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.
"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.
...
