<nametag:rook> THE ARMY OF THE DEAD 2015 story005

Xera Knight-Ley paused with hand on proud hip one leg braced forward upon the smooth surface of the gently sloping bolder. The tall willowy young woman with the impossibly large full round jutting breasts and full peach like buttocks seemingly attached by magic to her lithe long limb frame tossed her long luxurious hair in the moonlight and held the luminous fist sized gem up to her wide eyed smiling face. She was wearing the semi-transparent silks of one of the select honored wives of the sultan Lothario Gore’s harem. She undid her fragile face veil and let it fall upon her slim shoulders and long slightly curly scented locks so that she might better peruse the fabulous gem.

The tall teen looked to her right where the valley floor below was filled with orchards and the sultan’s palace of many walled parks and courtyards. Stealing the gem had proved even easier than she had thought. While keeping the precious jewel as well as many other treasures in his closely guarded harem had made them safe from male thieves it had made her procurement of the gem of such ease that she had to laugh at the comical events leading to its theft as she tossed the gem lightly into the air and caught it several times.

The cough of a panther broke her out of her revelry and the shapely vixen quickly crouched down and moved stealthily on up the bolder continuing on her way across the natural rock cliff that rimmed the palace lands on three sides. The overall quiet of the palace grounds below her belayed any likelihood that her theft and escape had been as yet noted but she did not relish being stumbled across by one of the panther guards; small detachments of lean shadowy men and their panther watch cats who patrolled the cliffs surrounding the bowl shaped valley of the palace from dusk to dawn. With sunrise they would give away to the falconers which she dreaded more as their soaring keen birds missed nothing.

Still a falcon was unlikely to tear you to pieces as a one hundred and sixty pound cat would. Xera moved quickly along the rim of the rock wall heading toward the single opening where the farms and city proper lay sprawled out with a winding river cutting through its many lush fields and markets. The city was called Kari which was the name of the city and the river and the dark olive and black skinned people who peopled it and worked its rich lands. They had whimsical sing-song lyrical names as had the families who had once ruled them. That was until the corsairs swept in on the tides where the broad plains of the Kari river emptied into the sea. These sunburned men had enslaved the Kari and set themselves up as sultans and alien idea and title from lands far away. Three generations later the Gore dynasty continued to reign the lands of the Kari despite endless intrigues and fratricide murders amongst their ranks.

Xera wove along the bluffs making her way as quickly and silently as possible toward the sprawling city of Kari. She had to be careful for guards had turned the many caves that dotted the sandstone bluffs and cliffs into furnished guard houses and so every shadowy niche might suddenly erupt in growls or light as some blanket or door is tossed back at her passing.

It would be a shame after successfully stealing the gem and slipping out of the maze of walled courtyards and parks to now just at the tail end of her endeavor be bumped into by some bored patrol of panther men or some sleepless shepherded herder taking a piss!

After a few heart in throat close calls Xera found herself climbing down the slope of the bluffs and entering the meandering boulevards of the sprawling city of Keri. The people here lived simple lives and still were happy despite their conquest and sometimes mindless brutal treatment of the Gore rulers. At first the corsairs had thought to conquer the Keri and use the people as the roots of an army to march up river enslaving more and more cities and towns but the Keri were not fighters but merchants in nature and the corsairs found themselves up to their necks in luxury and debauchery and lusts and the thoughts of further conquest pealed away as their low slung hulls of their black ships rotted on the beaches and they turned upon one another with poisons and knives until only the Gore family remained and ruled. Still the lands to the west were rich and powerful city states and though they allowed the Gore dynasty to act as a buffer against any further threats from the sea and paid small tariffs to allow their trade to pass to and fro thy remained busy with the bandit kingdoms of the deserts and the saber rattling of each others neighbor.

Xera quickly reached the wide merandering river that cut Keri in half and which gave it such fertal fields of grain in its delta and also acted as a road of inward and outward bound trade. Why did no one attack and claim the city? Well there was the answer along its stone staircase river bank. A dozen tall bronze men standing between twenty and thirty feet tall lined both sides of the river. The statues remained inert until a threat arrived and then they drew their swords or spears or unsung their spears from off their naked backs and attacked anyone foolish enough to approach them with hostile actions.

The dozen magical men where the reason no one attacked the city of Keri. But the men were rooted to their raised bases of bronze. They could not move off of them. So while they could reach out and attack anyone on the water or foolish enough to approach within their striking distance on land they could not step down off their pedestals and chase after or confront a distant adversary. Two of the bronze men wore bows and arrows of bronze and could unleash lethal shafts a considerable distance. The arrows having to be returned by the people of Keri or replaced by the blacksmiths and metal worker shops once the violence was over. A dozen metal spear like arrows each that could land almost anywhere within the city limits was enough of a deterrent to keep most brigands and pirates away.

The bronze metal men did not acknowledge the rule of the corsairs or the subsequent Gore family so that they lived in their palace in the bowl of stone; a blister on the side of the city and never ventured too near to the city of Keri its self least the bronze men attack and kill them. But there were enough questionable minded Keri that had proved more than willing to help the corsairs and then the Gore dynasty to thrive in their power. They lived off their taxes and the Keri basically ignored the palace and its courts and intrigues as if it were a separate city and went on with their markets and crafts and wares of trade. Each market set at the base of a great bronze statue and the store rooms and banks and treasure vaults of Keri were set in the bases of the large statues themselves. Keri was the only un-walled city along the Keri river and yet most felt it was the most peaceful and secure. Event the descendants of the corsairs ruled by proxy daring never to venture too close to the city staying forever locked up in their own palace. More prisoners than potentates.

But every year the Gore would hold a ceremony touting their right to rule and feast themselves in luxury and sport and at the end of the games and banquettes the current leader would announce his unshakeable firm resolve to raise and army and conquer the upper cities that shared the banks of the Keri river creating a boundless empire. An oath all the corsairs swore in face of their being unable to enter the city its self after easily conquering the present grounds of the palace which at that time had been a particularly rich and opulent farm land of a wealthy extended merchant family complete with resplendent zoos and treasure houses. The corsairs were all dead; poisoned or stabbed or drowned on food and drink and sex; but their collective oath remained a part of the ceremony even if it had become something of a joke snickered at behind the Gore families back.

Lothario Gore had a harem of one hundred women and twenty wives and he lived in an opulence from the taxes his men collected from the merchants of Keri. He had built little and added less to the grandeur of the palace grounds as his forefathers all had. Inspired as they were by decadent tales of distant strange lands. He was surrounded by plenty. His own gardens and parks more than fed and met his family and servants needs. But Lothario was a pig of a man. Short fat with greasy black hair and a greasy black mind. And the thirty year old surrounded himself with a mass of supplicants and hanger on’s and was living far beyond his means. His treasury was empty and the taxes he exacted from the city of Keri could no longer meet his most base expenses. So, for the first time in over two hundred years, a Gore said those chants of oath to conquer the river valleys with a serious inclination and a scour of necessity outweighed only by his diabolical twisted greed.

Of all this Xera was blissfully ignorant. She had appeared upon the stone step shores of the Keri river in a flash of naked orgasm and after being taken in and cared for in her dazed instant of arrival state by a perhaps ‘too friendly’ date sales man. She had heard of the fabulous gem in the Gore harem from a market stall fortune teller. The old perverted men who sent her thus and thus remained obstinate in ubiquitous silence and left her hanging as to what intent other then their perverted sexual pleasure she was to serve here. So she shrugged and set out to snare the jewel. It was a beautiful gem. A milky white clear stone multifaceted which glowed a moon shimmer of opal luminescence. In a house dripping with luxuries she doubted Lothario would even notice its absence until she was long gone and on ship to the Mecca of trade; the Blue City.

In fact Xera had not taken into account two things; first she was one of the most beautiful women in the world and with her powerful Aphrodite gene sexual pheromones had so stirred even the jaded lusts of Lothario that she was indeed missed as soon as he entered the harem drooling in search for her; Second the gem was also noted and missed for Lothario had promised it in payment to an old bent craggy man who had promised Lothario that he could provide him with an unbeatable army for his conquest.

So it was that as Xera meandered down the lapping shore line of the stone channeled river front and past the creaking bronze living statue solider she was busy wondering what her purpose was in being sent naked and mind melting climaxed to this strange city by the old perverts and how many blow jobs it would take to gain passage to a ship heading to the Blue City where she intended to trade her new found wealth for credits. There were several properties and investments she had an eye on there and it has some of the hottest boot makers in all the living cities she had ever seen! Xera lived to shop and her favorite thing to shop for was shoes! Kinky boots! Her multilayered flower boxed windowed balcony garden home in Blue City had closets and closets full of shoes and books and shimmering dresses as well as some magical weapons and lacy sexy magical bikini armors.

This was rather amazing considering how often the old perverts tended to whisk her back with a teleport orgasm just as she had crammed a handful of gems into her belt pouch or was bowlegged giggling with a heavy urn full of priceless spices in her arms. It seemed they had no care at all to her needs only their own. And their own seemed to be centered upon invisibly watching her get her sexy ass nailed and then giving her some slight small reward for that in the form of some information about what actual mission they wanted her to accomplish this time?!

They had remained silent since her arrival and had not offered a single clue but she could feel their eyes wielded upon her body and had felt the tremulous thrill of their jerking off when the date sales man had erupted his load all over her naked helpless tits and sure enough as she had pushed him off her and banged him upside the head with a date drying pan; there, just outside the door to his stall had been a market stall with a fortune teller and a single gold coin laying on the ground in front of a sleeping beggar. The coin she had dropped into the fortune tellers weathered palm and the old crone had told her all about the great gem and the palace harem of Lothario Gore. That was how the old men did things. They ushered her with a mind melting climax to this world of magic and monsters and then rewarded her sexual misadventures. If she just bent over and grabbed her ankles and shook her naked ass back and forth side to side until she felt the weak but refreshing small orgasm that singled that one of the old perverts had climaxed she would instantly find some small useful item or clue as to where she should go next or what she should be doing.

Since Xera had to wait for the markets to open in the morning and since she was still unsure what the old pervert men had deposited her in this city of Keri to perform; the young teen sat down in the shadow of one of the bronze statues on the staircase bank of the Keri river and while the river night fog wrapped around her she parted her legs and began to rub out a small refreshing orgasm hoping the perverted old men would ejaculate with her and reward her with either a verbal command from her bracelet or some helpful item that would suddenly appear near by that had not been there before.

What happened instead was as the luscious teen reached her flinger flicking orgasm she was startled to find herself being picked up bodily by a kneeling bronze warrior. The naked twenty five foot tall statue had a major hard-on and to the astonished girls surprise quickly impaled her upon the hot metal cock. The bronze man raped her for a considerable time; pinning the girls arms helplessly to her side with its inexorable grasp. Once it had spewed a magical glowing hot liquid in her pussy. It promptly threw the girl car wheeling through the air where it was easily grabbed by the next statue across the river. This statue quickly had its way with the orgasm dazed girl until it climaxed within her anus and then tossed her back across the river to its further down counterpart. And so it went that for the remainder of the night Xera was tossed from one bronze man to the next until all twelve soldiers had their way with her several times over again and again. Until with the raising of the sun over the sea bay the soldiers with large smiles set the weaving bobbing girl back upon the stair case bank; her rich garments all in taters her body covered in sticky glowing goop her prized gem still clutched in one numb hand as she fell flat upon her back legs spread wide fucked silly into unconsciousness.

It was midday when she woke and the markets around her were bustling with loud trade. No one had seemed too concerned with the naked cum covered girl and no one had tried to steal her gem. Theft was not looked upon kindly by the statues who all seemed to be snoring this morning in rare slumber and all the thieves in Keri had long ago taken up residence in the Gore family palace as retainers and courtiers. The honest merchants of Keri raised and eyebrow or two as the girl groaned and got to her feet but otherwise made no comment about her or her condition and said little about the strange gem clutched in her hand.

Xera held her forehead as she staggered bowlegged about the market the crusty magical cum still covering her tits and legs and belly and face. She looked up at one of the sleeping snoring statues with its big smirking sated smile and glared at it but said nothing as she moved through the market. She needed a boat to take her to the Blue City and after what she had just been through she expected the perverted old watcher men to let her have one for free! There was no way in hell she was going to be sucking any dick for passage this time!

However that is not how the pervert watchers do things. They don’t give you what you want only something you might need and usually something apparently worthless that might later give you a clue as to what it is they want you to do for them and having done it be sent back home upon another mind melting teleport orgasm.

Xera raised her bracelet to her cum crusted pillow lips and snarled, “I want safe and quick passage to the Blue City! You hear me you perverts?! I am not kidding this time! I could have been killed! There is a reason no one makes bronze dildos you bastards!” She angrily shook her bracelet but nothing. Only silence. This was unlike them. They liked to crow about her sexual missteps. Getting raped by a dozen magical twenty to thirty foot tall bronze statues was usually just the thing they would have a snide comical comment all ready for her to rage and be embarrassed about. She wondered if her bracelet was somehow on the blink?

There did not seem to be anything unusual or ‘new’ about her that might be seen as an appropriate reward for the all-night of entertainment she had just helplessly done for the perverted old men watchers. She found it somewhat inconceivable that they weren’t going to have a dropped purse of coin stub her toe; she was starving and thirsty even after a belly full of magical statue spunk which had tasted of copper and old electric riddled brackish salt water!

She clutched to her gem and made her way still somewhat unsteadily but less bowlegged as her Aphrodite advanced healing continued to sooth and caress her body back to full health; to each dock masters office. To her horror no ship was setting out for the next several weeks to the Blue City?! The best she could find was a skip stopping in the dead city of Pho-Ran-Yoon where some merchants were hoping to trade with a new colony of lizard men who had taken up residence in the ruins. It was in the right direction but several weeks out of the way and she pondered how she would get from that dead city which was on an island back to the mainland and on her way to the Blue City?!

Xera gave up on the ships and clutching her growling stomach limped tiredly inland from the bazaars and markets to where the plazas and courtyards quickly gave way to endless fields of rich varied farm lands and grazing pastures. She found a public fountain/well and using what little remained of her garments for wash clothes bathed her self in the icy water and then tossed them a way so she stood proudly naked with only her gem in her palm as her only accruement.

Xera feeling refreshed by drinking the icy water and clean by her bathing, but still very, very hungry strode purposely back toward the market stalls that lined the stair encased river banks. Without weapons she could not offer her services as a sell-sword as all merchant traders were always looking for a cheap mercenary. On several occasions she had gotten a little drunk upon her arrival at this or that remote village or port and found herself now no longer needed as all the goods had been traded and meandering adventure drawing to a close having been sold herself into some sexual bondage! In fact almost every instance she signed on with merchant traveling traders she ended up being sold into sexual bondage just as soon as the worse of the dangerous lands had been passed! You just couldn’t trust men!

She certainly did not want to end up sold into slavery to a bunch of lizard men! Their penises were rough with scales and always so very slender and thin and their spunk smelled like half yellow gelled fish oil! Blech! Besides she had no weapons. Much to her frustration and anger she was probably going to have to suck dick to get a tavern keeper to part with a meal and a bed (probably his own with him in it!) for the night. She was loath to try and sell her jewel as none of the city bound merchants would touch it knowing or being suspicious of its origins back in the Gore palace. And traveling merchants would only offer a tiny fraction of its true value as it might be a considerable time before they find themselves in a port or market where they could turn a handsome profit by its sale. In the meantime it was only a very pretty but very heavy paper weight. And for traveling merchants anything heavy was a burden of overhead against its own yet un-reached profit!

Xera pressed her jewel against the pangs of hungry growls her tiny stomach was issuing as she once again entered the fringes of the busy markets that lined the river shores clustered around the hallow base of each statue and was immediately accosted by a young boy who said he had been sent to bring her to his master. With nothing better to do Xera followed the boy who having introduced her to an old humped back man in ragged dark robes and wielding a gnarled walking staff offered her to join him at a lavish meal that was set before him.

It was often the way of the wealthy; though this man looked poor indeed, to leave the pressing important items of business as if they were unimportant at all and approached by time as casual asides. The one thing wealth could not buy was time so to time the wealthy show much disdain, So Xera accepted the man’s offer to dine with him and helped her self to platters of rare meats and sweet delicacies and ample supplies of wine. She did notice that the boy who had lead her to his ‘master’ raced off into the street as soon as he had waved her to the old man. Obviously he was not the servant of the bald old man but rather some street urchin hired to find and bring her to his presence. Xera also noticed that the old man was not a native of these lands for his skin was an ashen gray and not a dark olive or black as most of the Kari citizens were. For all his weathered poverty they dined outside under the awnings in a small secluded private yard of what Xera took to be a rather expensive restaurant.

Xera ate until she had twice her fill and set a couple of spare bottles of most excellent wine next to her naked hip to take with her as she waited languorously for the old man to state his business. He in turn had ate lightly and drank little and had seemed simply to be waiting for the belching Xera to finish stuffing her face. Once he reasoned she had sated her hunger he sent the trays and dishes of meats and bread away and had sweet syrupy coffee set before them in tiny handle-less fragile cups and set about smoking a curious curling pipe the wound around and around in many circles and which slowly coiled and uncoiled in his dirty unkempt hands as if it were a living breathing thing as he puffed away on it.

After an appropriate pause for relaxing and digestion the old man took his pipe from the stubs of his cracked yellow teeth and spoke. “My name is Alcazar and you are the famous Xera Knight-Ley of whom all the bards sing. Both hero and thief and courtesan of kings. One of the last of the scattered amazons and a princess at that! Your services are indeed unique and varied and if you be inclined I have a proposition for you which you alone maybe uniquely suited for?”

Xera did not answer but waved an indolent hand trying to keep from unleashing what she knew would be a particularly nasty fart that would undoubtedly spoil the wonderful mood the slow rustling wind and cozy privet yard had in the luxuriant after dinner glow of her host.

“Several days journey from here to the west and then another two days travel inland from the river Kari lies a long butte of rock. A large squat pillar of red stone surrounded by red sands. There upon its flat cracked top resides a lone ruin. All that remains of a lost race from long, long ago. Only a single long rectangular building still stands all else is weathered down to piles of rubble and sand. Inside that short squat stone post and lintel building is an item which I would sorely possess. But it is guarded by traps and a vile guardian. Which an old man such as myself would never hope to conquer and pass. Undertake this for me; go to the temple of the dying sun and retrieve the hammer and tongs of Erasmus. And I will reward you well. I will equip you for the task and set you upon your way. With your skills this will be an easy trifle and you will find yourself clothed in fine remnants and you may keep all the gear I clad you in and any other treasure you may find in the temple its self. Erasmus was smithy to the great kings of lost kingdoms of Pell. He crafted many wonderful magical weapons. It is said the temple built to house his remains was filled with many items he crafted but had not been sold or gifted before he died. Many of the great hero weapons that dot these lands came from his forge, his hands.”

“And yet you just want his hammer and tongs? Not any of his weapons?” Xera frowned at the old man. He looked like he weighed less than a street cur what could he possible want with some rusted old blacksmith tools?

“Yes. All I require is the hammer and tongs. Anything else is yours by merit. And of course I will award you upon your return with my thankful offerings.” He clapped his hands sharply and the keeper of the restaurant came out into the small cluttered privet yard and with a nod of the old man’s head bent low and opened a small wooden chest that sat near by. It was full of cut and uncut gems and Xera began scratching her palms.

Xera tried to hide the drool on her chin with a wipe of the back of her hand and tried to tare her wide gray flashing eyes off the small chest of treasure. She tried to adopt a nonchalant attitude that her quivering lips failed to convoy as she spoke in a husky whisper, “I don’t know… sounds like a long dirty journey through hot blistering sands. Not really very appealing.”

“Not so,” the old man spoke firmly and clapped his hands sharply again and nodded to another pile of chests. Here the keeper wrestled a large heavy carpet mangy and worn from the pile and set it down still rolled up next to the table obscuring the small chest of gems in the process and causing Xera to frown. “With this magic carpet you many fly there in a single days passing!”

The old man nodded again and the keeper opened another larger chest from the pile that cluttered the small privet yard with its swaying willow trees and bubbling wall fountain. Inside this chest was many items of fine crafted armor. Xera recognized it at once as the work of the Fan-Tits-see magical armor company. Its gossamer flimsy lacy transparent garments protected one better than full plate steel! Another chest popped open and weapons were pulled out and arrayed by the silent keeper; a black bow from the nomad tribes with struck with deadly accuracy at twice the range of most bows. A shimmering straight sword and small round shield from the Plus One Sword company of fine magical weapons.

Xera raised an eyebrow these were indeed fine beautiful weapons and armor she was much perplexed that it should be offered to her. “and you are saying I can keep all these even after I have completed your quest?! Even the magic carpet?!” The old man nodded and smiled as he puffed again on his pipe. ‘With a magic carpet I can travel in a few days to Blue City!’ Xera thought to herself and her palms itched so much she thought her hands might just fall off her arms!

“Of course you are reluctant because you fear such an undertaking might cause you to lose your gem stone there.” The old man blew smoke at the gem stone that rested next to the wine bottles at her hip. In fact Xera had forgotten all about the gem stone in face of the great riches being shown before her. “We will have the gem stone placed in one of the statue base banks for safe keeping so when you return with the hammer and tongs and anything else your heart desires it will safely waiting there for you.” Xera looked down at the gem stone shimmering next to her round perfect naked ass and frowned.

Xera rode the magic carpet over the red deserts at incredible speed. She was wearing her mix of metal and silk and gaze armor with its filigree etched and embrowned patterns which left most of youthful body naked but which could have kept her unscathed from a shower of black arrows! Upon one arm her small shield which was charmed to draw all near strikes straight to it and her straight sword hung upon her hip.

Sometimes she rode the soaring carpet on her knees with her hands pressed upon the top of her thighs and other times she road it standing up with legs braced. No bird could keep up with her no animal could catch her but a pair of golden desert dragons had flown with her for a while. These gaunt creatures who seemed nothing but bone and skin stretched over said bone had barrel rolled around her their gem like eyes gleaming. They had recently eaten upon several wild horse and so they had exploded up out of the valleys and canyons in glee to soar along side her for several miles before banking wide; their white under bellies shimmering and their camouflage hide of gold and white and brown and yellow rippling in the winds as they turned back to their own territory. Xera could only hope that the beasts would be just as well fed and prone to mirth when she returned on her journey! For they were nothing but huge boney horse like heads with countless rows of fangs and long serpentine necks and wings of incredible size with long thin rib cages and a flat long stretched out crocodile tail that they whipped this way and that as they flew. Desert gold dragons were more omnivore scavengers than alpha predators but since herself and her carpet was equal to the size of just one of their elongated heads! She had no interest in testing her weapons against them!

After a night of starry clear weather flying which she spent picnicking upon the back of the racing carpet the next afternoon found her slowly descending to the red pillar of rock she had set her course to and stepping off her carpet leaving it and her supplies as she cautiously walked up to the only building that was not reduced to a pile of dust and rubble. It was a long red stone building set upon a dais of stone porches cake layered so its sill was set at the height of her head when she stepped up on the first stair riser. What decorations and carvings had once existed had long since been weathered away but she could see that at one time a mixture of bright yellow and white had been applied to the surface of red rock and that black images had then been painted upon that. What little remained of the orientation was twisted in shape and cumbersome in design and seemed to smack of evil.

The décor was not enhanced by a dozen desiccated skeletons of men in rags of armor laying about the cracked red rock surface leading up to the tomb.

“Just once I would like to enter one of these tombs with it decked out with smiley faces and flowers instead of all these monstrous shapes,” Xera muttered under her breath as she raised up her small round shield and unsheathed her sword. She had been about to say, ‘flowers and bees’ but then she had suddenly remembered being attacked by a swarm of giant bees who had large black penises instead of stingers and shook her head and decided not to mention bees at all!

Inside the long squat rectangular building she saw at once that the center of the structure had a stair case well leading straight down. At this she rolled her eyes and muttered, “great!” as soon as she had entered the building her shields soft blue glow had steadily increased and now as she descended the naked staircase set in the floor of the crypt its glow continued to increase until it lit her passage by its shimmering white light. “You have to like the Plus One Sword Company. Those guys were always about the details!”

Xera continued her descent into the inky blackness as she crouched behind her shield which continued to illuminate her way. The stairs lead down into the center of a large spacious room with a high ceiling. The staircase as it had been in the much smaller above room was set in the center of the room and Xera found herself peering this way and that for this alleged guardian. It was obvious that no one had been inside this building for a very long time if ever and the idea of a guardian who could outlast time and thus death was not something she was keen on seeing. Still she would rather have it in front of her than behind her!

This room was filled with stone shelves running along the walls and upon these shelves heaps of items lay. Mostly shields and armors with a few weapon racks here and there. Everything was coved in thick layers of dust as was the floor. Directly in front of the stairs another cut out rectangle of stairs lead straight down to yet a third level. Xera cringed at that and giving the room a good looking over without moving her wide stance set feet from the small landing between stair cases she pressed on and downward. This staircase did not lead into another room but instead it was a narrow enclosed stair case more a stair passageway through the raw red rock and it finally dead ended at a door of dust covered metal.

This door was not locked and was embossed with a large powerful head of a man. With a press it simply swung inwards revealing a small room with a stone crypt seemingly carved out of the raw rock in its center. Columns decorated the sides but there were no other doorways leading out of the burial vault. On the far side of the room was a table carved out of the stone wall and upon it set various items. Xera moved rapidly to the far side making her usual ‘eee-eee’ clench teeth noises she always made when she was certain something truly nasty was about to leap up and try and eat her but only if she gave it time to do so. If she but hurried!

The items on the far wall were again heavily covered in dust and grime and pebbles from the shifting walls and ceiling of rock. Xera made no effort to dig through the no doubt priceless relics that right now looked like rusted bits of trash and instead sheathed her sword and turned her gaze back upon the raised crypt its self. This stone sarcophagus was in the shape of a large anvil and open in its center. Approaching it carefully she saw a moldering corpse of a man in a simple leather apron with a large smithy hammer in in one hand and a pair of tongs that lay in his open chest that clamped around a dull ember where his heart should have been! She seized up the heavy blacksmith hammer and the pair of blackened tongs. The tongs seemed closed upon that ember that still glowed dimly with a foul and evil light. That nothing she could do could shake the coal out of the tongs grasp so she turned to leave with hammer and tong and ember. With her first step she realized she was moving exceedingly slow?! no matter how hard she tried to speed up her step she took only slow ponderous strides. She set the hammer down on the stone sarcophagus and instantly could move as fast as ever. When she picked up the hammer she was again forced to move in a slow motion stride that seemed to have her sweating and sapping her very strength!

“Oh fucking great!” She whined and with laborious breath and shaking limbs she slowly strode out of the third level tomb to the door which she slammed behind a she began to climb up the steps her limbs shaking and sweat beading her straining brow!

Several times out of sure exhaustion she had to drop the hammer upon the step between her feet and recover her breath and strength. It was surreal for the hammer its self though understandably heavy was not so cumbersome as to wear her out so but as soon as she took a step it was as if she were moving through a swamp of lead molasses!

It seemed to take an anxious eternity for her to reach the top of the stair case and stand in the second chamber. She looked around her not for treasure but for the creature who’s duty it was to keep little sneak thieves like herself form purloining items from this crypt. She stood with the large black hammer head resting between her legs upon the stone flagging panting and looking around her in growing apprehensions. Noting stirred in the room but little clouds of dust from the piles of dust that covered everything. Her shield was casting enough illumination that should their have been any hulking horror in the room she would have easily seen it. Still the easier it seemed the worse it was.

Xera suddenly remembered the half dozen or so rotted corpses that lay around the front of the building and realized she had expected to see treble that number inside the tomb but had seen no bodies at all?! “Either one of those intrepid fellows died killing the temple guardian or it only attacks you once you think you are free and clear?!” Xera cursed under her breath and then hoisted the hammer up on her shoulder this time and staggered toward the last stair case of red rock that would take her to first above room. All thoughts of riffling for treasure where gone for the moment. She could always come back with her magic carpet if she was feeling a bit puckish for goodies. Right now she was more concerned if this obviously enchanted hammer was going to be too heavy for her magic carpet to pick up and carry?!

She had to stop three more times to rest on the stair case its self lugging the smith hammer which continued to seem to weigh not so much but yet made any movement near impossible and a struggle to achieve!

It was when she put her foot down on the first stone flagging of the main floor its self and thus off the stair tread proper that it happened. A loud powerful gust of wind rushed into the temple from outside and raced past her down into the second floor room. The wind howled around turning the piles of dust into ‘DUST DEVILS’?! if you took a rough image of male torso and attached it to a mini-tornado you got a dust devil. They could move quickly or slowly and they attacked like a sandblaster. They could peal the skin and tissue off a man in seconds.

Xera reached into her hip pouch and grabbed a vile and smashed it at her feet waiting for the blue smoke to engulf her. Once engulfed she continued to inch her way to the open and only door of the first floor leading out of the temple. The smoke was a simple conjurers trick which she had relied upon numerous times in the past. It effectively clouded one from all magical perceptions. It did not work against monsters or animals or men or some mechanical creations that housed mechanical brains rather than magical senses but she was certain it would keep her blind to the now four or five dust devils that whirled around the lower room in obvious confusion. She was half way to the door when they began to whirl about the upper chamber and around her. Each near passing stripping some of her magical blue smoke from her body.

The only trouble with these ready made potion spells is they only lasted a very short time. By the time she was half way to her magic carpet which one of the dust devils was taking a particular interest in as well as rummaging though her belongings; the magic smoke was more than half faded away.

The dust devil who was enjoying shredding up her chest and bags of supplies that sat upon her magic carpet suddenly seemed to sniff the air and turned its bald head to her and roared. It had seen her. Xera tossed the hammer at her carpet and much to her amazement it sailed effortlessly through the air and landed with a muffled thud upon the wincing carpet. Suddenly Xera realized she could have simply tossed the hammer in front of her; picked it up and tossed it again, and thus made her way very quickly out of the temple instead of sweating her tits off!

Xera ran to her carpet and shoved her shield into the face of the dust devil. When magic met magic you just never knew. The shield cracked and then shattered but its pieces now sucked up into the lower body of the dust devil seemed to be cutting it to shreds. In seconds the dust devil was no more; the area around it covered in black inky splatters of foul smelling muck.

Xera tossed away the useless handle and arm strap that had remained behind the shields’ disintegration and leapt on her carpet. She knelt down on one knee and whispered the command word and destination into her fist and them pressed her hand against the carpet. The carpet lurched upwards and started to wheel away from the plateau. Below the dust devils had exited the temple in response to their brethrens screams and now they launched themselves up into the air making a beeline toward her. The magic carpet was flying but it was very sluggish and Xera realized with the hammer on board it would never out race the dust devils that were rapidly closing in pursuit!

Xera stared grimly down and back at where the dust devils where closing in on her and her sluggish carpet. She looked at her belongings. The dust devil had torn or rendered or shredded almost everything it had touched including most of her provisions and her few magical potions, it had however left her unstrung bow and a quiver of black rune arrows. Desperate Xera strung the bow and notched an arrow. One never knew what would happen when magic met magic. She pulled the arrow back to her ear and let fly. The arrow pierced the nearest dust devil and it screamed and paused but came on. Again and again she let fly till all her arrows were spent. The dust devils were badly wounded but not one of them had died but they had slowed. The little four foot figures eyed her with extreme hate and then they started to clump together, soon instead of a half dozen dust devils following her there was one monstrous twenty foot tall dust devil. It howled and moaned and having completed its assumption of its fellows now set rapidly to over take her!

Things looked hopeless as Xera stood in the center of her carpet where the hammer caused the rug to sink and bow around its magical heft. She drew her plus one magical sword and cleared her throat. Just then as the dust devil now more a dust storm reached out gleefully toward her a large shape shot past her buffeting her with its powerful wake and then another. The desert gold dragons! The undisputed masters of the air! They did not seem to take kindly that some over sized dust bunny was lording it about in their domain! The dragons and dust storm crashed lightening and thunder shattered the sky and the great battle continued until the conflict fell away out of Xera’s sight as her little magic carpet struggled to race on as she breathed a sigh of relief and fell upon her ass dropping her forehead to her kneecaps.

While the first journey had taken only two days and had been through clear shimmering skies the return journey took four days with little to no provisions and much of the trek was through drenching thunderstorms and hail storms and tornadoes!

However exhausted and starved Xera set down her little magic carpet in the street next to the restaurant where she knew the old man would be found and after handing him his desired items and shaking off his inquirers of her adventure she had bolted down a few meats and bread and several bottles of wine and passed out in deep slumber.

When she came to; some day or two latter she found the restaurant keeper had kept her magic carpet and her few belongings and her newly acquired pouch of gems safe for her and after taking his fee for food and wine (he was not an innkeeper and did not offer lodgings but she had passed out in the small privet open courtyard that he rented to exclusive guests so he had simply charged her the usual rent for its use for her sleeping there) he handed all her things back to her with a smile and wished her well.

Xera still had several gems left in her payment pouch and a natty old carpet slung over her shoulder that could take her anywhere she wished to go and at great speed. She still had her marvelous and very sexy armor and her plus one sword and a bow but with an empty quiver without any magical arrows left. She now headed to the bank beneath the living statue who she gave a withering stare when the bronze man looked down at her and winked. And set about reclaiming her large white gemstone which she had stolen from the palace of Gore. She was not surprised to hear that the old man who had accompanied her when she had deposited it had come back and reclaimed it shortly after she had left.

“So the old goat has stolen my gem!” Xera huffed but then puzzled. The items he had given her were more in value than she could hope to batter in trade for the gem. Besides she had stolen it easily. Easy come, easy go. Still… Xera scratched her itchy palm.

Finding the old man was both difficult ant easy. It was difficult because no one knew who the hell she was talking about. The old geezer had been a stranger like her that had blown into town and then left just as suddenly. A few inquires with those that made a living hauling freight out to the palace had placed the man as a great wizard who was now the head of Lothario’s army. This army was currently attacking a small walled city up the Kari river to the west.

Xera mounted her magical carpet and soon was simply following the smoldering burned out husks of what used to be towns. A great string of shattered blackened walls and charred buildings lead an easy to follow trail to the army camp hold up in the plain outside the first large city west of Kari; Mong.

When Xera landed on the edge of the army camp she was appalled. This was no victorious camp of conquers with military precision outposts and security and smart lines of tents bulwarked and defended. No it was about a hundred men in grubby black filthy armor sitting morosely on their hunches tending their own wounds around a single opulent tent where the sultan Lothario Gore and his army commander the old man she knew as Alcazar but who she had been told in the courts of the confused somewhat deserted palace was called Thune.

Xera approached the great brilliantly hued tent and was surprised further to see the sultan and his commander in joyous great laughing spirits being waited on hand and foot by several naked serving girls who endeavored to ply them with food and wine as they sat laughing in their great throne chairs. Xera leaned out of the tents porch overhang and eyed the great wall city of Mong across the miles of great open plain where an army of thousands was already debauching out of its heavy gates.

Xera looked back at the smiling men who raised goblets to her and smiled. “You do not seem concerned that the army of Mong is massing in the field good sirs?” Xera frowned and then returned their mad smiles.

“We shall crush them like grapes!” Lothario seemed positively beaming which made him appear even more disgusting though there are few who have ever seen him who would acknowledge that as being possible!

“Indeed Master Gore! They stand no chance against our unbeatable forces! And we have you to thank for that little girl!” Thune raised his goblet again but did not finish it off but instead rose setting it aside and bowed to Lothario. “I must set our troops to meet the enemy’s attack my lord.” He then with proud strides pounced down the steps leading up to the two gaudy high-backed thrones and waltzed around the open flap of the tent pausing only to motion the girl to follow him with a crooked cocked finger.

“It is thanks to your bringing me the hammer and tongs and ember of Erasmus that allowed me to fashion this army. The amour they wear makes them deathless. Every splash of blood upon it heals their own wounds,” He gestured over at the sixty to a hundred men who sat swabbing themselves with buckets of foul bloody water.

“They don’t look too happy,” Xera noted.

“Well when the armor is not splashed with blood it eats the blood of those that wear it. So they must constantly bathe themselves in blood. But they are impervious to any wound; even severed limbs simply grow back! Of course once you put on the armor it can never be removed. A small price to pay for global conquest don’t you think! We need more supplies that are very expensive and can only be bought by treasure of conquest to make more such armor. They will look more impressive when they number in the tens of thousands! The taking of this city today should allows us to ultimately fit out another twenty suits!”

“You really mean those guys can just walk up to all those thousands of men and go toe to toe with them and they are the ones who will win?!” Xera looked at the miserable lifeless eyes of the men nearest her the armor reeked and seemed to be made of black thick straps that cut deep into their sallow flesh. The men just sat in silence slopping bloody water upon themselves from hundreds of buckets. In the background a muleskinner dragged a knife over a horses throat and collected the jets of blood into a bucket before walking around pouring it over the shoulders and heads of the soldiers sitting silently upon their haunches. She watched incredulously as the black straps seemed to suck up the blood as if they were cracks in the parched earth sucking up sudden rain showers.

“Of course! Nothing can stop them! They are an army of the undead! They can never die! They just march and fight and bring endless victories!” Thune smiled broadly and then walked over to the nearest baleful captain and began to give him his orders.

Xera walked solemnly back to her flying carpet and climbed aboard it and was soon hovering directly above the King of Mong. He was a thin man with a short beard and he stood upon the curtain wall of his battlements above his fortified great gate before which his army was setting its self in array. He was ringed by several battle clad archers who also coved the battlement walls for as far as the eye could see. He wore a skirt and hauberk of scaled armor of dwarfing manufacture and thus many centuries old though it shown golden and looked freshly knit. He stared up at her on her flying carpet neither cross nor kind but with a face set with resolve and his voice though weak by age still held the ring of one long use to command. “We thank you for your warning Xera but our scouts and those that survived and fled the fall of the smaller towns and flooded our city as pitiable refugees have already brought endless tales of deathless warriors inured to steel and magic who fall but briefly only to rise again never tiring never flagging never stopping until all living souls; man woman child and beast lay dead before them.”

“Great King of Mong, hear me; bring back your force inside your tall walls. The shambles of an army of undead have no siege equipment nor any hope of destroying your city save by buying their deathless assault upon the fresh blood of adversaries! Bring back your thousands and ring your walls with archers and iron clad men with long staves. Have your crossbow men shoot armor piercing bolts into the leg bones and kneecaps of the grimy knot of but a hundred that face you. Have your archers unleash fire arrows upon them in great showers. For I have seen these once men and starved of blood their own armor will consume them from within and leave them desiccated as kindling. Shatter their leg bones and their armor will devour themselves to heal them and rain fire down upon them and they shall burn! Keep this up and what can this immortal army do but stand about your walls and turn to ash!”

“You seem to forget their commander is a powerful wizard. He will tear down our walls with magic. He will-”

“Great King, if you lease to me four great archers and a dozen full quivers I think I can deal with this charlatan who calls himself a wizard!” Xera tossed her purse with its remaining jewels where it landed on the battlement lip between the King’s braced legs.

Xera raced across the open plain. Her carpet was hampered a bit in its flight by the four tall armor clad archers who stood like statues at each of its four corners and by the heap of quivers full of heavy black arrows that lay like bundles of faggots around her shins in the middle of the carpet. Behind her she could see the large army of the city of Mong racing back inside its walls as the large expanse of grassy plains before and around her were empty of all life save the small pocket of black stained men who slowly and with agonized strides marched toward the distant city. Clouds of bloat flies mobbed them and murders of ravens and crows circled them as they tromped along in their inexorable slow pace. Directly behind this small black knot of once men traveled dozens of servants who sloshed buckets of blood upon the deathless solders which they raced back and forth refilling from large wooden clacking ox drawn open wagons where muleskinners and butchers worked tireless hauling up by a rope a great stream of sheep and lambs and goats and cattle which sheepherders raced about with dogs driving after the armies march.

“Waste not an arrow on the soldiers but kill every servant and man who supports them thus.” And with a notched arrow she let fly and the arrow pierced the back of the skull of rushing maid dropping her lifeless to the sward; her empty bucket rolling away. The four archers did not hesitate but at her instruction let fly with deadly accuracy so that in but a short time all the supporting laborers who brought fresh blood to the army of the dead were dead. Then went down the men upon the carts, the oxen, the horses, the sheepherders and their dogs, and then the sheep and the oxen and goats as well. And still the army of deathless men marched now severed of any renewing blood.

Xera and her four archers did not stop until behind the army all was death or madly driven far away. From the black strapped men themselves up went a loud desperate moan but they did not falter in their step. On they marched tread after tread mindlessly obeying their last order. Toward the distant city of Mong still miles away across the rolling plain. But already one could see their sallow pale flesh begin to shrink and wither as the foul black straps of their armor dug in deeper and deeper. Their expressionless slack faces with sad morose eyes grew gaunt and those self same eyes grew glassy and filmed.

Behind the doomed army back at the banks of the Kari Xera could see the flummoxed and enraged Lothario and his short equally furious commander Thune stomp amongst their opulent tent stakes and shouted incomprehensible orders to the handful of few remaining naked serving girls left to tend upon them. The girls ran in the direction of the army and with a taught lip Xera drew and dropped them all. Dead in their tracks.

“It is now just the so called sultan and his army commander; spare not a shot. Make them like pin cushions!” Xera counseled as she set her carpet racing toward the distant tent set at the river edge. The King of Mong was right; Thune was a magician of some power. And he had fashioned for himself a set of armor different from the deathless warriors of his army but one that could still turn aside the flock of arrows the five upon the carpet winged at him as they banked and soared around him. The sultan died with the first arrow through his throat but a dozen more pierced his face in the instant after until it looked not like a face but a mask made of raw clay unfired and tossed in a muddy road where many carts traveled back and forth. Soon his body lay in pieces as well for unable to bring a single shot home against the sorcerer Thune the four archers let fly all their wraith upon the carcass of the sultan of Kari.

As the carpet did spiral and dart about and the archers let loose the last of their shafts Thune indignant and bold shouted out spells and conjuring so that great bolts of energy shot from his hands that sliced like knives across the sky and tornados appeared and milky white pale skin semi-transparent winged creatures all of which did attack the young girl and her carpet. One by one she lost her brave archers until only she remained on her much ruined torn carpet with only one arrow left and an enraged sorcerer spitting vehemence at her as she flung herself swooping low directly at him.

One never knows what will happen when magic meets magic. Xera removed the large white gem she had stolen originally from the harem of the sultan Lothario Gore and which the old wizard Thune had stolen back from her after she had placed it in the bank pedestal of one of the bronze men of the city of Kari at his urging before she had left on the journey to the tomb of Erasmus. Finding it gone she had returned to the palace of the sultan to retrieve it and found that Lothario and Thune had fashioned an army of unbeatable warriors and set out in conquest along the Kari river. Apparently the cost of creating such an army had stripped the palace of all its riches and as soon as Lothario and Thune had marched out with their army most of the remaining servants and guards had simply slipped out as well abandoning the empty palace and returning to their lives in the city of Kari. A few panther and hawk guards dotted the cliffs around the palace proper but the guards of the palace its self had become somewhat unwilling solders in the new army.

It was a deserted palace with only a few lingering and starving retainers who met her bold entrance upon her magic carpet and after answering her questions in exchange for some food and wine they had shown her where Thune had hidden his payment, as creator and commander of this army, in the belly of a magical scarab. Xera slay the scarab and ripped the treasure out of its belly. The teen girl had recovered her stone and left the rest of the gems and gold for the few remaining courtiers to squabble over.

It was this large milky white glowing gem no doubt magical that Xera now hurled at Thune’s brilliant opulent gold and ivory armor. The gem shattered upon impact with the magical armor and a white light exploded outward. Xera leapt off her magic carpet, rolling as she fell, which unraveled what little non-rented substance it had left into a billowing cloud of black dust. Xera rolled to her knees and looked upon Thune who with a startled face looked upon his body turning execrably into porcelain. Xera snarled and raised her bow with its last arrow and let fly. It struck the terrified sorcerer and shattered him into a thousand pieces. Xera looked around her; all was dead and in the distance she could see and hear the moans of the deathless army marching to their certain destruction before the walls of Mong where dozens of dirty fires of smoky pitch pots and barrels of oil could be see being readied.

Penniless and with nothing to show for her efforts Xera was not the least bit surprised to feel the sudden burgeoning rapture of the teleportation orgasm lathering up her young loins. She could only sigh and tossing her bow aside reached down with egger rapid fingers to help it along! It had been a long day and she wanted to go home!

<the end>