Futanari Legends: The Frozen Queen (Book 2: Astrid) (5 page)

“This…is not over,” he says, coughing.

“I know,” I say, smiling.

I dare say I haven’t felt more alive than right now, even in my supposedly lifeless state. Have I tiny bit of life still left in me? Is this my curse?

“Relax.” I stroke his scales gently, smearing a bit of blood along them from my stained fingernails. I kick him with my heel as if it were a spur prodding a horse. “Fly, that way. The girl is in this direction, and I sense her entering this place.”

A valley lost between the peaks of mountains, green and lush like a jagged scar of life cutting between two grand mountain ranges.

“This is not a place you-” The dragon’s breath is halting, weak. “The Valley of Lost Souls.”

“Correct,” I say, feeling the length of my cock begging for release. I grip it through the leather of my skirt, the runes feeling intricate against my palm, my fingers clasping the length of my shaft through the hide. The underside is against the beast’s warm scales, and their smoothness feels wonderful. Cold whips of air temper my erection, keeping me away from the edge by their chill intrusions under my skirt.

“Are you mad at me?” I smile, stroking the beast’s back gently.

He glares back at me with fire in his eyes, and growls a low, throaty growl that sends ripples of pleasure through my loins.

Yes?

Nice.

Stupid beast.

I know you enjoy this. I bet your cock is as hard as a fence pole right now, stupid, scale-brained dragon.

Below, the temple-filled Valley of Lost Souls spills away with a river running down the center, deep forests along the valley’s walls, and temples and cities devoted to the enemies of the gods along each side. It is majestic, in a way, long forgotten and abandoned since the war that sent the gods to the heavens, and left us mortals to live on this world as their slaves.

This is a place of legends, death, and the ends of eras.

Of memories.

This is not a good place, for death nor life, or even dragon kind. A place forgotten to the world, from the very time of the gods this place was sealed away and forgotten behind the Black Gate. This was a place of legend, lost to time, living in myth and sealed away eons ago by the long-lost Dwarves.

The enemy of the gods is everyone’s enemy.

Now what fool would bring her here?

Something is wrong.

And just like that, I sense my sudden death just seconds away.

Just like that.

What is this threat?

There’s nothing in the sky.

It’s a bright, blue day.

What must I do to-

Chapter 5:

Currents

It’s so peaceful.

I am so sore.

I want to die.

Why?

I float in the water, the surface just above, the light teasing me with its radiance, and I keep floating away.

My lungs burn for air, and my aching limbs float to each side.

My yellow dress carries me down the river, puffing around me in a lazy haze of color.

I feel another breath escape me, and the water seeps down my nose, and the water begs for me to open my mouth and give in.

It’s so easy.

Just float away.

Let the river take you.

This is not death.

It’s not like my father cares, my real father, that is.

My name is Chloe Chrissus, daughter of Yog Chrissus, mayor of the Crossroads. Only I am not his daughter, and that is not my last name. Yog is a special adviser to the Emperor himself, God-King of the entire world, Emperor Amarus.

And that man, the God-King himself, is my father.

I float and my lungs burn fire. I should give up. I should let myself be taken away. I have never known love in my life, and my true father fancies himself a god and not a father.

He is not a god to me.

I never knew him.

You never did.

Bits of plants float by my eyes as I feel myself get washed over a rock and into a current down the middle of the river. The pain is so great, the lack of air so fleeting, and I feel the darkness start to creep in from all around. My chestnut brown hair floats around my head like a halo, and the current picks up the pace, my hair flowing along, leading me to eventual death.

I am so cold.

This is the end.

This is one end.

The end of my seclusion, of schooling myself in private, of being locked in palaces, and of living as a daughter to me I never knew. This is the end of me being treated like a princess I never wanted to be, to my isolation, to my loneliness, and to my twisted and cursed life.

This is not your death, it is your birth.

I thought the drake would have ended my life.

I went to that field hoping the beast would take me, and end my miserable existence. I heard reports of the beast terrorizing farmers, so I went to a place nearby to pick flowers, and then I ran from my stepfather’s men. I hid, and they searched, but the drake found me first.

And them I was rescued by a lady-male Sister of Gundir, chasing the gold of a bounty put upon me by my stepfather.

And I found a reason to live.

She awakened you.

How I wanted the half man-woman to take me, to thrust her cock in my virginal folds, to make me the woman that I could never be. I have taken men before, but never inside my sacred chambers. In this woman’s strange curse I found my escape, and a path to my freedom.

Men, bandits, chased us through these mountains. We ran for days, with little food and water, and we ran until my legs felt so weak that Brenna had to carry me. Her Goddess’ lineage gave the half-woman great strength and stamina, she was a barbarian warrioress and raven-haired beauty I can not resist.

And I cannot forget.

Her lips draw me in. Her eyes penetrate my soul. Her cock I have never seen but I can only dream of. The pain of not having her hurts my heart. The pain of her rejecting me breaks the same. I shall never be a woman. I shall never know the pleasure of a cock thrusting into the deepest parts of my soul.

I shall die a virgin in a yellow dress.

And you shall live.

The daughter of the most powerful and uncaring man on this world.

This is the end.

I close my eyes.

Chapter 6:

Zenith

The air around me sparkles with a million points of light, and ice crystals dance and swirl suspended by fickle winds and the shifting scarce air. My skin is cold, my breaths labored, and bitter winds whip the robes against my body.

For around me, there is nowhere to go but down.

It is a majestic sight, in every direction a grand vista spills out like a canvas filled with beauty and magnificence. Ice covered peaks thrust defiantly towards the gods, chilled with the shrill breath of the ice-giant Blaer, his breath unending and unrelenting said to only stop in the world’s final days. For now, he breaths a bitter and careless wind of death and cold upon these dagger-like shards of rock and ice that will never melt away.

This is a deadly and patient place.

Farther out, past the glacier-filled valleys and deep crevasses that cut these stone peaks to the bone, lie grand, green forests of pine and spruce. The tree line wraps itself around every peak, over every valley, and the trees try as hard as they can to reach towards the heavens before the ground becomes too cold, and the air too scarce to support life. The trees are life, a grand green cushion extending down into the twisting valleys which radiate all around, before the trees climb grand mountains again, and great white peaks reach up into the skies on vistas far away.

Even a deep-cut fjord extends this far inland to the east, the Northern Scar said to be cut by one claw of a dragon, the second fjord this beast hundreds of miles long cut if the Dragon’s Scar, some fifty leagues south. The valley between both of these fjords is called Dragon’s Reach, a grand swath of fertile land between these deep-cut scars, and the grand, majestic, ice-capped volcano known as Dragonspire Mountain sits to the south, and this is the only thing taller than the mountain of which I stand upon now.

It looms over us like a watchful giant.

It is said dragons still sleep there as well.

And I look upon our world and feel a tinge of sadness. In these valleys and in these places, people live. The conquered people of the North, and the Southern Empire which rules over this land. Generations of wars fought because those who live now believed in the false glory of past victory, and the false sting of past defeat. Wars forgotten so those who came along next can discover the same tragedy again and again.

Why must so much hate be placed upon us? Why must peoples feel the need to take lands from others, to subjugate others to their beliefs, and to use the gods to justify the spilling of blood?

And yet, with each year and season passing by, it seems to get worse. News of killings, rumors of massacres, whole towns burnt to the ground, families slain, worshipers slain for revering the wrong god, and those who profess peace in their god’s name hold bloodied daggers behind their backs.

It is as if the word ‘peace’ means homogeneity to these men, and both sides share the same guilt. So I smile, play along, and pretend to respect them and their ways. This town worships the South, and that place the North. I pay false respects to both.

And in my silence, I am as bad as they.

For my silence is acceptance, and permission for the killing to continue. For I am sure if I were to speak my mind, ignorance would slit my throat.

It is death to speak up.

So I live in the silent between.

And with each year, my hatred for the gods deepens. The only one I still respect is Mother Gundir, the heritage of our curse, and in many ways, a goddess caught between sides and genders. Her progeny are hated by many, seen as miscreant spawn and monsters by others, and her grace preaching to only do right upon this world and the people who live there.

Mother Gundir preaches benevolent mercy upon those stricken by ignorance and hatred, to show others the way, and to walk between and enlighten those on both sides that a happy meeting brings joy and peace to all.

Somehow I feel acceptance isn’t accepted in these lands anymore. Those who raise their voices in anger are given the loudest voice.

Tolerance is dead.

And with that, my silent between is no longer a place in which I can live. Because this world does not know love anymore.

Even with all my magic sometimes I feel a great sense of hopelessness for these people. Or should I say, my people. It feels hard to even relate to any of them, their blood-lust, their clans and families, and their petty local ways and prejudices. I walk among them, yet I feel close to none of them.

Why can none see what I do?

Oh, Goddess, it is so hard walking between them. To show them both sides can know love and live in peace. To tell people healing means to let go of fear and hatred.

And I wonder why our Goddess is silent.

Sometimes I feel she is not even there.

So distant.

I stand upon this mountain cursed by my hermaphrodite body, the cock of a man and the womb of a woman. I am a soul forged between man and woman, a legacy of my Goddess, and one who is supposed to be above all of this.

Yet it is so hard.

And her silence deafens me.

I killed forty men the other day with my magic.

In my weakness, I gave the gift of hatred and revenge to forty families, and that gift will pass itself down to countless more generations as they hear what the faceless witch did to their fathers and sons.

Would they find me?

Frost seems to think they will. Word shall get out, and my name shall become marked with the red stain of revenge. Even though I am Astrid of Magetower, Fourth Circle member, there will be none who can protect me from the knife which bears my name. Perhaps this knife has not been forged yet, it is still a lump of ore in some far away mine. Perhaps the man wielding it has not been born yet, and he shall be raised ignorant to me until the legacy of hatred passes my name down to him for a crime which never touched him, only through the names of those who wronged their kind.

And in my ignorance, I have just made the world a worse place. And I have sealed my fate. For to kill that attacker would be to throw another log on the fire, and continue they cycle again.

But when he comes, I shall kill again. And I shall kill the next, and the next. And with my magic I shall kill legions. And in my name, others shall spread the hatred of magic and the Sisters and perhaps Magetower with the corpses I leave in my wake. There will be nothing stopping them, or me.

Maybe I care not for this world’s hatred anymore? Maybe I grow too jaded of this constant judgment. Maybe I killed because I feel nothing for these people and their worthless wars. They mean nothing to me. Their gods and their capricious society, with rules only meant to protect those with gold and power.

Maybe I have stopped caring?

Forgive me Goddess, for I have failed.

I feel a tear escape and it freezes in the bitter air. I keep my mouth and nose covered from this wind as I push myself higher. In my ascent and as my foot presses onto the peak, I see what I came to see.

Below me lies the Valley of Lost Souls, a forgotten place where the Lords of the Elements plotted to kill the gods and take the world for themselves. Between the Great Dragon’s claws this place arose like a festering wound, exploding into this high valley like an infection boiling to the surface, and the war of the Elemental Lords began against the Northern Gods.

This was long before man walked these lands, before Othin gave birth to his children, and before mother Gundir’s she-males were born. This place was the crown of the Elemental Lords, a valley in which fire and ice worked together, where earth and wind stood shoulder to shoulder in legions of elemental warriors were sent off to invade the lands of the gods, and Heaven itself.

When the war ended the gods sealed off Heaven and life was born. This place became a forgotten memory, sealed off by the very nature of its position between great mountain ranges, and sealed off by the magic of the gods. Even this close I can feel the magic of the ancient wards pressing into me and threatening to consume me. A mortal would fare much worse, and someone without magic, much, much worse.