Characters: Queen Isabella, Fallon, Lucilla, Cara, Gena
Location: The Tournament of Champions, in the arena
Time: Day 4 - 3:12 PM
Led by Lucilla, Cara, and a small unit of Paladins, Queen Isabella entered the arena with her long teal dress flowing behind her like an ocean wave. Fallon was at her side with the cage of naked Men in one hand and a gold trophy in the other. They walked slowly but powerfully towards the center of the arena, where Gena was still standing in the bed of roses, the bloody grave of Jinx.
Seeing the Queen, Gena lowered her head and fell to one knee, placing her back heel against the remains of Jinx’s corpse and grinding it into the roses just for fun. The audience continued to chant her name until Isabella raised her hand for silence. Even the wind seemed to stop.
Isabella was quiet herself for a moment and then she looked down at Gena with a smile. “…I wish my mother could be here for this. She would have loved to see someone with your power, with your skill, grace our humble arena floor. Never have we—the people of Ellewyn—witnessed a champion quite like you, Necromancer Gena. I don’t know where you come from, but I knew from the moment I laid eyes upon you, from our first meeting, that you were meant for things greater than this world can offer. You are not like the others. You are something…so unreal. I am honored to have you standing before me now.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Gena said.
“No, thank you, Gena. You have reminded everyone here that this day is about us, the Women of this great kingdom. Jinx was little more than an attraction, eye candy for the masses. You have brought us back to tradition, to the foundation of our people, and restored that which was. For that, I am forever grateful. No longer will we chant Jinx’s name from our lips. Men have no place in our kingdom. We must remember that.” Then she paused. “…As is customary with our following, I would ask Lady Lucilla, captain of our divine Paladins of Dai Celesta, to bestow you with a noble title for your victory in this tournament. Like Dai Celesta, you have shown us that the Light will always prevail in times of Darkness.”
Lucilla’s rigid face began to quiver. “Your Highness, she is one of the Forsaken. We cannot simply present her—”
“I would ask,” Isabella interrupted, raising her voice, “that Lady Lucilla, captain of our divine Paladins of Dai Celesta, bestow our champion with a noble title. I do not like to ask twice.”
With a fiery hand, Lucilla unsheathed her sword and raised it over Gena’s head. Dark thoughts ran rampant in her mind. She imagined the cold blue blade coming down and slicing through Gena’s skull at the naked parting in her hair. She imagined hacking Gena’s head off and kicking it around like a ball. She imagined the blade coming down from all directions, slicing and tearing away at the spawn of the Forsaken and letting the vultures pick through her entrails. After all, vultures never had a problem choosing between organs. They could taste when blood was evil, no matter where they began. They knew it was the same all around. In every bone, in every tissue of cold skin, in every one of the Forsaken, dark and eternal.
But Gena just looked up at the sword with a smirk that could anger a child. “Come now, Lucilla. You have no reason to fear me.”
“You are Forsaken,” Lucilla whispered. Nobody could hear her but Gena and she intended it that way. “You may fool the others, but I see through your skin, even now. You were born with this evil in your veins and you will die the black death of the Forsaken—numb, forgotten, hollow, and dark. Nothing you can do will ever change that. Your fate has already been decided. You have no future. But I swear to you, Child of the Darkness, by my hand, by this holy sword, I will be the one to sentence you to death. I will see it through. You stand for everything I despise on this planet and I will watch the Forsaken fall before the end. Mark me for this.”
Gena’s smirk grew. “Consider yourself marked. And very obsessive. I didn’t know you cared so much.”
“Lucilla, please,” Isabella said. “Knight our dear friend.”
Lucilla looked at the sword in her hand. “Your Highness, if I may interject…”
“I did not ask for your opinion. This is a command. You work for me.”
“I work for your mother, not for you, …Your Highness.”
The emerald stones of Isabella’s eyes began to cross as her eyebrows narrowed and her nose perked, twitched, and scrunched together like a wad of paper. She glared at Lucilla, staring her down even though the Paladin was at least six inches taller. Lucilla almost seemed to shrink under her gaze. She realized her mistake too late and swallowed a couple of times, feeling a knot of words lump together in her throat.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Isabella,” she spat out quickly, the bubble bursting from her lungs.
“That’s Queen Isabella. You appear to have forgotten this. As long as my mother is away, I will be filling in as the Queen and you will serve, respect, and obey me and only me. That is our agreement. That is your oath. I do not pay you for your advice, which, frankly, is trivial and a bore to my ears. I would sooner speak to my cousin if I wanted to hear drivel.”
“Your Highness…”
Warily, Cara stepped forward and put a hand on Lucilla’s silver-plated shoulder. “Lucilla, please, don’t anger her. She’s been having a bad day.”
“Look, maybe we shouldn’t do this…” Gena said, starting to rise. “Obviously your Paladins have something against me. It’s nothing I’m not used to. I’m rejected in most places I go.”
“We will not discriminate here,” Isabella said, raising her voice and speaking with concise pitch. “This is my kingdom and there is no place for bigotry among my people. I will not allow it. I want peace. And you will show it—all of you. You will show me peace or I will find a way to resolve this myself and nobody will be happy. Except me. Because this is my kingdom and you will not forget that.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Cara said with a bow.
“Cara, I was not speaking to you.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“Cara.”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Stop saying words. I want to hear from Lucilla and Gena.”
Cara sealed her lips and stared down at the roses on the arena floor. Next to her, Lucilla and Gena stood eye-to-eye, scowling at each other. Then Gena’s lips formed into a grin and she winked at the Paladin, licking the corner of her bloody lip.
“I understand your words perfectly, Your Highness,” Gena said, her eyes remaining locked on Lucilla. “What you say is absolutely true. I do think, though, that your Paladins need to be kept on a shorter leash. They just may find the tree they are barking up is really the leg of a giant.”
“Do not test me,” Isabella said. “The two of you are bringing something to this kingdom that I will not stand for. We are not here to turn against each other.”
“We’ve never stood for the Forsaken before,” Lucilla said. “How can we knight one of them without assimilating ourselves?”
“Why don’t you show us?”
“Yes, show us, Luci,” Gena smirked, kneeling back down. She watched Lucilla’s boot twitch and move forward.
Looking over her shoulder at Cara, Lucilla sighed and lowered the sword to Gena’s shoulder. For a moment, she thought of bringing it down further. Or swinging it across. She thought of watching Gena’s head roll across the ground and the blood that would stain her clothing, but she was too stiff to laugh. So she just stared into Gena’s cherry-colored eyes, as definite and foreboding as the night, and whispered a sacred prayer of Dai Celesta. The other Paladins followed in chorus.
“I dub you…Lady Gena,” Lucilla said at the end of the prayer, tapping the sword from one shoulder to the other and then against the fold of Gena’s breasts. Gena kept her head down, but her smirk had risen to her ears by now and she heard the chants of the audience forever in her mind. Her name. It was all hers.
“Lady Gena, you have my blessing,” Isabella said, reaching out with her palm. Gena took hold of the tiny fingers and Isabella gently pulled her to her feet again. “Now, because our tournament was interrupted by a group of scoundrels, I thought it would be fitting to end the ceremony with the sacrifice of the survivors. They will learn that no Man survives the Tournament of Champions. Fallon…”
Nodding, the courier stepped forward, held up the cage of the squealing naked Men, and placed them on the ground at Gena’s feet. Then she pressed her fingers against the bolt and slowly unfastened it, releasing the cage door. None of the Men moved. They looked out, eyeing the small canyon between Gena’s slippers, and huddled together like a big mass of shaking bare skin.
“These are the Men who ruined the tournament,” Isabella continued. “Gena, you may have the honor of sending them to their graves, as you did with the former champion.”
Gena looked down and studied the Men like rats in a cage. “…You’re missing some. Where are the ones who initiated the attack?”
“I have bigger plans for them.”
“I hope by ‘bigger,’ you mean a lot worse.”
Isabella smiled and this time it was genuine. “In Ellewyn, bigger always means worse for Men.”
Giantess World
