Antierra Manifesto – blog post #91

(In which Tiki’s training demonstrates a flaw in the use of emotion when engaged in one-on-one to the death fight – or, when things are not what they appear to be.)

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Always when I say thank you to these women they remain surprised, even shocked.  It is the word you use to men, not to women.  For someone to thank them means recognition of their humanity, equality, worth.  That simple word goes a long way anywhere it is used but never more so than here.
“Ready Tiki?”
“Yes.  I drink, I feel strong.  Ready.  More sword?”

End blog post #90
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Begin blog post #91

“Not today but tomorrow morning again.  The sword.”  I take it as she hands it to me to file – as trainer I’m also weapons master – and I pick the rapier and dagger combo.  I hand her the set to strap her belt on and I do the same.  We both test our weapons, stepping on the blade of the rapier and bending to find weaknesses, cracks or to test if the steel has lost its resilience and remains bent.  We check the daggers for bad edges or broken points.  These of course have all of those faults but this is the proper thing to do with new weapons before any fight and I insist the training includes every aspect of the official arena fight protocol.  In the arena, if a weapon shows defective and the weapons judge agrees it must be replaced with a new one.  A quick test can save your life.

We take our stances and begin.  You move much faster with the rapier.  It’s not meant to slash but only to stab.  It’s all body work, placing the body out of reach, parrying a thrust, jumping forward, backward, dancing, one arm out to maintain balance or to create a feint.  On Old Earth they called this ‘fencing’ though the term always amused me.  There is nothing amusing here, as these deadly blades keep thrusting at your naked flesh.  There is no place on the body you cannot stab.  All is fair game.  The extended arm, unlike in fencing, is there also to make that sudden grab for the dagger, in a killing move inside the challenger’s defence or to throw at a vulnerable spot to disable or kill.

Tiki has obviously trained on this set because her skills are superior to mine and her speed almost on par.  My bionic ankle allows me to take chances on balance which she cannot.  I can see her wondering how I do certain moves and trying to mimic them.  That’s what I want – to see her push herself beyond her set limits and discover new abilities.  Faster we move, parrying and stabbing with lightning strokes.  She scores on my thigh and I get her on the arm.  Gasping for breath and having drawn blood, I signal a break.  She pulls back and refuses to let me see she is tired and thirsty.  She holds the sword poised, ready to start again. 

I motion break again and gingerly put my sword down.  She jumps at me and if I hadn’t been expecting it and drawn my dagger to parry she would have had me in the heart.  I don’t think she would have gone through with the move this time, but in the arena nothing would have stopped her.  As it is I barely escape the thrust by sliding sideways and catching her just slightly off-balance, send her flying to the stones.  Then I pick up my rapier again to lunge but she’s already flying out of reach and ready to fight again.

Now she needs a serious lesson on obedience to a command.  I heft the rapier in my left hand, my dagger in the right and crossing them advance on her.  She attacks below the cross as I expected her to do.  Flipping the light dagger down and turning the rapier forward I trap her move and put the tip of my sword to her throat and push in just enough to draw blood.  She cannot move at all and does not know what to do.

“Drop your weapon, gora!” I order her in a deep throaty voice.  “Drop or die!”  She glares at me and drops it.  I pull back.  “Why did you not stop when I signal for break, Tiki?”

“I could finish fight.  I could kill challenger.  He drop sword.  I move in to finish…”

“You were caught in an evil fighter trance Tiki and I could have killed you.  You made a very big mistake.  Never do that again.  If there is a next time, you die for sure.  I won’t play these stupid games.  Death is always on the line and challengers never play games.” 

She lowers her face and holds her hands open and out to indicate her total acceptance and subservience.  “Yes master.  I very sorry.  Never, never do that again.  Too much into fight.  Trapped by desire to win.  Not play game.”

“You understand then.  Good.  I have news for you: arena fight next week.  Weapons choice made three days before the fight – you are very lucky to be given three days to train with chosen fight weapon.  You are a very lucky woman, understand?”     

This episode has strained our relationship somewhat and made me think.  Time for her to find another mate in the cages.  I approach the remaining “Concubine” – she calls herself ‘Satka’ and ask her if she would like to have another partner to train and fight with.  She looks at me with that strange look some women get when addicted to killing.  Dangerous, borderline dikfol even, but the kind I believe Tiki needs to associate with to learn the difference between her deadly inbred professional killer mind and that of an emotional killer. 

I ask as a favour to me, “Would you take my slave Tiki as your slave and partner?”

She makes a gesture and gives me a thin, crooked smile.  “Cannot refuse, Anti.  I take.  I watch her train.  She very good, hard fighter.  Together we kill men, many men.  I avenge my sister lover now, sure.  I take her.”  She hesitates then in a moment of daring, whispers to me,  “She come to me for night too?”

“Yes, No longer mine.  All for you.  Hope you and she good together.   Watch over each other.  Take care each other.  I not interfere in personal life of you and her, promise.  Yes?”

“Yes sir.  I do this.  I pleased; great gift to me.”  And for the first time since her arrival in Hyrete, Satka is smiling.   

So yes, I’ve become a manipulator.  But in my heart I know I’m motivated by compassion, there being no hope here of personal gain.  It is not easy to give Tiki up.  She has been my companion for some years now and I have motherly feelings for her.  I’m sending her into a new life, a dangerous unknown.  It seems a truism that whenever you want to help others improve their lives you will suffer loss and pain.  This has been true for me in hundreds of remembered incarnations.  If I wanted to break that pattern I should certainly have avoided this little trip through the crushing labyrinthine pressures within the confines of Malefactus… and specifically within the stone walls of Hyrete.

End blog post #91

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #85

Late again… resuming blog posting of the “Manifesto”… 

“You are too hard on yourself, almost to the point of blindness.  If you refuse to see the good you have brought here by your sacrifices how will you ever succeed?  Antierra – you will die in that arena, perhaps soon.  The auto-med reports many failures in setting things to right in your body.  The Warmo did things to you we cannot repair.  Your heart is damaged but not all of your damage is physical, do you understand?  You must regain control of yourself for this world still desperately needs you.

End blog post #84
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Begin blog post #85

“By the standards of Hyrete fighters you are the longest surviving ever.  Granted you began your fighting at an approximate age of twenty-five compared to the usual age of sixteen for regularly bred fighters.  But that only means you had much less training and experience when you were pitted against some of the best challengers in the realm.  Still, no fighter has ever lived past thirty in the official records.  You are approximately thirty seven.  Just a reminder to you that you held on in hope of accomplishing more.  And you may yet. 

“I’ve heard of your ‘Teaching’ among the women.  The slave you call Tiki tried to explain it to YBA4 in the kitchens.  I understand it not at all – seems foolishness to me, but I won’t be caught underestimating you again.  Just be careful with that line of ‘work’ because the men are nervous and it would take but a spark to ignite a pogrom against all the females of this realm, perhaps in the entire world.  You have brought all of us to a critical point.  We are not all as certain of what lies beyond death as you are, you know.  However short, however terrible its circumstances, life remains precious to us all.”

I know what he is saying.  He looks so sad and I feel self-conscious and stupid for being the cause of so much upset.  One of my Altarian elder teachers had given me the following proposition to work through: 

1. a) Prepare yourself with all the knowledge you can, train yourself in manifestation and self-regeneration, go to this world you speak of and cause the change you believe will help the people there and save your other world you call Earth, if that is what you know you must do.
2. b) Follow the path of Ultimate Logic and close off the parts of your life that had anything to do with Earth and her stack worlds as you know them to exist. Take the rest cure you earned, change yourself and return to us for re-assignment when you feel ready for something else, perhaps somewhat less daunting?  There are a number of worlds assigned to us now being terra-formed and populated.  They could use your expertise.

“Know this, then: there is nothing anywhere that can be used to measure or determine which of your choices will cause the greatest ‘good’ in the aeons to follow.  The good you choose to do today may be the great evil of tomorrow.  The world you save today may become your nemesis of tomorrow.  The evil you pursue to destroy may yet claim you also.  Conversely if you do nothing, the results may still be the same.  The question is for your mind alone.  We can neither agree nor disagree with your choices.  For at the avatar level of mind all choices you make are entirely your own and you live by them until you change them.”

I turn to the doctor again.

“I understand only too well Bal.  Don’t you realize how much I wish I could do it all myself without involving others in the additional sacrifices demanded by planned change?  That cannot be.  As I chose then, they too must choose now.  And so must the men.  When a world succumbs to a particular evil, Bal, the people on that world must wake up to it and decide eventually to fight it or be destroyed by it.  This is as true of individuals as it is of worlds.  This I have seen in my travels.  That was the fate of Old Earth: that her people refused to see the obvious evil that was destroying the fabric of their societies and continued in it long after there was even any point to it.  Result?  Billions died Bal.  Billions!  For nothing.  It did not have to play out that way.  There are always two paths for every ISSA.  Always choice, always.”     

Chapter 35 – Training Tiki – Clumsy Attempt on my Life

I am sad to leave the comfort of Bal’s place and the peace of mind given me by the Cydroids’ presence.  But if I’m to remain here longer I have to return to the training compound; to my world.  I walk slowly back unescorted as is now my unofficial ‘right’ to do.  It’s the third day of the week, early morning and the sun is already beating down into the courtyards.  Some passages are stifling hot.

Not much has changed, I notice as I re-enter the training areas.  There has been some rain and the stones were swept clean and washed.  The smell is a bit more tolerable and there’s a steady breeze blowing, cooling the space of reflected heat from the midday sun.  The women are lined up, sparring savagely against each other, their white bodies shining with sweat.  Some already have bloody cuts and black bruises.  I may not have mentioned it before but many women die in these training sessions.  Often the training is used as an excuse to kill a rival who may have ‘stolen’ a lover or to get rid of a suspected snitch.  The hated woman will be fighting her opponent when set upon from behind by another trainee in league with her own opponent.

Training kills are superficially investigated and seldom punished.  It is considered as maintenance costs.  The male thinking is that any trainee who lets herself get killed in training wouldn’t be worth putting in the arena.

I introduce myself to the new trainers and am escorted to Delton’s office, the overseer.  I bow to him and wait to be addressed.   

“Hah, our killer slave return from dead.  You look disgusting.  I hear they be discussing your execution huh?  Good.  You past prime now.  Die soon.  Killing orgy, I be thinking.  Good to watch.  I get ticket, yeah.  You be wanting?”

“I be wanting to train slave was in my cage, slave #1339-32-19?”

“Ah, that young one, she be good sex.  I enjoy her much.  Wiry bitch.  Deek?”  He yells out the door of the office to an assistant sitting at one of the tables playing cards.  “Off your lazy ass.  Get the ‘teela’ from kitchen, now!”

Within a couple of minutes he returns with Tiki in tow, dragging her roughly.  She sees me and her face for a moment lights up then she also bows, hiding her face in her hair.  Delton eyes her and is thinking to take her in front of me just for the malice of it.  He senses I wouldn’t care and says:  “Take the teela.  Train good and I fight it myself, beat it down and fuck it for you.  You watch.”

If I did not understand the ‘moods’ of Malefactus I would have been horrified at his whole attitude, indecency, crassness and hate.  This is nothing to get twisted about.  A man may be kind and considerate to you one day and treat you as filth the next.  I take three ‘reverent’ steps backward, as does Tiki.  Then we turn and walk to the end of the training line.

End blog post #85

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #73

No, this will not happen.  I have a job to do.  My training and my enhancements were all gifts to me exactly for this moment.  XBA9 was tortured to death so I would have this opportunity.  This is one of those classic turning points in history when one person, one “hero” can make the difference and everything changes, forever.
End blog post #72
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Begin blog post #73

Chapter 32 – The Fight of the Beasts – Part One

The evening before the fight gives us a clear sky with glowing red clouds in a fiery sunset.  The setting sun sends off rays all the way to the meridian above the keep.  It is beautiful.  I ask my handlers if I can just stand for a while and watch the patterns in the sky, alone.  To my surprise they acquiesce to my request and two of them stand almost respectfully at some distance behind me, also staring into the beauty spread so lavishly above us.  Suddenly they both approach me and hold my arms gently.  One of them puts his hand under my chin as I instinctively bow my head in submission and makes me look into his face.  He pulls me slowly to himself and kisses me, as he’s undoubtedly seen women do with each other many times. 

This too is another of those massive breakthroughs. 

The other looks perplexed by his partner’s move, then tries it also.  I kiss him back warmly and gently.  I move my hand to his penis and it is fully erect, hard in my hand.  I fondle him.  He understands now at least one of the uses of kissing.  To him it had always been nothing more than some kind of stupid display of female emotion and weakness. 

Both of them take me around the back of the weapons cases and make love to me.  Yes, they actually make love.  They allow me to play them and arouse them fully before they come.  It is pleasant; it is good; it is like giving the finger to that terrible Force that my “high” sense keeps telling me uses the artificial world of Albaral to poison the men’s minds against women on this world.  No it’s even better than that.  It’s an awakening for the three of us. A bonding that can never be reversed.

They walk me back slowly to the cages.  Tiki is standing, a bit worried I think, maybe jealous.  I take her in my arms and for a long time after the gate has closed and the handlers have walked away we hold and caress each other.  I see many faces turned to me, to us.  On those faces closest to me I see smiles – smiles!  I smile back at them then Tiki and I slip down together into the straw and soon fall asleep.  Another dreamless, innocent sleep that ends with the morning call.  I awaken from a great distance and immediately realize what day this is.

It has been said that ‘only the dead do not know fear’ but if that is true then I must surely be dead.  I do not feel fear.  I feel as a bride on her wedding day.  This is when it comes together for me. 

So many paths, so many twists, turns, dead ends.  But this path has been the most trying.  For years I struggled on it and the thorns, thistles, broken branches and fallen trees kept blocking my advance, tripping me, crushing my bones and making me bleed.  For some days now I’ve stopped struggling and now the path is clear. 

Ahead, in a clear bright light I see one single set of stairs and two altars.  The one on the left is covered with a pure white linen cloth on which the sacrificial victim must lie to be offered in death to the god.  Beside it stands the high priest with the sacrificial knife to cut the victim’s heart out.  Yes, I remember that part.

On the other is a wonderful set of deadly blades and a knight with a golden sword half drawn waiting to knight me and hand me the blades. 

It’s a simple, age-old choice. 

One, I believe and I trust the High Priest to know better than I ever could.  In his hands I die a sacrifice to the God as I have been in the habit of doing over and over. 

Two, I walk to the Knight, kneel, accept the knighthood proffered.  I take the weapons, walk past the altar into the room where the demon in black metal armour awaits my entrance.  He is ready to fight me, dishonour me, kill and devour me along with all I have ever loved and cared for, living or dead.

That is the choice I have been moving towards since I evolved into ISSA consciousness.  This choice determines whether I graduate, or remain in obedient subservience and servitude to a Higher Power.

I choose the weapons.  I go to meet Warmo.  It is time.

End blog post #73

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #63

(Ah, where does the time go? Late again, but here’s blog post #63 and the story is back on track.)

(from blog post #62)  The petrified trembling girl dropped her staff in utter terror of striking the king and for that little mistake was promptly decapitated by her reproving lover.  In a final tribute to the supremacy of malehood, the king then proceeded to have sex with the decapitated body.  A fitting end to a perfect week to commemorate the enthroning of Clown Prince Jestor to king of the fair land of Elbre.

(Note: my use of the word Clown rather than Crown is deliberate)
“M. D.”

End blog post #62
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Begin blog post #63

Chapter 27 – The ‘Teaching’ Begins

It’s been over a month since I’ve heard anything from either the Cydroids or seen Dr. Echinoza.  I suspect he went on one of his “R and R” trips to the south with Yoba Five, or one of the Yoba’s.  In the meantime I have had six more turns into the arena.  I am a new person in two very remarkable ways.  One, my bionic implants work to perfection, matched as I was told, by whatever else was done to my skin and I suspect, to my brain.  There is a new clarity and speed I have to actually pull back on to appear at least nominally ‘human’ to challengers, observers and watchers.

In any official arena combat, all participants are assessed on performance.  Every move is observed by cameras and human recorders.  Most of the observation is for legal purposes, to reveal if laws are being flouted or broken so penalties can be applied.  For example, if a challenger uses a poisoned tip without having cleared it with the arena and paid the proper fee that allows use of such a poison, he will be fined, or if it causes the premature death of an expensive fighter, may cause the forfeit his own life.

Female fighters are assessed for future value in the gambling circuit and they also are watched for breaking laws.

An example of a move that will certainly get you flogged to death: approaching a challenger and suddenly releasing sand trapped in the hand into his eyes, temporarily blinding him to administer the ‘coup de grace’.

Thus are we watched and all our moves carefully recorded and gone over by statisticians.  My personalized and famous killing kick had to be entered as a permissible move before I could duplicate it in an official combat.  All fighting must be done using only the weapons provided.  If a weapon is dropped, you cannot use your feet or hands to tackle your opponent.  Unless you can regain your weapon, you die.  If you use your body and succeed in overthrowing your opponent, then you have to kill him with your bare hands, or with a kick.  If you do so, you will be tortured to death as a murderer.

Isn’t it interesting how the laws of any land can be twisted to fit any kind of immoral concept?  Think about this.  On Malefactus I have no status as a human being.  I’m not even an animal, just a thing with some monetary value attached to it.  Yet I can commit a crime punishable by the most violent form of punishment – physical torture.  Who stops to think that through?  Well, since it serves the ruling class – the males – there is no reason for them to question it and since I have no legal status to question anything they do, I cannot question it.  A perfect combination.  Reminds me of many laws I studied on Old Earth, especially those to do with slavery and post-slavery days on some worlds before the great die-back.  Similar irrational laws governed the interaction between labour and management and whether corporations could be held accountable for crimes committed against humanity when all along they paid taxes (or made a pretense to) and received benefits under the law as did private citizens.

Here’s another thought on the same subject regarding organized sports.  On any world where such gratuitous forms of violence are still indulged in, it has been my observation that organized sports of any kind require a plethora of arcane rules to remain interesting to spectators or to make any sense, especially to define one’s performance within the sport to those who participate in it.  Shouldn’t that tell you something about the actual ‘value’ of such sport?  Any remotely intelligent encounter with such a put-up job would be to walk away from it.  But as here, in Hyrete, the opposite happens.  People flock to observe these insane and immoral activities and willingly part with large sums of money to do so.

Of my six encounters now since my implants, none were even close to a challenge but I did manage to make it look as if I was working.  I performed what the crowds hate the most but get the hottest about – evasive manoeuvres, drawing my opponent behind me as I back away from him, tiring him out from walking through the sand.  The most difficult part for me is getting slightly wounded without incurring serious cuts or blows.  I have to show I am working, but I cannot afford to get seriously hurt because the local medics may discover my implants and jeopardize the Koronese effort on Malefactus.  I promised to be careful.  It’s a very difficult act to perform.

Sometimes, when I let my feelings dominate for an instant I want to reach out with my bare hands, pluck the little fuck by the neck and just squeeze with those impeccably reliable bionic wrist implants and watch his eyeballs pop out.

Oh, am I shocking you?  Did you think that for a moment there I was no longer human?  What, and miss all the fun of living on this world?  OK, so I feel sorry later.  I confess to myself how wrong, how dangerous, how deleterious, how openly evil  it is for me to entertain such thoughts.  But in the heat of the fight, it helps me focus… until I find something better to occupy my thoughts with, or until they finally kill me.

I know there will be, there must be, an execution in my future or at the very least a killing orgy.  No woman ever survives the arena.  It will end here.

In between these fights I train many women.  Having lowered my speech standards to theirs, and having once more bounced back from what they were sure was my certain death, thus becoming to some a kind of local hero, to others the reincarnation of their Desert Beast Goddess, several now speak to me even though they certainly fear me.  I don’t mind the fear because it works for my long-term plans.

As I tap into my “other” memories I keep introducing new fighting methods, new moves, tricks, attacks that do not appear as attacks.  After all these are women.  Their brains work like women.  They innately know how to seduce men.  This can be done in many ways, not only sexually but as fighters.  Even in the arena they are still women, they are not men.  They are more subtle, less likely to charge mindlessly at an opponent.  They are the ones who finesse the combat, who quite often call the shots as it were.  With self-empowerment they can have much control over how it plays out.

But first I must make ‘her’ aware of her power as a sexual being.  What stance to take when a man approaches with an erection to plunge into her.  What feelings to bring forth for him to absorb.  I explain that it should not be hateful, neutral or submissive.  That is the one place where her female body can be activated to weaken the male without his realizing it.  The way to his power is through his emotions.  That is his greatest weakness.  Males cannot muster up emotional shields against a woman’s sexual love advances.  He can only counter with physical barriers but most of the time he finds himself powerless to do so.

“You must learn to seduce them to you not just for quick favours but to steal their will power, their male power.  You must learn how to take that into yourselves.  That is what I used to do on Túat Har.  Any woman can steal a man’s energy through sex but few men can do the same with a woman.  She basically has to let him do it to her.  Here you have forgotten this and it has made you weak and fearful.  Even those of you who use anger against men, you are weak.  Anger is the last refuge of fear.  It is your greatest weakness.

You have become slaves of men from the original shock of losing all that was familiar and natural to you.  That is what the black metallic demons stole from you.  What you don’t realize yet is that this ancient female power has come back for you.  It is here, within you again.

“There is a story from Old Earth of a very strong man whose power was in his hair.  He told no one this and he was able to fight hundreds of armed men and kill them.  He could take doors like that one – I point to the massive portal of the keep’s main entrance – and carry them on his shoulders to the top of a hill.  He could kill huge wild beasts with his bare hands.  But he was seduced by a woman and one day he told her his secret.  She cut his hair and he became weak.  He was imprisoned by his enemies and they gouged out his eyes.  But over time they forgot about cutting his hair and his strength returned.  One day he was chained between two massive main towers that held up a stone temple like this place, and thousands of his enemies were inside celebrating.  The man flexed his muscles and knew his power had come back.  He pulled on the towers and collapsed the building, killing himself and all those inside.  Thousands of his enemies died in one day.

“Remember this story.  See this man as each one of you.  As a woman on this world, realize always that the power they took away from you has come back.  Yes, they have taken your freedom away and made laws so you remain slaves of men.  But it need not remain that way.  All you need to do is focus your mind on your female energies.  Not to survive a fight against a male in the arena, that’s nothing.  But to regain your freedom as women; as full human beings.  That is what you once were…”

I go on like this, day after day, to one, two, sometimes more women while one of them watches for eavesdroppers (snitches) or men lurking about trying to hear what we are saying.  Technically I am not supposed to talk to the women but I have demonstrated time and again, the necessity of the need to verbally explain new or revolutionary ideas.  I have shown the men the advantage of allowing me these law-bending freedoms by the money they have made from my innovations in fighting techniques – not to mention the improvements on the weapons the women use.

Yes, many of the women are frightened by my words and the ideas they create in their minds.  I have to keep reminding them that they are going to be killed violently regardless of what they do, or do not.

End blog post #63

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #62

(Something a bit different, a break in the story that explains a bit more about the politics of T’Sing Tarleyn. Thankfully short!)

For more information on the early life of Chang-X, see Rise of the Supremacy – Its Military Strategy – Melkiar Invasions and Aftermath by Michele Dellman, freelance journalist and Supremacy chronicler with contributing annotations by Deles Kotmallo of Parnako. The following report is intended to help the reader understand how Elbre was ruled and what that meant for the women of that land, in case there are still doubts.

End blog post #61
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Begin blog post #62

 As found in earlier writings by chronicler of T’Sing Tarleyn history, Michele Dellman

 re: King Jestor Tassard of Elbre by Michele Dellman.

 King Jestor (Yes, it is  pronounced ‘jester’) Tassard the One Thousandth Three Hundred and Three was the king of Elbre until the hundredth day before the arrival of An’Tierra on T’Sing Tarleyn {ref: Avatari and WindWalkers – the tales of Al’Tara by Deles Kotmalo}  At that time he was deposed through the simple but expedient and definitive process we call murder, by his own son who became king Jestor Tassard the One Thousandth Three Hundred and Twenty Eight.  It must be noted that the son only followed his father’s example.  Jestor the “OTTHT” (not to be confused with his son, Jestor the “OTTHTE) had also murdered his own father to gain access to the throne.  It’s a little family tradition that has served them well, so why should we question it?

The number, by the way,  does not refer to how many “Jestors” have ridden the throne of Elbre to ignominy and infamy, but to the year of investiture of power of that particular Jestor. 

 “Old” king Jestor Tassard (Jestor the “OTTHT’) is an avid spectator and promoter of organized sports – of one organized sport, actually.  On the day of his bloody climb aboard the throne of Elbre – a kind of coronation à la Napoleon that included the sudden, inexplicable but timely death of his father–(the inexplicability of it already explained) he held the most lavish of feasts.  It became known in the Annals of the King Elbre as the greatest display of state sanctioned pleasure-killings ever organized in the kingdom city.

 As per the records kept by the Arena Council of Hyrete, three hundred and eight female fighters, concubines as well as hapless birth mothers, female sex slaves and worker drones, were officially butchered in the Hyrete arena, most of them under the approving eyes of the new king, his jealous uncle and heir apparent and their respective retinues.

The event lasted from sunrise to sunset over a period of exactly six days.  It is assumed by this researcher that on the seventh day, the poor king desperately needed an extended rest period.  The very last victim to grace the arena and titillate the entirely male spectator crowd was the king’s own beautiful young concubine whom he personally escorted, with a complement of twelve aides, down unto the bloody sands of the arena floor where she was stripped and handed a weapon – a staff actually – with which to defend herself from, and attack to kill, her challenger whom as you have likely deduced, was none other than king Jestor himself.

The petrified trembling girl dropped her staff in utter terror of striking the king and for that little mistake was promptly decapitated by her reproving lover.  In a final tribute to the supremacy of malehood, the king then proceeded to have sex with the decapitated body.  A fitting end to a perfect week to commemorate the enthroning of Clown Prince Jestor to king of the fair land of Elbre.

(Note: my use of the word Clown rather than Crown is deliberate)

“M. D.”

End blog post #62