Quiet Laughter

Royal appeared on a cliff overlooking a small village of animal skin tents with bones for support timbers. In the air was the scent of death and her Fae senses heard the screech of the sacrificial dead, the moan of the animals and far worse. With a shudder, she crouched down and crawled over to the ledge to get a better look at her targets.

Most of the brown skinned necromancers were gathered around a large bonfire in the center of the village. Brothers and sisters of the craft speaking in hushed and unhurried voices.
The younger members, each no younger than fifteen, practiced their craft in the dark shadows between tents. They summoned dead creatures they crafted from their finest materials and fought them against one another.

Their clothing hardly differed from one another. Each wore cured skins of animals covering their vital bits. Over those were sculpted bone armor and random trinkets they stole from their murdered victims. Teeth, bone, dried organs dangled from the belts, hair, ankles and wrists of the necromancers.

Royal smiled grimly. Soon, very soon this whole area would become a massive grave and the tortured spirits held captive would finally have peace. She drew her father’s katana as if from thin air and prepared to strike when he did.

He was painted all in black with hollow white rings around his midnight colored eyes. The muscles of his chest strained against the ties of his armor made of bleached rib bones as he thrust his spear down at Royal’s exposed back. She rolled to one side and up to her feet, bringing up her katana to defend.

They each took measure of themselves. Royal saw he wore a dark colored skirt, something she somewhat admired him for. It took a real man to be confident enough to forgo his masculinity and choose to wear something that did not restrict his movement. Even if it did give his enemies peeks as to the reason of such confidence.

“Another pale one.” He grunted in disgust. “When will your kind learn that we Speakers for the Dead are not the weak people you think we are.”

“Speakers for the Dead?” Royal scoffed. “You asquerosos don’t speak for the dead, you enslave them! You make monsters from corpses. You murder and pillage graves.”

“Hm, not a pale one but one of nature.” He said with a chuckle lowering his spear. “I recognize Court propaganda when I hear it.”

It was then Royal attacked. She charged at him with a cry and began to slash her blade down upon him but he surprised her. He dropped his spear and actually caught her katana between his bare hands, tugged the blade out from Royal’s hands and tackled her to the ground.

“Get off me!” she screamed at the laughing face above her. She noticed his hair was white, but had so many trinkets woven in with leather, it appeared a light tan.

“You are just as Those Who’ve Came have said.” He told her. “Beautiful, foul mouthed, and extremely deadly.”

“I try my best.” Royal snapped back as she ran her hands around for something other than rocks and dirt.

“No, you don’t.” he replied with a chuckle. “That is why you are so beautiful. Your feral nature adds to your allure, for doesn’t everyone desire for what they cannot have?”

“Is that why you are currently rubbing yourself against me?” Royal retorted. The man seemed startled as he finally noticed his unconscious act. She smiled as she finally found her weapon against him.

“I can hear your heart pounding an erratic rhythm. Your forbidden desire is to feel my breath softly fan your face. To feel my naked curves molding to the contours of your lean body.” Royal whispered beginning to stoke a gently growing fire.

A delicious shiver of wanting ran through him and he let out a shuddering sigh. The idea of his eagerness made her bold.

“You long to gather me in your arms and clasp my body to yours. You hands exploring, burying into my loose hair, reveling in the feel of warm flesh before claiming my lips with fiery desire.”

He trembled with the effort to hold himself back from making her words a reality.

“I can almost feel it.” Royal said arching up into him. “You dragging my clothes from my nubile flesh. Your tongue tasting my juices...”

He quickly slapped a hand over her mouth shifting his weight to the side. It was what she had been waiting for. She delivered a knee to his side, rolling him completely off, kicked him away from her and rolled up to her feet, snatching up her sword.

“Clever, beautiful one.” He chuckled as he rose to his feet and retrieved his spear. “Using your own appeal as a weapon... classic and never clichéd.”

“You know some big words for a soon-to-be dead necro savage.” Royal replied before smirking. “Not from around here, are ya?”

“I was born to these lands.” He told her. “It is here I learned from the spirits themselves the language of the pale men, the court of the ones of nature and the deviants of the dark.”

“And as thanks you and your people enslave the dead, reshape their bodies into abominations and use them until they are nothing. You even kill the living without so much a care!”

Royal charged and swung her sword at him. When he dodged the blade, she followed through with a spinning kick to the back of his head. He fell to his hands and knees and Royal was about to bring the blade down upon him when the ground erupted.

Bones and rotten hands all came up in the area surrounding the assassin Fae, all gripping and pulling causing her to lose her balance. When she fell, more hands appeared, pulling her blade away from her, passing it to another hand until it laid too far for Royal to reach. Mere moments later, they began pinning her down, helpless to the man rising to his feet and sauntering over to her.

“Sorry for doing this.” He said kneeling down beside her. “You seem more preoccupied with killing than listening to me.”

“Bastard.” Royal hissed struggling against the rotten binds that kept her spread-eagle. He caressed her cheek gently with the back of his hand.

“If preventing you from bringing me harm when I merely wish to know you.” He told her with a sigh. “Then yes, I am.”

Royal fought against her bonds fiercer than before as he tugged the leather straps from her hair and settled her locks around her like a golden halo. She screamed in frustration as he settled himself bit by bit over her.

Ever so carefully he tilted her chin and rested his hands around her neck as he inhaled her scent. She trembled as he sampled her skin with a tiny lick. His gaze pierced her as he looked up into her eyes as one hand moved from her throat to trace the twin red slash tattoos on her cheeks which marked her as exiled.

“I see.” He murmured leaning down tasting her skin again. She whimpered and flinched when his tongue met the flesh of her neck.

“Quit.” Royal ground out, her anger quickly turning to desire. She felt the bindings around her ankles loosen and his hands suddenly fumbling with her clothes.

“No.” he gasped before claiming her lips and the passion sealed inside his kiss sent Royal over the edge.

Suddenly her hands were free and she too was tearing clothes away. Skeletal hands took away armor and boots. A pale hand pumping at his member. A clash of tongues and pants of breath. Her shirt was ripped open and too many hands grasped and molded the unveiled flesh. Something thing pressed into his entrance then quickly withdrew. He moaned and thrust into Royal with sure efficiency. She cried out in pain and shock.

The necromancer froze and quickly banished those he accidentally summoned back into their graves. He felt the slight quivering beneath him and realized he made a crucial error.

“A virgin.” He whispered in awe and astonishment. She squirmed uncomfortably and he was forced to hold her still unless he desired another loss of control.

“Those Who’ve Came never …”

“Shut up.” Royal snapped then reclaimed his lips with a kiss which made his pulse inside of her.

His loss of control summoned the dead back to them. Once more bones that were formerly hands touched and caressed following unconscious commands. He felt the metallic handle of a dagger begin to slide in and out of him again, hitting his prostate each time. She felt his thumbs toying with a nub of flesh where they joined.

He felt Royal’s body clamp down on him harder. Felt the ease at which his body moved within her, no longer caring it what made it possible. Despite his uncaring slaking of his lust, it was Royal who came first and then him. So it was a complete surprise when he found himself swimming into unconsciousness from a blow to the head from his lover.

She shoved him off of her and quickly donned her clothing still holding his staff that she used against him.

“You’re stupid.” Royal told him coldly. He watched her in a daze as she discarded his spear and retrieved her katana.

“I won’t forget my mission and duty because of you.”

I should have known, he thought before finally submitting to oblivion. Royal turned away from him and approached the village.

She raced through the shadows between the tents first, her sword sliding through the flesh of the necromancers gathered. Not one of the youths survived the swift attack of the Fae angel of death. Once the masters were gone, the crude monstrosities the young necromancers created crumbed like fine dust. Royal offered them a silent prayer before moving on to the bonfire.

She fashioned herself darts from the shards of bone and teeth surrounding her and used them first to attack. But once a single grunt of a fallen foe was heard, Royal sprang into the light.

Her sword carved a path through the men who rushed to attack her alongside their grave creations. New and old blood sprayed into the air highlighted by the flickering fire.

Women ran away only to be brought down from behind by a weapon made on the fly. A spear still clutched by a necromancer hand. Fangs knocked loose and flung out blindly. Even the necromancers own children were thrown with lit sticks of dynamite shoved into their slashed bodies for use as weapons.

In less than an hour, the village was in smoldering ruins. He walked through paths littered with the bodies of the young. Spied the throats of infants slashed. His elders piled carelessly in the communal fire and there, stoking the fire, Royal.

Her loose hair was matted with blood and gore. From where he stood motionless, he could smell the stench of gun powder and burnt skin. Her clothes were barely tousled and clung to her body with dark sticky fluids.

“You look confused.” She said gazing into the flames.

“Why?” he asked in a dull tone of voice. He took a step toward her “Wh-why didn’t you…?”

“Kill you?” Royal finished and let out a self deprecating laugh. “Maybe it’s because of the sex. Who knows? I might want to get laid again.”

He was silent and watched as she wiped at her face. He heard her sigh then, with a deliberate straightening of her shoulders, Royal turned and faced him.

“Take whatever people that are left and leave this place. Don’t ever come back.”

“Won’t the Court have an issue with that?”

“Leave.”

He reached out and went to take another step toward her. Before he could blink, the tip of Royal’s katana was poised at his throat. A cold deadly gleam appeared in her violet colored eyes.

“I will not bestow a second chance.” She whispered icily. “Leave. Now!”

Shadows and smoke crept up to consume his form from sight as he backed away. In select places around the camp, other necromancers followed suit and summoned spirits to veil their escape.

“Remember the name Kaiy-len, my beautiful exiled Fae.” He commanded. “I promise we shall meet again.”

She smiled as he vanished from sight. “I’ll be sure to place that name on your tombstone when you return.”