Disclaimers: See Chapter 1
Additional Note (Please Read): This tale is a companion with, Xena & Gabrielle: A Turn of Fate. If you haven't read both stories' chapters preceding this one, you should do so now. Thanks to my beta, Jinxie 2013 and a special thanks to my readers who waited patiently, I hope. A shout out to Solitarius-X, please continue to read and enjoy the commencement of Phase Two. ;-)
The Conqueror & Ri,
A Twist of Destiny,
By, Ahkiken
Chapter 31: Stratification
The cropped blonde reclined on the beautiful furs that covered the bed, awaiting her gorgeous lover who'd just arrived in their bedchamber. Gabrielle was a tad apprehensive, brought on by the apropos of what the raven-haired beauty and herself had arranged for the night. She managed to supplant her anxiety with fervency at seeing the tall goddess trekking forward to stand in front of her. The bronzed-skinned woman peered down at Gabrielle's nakedness, displaying unmistakable intent.
"Seems you are ready for me." She teased, donned in a red, silk robe that was slightly parted, revealing her ample cleavage.
"If you'd taken longer, I would have started without you." Gabrielle's witticism skirted on playfulness. "You know how I can become impatient."
"Oh, I'm aware." Xena retorted, massaging one of the bard's calves. "It's a shame I didn't come later. I would've loved to watch you touch yourself."
Returning a prurient grin, Gabrielle spread her legs. "I can still put on a show for you, if that's what you want."
"I don't think so." Xena expanded the petite female's appendages wider, lowering her body between them. "Your precious pussy is mine now."
Gabrielle sighed from the contact of her bare skin touching the texture of Xena's robe. Placing small hands on her wife's cheekbones, she coaxed their lips to meet in a slow, sensual kiss, which exceedingly transformed into something more as both women's passion rose. Xena caressed Gabrielle's fair features while two tongues roamed deeply in each other's mouth. Foregoing any delayed pretense, Gabrielle removed her lover's silky garment, discarding it aside, so she could have access to the dark warrior's uncovered exterior, snaring darkened nipples forthwith. She enjoyed tugging on the golden rings that pierced Xena's breasts, especially whilst using her teeth.
Moaning from the feeling of evinced flesh melding into one another and the thrilled pleasure of having her nipples' rings tugged, Xena disengaged the vigorous kiss, descending to lave Gabrielle's neck. Of her own volition, the blonde's digits roved in Xena's tresses while their bodies commenced swaying together, providing some relief to her core.
However, the contentment of her clitoris being physically rubbed was superseded by the usage of the phallic instrument Xena frequently impaled her with. Although Gabrielle continued to gain satisfaction from Xena's amorous touches, she grew fond of getting penetrated repeatedly by their favorite toy to the point of climax. Her curiosity for what Xena had in stored this night, significantly aroused Gabrielle with anticipation, but she was a little aghast.
Noticing Gabrielle's tension, Xena halted her actions to assert, "We don't have to do this if you do not wish to."
"You aren't reading my mind, are you?"
"I swore I'll never do that to you." Xena answered, nipping Gabrielle's throat. "I felt you tense up. It's perspicuous that you're reluctant about doing this."
"Aren't you?" Gabrielle inquired.
"I'm terrified." Xena admitted. "But knowing you're the person I am trying this with; diminish my fear. I love you, Gabrielle."
"I love you, too." She assented, snuffing her perturbation, replacing it with adoration for the woman who yearned to share this spectacular experience. "I want to do this as well."
"Are you sure?"
Gabrielle nodded acceptance, wrapping her arms around Xena's back.
"Don't be afraid... I won't hurt you." Xena promised, repositioning herself so her sex was directly atop Gabrielle's. "I have no doubts you're greatly wet already."
The bard's appetite surged swiftly. "Maybe you should lick it to be certain."
Xena was extensively allured, but denied Gabrielle her oral pleasuring, deciding she would have to settle for a chaste osculation instead. "Nope, you'll get more than that in a moment."
Observing Xena shutting her eyes, Gabrielle feigned a pout, "But I love it when you suck me."
Xena's smile at the Amazon's comment was erased as she tried to effectuate a meditative state. "I need silence, Gabrielle. Soon, I'll be making you very noisy."
Not wishing to be a hindrance to Xena, Gabrielle clamped her mouth closed. Her heart raced from the unknown of what the powerful warrior had planned to do to her. In the quietness of their bedroom, she studied the ebony hair that cascaded on the left side of her wife's face, loving how it highlighted her renewed visage. Gabrielle would forever be astonished by Xena's restored youthfulness after convalescing from her fatal injury.
Long moments passed in advance of Xena opening her orbs, mesmerizing the lithe Samurai to stare helplessly into the irises that were locked on hers. Xena's usual eye color became more than simply blue; they turned lighter with an added crystal hue, causing them to glow. Gabrielle had witnessed the alteration of her spouse's eyes before, nonetheless, she hadn't ever seen them so up close and intimate.
Suddenly, she let loose a drawn out, soft cry of ecstasy as she felt Xena's godly, created organ carefully and sluggishly gain admission inside of her vagina. Becoming completely filled inch by inch with the organic phallus, Gabrielle's cries of rapture were matched by the woman above her who'd thrust into her velvety walls. The short-haired blonde latched onto her lover's frame tightly, instantly noting the difference between their normally used phallus and the fleshly one that was now ensconced in her canal.
She became inquisitive on what it look like, but was unable to cease looking into Xena's eyes, averting her from taking a glimpse. Once Xena was buried deep within Gabrielle, she lingered until the bard got accustomed to the size. Raising up with her hands on either side of Gabrielle's head, she prepared to deliver mighty impacts to the whimpering Amazonian Samurai whom lied beneath her.
"I knew you would be saturated..." Xena gasped, thrusting Gabrielle over and over. "Although I... I had no idea it... Would feel this wonderful."
Then, Xena's celerity displaced her moderate trusts, delving into Gabrielle's sultry wetness. Discerning she should reduce her strokes to enable delaying her orgasm, Xena couldn't control the urge to continually piston in and out of Gabrielle due to the Amazon's moans of gratification, including the sensational, succulence she was purely fucking. With every forcible plunge, aiming to coerce herself to her zenith, both she and Gabrielle's sonorous melody of lovemaking pushed Xena towards the precipice of orgasmic delectation.
Xena tenderly touched Gabrielle's cheek, espying her fluttering aqua-colored eyes change to lustful emerald because of receiving such a thorough pounding. Losing her composure for a split Cronus, caused by the excess of actually feeling Gabrielle's silken core, Xena's other hand smashed into the wall over their elegant headboard, cracking the stone. It made Gabrielle scream out from the combination of the crushing sound and Xena's last lunge inside her before withdrawing.
"Mmm, my Ryujin." Xena kept her gaze on Gabrielle, temporarily ceasing her movements to refocus her energy, her erection posed at Gabrielle's entrance. "I have to slow my pace. I want us to enjoy this for a long time."
Gabrielle groaned loudly when the godly penis entered her once more.
"Xena..." Gabrielle moaned as she awoke, gripping the middle bar of the yin-yang chakram on her lap.
Her disposition was addled by what she presumed to be a sexual dream. After the dizziness scattered, allowing her awareness to return, Gabrielle realized slick moisture permeated from the apex of her thighs and she was clutching the sharp, circular weapon. The Amazon remembered lying next to her soul mate in her cabin, dozing off quickly when she had finished talking to Harukata on the lower deck of the warship.
'Must have slept with the chakram in my hand.' Gabrielle tiredly mused, rolling on her side to relinquish the circlet weaponry onto the floor.
Finally she opened her eyes, ascertaining the sun was an hour away from shining through the morning's dawn. Closing them again, Gabrielle cogitated on the erotic fantasy she'd dreamt and how surreal it was. Throughout their relationship together, the bard and the Warrior Princess haven't once used a phallus, but the dream was coaxing Gabrielle to introduce the sex toy into their love life. Memories of the sensations she gave Xena's body last night by stroking inside her while simultaneously tonguing her clit, increased the cropped blonde's incredible horniness and the ache between her legs.
'I know Xena has to restart the Samurai's trials today, but she said we would have morning sex.'
Sleepiness exchanged places with lasciviousness and Gabrielle turned over to enclose her arm around Xena's waist, only to grasp empty space. Greenish blue spheres shot open, acknowledging she was alone.
'No you didn't, Xena!' Gabrielle sat up, irate. 'You cannot be foolish to leave me on this cot by myself, knowing we just made amends.'
Not feeling the slight rocking of the ocean waves and coming to the conclusion that the soft bedding wasn't her cot, a crease formed on Gabrielle's forehead. Viewing the semi-dark area, she perceived the capacious room wasn't her lodging either. She noticed the two windows that permitted light to shine through, illuminating her surroundings. The room's interior was decorated with pairs of chairs encircling a wooden table, a single dwarf-sized sable settee rested in the corner, a closet adorned the center wall near a desk and mirror.
'Where am I?' Gabrielle questioned mentally, fearing she already knew the answer.
Arising to her feet, the Amazon walked unsteadily towards the windowsill to open its glass, glancing at the sight of grass three stories below and a luxurious garden farther across from the room she occupied. A spectacular water fountain was enriched by the twilight and Gabrielle had no doubts about her whereabouts as she gaped at the centerpiece of it, descrying the marble-crafted, colossal replica of Xena.
She was in the Conqueror's castle.
'But how?' Gabrielle fretted. 'This can't be! I fell asleep beside Xena... I was on a vessel journeying for Japa... I must be dreaming!'
Remembrance of the ring glowing before she drowsed, flashed in Gabrielle's mind. The anathema Omphalos shard had transported her to the Conqueror's world.
"That's why I had a regular dream and not a vision." Gabrielle quietly conjectured, glaring at the silver band on her left index finger. "The shard powered up to teleport me here instead."
Next, the bard ruminated on Xena, wondering if she was cognizant of her disappearance and Ri's materialization in their world. Gabrielle worried over not knowing how the warrior would take the disclosure of her being gone. Would she accuse and harm Ri because of Gabrielle's absence, or would she be rational; gathering information from her twin, who's probably as mortified as the petite Samurai was.
The cropped blonde's disquietude had worsened once she began thinking on the agreement she and Xena struck. Her fiancée had acceded to delay her sacrifice for Japa's salvation until they were married. Also, she'd concurred to postponing her death indefinitely if Gabrielle got conveyed away by the Omphalos shard. Nevertheless, the Amazon became vexatious from pondering would their conformity remain tenable or fall into rescission now that the event they both dreaded came to pass. The heavy weight of Eli's augury, anent to the shards she and Ri wore, hit her unsparingly.
The actuality of getting separated from her soul mate, tore at Gabrielle's heart more than the troubling thoughts she subjected herself to whilst her and Xena had their truculent schism, caused by Xena's prevarication. Devastating amounts of furor, exasperation, solicitude, and helplessness, assembled in impeccable stratification within her. Falling to her knees, tears welled in Gabrielle's eyes before closing them to commence her orison to the Messiah of the Most High God. Praying with obstinacy, Gabrielle beseeched Eli to intervene on her behalf and facilitate a pathway for her to get back home; back to Xena.
'Eli, it has happened... Please, please, help me.'
A quarter of a candle-mark elapsed without the martyred man appearing, and Gabrielle capitulated to her grief. Ending her unanswered prayers, she let the salty liquid escape the inner side of her eyelids.
"This is a nightmare." She uttered, weeping softly inside the empty chamber. "I wish... I wished we had more time, Xena."
{C&R}
'Damn nightmares.' The ruler of the Grecian Empire cursed, trying not to reminisce about the horrible visual that haunted her. 'It's my fault for dwelling on him.'
Forsaking the rest of her nightly sleep, the Conqueror stood on the bow of her voyaging ship, traversing Neptune's domain towards Corinth. Neglecting the prospect that her Chancellor would indeed be disgruntled with her because of the lengthy Cronus she'd spent bordering the sea, she was exhilarated to travel back to the castle, composing what her arrival would portend; debriefing Meleager, explaining what has occurred with Brutus, then making haste to Athens.
The Conqueror hadn't been to the City-State since the aftermath of its razing and consequent remodel. Completion of the restructured Athens was glorious; flourishing once more with the reestablishment of dinar-making businesses at many grandiose marketplaces. Other than her achievements of ending the Peloponnese Purge, uniting all of Greece, and inciting the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Conqueror considered the manumit of Athens to be a matching crowning accomplishment along with the emancipation of Corinth.
'Now if only I could liberate my entire Realm.' She expressed her discontent.
Subsequently that was the Conqueror's primary goal when she had secured her ascendancy over lands and others. She desired a chattel-free Empire, with every slave exercising his or her gods-given-right of freedom. However, dreaming of a freed nation and making it a reality were two different things. Obstacles thwarted her from doing so, and she drastically underestimated how earnest people really relied on the system of slavery.
Surely she could decree enslavement of humans to be illegal, but that would instigate disturbances; for innumerable slave-owners, including men and women whom have a tinge of authority, wouldn't hesitate to take issue with the debilitating law. Malcontent would peak, ensuring violence and war, causing millions to suffer. The Conqueror was wholeheartedly against that happening. She chose to be a fair and munificent ruler, not wanting to bestow an image of a tyrant. To eradicate the retained ideals and shackles of thralldom effectively, she would have to do it in a diplomatic custom, the same way she'd done for Corinth and Athens.
Determining her cognition had divagated from the main reasoning for ruminating on Athens, the Conqueror's retention centered on Ri. An amused grin eroded her frown, imagining the amazing viewpoint the ex-Handmaiden will have when she enter the golden city to begin her apprenticeship with Aristotle. Immersed in her wanderings, the Conqueror didn't realize she was no longer alone.
Behind the Conqueror, Glaphyra espied her Lord who remained bedecked in her robe, marveling why she was idle on the bow, rather than doing what she normally did. Usually after a battle, the Lord of the Realm would make her offering to Minerva, then check on her victorious soldiers, giving soothing support to the wounded and congratulations to the healthy. Clad in her cleaned purple armor, the General strode to the singly elder woman.
"I thought you'd be in Hypnos' blissful embrace." Glaphyra elucidated, standing next to the Conqueror. "Once we sailed from Crete, the army missed you while they celebrated the victory. Most of them are asleep now, but will you be making your rounds to the ones that are awake and the injured?"
The Conqueror didn't respond, keeping her blue eyes on the horizon. In truth, Glaphyra's statement, concerning dreams of bliss, stirred her from the jovial thoughts she was having. Still, she did have interest in one particular warrior who had an arrow protruding out his neck.
"Is Turel alright?" She asked.
"He's healing, Conqueror." Glaphyra proclaimed. "Gagius stayed by his side, abetting him during the battle as you commanded."
The Conqueror was assuaged with the pronouncement and resumed her quietness, which affected Glaphyra. The long-haired blonde hadn't received a reply to her original question.
Deducing her Lord was shrouded in consternation, Glaphyra queried, "Is something bothering you?"
The Conqueror became taciturn, unwilling to speak on the dream she had of her dying fiancé, nailed onto the mast of a Roman vessel.
"Forgive me." Glaphyra affirmed, interpreting the Conqueror's silence. "I can see you want to be by yourself."
"I do."
Bowing to her Liege for possibly upsetting her, Glaphyra started to retreat below deck.
"You fought well last night." The Conqueror praised, choosing to lessen her biting remark. "I'm glad you were by my side, Glaphyra."
Shocked at the Conqueror's appraisal, Glaphyra bloomed with pride. "Thank you, Lord Conqueror. The Romans did outnumber us though. If it weren't for you and your chakram, their legions would have mauled us down. I'm surprised the sentinels whom guarded the perimeter didn't report any activity. I assumed Brutus and Cassius would retaliate for the losses we gave them."
"They didn't because I lied, avowing that the Chancellor had sent ships to discover our location." The Conqueror illumined.
Glaphyra was bewildered that her Lord would place herself and her handful of soldiers from the Sixth Army in a precarious circumstance. She had addressed her misgivings to the Conqueror in the beginning of their un-pragmatic mission, only to have her incertitude refuted by the ruler. Learning of the Conqueror's inclination to risk their lives on a lying whim, the purple armored blonde begun to feel furthered dismayed by her Lord's actions.
"You've always been a gamester." Glaphyra declared in a humorless voice.
"I don't gamble."
"You could have fooled me." Glaphyra mumbled, becoming contrite when the Conqueror's glacial orbs pinned on her. "Pardon me for the offense, my-"
"You are dismissed, General." She interjected, restraining her rage at Glaphyra's audacity. "Leave my sight."
Glaphyra bowed and speedily left the irritated woman. Listening to the footsteps recede, the Conqueror rationalized that the General of the Sixth Army had an understandable reason for announcing what she felt. A total of fifty-seven people paid the price of blood for her and this expedition.
'One hundred-forty-nine warriors beset by thousands of Romans... Some nerve I have to claim I'm not a gambler.' The Conqueror confessed.
How much did she stake more than a decade ago, risking all for the opportunity to conquer Greece. Going further back, ages in the past, how much had she chanced as a twenty-year-old when she'd went to Egypt to aid Cleopatra in her endeavor to become Pharaoh. Unabated, a flashback of the crucified, dark-skinned man she'd loved, invaded her mind.
"Gambling demands someone has to lose." The Conqueror whispered.
Looking at the rising Helios, the Conqueror made a futile attempt to scatter the memory that reminded her of the Fates' choice to expose her to the bitter taste of a plagued, chancy existence:
Loss.
To Be Continued...