“Yes, your highness. I have served for ten years in Naxus’ army.”
“My army, Nanite. My army.”
“Of course, sire. Your army. My apologies.” Nanite was starting to sound less and less confident in his ability to remain breathing. Archon was evoking thoughts of war, and with those thoughts of war, the possibility of death for an underperforming sergeant.
Everybody was bold and brave until they heard the screams of the dying and realized that those screams would one day invariably come from their own throats. Then they started to look for reasons to be merciful, in the false hope that mercy might one day be shown to those they loved.
“If someone did escape, they will spread the word of your terror and they will ensure that others know never to antagonize their great king. Was that not the purpose of this exercise?”
“Perhaps, but it was supposed to be a mystery. An attack can quell rebellions for a few years, but a mystery can last for generations.”
Archon had at first thought that making an example of the village which had started the rebellion would be a good idea. Then he had decided that it would be better to simply remove the village and let everybody wonder what had happened to it.
If he could not secure every single one of the humans, then the illusion would be broken, and if the illusion was broken, then real war was inevitable. The humans might possibly believe that they had some chance of succeeding in their rebellions.
Archon wished to avoid war. He knew that once the killing had begun it could not stop until each and every witness, relative, scribe, or bard lay in the cold ground or danced upon the ashes of a funeral pyre. To truly win a war, one had to kill until there was nothing left to die. To show mercy to a woman or a child, to allow them to escape and spread the word of tragedy was to ensure that there would be someone left to grow up and seek vengeance, or to breed a small army of those who would wish to reclaim what was taken.
The best way to maintain control was to be cruel, but if one was not prepared to be cruel, then it was absolutely essential one appear evil.
A flash in the distance caught his attention, a brightness suddenly glimmering among the trees. There she was. He knew she was a she, in the same way he had known she was there in the first place. Instinct.
Archon gave chase without a word, leaving his army and his war machine behind, throwing his body into the task of pursuit. It felt good to use his own flesh. To chase with muscle and bone, not electricity and metal.
It did not take long to catch up to the prey. She was relatively slow compared to him, and she had little in the way of strength. Archon slowed his pace to closer match hers, drawing out the chase.
He got a better look at her as he bounded through the undergrowth. Female, just as he had thought. Young. Weak. Round rumped and long legged.
It would have been so easy to catch her right away, to overhaul her with his longer stride and more powerful body. But where was the fun in that? He liked making his prey run. He liked to savor the hunt. There was no sweeter music than her ragged, panicked breath as his prey came to terms with their inevitable capture.
So many would have given up by now. Archon had been on many hunts, and often the object would just stop and accept the inevitable. Not this female though. She believed she could escape him. What a very human delusion, to think that a five foot female could outrun a nine foot king.
Wait. Where did she go?
It was as if she had blinked out of existence. One moment she was dashing through the woods, the next…
Archon almost fell into the hole his prey had crawled into. He let out a laugh as he realized what a good trick she had played. But the hunt was not over, and her escape was far from guaranteed.
Crouching down, Archon discovered that it wasn’t just a hole. It was a tunnel. When he peered down it, he could see that it came out in the mid-distance. He could also see that round rump crawling as fast as it could go through the narrow space.
Archon finally bothered to use the speed which was at his command, easily crossing the distance in a matter of bounds.
He was there when she came out. He saw her head pop out, and then she was off again at a sprint. But the hunt was over. It was obvious that she would run herself past the point of exhaustion, and Archon did not want such a fascinating prey dead.
He grabbed her by her arm, swung her off her feet, and tossed her onto the soft leaf covered mossy ground on her back. She lay there panting, her eyes wide with fear. Something about the way this human looked at him, some expression in her eyes touched something in him. There was a strange moment of connection, in which he almost forgot she was human, and in which they almost felt like the same thing.
She had coppery brown hair, and furious brown eyes. Her face was daubed with clay to mimic the patterns of the forest. She had been trying to hide before he hunted her. He wondered if that was because she was a huntress herself.
“Bad little human. I had only just finished telling you and the rest of your village that you couldn’t run, and look what you tried to do. Are you simple, or so rebellious you cannot obey a single sentence?”
“It wasn’t an order. It was an assumption, and it was wrong.”
There was so much spirit and spite in those words, they were fiery enough to have come from Energon himself. But they did not. They emerged from a little human upstart.
“Arrogance,” he murmured. “I will break you of that habit, human. I will punish you.”
“Why?”
Why? There were a thousand reasons why. The rebellion of her village, for starters. Her refusal to be caught. Her complete lack of disrespect for her king.
“I am Archon, king of Archaeus - and you are my prey, as well as my subject. I am entitled to do with you as I please. I own you. Every part of you.” He emphasized the last part by squeezing the pink place between her thighs, feeling her heat and her wetness.
She let out a pleasing mewling sound and arched her back, tightening her thighs around his hand. He found himself wanting more. The clothing between them was an inconvenience he would not tolerate.
Archon stood and drew his sword. He wanted to see what lay beneath the furs and leathers which covered her body. He had not seen a naked human female before, but he wanted to see this one.
“Lie still,” he told her. “I don’t want to bleed you yet.”
She lay there, silent but furious as he cut the clothing from her body, revealing a beautiful soft hide and vulnerable pale curves. Between her thighs there was dark hair hiding a flash of pink.
Her sex.
Archon felt his lust inflaming as he beheld this female human, this woman who had led him on such a good chase for one of her size and strength. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to claim her.
Kneeling between her thighs, he freed his cock and guided it toward the tightness between her legs. Once he was inside that pink hole, there would be nothing left of her rebellion, of that much, he was certain. He would break her. Destroy her resistance. He would turn her into a toy for his use.
He could feel the heat of her body against the head of his cock, the softness of her human flesh, the delicate spreading of the petals of her sex. This was a female worthy of his cock. This…
A dull throb in his belly made him look down. He was surprised to see a knife sticking out of his midsection.
The shock made him cant to the side, away from the human female. She had stabbed him right in the gut. She had waited until the precise moment he thought he had triumphed over her and showed him that he had not.