and propped upon a pillow a fairly long distance away from her restrained body, she wondered exactly how she would be able to wash him, even as the very thought revolted her. But then her tormentors changed position: The betrayer stepped back and turned to the side as the northerner took a kneeling position before him, looking directly at her.

"This is how my Master likes to be cleaned after using me," the collared woman announced, then she reached out toward the base of the softening manhood and gave the underside several licks. She then opened her mouth and slowly engulfed the bulbous tip as he lovingly caressed her red-covered head. Those outrageous and sickening actions seemed to produce intriguing, wonderful sensations for the betrayer, however, as he closed his eyes and smiled with his head tilted back.

At last, the control over her eyes ended, and the princess was thankfully able to close them, to block out the nauseating scene taking place before her. But a few moments later, however, her eyes opened again as the cold hands lifted her severed head from the pillow. The northerner turned her head around, then knelt again before the betrayer, and it was plainly evident what she was to do.

Controlled by magic, her mouth opened despite her unwanted participation. Her head was moved forward, and that portion of anatomy which had once given her such fulfilling pleasure was buried in her unwilling mouth. The combined taste of her tormentors' harsh copulation was both fifty percent salty, fifty percent sweet, and one hundred percent revolting. But she closed her eyes and somehow endured the "cleansing" as her head was moved back and forth and her lips and tongue controlled magically until the job had apparently been completed to his satisfaction and her head was again placed upon the black pillow. She spat several times to try to clear her mouth of the unwelcome tastes of her tormentors, but it did not seem to help.

"You have made a mess on the floor, Tana, from when you were kneeling before me."

"Yes, Sir. Shall I clean it, or shall I have the princess clean it?"

"Actually, leave it. We can have the princess clean it later if necessary."

Now that she knew what their idea of "cleaning" entailed, she reddened in anger and in shame, and feared what they might do to her next.

"I shall leave you and the princess to become better acquainted. I will have food brought for her in about an hour, so use the time wisely and appropriately, Tana."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."