FSE

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CONTENT WARNING: death, slavery, rape, hanging (none explicit)

Olivia and Jacky stood side-by-side at Tommy’s stove, each making pots of popcorn. Bobby had salmon poaching on the back burner, (on Jacky’s side so they could both watch the otter), as he cut crudites for his brother, sister and himself. Bonny, at the sink, was making a pitcher of embalming fluid in case anybody wanted something stronger or fresher than canned cider. In the window below them, knots of children and parents were going from door to door, from pumpkin to glowing pumpkin, demanding tricks or treats.

Meanwhile, Tommy was vacuuming the livingroom rug under their black Korpsween dragon that hadn’t been out of storage since last year and was dustier than he’d expected. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was playing on the TV, but nobody was watching until Tommy noticed somebody clearing their throat over the movie. ROSE stood in front of Jack Skellington, tapping her left wrist with her right forefinger. He nodded to her.

“Hurry up, team!” he cried. “Karen’ll be here soon!”

“Salmon’s ready!” Bobby called back. “Veggies too in a minute!”

“Just pouring the popcorn!” Olivia added. “Hey, where’re the bowls?”

Bonny brought out a tray with her pitcher and some glasses and their six-pack of Strongbow. Tommy brushed space open on the coffee table for her and went back to winding up the vacuum cleaner cord. Bonny frowned and cleared off the rest of the table for the boys. She’d hardly stowed the mess that had been on top in the otherwise unused shelf under the table when the three cooks brought out their platter. There were two plates with fish, a big bowl of carrot and celery sticks, zucchini, cucumber and asparagus spears, rings of green, red, yellow and orange bell peppers and lots of grape tomatoes. And three big bowls of popcorn, that was mandatory. (Bobby tapped Olivia’s hand as she reached for a plate. “Wait for Karen!” he hissed.)

There was already a bowl of gold-foiled chocolate coins on a stool by the door, but kids didn’t go door-to-door in apartment buildings. (Tommy left plenty more in the lobby for them.) These treats were for their special guest!

The villains had hardly set themselves down by the TV when there was a knock on the door. A gruff, draconian voice cried, “Trick or treat!”

“Hey!” a slobbery sea otter voice replied. “Who...” There was a long pause, then Mr Powell said, “Nuh-uh, nope!” and they heard his door slam shut.

Tommy opened the door and welcomed a Karen in. The rest of the crew stood, too as the boss entered, not sitting until she had taken her place in a comfy chair beside the TV, (exchanging a wave with Rose as she sat.) They all took food and enjoyed their Korpsween feast. Then Karen cleared her throat. Rose paused the movie and played atmospheric music instead. All other eyes were on the silver dragon. She held up a shiny chocolate coin.

“This is the first Korpsween for two of us,” she began, “so I won’t skip any bits. Get comfy. Ready?”

#

This all happened many, many years ago, (Karen said), in a little Spanish village that’s part of a farm now. The peasants who lived there worked on the farm for their master, a land baron. While the moors ruled Spain, he was bound by laws to treat his peasants fairly. But then the exiled Christian forces took Spain back and the laws all changed. Now the baron owned his peasants and the royal court took a strict hands-off approach. The baron stopped being fair and was cruel instead. The first thing he did was hire a gang of thugs to control the peasants. The first thing they did was raid the village. They beat the men, raped the women and took anything of any value that the villagers had. The village chief went to the baron and told him what these strangers had done. He expected the baron, cruel as he’d become, to want to protect them, if only as his property. Instead he brought the thugs onto his fine house and ordered them to take the chief back to the village. He came with them and when they arrived, the thugs went door-to-door and ordered everyone out to the square. Then the baron ordered his thugs to teach the village chief a lesson.

The thugs began to punch the village chief. One of them had a club, just a big stick, and he bashed the village chief over his head and in his face until he fell to the ground. His wife screamed, so one of the thugs went and grabbed her, brought her where the chief could see and held her while the baron raped her, again and again. As he did, the rest of the thugs started to kick the chief. They kept kicking him until they’d killed him.

When all this was done, the baron told the rest of the village, “You don’t need a chief. I am your chief. You don’t need to tell me your problems. You need to keep working until I tell you to stop. Christ has given you to me and I will use you however I please!”

Then he told his gang of thugs to make the peasants respect him. And the beatings began again.

After that the peasants didn’t dare argue with anything the baron wanted. They toiled for him night and day to keep from being beaten by his thugs. But he sent his thugs to beat them anyway, every so often, just to make sure they didn’t forget. But there was one thing the baron didn’t count on. He raped the village chief’s widow, not just once but three times before he was through, and both of them were foxes. It wasn’t long before she proved to be with child. One Sunday when the local priest came to preach at them, she revealed her pregnancy to him, told him how it had started and asked him what to do. He told her that the man who had raped her must take care of the kit and asked her who had raped her. She told him that it was the baron.

The priest was no fool, he knew what danger the baron was to him. He decided that the matter was above his pay grade, (to borrow a modern concept), and went and told the bishop. The bishop had thugs of his own! So he and they went to the baron, brought him before the village and asked if he had sired this woman’s kit by rape. Of course the baron said no. He pointed to another fox among his peasants and said it was him. The bishop knew better because he knew what kind of man the baron was. So he pointed out that Christ had given that woman to him to use as he pleased and asked again if the kit was his. But the baron had already said no, so he kept saying no and pointed again at the innocent fox. Again the bishop reminded the baron of the eighth commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness, and asked him, upon his soul, if he had raped this woman and sired this kit. But again the baron denied it and now he was getting angry. So the bishop told him that Christ had given him all these people to work his land and be his own and that he could punish the innocent fox as he wished.

“But remember this,” the bishop said. “A child of rape is a curse upon the rapist. He will come back and punish his father if he can. Do not let that happen!”

The bishop took the chief’s widow to a local convent until her child was born, in case she should go to a witch and have him destroyed in her womb. (This was a very male-centric time.) As for the innocent fox that the baron had accused, he hung the poor man in the village square and left the scaffold and the noose in case he needed it again.

The child was born a girl in a boy’s body, something that many of us understand, but a very long time before Empire Enhancements was there to do anything about it. She realized the cosmic error when she was five. And that’s about when she started hearing whispers in the night. They came as she was falling asleep.

“You deserve better than this!” the whispers would say sometimes. “You are no less a person than the baron!” other times. “If you resist, I will be with you!” still other times. And often the whispers just said, “Hope!”

And sure enough, for a peasant boy living under the thumb of a cruel master, she seemed to live a charmed life. If the baron’s thugs came and she hid, they wouldn’t find her. If the baron gave them more work than they could do, somehow she’d get it done, as if time stood still for her. If the baron or his men or anybody tried to whip her, their canes or sticks would break into pieces on her back with the first stroke and hardly leave a welt. The villagers started calling her Lucky. But they dismissed Lucky’s whispers as mere dreams.

.When Lucky was fifteen, there was a drought. The summer was cold, the ground never thawed, snow came instead of rain. The baron made them work his frozen land all the same, but of course, no crops grew, the seeds lay frozen in their furrows. The baron used his wealth to buy food for himself and his thugs, but he let his peasants starve. He even took the wood they gathered for his own fires. The peasants had to go about to other villages begging for alms, it was the only food they could get.

One day, about the end of October, Lucky found a house along the road where there had been none before. She went to it and knocked. There were no lights inside, but the door swung open for her and a voice whispered, “Bring your friends. Eat all you wish, warm yourselves by my fire. You are welcome here.” Lucky recognized the voice, it was the whispers she’d heard in her sleep for ten years. So she went and brought the whole village to the house. The kitchen was full of food for them ad the fireplace roared. It was the most comfort they’d had since their master had turned cruel. They ate and drank and slept before the fire.

As Lucky was falling asleep, she heard the whispers again. She let them wake her up this time and they didn’t stop.

“The time has come!” the whispers said. “The baron has had his cruel way for too long! Tomorrow you will find weapons in the kitchen along with food. If you all rise up against him, I will stand with you! The baron and his men will fall and you will be your own masters!”

“Who are you?” Lucky said.

The whisper gave a hissing laugh, something like this. (Karen gave them a draconian chuckle.) And it said, “Sometimes I am justice. Sometimes I am mercy. Sometimes I am vengeance. Sometimes I am forgiveness. Sometimes I am caution. Sometimes I am courage. And sometimes I am freedom. Stand against the baron and I will stand with you. You will know me when you see me. Sleep now, you will need it in the morning.”

Next morning, as sure as the whisperer’s word, there was a sword for every one of them in the kitchen along with their porridge. There was even a big tapestry that showed how to use the swords. Lucky told them all what the whispers had said the night before. The peasants scoffed, for the baron’s men had always beaten them before.

“But now we have swords!” Lucky said. “The baron’s men don’t have swords. Only the baron himself has one and there are many more of us than there are of him! Look at this tapestry, it shows us what to do with them. Let’s take today and learn how to fight, then tomorrow morning we’ll go and end the baron’s cruelty forever!”

“But the baron is used to fighting!” one of them argued. “Even with swords like his, he can cut any one of us down!”

Lucky took up a sword and faced them. “I will stand in front,” she said. “I will keep the baron’s sword busy. While he cuts me down, the rest of you will move in and finish him. I ask just two things in return. First, don’t abandon me as I sacrifice myself, move in and finish the baron for me. And second, bury me as a girl. Will you do that? Will you fight with me?”

“But what about all his men?” said another. “How can we fight all of them?”

“There are more of us than them, there always were,” Lucky replied. “Besides, the voice said that if we stand against the baron, she will stand with us. I don’t know who she is, but look at all she’s done for us! This house where there was none before, the food, the swords! Whoever she is, she has power, and she’s promised to use her power with us. How can even those evil men stand against all that?

“:Listen to me!” she cried. “The baron made me and then denied me! He murdered my uncle, hung my poor uncle, so that he wouldn’t have to raise me as his own! I have lived under his boot heel my whole life and always known that what was happening to me, to all of us, was wrong! The time has come! I will not live under an evil master any longer! Tomorrow morning I will fight him, with or without you! If we all fight together, we can end this. We can end him!

“Will you fight?”

One by one, every single one of them picked up a sword. For the rest of the day they followed the tapestry, learning basic chops and thrusts, learning to follow through on moves. The tapestry made one thing clear more than anything else. Fight as one, move as one, always advance, never retreat, always stay together. Lunch appeared about noon, dinner at sunset. Several times the baron’s men walked by the house, down the road or up it, but they never even noticed it. The peasants were not exactly an army by the end of the day, but they’d learned to fight together and they’d learned what a sword can do.

The next day after breakfast they took up their swords and marched on the baron’s house. The baron and his men were there. He ordered the peasants to drop their swords and the peasants nearly obeyed. But Lucky laughed at him and told him that of course they were not going to obey him anymore. She told the peasants to advance and they did, swords held high. The closer they came, the more afraid the baron’s men looked. The baron, too looked at them with fear in his eyes. He ordered his men to attack, but they ran instead and several peasants ran after them. Two of the baron’s men fell to those peasant’s swords, while the rest of them kept running and never came back. The baron himself drew his own sword. Lucky fell on him and several peasants crowded around him and together they hacked him to pieces.

The baron’s last words were, “Fools! Don’t you see what’s behind you?”

But they were too busy killing their evil master to notice anything else. Only when he fell, when he was in pieces on the ground, did they turn and see what he’d been pointing at. Behind them was a huge, silver dragon, casually puffing fire at the sky. The peasants raised their swords in fear! But Lucky told them to stop.

“Now you know me,” the dragon said. “I promised to stand with you. Honestly, you’re not good enough with your swords yet to stand alone. But you will be. I promised to stand with you and I will keep my promise. Fight evil, even if they call you evil. Fight lies, even if they call you liars. I will teach you how. I will be your confidence. You will be my corps.” Then he turned to Lucky, candesca glowing around her, and said, “Be yourself.”

As Lucky watched, breasts grew on her chest, her hips spread, her waist narrowed, her face changed and her package turned inside out into her crotch. When it was done, she stood in amazement for a moment. Then she burst into tears, for her outside finally reflected her inside. And the big black dragon held her and let her cry.

#

“I hope I don’t have to tell you who that silver dragon was,” Karen concluded.

Tommy, Bobby and Olivia opened heir mouths, but tears came to their eyes instead. Olivia ducked under the coffee table and grabbed a box of tissues, took one and passed the box.

“That was The Overlord?” Jacky exclaimed.

Karen nodded. She unwrapped her chocolate coin, (more easily than should have been possible), and chewed thoughtfully on the candy. “That was the start of the first Korps,” she said.

“There’s been more than one?”

“The Korps comes and goes as it’s needed. It’s gone by other names, too. The Knights Templar, the Illuminati...”

“Does he really breathe fire?”

“The villagers said he was breathing fire,” Karen replied. “It might’ve just been a few balls of candesca near his mouth. Or maybe they added that to the tale later because people say dragons breathe fire. I’ve never seen him do it. Never done it myself!”

“The drought,” Bonny said, “wait, that was the little ice age?” (Again, Karen nodded.) “But that was... about six hundred years ago, wasn’t it?”

“The little ice age was an exceptionally cold period within written history,” Rose replied. “There were three distinct cold snaps; ninety-four years from 1458 to 1552, a hundred twenty years from 1600 to 1720 and forty years from 1840 to 1880. The drought in the story of the First Korps happened approximately 1459.”

“But that would make The Overlord more than five hundred sixty years old!”

“He’s much older than that!” Karen said, chuckling.

Bobby snuggled with Bonny and held her. “The Overlord is immortal,” he said, (his voice still shaking with emotion from the story.) “He’s really, really powerful! And he stands with us through everything! So how can we ever lose?”

“He’s our courage ‘n our confidence,” Tommy added, still sniffling.

“I love him!” Olivia whined.

“And he loves every one of us!” Karen said as she stood. “Well, this silver dragon has lots more stops to make tonight, so I’d better get going.”

“Thanks for coming, Boss,” Tommy said. “’Scuse me not seein’ you to the’ door.”

“You never can, Tommy. It’s all right. Thanks for the hospitality,” she added, as she opened the door to the hallway. “And maybe” she added, before she closed it, “you could all stop being so scared of me? Happy Halloween.”

###

This story and all the characters in it are copyright © 2024 by D’Otter, except as follows.

ROSE, Karen The Overlord and The Korps universe belong to Karen King (@kraken) and are used by general permission.

My own characters are available for use by other writers in the Korps Extended Universe, (and Kraken if she likes.) Just please ask first. Character sheets are available.

This is a work of fan fiction based on the works of Karen King. It should not be taken as canonical to those works, (unless she says otherwise.)