The Ballad of Sami the Arisen, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Queen
A Tragicomedy in One Act, With Excessive Description
Chapter the First: In Which Our Heroine Makes a Series of Unfortunate Decisions
Sami the Arisen—that storied warrior whose sword arm was matched only by her gift for missing obvious social cues—had done it again. There she stood, trussed up like a Solstice goose, dangling between two remarkably muscular women who had the sort of jawlines that could open wine bottles.
"Another one for the Queen," said the taller bandit, adjusting her leather straps with professional satisfaction. "She's got that look about her."
"What look?" Sami asked, genuinely curious.
"The look of someone who couldn't find a clue if it was nailed to her forehead."
The high ruin castle of the Daughters of Desolation perched atop a crag like a brooding ex-lover, all Gothic arches and suggestive turrets. Sami was dragged through corridors lined with tapestries depicting scenes that made her blush—scenes that, had she been paying attention, might have clarified her situation considerably.
Chapter the Second: The Throne Room of Sapphic Intent
Velucia, Queen of the Highway and Sovereign of Questionable Life Choices, reclined upon a throne carved from what appeared to be solidified midnight. She wore leather the way other women wore perfume—sparingly, strategically, and with devastating effect. Her eyes were the color of sin itself, which is to say, a very particular shade of violet.
"Unbind her," Velucia commanded, her voice like honey poured over gravel.
Sami rubbed her wrists. "Thank you! I was just passing through on my way to—"
"Silence." The Queen rose, circling Sami like a shark circling a particularly oblivious minnow. "You have... potential."
"For what? Questing? I'm excellent at questing. I once retrieved the Orb of—"
"For other pursuits."
Sami blinked. "Like... crafting?"
Velucia's eye twitched. It was a very small twitch, but Sena—who stood nearby oiling a breastplate that didn't strictly need oiling—noticed it immediately.
"To the tower cell," Velucia sighed, suddenly looking very tired for a woman who hadn't yet reached her sexual peak. "Perhaps solitude will clarify her... situation."
Chapter the Third: The Concubines Conspire (While Bathing a Clueless Woman)
Three days later, Sami sat in a copper tub large enough to host diplomatic negotiations, still wondering if perhaps the Queen wanted her to craft something—maybe a really nice belt?
"Lift your arm," Sena commanded, the buxom peasant girl whose previous life involved churning butter and whose current life involved considerably more interesting activities. She was enthusiasm incarnate, all curves and smiles and practical knowledge of knots.
"Now the other one," added Morella, the snooty noblewoman whose capture had been the scandal of three counties. She examined Sami with the critical eye of someone who had once judged horseflesh at the Imperial Fair. "The Queen requires you... presentable."
"Presentable for what? An audience? I've been asking for an audience for days!"
Sena and Morella exchanged glances that contained multitudes.
"Sweetheart," Sena said, sponging Sami's back with what was definitely unnecessary thoroughness, "the Queen doesn't bring just anyone to her private chambers."
"Obviously," Morella sniffed, arranging Sami's hair with pins that cost more than Sami's entire questing wardrobe. "One must be... selected."
"Selected for what? Is there a tournament? A test of arms?" Sami's eyes lit up. "A DUNGEON CRAWL?"
Morella's hand went to her forehead. "Gods preserve us, she's serious."
"I was a dairy maid," Sena confided, her hands wandering into territories that had nothing to do with hygiene. "Three years ago. Now I live in a castle with hot meals, soft beds, and regular... workouts. Best decision I never made."
"I had seventeen suitors," Morella added, fitting Sami with a negligee so sheer it could have been mistaken for a particularly ambitious shadow. "All of them tedious. All of them men. Do you know what men talk about? Horses. Always horses." She shuddered. "Velucia discusses philosophy. While doing things that would make a courtesan blush."
"She's very well-read," Sena agreed, tying ribbons that served no practical purpose. "And very... thorough."
Sami looked between them. "So she's looking for a... advisor? A court scholar?"
The concubines, in perfect synchronization, deflated.
Chapter the Fourth: The Negligee of Doom
The Queen's bedchamber was a monument to excess. Velvet draperies. Fur throws. Candles that burned with scents scientifically proven to lower inhibitions. And there lay Sami, arranged like a gift she didn't realize she was, wondering why the room was so warm and why her heart was beating so fast and whether perhaps she was coming down with something.
Velucia entered wearing a robe that made the negligee look like armor.
"At last," the Queen purred, approaching the bed with the inevitability of gravity. "You are... magnificent in your obliviousness."
"Your Majesty! I must protest this treatment! I am an Arisen, a warrior of—"
"—absolutely no romantic comprehension whatsoever. Yes. I've noticed." Velucia climbed onto the bed, her movements liquid and predatory. "Tell me, Sami. Have you ever been with a woman?"
"I've fought alongside many women! There's Janna the Swift, and—"
Velucia kissed her.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was the sort of kiss that rearranged priorities, that rewrote certain assumptions, that made Sami's brain—which had been running on a very specific operating system for twenty-eight years—suddenly require a complete system update.
"Oh," Sami said, when they broke for air.
"Yes?"
"Oh my."
"Better."
Chapter the Fifth: The Epiphany, or: Sami Downloads New Information
What followed was educational. It was, in fact, the sort of education that Sami had been missing despite all her adventuring, all her dungeon delving, all her regrettable encounters with creatures whose ideas of romance involved more teeth than was strictly necessary.
Velucia was an artist, and Sami was her canvas. The Queen worked with lips and fingers and whispered instructions that Sami found herself eager to follow. Every touch was a revelation, every gasp a discovery. This was not the clumsy pawing of Maangar, her erstwhile companion, whose idea of foreplay was asking if she was "still awake." This was not the terrifying, bitey enthusiasm of the goblin incident, which they never discussed and which had required three healing potions.
This was... this.
"I understand now," Sami breathed, sometime around the third hour.
"Do you?" Velucia smiled, satisfied.
"I understand everything."
And then Sami moved.
Perhaps it was the Arisen blood, that ancient lineage of heroes that demanded not participation but mastery. Perhaps it was simply that Sami, having finally understood the assignment, intended to ace it. Whatever the reason, she rolled Velucia beneath her with a strength that surprised them both.
"Your Majesty," Sami whispered, her eyes alight with terrible knowledge, "I believe it's my turn."
Chapter the Sixth: The Tables Turn, the Queen Learns, and Face is Threatened
Velucia had not been topped in seven years. She had, in fact, built an entire reputation, a criminal empire, and a personal brand around being absolutely, definitively, categorically in charge.
Sami, it turned out, was a natural.
"Again," Sami commanded, and Velucia, to her absolute horror, found herself obeying.
"Wait, I—"
"Again."
"Stop, I command you to—"
"Again."
The Queen of the Highway, Scourge of the Northern Roads, Terror of the Merchant Guilds, was reduced to a quivering, begging, submissive mess. And she loved it. She loved it so much she feared she might die from loving it. She loved it in ways that made her question every decision that had led her to this leather-clad throne of power.
"One more time," Sami suggested, and Velucia wept with joy and terror.
But afterward—after the fourth or fifth round, after Sami had discovered talents she never knew she possessed, after Velucia had experienced heights of pleasure that should have required mountaineering equipment—reality crept in like a thief.
Velucia lay in the wreckage of her own bed, her hair a disaster, her composure in ruins, her authority in question. Outside, she could hear her bandits training. Sena and Morella would be waiting with breakfast and knowing smiles.
She could not afford this. A Queen who moaned "yes, please, more" could not command respect. A bandit lord who begged was merely a liability.
"Sami," Velucia said, her voice carefully reconstructed into something resembling authority.
"Yes, my love?"
My love. The words sent a shiver down Velucia's spine that had nothing to do with fear. "You must go."
"What? But we were just getting started! I've got this whole new thing I want to try with the candles and—"
"NOW." Velucia sat up, pulling her command around her like armor. "You are banished. Exiled. Cast out. Take your things—" she gestured vaguely at Sami's adventuring gear, which had been cleaned and oiled by loving hands, "—and never return."
"But—"
"Guards!"
Chapter the Seventh: The Departure, and a Reunion
Sami found herself outside the castle gates wearing considerably more than she'd arrived in—armor polished, sword sharpened, provisions packed, and absolutely no understanding of what had gone wrong.
"Was it the candle thing?" she asked the closing portcullis. "I can skip the candle thing! We can work up to it!"
The only answer was the sound of a bolt being thrown.
Sami wandered down the mountain path, her mind a whirlwind of confusion and lingering physical satisfaction. She had learned so much. She had discovered herself. And now she was alone again, with no one to practice on.
She found Maangar at their pre-arranged meeting point, the idiot barbarian snoring beneath a tree with his mouth open.
"You're alive!" he said, waking with a start. "Did you get the treasure?"
"There was no treasure, Maangar."
"Did you kill the bandit queen?"
Sami thought of Velucia, her violet eyes, her command, her surrender. "No. No, I didn't kill her."
"Well, what did you do?"
Sami adjusted her armor, checked her sword, and smiled a smile that made Maangar—who was not a perceptive man—feel suddenly, inexplicably nervous.
"I had an education, Maangar. And I intend to apply it."
"To what?"
"To everything." Sami set off down the road, her stride purposeful, her mind already planning. There were other castles. Other queens. Other women who perhaps needed an Arisen to show them the error of their ways, or the rightness of them.
Maangar scrambled to follow. "Wait! Shouldn't we go back to town? Report to the Guild?"
"Guilds are boring, Maangar. I've discovered I prefer... private enterprise."
And so Sami the Arisen rode forth, her sword at her side and new knowledge in her heart, ready to topple kingdoms in the most literal and most pleasurable sense possible.
Meanwhile, in the high ruin castle, Velucia touched her lips and shivered, and wondered if perhaps—just perhaps—she might send a very discreet invitation in six months' time, when her reputation had recovered.
But that is another story.
FIN
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