📚 majutsu-shi no chiara Part 7 of 20
majutsu-shi-no-chikara-ch-07
SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY

Majutsu Shi No Chikara Ch 07

Majutsu Shi No Chikara Ch 07

by thefeveredhunger
19 min read
4.65 (1900 views)
adultfiction

Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"

CHAPTER SEVEN: Broken promises

Two mules of Sidero stalked the vacant tents, the scuttled stores and smashed water jugs. In their stealth, they had spent a day and a half weaving their way through trackless underbrush at the edge of the small forest the humans called Willow Wood. They found a camp abandoned, with foul-smelling charcoal and ashes blowing-about in the wind -- patches of thick paste clotting the gathering-places and the water tent with an odor they could only just recognize.

"The dead... lizard-kobold-two-things-thief..."

"What did it do to the Sidero?"

"The sword?"

"No -- we'd be dead, if it were the sword."

"Hide! Someone is coming."

Some time passes, but there is little to hear from the trespassers as they seem to know exactly what salvage they seek.

"They look... are they another tribe?"

"We follow them. If they're scouts, we kill them. Either way, they have answers."

They follow, low in the grass or just inside the trees... to the narrow bend in the stream... with the morning sun just below the rim of the world, and naked, pristine ork flesh scattered in the wake of an orgy-rut the Sidero had not known since before the death of Sidero himself.

Lust. The stench of it undeniable, unavoidable. It hunted them, dragged them into the heart of the camp with silent steps -- to another familiar stench. Human.

Cradled in the arms of Abhilash Chief-kin, like some prized trophy, was the human. His back to her front, naked flesh a red-brown shade of clay suited to the plains and pottery both. His limbs, smooth with the secret nod of muscle just beneath, not so large as the limbs of orks... indeed, he would stand a hand shorter than most orks -- even as he stood a hand taller than most humans in the region. Whether illusion or some other magic, his previously scarred face -- a jagged explosion on the side where a troll's hand had struck him only once -- was pristine... unmarred.

Abhilash's arms were about him, the thick muscle of one arm pillowing his head as she snored into the slick-looking raven locks of his hair, and her other arm draped over him and cupped him to her breast, a shield wall of brown-green muscle hot against his skin. He stirred but once, his mouth frowning into a wistful smile, and the mule looking upon him was filled with drooling, gibbering rage.

This

human

, who Kamakshi had spent so many lives of her loyal mules to capture, was nestled like a thing worthy of comfort -- of suckling like a whelp at a mother's teat and shielded from the harshest winter winds until it was big enough and strong enough to fend for itself. For this

human

to be so

protected

... it made the mule's eyes bulge and mouth slaver with hatred -- tusks quivering as it drew in a breath and lifted the shining steel blade in both hands, the tip of steel shivering in murderous anticipation as dawn light danced down its length, already wet with sunlight in honor of the blood it was about to shed.

Humming. Either from the weapon or the sleeping human, the mule would never know, for it struck downward with fatal accuracy toward the human's throat as the mule's voice erupted in a terrible scream of wrath and blood. The mule's strike carried such force that the blade bent nearly double after lancing into the earth below, and blood raced down from the flesh in which it was sheathed. The human's eyes were wide, blind in terror, his breath trapped in his chest even as a warding arm tightened over him.

But it was not to be.

Abhilash's hand gripped the blade with strength born not only of hardship and violence, but the mad power of promises sealed by magic. Even so, her grasp was not enough to stop the blade, and the flesh of her hand opened around that lethal edge and wept freely as the point met soil. The naked edge of steel between her hand and the ground touched Damon's throat, the she-ork's blood mingling and overflowing his own as air gushed from his chest and out his mouth. He felt the itching, razor-like burning of two nerves laid bare and he could not tell whose blood rushed at his neck.

Abhilash stood, her hand a vise upon the blade, and her fury was terrible to witness. Bending between them, the magical sword whined and strained. The mule, for all its two-handed grip upon the sword, released the blade and flew at the chieftain's daughter -- lost to bloody rage and screaming wordless hatred at her face. Abhilash dropped the sword, but the curve of steel gave up the stored momentum of its wrestled arch and flew upward between them. Her bloody hand struck, limp claws like daggers across the mule's eyes, and her other hand snatched the pommel from the air and hacked downward.

The blade sang with delight and bloodshed, limbs and life spilling in different directions.

The mule, having seized upon its own momentum when the blade was deflected in its grasp, had torn great wounds at the arms and neck of Abhilash Chief-kin. Had he not descended upon her as she stood, his attack would have stopped before reaching her flesh as the blade swept down and took his arms at the elbows. His face a ruined mass, Abhilash's near-useless hand clutched in a weak fist to slow the blood running there as her arm was drawn close to trap his hand upon her. It was there, in that slender space between them, where the blade passed of its own volition. She had not commanded it, nor had she the skill to wield it with such precision, but the blade had known. She could feel the giggling, childlike laughter of the steel as it drank of the mule's life -- but there was no stillness.

Blind, limbed, and howling, the mule had continued its deadly lunge at Abhilash and its wide jaws sought her neck or face. The blade gave a keening note, twisting Abhilash's arm and wrist and dragging upward -- her elbow snapping-shut the blood-filled maw of the mule and crushing its jaw, whipping its head backward. The blade, never resting, dragged up, up, outward -- impossibly fast in its lazy sweeping that took the mule at the balls and split upward to his breast -- the buried tip of the blade cleaving through organs and bone like so much soft butter.

Gutted, mangled, blind, the mule's body could not continue -- though its mind still raged and dreamed in death of the furious destruction it wrought upon the traitorous cunt of a whelp that was Abhilash, daughter of Kamakshi. It fell backward, even as the mule's crushed jaw gave a hideous smile at the taste of victory in its jaws where Abhilash's throat was torn free...

Abhilash, like the mule's dying mind, did not stop at the death-blow she dealt. She screamed a wailing, thunderous sound that scattered birds and beasts for miles, and the blade danced upon the ruined body of the fallen mule. Over and over again she struck, the blade happily severing, slicing, and hacking at the twitching flesh and splattering blood all about. For its bloody work, the blade gave thanks and fulfilled its purpose -- drawing the dwindling life of its victim into itself and up the blade, into the pommel and out to the hand wielding it.

Most orks, in a rage, will rend their foe to pieces and stop when the quivering body goes limp with death... then, the feral surge that fueled them would retreat to the periphery and leave them dazed or winded -- victim to whatever wounds they might suffer in such a state.

So sated, Abhilash looked down at her breasts and hand, a crisp, itching heat tunneling through her sword-hand and into her wounds where nerves had been severed and blood filled aching gaps. Her flesh began to knit itself, and she hissed displeasure at the pain of it -- for her fury was gone -- but she waited until whatever spell had trapped her was satisfied.

"What have you done to me?" Her yellow eyes found Damon, slowly rising to his feet with his eyes staring at her -- his neck looked intact, despite the heavy wash of blood upon it.

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"I..." Damon's hands raised slowly, as though such a movement could protect his naked body from naked steel.

"What have you

done

to me?!" Abhilash shouted, and tears wept from her face as wounds knit shut to leave smooth, unblemished skin.

Eyes darting from Abhilash's face to the sword and back, Damon fought to recover a memory from a thousand years ago... something behind the thickened wall of the night of his capture.

"The blade." Damon pointed. "He called himself

'Billsby of the Thirsty Blade.'

"

As Abhilash regarded the weapon with only passing scrutiny, she noted blood-black markings on its length. It did not glow, such as magic blades were oft said to glow, and the bloody etching in the blade faded before she could puzzle-out the language of it. She did sense a proud malevolence coming from the steel, and thoughts like a whispered voice echoed from the well of the pommel in her hand -- like a call from a tribe-mate carried on the wind.

Death is life and life is death.

She dropped the weapon, revulsion contorting her mouth and eyes in a mask Damon recognized -- but the shadows of fear and surprise still stymied his understanding her expression. Whatever the blade had done, it seemed through with its task and anyway the she-ork now appeared loathe to touch the thing. His dark eyes searched Abhilash's face, searched the length of the sword... searched, albeit grudgingly and with many a flop or turn of his stomach, the hewn...chunks of what remained of their attacker, now only just recognizable as a humanoid corpse.

"How were you able...?" Damon trailed-off, his mind full of too many questions. "Are you hurt?"

Shadows, reflections of reflections like two pieces of mirrored glass facing each other, Abhilash heard and saw Damon's face -- his voice becoming a soft murmur in the darkness, a booming cacophony from a mountaintop, and the steady beating of her own heart in her ears. It was unnerving, nauseating to hear and see him as though through several sets of eyes -- or rather, as though each memory were still happening and the eyes were her own and the moment was several repeated events colliding all at once.

She clutched the sword-hand to her breast, a balled fist pressed protectively into her flesh, and she stared defiantly at him. The human's eyes and hands were drawn to the appendage that had, instead, gripped the bare blade. His touch was warm, gently insistent and only humanly comforting. Abhilash gazed in rapt terror as the human lifted and examined her palm -- touching fresh scars in her flesh where there had been none before.

...

The whole of the Sidero were likewise on their feet and several were wrestling a single, misshapen she-mule to the ground. Kamakshi's hands had reached to Damon's shoulders and were about to turn him to look at her, that she could see the extent of his wounds. Here, in a primal moment of blood and dying, the human was approaching her daughter like a wounded animal caught in a trap. It was enough that she let her arms drop to her sides, taking a deep breath through her nose as much to calm her own stampeding pulse as draw information from the air.

Kamakshi turned her voice to the assembled Sidero, leaving Abhilash and Damon in the thrall of whatever cruel magic was being worked upon them. For them, there was nothing left for her to do except wait until the daughters of Sidero were fat with new life -- then release Abhilash from her hex to protect the human -- lastly, to send the human away. Until then, she was still Shaman -- still Chieftain to the Sidero tribe.

...

"Why did it scar?" Damon looked from Abhilash's left palm to her breast, up to her shoulder and the curve of her neck. "Your other wounds..."

"Do not

touch

me." Abhilash hissed, but did not withdraw from him. Her voice near failed her, and her eyes were wet from the confluence of feelings -- his touch too soft, his mouth too small, his eyes too...

"I'm sorry." and his hands released her hand, which hovered only a moment in hesitation before falling with a slap to her thigh. "You have saved my life, Ser Abhilash, chieftain's daughter."

His hand found the small groove in the flesh of his neck, still welling with droplets of blood that mixed with that already spilt from when the she-ork grabbed the magical sword's blade. His hand was sticky and wet, and he looked at the stains of life mixing on his fingers and palm. It bled slowly, yet did not clot-over quickly, for it was bumped and bounced by the beat of his own heart and each of the first few attempts of the blood to seal the wound resulted in another welling drop forcing its way out and bursting the dam before it could be shored-up. Feeling the ache of it in the hollow of his throat, he wondered again how he could still be alive. The blade had certainly speared his throat, had it not? He

should

be dead, twice-over.

How else, but the warring power of magics at work: a blade's blessings of skill and death, and the ork-mother's curses laid on the she-ork who only now stole a glance at the scars of her palm. Scars that, no doubt, told of how she hand gripped the flat of the blade and

lifted

it -- mid-blow -- from the dimple wound in his neck, and redirected that dread thrust away and into the dirt.

Razor-breadths vanished, too large to fit within the space and time of such a feat. Damon shook and sank to his knees, sobbing in relief for his life... the dam holding back his fear burst and dragged deep, shaking cries from his chest.

Why?

Abhilash demanded of her treacherous hand, whose scars glared back at her with resolute pride. She thought for a moment, just that, of taking up the magical blade and severing that scarred hand from her body -- casting it away, some reviled, diseased part of herself... or else, cleaving the head of this human from his shoulders.

And there pounced the waiting giant in her mind, grappling her and knocking the breath from her chest and threatening to squeeze the life from her -- but never letting her free of the

burden

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... the maddening burden of protecting this

human

.

...

"Kamakshi-Chief!" one of her mules (Kamakshi's mouth was wet, seeing their beauty) leading the scrum that had tackled a hulking she-mule ork that looked alien to her... but she knew this one.

"What is this?" Kamakshi wrested her attention from her daughter and the human. "Are my beautiful..."

The word "mules" died on her lips, the rest of her thought smothered and drowned in the nearby creek. The huddle of orks lifted the hulking mule among them, her arms grappled by two mules each, and her throat caught in the dangerous claws of yet another.

"Kamakshi-Chief." the female mule, who may have been sired by a troll (though Kamakshi found it difficult to remember, just now), lifted her chin and stared with different-size eyes at the resplendent matriarch. The mule's larger eye wept at the sight of her, and her sex followed worshipful tears.

"She is unchanged by the sorcerer's magic." Uduak whispered, even as the voices of a dozen mules were rising with equal confusion.

"Where are the others?" Kamakshi raised her brow at the true mule. It was a curious distinction, now, and she felt it cheapened the gifts the sorcerer had given... she gave thought a moment to killing this mule to be rid of their twisted shape -- but they were also her kin. Either the whelps of her whelps, or another generation later... would it be more kind to kill them, and spare them living as the only twisted mule of the Sidero?

"Dead." the she-mule offered an abbreviated explanation. "The human shaman -- the ancient one -- is dead. We found the sword. We argued. Then, we agreed to flee."

"But you are here."

"We are here." the she-mule looked toward Abhilash and the innumerable pieces of her cohort scattered behind the chieftain's daughter. "We followed those changed... we did not recognize their scent, until we were here."

Kamakshi stared, as though her silvery eyes would pierce falsehood and the she-mule's flesh entirely.

"Why attack the human?" Kamakshi demanded, ignoring the obvious human blubbering behind her.

"Kamakshi made oaths with the human." the mule shrugged, wholly unapologetic and without any real explanation herself. "Kamakshi-Chief did not stop her mule in its rage... Abhilash Chief-kin did. The human is protected."

"Bah!" Kamakshi waved-off the prisoner, her mules promptly pummeling the she-mule insensate under withering blows of fists and feet. That threat dealt-with, Kamakshi turned to see that Abhilash had taken-up Billsby's sword.

...

It was a simple matter to scoop the blade into her scarred hand, even if her breath did not come easily and her eyes could not focus to see where the human had gone. The stink of blood and entrails from her kill obscured even Damon's direction, though she knew he was before her. When her scarred flesh met the pommel of the sword, pain still strangling her mind, she thought she felt the weapon recoil -- a peculiar, metallic springing sound in her ears that no-one else could hear. The hand that had impeded the blade in its task of doling-out death and dismemberment, the cursed flesh that so

dared

to act against the powerful enchantments that gave this length of steel nearly a mind and will of its own. Whether the image in her mind was her own contrivance or some cryptic magical speech from an intelligent weapon, Abhilash could not know -- indeed, the consideration did not even occur to her, such was the fugue of her pain that she would not even remember the feeling until hours later.

If a weapon could hate -- if

this

weapon could hate -- it would hate Damon for being alive, as it had tasted his blood and he still drew breath... it would hate Abhilash doubly so, for that reason and for her interdiction of its affairs.

But rather than continue to bend herself against the indomitable strength of her mother's curse, Abhilash considered another, more final escape. The manner may be different, but the human may have seen the right of it long before any of the Sidero had realized just how fucked they all were, and she turned the blade and her own bloody thoughts -- blinding pain and all -- to put the blade at her own neck.

See who shall guard your precious human now, Kamakshi.

She froze. Whether triggered by her challenge and threat of reprisal, she couldn't truly know (and it would haunt her), but she could not move her arm... a wave of thoughts coursing through her mind too fast to see clearly, too loud to single-out a single word. At last, the whirlwind grew quiet, the dull

thump

of distant heartbeats stretching further and further apart -- to the rhythm of a brief refrain.

If not me, then who?

There, staring back from the impenetrable fortress and cage that now barred them from each other -- and held them prisoner together -- was the mighty construct, damnable magical bonds that Kamakshi had lain upon her. It leaned against its confines, the bars bending painfully toward her as it leered at Abhilash from the depths of her own being, laughing with sadistic delight as it savored the choking she felt in her neck and the searing pain where her muscles refused to obey her commands to end her own life.

"I..." the voice was not her own, and she shook against the sickening sound of it as the beast within pulled at her flesh -- its living marionette.

"...will..." her eyes squeezed shut, already knowing the inevitable sequence of words, damning herself, her mother, the human, all of the plains, the sun, the heavens.

"...guard..." sweat and tears gathered and ran down her face, her quaking body a volcano threatening to explode.

"Abhilash, I release you!" Kamakshi screamed, her hands a blur within the lines of magic.

What should have been the snapping of threads, the slackening of tension -- the relief and the release of Kamakshi's curse... wasn't. Having only enough strength to sense salvation, Abhilash had given herself over to Kamakshi's power. The matriarch had attacked the hex with all her will.

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