The spires of Crystal Castle stretched upwards towards the ashy skies.
Topaz Flame remembered when the sight of the castle inspired awe. She had only been a filly back then, in the days before the Conquering. Back then, those peaks and towers seemed to stretch on forever, gleaming with the radiance of a flaming rainbow.
There was none of that now. What had once been scintillating, brilliant crystal was now a mass of imposing, black obsidian. The jagged edges stabbed into the clouds like knives, where they disappeared somewhere in the mists that forever obscured the sun.
What had once inspired pride now inspired fear. Deep, bone-chilling fear.
For a moment, she was tempted to step back. Run back home, to her mother and her sisters, to hide away from all of this. She could feel safe there, if only for a little while, and pretend nothing was wrong. But like a foal hiding under the covers, it would do nothing to save her from what was out there.
The slightest infraction meant the mines. It meant the tunnels of death, treading in knee-deep slurry, as whatever was in the mines slowly poisoned a pony to death. It meant a slow, lingering death in the darkness burrowed deep into the hills outside of the Crystal Empire.
One bump of his cart against the wrong soldier, and her father had been seized at once. No trial, no questions, not even a chance to bid farewell to his wife and children. There were only his eyes, defeated and sullen, as they glanced to his eldest daughter from inside the barred cart trudging along towards the mines.
There was but one recourse left to her now.
The Crystal Empire had always been a haven for love of all kinds. Eros and Psyche had existed in balance here, two sides of the same coin, one and the same. With the Conquering, Sombra had cast Psyche down from the heavens. It was Eros who held sole dominion upon this land now.
It was still love, of a sort. A corrupted, savage, defiling love, but love all the same. There was room yet for what Topaz had to offer.
Maybe.
The king was said to have a particular liking for young mares, after all. There was a chance that he might find favor in her, who had so recently celebrated her twentieth year.
Topaz took a deep breath and heaved a deep sigh. The air smelled like smoke. Everything smelled like smoke these days.
She balled her hands into fists and stepped forwards.
Topaz was surprised that the king had granted her an audience at all.
The guards at the gate had leered at her silently, their faces obscured by steel masks and glowing slit-eyes. They had made no indication that they had even heard her request. And yet right as she had turned to leave and try another way, the gates had opened, and the guards had gestured for her to enter.
Now she stood before the doors of the throne room, before a set of great doors that creaked opened on squeaking hinges into the cavernous interior of the throne room.
The halls were the same glossy black as the spires outside. Torches lining the pillars cast a harsh, pale light along a path that led to a throne of blocky crystal. The air was cold, like a winter’s chill without breeze.
And there, upon the massive seat, sat the king.
King Sombra stared down at Topaz’s figure, sitting up from his reclining position to look down to her with a furrowed brow. The timid clopping of Topaz’s hooved feet upon the hard ground was greeted with the sound of creaking metal, as the king’s gauntlets briefly flexing. The scarlet cape draped around his broad shoulders hid little, his front bared to reveal the chiseled, tense musculature beneath.
I am powerful, he seemed to say. I could rend you in two with my bare hands alone.
Indeed, by Topaz’s estimate, the king could circle his hands around her waist and have his fingertips touch. His sheer size was awe-inspiring.
Topaz stopped before the king and timidly bowed her head. She caught sight of the hungry light in his eyes. Though she could not see his face, the heat of his scanning gaze sent a shiver down her spine. She was inexperienced, not innocent. She knew what was on the king’s mind, and what she was about to give up to him.
“Your Majesty,” Topaz stated. She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded in spite of the fear rising up within her. “I come with a request.”
At first there was only the sound of his breath, slow and massive like that of a slumbering dragon. Topaz flinched when a rich, sonorous voice answered her, a voice that could only be a King’s.
“Name it.”
Topaz dared not look upwards into his face. She spoke the words she had rehearsed so many times the night before.
“Your soldiers have sent my father to the mines. His name is Onyx Flame. He did no wrong, and he was sent there anyway. I come bearing an offering in exchange for his freedom.”
Topaz heard the king’s tail shift against the dais of the throne with a soft sweeping sound. “What do you bring?” he asked.
“Myself,” Topaz answered, all but squeaking the word, still not daring to lift her head. “I offer myself.”
At first the king made no reply. There was only the heavy silence of the hall and Topaz’s own pounding heart. The urge to flee rose higher and higher, nearly compelling her to do just that until he spoke once again.
“Look into my face.”
It was an order, not a request. Topaz trepidatiously lifted her head to meet the king’s gaze.
She could practically feel the heat emanating from his crimson irises. They slowly rose upwards from her hooved feet to lock onto her own eyes directly. The faintest glow of emerald green flashed from them, eliciting an involuntary shudder.
He stepped off the throne, his boots echoing upon the ground as he slowly stepped directly before Topaz. She could only look up to him in fright and awe, her hand unconsciously tightening her gown around her as if that could hide her from his piercing look.
The warmth of the king’s body was impossible to ignore from so close. It seemed to draw her in, away from the unwelcome cold of the black crystal. The scent of him rose off his frame from beneath his cape, meeting her nose with the unmistakable scent of raw stallion.
“You would free your father?” he asked.
Topaz nodded meekly at the king’s question.
“Then it’s done,” he answered, face inscrutable. “Come.”
He turned away, the hem of his cape brushing briefly against Topaz’s knees as he made for the back of the room, to the corridors behind the throne. She stood transfixed at the sight of the king’s retreating figure, briefly wondering if it had all been real, if he had really just gotten what she had come for.
“Come,” he repeated, a little louder this time, without looking over his shoulder.
Topaz did not need to be told thrice. She briskly stepped forwards to follow the king where he was leading her.
The sudden sound of the door closing made Topaz jump, even though she knew it was coming.
She had found herself jumping at the shadowy, strange shapes that seemed to roam inside the halls just outside where the torches shone. Eyes seemed to stare from within the crystal, leering and mocking the king’s newest guest.
Strange, then, that she found the most solace in the king. He simply moved onwards through the dim halls, unperturbed, simply passing through. He had nothing to fear here, where all life bowed at his feet and served him.
As the door closed and she turned to face the king, it was easy to see why.
Topaz turned just in time to see the king’s cape fall to the ground at his ankles. For a fleeting moment she was granted the sight of King Sombra’s figure bare from the waist up, the flickering torchlight glancing off the lines of his pectorals.
He spoke no words. He simply advanced upon Topaz before she could get a word in edgewise, his hands reaching for her back and behind her head, drawing her close against him.
Her eyes went wide and her body froze as he leaned in for a rough kiss.
No, not a kiss. A tasting. A mark of his ownership over her.
Topaz had little choice but to give in as the king ravished her. His hands squeezed tighter around her, forcing her closer as his tongue searched and pressed deep inside her mouth. He lingered in places, searching far back and around to tickle and titillate her, her voice calling out in unwitting mewls into his maw that were met with belly-deep growls of his own.
She was suddenly very conscious of her breasts pressing against his chest.
So was the king, it seemed, for his hands shifted to place themselves upon both breasts and squeeze lightly.
King Sombra abruptly withdrew from the kiss. The respite lasted but a second, long enough for Topaz to draw in enough breath for the sharp squeak that followed, when the king’s hands came up to her shoulders. He guided her down onto the bed, his grip just a little too tight for comfort as she fell back atop the sheets behind her.
The canopy of the bed filled her view, a lavish field of purple with golden threads. Topaz could only just see the top of the king’s horn bobbing at the bottom of her view, as he leaned down. With a harsh ripping sound and the tug of cloth all around her, he simply tore her gown in half.
Cold air rushed upon her bare coat, and her arm went up over her chest, tail sweeping the sheets as she closed her thighs together. It was futile, she knew. She had already given herself up to him. And yet some part of her still feared what was coming, wanted to deny him just a little longer, as if that would make her any braver.
It did nothing. The king’s hands grasped her wrists like they were made of feathers, lifting them above her head and baring her to him. She felt his eyes looking down upon her, upon the silken gold coat that had given Topaz her name, with its scintillating gemlike patterns so unique to crystal ponies.
A puff of warm air at the center of her chest was the only warning she got before she felt his tongue trace a line from the bottom of her breast to the top of her nipple.
In her position, Topaz could do nothing but arch her back as the king’s lips closed around her nipple and suckled lightly, before his tongue passed around and upon it in circling motions. She clenched her jaw shut, unable to suppress the soft whine emerging from her throat.
“Let me hear you.”
Her eyes flung open at the sound of the king’s words, the first he had spoken since they had begun.
“Give in, little one.” She felt his husky whisper at the space between her breasts. “Give in and sing for me.”
His tongue trailed again up to her other breast, and she held back no longer. She gasped and called out in unmistakable carnal pleasure.
For many long minutes he simply held her there, indulging in her nipples as his lips and tongue played all along them. The fear was still there, of surrendering to him in a way she had for no stallion, of being laid so bare for his indulgence. Yet there was a thrill here too, a primal thrill and need to give herself up.
She called out again and again, riding the electrifying notes of pleasure he brought her, upon waves that rose and fell and rose again in ways she’d never felt. Not in her deepest fantasies, not with her own fingers, not with anything or anyone.
There was no telling how many minutes the king spent there. Yet it ended abruptly, with the king moving upwards and away from her body. Part of her wanted to draw him back towards her, make him continue. The void left behind in the absence of his touch made her ache.
His hands returned to her sides to slide downwards, and her body flowed with them as she squirmed. They moved up her legs, just to the edge of her undergarments, so tantalizingly close, only to move back down again. The same treatment to her other leg, coaxing her thighs to gently part for him.
Then the sensation of his fingers hooking underneath them, stripping her bare, cold air rushing between her thighs.
Again she clasped her thighs together, a sudden rush of shame suffusing her as she turned her head to the side and hid behind her own mane. But the king was insistent, his fingers gripping her inner thighs and slowly, but firmly, making her open up for him.
She felt fingers gently playing with her, spreading her petals open to make her blossom for him. Hot breath washed over them, the king drawing in breath to take in the scent of her.
And then, a tongue.
Topaz called out to the ceiling and arched her back again, hips thrust forwards to meet him as he began to taste her down below. Slow, tender, yet with a raw strength behind it. The hot wetness between her thighs spilled onto the sheets and soaked into them, letting her arousal mingle with the heady scent that rose from the king’s own figure.
He spread her wide with his muzzle, searched inside to sample every little crevice, circled around the most sensitive places that made her cry out the loudest. And then all too soon, he stopped.
Topaz almost felt indignant. She exhaled in a plaintive whine, aching for the king’s ministrations again. She looked down just in time to meet his hungry, piercing gaze as he met her muzzle for another kiss.
She could taste herself upon the king’s lips and tongue. Salty-sweet and musky. It mingled tantalizingly with the scents rising from him, intensifying from down below as he scrambled with his trousers until he too lay bare atop her.
Musk. Sweat. Distilled and raw, filling her nose. She bathed in it, pressed herself into it as he rubbed the scent of himself upon her. His pride rested on her belly, as heavy and thick as her arm, enticing her with what was to follow.
There was no denying him now.
He was shifting atop her, reaching down to line himself with her entrance. Broad, larger than life, pressing insistently at her entrance. Her hips squirmed against him, shifting back in residual fear. A few fingers, that had been all she had ever managed. But this? This was different.
With a harsh thrust and a grunt, it was done.
She screamed into the ceiling as she felt him push inside, stretching her as wide as she would go without breaking. The straining girth threatened to break her in half as it pushed harder, deeper inside her.
Topaz could smell blood in the air, and feel the flare of pain down below. And yet she didn’t move to stop him.
The king burrowed further and further, stopping only to let her adjust for a moment before pushing deeper, simply making room for himself if there wasn’t any. The sheer weight of his length inside seemed to weigh her hips down, her legs spreading out wide as if that could make the entrance any easier.
He growled like an animal, the vibrations running deep from his belly against her own. Topaz flexed reflexively, eliciting another, louder sound from the king.
A brief rush of satisfaction filled her at the thought of pleasuring him like this.
The king pulled back, tugging his hips back until his medial ring popped out again.
And then slowly, he pushed back inside, to the hilt again.
Back slowly again, and then forwards, a little faster and a little harder.
And then he simply let loose.
The king all but slammed his hips forwards and lost himself to the pleasure Topaz gave him. Not a mating, not a lovemaking, but a claiming. Topaz was his, and his alone.
In the throes of what followed, Topaz lost herself to him. As the king made her a mare - his mare - she craved more. Let him hurt her. Let him break her, if he so chose. She had given herself to him, and she would offer even more if it meant more of this.
He certainly didn’t spare her. The raw strength sent the bed creaking and Topaz’s body aching. A true king, strong for his mare. Something deep down wanted nothing more than to live like this forever, beneath the king’s ravishing, ready to pleasure him and bear his children until the end of time.
She no longer cared about the noises she made. Topaz was loud and unashamed in her need for him, as the king brought her soaring high up to climatic bliss, feeling herself gliding back to earth only to rise back down, only to skyrocket back upwards amidst the peaks of orgasmic bliss. And he answered her cries with harsh animal growls of his own.
She felt him widen and flare out inside her, and she knew he was close.
With one last harsh grunt and a long shout into the ceiling, he released into her.
Hot, thick warmth, as thick as glue, clinging deep inside her. His throbbing, kicking length sending out long, stringy gushes of the stuff deep into her womb. She let out a shrill yell, squeezing hard around him, accepting his seed eagerly as he flooded her womb with the warmth of his essence.
At long last he fell to earth, panting harshly, settling his heavy weight atop her as he simply nestled atop her in the warmth they now shared. There was something like fondness in the way he gently nosed at her neck, letting the hot rushes of air from his nose puff all along her sensitive hide. Topaz herself could do nothing but simply take him, feeling tremors run down each leg as her feet kicked to the sides, before latching around the king to keep him deep inside her.
It was merely the first of many such claimings to come. Topaz knew it. The king would surely see to it that she kept her pact.
But where before there was fear, there was now a deep desire for the king.