Chapter 1

The Empress sat on her throne, trembling as the enemy approached her Great Hall. Her lower lip quivered, goose bumps formed on her flesh, and the chill of fear gave her the shivers. The Nasucrean Empire had fallen, and there was no saving it. She was the last Empress, the end of a long line of female sovereigns who had dominated the civilized world.

Sadly for her reign, the eunuchs and males had risen up against the matriarchal system of their native land, joining with the Vystercian savages to achieve vengeance for centuries of oppression. When the mercenaries who composed the capital's garrison demanded more pay as the price for their continued service, and the Empress didn't have enough money to meet their demands, they simply joined the invaders and opened the city gates to the barbarian horde. The fiercely loyal Imperial Guard fought to the death, its entirely female ranks refusing to live under a patriarchal conqueror. Those 250 soldiers were not enough to hold back the gigantic Vystercian host.

The war had gone badly from the very outset. It was a complete surprise, when the new Vystercian Confederacy had simply attacked the frontier towns and overwhelmed the neglected fortifications of the overextended Empire. The men of the towns had welcomed the invaders as liberators, instead of resisting them as occupiers.

The fragility of the Empire was proven. Its supposed security had rested on the disunity of the neighboring savages on the borders. That situation was no more. The Confederacy was established by the new High King, Ar-Ges, a chieftain who had once been a hostage at the Nasucrean court. All of the tribes opted to unify themselves under a single command.

The initial invasion was almost totally bloodless, thus reducing the anxiety that most had of life under Vystercian rule. The real fighting didn't begin until the field troops arrived at the front. There was no question of which front that was, in any case, since the Empire was surrounded by the "barbarians" on all sides except the coastline.

Even the battles were pointless and futile. The lower ranks, composed of male conscripts, simply defected to the Vystercians and turned their weapons against the all-female officer corps. The officers were too heavily outnumbered and unprepared to prevent this juggernaut. Most of them surrendered when they realized that it was hopeless.

The interior fell into the enemy's hands in a few weeks, causing the Empress to use her elite mercenaries to flesh out her ranks. The problem was that most of these men were Vystercians themselves, and many of them feared retribution for betraying their countrymen.

Yet another fatal flaw of the Nasucrean state became apparent when it was already too late. Desertions became pandemic in the Imperial Army. Those who didn't switch sides extorted more pay for their loyalty. Military discipline became impossible. No one was motivated to defend a country that existed to provide women with political supremacy these days. The original purpose of the Nasucrean nation was irrelevant and forgotten. Time had made its survival undesirable for the male minority. They had become a fifth column that simply backed the invaders against the old regime.

A desperate Empress had armed the eunuchs who constituted the Imperial civil service and any other male civilians who declared themselves willing to defend the Empire. It was only at this point that she realized just how disgruntled her male subjects were with their station. They mutinied everywhere and aided the invasion force. The crews of the naval warships particularly rebelled against their female captains and first mates. They raided the coastal cities and abducted many of the local ladies. In mere days, the last provinces outside of the capital were occupied by the Vystercians and their sympathizers.

The siege of the capital was short, but the battle for control of it was not. The Imperial Guard fought from house to house, despite the fact that most of the inhabitants simply watched the action instead of participating. After all, it was only women of the ruling class who truly benefited from the services of eunuch concubines. The rest of the women had to make do with only their husbands: fully intact men of equal rank. Only ladies of high rank got to have eunuchs lick their husbands' seed out of their cunts. Noblewomen had these oral services entirely to their themselves. There was a scarcity of men as it was, so eunuchs were a luxury.

Unknown to the Nasucrean rulers, this social custom of eunuch harems and double standards created a population decline and shortage, thus further weakening the state. Reliance on mercenaries became more frequent as a result, to fill in the gaps in the ranks. It also broadened social divisions and created popular resentment, making the bulk of the people of both sexes unhappy with their situation. Only the women of exalted status had any vested interest in preserving the Empire, and their numbers were small. By far the most discontent citizens were actually men of the middle class, who were the ones most likely to be forced into castration and service as a eunuch to either the Empress herself, the Imperial civil service, or noble ladies who had a right to conscript male commoners for their own pleasure.

Some of this was known to Amthalla, 37th Empress of the Nasucrean Empire, as she waited for the enemy troops to enter her throne room. The rest wouldn't occur to her until some time later, not that it mattered. The war was over and her Empire was finished. She was terrified of what the Vystercians might do to her, once they took her alive.

She had little doubt that they would do so, since suicide was intolerable for a Nasucrean woman. It was deemed a desecration of the image of the Mother Goddess and a rejection of the gift of life that She had given to her. She had no weapons nearby anyway. Arms of any kind were banned from the Great Hall, since it was the sacred center of the Empire and supposed to be the Sanctuary of the Empress from any kind of conflict. It was meant to be a secure and sacrosanct haven from any mention of violence. Any kind of weapon in the throne room was regarded as a sacrilege.

Amthalla didn't understand why exactly she was in this awful predicament, except that the Mother Goddess was displeased with her daughters in Nasucrea and the previous Empresses had somehow caused the weakness of the Imperial defenses through misguided policies. It wasn't her fault, for the most part. She had inherited a state so far gone that it would have taken drastic and unpopular reforms to reverse the crisis.

Her only mistake was in not doing so, but the pressure against it was tremendous and the necessity of it not so obvious for most of her reign. She wasn't exceptionally wise, she now realized, so it wasn't too shocking that the need for serious measures wasn't apparent to her. In any case, it was too late to think much of it now. The enemy was about to take her captive and have their way with her.

Her suspense and anxiety increased, as she was alone in the throne room, all of her servants having abandoned her in this chaos. Even her husband and cousin, Prince Sergan, was gone. She didn't know where he was, but it could be anywhere. He might have acted on his long-time desire for other women, a fantasy forbidden him by custom and law in the past. She was not especially savvy, but she wasn't a fool. She suspected that he craved other women, though he didn't dare to act on it. He had too much to lose, since the penalty for adultery (which didn't include oral service by eunuch concubines) was castration. He certainly didn't wish to become a eunuch himself and lose his rank along with his balls.

She was wrong. Prince Sergan was not very far away at all, as she discovered when he entered the throne room, sword in hand. He was flanked by Vystercian warriors and several Nasucrean defectors. They were mostly eunuchs, but a few intact men were present as well. He had not simply yielded to the temptation given by chaos to have his extramarital pleasure. He had betrayed her, though his reasons were not yet evident. She felt a kind of powerless anger and sadness, particularly when she looked into his eyes and saw hatred.

"Sergan, my dear, why are you armed in my sacred chamber? Why do you desecrate my presence with violence and weapons? Why do you consort with these traitors? You are my husband, my companion. I have given you everything that a man could reasonably expect in my Empire! Why have you betrayed me?" she wept openly, feeling a bitter sadness at her fate.

Amthalla's dignity was gone. Her pride had disappeared. She felt only her womanly sorrow at an obvious breach with the man that she loved. She had really loved him, yet he didn't requite her passion for some reason. Somehow, she knew that he deemed himself the injured party and sought revenge upon her. What could she have done to deserve his malice?

"You have taken more than you have given, my wife. You have taken my freedom, my dignity, my manhood. You have taken my pride away from me, just as your mother did to her husband, and your grandmother did to hers. Do not think that we men have overlooked the injustice of your laws. We have collected our grievances and compiled them in a secret record over the centuries, for the Reckoning that was to come. You chose poorly in making me become your consort, against my will, if you recall. I was already Grand Master of the Clandestine Order of the Reckoning. What's more, I was chosen as Grand Master on the basis of my father's role as the previous Grand Master. Yes, your kindly Uncle Migdan was head of the order in his time, as was none other than his father, your grandfather.