Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 08

"Here." Kamakshi delivered several stones, dredged from the boggy mire that was the spring whose creek they'd followed into the Willow Wood. "Water is still fresh, just over there."

Damon looked down the angle of her arm and through the brush.

"You are sure?" He was certain to not look her in the eyes. Something about the way she kept looking at him made him uneasy... more uneasy.

"It does not stink, as the bathing pond stinks." Kamakshi nodded, searching his face without putting herself directly in front of him. "It does not taste sweet or sickly, and there are many tracks."

"And it moves?" Two steps in the direction of the water, unable to hear anything.

"It is the source of the stream, I think." Kamakshi nodded again. "There is an opening, back that way, where it looks to become the neck of the stream."

Damon arranged the stones as Kamakshi left to fetch more. Abhilash returned near nightfall, fair hours after Damon had gathered fallen branches and built a mound of kindling he hoped they could spark. Much of the grass was too damp for tinder, and he counted again the number of tools he didn't have available and sighed heavily. He'd managed to break one of the stones into a passable blade, but none of them were suited to striking a spark. Shaving bits from several branches, he fashioned a flat-enough space on one branch and was rubbing the pointed end of another rapidly against it... as the groove deepened, wisps of white smoke gathered along the flat bit of wood, the tip of his sharpened stick browned and blackened. Then, a small flame erupted.

It took two more tries to get the fire to catch the kindling, and the fire sizzled and hissed contentedly as evening's shadows cloaked them all and the slate-gray sky above the canopy was carved-through with rivers of pink and red sunset. Only the barest remnants of daylight shone through the trees from the west, as ink-black night marched over them from the east.

"Where'd you go?" Damon asked of the she-ork daughter of Kamakshi, at last settling back to try his hand at enjoying this small fire.

"To look for an ork with a magic cock." Abhilash did not look at him, when she answered, instead her eyes scanned the darkening shadows of the forest.

"Why do humans stare at fire?" Kamakshi sat opposite him, knees before her and ankles under her. Her brown breasts rose and fell to the regular pattern of her slow breathing, and the brown-black nipples cast dancing shadows over her areola and the lighter skin surrounding. Damon's penis twitched, and he pushed it down angrily.

"I don't know." Damon shrugged, his eyes searching the flames to keep from looking at the female just on the other side of the fire. "Fire holds power..."

"You hold power." Kamakshi tipped her head forward. In the firelight, he could just make out a similar pelt of hair on her scalp as he had seen on her daughters earlier that day. Her hand searched up over the top of her head, lips smiling as her silver eyes shone like molten brass.

"Yes, your magic changed all of us." Kamakshi purred, and gave him some small relief by looking away from him. "Made us almost perfect."

"So, it's not just mules that have hair." Damon grasped the concept easily enough, but his prick was interested in other things. "Even you were not..."

"Not perfect?" Abhilash scoffed, dropping the magic sword point-first into the ground to sway back and forth, before taking a seat by the fire beside Damon. "'Kamakshi the Betrayer', humans call her in the north."

Noting the ork mother's scowl, Damon turned to look at Abhilash... her proximity didn't seem to bother him near as much, which also bothered him greatly. He searched her face a moment, seeing no deception in her eyes but also getting no further explanation.

"Who did you betray?" He only glanced her direction, then took to gazing at an area of darkness beyond the firelight beyond the former chieftain of Sidero.

"Whoever it felt proper to betray." Kamakshi shrugged. "If it is easier, you may think 'everyone', and have done with it."

"But it's not that simple, is it?" Damon looked at her, now, his dark eyes drinking the firelight.

"No." Kamakshi looked back at him, unable to resist sucking her lower lip between her teeth.

"Why are you following me, Ser Kamakshi?" Damon tried to use the honorific, though she was not deserving of it. "Why not kill me? Why not just leave?"

Both orks stared at him. Looking back and forth to one another, Abhilash at last scoffed and pushed on Damon's shoulder. He sprawled on his side, but recovered to glare at her as she shook her head and muttered under her breath.

"We forgot." Kamakshi laughed, but it was a sad, bitter sound that stole through the smoke of the small fire and cut across Damon's chest like grief. "There is much that you do not know."

"Yes: how you cursed me and you're his slave." Abhilash snarled at her.

Kamakshi winced at that but did not look away from Damon, whose eyes were wide in shock or fear (or too much of both to be fully either). The human's mouth opened and shut several times; small, deformed beginnings of words dying on his lips and floating away with the smoke and stray embers of the fire. He scrunched his face and scratched at his head, running his hand over his hair and pulling it's length over his shoulder to run his fingers through it several times as he pondered this.

"You humans..." Abhilash shook her head, scoffing at Damon's obvious worry.

"I'm sorry, Ser Abhilash." Damon bowed where he sat, turning himself to more squarely face her as he did so. "This was never my intent."

"What did you intend, Damon?" Kamakshi cast the words over the fire, to splash like a stone into a deep well.

"...no more death..." but the words were mumbled and even the she-ork next to him had trouble making them out next to the crackling of the fire.

"No 'what'?" Abhilash's face was one of supreme doubt, and the exaggerated shadows cast by the fire gave her brows much more force than under the full light of the sun.

"No more death." Damon look at her, then over to her mother -- wondering which was the more cruel joke: their current situation or the rivers of blood on which they arrived to this shore.

"So simple." Kamakshi frowned at them both, then looked over Damon's shoulder into the darkness. "And so far from simple."

"Half-formed thoughts do not make plans." the daughter of Kamakshi nudged Damon's shoulder, changing the subject as she often did. "How will you return to your home?"

"Naked and alone." Damon nodded, resolute. He'd spent much of his time preparing the small camp thinking on just that.

"But you are not alone." Kamakshi's tone was neither kind nor harsh, and her face belied the fear that Damon was certain he'd heard there.

"South-wold has no need of slaves, and I doubt they would permit either of you to remain." Damon stood and sought-about for a stick to turn or jab at the dwindling fire and glowing coals. "I doubt they could stop you, Ser Abhilash -- but they would not be happier for it, and I think Matta would..."

"Your Shaman is dead." Abhilash blurted, already knowing she would not be staying in South-wold -- but not content with silence. "But for his other half, you have nothing to stop me taking what... or who I want."

"Matta is dead?" Their eyes gave all the answer he needed, and a freshly snapped sapling stirred at the coals and smoked heavily. "What 'other half'?"

"The nymph." Kamakshi sighed and stretched out beside the small fire, letting the warmth battle against the night chill on the horizon of her body where they met.

"Nymph? There's..." Damon's denial died on his lips, revealing enough even as he wished he could have stopped himself. "When did she arrive?"

"Must have been shortly after the raid." Abhilash glanced into the canopy, spying a few wayward specks of starlight through the broadening leaves of spring. "She is powerful."

"Powerful enough to make a poison that would kill even you -- if she had known you were a sorcerer." Kamakshi's response was maddeningly calm, for Damon had no source of reference to relate what she was saying.

"Am I to be angry that they wanted me dead?" He scolded, wanting to stab furiously into the fire with his smoldering branch -- and knowing well better. "What choice did they have, knowing you held me captive?"

"Many choices." Kamakshi narrowed her eyes at him. "I think you were the one who wanted 'no more death'."

"I think they chose revenge." Kamakshi's daughter scratched at the side of her face, and then more insistently at her scalp where no hair had grown before.

"So, the poison -- what? It was meant to kill me and everyone nearby?" he let the grave accusation rise with boiling persistence. "To rob the Sidero of their captive and take revenge for the blood you shed? I say it would have been a mercy. More than any of you deserved."

"Just so." Abhilash sneered at him. "But your magic does not agree."

Damon stared angrily at her for several moments.

"It would seem not." he frowned, snapping the branch and folding it into quarters before dropping it on the fire. "We need more firewood."

"We can share heat." Kamakshi offered, sitting up.

"Go get more firewood, Kamakshi." Damon growled, staring past her.

She gave no word of reply, but stood, snatched the magical blade from just behind Abhilash and walked out of the firelight. Abhilash watched her with some vicious pleasure, as her mother approached a birch as big around as her thigh and began rending its base with her claws. Once Kamakshi had carved a notch near the base of the tree, she began hacking with the sword -- which whined and panged indignantly with each blow.

The sound of Kamakshi grunting and growling was underscored by the crack and splinter of wood. As flames died, and the ash of the coals threatened to smother the heat that remained, the crashing of branches was followed by a rush of air as Kamakshi's victim fell. She made quick work of the smaller branches, and lay several in arches over the coals before returning to hew the trunk apart with the ill-suited sword. The blade, glowing and shining in the firelight, was now dull and gray with dirt and sap -- a shadow of its former glory. Sufficiently humbled in the ork-mother's hands, the Thirsty Blade made no further complaint and chucked and chopped in as near facsimile to an axe as it could manage.

The first few branches had dried enough and ignited in plumes of white smoke and tiny orange flames as Kamakshi brought the first of several cubit-long segments of birch into the now miniscule circle of light. The sweat of her breasts and forehead shone bright in the illumination of the small flames, and Damon thought she looked hale and terrible. She did not scowl at him as she dropped her cargo near the circle of stone, and silently retrieved more.

She laid more kindling on the fire, and the heat sparked over these more quickly -- tongues of flame growing and rushing over curling branches and withering leaves as buds hissed and sap popped or gurgled in the fire. Damon watched the pile of lumber grow too large to be burned in one night, and silently chastised himself for his wasteful impulse. She had been his enemy... his captor... and he had been magically bound to her...

Still, watching her toil brought him no joy. Listening to the slash and groan of ork, steel, and wood brought him no measure of peace.

"I do not need a slave." he said at last, though more to himself.

"Then you shall die unfulfilled." Kamakshi sighed, brushing her face against her arm after dropping the last of her offerings on the piled birch corpse.

"Hmph." Abhilash picked up one of the logs and tucked her talons into the rough point of it.

With a bulge of her considerable arms, the log split apart with a wet snap and clunked to either side of her. She repeated this exercise several times, and then placed two pieces into the fire pit to gather the flames. Damon shivered and told himself it was because he'd been getting cold and not because he'd wanted to leap away and run in terror.

The magical sword slapped onto the ground beside him, sticky and streaked with sap and looking much-abused. For all Kamakshi's torture, the weapon kept its edge if not its dignity. Kamakshi sat, cross-legged, opposite Damon on the far side of the fire. Now, Abhilash jabbed with the magic sword into the coals, stirring and turning. The Thirsty Blade, mortified, blackened with ash and charring sap and refused to glow even from the heat of the flames.

Damon felt sweat rise against his skin and swiftly vanish in the growing heat of the fire.

"I release you, Kamakshi." Damon tucked his knees to his chest and hugged them loosely to him, his feet crossing protectively in front of his genitals. "I have no need of a slave, and taking you to South-wold would only mean your death."

"And you have had enough of death. So you say." Kamakshi scrubbed her hands against the bark of one of the logs, then scooped dirt to scour her palms. "If that is your will, I shall not speak against it."

"What of my will?" Abhilash demanded, first at her mother in ork-speech -- then again at Damon in his own language.

"What of it?" Damon glared at her. She could kill him. That was her threat -- a brutally painful death... but after days of such fear, its sting had dulled.

"I did not demand this curse." Abhilash frowned at him, as if that explained everything. "Blood or not -- I do not want to be your shield. No seed-right is worth this."

"I... What? You...?" So many half-started questions, demands, and profane suggestions on how Abhilash might proceed -- left Damon sputtering and pouting at the fire, his chin resting on one knee.

"It is my doing." Kamakshi shrugged. "You tried to drown yourself. She said you were too much trouble. I cursed her to never harm you. She brought the poison. I cursed her to protect you with her own life."

"How did you know it was poison? They didn't tell you..." Damon looked her in the eyes, squinting over the leaping flames and floating sparks.

"I guessed both poison and cure." Abhilash grumbled. "With her first chains, I ache for death."

Damon could not comprehend his own feelings, looking at the daughter of Kamakshi -- a she-ork of unmatched physical prowess and beauty -- and seeing her as much a prisoner of her circumstances as he. The pain mirrored much of his own and likely ran deeper. The realization that Kamakshi had stripped-away Abhilash's free-will and replaced it with a magical compulsion filled him with sickening dread.

"To call you 'betrayer' falls short..." Damon could still not hide his shock. More of what had happened began to make sense.

"Just so." Kamakshi only looked at him, her face impassive. Perhaps he could see a deeper pain there -- but it might only be a reflection of his own anguish, or an echo of her daughter's torment. Moments passed with heavy silence, broken only by the hissing flames and crackling birch logs.

"I could not risk you." she said, at last. "Your magic..."

"You dare blame me for this?!" and Damon was on his feet, unsteady and nearly pitching himself into (or over) the fire before he reeled back.

"No. The choice was mine, Sorcerer." she shook her head and her silver eyes glinted under nearly-closed lids as a tear slid forth. "I did this, when I ordered the raid. I was already desperate with pride."

"I could kill her, if that would please you." Abhilash offered. "She is weak, and it is good to see her suffer as your slave..."

"But you would kill your own mother?" Damon rocked from one disbelief to another.

"You heard her." Abhilash pointed with the sword, still blackened and refusing to offer any help to anyone for fear of further atrocities. "Should I praise her treachery? Should I praise her mewling weakness? She cannot release me, and I am outcast for her madness."

"This is insane." Damon's hands knotted in his hair, clawing at his scalp and gripping handfuls of his black mane.

"It is known." Abhilash nodded.

"What?"

"Magic... it makes you crazy." Abhilash shrugged. "It is known. I would cut your seed from me if..."

Damon flinched, and Abhilash groaned and clutched her head in her hand. The she-ork gave her shock only a moment before giving a rueful snort of laughter.

"So -- I am your prisoner, too." she turned to look at him with eyes that shone with orange fire.

"Save her." Kamakshi stood, dragging Damon's attention away from Abhilash and stirring his confusion further. "I will do whatever you say -- die whatever death you command, only do not rest until my daughter is free of my power."

"If I die..." Damon ventured.

"I cannot let you." Abhilash interrupted pointedly, flicking ash from the sword and adding a new log into the flames. "This blade hates us both, I think, and would gladly take either of us, if it could... but I cannot let you die."

"But what if..."

"I tried outsmarting it, remember?" Abhilash looked at him again, and Damon's mind raced back to that moment -- her body frozen in place with the blade shivering in the morning light just shy of her neck. "Magic knows... and it makes you crazy."

He felt like he'd swallowed a boulder... and sank to the ground, his breath pushed from him in a defeated sigh.

"We're fucked." Damon sighed, cradling his forehead with both hands.

"By a charging bull mammoth." Abhilash nodded in agreement.

"A what?"

"Bull mammoth." Abhilash blinked at him.

"Twice the height of a bison, with great tusks and a snout as long as its cock." Kamakshi's explanation created a horrible vision in Damon's mind of a behemoth with a waving phallus where its snout should be. "Shaggy pelt, walks like thunder."

"Then, yes... we're fucked by a bull mammoth." Damon gave a grim chuckle.

"Will you help her?"

"Do not answer her." Abhilash grabbed his arm, her hand hot and firm over his bicep. "Sleep -- do not answer."

"Sleep?" Damon could scarce believe and knew the idea couldn't be further from his mind.

"Sleep, or don't -- but do not answer. You make stupid choices, human." Abhilash let go of his arm and set about tamping a place near the fire for her own comfort. "Think on it or not -- but give her no answer... any choice but silence will be stupid."

Kamakshi growled at her daughter's impertinence and thought briefly that she might use her magic to compel Abhilash to silence out of spite... How would Damon respond to that? No magical chains tied her to him -- but she knew she needed his help if she had any hope of returning to the Sidero. To do that, she would need Abhilash. Better to suffer her insolence now.

...

Damon lay awake until the gray light of dawn lit the spaces between the leaves of the canopy. Kamakshi, Abhilash, or both orks had taken to keeping the fire going through the night, and he had sweated comfortably until his mouth was dry.

"You are right." He looked at Abhilash, who quirked her brow at him and then nodded a silent understanding.

With that, he went in search of the rushes and water that Kamakshi had found the night before. Abhilash followed quietly after, sword in hand. The human made an awful racket, naked and stumbling in the near-dark of the Willow Wood, and Abhilash grimaced as she searched their environs for sign of any wild cats looking to ambush her ward. Damon found moving water -- not quite rushing, but far from stagnant -- and quenched a terrible thirst. It tasted heavily of grass and dirt, but he could taste nothing else and it did not sicken him. His stomach growled and clenched. Having no belt to tighten, Damon growled in answer and splashed water over his face.

"How far to South-wold, from here?" He turned to Abhilash, standing guard outside the perimeter of the muddier wetland feeding the mouth of the stream.