IF THIS STORY OF FICTION IS TOO VIOLENT FOR THE SITE (PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REMOVE IT AND I APOLOGIZE).
Siege of the Castle
The sound is like nothing they’ve heard before.
Not war, not quite. Something more… improvised. Boots on stone. A scream, too raw to belong to a soldier. A gate coming off its hinges, not cleanly, but with the splintering groan of old iron torn from older wood. And over it all, the clink and jangle of mailshirts, the voice of steel unsheathed. Then another scream, higher. A woman. Then another. A boy.
The high chamber feels like a bell jar of fear.
Princess Lira stands at the narrow window slit, and what she sees makes her colder than the stone beneath her feet. Fire, yes—but not the wild sprawl of torches. Targeted fire, strategic. Moving like thought through the outer ward. Someone has planned this.
“That was the stables,” she says aloud. No one responds.
Behind her, three women—her waiting gentlewomen—form a kind of prayer: white hands clenched, lips moving, one quietly weeping. The castle’s noise is too close. It rises through the floor, through the walls, like water into a ship already taking on sea.
Then the door bangs open—not with violence, but urgency. Her brother.
Prince Aerion is still in his night robe—silver-trimmed, laced at the throat. There’s blood on his wrist, someone else’s. His face is set hard, but the eyes betray it.
“They’ve breached the lower bailey.”
“How?”
“The drywell. Unguarded.”
“It’s never unguarded.”
“Tonight it was.”
Aerion’s voice is low. Precise. He speaks like someone who knows words are now rationed, like water in a desert.
Outside, a man shouts in what may be pain or triumph—then silence, broken by the fall of something heavy. A scream abruptly cut short. The stone trembles.
Lira turns to him, eyes wide. “Aerion, if they take this floor—”
“They will. Which is why you must leave it.”
“They’ll take me,” she says. No drama. Just fact.
“They will not.” He doesn’t explain how.
Then comes the knock—not a knock, a body, hurled into the door. It hits, slides down. Blood appears under the threshold.
Aerion grabs the hearth poker. Useless, ceremonial. A ghost of authority.
But it’s not the enemy. The door opens again. Ser Caldus, his sworn sword, fills the frame. Blood down his chest. One eye swollen shut.
“My lord,” he rasps. “We must go. Now.”
“Where is the King?”
Caldus doesn’t answer. Not immediately.
“Gone,” he says. “I saw him fall. They have the Lionblade.”
Aerion’s breath catches. The word hangs. The sword—his father’s sword—is gone.
“Then it’s Merek.”Caldus nods.
Lira takes a half-step toward them, then stops. She looks at Aerion.
And for the first time—perhaps ever—they see each other fully. Same jawline. Same soft mouth that hardens when they lie. Same eyes: gray, rimmed in firelight.
“You must go,” he says.
“I won’t leave you.”
“You will.” “What if they—”
“Then let me be the one they take.”
“I’ll see you again?”
“In songs,” he says. And smiles—just barely. “Or lies.”
He crosses to the back wall. Pushes a palm against the stone griffin. There is no magic to it—just gears, ancient and grinding. The wall opens inward, revealing blackness and the first taste of cold night air. And escape.
Caldus enters first, sword already out. Lira stops at the edge. Turns.
Her women clutch their skirts, faces pale. She gestures sharply.
“You come too. All of you. Now.”
They vanish into the tunnel.
Lira looks back one last time.
“Aerion—”
“No goodbyes. Just go.”
She does. The wall seals.
And the room is smaller now. And hotter. And soon, no longer his.
There is no warning—just sound. The door shudders once. Then again. A third time, and the wood cracks like a bone. Iron groans in protest. Hinges scream. Aerion steps back. The fire in the hearth is dying. The air is full of smoke, and the stone beneath his feet is slick with ash and something darker.
The door explodes inward. Merek steps through. The king’s bastard.
A name whispered in taverns, spat in noble halls, scrawled on the underside of cards in backroom dice games.
He was born in the wet corner of a maid’s chamber, his mother screaming into her skirts so the castle wouldn’t hear. There was no herald to announce his birth. No cradle carved from cedar. Just cloth, blood, and a silence that stretched on for years.
He wore his father's features like a curse—high brow, cold eyes—but with something sharper in the jaw. As a boy, he followed the hunts from the edge of the trees, barefoot and hungry, watching the royal sons ride past him like gods who had forgotten how to look down. His mother begged—quietly, desperately—for recognition. A coin. A name. Even just a priest’s word that he was not sin-born. None came.
They were moved from chamber to stable loft. From stable loft to a lean-to in the far paddock. When she grew sick, he sold the hair from his own head for medicine. When the cough turned red, he sat beside her until the end. She died with the king’s name on her lips. The king never said hers once.
Merek survived by rage. When there was no bread, he ate bitterness. When there was no roof, he slept under prophecy. He trained with sellswords, bled with cutthroats, learned to read in brothels and to lie in churches. Everything the prince had been handed, he earned with bruises.
Now, armored in black and blood red—the colors of no house, only vengeance—he stepped into the prince's chamber. The Lionblade is sheathed across his back. His mouth is curled, but he isn’t smiling.
Behind him, Ser Vallon—iron-faced, his mace already blooded and steady as ever, and three more men, hard-eyed and silent, the sort who took orders without waiting to hear them twice.
Aerion doesn’t reach for a weapon. There’s nothing left to reach for.
They moved without flourish. Toward Aerion. The prince stood still in his night robe— finely stitched, soft as the throat of a dove. It was a garment meant for comfort, not defense.
Merek surveys the chamber. Notes the missing presence.
The men seized him—not cruelly, but firmly, like stewards handling a body after a fall. One at each arm, one behind to keep him from staggering. As they forced him forward, the robe, never meant for struggle, twisted in their grip. The hem rode up as they manhandled him, rendering what had once been private, public.
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“Where is she?”
No answer.
Merek tilts his head. Steps closer. His boots crack something underfoot—glass or bone or both.
“Where is your sister, Aerion?”
“Gone,” the prince says.
Merek looks around again, as if she might be hiding behind a curtain.
He snorts. “Gone where?”
Aerion just meets his gaze.
Merek’s eyes narrow. He steps forward—close now—and looks at Aerion as though seeing something unexpected.
“Gods,” he murmurs.
“You look just like her.”
The words hang there. Aerion doesn’t move. Then—a gloved hand reaches out, slow as sleep, and brushes along the side of the prince’s face. It’s not gentle. It’s deliberate. Fingers against cheekbone, then jaw, then under the chin and down the center of his chest.
“Do you smell like her too?” he asks. “Do you scream like she would?”
Merek’s expression shifts.
“You’ll have to do,” he says. The tone is quiet. Almost casual. Then colder: “For now.”
And then—he strikes him.
A backhand. Fast. Brutal. The sound is loud in the stone chamber. Aerion hits the ground hard. His head strikes the stone. Something warm drips down behind his ear. He blinks. The light flickers.
Above him, Merek turns to Ser Vallon. Merek, the king’s bastard, the conqueror of the gate, circles once, then stops.
“There’s something I’ve always wondered.”
Aerion doesn’t answer.
“They say all the king’s true sons are born with a mark. Left side. Just below the ribs.
You have it, don’t you?”
No reply.
“They whispered it at court when I was still young enough to believe I might be invited in. The mark of inheritance. A wine-dark blot, no larger than a coin.”
He steps closer. “May I see it?” he says—mockingly polite. “Or shall I peel it from you?”
Aerion lifts his head, jaw clenched. “And if I do have it?”
“Then I’ll know what I’ve done.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll know what I must still do.”
He signals to Vallon. “Strip him.”
![yes download (18).jpeg]( "yes download (18).jpeg")
The old knight steps instantly behind the prince and with rough hands pulls the fabric away as one might part a curtain in a war room—not gently, but not cruelly either.
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Merek watches.
As Merek removes his gloves, his fingers brush against Aerion's skin, sending a shiver down the prince's spine. Merek's touch is not gentle; it is thorough and invasive, exploring every inch of Aerion's nude body with a clinical precision that leaves Aerion breathless. He does not rush. He has the patience of someone who has waited his whole life for this moment.
The contact is not violent. Not even cruel. But it is intimate in the worst way: slow, possessive, without warmth. Merek is not caressing—he is searching. Cataloguing. Claiming.
Merek's eyes roam over Aerion's form, taking in every detail, every scar, every mark.
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His hand traces over Aerion’s ribs, the curve of his side, the hollow beneath his arm. The silence in the room sharpens.
Aerion's body betrays him, and despite the fear and humiliation, he feels an unwanted stir of arousal. Merek notices the erection, a smirk playing on his lips. "Well, well," he murmurs, his voice low and dangerous.
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Merek leans in closer, his breath hot against Aerion's ear.
Aerion says nothing. But the breath he exhales is not steady.
Merek expression doesn’t change when he sees it: a deep oval birthmark, the color of old wine, resting just below the ribs. He inhales. Not shock. Something colder.
“So it’s true,” he says. Aerion lifts his eyes to meet his.
Merek crouches beside him and stares at the mark for a moment longer.
He examines the mark the way one might study a relic—ancient, sacred, undeserved.
“All my life they said it was myth,” Merek murmurs. “A lie told to cradle you in legitimacy. And yet... here it is. A blot of purple wine. So small. So smug.”
He leans in.
And then—deliberately, publicly, and not gently—he presses his lips to the mark.
Not out of tenderness. Not even cruelty. But something more theatrical: a coronation turned inside out. A bastard’s kiss upon the seal of the crown.
His fingers linger on Aerion's birthmark, tracing its outline with a possessive touch.
Merek pulls away and removes his own gauntlet, unbuckles the side of his cuirass, and lifts the padded underlayer. Beneath the grime and scarred skin, on his own left side—a near identical mark.
He lets Aerion see it.
The prince breathes, shallowly.
“There,” he says, straightening. “Now we are brothers.”
“Did you know,” he says softly, “my mother died hungry? Cold and bone-thin. Because your father refused to name me. Refused to admit he ever strayed.”
There is no answer.
A breath passes between them. A blink. Then the sound—not the strike itself, but the aftermath of it.
Merek’s hand moves before the thought finishes forming. Open palm, bone behind it. A sound like a banner snapping in wind.
Aerion’s head jerks sideways, his balance vanishes, and the body folds. He does not crumple—he breaks downward, as if pulled to earth by something older than pain.
Hands catch the stone first. Then knees. A low grunt, tight in the throat.
On all fours now. Blood on the carpet, but only at the edges.
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Merek does not gloat. He does not speak. He simply watches—one foot forward, hand still hanging by his side like a thing unburdened.
Aerion does not look up.
The silence is long.
Aerion’s lip is bleeding. He says nothing.
“I fed myself on vengeance when there was no bread,” Merek says. “And now I’m full.”
He looks down at Aerion.
“We both have the mark and you are the king’s son,” Merek mutters.
“But I have the king’s sword now.” He glances down at Aerion’s feet—bare, bloodstained, aristocratic to the last toe.
“One of us will be remembered,” he says.
With that, he steps back, his eyes never leaving Aerion's.
"Leave us. I have business to attend to with my dear brother."
Merek’s men exit the room, except for Ser Vallon.
Merek turns back to Aerion, his expression hardening. "You and I are brothers, Aerion," he says, his voice cold.
He signals to Ser Vallon, who holds Aerion down painfully against the floor, his neck in an unnatural position.
Merek approaches, his eyes gleaming with a mix of triumph and malice. He unbuckles his belt, his movements slow and deliberate, savoring the moment. "Tell me, Aerion," he whispers, his voice laced with cruelty. "Is our sister as loose as they say she is?" Aerion grits his teeth, refusing to answer, but Merek doesn't wait for a response.
Merek draws the Lionblade, their father's sword, from its sheath, the metal gleaming in the firelight. He approaches Aerion slowly, the tip of the blade hovering over the prince's body.
Aerion's eyes widen in terror as Merek positions the blade. With a cruel smile, Merek begins to introduce the tip of the sword into Aerion's anus, slowly and deliberately, ignoring the prince's muffled cries and struggles.
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Aerion's body shudders as the cold metal invades him, a searing pain radiating through his body. Blood begins to trickle down his thighs, staining the stone floor beneath him. Merek watches, his eyes gleaming with a mix of madness and triumph, as the blade encircles itself in Aerion's blood.
Merek continues his assault, punctuated by a cruel question or comment, his voice a low growl in Aerion's ear. "Does she take it like this? Does she beg for more?"
Aerion doesn’t flinch. He breathes through his nose, refusing the moment.
In a moment of madness, Merek suddenly and violently thrusts the blade deeper, the metal tearing through flesh and muscle.
Ser Vallon watches in surprise, his eyes widening at the brutal sight.
A choked scream escapes Aerion's throat.
Merek holds the blade there for a moment, and begins to shake, savoring the power and control, before savagely pulling it out, the metal slick with blood.
He turns to Ser Vallon, his voice cold and calculating. "He will be a fine addition to our parade," he says, a cruel smile playing on his lips. "Bind him. Tonight we put the prince on display. It will be a spectacle they won't soon forget."
Ser Vallon yanks the prince to his feet. His gauntlet closes around Aerion’s arm and pulls him up, careful not to look at his face. Aerion sways, unsteady. His breath hitches, but he does not cry out. Blood runs freely down Aerion’s legs, staining the pale stone beneath him. The blood makes his footing slick.
“March him to the dais,” Merek says. “Let them see who kneels and who stands.”
Merek slips the glove back onto his hand, tightens the strap, and walks to the shattered door, stepping over the broken wood. The Lionblade gleams once in the smoke. Bright, then gone.
And so is he.
samsara108
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samsara108
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keep up the good story telling with illustrations, ♥
I posted two more in the AI Content section of the forum:
The Patient in the Chair (written with AI assistance & illustrated with AI).
The Smell of Cedar (written with AI assistance & illustrated with AI).
Using AI to write stories. Embarrassing. There used to be a time where high school juniors would write whole novels on Wattpad while still having to do their homeworks and still have a good goddamn story to tell. Use your brains people.
Sorry you feel that way. You could have just ignored it - if it bothered you so much. I think you just wanted to be angry about something. *hugs you*
Ignore your contribution to the death of art and talent? Even worse AI is actually speeding up the destruction of the planet. Maybe do some research instead of gaslighting me? Save that hug you'll need it
Are you doing this with everyone else who has created something with AI or just me?
You’ve made your feelings clear. I respect your choice not to use AI — please respect mine to create in the way I choose.
liittlefiish
Cherished Member
Hey, I hear you both. Writing’s about telling great stories, not competing over tools. One loves the raw hustle of writing by hand; the other enjoys AI’s help—both are valid. Can we share what inspires our creativity instead of arguing? What do you think?
Even this is AI generated jesus Christ you people can't do shit on your own
Choosing to use A.I is you doing nothing but letting A.I doing the heavy lifting by plagiarizing from other REAL creators and spoon feed you something choppy and soulless. No one should be even using generative A.I considering the harm it's doing to the planet as we debate right now.
