Parentage would be dubious, as the nobles and other males swapped the dancers among themselves. The more popular dancers were mated six or seven times, until their swollen vulvas dripped with the mixed seed of a half dozen males.
What had begun as a ritual turned into an orgy, a group mating which smelled like seed and looked like filth as bodies were pressed against the remnants of the feast, cream and jelly and trifle all going places they were never intended to go, finding crevices and cracks and coating the rampant members of drunk nobles who sprayed their seed into anything hot and tight.
The cleaners were going to be busy in the morning, when they would find nobles and insensate dancers draped naked over remnants of what would be ironically described for posterity as the chaste feast of Archon.
Meanwhile…
Relieved at having escaped what might have loosely been called festivities, Archon made for the relative peace of the tower where he had come to reside, taking the stairs two at a time.
He knew very well what the nobles and courtiers he had left behind with the dancers thought of him. He knew they were ingrates without a scrap of sense, growing fat and dull on the largesse of the kingdom.
Archon did not concern himself with their opinions. He was a natural king, even if he was born a bastard.
That was not to be mentioned, though Brimsley had been heard to mention to his fellow servants that the brutal nature of the king could be put down to the wildness of his mother, a female who was not of a good house of breeding. She had never danced before the court, never displayed her mutations and her body to those who watched the breeding ceremonies.
Archon would never have come close to the throne if not for the untimely and unfortunate deaths of his seven older brothers and their eldest sons besides. Their deaths were one of many subjects not to be discussed in Archon’s court. Some may call him a murderer and a tyrant, but they did not do it twice. They could not do it twice for having a lack of a tongue.
Most of the castle’s inhabitants had the sense to leave the king alone, save for one adviser who followed him up the stairs slowly on arthritic knees so he could shake a finger at the monarch.
“Truly? Not a singe girl chosen? Not a one spoken to, let alone sampled? This is an insult to every one of the twenty-four tribes who sent their most beautiful women to be presented before the king. There will be great offense taken. Wars could be waged.”
“Wars are always waged, and I have no interest in offense,” Archon growled. “Feelings are not a currency I choose to trade in. My mate will not come to me dancing and flirting. She will be conquered.”
“Sire complains that we have made it too easy for him,” Brimsley noted. “I could have had the girls set loose in the forest, or perhaps give each of them a shuttle and a day’s head start.”
“There is no sport in chasing those who wish to be caught.”
“So you wish to mate with a female who does not wish to mate with you. You eschew the well bred and willing for the notion of someone who will resist you?”
The old man shook with outrage and perhaps even disgust. Brimsley had served the royal house of Archaeus for as long as he had been alive. He was the son of the head maid of the old queen, she who had been dead for over fifty years, she who he regarded as being the last of the true royals.
The one who sat on the throne now horrified Brimsley. There would never have been one like him when Arasabella was queen. The royal house of Archaeus was once refined and genteel. Now, with a monster who had no respect for old customs wearing the crown, anything was possible.
“I horrify you, don’t I,” Archon smiled, not the least concerned by Brimsley’s judgement.
“Sire knows I have certain traditional opinions…”
“Yes. Sire does. But when it comes to my cock, Brimsley and where I put it, I have to want the female, and I find little appealing in one who is prepared to dance amid two dozen others in the attempt to get my attention. I will know the one I want when I see her.”
“A rather romantic notion for a monarch recently talking about taking women without their will…”
“I did not say without willingness. I said that it would be a conquest. One doesn’t stop the other from being true,” Archon replied.
Brimsley’s lips became very tight and puckered. “I confess, I do not understand you sire, not after three years. You are a very different king than your father…”