Chapter 13
Abruptly, I had at least some idea of what we were fighting. A shifter, one of the elite warriors of the Metic clans. But this shifter had been corrupted, turned into a demon. The druids of Metic were experts in finding and preventing potential demons, so I could only imagine that the Pure were behind this.
Myta streaked past me, engaging our enemy herself, and I focused back on the battle. Pain was a distraction now, and I pushed it away with a well-practiced effort of will. I clamped down even harder on the shifter with our combined presence, determined not to waste this opening.
Myta took full advantage. She cut off the beast's head with a heavy overhand chop, and when that failed to kill the enemy she continued to rain down blows. I tried to direct her, to let her know that the animalistic visage was just a facade for the human inside, but my flame was too lost in her rage to heed me.
It didn't matter. Myta simply kept cutting the enemy into smaller pieces. Eventually bisecting their torso.
"Enough!" I shouted, when it looked as though she might continue to mutilate the corpse. I put my will into the shout, bringing her up short abruptly. Not just her, however. I hit Sati with the command as well, and everyone else in the company besides. Sighing, I dispersed my lingering will while some of the company were still stumbling in reaction to my mistake.
"They're dead, and I want enough of a body to examine." I said. "Get the company in order, Mytan."
She jerked when I called her that, clapping her fist to her chest in salute. Adding the suffix was a cold reminder of her responsibility to lead the warriors, and care for them. Hati came over, pulling me into our impromptu infirmary. I was already binding my wound with my presence, just my own presence. I'd released that of the rest of the company.
"We need to train our skills, Esur'uk," Hati said. "I felt useless in that fight, too slow to keep up with anything that was happening." She sounded apologetic, even though it wasn't an apology. The sergeant was experienced enough to know when something was within her capabilities, and when it wasn't.
"Yes," I agreed. "With an earth aspect you'll never be as fast as Myta or Denu can become, but you can improve greatly. The rest of the company need to develop their aspects first, however. So you can all train together. I'll need to push you all, hard."
She nodded, not adding anything more. Our company had already shown their dedication, simply by coming on this mission.
The aftermath of the battle was a messy affair. Containing the spiritual remains of the shifter and tending the wounded took me hours. Hours in which our camp was cleaned up, and pungent herbs were burned to repel scavengers. At my insistence, our attacker's corpse was set aside, although Myta told me there probably wasn't much else to be learned from it. The shifter's body had rotted away to nothing within minutes.
I tended to the warrior with the missing arm first. Her name was Kari, no doubt named in honor of the former governor of Bani. An unfortunate name, as she would likely be saying 'Kari the guard, not Kari the traitor' for years to come. I smoothed out her curling meridians from her missing arm, and then formed a powerful spell of restoration. Her status as my vasra meant that I could simply send the spell to her through the link. Far easier, and less disruptive than piercing her anima.
Then, as I had done once with Jito, I visited her unconscious mind. Kari had actually begun to form her sanctum, it was a part of the basics I had been teaching the company. Hers was nothing much yet, a vague glade in a forest, with a small pool and stream to represent her mana, and her link to Myta. As I entered it, however, her sanctum grew more defined at an almost visible pace.
As I had with Jito, I walked Kari through the process of cementing her self-image. It was fairly easy, as she hadn't had time yet to process the idea that she'd lost a limb. After she was settled, and I purged the lingering demonic mana from her, I moved on to my next patient.
By the time I was finished, I was confident that everyone other than Kari would make a full recovery. And my previous restoration of Jito's eye made me hopeful that with my new technique, even she might be restored. I could tell that Myta and Sati both wanted to speak with me, but at that point it was past midnight, and I just fell into an exhausted sleep.
The next morning I was still groggy, and in a foul mood. I didn't generally need as much sleep as others. But between the mana I'd consumed, as well as my own injury, I was in poor shape. I put Myta off until I'd had a chance to examine the shifter's remains, but at that point even the bones had crumbled to dust. Perhaps I could find out more from the spiritual remains I'd harvested, but I could deal with that later.
"Master, I must speak with you now." Having felt that I was ready to address her concern, Myta pitched her voice deliberately loud. Whatever this was, she wanted the entire company as a witness. "I failed you yesterday. I lost focus, and allowed my emotions to override my sense, ignoring your instructions in battle. I submit myself for your judgment."
My first instinct was to dismiss her apology. I could feel her remorse, her budding shame over her loss of focus in the battle. And the last thing that I wanted was to send her into a spiral. Her recently cured soul-sickness was shame, and I was wary of seeing her fall back into it.
But then I realized, that was exactly why my flame needed this. She had carried that shame for her whole life. Guilt, that was foisted off on her with no way to resolve or escape it. Now that she had made a genuine mistake, she needed a way to expiate the guilt she was feeling.
"Tarun would give a guard who failed their duty in the heat of battle five lashes to remind them of their failure." I looked at Hati, who nodded to confirm. "You lead the company, and so you will receive twice that, as your responsibility is greater. You will display the marks for one day, after which your mistake is forgiven, so long as it is not forgotten."
No one looked upset at my declaration, except for Myta herself. I imagined she thought that the punishment should be harsher, but she couldn't argue with my reasoning. She did open her mouth to argue when I cut a tiny switch of green wood, but snapped it shut when I glared at her. We both knew that such a flimsy lash would do nothing to her.
Myta stripped off her top, and knelt in an open space to bare her back for me. The entire company gathered to watch, although not a person jeered or made a sound. Far different from the public punishments you might usually see across the Shattered Lands. Many cultures encouraged such displays as a form of humiliation, but everyone here respected Myta too much for this to become a spectacle. Even Sati was dead silent.
I brought the switch down across my flame's shoulders, and as I did so, I turned my mind back to my youth. Kneeling in a stone courtyard, a whip licking across my back hard enough that the welts would bleed. I pushed the memory across our link, careful that it only reached Myta, focusing on the physical sensations.
"One!" Myta screamed the word out in pain and surprise. My projected memory bypassed her tolerance for pain. She'd suffered far worse in her time with the Pure, but this was a memory of my pain, from a time before I had understood what true suffering was. And so it impacted her in the same way as it had affected my much younger self. Already a harsh welt rose on her back, purple on her gray skin, hot and seeping blood.
I didn't linger over the strokes, and Myta was less surprised after the first. She counted them out with as much grace as she could muster, while her eyes gathered tears. I cleaned her back, and kissed her forehead, before Sati helped bind her breasts with a silk scarf, so that the welts were uncovered and plainly visible.
