“He’s fallen asleep.” Shalltear realized with dismay. ‘It’s true… I knew it. I heard a heartbeat. If he has a heart, he has flesh, if he has flesh…’ Shalltear wiggled a little on his lap. The robe and the magic did nothing to hide the erection.

‘So he’s got one…!’ Shalltear realized with a bright red glow to her eyes. Of course the question came to mind, ‘Can I actually produce an heir?’ The possibility that she couldn’t as an undead, it haunted her. The still heart within her breast could at least quake in anxiety that she might fail to do what a Queen of Nazarick should, and produce the fruit of their Master’s glory. As if to compensate for the trembling heart, she pressed her ear to his chest to listen to the slow rhythm beneath.

Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, over and over at a constant pace his heart continued, his breathing slow and steady, undetectable through his mask. It disguised so much of him that, if she weren’t where she was at just this moment, she never could have guessed. She inhaled his scent. ‘Human… so human… but humans are inferior… why would he do this…?’ Shalltear pursed her lips as she sat there against the slumped over King of Nazarick.

‘He knows I am a vampire… I feed on humans… they’re prey… toys. Like that nice tail I want to put on Leinas as a reward for what I’m ‘sure’ will be her very hard work.’ Shalltear ran her hands over his chest and up to his neck, she touched him there, and found flesh beneath.

‘Does he want me to eat… does he want this… is that why he chose me? Is that why we’re alone here…?’ Shalltear asked herself, and it seemed at least possible.

The idea, it was bliss. ‘Even that demon whore can’t possibly know him the way I could…’ Shalltear told herself and closed her eyes. She raised her head up, slumped forward as he was… her fangs came out. His vein, so rich, so beautiful…

Shalltear stopped. ‘No. If he wanted me to… he would have commanded it. How long has he been awake… he’s been pretending to be undead for weeks now at least…’

She slipped down from his lap, ‘I’m the worst of his servants…’ She told herself, and moved to one side of his body. With the level one hundred strength at her command it was easy to brace him and slowly lower him into his bed. His body sank into the mattress, it cushioned him like a cloud.

Shalltear then gently tugged the blanket back from beneath him and pulled it over his body. Her eyes lingered on his mask, ‘There is a face beneath there, vibrant, alive, and it is his. All I have to do is remove it, and I will know what he looks like…’

Her dainty hands moved of their own accord until they were almost to it, she was leaning over her sleeping master, the One Who Stayed, and the loathing for herself she felt mere moments ago, returned in force.

“It’s for him to decide… not me.” She whispered without a breath and without a sound, and took her hands away.

Her heart wanted to tear itself in two with such despicable self hatred that offering to end her life if he wished, seemed the only sufficient atonement. But that… that would have required at least waking him up. ‘I don’t want to wake him…’ She thought, and instead reached behind herself and began to undo the laces of her dress.

It fell to the floor, beautiful as it was, she cared nothing for it at that moment and kicked it away, her black undergarments followed, leaving her naked before the sleeping King. ‘If only you opened your eyes now…’ Shalltear thought, ‘For what I even thought, let alone ‘almost’ did… at least I can offer this.’ She thought, and floating up, she hovered over him, her hair tumbling free and nearly caressing his red and white mask, she began to descend.

Floating downward as gently as a snowflake on a still winter morning, she reached the bed and slipped her feet between the blanket. The mattress sank under her slight weight and she let the slope roll her forward so that she slept against the body of her lord.

Her red eyes closed, and her soft, slender pale arm went over the top of her Master’s chest, she snuggled in close and a sigh of contentment and supreme happiness swept over her, tearing apart the earlier shame and loathing like it had been a mere sandcastle before a rising tide. In that way, Shalltear finally slept.

Heketi ribbited with pleasure as she and her tribe made their way across the lake. Interrogating the survivors and hunting the fleeing took time, precious time. But it didn’t matter. ‘With our numbers we should have no trouble at all. There won’t be a lizardman left to walk free when we are done.’ She thought with glee as the distant village appeared as a dot on the horizon.

‘The Razor Tail uses heavy armor… they will be dangerous. But with this many…’

Heketi swam through the cool waters of the lake, the sun warmed her slightly exposed back, everything was right with the world. The village was growing ever closer, closer, and closer. With every kick of her legs, and so it was for the rest of them.

The gentle sloshing of the water, the buzzing of insects which her tribe occasionally darted out a tongue to snatch at, ‘This was designed for us, the true gift of the gods where we and we alone should live. The lizardmen are mere brutes, interlopers wanting to take what’s ours… they let us fight the empire, they let us die and offer us nothing but the points of their weapons… now though? Now we have our brethren back, all will be well, everything will be as it should be!’ Heketi continued to put herself into an ever greater frenzy, her desire for revenge and retribution for everything the lizardmen did, and everything they didn’t do.

She began to turn away from the village, only a little, but a little change of direction was magnified over distance. Small tendrils of smoke rose up from various spots within the village.

‘Savages! Absolute savages… using fire is so… disgusting.’ She darted her tongue out and snatched a bird in flight, it was yanked into her mouth and disappeared whole down into her gullet. Whatever fight it had in it vanished a few moments later after only a few little railings in her guts.

They reached the shore as the sun was beginning to set, but didn’t leave the waters. ‘Pathetic lizardmen call the lake their home, but they’re stuck to the shores or in small boats, but we… we can live in all of it…’ Heketi’s body remained hidden beneath the waters, well out of reach or sight, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The fires continued to rise from a few huts.

‘A few huts. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.’ Heketi poked her eyes above the water as the darkness continued to threaten to overwhelm the landscape and turn the blue waters to black. Little ripples of water went back and forth against her body, a constant cycle that she’d known since the time of her hatching in the murky northern waters.

For all her life, it was comfort, but now she didn’t feel comfort at all. A chill went up her back. The same pillars of smoke just kept rising. ‘There should be more of those… but there are only a few, the same exact few…’ Heketi blew bubbles in the water, and the rest of her people knew what to do when they caught the sound. ‘Dark enough anyway.’ They swam the distance they had to, rose up to the shore, and when they were ready, Heketi opened her mouth.

‘No watchers?’ She asked herself. “First rank only.” She said, “Take the walls.”

The frogmen began at a jog, their rapid wide legged gait ate up the soft ground until they were ready, and then they charged with the mightiest cry the first rank of twelve could muster, and with their powerful legs they jumped the full height of the wall and over to the other side.

Heketi waited. “There’s nobody here but one old lizardman! He says he’s got a message for you!”

Heketi’s lips tightened, her broad mouth was still. “Open the gate.”

Her army followed, they were right, the whole village stank, though what it was was familiar, it was so overpowering it was hard to tell. ‘The other lizardman village was cleaner than this… these stink!’

The gate opened and her force was about to follow her in when she held her arms out at her sides. “No… wait here.” She said and pointed to the twelve. “I’m not unguarded, and it’s just one old one.”

The frogmen that ventured over the wall leveled their spears in a tight circle around the old lizardman’s neck, one motion and he was as good as dead. The lizardman seemed to know this and held his hands aloft to show he was unarmed.

Heketi towered over him like a tree. “You are bigger than I thought you’d be.” The wizened old lizardman said, and coughed several times in rapid succession.

“You have a message for me? Did your tribe flee into the forest, are they hoping to beg a truce…?” She chortled at that and shook most of her upper body, her webbed hand, easily vastly larger than his head, and wrapped the slimy surface of it around his skull. She began to squeeze.

“N-No.” He gasped.

“Then what… what is it?!” She said, her large orblike eyes both focused down on him alone.

“My- My Chief… he wants you to know…” The old man struggled, kicking a little as she began to pick him up.

“Two things… th-that you’ll lose… and…” He gasped at the pain in his head when he felt his skull begin to crack.

“And?” She demanded.

That was when she saw it, as she picked him up more, a buried string lashed to his tail began to rise up out of the ground. Alarm immediately ran through her.

“Fish oil is flammable!” He shouted as he jerked his tail, the other frogmen saw the string and heard the sudden clang of something falling within the huts.