The Dead Warlord’s Son.

Matvei was someone far different than his brothers. The youngest of three, pure-blooded heirs, he was to one day rule his father's kingdom if the Romans spread too far into their territory and noble blood was shed. He was to be the last light in the darkness surrounding their walls. A hero. A king. A mercenary.

Their position was stamped into the war-torn, blood bathed hills of Europe. A dead country rose from the ashes there, the Spaniards and Germans flooding the land, courting and fucking, corrupting the Earth in their seed. The Spanish-Germanic Empire lived a long one, surpassing the Romans whose thirst for flesh was contagious. They slaughtered them. And the Turks. And the Jews. When they died, they died with Matvei, the last face burned into gold and silver currency, never to be seen again.

"Come now, brother. Look at her." Antonio, the eldest of the three brothers, firmly gripped the hair of the poor slave girl in his arms. She was stark naked, the only coverage she was given being her blood from places Matvei refused to acknowledge for his own sake. Antonio caught the anxiety boiling in the tears at the bridges of his younger brother's eyes and laughed. "Matvei, you are acting like such a child. This slave girl will not bite." Antonio yanked her closer to his face, inhaling the rustic scent of her filth with a small smile. "Foreigners always have quite the alluring scent. So cruel and captivating."

"Toni..." Matvei croaked out in between clenched teeth, eyes upwards at the mold-spotted, brick ceiling. "I- I think that's enough..."

Antonio blinked and turned his head back to his nervous sibling, eyebrow quirked questionably. "It's just sex, Matvei," he said nonchalantly. "Look at her face when I stick my fingers in." Matvei couldn't bear watching or hearing the breathy, abused gasps of this slave girl he was faced with. "See? She likes it."

"That's enough." The new voice hissed from in between his teeth was a foreign one. Probably one of an unknown sibling, a stronger one, in a land far from there. Antonio stared at his brother for about a minute or two, the sound of his jagged breath taking up the loud silence of the dungeon.

"So this is how it is." A sigh. Antonio flung the slave away from him, the poor young woman hitting the ground hard, choking back sobs. Standing to his full height, an almost six and a half feet that loomed intimidatingly over that of his younger, shorter brother, the elder took hold of Matvei's forearm hard and practically dragged him out from the girl's cell. The younger of the two cried out tiny protests for his brother to loosen his grip, but he went unheard. He forced himself to stop stumbling over his feet and be hauled up the stairs out of the dungeons, up the main staircase to where he, his brothers, and his father resided, then down the hall to his father's throne room.

Much like the slave, Antonio heaved Matvei to the ground, the younger boy shivering in fear as they faced their father. The older man stopped his conversation with the middle child, Seckel, a crafty man who conspired horrid things about the casualties of enemy nations, but enjoyed being at the mercy of his personal slave woman when she bound and gagged him in the privacy of his quarters.

"Antonio. Matvei." Matvei was far used to being acknowledged with contempt by his father. He, on his knees, carried out a deep bow, not daring to bring his eyes to meet those of his king.

"Father," Antonio began, not one to dawdle when it came to news, "I believe that our Matvei sympathizes with the lower class. The slaves and foreigners especially."

"Is that so?" A deep, throaty sigh that was no doubt that of the old man in the throne. "My God, Matvei. I pray for you each day. Pray to every God that I know of that you will eventually be a strong man like your brothers. And yet you continue to disappoint." A long silence crowded the room. Seckel and Antonio stared down their youngest brother without remorse.

"Father, if I may suggest," Seckel began, a dash of a smirk lifting his cheeks, "if our brother wishes to have feelings for the slaves, why not we do the honorable thing and treat him like a slave? Rehabilitation is the word I am looking for." Matvei's eyes, wide with panic and still aimed directly at the ground, clouded with stinging rains.

"I adore that idea, brother." Antonio grinned, a sadistic lust dilating his pupils. "Besides. Look at him. He already does so well on his knees, grovelling for forgiveness. He is a natural." The older two brothers cackled at Antonio's joke, but quickly silenced and straightened up with the raising of their father's hand.

"Matvei. Lift up your head. Eyes on me." Reluctantly, Matvei did as he was told, forehead rising from up the stone ground and brown eyes focusing through teared vision on his King. Father did not look pleased. "You are an embarrassment to me. If I was not a merciful man, I would have had you slaughtered along with your bitch of a mother before your birth." A pause. Redirection to Antonio. "Please, demonstrate to him the difference between men like us and the women we keep chained in the cellar."

Antonio licked his lips. "With pleasure." Matvei sobbed like a girl for the seven weeks he was trapped in his brother’s room. And Antonio, strung out on the drug that was Matvei’s body, couldn't resist seconds and thirds. Seckel was invited to partake in the meal known as Matvei. Noble guests from allied nations rallied together in one, weekend long visit of treaty signings and war plans, sucking the juice of the forbidden fruit. When Antonio opened his door on the last day, he whispered, “now you see why we don't waste pity on slaves. Do you feel sub-human, brother? They do.” A tear escaped from the boy’s bloodshot eye. Antonio laughed, undid Matvei’s shackles, and shoved him out of the room. Matvei laid spent on the ground, drowned in the upper class’s filth, unmoving because his legs refused to work. He laid there for hours, stepped on and ignored. He laid there, in that time, in the antebellum of his adulterous bloodlust. He was only fifteen years old.

On the dawn of the coming war against the Turks, Matvei stood in attention in his father’s quarters. The old man coughed and hacked on his own dry saliva. Matvei could remember the taste like it was yesterday. His father was dying of a new illness that, fortunately, was not contagious but came from old age. When his father died, Antonio would be the next heir to the throne, something that the commoners of the Spanish-Germanic Empire feared. Antonio was an evil that swallowed his conquests like Kronos himself, ghastly teeth severing the skin and bone of his children. An attractive man on the outside who boiled with tyranny in his entrails. For now, however, the king’s days were numbered and Matvei could not wait.

“I have brought you something that may please you, father,” Matvei said with a low voice. He and his father were undeniably alone, the young man ordering away the guards after insisting he wanted absolute privacy. His father attempted to sit up in the bed, but he restarted his weak fit of coughs. Matvei jumped to action, forcing the king back into the pillows under him. "Hush, father. Drink this." Picking up the dish of water on the desk beside his father's bed, he pressed the edge against the old man's lips, tipping it a little so that he may drink. The king took tiny sips that reminded Matvei of a small child suckling on his mother's breast for the first time. "There... just like that..."

The old man shoved the dish away from his mouth and wiped any residual water on his lips and chin with the back of his hand. "I am fine. Thank you, son. Now, what is this about pleasing me?"

Matvei's frown from being pushed away rose back up into a smile. Kneeling down, he picked up a box from the ground and then placed it on the bedside. His father raised an eyebrow at him as he watched his son pop open the lid to the container. Moments stood in a silence between the two before a cobra slithered out from it's former prison, devilish eyes locked on the old man. It slid it's way up the man's stomach and the king almost screamed, but Matvei covered his mouth with his hand.

"Now, now, father. Do not startle the cobra. Or else it will bite." The once innocent smile on his son's face that craved nothing more than to please his father faded into something different entirely. There was anger in his eyes that was drenched in a sadistic cruelty that brought tears to his father’s eyes. “Wait-- no way. Are you crying?” The smirk widened into a grin and he threw his head back laughing in such a way that the cobra seated on his father’s chest looked disturbed. “Priceless,” he sighed out, shaking his head. “But I can smell your fear, father. If you beg of it, I am capable of mercy.”

The old man quivered pleas for forgiveness under Matvei’s strong hand, eyes widening and louder begs spilling forth from his muffled lips as Matvei drew a knife and held the blade sickly sweet way against the side of his face. “What? This is mercy, father. This is what you gave to me those few years ago. You remember, do you not? I know you do. You would not stop commenting about how pretty my face was drenched in your seed.

“I can show you mercy.” The young man smiled down at his father, snake on him regaining confidence and crawling up the man’s stomach to his chest. Matvei removed his hand from his father’s mouth, eyes dark. “Beg for it.”

“M-Matvei,” his father spluttered, terrified eyes shifting quickly back and forth from the sadistic son and the hungry cobra, “please… h-have mercy on me! I am sorry! Forgive m--” Matvei couldn’t stand listening to the pathetic man any longer. Wordlessly, he plunged the knife directly through the king’s eye, blade piercing his brain and blood spewing forth from the intrusion. The snake hissed and backtracked at the gory sight, finding refuge beneath the man’s legs. Matvei stared at the convulsing body die off from his own hands. A true, genuine smile graced his face for the first time in years. He was only nineteen years old.

©SelfTitled, 2017