A Friend in Need: The Golden Rule

Yveraol smiled and waved from the top of the newly dedicated teocalli on Tecocoa, her home village and island. These people adored her; they always had. Her otherworldly beauty and easy charm made her instantly lovable by all but the most astute individuals. And so, of course, when her parents died in her childhood, the entire village had come together to care for Yveraol. They took it in turns to house and feed and care for the child until she grew into a terrifyingly beautiful young lady.
Never above using her gifts to obtain her every desire, Yveraol learned the power of her almost alien allure at a very young age, and proceeded to master the art of seduction. It came to her easily, as if she had been born to do it, and so when the King came to visit the island on a mission of state, she set her sights upon him. Within two days she had had him in her bed. In a fortnight, she had secured a proposition. Within the year, she was queen to King Teotach I. One of many, true, but she felt confident her wiles and natural beauty would float her directly to the top of the heap. Then, two years later, the king married Cere Sorellsage and Aglethal in quick succession, and she found herself at an impasse. Was she to join with these two obviously ambitious souls? She recognized kindred spirits immediately, and wondered how best to use them to her advantage.
Yveraol quickly discovered the depths of Aglethal's desires, and her unscrupuous lust for naked power. She also discovered Aglethal's reckless disregard for her own soul...all things she found interesting enough to use against her sister. But Yveraol was canny. She began leaving books on the occult around the harem common areas, and talking to the other wives about their husband's interest in such things. Sure enough, Aglethal's innate chaos magic spun into high gear, and a new chapter in the lives of three women was borne. The depravities the three women carried out were becoming increasingly sadistic. The men and women they chose to share their beds with, when they were not indisposed by the King, all wound up being paid hefty dispensation by the crown for scars, or maiming. Or death by exsanguination.
The public square, fringed with tall coconut and date palms, was absolutely stocked with people. At least six thousand people crowded in on the colorful pavers of the yard, with at least that many more crammed into every space, nook, and cranny surrounding it for three hundred feet in every direction. She rose above the milling faces, the enchnated crowd, slowly spinning with her hands held high to offer herself to the sun, in the traditional opening of the Sun Salutation. She timed it perfectly, with a single beam of sunlight piercing through a stonework lattice precisely to fall upon her upturned face. There she stood, bathed in the light of the sun and the silent acclaim of the crowd, for a full three hundred and sixty-one seconds, until the angle of the sun passed below the surrounding island mountaintops. With that, the moment passed, and Yveraol let her arms drop to her side, exausted. She had been holding them up for north of six minutes, and she hated physical exertion. She hung her head in the throes of faux-spiritual fatigue. From her perch, high above the people and the trees, her ears caught wind of a low rumble.
Spinning back to the public yard, Yveraol shouted out loudly to the assembled masses. "All Hail to our King! All hail Teotach the First, our saviour and provider!" The crowd began stomping their feet and yelling loudly, all eyes focused in toward the middle of the island, and up toward their native queen. Yveraol used a magician's parlor trick called prestidigitation to make herself heard above the cacophonous sound of the mob. "All hail Queen Aglethal!" The roars increased twofold. She could feel the stomping all the way at the top of the teocalli. "All hail! All fall, all! All shall pall, and the moon shall witness, as the rivers run red!" This confused many people, but they were far beyond that by now. Their paroxysms of mass rapture continued unabated, even as the tsunami washed over the shore and up the stone causeways. The masses of people were shouting in glee right up until the moment the water washed all of them away; the entire population of an island, all in one mighty roar of foam and salty spray. Safe atop the teocalli, Yveraol stood with two naked preists, four boggle-eyed prisoners strapped to upright tables so they could see the entire proceeding, and her pet cat Rory.
Yveraol smiled wickedly as she ran the edge of her flint knife precisely over the necks of the prisoners, deftly harvesting the adrenal glands and the priceless adrenochrome within. Dropping three of them into prepared jars with glycerine preservatives waiting within, she looked around quickly and popped an entire harvested gland into her mouth. Her irises immediately slammed open, expanding to their very utmost, then contracted into pinpoints surrounded by bloodshot sclera. Sounds came rushing back to her after a moment as time seemed to catch up to her. Throwing her head back, she howled a feral note of primal victory, and all too quickly the flashing lights and crystalline haze of the drug wore off. She gasped, a little, motioning to the naked man next to her to follow, leading him to a prepared bower within the teocalli. He was drugged, and rubbed down with exotic oils, before she used him and threw his lifeless body to the tiger sharks.
Yveraol purred, sated for the time being, as her royal barge sailed away from the once vibrant and populated island. Now, it was a barren wasteland and swamp. Soon, as she planned, it would be full of insects. Biting nuisances that carried diseases her sister Aglethal had cultivated. In time, this place would be the perfect lair for her sisters and her. A miasma of pestilence and corpulent pustules of filth to deter any type of visitor would arise, here, and all she hadd needed to do was commit mass murder, ritual mutilation, and unholy magic that put her very soul at risk.
"Worth it," she said to herself as the flat bottomed sailboat skimmed across the water of the archipelago.

Summary

Yveraol put on a spectacular show, replete with magic and pyrotechnics, to distrct the denizens of her home island, Tecocoa, as a massive tsunami wiped out everything except those on top of the teocalli, or massive ziggurat, she had caused to be built. It left a stinking wasteland of fetid marshes choked with foul slimes and drifting clouds of poisonous spores.

Date of First Recording

3000NG