La Humiliation de la Monarchie

(The Humiliation of the Monarchy)

by Jessica Gaude and Terri ‘Lady Kakata’ Ferguson

Novelization by Terri ‘Lady Kakata’ Ferguson
Chaptre Une


And so now he was being taken to yet another kingdom in response to yet another proposal of marriage. There were several things that marked this one as different though; the first and most notably dangerous difference was that instead of his hand actually being asked for in a traditional sense that would imply that he was highly sought after or worthy, it was actually demanded in a gleeful sort of way, lest the owner of the bounty (this being the King, Thane’s father) want a whole bloody army on his doorstep that would think nothing of slaughtering everything from men right down to cats and dogs to satisfy some hugely defended and inflated ego. Thane had no choice in the matter, and neither did his father because, as a good King, his first duty was to protect his people, even if that meant losing his son to people he knew that played childish games with lives for mere distraction. Thane might be an ungrateful spoiled bitch (quite like his mother then) but the King still loved him as his only child and his heir. Watching him ride off in the carriage to what was either certain doom or a horrible existence was almost too much for him to bear, and the Prince only caught a glimpse of his father before the horses spirited him out of the Kings sight.

The Kings fear was not entirely misplaced; the Kingdom that had demanded the Prince was like the barbaric bloody and laughingly sadistic Kingdoms of old, like the times that Thanes tutors had described in the bloody Land Wars when so many kings and dynasties and groups each claimed such-and-such a land or throne as their own or else demanded that the Kingdoms were wrongly defined and insisted that the borders shifted to greaten their own territory. Mostly those times were gone (simply because people became exhausted and once all the madly berserk fighting men were all dead the negotiators moved in to settle the arguments and usually daughters or nieces were exchanged to secure the peace), but some pockets still remained, and the berserk men hadn’t really died, merely bred and secured the lust for a fight and the burning image of righteousness into the next, slightly unstable generation. For the most parts these Kingdoms were usually like sinister, giggling little masses on the map that were nervously glanced at but for some reason they liked to keep to themselves and rarely shouted out loud to the other kingdoms that liked to try and keep some sort of No-Mans land between themselves and this madness as though it were some soft of black-and-blood swamp filled with nasty things that liked to bite and had a sense of hideous humor about it.

Such terror of such places meant that, when a declaration was made or a demand was received, most kingdoms did the bloody sensible thing and did whatever was requested, within reasonable limits. Some requests were strange, like a demand for ten crates of eggs that not even the most knowledgeable of war veterans and strategists could work out a use for it (other than someone wanted an omelet) but some were serious, such as threats of a war unless some nice virgins of good stock were sent their way. Once or twice a generation there was usually a demand for a Princess or a pure-blood noble to be sent to them to continue their dynasty (the underlying implication was that if one wasn’t sent willingly, then they’d kidnap them all and rape anything that stood in their way), and usually she wasn’t heard from again but presumably she was treated well enough until he birthed the next generation but even the most anxious of families wasn’t brave enough to march up to the Kingdoms front door and ask.

It became some sort of hideous game of pass-the-parcel to see what Kingdom would land a request from these people. In this area the pocket was called Seresgoth, and it fell on Thanes luckless father to provide tribute. The signs were that hey would possibly ask for livestock or something odd, but unfortunately they asked for a Princess or pure-blood noble. Thanes father got as far as saying that he only had a Prince and he would have to research the Nobles bloodlines to see who was the purest, when he got a shocking reply that simply said (in a jolly tone that would have been nice had it not come from such sinister and demented people) that a Prince was fine and they should send him along right away. Or have a bloody great big army on their doorstep eating, raping and pillaging everything, not necessarily in that order.

Thane’s father was utterly stunned that they said yes to a Prince, and didn’t seem to want to take a female instead. He had offered Thane to Tsavolnyx of Arazeeus because he knew of the tradition of consorts/wives, depending on the sex of the person chosen to be the Emperor/ess’ mate at the time, but never was it known for the Seregoths to ask for Princes or anyone remotely male. The King initially thought that perhaps it was a Princess that had to have a consort rather than the usual Prince but his advisors told him that, actually, as far as they or anyone else knew women were exceptionally rare in that Kingdom, and surely there would be some sort of fuss about a Princess being around and therefore a possible Queen instead of the usual scary Kings. The poor man didn’t know if he was amused or outright terrified for Thane, since he still didn’t want his beloved child to be the victim of a filthy beast only saved from inbreeding by donated women.

Of course, he didn’t tell Thane any of that, he had a hard enough time telling him that he was going to Seregoth and no, he probably wouldn’t see his father or the Kingdom again for a while. There was the usual haughty dismissal, saying that he didn’t need to go because of the strength of his fathers’ kingdom and his own self-pride. The King was surely almost driven to beat the boys head into the wall to thin his skull a little and take in the information that there WAS no way of getting out of this, the Sersgoths were horrifically stronger and fiercer than anything outside their boundaries and if Thane didn’t go there himself, they’d come and get him, and they wouldn’t be as nice about it. And they were rarely nice to start with.
Then came the usual demand that his guard Aphrodine with him. Thane was always one to grab something with his teeth and not let go until it was his or was ruined in some way, and he had a task and a half trying to make sure his son didn’t rape the poor knight one night or try and do away with the boy that seemed to be his lover.
If Thane wasn’t happy, apparently the entire castle wasn’t allowed to be happy but he was doing all within his regal power to discreetly lower the amount of sexual contact Prince Thane had, since he hadn’t been married off yet and wanted to keep him more or less naïve since an experienced Prince would create loud noises to be made about being so experienced (one would think that was good but it called into question just how many sluts/virgins had this Prince taken into his chambers, how many illegitimate children –and therefore contenders to the throne and possible murderers of any legitimate children- he had fathered in his whoring and just what interesting diseases and parasites he had played host to in the meantime) or being a walking syphilis bag. Usually Princesses had to be virgin and pure, and Princes were allowed to sow so many wild oats they could populate their own Kingdoms in a short time, but that had all changed after the Land Wars had threatened to start again with so many Royal Bastards coming out from the peasant ranks and stirring up revolt with their half-blood and taste for potential power being snatched away from the Prince and Princesses fathered legitimately. The Kings clamped down and made sure that their naturally roving sons stayed within a very small pen, which was hard for Thanes father, considering his sons appetites and his blinding drive to have everything his own way.

But despite all his faults (and oh Gods he had a few) he surely still didn’t deserve to be drive off like this with Aphrodine and a few other guards with an uncertain future. Aphrodine had long since stopped listening to the Prince, eventhough it really was his duty to reassure him and make sure that he didn’t make a fool of his own kingdom again. But the conversation alternated between why he didn’t think that this was necessary since his own Kingdom could easily defend him (but everyone Aphrodine had spoken to said completely different), how this was probably some withered up old Lord that he would have to play bitch or boytoy to (Aphrodine, rather wickedly at times, hoped this was true, despite the fact the last time the Prince had thought that the ‘Lord’ had turned out to be a magnificent Emperor that had such beauty and handsomeness that it instantly shut the Prince up) or else he went on and on about Aphrodine and Callguard.
He was fiercely jealous of Callguard, for obvious reasons, and it probably didn’t help that he had seen how large that Aphrodine was and had heard the cries of the younger Callguard in the throws of lovemaking when passing the quarters in the hope of getting Aphrodine alone. Aphrodine was, quite frankly, sick of hearing about it and had long since stopped listening to the Prince when he tried to bait his guard or else tried to cause some trouble in his relationship

“Your Majesty, we’re nearing the Kingdom” One of the Guards outside of the Carriage said to Thane through the window. Though one didn’t really need to tell him that; it was obvious in the change in the landscape. It started out in the typical type of landscape; green grass, tall strong trees, a cobbled road through the countryside. But the further they moved on, the more the grass thinned out. The trees lost leaves, until they resembled skeletons that became darker and darker the more they moved on. The road became rougher and decidedly more foreboding.
In fact, as soon as they hit the border, the sight of the land before then was enough probable cause to turn around and run like hell; it was black, it was slightly hilly, the trees were black and lacking any leaves but instead of fruit hanging from the fragile-looking branches, it was swinging skeletons on the ends of rotting ropes, strands of tattered material hanging from the occasional branch too like some sort of grim streamer. The macabre bunting was probably the banners and colors of other armies or even just someone that the killers had some disagreement with. The amount of skeleton trees was extremely disturbing, almost as disturbing as the fauna that they had the chance to look at as the horses nervously went forward. There were what looked like wolves, but these canine creatures looked as though they could eat wolves for a mid-morning snack, so large and incredibly vicious were they, with their muzzles dripping in blood, suggesting that they had recently ate but what exactly they ate wasn’t clear since all the entourage saw were predators. Perhaps the prey, like females, was rare …
Bears, wild cats, some horrible little things that didn’t even have an easy comparison animal that could be used to try and categories them, they all watched the horses and the passing royalty enter the kingdom and nervously shuffle its way towards the castle of the sitting King.

It wasn’t exactly hard to find the castle; it was built upon a tall rocky peak, the tallest in the land that was mostly mildly rolling with this giant peak sticking out like a big spike with the stone and metal castle on it almost like a coating rather than being on it as such … Like a velvet wrap that was normally put around arrowheads in transport. Small lights dotted the structure wrapped around the mountain; showing that someone was in and possibly lots of someone’s were watching him arrive.
Something that struck Aphrodine as odd was the fact that there were very little peasant villages. Normally there were quite a few dotted around the landscape in sort of farmtown formation, but Aphrodine only counted three distant little huddled hamlets all the way here, and there was only a thin ring of peasant houses around the base of the mountain peak with the castle on it. He looked out to the peasants, who were standing at their doors watching the Royalty arrive. They stood there, with pitchforks, spears, axes …. All big, beefy bearded men that appeared as though they had been surly peasant warriors that were forced to go back to the land for lack of something to fight about, but he could sense the itch and it made the back of his skull to ache with the urge to protect and stay away from these people. He could see no wives watching, which would fit the general idea that women were rare, although he could see the occasional teenager and a few children, all male and all as resentful and aggressive looking as their fathers. They were already strong looking, rather than the lanky thin little things present in most kingdoms, and looked as though they ate organs and drank pure beef blood.

The carriage stopped, bemused as to where it was supposed to go. Most castles had a moat, a drawbridge, somewhere where you clearly drove into. This place had no such thing; the peak was tall and Aprhodine had to look directly up to see the castle above him, and had no obvious place where you took a horse and carriage. In fact, he wondered how you got up to the castle at all, unless you had some sort of wings.
Someone appeared from nowhere, a knight dressed in jet-black armor with more spikes and sharp edges on the hideous looking protect than any mace or torture implement. He was joined by seven others, who surrounded the carriage (two at the front, two at the side, two at the back with the remaining man directly to lead) and made it go forward to follow the odd man in front. Making sure the easily panicable Thane get his Gods-damned mouth shut, he watched carefully as to where the men were leading them.

Much to his astonishment, a door was opened in the side of the mountain, like some sort of horrible locker, and lights burned inside to show that this was where the vehicles were stored. As they were guided through, Aprhodine could swear he heard the whinny of horses that weren’t theirs, although the noises were deeper, angrier, like a huge billowing stallion only more than one of them. He rather hoped that they didn’t meet the steeds that made a noise like that.
They were hustled out of the carriage, eerily wordlessly, and made to move towards a set of stone stairs upwards. Aphrodine was place din front of the Prince, as was right, to absorb anything that might come out of the wings at attack His majesty. After all, this was a place where killing was a sort of sport and merely something with which to amuse oneself since nothing much entertaining was worth observing or taking part in.

The castle was of an unusual structure on the outside, being wrapped around a bloody great big mountain, but inside it was surprisingly normal. It was a lot of wide open rooms with stone floors and walls, support beams though were made of metal and the whole places had the atmosphere of being ‘anchored’ onto the rock beneath. It seemed to be a lot of rooms, a lot of places that seemed near identical except from the odd identifying mark that told one that it was a different room.
The rooms were mostly barren; there was little furniture, a few hanging banners that were weather (and revolution) beaten and tattered. The wide windows had no glass and were open to all the elements outside. Most castles would consider this quite a design fault, or at least bloody awful once the wild winter weathers set in. But Aphrodine had a look around the windowsills and he rather doubted that this place had any sort of real rain in a long time. It possibly had storms, the thick sickly grey clouds looked as though it would whip up a storm with the least amount of provocatation, but it was probably a storm of just thunder and bright lightening. Suddenly the black trees made a lot more sense …
They walked though a lot of these rooms, most of them even empty of people, until they were in the bowels of the castle and on their way to the throne room. The entourage stopped outside the massive metal and wood double-doors, apparently waiting for some unspoken command for; as soon as it was given they went through into the long throne room and towards the man that was sitting as the King of Seragoth.

The King amazed Aphrodine immediately. For one thing, surely this man was half-giant, as he was fucking huge! His broad chest could absorb an entire army blow and still snap each mans neck in half like a dry twig. His eyes were cold and a crystallic very light blue that glowed in the otherwise gloomy castle. His hair was surprisingly long and very pale blond, reaching just off his shoulders and he was dressed in a lighter, more flexible version of the knights’ armor. As Aprhodine stared at him and wondered just what kind of woman birthed a man that would be this huge, the king looked at Prince Thane.

Rather wickedly and most unbecoming to a Knight, Aphrodine rather wondered just how big the Prince was if this was his regal father. If he was anything like this …. Well, Thane had seemed obsessed with the size of Aprhodines … assets, and surely a man this huge must have the organs to match. It caused some amusement to think that Thane would get more than he bargained for, and it might tear him apart. But then again, he sounded like a hungry whiney bitch most of the time anyway …

Once that was all out of the way, the Prince was sent for. With the right amount of flair he entered the room, dressed too in armor and he shared the same long very pale blonde hair of his rather. A marked difference was the build; he was a lot more average than his hulking great big father, himself more the size of an average man and less buff too. Not that he wasn’t handsome, he was. Just his eyes were extremely pale grey and seemed to glow like his fathers, his hair longer (reaching past his shoulders) and he had a smirk on him that distinctly rattled Aphrodine and just about all the rest of the guards that Thane had brought with him. His grin was a deep and tooth showing smirk, his eye teeth slightly long and made him look even more predatory than he had looked initially.

This was, apparently, Thanes betrothed.