Kiravi's Travelogue

"So, will you bestow this favor on our small hamlet?" Serina's father asked me, his voice earnest and drawing my attention away from the drunken leering I was aiming at his daughter.

As you, my readers, will learn throughout this record, I had two desires warring within me when I heard this question. The side of me that earnestly wanted to restore my worth in my father's eyes looked at this task as little more than a nuisance that would distract from my real mission. The other side of me, the one that had bedded too many noble wives and daughters, and barmaids and seamstresses to boot? That side wanted to see what was under that cloak. That side didn't much care if I ever returned to Karal or Anghu and merely wanted to make my own way in this world until disease or some jealous husband's dagger found me.

"I will escort her, Headman. She will be safe in my charge, as far as Atala."

Serina's father beamed, and the daughter favored me with another faint smile and a noticeable blush despite the darkness. "Thank you, my lord. I knew the gods would answer our prayers."

We walked into the Headman's dwelling, and the aging man didn't bother to light a lamp or torch. I supposed he was as tired as I was, at first anyway. Enough star and moonlight came through the narrow chimney hole in the center of the roof to let me make out two separate areas filled with furs and simple mattresses filled with dried grass. Thin blankets hung between and around the sleeping areas to provide something resembling privacy.

"You May sleep there, my lord Kiravi, in my daughter's hearth. You will leave at dawn with your provisions replenished and a map in hand." He pushed aside the blankets around his bed, and I could hear him settle heavily into the floor.

I glanced at Serina in the darkness, and we could sense each other's discomfort. This was not an unheard-of tactic by the Headmen of these small hamlets. They would wait for nobles to visit and then place their own daughters in compromising situations and wait. Human nature took over more often than not. The noble would then be obligated to marry the girl, bolstering the Headman's stature, or the noble family would be compelled to compensate the Headman for the 'damage' done to his 'property': the virginity of their daughter.

Of course, dear readers, I already explained my desire to bed this divinely touched girl, but I wasn't that great of a fool. I'd wait to see if the girl was amenable somewhere on the road to Atala, where her father would know nothing. I pushed aside the blanket and crawled across the furs and bedding, resting, sitting up, with my back against the mud-brick wall. Glowing eyes regarded me nervously from across the small space, and I could hear the drunken Headman snoring quietly.

"You have nothing to worry about, Serina. You have nothing to fear from me," I whispered. Not tonight she didn't, I thought to myself. The girl waited another moment but crawled in quickly, stripping off her cloak to hang it on a peg on the wall. In the almost total gloom, I glimpsed the barest hint of a nubile young body with what I hoped were delightful curves underneath a simple cotton shift. In an instant, she was under the soft furs and hidden again. For a little while longer, I feigned sleep, and the entire time the young woman peered at me with her glowing eyes. Despite the intriguing new changes to my journey, I honestly was tired, and sleep took me soon enough.

I woke with the first tendrils of daylight creeping over the hamlet and an enormous cramp in my lower back from my uncomfortable position. Serina and her father were already gone; they were certainly not wasting any time. I groaned and stretched and crawled back out into the chilled desert morning to find my traveling gear freshly brushed and oiled and filled fit to burst. There was no grand ceremony or ritual to send us off; the Headman and the priest simply led Serina and me to the gate in the thorny and living fence. She'd donned her traveling cloak and headscarf again, though the hem of her simple light gray dress was visible below the edge of the covering. They said their goodbyes, and I thanked them for my pack, heavy with dried meat, hard dough, and bulging pouches of roasted sunflower seeds. The Headman seemed disappointed that I had managed to control myself but didn't convey anything to me other than his thanks for escorting Serina.

And off we went, the sun climbing to our right.

Serina was so wrong-footed and her legs so small compared to mine that it took until late morning to even put the thorny walls of Wakh out of sight. Not a single word passed between us for hours, and I slowly grew more and more frustrated with the young woman's dainty attempts to follow the rough track. I waited at the top of a low ridge and looked at her struggling up the reddish-gray rock; she was flushed and sweating, and her black hair was spilling out from her scarf and across her pretty face.

"You should take that cloak and scarf off," I grumbled, admittedly much more concerned by my traveling companion making my journey twice as long and less about finally seeing her figure in the daylight. I would be lying to you, though, dear readers, if I said that my heart didn't quicken at the thought of seeing her uncovered.

Serina — who had yet to say a single word to me — gave me a nervous look, as if allowing me to see her would somehow instantly deflower her. However, common sense prevailed, and she shed the cloak off her thin shoulders and shoved it into her small pack. Her light gray dress was soaked with sweat and clinging to her nubile body tightly, and I shamelessly took it in. She was undoubtedly more bottom-heavy than I had guessed her to be, with a very slim waist that I could probably make my long fingers touch around, but wide hips and toned thighs. When she bent over to pack away her heavy garment, my eyes lingered on her plump but tight behind. A man could get lost in that, I thought, imagining how it would look and feel when I bedded this girl and took her however I pleased. Despite the attention-grabbing size of her hips and rear, Serina's chest deserved its own long glance, especially with the way the sweaty cotton stuck to her. Each of her breasts was just larger than one of my handfuls — and remember dear readers that my hands are quite a bit larger than average — and I could see every inch of their perky outline through the wet and translucent cotton. Her nipples were small and dark, easily visible and curiously despite the warm weather, hard and pressing against the fabric.

Forgive me, my readers, for being such a lecherous bastard in my youth. And now, even.

She glared at me, harshly with her strange eyes, admonishing me silently for my leering, but I just smiled and extended a hand to help her up to the top of the ridge. Serina ignored the proffered limb and struggled her way up, and I turned away to gaze out over the next valley. The land dropped steeply away from our ridge and was littered with great sandstone slabs, and the vast basin below us was filled with more giant boulders and shattered remnants of the same. An unusually large number of juniper trees sheltered in the hollows and slopes on each side of the basin, and I guessed that there might be a spring or creek somewhere in the low ground. Beyond, there looked to only be another ridge between us and the plain forming the Nekoar's eastern bank. According to the map, Atala would not be much further than that.

"Take my staff, Serina," I handed the bronze tipped staff to her to help her down the steep slope. This time, she accepted my help, but she still refused to say a word to me.

It took us until after noon to reach the floor of the basin using the narrow and steep track, and my legs ached, and the soles of my feet protested despite the well-made sandals I wore. I could only imagine how the poor maiden, sodden with sweat and whimpering almost imperceptibly, felt if I was so miserable. However, I did hear the faint trickle of freely flowing water and told myself that we'd stop when we reached the creek.

Collecting in the lee of one of the massive blocks, there was a clear pool of blessedly clear water that trickled down through a dam of shattered rock and away through the junipers. We stumbled to its bank and peeled off our thin footwear, wading into the chilled water. I sighed happily, and Serina smiled for the first time since the night before. She leaned on my staff and sat gently on a relatively flat rock at the pool's edge.

And that was when everything went wrong.

They'd been hiding amongst the unusually thick stands of juniper trees and waiting for us to rest in the water. Three of them rushed to the edge of the water, two wiry and bedraggled human men and a slightly more muscular Orgos male. The Orgos' skin was grayer and darker than the tanned humans', and when it snarled at us, I could see its slightly larger upper canines, one of which had rotted and broken off. They all wore poorly made leather breastplates and carried flint tipped spears marginally shorter than they were tall.

"You can't just use our little rest stop without asking," the Orgos said with a snarl.

"Yeah, there's something you have to pay. A...a..." one of the men stammered.

"A toll, you idiot," the Orgos barked.

"Yeah, a toll. You want to rest here; you have to pay the toll."

The second man, who hadn't yet spoken, and who had a sadistic half-smile plastered across his face, looked between Serina and me, "The two of you don't seem to be carrying much barter." He prodded at the heavy pack I'd abandoned at the edge of the pool.

Serina had stood up the moment the bandits revealed themselves and had edged closer to me in the cold water, "Easy," I whispered to her.

The sadistic man barked suddenly, pointing his spear at Serina, "We'll just have to take our payment some other way. Send her over here, or we'll just gut you and take her anyways."

Up until that time in my life, a great many people had thought a great many things about me. Failed wizard. Drunken noble. Philanderer and lech. Dead weight. Few had seen me in the shit-filled alleys of Anghu, fighting for my life against beggars and thieves intent on snatching the few valuables my father allotted to me. Few had seen me sparring with the city guard in spare hours of days that should've been spent studying. And few, very few, had seen just how murderous I could get when someone decided to break my very short list of inexcusable offenses.

My legs were already churning through the cold water as my left hand swirled with glowing eldritch energy and my right reached out to seize my staff from Serina's trembling hands. I may have failed as a true wizard, but I'd always performed exceptionally well when it came to attacking with raw magic. I hurled a bolt of unformed magic at the Orgos, figuring he was the most significant threat, and rushed towards the dim-witted human to my left.

The hasty blast of magic gouged a ragged and messy hole in the side of the Orgos' torso, and my other chosen target, clearly surprised by the magical abilities of their chosen victim, hesitated for a critical moment. I lashed out with the staff in my right hand and snatched the tip of his spear with the other. The bronze shod wood smashed into his temple, and there was a sickening crunch and a satisfying look of stupefied panic on his face before he staggered down to his knees. Misted blood, warm and metallic, scattered across my face.

The Orgos, somehow, had recovered from the shock of my attack and was rushing at me, all wild jabs and snarling teeth. I yanked the spear out of my first victim's weak hands and wheeled with it, clumsily batting aside a thrust aimed at my stomach. The handful of elite guards I'd trained alongside in Anghu had always taught me to keep a foe at arms reach, to parry and thrust and swing until your opponent was unable to keep fighting, but I was no swordsman. No finessed duelist. I was a brawler. Still am.

I rushed close and head-butted the wounded Orgos in his rotten mouth, feeling a handful of teeth break loose. He roared with surprised pain, and I shoved the hulking, foul-smelling Orgos back with my shoulder. I channeled more crackling energy into my left hand, feeling the conduit to the Eldritch wind deep in my soul straining from the rapid effort, and smashed an uppercut into his chin. His jaw blew apart in a cloud of charred bone and burnt gristle only to reveal the sadistic human leaping towards me and thrusting with his cheap spear. I kicked the body in front of me back and tried to spin away, but a hand had grabbed my ankle, and I stumbled awkwardly backward onto my overconfident ass.

Instinctively, I lashed out with my elbow, caught the other human in the blood-drenched side of the head, and felt another crunch. But it didn't matter. The spear came down at me, and I knew it was over. At worst, it'd punch through a lung, and I'd drown in my own blood in minutes. At best, it'd tear messily through one of my larger muscles and kill me in a week from the blood fever.

Instead, there was a flash of light, a deafening crack, but no lightning bolt of pain from a speartip in my guts. Blood trickled from my nose and ears, and the world swam and rang and whined as my senses reeled. In a moment, I could make out the bandit reeling in pain, free hand clutching his head, but the spear firmly gripped in the other.

He recovered first but didn't press the attack, roughly shoving me back with a vicious kick to the ribs before turning towards the pool, spear clenched overhand to throw. I turned, confused, stunned, only to see that meek little woman, who could barely make it up the ridge that morning. Her hand was outstretched, surrounded by waning scraps of reddish magic, and her eyes blazed like miniature suns from beneath her sodden black hair.

Like the unending hells of the Akashi was I going to let this bastard do anything to this suddenly fascinating girl.

I kicked him in the side of the knee and heard sinews pop. His throw went wide, he grunted with sudden pain, and Serina screamed as the spear hissed past her and clattered off of the great stone block behind her. Ignoring the searing pain in my ribs, I scrambled up and snatched a jagged lump of rock. It had a wicked edge to it, and I slashed messily through the side of his thigh. He smashed a balled fist down onto my shoulders, but the blow glanced away, and I rammed my makeshift weapon into his throat. Desperation flashed in his eyes, and an obsidian knife appeared in his hand.

A quick jab with the rock deprived him of that and tore open his wrist, and then I deprived him of that panicked look. I seized his greasy head in my large hands and jammed my thumbs into his yellowed eyes. They pressed, and pressed, and I ignored the pathetic screams until the resistance gave way, and the pained thrashing stopped. I pushed a little harder to be sure and then tossed the body onto the rocks.

There was a faint whimper, and I turned to see Serina standing in the pool, water flowing gently around her waist, her limbs trembling with fear. I crossed to her, hands spread placatingly, but she recoiled slightly. After looking down at myself, I realized I was coated, from my head to my thighs, with dark and oozing blood. "Are you alright?" I asked, looking over her quivering body for any outward sign of injury. Serina hesitated, then nodded only barely. This girl was never going to speak to me, I thought.

"Have you ever used magic like that?" I pressed, feeling my own muscles begin to shake as the thrill of battle left them. She nodded again, and I thought, maybe, that the fear was leaving those strange eyes of hers. Serina reached out with one of her small hands, scooping up a bit of water and trying to scrub a bit of the congealing blood off of my breastplate. Her other hand brushed at my cheek the same way, though she wasn't making much headway against the gore.

I helped her scrub for a while, getting the worst of it, before she finally allowed a word to escape her lips, "Thank you, my lord."

"You don't have to call me that." I flicked a charred tooth off of my shoulder and turned back to the remnants of the three bandits. My curiosity got the better of me, "where did your magic come from?"

No one understood magic, not really. Not yet. I know it little better now than I did then. Toiling away in their academies, the wizards thought themselves masters of the Eldritch wind spilling across our world, but then how were new things discovered every day? We grasped at shallow reeds growing along the banks of the river of magic, ignorant of what the depths held or where the river even came from.

"I don't know," she whispered, "I had no powers before the gods changed me. I felt...something, but it never came out before just now."

I thought I knew, then, what she was. The wizards and the magi, and those curiously insane alchemists along the Seleyo river: we all studied and trained endlessly to harness the Eldritch. Long before that, before the light of the gods and the Titans lifted us from brute tribalism, there were those born to magic, the sorcerers, and their powers were terrible and fickle. But Serina seemed like that breed equally as ancient but rarer than sorcerers, those who'd been brushed by the faintest hint of divinity. The Oracles.

Most like her died. Some lived: lame, blind, or cursed in some other way. Blessed few drew power from it and could wield it, as Serina had. I was curious, intrigued, but that could wait for another day.

"There could be more of them in this valley. You're going to need something a little sturdier than that dress, darling. Come here."

I picked through the bodies — well, the one with the crushed skull was technically still alive — for anything of use. I stripped off the dying man's poorly tanned breastplate and tossed it into the pool. He was the smallest, so it'd probably fit her. They only had a few scraps of food and precious baubles between them; some glass beads, carved bone trinkets, even a single nugget of copper looped on a frayed string. I dumped it all into my nearly full pack but shoved the obsidian knife into my belt and picked my staff back up.

"You don't expect me to..." Serina said, her voice fading as she looked at the floating piece of armor.

"I do. I don't want you catching a stray spear."

She shuddered but picked up the breastplate anyway. "I have you, though." Those glowing eyes bored into me.

"I almost wasn't enough."

"You were..." she paused, pulling the leather over her head, soaking her dress worse and making it even more translucent "...terrifying."

"I'll continue to be," I grumbled, but something twinged in my guts. Shame? Pride? I didn't know. "Come on. We need to go."

We went up the far side of the basin quickly as if every juniper tree hid another pack of thieving would-be rapists. I scrabbled up the slope again, hauling Serina up behind me and grabbing at the sharp-edged branches of the scrub ahead of me. Whoever called this abandoned goat path a track should've been hauled in front of the city guard in Anghu and cut to pieces, I remember thinking. The sun dipped low and great banks of cloud loomed to the southwest, churning their way up the Nekoar valley.

Shit. There shouldn't have been a storm that big that time of year. We finally reached the top of the ridge, and I hauled Serina's supple young body up after me. She must've weighed less than half of what I did, I thought, and she gasped at the ease with which I could move her around with only one burly arm. I'd have been much more focused on her excitingly demure sounds and posture if I wasn't worried about finding shelter before the storm arrived.

The slope below us was as barren as all the countryside before the juniper valley and, a few hundred paces away from the base of the ridge was a spire-like chunk of smooth black rock at least three hundred hands high. It and those like it were some of the more apparent results of the war between the gods long ago, and it had smashed down into the surrounding sandstone and buckled up the rock all around it. That was the only possible shelter I could see, so I cast a glance at the breathless girl and hauled her after me down the so-called track once more.