Archon wished to avoid war. He knew that once the killing had begun it could not stop until each and every witness, relative, scribe, or bard lay in the cold ground or danced upon the ashes of a funeral pyre. To truly win a war, one had to kill until there was nothing left to die. To show mercy to a woman or a child, to allow them to escape and spread the word of tragedy was to ensure that there would be someone left to grow up and seek vengeance, or to breed a small army of those who would wish to reclaim what was taken.
The best way to maintain control was to be cruel, but if one was not prepared to be cruel, then it was absolutely essential one appear evil.
A flash in the distance caught his attention, a brightness suddenly glimmering among the trees. There she was. He knew she was a she, in the same way he had known she was there in the first place. Instinct.
Archon gave chase without a word, leaving his army and his war machine behind, throwing his body into the task of pursuit. It felt good to use his own flesh. To chase with muscle and bone, not electricity and metal.
It did not take long to catch up to the prey. She was relatively slow compared to him, and she had little in the way of strength. Archon slowed his pace to closer match hers, drawing out the chase.
He got a better look at her as he bounded through the undergrowth. Female, just as he had thought. Young. Weak. Round rumped and long legged.
It would have been so easy to catch her right away, to overhaul her with his longer stride and more powerful body. But where was the fun in that? He liked making his prey run. He liked to savor the hunt. There was no sweeter music than her ragged, panicked breath as his prey came to terms with their inevitable capture.
So many would have given up by now. Archon had been on many hunts, and often the object would just stop and accept the inevitable. Not this female though. She believed she could escape him. What a very human delusion, to think that a five foot female could outrun a nine foot king.
Wait. Where did she go?
It was as if she had blinked out of existence. One moment she was dashing through the woods, the next…
Archon almost fell into the hole his prey had crawled into. He let out a laugh as he realized what a good trick she had played. But the hunt was not over, and her escape was far from guaranteed.
Crouching down, Archon discovered that it wasn’t just a hole. It was a tunnel. When he peered down it, he could see that it came out in the mid-distance. He could also see that round rump crawling as fast as it could go through the narrow space.
Archon finally bothered to use the speed which was at his command, easily crossing the distance in a matter of bounds.
He was there when she came out. He saw her head pop out, and then she was off again at a sprint. But the hunt was over. It was obvious that she would run herself past the point of exhaustion, and Archon did not want such a fascinating prey dead.
He grabbed her by her arm, swung her off her feet, and tossed her onto the soft leaf covered mossy ground on her back. She lay there panting, her eyes wide with fear. Something about the way this human looked at him, some expression in her eyes touched something in him. There was a strange moment of connection, in which he almost forgot she was human, and in which they almost felt like the same thing.
She had coppery brown hair, and furious brown eyes. Her face was daubed with clay to mimic the patterns of the forest. She had been trying to hide before he hunted her. He wondered if that was because she was a huntress herself.
“Bad little human. I had only just finished telling you and the rest of your village that you couldn’t run, and look what you tried to do. Are you simple, or so rebellious you cannot obey a single sentence?”
“It wasn’t an order. It was an assumption, and it was wrong.”
There was so much spirit and spite in those words, they were fiery enough to have come from Energon himself. But they did not. They emerged from a little human upstart.
“Arrogance,” he murmured. “I will break you of that habit, human. I will punish you.”
“Why?”
Why? There were a thousand reasons why. The rebellion of her village, for starters. Her refusal to be caught. Her complete lack of disrespect for her king.
“I am Archon, king of Archaeus - and you are my prey, as well as my subject. I am entitled to do with you as I please. I own you. Every part of you.” He emphasized the last part by squeezing the pink place between her thighs, feeling her heat and her wetness.