Meanwhile, Victoria was dealing with a randy beast of her own. She arrived at the satyr's cave, dismounted her mare and walked toward the beast princes' lair, hearing moaning coming from within. The closer she got, the louder it became.
No doubt Leo would have warned her to stay back while he went charging in, sword drawn, but as she walked in quite brazenly, she could sense that a sword had already been drawn, a meaty sword of flesh, plunging between the buttocks of a wailing maid.
“Edouard Lucius Fendalton Monterey Eldred,” she snapped. “Remove yourself from that girl this instant!”
The satyr stamped his hooves and snorted, his cock still buried in that dark little star. If the girl was upset by the interruption, she did not show it. As he stopped thrusting, she lay beneath him quite calmly, working her hips on his shaft as if Victoria were not even there.
The prince did not have such erotic composure. He pulled out of the girl's rear and turned toward Victoria, hands on his hips, eyes flashing with anger at his tutor turned tormentor.
“You rule me no longer, Lady Varys.”
“Incorrect, as usual,” Victoria said. “It is time to return to the palace, young man.”
“I don't want to. I like being out here. They send their virgins to me. I rut all day long, one after the other. Some of them even stay. Why should I return?”
“Your mother wishes you to. Your father wishes you to. I command you to.”
“My mother can kiss my father's ass,” he replied. “And so can you.”
She had not expected him to agree, of course. The prince had been a headstrong whelp from the beginning, never learning his lessons, ignoring her instructions, chasing girls rather than learning the necessary skills anyone anywhere in line to the throne needed to survive.
As the prince gave her his most impudent look yet, Victoria smiled rather unpleasantly and whispered a charm beneath her breath, simultaneously tossing the contents of a small vial of potion toward the horny beast's exposed rod.
What took place next was rather unpleasant and involved a great deal of screaming and pleading from the satyr who found himself suddenly and unceremoniously absent one phallic appendage.
“What have you done! My manhood!” He screeched in a near falsetto.
“You can have it back when you prove you can use it responsibly,” Victoria lectured.
The truth was, his cock had not gone anywhere. It was a mere illusion - albeit a very effective one. In seconds, the prince agreed to any and all terms. Yes, he would return to Englred City. Yes he would make his apologies to the king and queen. Of course, he would absolve Victoria of any wrongdoing.
Satisfied that she had done as the royals wished, Victoria was pleased. The prince was still a satyr, of course, which might not please the queen entirely, but Victoria could not bother herself with minor details of that nature.
“Clad yourself properly so those legs and hooves might be hidden, make your way to Englred palace and make your apologies to the king and queen,” she ordered. “Once you have done this, you will find your manhood returned midnight of the following eve. But I warn you, Edouard, if you put it to ill-use again, you will lose it forever.”
“Y... yes... ma'am,” Edouard stammered.
Victoria had never seen a satyr look sheepish before. It was quite a sight. She unfolded a pair of trousers from under her arm and handed them to the prince.
“Dress now,” she said. “And make your way with all due haste. If I am alerted to you making a single stop between here and Englred there will be hell to pay – and perhaps another appendage.”
The prince whimpered and once having pulled his trousers on, made haste from the cave before Victoria could make any more threats.
She stayed behind and ensured that the women present were unharmed. There were quite a number of them in half slumber about the place, all smeared with the prince's seed. In nine months, she could foresee quite a crop of Englred's finest genetic material springing up in this region.
Just as she finished tending to the last girl, the sound of hooves outside the cave drew her out, ready to chase the prince away in case he had returned. It was no prince outside however. It was a very annoyed looking assassin on a familiar stallion.
“There you are,” Falkroy said, his brow furrowed at her, as if she had failed to answer to him in some matter of consequence.
“Yes, here I am, having dispatched the boy to his mother as agreed,” Victoria said. “Are you alone? Where is Kelsie?”
“In hiding from the peasants of Samilton,” he said. “She revealed herself as a witch this morning and bought a mob down on our heads.”
“Oh. That's unfortunate.”
“Your talent for understatement never fails to disappoint,” Leo replied in a low growl. “You're right. It was unfortunate. We were barely able to escape without having to take life. It was chaos, Victoria. The girl needs you. You cannot simply leave her because your feelings are hurt. I am not equal to the task of handling her.”
“I take it you have though?”
“What?”
“Handled her.”
“I chastised her. She did not take it well.”
“Ah, her idol said a harsh word to her, did he?”
“I did a little more than that.”
“Is that so?”
“I thrashed her,” Leo confessed.
Victoria gave a little shrug. “It will not do her any harm. I would have done it if you had not. As it is, it saves me the trouble.”
“And of course, I live to save you trouble, Victoria,” he said, his voice sharp. “You deserve much the same treatment.”
“Perhaps later,” Victoria smiled. “You've left Kelsie alone. I cannot imagine that will end well. I am done here. Let us ride out.”
Her horse was standing obediently nearby and it did not take more than a minute for them to get underway. Victoria was not well pleased to hear of Kelsie's little misadventure and planned to have quite a few choice words with the girl herself. Leo liked to apply his palm in such matters, but Victoria rarely had cause to resort to physical chastisement. Words tended to have a much longer lasting effect in her experience. Leo was quiet, she noticed. Annoyed at her. She hid a little smile.
In a short while they rode past Samilton. Under the glowing moon the village lay in smoldering ruins, as if the hand of some infernal god had laid waste to it in one strike.
“I leave you for one day and you raze a village?” She lifted a brow at him, shaking her head as her lips quirked with amusement.
“They tried to burn Kelsie and must have ended up setting their own thatch ablaze,” Leo surmised, slowing his stallion. “The village was not on fire when we left, I am sure of that.”
“Is Kelsie...”
“She's unharmed,” Leo reassured her. “More worried about you than she is about herself. The cottage I left her in is not far off.”
“Let us make haste,” Victoria said. “I do not like the look of that fire. The villagers were not that stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know the work of a demon when I see it.”
“A demon!” Leo exclaimed. “What do you mean a demon?”
“A young witch's plague, I'm afraid,” Victoria replied, spurring her mount on. The mare whinnied and the stallion responded to the call. Together she and Falkroy charged over the night plains, hooves flashing in the moonlight. Victoria's expression was set with determination, but she knew in some deep part of her soul that she was perhaps already far too late to effect anything like a rescue. If a demon had caught Kelsie...
“This way!” Falkroy called out. “It was this way!”
He led her through the trees, cursing up a storm. “I knew there was something strange,” he kept muttering to himself over and over.
Victoria did not join in his self-flagellation. She had no time for that. The trees were twisting about on themselves and she was almost certain that they were in some kind of maze. Leo kept swearing that it had only taken him a few minutes to find the lake cottage, but it was almost an hour before they reached the place themselves, and when they did, she saw immediately that it was a trap.
Falkroy had seen only physical shelter. He had not noticed the way the grasses around the cottage were dead and brown, or how the water in the lake behind was slimy and devoid of life. He had probably not taken a moment to consider how the thatch could possibly be so perfect even though the cottage itself was clearly derelict. This was a cursed place.
She dismounted from her mare and rushed inside the cottage where she found Kelsie naked and practically insensate. There was an incorporeal shadow hovering over her writhing and glistening form, and the sounds coming from the girl were even more carnal than those she had recently heard in the satyr's lair.
“Begone this instant!” Victoria stalked forward. “You have no place here, cursed thing!”
The shadow turned toward her, as best as any shadow can be said to be turning, and took physical form.
“Immoleth.” The demon’s name rose to her lips instantly. “What are you...”
She did not have the chance to form the rest of the question. The moment the demon took shape, Leo sprang into action. A man should have been no match for a demon, but Leo was no ordinary man.
The assassin's blade whipped through the air, neatly removing the demon's head from its body. The expression of surprise on its whirling maw was amusing in a dark way, only visible for a split second before both head and body disappeared back into the thin air from which they had come.
At the moment of the demon's passing, Kelsie sat up and screamed, a wail of misery and loss. Her great brown eyes welled with frantic tears, her hands in two desperate claws as she stared at Leo and screamed.
“What did you do!?”
“Leo has slayed the demon that defiled you,” Victoria said, rushing to her side.
Kelsie glared at her in anguish. “Defiled me?! He did not defile me! He came to me and spoke to me and made me feel good and told me what my future was to be. How could you hurt him!”
Confusion established itself on Leo's face. “What? Would you have been a willing slave to him?”
“Better slave to him than sexless wench to you,” Kelsie spat, her voice somewhat hoarse. She sounded like a woman ravaged, and Victoria wondered if there was any shred of innocence left in her body.
Hearing her rejection of his rescue, Leo went white with anger, turned on his heel, and left the cottage.
“Stay there, young lady,” Victoria ordered. “And put your clothes back on.”
She followed after Leo and found him pacing back and forth outside, quite disturbed.
“What has gotten into her!?”
“You know what has gotten into her,” Victoria said gently. “Her first foray into lust was bitter and ended in blood. Blood you shed.”
“She was being defiled.”
“Sorceresses rather enjoy that,” Victoria reminded him.
Leo pointed toward the cottage with a long, angry finger. “That demon would have consumed her soul, turned her into a demon's hag. She would have spent the rest of her life in that hovel, serving him, birthing offspring to be consumed.”
“True,” Victoria agreed. “Understand, I am not questioning your actions. Kelsie does not understand them. I understand them perfectly.”
He glowered at her. “And what is it you understand?”
“You are protective of her. I pity any man who tries to lay claim to her.”
“I am not guarding her virginity,” Leo said quickly.
“Good, because it would be a fool’s errand. She certainly has none now. Physically, perhaps, but otherwise... be patient with her, Leo. She does not understand that you have saved her. Not yet. Come. Let us speak with her.”
When they returned to the cottage, Kelsie was sitting on the side of the bed, fully dressed but hunched over, her dark hair acting as a curtain to cut out the world.
“Kelsie…” Leo tried to speak to her.
“Go away,” she said bitterly. “I don't want to talk to you. The only man who I ever let touch me, you just killed in front of me.”
“He wasn't a man, and you didn’t have a choice but to let him touch you. Demons suppress magic.”
“Good,” she said bitterly. “I liked it. He desired me.”
“He desired your power. Nothing more.”
“It felt like more to me.”
“That is because you are naive to the ways of men.”
She lifted her head and looked at Falkroy with a burning dark gaze. When she spoke it was with a sorceress' cadence. “No. You are the naive one. You want me to stay a virgin. You want me to stay innocent to be protected. But I have been defiled, Lord Falkroy, and thoroughly. You cannot change what already happened to me.”
“Stop torturing Leo,” Victoria interrupted. “ I see how proud you are.”
A dark smile spread across Kelsie's lips. “He knew me better than you do. He knew my mother’s name. He knew what I was. I am no sorceress. I AM A WITCH!”
She threw her arms wide as she made the declaration at the top of her lungs in a voice that did not seem entirely her own. Their little Kelsie had certainly come a long way in a very short time in the demon's tutelage. As the girl's cry died down, Victoria’s lips thinned and her eyes narrowed. The rebellion had arrived in full force. It was time to put it down.
“Samilton lies in ruins, Kelsie. Innocents lost their lives.”
“What?” She looked at Victoria, deflating almost instantly.
“Your little display did not merely bring a mob with torches. It bought that demon. You were tricked into revealing yourself there, I think. It would not surprise me if the soldier you claim smiled at you was Immoleth in some hidden form, tempting you to show yourself to the world so that he could bring his fire down upon the villagers. And then the same force guided the hooves of Leo's stallion. You did not come here by chance. You were bought here quite deliberately to be trapped by that demon. And when it came for you, you did not fight, not for yourself, not for those you inadvertently harmed. You allowed evil to pleasure you, leave its mark on you. So perhaps you are correct. Perhaps you are a witch. That is what witches do, and that is why they are hated. They bring evil down on those around them, innocent and guilty alike. A sorceress has some kind of control over herself. She has control over her abilities. She is of no interest to demons, because demons know she sees through their tricks. If you aspire to be a witch, Kelsie, I pity you. It will be a short and painful life.”
Kelsie's lower lip trembled under the force of Victoria's lecture.
“But... you used magic in the tavern in Samilton. Nobody tried to burn you.”
“Of course not,” Victoria said, her lip curled. “Do you still fail to understand, Kelsie? I have tried to explain the difference many times. I control magic. You are an impetuous slave to it. Until you learn otherwise, you will be a puppet to any dark force willing to put its hand up you.”
Kelsie stared at her, her bravado and certainty crumbling quite visibly now.
“Are they really... dead?”
Victoria nodded. “Yes, Kelsie. At least a hundred of all ages gone in an instant. Immoleth fed on their blood before he came to you. You were fucked on the bones of innocents. Those who smiled and played and lived their lives. They were all made sacrifice for your pleasure. Are you still so proud now, girl?”
Kelsie put her hand to her head. She had gone pale and little beads of sweat had broken out on her brow. “I feel ill...”
She was promptly such. She fell forward into a dead faint and was caught by Leo before she cracked her head on the floor. He looked down at her messy form and shook his head at Victoria.
“That was harsh,” he said, easing the girl back onto the bed. “She was not responsible for the deaths of those people. She's an innocent as much as they were.”
“Had she had control of herself, they would be alive,” Victoria replied. “If she feels guilt for that, all the better. It might provide her the reason to finally come to control herself. Now please, Leo, fetch some water.”
“You fetch the water,” he said, glowering at her. “You made this mess. You clean it up.”