Path of Lyssa -

Path of Lyssa

is being written as part of a novel-writing challenge over the month of November. Please expect poor editing!

Current word count:

27,275

This chapter contains scenes of

non-consensual activity

and

physical abuse.

---

3 - Animals

Charisse hated bandits. Naturally, that was in part due to their shameless shedding of morality in order to achieve financial gain. Where Charisse threw himself wholeheartedly into the sacrifice he would need to make to quell the Dark Lord, others took from those with desperately little left to their name, the victims of battles with the Dark Legion and the mindless slaughter of the ghouls. It baffled the young farmer-turned-warrior that, especially in this Era of Shadow, the people of this land would be able to ignore the suffering around them, even increase that suffering, and allow their comfort to accumulate. To never consider that their ill-gotten wealth might do better work in the hands of the needy.

The other reason he hated bandits was because they were so

fucking

fast! The ghouls never considered self-preservation as you marched upon them and cleaved their heads from their shoulders. The counterattack was the danger when facing the undead. They were simple creatures with no imagination and no battlefield planning to speak of. They used their numbers and physical mass to overwhelm their victims. But bandits were clever. They cared about their own wellbeing. They would retreat, hide and lay traps and ambushes to catch you off-guard. Charisse hated that. It was seriously annoying.

He let his frustration out into the air as a shout with the savage swing of his father's axe. In most circumstances, Charisse balked at the risk of taking life from someone. But his blood was boiling, and the hour was late. The curse was wriggling restlessly in his bones. And when he swung, he swung to kill. Not that it mattered. The cowled villain ducked beneath the attack and allowed the axe blade to embed itself deeply into the wood of the tree behind him. Then he spun away from Charisse's engagement and slipped into the gloom once more. Charisse snarled as he tugged his weapon free.

"Damnation!" he spat, spinning in search of new targets.

Near his back, Claire's expression was far softer. She had her blackjack out, held straight at her waist like an extension of her arm, but she also had her eyes closed. A flash in his attention showed Charisse that a darkly clad figure was approaching her rapidly from the rear with a baton of his own. But as the figure attacked, making to club her on the back of her head, Claire hopped to one side and let the attack pass her by. Then she swung a blow of her own. Charisse heard snapping bone under the impact on the bandit's arm, and the muffle howl of anguish from the robber, who immediately pulled back with a hand over his wound.

"They are retreating," Claire informed him sightlessly. When she fell into the prayer-trance of her elder patron, her senses became heightened beyond the limits of her human form. Her skills bordered even on precognition. "There's one more making the attempt. North-east, cover me."

Obeying her words without question came easily after so long spent together in combat. Charisse sped forward on his powerful legs and raised his shield arm up to protect her face at the designated angle. A mere moment later, the wood of his shield shuddered with the powerful slam of a stone cast from a sling.

"Now he's leaving too," breathed Claire. She was close, their bodies pressed protectively together. These days, Charisse didn't even feel the slightest bit awkward about sharing heat with a girl his own age. It was just Claire, after all.

Charisse held his breathing steady for a further twenty beats of his heart, enough time to ensure the bandit squad wasn't preparing a recovery deeper in the trees. But when only the ambient swishing and chittering of the woods fell across his senses, he knew that they were done. And apparently, the villains had decided to be content with earning nothing from attacking them. It may have been in part thanks to Charisse's inability to deal them harm. None of their number had fallen, so there was no need to pursue recompense for shed blood. They all lived to fight another day.

"Charisse..."

Claire's eyes were open. Where he felt cool relief, his friend's countenance was creased with concern.

"Where's Lyssa?"

A pause, his mind blurred by the lingering effects of battle-rage. Then, his stomach dropped. One moment, elation. The next, fear. Charisse lowered his shield arm and spun left and right, his eyes piercing the gloom in search of their friend. But she was nowhere in sight.

"No!" he shouted. "Claire, where is she?"

"I-I was asking you!" she scowled. "I couldn't sense her... not even when she was right next to me! The eyes of Oculus didn't see her at all!"

And now she was gone. Charisse began to prowl around the disturbed leaves of their battlefield. His shoulders were hunched, his bootfall heavy. He darted his attention back and forth around the cover of the trees all around them.

"Lyssa!!" he cried. "Lyssa, where are you?!"

He kicked at the leaves at his feet, hoping for some sign of her presence fallen on the ground. Hoping he wouldn't find shed blood or her mangled body. No, there was little chance of that. Bandits like the ones who had attacked them didn't kill needlessly. Coin meant little in the Era of Shadow, good shoes and unmarred clothing a little more. But people were precious. And a woman like Lyssa, so lovely and fair...

"Lyssa!!"

"Charisse, please calm down!"

"Lyssa, call out to me! Please!!"

"Charisse!!"

He almost shoved Claire aside when his friend grabbed hold of his arm tightly. In her blue eyes he saw his own foul, bestial expression reflected back at him.

"Rage will win us nothing!" Claire insisted. "You're just as likely to run off in the wrong direction."

"Then which way

should

I run?!" he spat.

"I saw them retreating north," she said carefully. "B-But they may have done so just to hide their true retreat."

"Search for them!" he commanded, turning fully to face her. He loomed over her, but she held his gaze bravely. For his sins, Claire was well used to handling him when the curse began to take over.

"It will be difficult without knowing the attackers personally," she said, needlessly since he knew how her prayers worked. "And I... really could never sense Lyssa herself. But..."

She swallowed, reaching backwards and dropping her rucksack to the floor. Her writing kit was right on the top of her belongings, since she called on her patron so frequently.

"She still has that letter I gave her on the day we met," Claire said. "I can ask for the paper I tore it from to be returned to its brothers. Oculus will listen to that."

"Do it, then!"

"But first!" Claire set her writing kit aside and tugged free of the rucksack instead a small cotton pouch, very familiar. She stood to her feet and held it out to him.

"There's no time!" Charisse insisted bitterly.

"I won't have you going after her like this," Claire demanded with a scowl. "You are going to calm down first."

"Claire!"

"I can't lose you too!" A tiny tear sprung to life in the corner of one eye, and she shook it free with a grimace and a whip of her head to one side. "I can't do that. Pray with me. I insist."

He swallowed down his remaining ire with effort. Of course, she was scared too. Lyssa had been a part of their journey for only a couple of days now, but her sweet smiles and easy conversation had been a gift to both of them. Charisse had overheard the two girls talking well into the night, when Lyssa should have been sleeping and Claire attentively on watch. The mysterious beauty was curious about them, about the Era of Shadow that she had seemingly missed through her memory loss. And her if her constant questioning would have been an irritation for anyone else, Claire, who had made the accumulation of knowledge her sacred mission, revelled in being the source of insight for her. If they perhaps had shared a little more of themselves with her than was wise, then such was the effect of the Era of Shadow. It had been so long since they had met a new, friendly face.

"I-I'm sorry, Claire," said Charisse. He let his axe and shield fall to the leafy floor and put one hand on her shoulders. With the other, he took the little bundle of calming herbs from her and held it under his nose. "You're right. Let's pray."

"Thank you."

Sighing her relief, Claire assumed the prayer position. Her hands pressed against the sides of his face. Her skin was chill, or perhaps his was just unusually hot. Claire closed her eyes. Charisse did the same.

"

Eyes inward, eyes inward,

" she recited. "

May we see the truth, as you see it, O Oculus. We draw the box and count the sides.

"

He slowed his breathing. In his imagination, he readied once more the ritual square shape that he used to measure his breaths, the four-sided sigil of Oculus All-seeing. Charisse ran his attention along one edge of the box, breathing in. Then along the next edge, breathing out.

"Two," he sighed with his exhaling. Then he did the same again. "Four."

"

Show us the heart of who we are,

" Claire implored to the ancient one. "

Even that which is dark. May we not be clouded with judgement for the ugliness of our inner selves. May we see objectively.

"

"Ten," Charisse counted. "Twelve."

Slowly, the roiling black of the curse began to recede into himself. Charisse could feel a presence standing at his back, though he knew there would be nobody there when he turned. Oculus, unknowable and mysterious, drew Charisse's attention inwards.

It was so hard to sense the influence of the Dark Lord when he was wrapped up in its embrace. But when he was actively reducing it, Charisse felt acutely the vicious, animal snapping and snarling of the version of himself that he hated. He grabbed the animal by its collar and began desperately tugging it back into its lair. As Oculus showed him the truth of himself and the curse faded, it became more like a mouse he had trapped in his palms. It scratched and bit at his skin, but it was a small pain. Then, smaller. A biting midge. A twinge in his muscle. Then, nothing.

"Thirty," he said.

"And I think that's enough." Claire sniffed as she stepped away from him. Had she been crying? Charisse opened his eyes, but he didn't see wetness of her pale cheeks as he had expected.

"Now," Claire said with a smile. "Let me find our friend. We can walk while I work."

"Thank you," he replied. They went for their tools. She for her writing kit, he for his iron. And they set off together, following the retreat of their enemies. And hopefully the wayward capture of their dear friend.

---

Lyssa was annoyed. The nature of her existence was a continual mystery to her. Where she'd hoped for a simple answer for her amnesia and a swift, comfortable return to the life she'd had before, every clue instead seemed to spawn another new set of questions. She had dedicated long hours of each day trying to puzzle out the truth of herself with her friends. But the more she learned, the less she understood.

The man in her dreams was the Dark Lord, the man Charisse and Claire were seeking to slay. What did that mean for her, that she found him so enthralling? He was evil. His influence had led to the Era of Shadow that had ended the lives of countless of Charisse and Claire's friends and family. He killed, he tortured. He stole. Her own heart too, he had stolen. One thing was certain, Lyssa would one day have to choose. Her new friends, who had so willingly added her to their number. Or her Lord, the one who beckoned her east. Which was her true nature? Which road was Lyssa's?

And on top of all that...

Lyssa was tossed unceremoniously to the floor of the wide tent. Her head was spinning, and she tasted blood in the back of her mouth. Her vision, on one side of her head more than the other, was blurred. She blinked a few times, and a semblance of clarity returned to her. The bandit camp's central tent was all rough leather and caked dirt, a needs-must of a command centre. Mismatched rugs faded and stained with week-old boot prints lined the floor, but Lyssa could still feel the lumps of the soil beneath the thin fabric. Piles of loose clothing and balled up sleeping rolls were dotted carelessly about the edges of the tent, where standing poles that kept the roof above their heads were dark at their bases from rising damp. These people had come here a while ago, then, and had yet to find a reason to move on. In the centre of the tent was a long table, and Lyssa's fuzzy mind identified a simple map rolled out on its surface. She couldn't tell from her vantage on the floor where on the illustration she was meant to be. And some of those marks were clearly from food.

She rolled her neck around on her shoulders with a grumble at her lips, and the man who had been lugging her along chuckled as he prowled around to her front.

"Yeah, I'd get comfortable, little songbird," he said. "You might be here a while."

Lyssa scowled. That was unfortunate. The answers were not coming fast enough. But she'd find them east, that was for certain. Her sense of direction wasn't adequate to determine where this camp was situated compared to the trail she had been following, but chances were that they hadn't gone in the right direction. Her being here at all was a delay that her dreaming mind, the mind so fixated on the face of the Dark Lord Karaszen, refused to accept. She had to be moving.

The man who had taken her was a broad-shouldered fellow in his late thirties, by her guess. The thick muscle around his chest and neck reminded her of Charisse. Perhaps a Charisse who had dedicated a further decade of life simply to bulking himself up. And in that time, had refused to wash himself. The man's stubble was thick and uneven, his hair shorn around the edges but leaving the top tall and rigid. One of his eyes was scarred with an old slash, but it did not appear to be sightless. He wore the buckles of his leather harness atop his looser, darker clothing with easy familiarity. His prowling gait took the weight of his sheathed weapons in stride. A man who had seen battle and walked away, and not just once.

Around them, the rest of the band were assembling. Six men and one woman entered the tent and tossed their belongings down on the floor wherever they could find space. Their grins were cheerful, victorious. One of the bandits, wiping down his brow with the back of one hand, threw Lyssa's own satchel onto a pile of clothing as if it was worthless.

Lyssa felt at the tender skin on the side of her skull and winced. "So," she said, deciding on boldness, "how long are you fancying that I should remain here in your care afore I continue on my travels?"

The female bandit, taking up a seat on the floor across from her, whistled through her teeth. "That's some accent, love," she said with a smirk. "Posh little bird, aren't you?"

Lyssa scowled at her, since was supposed to be acting confident, and the woman laughed.

"You're our possession until someone comes along to buy you from us," said her male captor with a sigh. He leant back against the long table in the centre of the tent and folded his big arms. "How long that takes depends on how much you're worth."

"She's magic, boss," said one of the men, a scrawny fellow with a rat-like snout of a nose. "She's a mage, I guarantee it. Rych had a go at her before you got to her, and he's nursing a headache now from something she said at him, he says."

"Is that right?" Boss narrowed his eyes down at Lyssa with a thoughtful twist of his lips. "You're a magician, little bird?"

"If that will allow me to leave this place posthaste, then I shall be whatever is required."

The man laughed. It wasn't so coarse a sound as Lyssa had been expecting. If anything, he sounded impressed.

"That's what I thought," he said with a grin. "If you were a true mage, you'd have set us all on fire by now. Either Rych is just using a likely story to cover for the fact that he drinks too much, or whatever reserves she uses to empower herself are dry. Either way, we can't sell her as a mage if we can't prove it."

Lyssa set her eyes downward as a wave of frustration and shame overcame her. In the end, the sliver of essence she had harvested from Arram had been next to useless. She had commanded the brute who had come upon her to back off, but she had succeeded merely in deterring him temporarily. Clearly, living humans required more of a push with her mysterious enchantment than dead ghouls. There was nothing she could do against a human opponent with just one dose of energy, save delay an inevitable re-capture.

"You sure about that, boss?" asked a lanky man by the entrance flap to the tent, unwinding a sling from around his hand and hanging it up on a nail on one of the structure's posts. "Dark Legion's always on the lookout for mages. Isn't that what the Adherent said when he stopped by the other day? They could take a mage for retraining and we'd be well compensated."

"The Dark Legion?" Lyssa looked up as opportunity presented itself. "Yes, you should sell me to the Dark Lord! I am valuable to him! I am certain you shall not regret it!"

If these brutes were willing to ship her straight to the Black Palace, she could save herself a lot of wasted time. Unfortunately, the Boss eyed her with a narrow, suspicious glare, and she realised that she had played her hand a little too enthusiastically.

"You

want

to go to him?" he asked. "I wouldn't, I were you. The Dark Legion doesn't treat its own well, far as I've heard. And the other thing I've heard is that they don't pay."

"The Dark Adherent said-..."

"Fuck if I care what he said!" Boss retorted with a sharp laugh. "You think Karaszen gives a shit about the economy? He's not interested in outsourcing his invasion, Derk. No, we aren't selling her to the Legion."

Boss pushed himself off from his lean on the table and squatted himself down in front of Lyssa with a leering smile. Despite her false bravado, Lyssa found herself leaning away from him.

"Tell me about your two friends," he said. "Are they rich kids? They look like village tykes to me, but you never know. More than a few pricey relics end up in the care of the villages around here, now that order's mostly fallen apart. That sound right, songbird?"

"They... do well enough by themselves," Lyssa replied carefully. "I... They will pay, I believe."

I hope

, she added to herself. The last thing she needed was for these bandits to decide that she was worthless. They wouldn't turn her out peaceably in that case, would they? They'd more likely just slit her throat and bury her in the dirt.

"The lad had a nice axe," remarked the lanky man, Derk, with a shrug. "That wasn't a lumber tool. Looked like a pre-Rout weapon."

"He was wearing chain, eh?" agreed the rat-man. "Can't recall the last time I saw a full shirt of chain. They don't make that around here anymore."

"Hmm," nodded the Boss. "A nice axe, and a shirt of chain. It's a start. What about the girl? What's she got that we could use for our little cause?"

Lyssa blinked at the quiet chorus of chuckling that sounded from around her. There was heat in the sound, the sharpness of teeth. She swallowed. Her stomach churned at the thought of Claire having to decide between her innocence and her friend's life.

But deeper beneath, Lyssa's now empty void gurgled hungrily.

"Is that the treasure you seek?" she asked the room. Since she was pretending at confidence, she allowed an edge of derision to glide across her words. "You would trade me for a mere act of physical gratification?"