Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1993: Monster

Andre’s scream followed her down, but Quinlan kept her from falling. Her head sagged in his grip, her chin hanging crooked beneath a ruined cheek. The breath that came through her mouth bubbled in blood.

Quinlan’s silent [Subjugation] reached her next.

Marielle convulsed in his hand. Through the wreckage of pain, she felt the binding closing inside her and tried to resist, but all that escaped her shattered mouth was a wet, terrified rasp.

The spell took hold. Quinlan watched her surviving resistance fail before lowering her onto the floor beneath the blood smeared across the wall.

"Seraphiel."

"Leave it to me."

The Dawnbringer crouched beside Marielle, [Healing Light] gathering beneath her palm. As her magic stemmed the bleeding inside the mage’s head and throat, the bubbling breaths eased into a hoarse drag of air.

Under the light, the fractured bones drew back into place. Her mouth still hung open around the broken stumps of her teeth.

Beside them, Andre strained against Aurora’s barrier until his injured arm shook. His eyes stayed on his wife’s face, following each shallow breath.

Quinlan crouched in front of him.

"Your wife is irredeemable trash and you were ready to hurt my women too. But I can respect a man who stands by his woman, even if she deserves the worst."

Andre looked up at the blood on Quinlan’s gauntlet.

"So I ask you: will you accept my [Subjugation], or are we doing this the hard way?"

His gaze returned to Marielle, who lay motionless beneath Seraphiel’s hand. He couldn’t even reach her from here. His sword was gone, his arm was ruined, and the man in front of him had just destroyed everything they’d come to investigate.

"I’ll accept it," he whispered. "Please... let me stay with her."

Quinlan sent the binding into him. When Andre felt it seeking entry, he surrendered to it, shuddering as the spell settled into place.

Only after both bindings held did Aurora dismiss the barrier over Andre. He dragged himself to Marielle and tried to reassure her.

Seraphiel withdrew her glowing hand. Marielle’s less swollen eye stirred at her husband’s touch, finding him through the haze as he eased her head onto his lap. She tried to lift her injured hand toward him, then let it fall with a muffled cry.

Behind Quinlan, Serika lifted the unconscious Celia into her arms. The girl’s cleaned lantern swung against her pack.

Quinlan then looked toward the queen at the balcony’s far end.

Her remaining eyes fixed on him. As he began walking toward her, the shelf beneath her prison widened at his will, and the rock clamped around her abdomen loosened. The collar crumbled last, spilling fragments between her broken mouthparts.

Andre drew Marielle closer against him as the enormous creature unfolded her surviving legs. She flinched at his sudden movement, her broken face turning against his bloodstained clothes.

The queen watched Quinlan take another step, then gingerly lowered herself onto one side.

"Kuuu...."

Her wounded abdomen caught against the ledge. A thin hiss escaped her as she shifted it free, feeling for support with her legs while she rolled farther over. When Quinlan reached the widened shelf, she was lying on her back.

Above her pale belly, the hooked feet drew inward. One twitched toward him as his shadow fell across her underside, then tucked hastily out of his way.

Through her one open eye, Marielle caught sight of the queen’s exposed belly beyond Andre’s arm. Lifting her head sent pain through her ruined face, but she kept staring at the monster that had shrugged off their spells and chosen to eat her alive.

Quinlan stepped between the folded legs and rested his palm on an unbroken patch of her belly. She trembled at the touch, her damaged mouthparts working around a faint, wet clicking.

He began rubbing her belly.

"Who’s a good girl?"

The clicking faltered. Beneath his hand, the queen held herself painfully still while a tiny rasp escaped the slit behind her shattered fangs.

"...Me..."

Quinlan chuckled and gave her another pleased pat.

"Rosie’s going to love you."

The queen stretched a trembling foot toward his hand when he stopped rubbing.

"I... good. Have... shiny things..."

"Oh?"

"Gold... weapons. Hidden... farther. I give... all. You... gentle?"

Quinlan chuckled. "I’m always gentle with my loyal subjects. Where would I find your offering?"

Her foot pointed toward a surviving upper gallery. At Quinlan’s will, the balcony separated from its buttress and rose toward it, carrying the queen’s shelf alongside. Aurora kept the rescued captives beneath her shield while Andre held Marielle against his chest through the ascent.

Once the platform joined the gallery floor, the queen struggled upright and clicked toward a sealed side passage. Faint scratching answered from beyond it.

"More... children. They bring."

Quinlan opened the plug of earth he’d driven across the passage. Behind it, the tunnel was untouched by the molten flood.

A giant spider pushed its head through, then crouched at its mother’s shrill command. Others retreated into the deeper tunnels, returning with silk bundles and battered packs caught between their fangs.

A split sack spilled silver across the paving.

"Over there." Quinlan pointed beside the queen. "And you can pick those up too."

The giant hesitated. Its mother’s clicking sharpened until it followed his hand and deposited its bundle, then turned back to collect the scattered coins.

Marielle soiled herself in Andre’s arms.

She felt the warm filth spreading inside her trousers, but couldn’t drag her eyes from the monster gathering silver at Adventurer Black’s feet. A creature like that had folded her husband’s shield around his arm. Now it was fetching treasure for a Grade One rookie.

Monsters didn’t do this. No matter how badly a fight went, they fled or tried to kill you. They didn’t wait politely while you inspected their offerings.

Quinlan pointed another spider away from the patients. At the queen’s warning hiss, it backed off and settled beside the loot.

"Good job," Quinlan praised the queen, giving her another pat. "Could you keep them here while I finish?"

"Yes... Here. Stay..."

At her clicking, the brood crowded back into the side passage, leaving the riches on the gallery floor. Quinlan turned toward the molten nest below.

"Quin, the entrance passages?" Aurora asked.

"I’ll leave them. Anyone coming down can see where the ruins collapsed."

Andre watched the red glare fade as Quinlan drew the magma into the lowest chambers and cooled it with his ice. Through the cracking of the hardening surface came the queen’s clicking, keeping her children back from the humans beside her.

Only the bridge’s stump remained recognizable below. Andre flinched when Quinlan tore it from the wall, dragging the ruined chambers down after it until rubble buried the battlefield.

’Just like that, all evidence... Gone. Replaced.’

Where he remembered the nest, Quinlan’s earth magic compressed the wreckage around the supporting pillars, filling the hollow. Once the steam cleared, Quinlan sealed the vent too.

A rough slope of broken masonry covered the smooth cuts of his spells, and Quinlan opened a way from their gallery into the surveyed corridor.

"There we go. Shall we head back?"

Marielle looked up at the crimson grin.

What the fuck was he?

She’d been so certain there was a man’s face beneath that helmet, yet she’d never seen it. He’d let her call him a fool all morning while hiding what he was.

"Andre... A... monster..."

The words scraped through her damaged mouth. He bent closer to hear her, holding her against his chest.

"I know."

"No... Under... armour..."

She couldn’t make the words come quickly enough to warn her husband. The queen recognized whatever was beneath that armour, and her children obeyed it. How many people had walked past Black without knowing what was hidden beside them?

Andre looked from his wife’s ruined face to Black’s helmet. His arm tightened around her.

"Not... human..." she rasped.