Her fingers curl, pulling her up and over the final edge. She offers a hand and a sturdy tug and both of them alight upon the clifftop. The journey has been long and gruesome, as have been their wounds, but every bitter step forward led them to this forsaken place.
This is the only way their story could end.
A castle crowns the mountain, hewn from the peak at odd angles, distorted and menacing. Fires, wreathed with smoke, burn along every parapet. The portcullis hangs open, barbed fangs precipitous but still.
There is no guard. There is no need. Only a fool would enter here.
They look back at the lands below. The fields and hills were once verdant and wild. Now they are scorched and scarred and doused in blood. Most of it is the blood of Giants, but all too much of it is their own.
In the far distance, they can just make out the hollow spindle of the fallen tower where they first emerged from the underground. They will never go back.
After today, they will live above ground or they will be dead.
The castle's foyer is perfunctory, a mere collection of spiraling staircases, some that go out into the wings, some that go down into the heart of the mountain. One goes up. That is the stair they choose. It is tall and it is tiresome, but it leads them where they want to go.
They try not to look at each other as they make this final climb. They are each afraid that, in seeing the other's fear, they will lose their nerve. They keep their eyes straight and upward.
Firelight plays along the surfaces of the vast throne room, cast by more than a dozen suspended braziers. Unlike those outside, these emit no smoke: their light is ruddy, but clean. Flanking the walls and braziers are a spread of blue-and-gold stained-glass windows, each depicting a distinct constellation from the sky above. It is strange to find such reassuring company here. It feels a mockery.
The throne itself is at the far center atop a wide dais at the peak of a stepped pyramid. It is as angular and cruel as the visage of the castle itself, but no more so than its occupant.
As the legend goes, every hundred generations a small one is born among the Rubric Giants. From what they can see of her across the room, the descriptor of small does not apply.
Tragedy the Giant King is easily nine feet tall and is broad as a small house. He wears a long skirt of pleated black leather, covering him from belt to ankles, but his muscled chest is naked save a cascade of jewelry: ropes of copper and silver and even finer metals, all set with every cut and color of precious stone. It is a splendorous display of wealth, but that finery does nothing to hide the craggy, endless contours of his body, as if all the power of a Rubric Giant had been compressed into his scar-crossed frame.
He does not stand as they approach the center of the room. Dark eyes flash under thick black brows. Thin lips contort into a menacing smile over a sharp and bearded chin.
"Welcome, heroes," he says.
It is not a salutation.
Chain the Shield-Maiden leans in and whispers to her sword. It is a broad and pretty thing, black as obsidian and inscribed with faintly-glowing lines of electric green, a pleasing accent against her pale blue hand.
"Phantasmagoria, javelin," murmurs the Shield-Maiden.
"Yes, my wielder," the living weapon replies.
Its voice is inorganically musical, dulcet vibrations that ripple through the gloom. It ratchets and reforms, blade shrinking, haft lengthening, stretching itself out aerodynamically.
Seek-Sorrow the Battle Princess hovers her fingers over the weapon as it changes. Her own hands, once soft and yellow-gold, are callused and stained, much like the lands outside. She is a reflection of her people in their most desperate hour.
"Light, guide thy way," prays the Battle Princess.
The lines of green that trace the weapon's night-black body leap and sparkle like a fire reignited as the rings on Seek-Sorrow's fingers go dark, never to gleam again. Chain quiets her breath and hurls her stalwart companion. It arcs across the throne room, dead on target, impelled by fate and skill to bury itself between the Giant King's eyes.
He catches it.
With a lazy motion, like swatting a fly, Tragedy snatches the javelin from the air, its point inches from his crooked nose. He gives it a slight shake and there, where a moment ago there was a deadly missile, now there is the simulacrum of a person.
Her skin is the same glassy black and her lithe form is etched with those same green lines, though all but a dull vestige of the glow has gone out of them. Her green-black eyes are panicked and her lips curl in a grimace of fear as she writhes, caught around the neck, desperately straining against her captor's unbreakable grip.
"Phantasmagoria, my sword," commands the Giant King.
The poor thing's body goes slack.
"Yes, my wielder," the living weapon replies.
It is a slow, grinding change. Her legs knit together, widening and flattening into a mammoth blade. Her arms splay out and then bend back upon themselves, twisting into a cruel cross-guard. Her face narrows and squeezes until it is barely recognizable as anything other than a grip for the Rubric Giant's four massive hands.
Tragedy stands, lifting the completed blade above his head, casting a shadow so long that it falls across the Shield Maiden and the Battle Princess, dropping their faces into darkness and despair.
He turns the sword over in his hands, point to the earth, and thrusts it down, sundering the dais of his throne and sinking the black blade halfway into the marble. The Giant King sighs, as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He steps forward, descending halfway down the pyramid steps and taking a seat, legs spread comfortably wide, offering up a tantalizing stretch of thick and meaty thighs and a hint of the dark delta beneath his skirt.
"Now that we have that out of the way," he says, "may we talk?"
"Talk?" Seek-Sorrow sneers. "You are the Small King of the Rubric Giants, the scourge that brings ten thousand years of darkness to our fair land. It is my sworn and sacred duty to slay you. What could we possibly have to talk about? Either you die today or I do. That is all there is."
Tragedy licks his lips and flashes his teeth. It would be wrong to call it a smile, now. There is too much hunger in it.
"You Golden Folk are so sure of yourselves," he says, his tone acid. "So certain of your prophecies and your destinies. But how do you know? Have you seen the future? Have you not left a trail of blood and bones nearly as long as I have in your so-called holy quest to sever my head from my neck? Are you really so confident that your path is righteous?"
Chain says nothing, but slips her shield off her back and onto her arm, holding it forth defensively and bending her knees, ready to fight. She may not have a weapon, but she's gotten them out of worse scrapes than this with greater odds against her. Improvisation is how she's survived this long.
"Save your energy, Child of the Blue," says the Giant King. "You'll never reach the sword in time. I could crush you where you stand, but that would be such a waste when we have so much to offer each other."
Tragedy opens his hands, showing the Shield-Maiden his many palms. It is a gesture of surrender, but it is impossible not to imagine just how easily he could grasp Chain's head between them and grind her skull to dust.
Chain doesn't lower her shield. She has come too far to back down.
Seek-Sorrow reaches for the forbidden blade tucked within her bodice. She can't hope to outmatch the Giant, but she can buy the Shield-Maiden time.
"Fine, then," grumbles the Giant King, sensing the tide as it turns. "Proof."
He reaches up to his forehead and detaches a golden bauble from his headpiece. With a grandiose flick of his wrist, he lets it fall. It bounces down the steps, each strike of metal against stone heavier than it has any reason to be, booming like a gong, and then it rolls, ceasing its progress ever nearer to the pair only when it aligns with a hidden depression at the direct center of the throne room. It wobbles, circling the rim, and finally drops down with a soft click.
Motes of violet light burst forth from the little orb like a geyser, filling the air with a fog of brilliant purple. They swirl and coalesce, darting and dimming, brimming and brightening, a cacophony of silent motion and untraceable patterns, though they do not remain so for long. The Shield-Maiden and Battle Princess, bodies taut and ready to fight, hearts prepared to cease, slowly relax as it becomes clear that this is not an attack, but an entreaty.
It is a vision of the future.
The images are so lifelike—vast and three-dimensional, appearing much larger than the space they have to fill—that it isn't hard to locate familiar signs and landmarks. There, the cities of the Golden Folk, their towers adorned with winged crests, reaching higher with every passing season. There, the roving villages of the Children of the Blue, shifting through the forest as they tend to the needs of the land. There, out on the steppe and far from harm, a gathering of the Rubric Giants, united in celebration over a baby born from a newly fallen star.
The vision changes. As the towers grow more plentiful and reach ever higher, the span of forest and steppe alike is gradually and then rapidly diminished.
A great hunt begins. The Giants give brutal reprisal, but it is not enough. The Golden Folk have grown too numerous, their resources too vast. Falling stars are plucked out of the sky to be consumed as fuel for the Golden Folk's engines of progress.
The forests are cut down. The Children of the Blue escape to the ocean, but they do not keep their freedom long. They are rounded up and given new purpose: endless labor, to lift their masters' golden wings to the stars.
The steppe is paved over. No Rubric Giant survives their passing. Their subtle arts are lost forever, but the Golden Folk have no more need for mortal power.
The cities expand. The Golden Folk, once one people, become many nations. The many nations do as many nations will. War follows. The land burns. The vision pulls in close. A final, terrible machine. A final act of vengeance. The Golden Folk pull down the moon from the sky—and then the Golden Folk, too, are no more.
A million motes of light wink out one by one as they recede into the bauble, leaving a final image lingering in the minds of those who have witnessed their grave forecast: a sphere without a satellite, scorched and scarred, devoid of life, orbiting listlessly through the dark.
"We kill the world," whispers Seek-Sorrow.
"No," scoffs Tragedy. "The world will go on long after we are gone. But you do kill all that live upon it."
The Giant King stands and descends the remaining stairs, striding without hurry across the throne room to retrieve his bauble and put it back in the crown of golden beads. This act brings him so close to the Battle Princess and the Shield-Maiden that they can smell his musk. It is nothing so vile as they might have imagined—brimstone and sulfur or carnage and blood—but a soft perfume, something melancholy and nostalgic, like a flower blooming in the desert.
He stands, looming over them, smallest of all Giants but still nearly twice their size. His oiled chest glimmers in the firelight, possessed of a deeper luster than all the sparkling metals and gemstones that mantle him. For a moment, they forget that they are enemies. Chain and Seek-Sorrow alike find themselves wishing that he would reach out and touch them with those many powerful hands, even if it meant their death.
The Shield-Maiden lifts an unsteady arm towards the Giant King, who cackles half in warning. Chain takes three steps back, shield raised high, taking Seek-Sorrow by the arm and pulling her along, though her feet drag.
Seek-Sorrow glances at her partner, sharing both her unexpressed fear and another, deeper and more exhilarating terror. Chain slips her hand down into Seek-Sorrow's and their fingers entwine.
"What does any of that have to do with your war on the world?" the Battle Princess asks, emboldened by her partner's touch. "You brought havoc and death upon us all."
"Have I?" the Giant King asks.
Tragedy turns on his heel, carelessly exposing his unguarded back to them in an ultimate, insulting display of dominance. He does not fear them, even now. He never did.
"Follow me," he commands.
In spite of their dignity, they do. Hand in hand, they cross the throne room in Tragedy's wake, following the billowing folds of his skirt and the patter of each footfall, softly jingling. He leads them through a side hall that opens onto a great balcony.
"Havoc, yes," Tragedy says as they walk. "I have driven your peoples underground. I have razed your settlements. I have salted the earth of your meeting sites. But how many have I killed and how many have died in attacks upon my people? There is little blood on my hands that could not have been avoided had you gone quietly into the dirt and just stayed there."
In the center of the balcony is a large and banded cylinder, mounted on a heavy tripod. A telescope. It is pointed at the moon.
"Have a look," he offers.
Seek-Sorrow goes first. She bends down to look through the viewer and comes up pale as ashes. Chain steps in to see for herself and reflexively reaches for the weapon she no longer possesses before she staggers away in stunned disbelief.
The surface of the moon is moving.
Only it isn't the surface of the moon, it's the Rubric Giants that live upon it. Thousands—no, hundreds of thousands of Rubric Giants. The entire moon is shrouded in a roiling, orgiastic mass of Rubric Giants. No wonder it shines crimson.
"Let me tell you a story of my people," says Tragedy.
He leans on the railing, looking out over the mountains, as if he were on vacation at his summer villa and not at home in the castle of nightmares from which he has launched a campaign of brutality against all those who dwell in the green places of their realm.
"A thousand generations ago, maybe longer, we Giants lived inland," he says. "It was a time of harmony, prosperity, and possibility, as few challenges proved insurmountable when faced with Rubric strength, Blue craft, and Golden technology. Our greatest achievement was to construct a bridge to the moon. My people were the natural vanguard, as we need no air to breathe and feel no cold or heat. Nearly the whole host of us went up to the moon together to lay the foundations of a new and fantastic colony, the first of many to be built among the stars.
"But down on the surface, the Golden Folk schemed. They feared that our indomitable resolve would one day threaten what they saw as their rightful place at the top of our triune nation. That toxic notion turned their ingenuity into barbarity. As the last of the pioneers set foot upon the moon, the engineers below tore down the bridge and destroyed the mechanisms of its creation, forever severing us from our home. The Children of the Blue fled to the forests in disgust, rejecting further cohabitation with the Golden Folk. The Rubric Giants that had stayed behind either fled to the steppe or were slain."
The Battle Princess, having regained some of her golden color while resting in the arms of her lover, steps forward.
"We have a similar story in my people's oral tradition," she says. "It tells us that in those dark days the Rubric Giants were a threat to all existence, that they would raid our villages, raping and pillaging, murdering our livestock and razing our crops. They say our Knights Engineer led a grand crusade to drive the interlopers from our land. The crusade was successful and the enemy was driven out, but the Knights returned changed. After, they committed scientific atrocities against their own people. That is why we abolished our schools and burned our libraries. That is why so many of the relics I carry are forbidden."
Tragedy's laugh is low and haunted. He turns to the pair and there is a fire in his eyes that is somehow more frightening than anything that has been described in the stories of the Giant King's monstrous nature. It is a cold fire, that which burns from within, that which has a beginning but no end.
"You have seen the bauble's prophecy, the same as I," he says. "A vision stolen from Time itself cannot be a lie. Knowing what you know now, which history do you think is true, little Battle Princess? Which one of us is the product of true sin?"
Seek-Sorrow opens her mouth, intending defiance, but the words catch in her throat. She has experienced the cruelty of her people first-hand. She would rather die than return to their fold. She has sworn Chain to kill her on the spot should she ever change her mind.
"We can be different," she manages, the words so feeble that they are barely spoken.
"Liar!" shouts the Giant King.
Tragedy moves faster than either of them would have believed, clasping Seek-Sorrow by the waist and hauling her into the air. Chain moves quickly, too, but the gesture is impotent: the Giant King catches her by the arm and dangles her like a rag some three feet off the ground.
Seek-Sorrow struggles, but like Phantasmagoria before her, she cannot escape from Tragedy's grip. Unlike Phantasmagoria, she wears a battle dress, and with each squirm and wriggle she feels its seams pop and its rings sunder, the whole of it ripping like taffeta beneath Tragedy's nails. The more she struggles, the more she makes herself vulnerable.
She ignores the voice within that tells her to keep going, the urge that insists that this terrible freedom is exactly what she wants.
"You understand," says Tragedy. "I know you do. You must."
The Battle Princess shakes her head and jams her eyes shut, willing away her doubts, pushing down the joy she feels at the strong, hot hand around her waist.
"Look at me, Seek-Sorrow, Battle Princess of the Golden Folk," he snarls. "Lie to me again."
Her eyes snap open and their gazes meet. In a flash, that ineffable fire passes between them. Seek-Sorrow shivers and half her bodice falls away with a death rattle of wool and iron.
Chain stops fighting the Giant King's hold, distracted first by the unusual sound and then by her comrade's sudden exposure. She can't ever focus properly when the Princess has her tits out. It has been argued that this may be her greatest weakness. Almost on command, her cock begins to swell within her breeches.
How can she be thinking about that at a time like this?
But then she notices the tears streaming down Seek-Sorrow's lovely face and all carnal thoughts perish and her singular, protective drive reasserts itself. Summoning heroic force, she leaps off the Giant King's arm, breaking his monstrous grip. She dodges his third and fourth hands with an acrobatic twirl. She tumbles through the air and lands beyond his reach, ready to mount her counter-assault.
The Battle Princess gasps: "I understand."
The Shield-Maiden goes still as stone.
The Giant King bellows with mirthless laughter.
Tragedy sets Seek-Sorrow upon her feet, unhanding her so gently as to not leave even one more scratch. He sweeps past them both without a further sound, returning inside and mounting the dais to perch upon his nightmare throne. No words are needed. His message is clear. They will go to him when they are ready.
The Battle Princess wobbles on her feet and the Shield-Maiden is there to catch her.
"Oh, Chain, I'm sorry," Seek-Sorrow weeps. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I understand him, now. Damn me, damn us all, but I do."
The look of consternation on Chain's face is enough to make Seek-Sorrow grin, despite their circumstances. In that moment of release, she notices the hard tent behind the Shield-Maiden's codpiece. She reaches down and wraps her fingers around the base of it through the twill. Chain stiffens in all the places she can stiffen.
"Really, you," Seek-Sorrow giggles. "It's the end of the world."
It is at this point that she registers the state of her battle dress.
"Ah," she swallows. "That would explain it."
Chain shrugs. It is a well-established weakness.
The Battle Princess stands under her own power and takes the Shield-Maiden's face in her hands, guiding her gaze up and away from her chest, locking eyes with her searching gaze like she did with the Giant King, a minute and a lifetime ago.
"Chain, my beloved," she says, "we have failed. We will not slay the Small King, for his cause is more righteous than our own. We have lost our opportunity to reign over the paradise we were promised by our accursed forebears, but let us not throw away the chance to serve him in this hell."
They go together. Tragedy's voice reverberates through the throne room as they approach.
"Tyranny is in the nature of the Golden Folk," he declares. "Any rise to power by their hand will end in corruption. Sooner or later, that corruption will kill us all."
Chain leaves her shield behind on the throne room floor as she ascends the first steps.
"Our only hope," the Giant King offers, "is to change the very nature of the Golden Folk. It is a complex assignment, but one that I believe can be completed through sufficient environmental pressures."
Seek-Sorrow discards her protective bangles. She won't need them anymore. They chime and clatter as they roll down the stair.
"To purge them of tyranny, scourge them with tyranny," says Tragedy. "Give them such excess that the taste sours. Twine the memory so closely around them that they can no longer distort their histories. Carve the lesson into their very bones."
They prostate themselves in supplication at the foot of his throne, flanking Phantasmagoria.
"You punish them now so that they do not commit future crimes," observes the golden one.
"Yes," he concurs. "Now and for howsoever long as I live—and we Giants live many lifetimes, even when we are born small."
"What comes after?" asks the blue.
"At my end," the Giant answers, "I will cease to restrain the tide of my brothers and sisters on the moon. With my last breath, I will loose them upon this world. They will ruin it as it has ruined them. But they will pass, as all things do, and those who survive their passing will be changed. The course of Time will fork. The future predicted will never be, for the Golden Folk will be tarnished beyond recognition. If their goddess is good, they will have become something entirely new."
Seek-Sorrow looks to Chain. There is fear in both their eyes, the bond of their trust is unbreakable. Chain still isn't quite sure she understands what's happened, but Seek-Sorrow's intentions are clear enough for her to follow along. Seek-Sorrow is terrified for what will come next, but she knows at least that she will never be alone.
"What of our time that remains?" asks Seek-Sorrow. "We can never go home."
"Make yourself a new home, then," says Tragedy, as if it is that simple. "I dwell within this castle alone, but there is ample room for two more. Between my hidden strength, her lost craft, and your buried technology, applied with foresight and ingenuity, I daresay you both could live nearly as long as me."
"How will we pass the days?" murmurs the Battle Princess, voice trembling.
"How else?" crows the Giant King. "With pleasure."
He spreads his legs and pulls the skirt up around his waist. Between red granite thighs, his cunt unfurls like a many-tongued flame, glimmering slickly in the firelight, a bouquet of flesh wreathed around an infinitely dark abyss that pulses as it beckons.
Seek-Sorrow steps out of her half-torn dress. She runs a hand over her own cunt, confirming an easy suspicion when it comes away drenched. Her fluids are hot, but they leave her skin cold where her fingers trail, up across her belly and around the rose-gold nipples of her full breasts in ceremonial circles, drawing the King's eye.
"Chain," she commands, "show her your skill."
Gleefully obeying, the Shield-Maiden crawls across the dais on all fours, locking on to her target. She comes up between Tragedy's legs without fear and dives in tongue first. With so much ground to cover, she works swiftly, running her fingers through the parted folds of his labia and locating the engorged ruby of his clit. She winds her fingers around it, pinching and rubbing, but she cannot see the way Tragedy's composure cracks, just for a moment, as his dominant grin screws into a furtive wince of pleasure.
Seek-Sorrow, in a flurry of motion, climbs up Tragedy's calf and onto his lap. She lets her cunt grind across Tragedy's knee along the way and she nearly comes undone, spasming with the hard heat of their contact, but her years in the wilderness have made her resilient and she somehow powers through. Her legs settle into the nooks of Tragedy's haunches and she centers herself, cunt pressing against Tragedy's pelvic mound, undulating to the beat of Chain's attack as she stretches skyward for a nervous kiss.
Tragedy's lips envelop Seek-Sorrow's. His invading tongue is long and thick enough to fill her whole mouth, cutting short her breath as a deep, strangled moan percolates within her chest. Not soon enough to defend herself, Seek-Sorrow realizes that this is only a feint to distract from his true counterattack. He lifts each of her perfect teardrop tits in a large hand and squeezes, pulling on them with such violence that she worries briefly that her flesh might rip as easily as her battle dress. Her fears are unfounded. There is more pleasure than pain and she has suffered worse with less kind intentions.
As Tragedy continues to pull, lifting Seek-Sorrow off his lap and dangling her by her own tits for one blistering second before he catches her by the ass with his spare pair of hands, Chain shifts her stance, intent on breaking Tragedy's guard. She clamps her whole mouth around Tragedy's tremendous clit and sucks with all her might as, in the same motion, she plunges her sword hand into his pulsing depths.
Tragedy's composure buckles and his tongue flees from Seek-Sorrow's throat so that he, too, might gasp for air. Embarrassed or encouraged—or a bit of both—he spins the Battle Princess like a wheel, serving up her cunt to his hungry mouth. Seek-Sorrow has just a moment to consider the size of the tongue that was just inside her mouth before it blows past her labia and skewers her all the way through.
Her scream of shocked joy is loud enough to shatter even Chain's legendary focus.
The Shield-Maiden redoubles her efforts. She lashes Tragedy's clit with her tongue as she jackhammers her hand, thrusting nearly to the elbow with every strike, engaging every combat muscle she has. Not to be outdone, Tragedy's tongue flies in, out, and around Seek-Sorrow's cunt. He holds her hips steady in a vice-like grip, allowing no retreat, even as he slaps her ass like a drum, sending rhythms up and down her body that make her twist and curl like a banner in the breeze.
The Battle-Princess's mind is carried away in the deluge of stimulation and travels back to the first time she and Chain engaged in coitus. They had been on the road for months and were finally learning to trust each other. If they worked together, they'd figured out, they could make up for each other's weaknesses and better capitalize on each other's advantages. It would be a long time yet before the Giants feared them, but they were making headway.
On the night in question, she had made a mistake. If not for Chain's shield, she might have lost everything and then she would never had made it to this moment of mind-transporting bliss. Chain's reward for her courage was to be given every gift that Seek-Sorrow had to give, save one: the truth. She had never told her what drove her to such distraction.
The Giant at cause hadn't been especially fierce or particularly large, but its cock was another story, even by Giant standards. She could still picture the way it bulged, so knobby and knotted that the blasted creature had trouble walking straight. Seek-Sorrow could never have taken such a devil inside of her—it would have killed her on the spot, split her right in twain—but some part of her had wondered: what if?
That curiosity had nearly killed her and had gelded her with secret shame. Someday soon, she will need to repent. Chain knows everything about her. Every other corner of her conscience is clean, except for this. It seems so silly, now.
She also thinks she has her answer. It's not that Tragedy's tongue is so improbably large—Chain's cock reaches deeper than this—but there's something monstrous about his effort, something all-consuming, as if his tongue reaches not just into her cunt but all the way to the core of her spirit and poisons it with lust.
For the first time since she crested the clifftop, Seek-Sorrow is content in the choices she has made. There may be no glory in her life to come, but there will be indeed be pleasure enough to make up the difference.
As that last bit of her resistance crumbles, her body convulses, starting in her delta and radiating outward with the sweet devastation of a powerful orgasm. It's only when her voice cracks that she discovers she has been screaming obscenities for the last several minutes. She can feel Tragedy cackling around his tongue. The sound is wicked, joyful, proud. It makes her feel the same.
The Giant King—no, he is not that. Not now, not ever again.
The Giant called Tragedy holds her aloft as his own hips judder and he looses a great torrent from within, drenching Chain from nose to stomach. When he lets her fall, it is without malice, though it makes her breath flutter just the same.
She is in no danger. Chain is there to catch her and see her spared of harm, as she always has been and as, Seek-Sorrow prays, she always will be. That they need no longer face these wilds alone does not alter the circumstances of her heart, but that confession can wait for another time.
"Why are you still dressed?" queries Seek-Sorrow, diverting her thoughts away from love and back to lust.
Chain shrugs.
"I can help with that," announces Tragedy.
He reaches around Seek-Sorrow with all four hands and digs his fingernails into the garments that cover Chain. One quick tug and they are torn to ribbons, leaving the Shield-Maiden with nothing to do but kick off her leather boots.
Chain may not be so impressively bulky as Tragedy, but she has a fencer's tone. Seek-Sorrow knows every slight crease of that pale blue chest—she has traced them to the last with her eyes, her fingers, her tongue—but her eyes are drawn, as ever, downward to the deep cut of her hips and the prominence at the apex of her delta: a cock as long, straight, and hard as any sword she ever wielded, suspended beneath a tuft of sand-gray hair.
Seek-Sorrow sinks to her knees on the dais and takes Chain's cock by the base, just above her balls. She draws her closer, step by little step, until the drooling tip is close enough to kiss. Without hesitation, she wraps her lips around Chain's head, gently probing with her tongue, lapping at her little hole, and drawing back the foreskin to fully unsheathe Seek-Sorrow's favorite weapon.
The Battle Princess could do this for hours, left to her own infernal devices, but Tragedy's claws run the length of her back, reminding her of his presence. The delicate pressure bites into her flesh, soft enough not to leave a mark, but firm enough to fully indicate that she could be ripped to shreds as easily as Chain's meager garments. She obediently stands, rising and turning, bending slightly at the waist and waving her ass invitingly as she braces herself against Tragedy's inner thighs.
Chain needs no further direction. She takes two steps forward, squares her feet, and drives her cock up into Seek-Sorrow's cunt. It is a movement they have thoroughly practiced, but that does not lessen its effect. Seek-Sorrow crashes forward, haphazardly burying her face in Tragedy's cunt, entirely lacking the coordination or coherence to do much more than wriggle. The clapping of their bodies parting and joining is wet and loud as Chain shows off another of her skills: she rapidly accelerates to punishing speed, even as her hands slip around Seek-Sorrow's waist, one sliding up to snatch an aggressively bouncing nipple, the other sliding down to roll Seek-Sorrow's clit. Seek-Sorrow roars into Tragedy's nether maw.
Tragedy's hands descend. Her thick red fingers roughly caress Chain's cheek while she runs her thumbnail across Chain's lips, encouraging them to make way for her to come inside. Chain complies, parting shakily, tongue dancing, but the taste of Tragedy's thumb at the back of her throat is too much for her to bear. She explodes inside of Seek-Sorrow without warning, filling her up with thick, fruitless seed. Seek-Sorrow quakes, toes curling, and takes over, thrusting backwards against Chain in short, hard strokes, her hands replacing Chain's over her tits and cunt, working feverishly until she, too, tips over the edge.
They collapse together at the base of the throne, tangled and coiled in a knot of soaked and burning limbs. Tragedy lets them rest a while, his bright eyes studying the spoils of his conquest, but impatience soon gets the better of him. He steps across the pair as he descends from his throne, briefly eclipsing their quivering bodies with his voluminous frame.
He unburdens himself of his skirt and his jewelry as he crosses the dais, discarding even the circlet of golden baubles—it has served is purpose and he has achieved his goal. What further need has he of prophecies? He has seized a future of his own design.
In their post-orgasmic haze, both Seek-Sorrow and Chain take a moment to appreciate the terrible greatness of Tragedy's ass. It is somehow both plump and cut, the kind of ass that leaves you torn between wanting to spank it and wanting to be smothered beneath it. Those twin gibbous moons sway hypnotically as he strides, but the spell is broken and a shock of fear creeps in when his would-be killers realize where he is headed.
Tragedy puts both hands on the sword Phantasmagoria and draws it up from the dais. The weapon offers no resistance and shimmers as he holds it high, a starless crystal in the half-lit dark. If he wants them dead, he will have it. They are stripped of all defense, broken of all resistance, and freed of all pretense. Swaddled in her warm and well-fucked glow, Seek-Sorrow would almost welcome death, she thinks, though Chain might disagree.
It does not matter. Tragedy has something else in mind. He lifts the sword to his lips and whispers so softly that no one else can hear his command.
"Yes, my wielder," the living weapon replies.
The transformation is odd, even by Phantasmagoria's standards. She ratchets and splits open in the usual way, but fully transitions into her anthropoid form, suspended in the air and pirouetting like a dancer. Chain catches her glowing eye and sees something resembling a look of approval lurking in the shadows of normally expressionless face.
Phantasmagoria's arms reach amorously around her own slender body as she whirls and slowly loses distinction, her sparse shape smoothing out into a long and curving column, bulbously rounded over on both ends. This column doubles back and knits around itself in a double helix as it shrinks and gains density before finally bending in the middle like a boomerang as it settles into the facsimile of a curious double-ended scepter.
The Battle Princess utters a low gurgle of delighted anticipation, much to her bedfellow's befuddlement, but the purpose of Phantasmagoria's new form makes itself plain when Tragedy inserts the shorter, thicker end of the weapon into her cunt, leaving the other side to jut perpendicularly out from her delta. It is spiral ribbed, it is composed of meteorite steel, it is etched with mystic traces of eerily-glowing green, but for all its strangeness, it is a cock, through and through. A cock, what's more, that is suitably matched to Tragedy's prodigious hips, therefore dwarfing not only Chain's nominally substantial member but also every one of even the most creatively-utilized objects that either one of them have ever stuck inside themselves.
Seek-Sorrow amends her naive conclusion that Tragedy's tongue would be the closest she ever came to getting fucked by a proper Giant. She isn't sure whether she wants to laugh or to cry, but before she realizes it, her fingers are in her cunt, spreading herself open in unchecked invitation.
Chain is similarly occupied, scooping the steady stream of pre-ejaculate that drools from her rising cock and working it into the puckered purple rim of her asshole.
Tragedy, seeing this, makes his selection.
"You will have to wait your turn, little Princess," he notes with a smirk.
He grabs them both by their waists—the benefit of many hands—and places them on the broad seat of his throne, spreading Seek-Sorrow's legs and placing Chain between them, pressing her back comfortably into Seek-Sorrow's bosom. When Seek-Sorrow reaches out to grab Phantasmagoria and bring it closer to her needy mouth, Tragedy playfully bats her away. They will have centuries for cock-worship. Right now, he is king and his desire is law.
Without words—unless one counts his stirring growls—he directs Seek-Sorrow to hold Chain's legs behind the knees, presenting him with her unobstructed ass. While Chain's efforts to prepare herself for Tragedy's coming were well-intentioned, they will prove insufficient. He squats before the throne, appreciating the weight of Phantasmagoria as it swings, and attacks Chain's ass with his tongue, ably routing her involuntary defenses and invading her depths.
Perhaps it is Tragedy's imagination, but the weapon feels like it is willfully transforming inside of him, subtly oscillating in a most stimulating manner that only stokes the fires of his need. Chain whimpers and groans, sinking her teeth into Seek-Sorrow's neck to steady herself. Seek-Sorrow, in turn, worries unnecessarily that she may so drench the seat of the throne that they will both slide right off. She chuckles between gasps of pleasure at this ludicrous notion.
When Chain's cock bursts open, anointing Tragedy's forehead with a new milky circlet, he determines that he can wait no longer. He stands again at full height, towering over his small and vibrant playthings. These are all the jewels he needs. He spits into his palm and slathers it over the head of the cock Phantasmagoria, widens his stance, and guides himself into Chain's gaping hole.
Chain screams as Tragedy forces himself inside, but not in pain. Seek-Sorrow has tended to countless of Chain's wounds and knows better than anyone that Chain is silent in her suffering. She is anything but silent, now.
Phantasmagoria throbs within Tragedy's cunt as he thrusts. Tragedy does not know what it's like to have a natural cock—no subtle art could grant her that, even if he wanted it—but this, he thinks, is not a poor simulation. Each time he goes deeper and harder into Chain, the weapon vibrates more furiously inside of him, a feedback loop so intoxicating that Tragedy entirely forgets himself. His hands grip the back of the throne, claws digging into the wood, and he ruts like a hog in heat, fangs bared, unable to hold back his hot breath or the rumble within his lungs.
Seek-Sorrow, observing Tragedy's transformation, his body a red canopy that blocks out the world above, holds Chain all the more tightly, bracing them together in an attempt to tame Chain's helpless convulsions. The only thing she gains from this, however, is a keener connection to the impact of Tragedy's cock, transferred through Chain's body and into her own. As Chain's back grinds against her delta, it is suddenly as if Tragedy is fucking them both at the same time. Her undoing comes faster than she can prepare for it, and only her indomitable will keeps her hold on Chain's legs intact.
Chain, for her part, has long lost count of her orgasms. Her cock flails with every thrust and spurts forth every other, splattering them all with sticky goo. Some reserved part of her mind—her battle sense, you might say—wonders if this isn't what she has trained her body for all these long years, why she built up such up stamina and endurance. She was built to take the blows of Giants, but she never imagined it would be so rewarding.
Tragedy's blood boils, a release more complete than any he has known in all his years of subjugation. It bubbles up, drawn forth by the rasping, raw voices that scream out from his touch, pushed to breaking by the steady undulations of the weapon within him. As Tragedy's climax overflows, Phantasmagoria reveals one more trick: it flares at the opening of Tragedy's cunt to shut off all other lines of egress and opens a narrow passage through its center, running from the base straight through to the mushroom tip.
It has been a long, long time since Chain felt anyone come in her ass—and never before did it feel anything like this. A torrent of Tragedy's nectar erupts with such immense volume that the wave of it forces him out of Chain's ass. He watches helplessly as he stumbles backwards, his glistening cock spasming and showering his throne and its occupants. Whatever he represents to all those who walk on and under the ground below, in this moment he is unmade. With great relief, he sinks to his knees, enveloping the others' heaving flesh with his own.
There are no more Kings or Princesses or Maidens.
He is Tragedy. She is Seek-Sorrow. She is Chain.
They are lovers until death does them part from this forsaken world.
But Seek-Sorrow is not finished, yet. With strength she barely thinks to have and craft she has never claimed to possess, she pushes a drowsy Chain aside and lifts Tragedy by the shoulders, guiding him to lean back on his heels. Phantasmagoria still sprouts from his cunt, tireless and immovable, and she helps herself to its pleasures.
She climbs atop the jet black spire, straddling Tragedy's hips, and skewers herself on half its length, driving it in as deep as it will go. Goddess, it is thick.
Tragedy's half-lidded eyes snap open.
"I have waited my turn," Seek-Sorrow insists.
"Have at it, then," Tragedy submits.
She arches her back as she rides, letting her tits bounce freely in an alluring spectacle. Her long white hair, come unwoven from its sensible braids, dances in ribbons around her as she throws her head back and wails, able to fuck unhidden from the world, now that she sits atop its crown.
Tragedy grunts with Seek-Sorrow's every fall, mastering himself, refusing to take over but unused to being the one being fucked. He could grow accustomed to this, he thinks, but that thought is replaced with another as Chain—impossibly recovered—climbs up onto his chest, plants her knees on his shoulders, takes hold of the back of his head with both hands, and thrusts her cock between his bemused lips.
Soon, Tragedy's mastery crumbles, and he wraps his four hands around their two backs, encouraging them and lending them his power. Seek-Sorrow rides his magic cock as Chain fucks his face and before any of them can mark the transit of the moon across their sky, they are upended and recollected in a pleasure-wracked heap, the Wayward Child and the Folkish Scapegoat nestled in the crook of the Small Giant's big arms, their hands interwoven across his stomach.
Seek-Sorrow's hand strays southward once more and wraps around the head of Tragedy's cock.
"Phantasmagoria, yourself," she whispers.
"Yes, my wielder," the living weapon replies.
Her body joins the pile. Phantasmagoria's slender figure settles into the valley between Tragedy's thighs, head pillowed on the wooly tuft that runs across his belly. Chain's fingers brush lovingly over the swoosh of her pointed head and she sighs, content with simply living, a weapon no more. Seek-Sorrow beams, basking in the reflected warmth of her expanded family, its missing pieces all found where she least expected them, at last complete.
Somewhere in the skies above their castle, a blood-red moon shines down, its rage contained for now, but not forever. Let it be another hero's burden. They have suffered enough.