Barbaric Behaviour

The following takes place in a fairly generic D&D-like fantasy world. D&D spells and fighting styles are referenced, but I hope I have made everything accessible to people unfamiliar with the mechanics.

~~~

"I just don't understand, no member of the bowstring has ever volunteered to be the yew cores." A stern elven commander sighed at me. I couldn't give him the real reason, he'd never understand. Ever since this strange alliance, elves and dwarves working together to repel the threat of men, we all were suddenly out of our comfort zone. We were wedded to a novel military strategy, the elven units (referred to as the bowstring) were archers and mages that supported from behind, while the dwarven fighters and barbarians formed units known as arrowpoints to break the lines and push the invaders back.

But keeping us so strictly separate was bad for cohesion and bred resentment that elves got all the assistance magic, so there are the yew cores, elven mages placed in the arrowpoints to give magical assistance to their raw fury. It was well known that only elves that had pissed off the wrong people ended up in the yew cores, so nobody could understand why I wanted to join.

I've heard the term whirlwind romance before, I understand it's meant to represent a sudden tumultuous crash of emotions, but I don't think it fits. The storm brews, the wind picks up, and you can see the whirlwind coming, it is something only a fool is totally unprepared for. My romance was more like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky.

Like most elves, I first met dwarves in our shared army camps and mess halls. We would make small talk in passing but that barrier seemed insurmountable, so we did what everyone does with friendly rivalries, we would play pranks on one another.

One day I fetched my meal and sat with the other elves, and began to drink my honeyblossum wine, only for a bitter taste to assault my tastebuds. As I gazed around I saw that my elvish companions were all spitting out their drinks in disgust as dwarves laughed on at their devious switcheroo. I detected the pang of alcohol on the palate and realised this wasn't some disgusting concoction designed just to be horrible, it was a strong dwarvish drink they clearly didn't think we had the stomach for. So I steeled my resolve, finished my glass, and gave a huge false sight of satisfaction when done.

Then, just to make my point I drained the glass next to mine too.

The dwarves were both impressed and angry at my resolve, and that's when Jodrolim stepped forward, laughing his head off. He patted me on the back, and announced to the rest of the dwarves.

"We've found mithril in the dirt tonight, lads." He announced, pulling me close and welcoming me into his group of friends. Usually I would have declined out of propriety, but whatever I had drank was of such strength I was willing to throw caution to the wind, and Jodrolim had this relentless charisma that I became completely washed up in.

And after a couple more drinks and Jodrolim's fantastic company, I even felt comfortable letting him take me back to his tent to fuck me.

You have to understand, even in war with everyone seizing the day lest they die tomorrow, I would never usually have sex with someone the first night I met them. I admit I undersell my willingness due to a vestigial attachment to propriety, by his account I swept him off his feet just as surely as he did mine.

From there we went on to spend every moment we could together, any time we weren't training or on manoeuvres we would seek out each other's company. I learned to sharpen my tongue in the presence of his friends, and he learned to refine his wit around mine. That's when I decided to become a member of the yew core. If the men were still advancing, I wanted to face my end side by side with Jodrolim. I already knew the elf assigned to his team was eager to leave and had arranged a swap if my request was approved.

There was bemusement, disappointment, elves trying desperately to talk me out of it, but the only thing I couldn't handle never arrived, rejection.

...

"Alright fellas." Jodrolim began.

"Fellas?" Yelled a female dwarf in confusion.

"You heard me, Moldir, just coz your privates don't dangle, doesn't make you not one of the fellas. Now shut it while I give my pretty words." Jodrolim replied.

"Pretty words, you've been hanging out with that elf too long." Another of his cohort yelled.

"Well you're about to find out what that's like. I had an awe-inspiring speech about having one of us as a yew core, there was going to be a battle cry and everything, but you ruined it so now I'm just going to say this. Motherfucking Nyana is our battalion's yew core!" Jodrolim announced, rhythmically banging his axe on the ground.

At first there was silence, shock. But soon the whole battalion joined in, banging their axes and cheering with unrestrained joy. I had been quietly standing to one side but the boisterous dwarves wouldn't allow that and lifted me on their shoulders and up to the stage.

"Thanks." I stuttered, not prepared for this outpouring of support. "I don't think an elf has ever gotten this level of support from dwarves."

"It's a low bar, you're just the first one to care if we live or die." Came a yell from the crowd.

"Keep interrupting my speech and see if it stays that way." I joshed. The crowd laughed, appreciating every time I showed that I wasn't stuck up. "None of you actually want to hear me talking, you wanna get drunk and celebrate your slightly increased chances of survival. So get some ale down you, I'll take the battalion's watch duties for you tonight."

The explosion of joy and the party that followed will stay with me for some time as I departed to the defensive embankment at edge of our camp. The fortress we were protecting at the time used outlying dwarf camps as both early warning signals and first line of defence, so constant vigilance was drilled hard and being relieved of watching duty was the highest privilege. I took my place looking out over the plains, no signs of any disturbance except the laughter of Jodrolim's approach about an hour into my shift.

"You certainly know how to raise spirits." He chuckled.

"The lightweights in this battalion can barely handle ale, I don't think they should be moving on to spirits yet." I replied through giggles. "Shouldn't you be joining them?"

"I had a few, but the lads decided you should have some company on watch. I'm telling you, there's a good chance you will be the first elf a dwarf has ever taken an arrow for."

"Do they know I took an arrow from you the night we met? Or did you not want them asking how many tries it took you to hit the bullseye?" I japed.

"Oh, so you're planning on being a brat tonight? Sounds like you need a game of rune bones to put you in your place." Jodrolim suggested, that cheeky glint in his eye sending shivers into my core.

"No." I meekly replied, only encouraging him.

"Oh, that took the blast out of your bellows, didn't realise you..." Jodrolim began.

"One game, real stakes to discourage this attitude of yours. If I win, you have to wear my mage robes at drills tomorrow." I interrupted, playfully goading him.

"Fine, and if I win, you finish your watch shift naked." Jodrolim proposed.

"No way, I know you're a big perv, but what if somebody..."

"Nobody will see you, they're all partying, if I lose they'll all see my forfeit, so I think it's fair." Jodrolim reasoned as he pulled out his set of rune bones, five bone carved dice for the gambler on the go. He always knew he could get a rise out of me, a cheeky grin and a wicked idea and immediately we would become partners in crime. I was looking forward to triumphing.

15 minutes later he had the smuggest grin ever to grace a dwarf.

"Don't think of this as a humiliating defeat, think of it as finding a way to keep your heart beating and your wits sharp while on guard duty." He jibed as I stared at the most lucky rune bone roll to ever grace the game.

"Alright." I sighed as I removed my magic enhancing jewellery and began to undo my robes, "but if I hear anyone coming, I'm putting my clothes back on."

"That wasn't the bet." Jodrolim laughed as he collected up my discarded layers and stared lovingly at me in just my elegant gilded underwear. My pale skin turned red with the full body blush that accompanied my precarious position as I undid my bra and eased out my C-cup breasts. The cold night air and my excitement already combined to make my flower petal pink nipples stand to high attention. I pulled my bloomers down over my battle toned thighs and saw Jodrolim's eyes light up.

"So, like what you see?" I giggled with a sarcastic pose like I was in a regal portrait.

"I don't think a dwarf has ever been so attracted to such a hairless body before," he replied. "How much time does it take you to remove every strand of hair on your body that isn't your luscious golden locks or that small blonde stripe above your pussy?"

"Oh, don't you know, usually us elves are as hairy as you under our robes, but when I saw how many fleas you have living in that ginger forest covering your body, I started shaving myself twice a week to keep the swarm from colonising me." I teased as I turned away to scan the horizon with my telescope.

"Usually I have to work hard to keep up with that quick wit of yours. But tonight I can just do this." Jodrolim chuckled. After a slight pause I felt his hand slap onto my bottom, then give it a tight squeeze.

"Keep that up and you'll have to work hard to keep up with something else of mine." I drooled, turning around so Jodrolim could see the bounty available to him. He took my hint and immediately wrapped his arms around me, pulling my naked body close to him and planting his lips on mine. I wrapped my arms around him and for one moment the heat of our passions chased out even the cold night air.

"Jodrolim, you up there!" A voice floated in above the din of the party.

"Just checking in on our guard, making sure she's not sleeping on the job." Jodrolim yelled back as I dropped into a ball at his feet. "Actually, she's currently doing her guard duty naked up here if you want to climb up and have a look."

Jodrolim struggled to control his laughter as I elbowed him in the shin.

"Very funny, just get down here before all the ale is gone." The voice replied, fading into the din of the party as the sentence petered out.

"You fucking prick, what if he had come up?" I whispered angrily.

"That was Wegguk, he's afraid of even the lowest of heights, would rather eat a barrel of loose bolts than climb up that ladder. We always give him shit for it, so he would have been certain I was joking." Jodrolim explained. "But more importantly, you just called me a fucking prick. Did I just relieve you of that elegant elven tongue?"

"I grant you got the better of me, but you had a major advantage." I pouted as I once again returned to standing up right and exposed in front of the dwarf that stole my heart.

"Well, I feel like I should be claiming my prize then. Let's be quick about it, you cannot be distracted from your guard duties too long and you heard Wegguk, we're running out of ale." Jodrolim riffed as he undid the buckling on his trousers and freed his hard cock. As demurely as I could, I bent over a nearby crate, then felt deeply exposed and violated as Jodrolim gave me a rough fucking right there on the ramparts.

...

Seeing my love in the heat of battle was as eye-opening as serving within our frontline melee units. We would often be called upon to do skirmishes into nearby forests and marshlands to scout for the enemy camps. Without any sightings these ended up becoming nice, albeit long, walks across wild countryside with my partner. It was a couple of months before we spotted a small unit of men and ended up squaring off for battle.

After the fighting was done, it was clear how much we outclassed this group of enemies. They had no magical support and swords of such low quality that dwarven axes simply cleaved through them. There was much lauding of my assistance spells, many noting the unique situation of coming away from such a fight without sustaining any casualties, but I couldn't help but notice that Jodrolim's fighting style seemed more powerful even than my magic.

As our unit charged into battle, Jodrolim's battle cry was different to the others. While most of the barbarians had eyes that turned red with fury and muscles that bulged with the supernatural rage of battle, Jodrolim's eyes and veins glowed an otherworldly blue. When he swung his axe into the enemy, ghostly wisps rose around him and flowed with each swing. I would later learn that Jodrolim's family line were known as ancestral guardians, beserkers whose deep emotions allowed them to pierce the veil of death and call forward their fallen family to lend them their strength in battle.

"So if we get too into whips and chains in the bedroom, your grandma's going to appear with some choice words for me?" I joked after the battle.

"I mean, it's not necromancy, not like that anyway. There's no intelligence or character of the ancestors that arise, just pure will to protect their family manifesting as battle fury." Jodrolim explained. "So Nanny isn't going to yell at you, but if I get lost in the blue mist, she may lend her strength to my whip arm, her resilience to my paddled bottom, or even clear my mind to think about how I get my revenge."

"Creepy." I instinctively replied.

"If I am feeling such a depth of emotion when we're having sex that I call forward the ancestors, something has either gone drastically wrong or unprecedentedly, earth shatteringly right." Jodrolim informed.

"If ever we know peace, I'll see what I can do." I promised.

...

When you walk a valley, you do not walk at the very bottom of the cleft, that would leave you susceptible to ambush, and you do not walk at the very top, lest your silhouettes stand out against the sky for miles around. This means that in a land of valleys you get used to walking on a lean, your ankles adapting to the awkward angle as best as they can.

As the tallest and least armoured of the company, I would be slightly downhill from my compatriots, our synchronised height and hiding us better with an understanding that the most likely attacker would come from the higher ground and I would be protected.

Our skirmishes took on a different character since Jodrolim and I stopped hiding our relationship a few months ago and the rest of our company stopped pretending it wasn't obvious. It wasn't like we held hands or anything, we just no longer had to hold back our feelings. If anything this made us better fighters.

"I heard magic users can just look through the eyes of the nearby birds to scan areas like this. Are we schlepping this whole way just cause you two want to make googoo eyes at each other?" a particularly tactless dwarf asked.

"Still your tongue, we're meant to be stealthy." Jodrolim reprimanded, staying professional even though valley had been abandoned the last 14 times we had walked it.

"Yes, I learned the high level difficult magic necessary to command the senses of animals, but your mother asked me to take you out on patrol, hoping that if you're worn out you'll stop fucking all the goats in your homestead." I replied, not letting Jodrolim's silent pleas for quiet blunt my tongue.

"Just because it wasn't..."

That's all I remember hearing.

The nearest man encampment was over a mile away, nobody expected them to tunnel so far, let alone break cover for a single company patroling the edges of our land. They broke up through the ground, their aim to have us cut down before I could cast any protective spells or my comrades could marshall their rage.

It was effective.

The ground ran red with blood, our blood. The blood of the slain had become our stock and trade, who'd have thought the same substance could be changed in my mind so much by where it had once dwelled.

I had been prepared for facing my end alongside my lover. In my naivety I had assumed we would die together, side by side facing the end. I never could have fathomed that I would arise from my daze, channel my inspiration and magical assistance into the ragtag dwarves that had somehow risen above the ambush to fight by my side, and notice that Jodrolim was not among them.

I'm retrospect, in my anger, I was not helpful to my other comrades. I remember freezing men alive, their screams shattering with their bodies giving my rage only momentary satisfaction, like quenching a fire with acid. I offered my unit very little in the way of protection and they suffered heavily for it. When I knelt among the dead, the last survivor, my voice could only whimper the sole thought that had been in my mind since our deaths rose from the ground.

"Jodrolim?"

"Nyana?" A wispy voice cut through the horrific silence. I followed it to where the love of my life lay slain. Please let me assure you that when I say slain, I don't mean clinging onto life, I mean that no natural life remained within him. His injuries were obvious and severe, and yet through his indomitable will and supernatural means beyond my understanding, he was still talking to me.

"Fuck me!" I exclaimed without a filter, simply reacting to the sight in front of me.

"Probably don't have the time for that." He replied, not allowing even death to take away his wit. "I'm only still present because I need to say one last thing..."

"I pledge an oath to you, and with this oath we are kin." his whisper roared around me. Then the glowing blue wisps of my love evaporated from his destroyed body.

I wanted to scream and wail until the end of days, I wanted to take whatever scraps of my lover's body remained and hold them so tight they became one with me. But before I could, out of the ground arose the most contemptible creature I have ever encountered.

To rise out of the ground, defeat your enemy by ambush is already a gutless way to fight a war. But how much of a coward must a disgraced soul be to, while their friends are attacking and dying in such an amoral way, hang back and wait to emerge only when the situation is advantageous to you?

"To the victor goes the spoils." This disgusting man drooled, looking over me with his sword in hand. My rage became so uncontained that I found the world still and calm, like a brief silent moment of a landslide before the rocks crash into the ground. I wrapped my hand around Jodrolim's axe, it felt both right and light, like another hand was within mine, grasping it together. I somehow found comfort in my rage, a blue wisp of Jodrolim swirled around me and steadied my breath, through our combined rage there was unerring righteousness in my strike.

I have always been a spell weaver, I fight with my brain and spirit, I didn't even join the dwarves in their physical drills when I became a yew core. I was as unfamiliar to the axe as a chef is to mining equipment. Yet with this surge of rage I swung the axe and it severed everything in its path: the man's sword, the man's arm, the man's torso, and the droplets of blood that hung in the air for the instantaneous moment before he could react and realise his life was over.

As he fell, I wanted to take the axe and hack away at him. I wanted nothing left of this wretch but chunks too small to dissect. But the moment he fell, I felt Jodrolim's presence leave me. With him by my side I performed a cleave that could be written into legends, without him I didn't even have the strength to lift the axe.

I simply collapsed and cried into the ever increasing pool of blood.

...

1 year later

...

"Do you know how fucking useless medals of valour are?" I slurred as the innkeeper indulged me. "I lost everything in a single day, but don't worry, I have a slab of metal that says I was a big brave girl."