The Fall of Za'had'da'Keafer

The Iron Queens armies had come from the desert to the north of the city and had in the span of a single day and night reduced the stone walls of the city to rubble and the city within those walls to ruin. Every defender within who had not had the sense to flee put to the sword and any human’s that remained executed.

Seated upon her mount the Iron Queen watched and said nothing as she looked on from behind the silk veils she wore a witness to her commands. Unfeeling and unmoved by either tears or pleas for mercy. For the men of this city there was no mercy within her heart just as there had been no mercy for the young elven girl who had been dragged here in the centuries before.

The unspoken truth was that she had known this place in her youth. She had known it and hated the memory of it with a burning fire that could not be consumed by the blood of all the dead in the land.

The memory of that day long ago when that she had been stolen away from her home by rogues and dragged through the dirty streets of this hell in not but the ruins of shirt with chains of cold iron around her wrists and throat as men and women looked on at her nakedness and laughing and cheering. Some yelling vile and vulgar words in their alien tongue while street children laughed and pelted her with rotten fruits and garbage.

It was that same night that her virginity had been sold for a handful of coins to a foul-smelling man who had wasted no time in dragging her in to the backroom of some bar to claim it. That pig smelling son-of-a-whore selling her to another when he was done. A man who in turn sold her in turn to another when he was done.

By morning her ownership had changed hands a dozen times and she had suffered the attentions of each new owner in turn until the last who forced her to clean herself when he was done before dragging her down the streets in less than she had worn before to the auction block where she was sold yet again.

She did not bother to try to recall what followed after that given that in Zatar pretty young elven slave girls changed hands on a whim it had seemed to her. She herself having been bought and sold more times than she could count in the span of her first hundred years in this hellish kingdom of men.

The approach of one of her champions drew her attention again to the here and now.
Her gaze drifted from the ongoing executions to that of the face of the young elven lord whose face soiled by blood and ash and yet whose love and worship of her shone brightly upon his noble elven features.

“ The city of Za’had’da’Keafer is yours my Queen. “ The Champion announced with great pride as he fell to his knee before her.

“ And what of its Master ? “ She spoke aloud, her own words feeling almost alien to her.

The Champion’s smile grew even broader. “ He awaits your pleasure my Queen. “

“ Does he indeed? “ She spoke softly.

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