Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 08

"I didn't want any of this." He watched her over his shoulder, not ready to trust her and too tired to be afraid. "I offered you my life in exchange for theirs."

"I will not call you a liar." Kamakshi shrugged, crouching to feed more kindling to the flames that now crackled hungrily and hissed white smoke in thin ribbons. "Only that your choice and your magic are not as one."

"Kamakshi knows so much." Abhilash snorted, splashing more water on her face and sucking at her lip before she ventured closer to the fire.

"Sidero pleaded with me to protect the bloodline -- not let it be withered by lesser matings." Kamakshi frowned, a dismissive sniff and tilt of her head as she looked from her daughter to the human. "I protected the bloodline, and now a human powerful-enough has mated the last of Sidero's daughters."

"Sidero pleaded?" her daughter scoffed at her, her posture and tone making clear what she thought of it. "As if Sidero begged once, for anything."

"Believe me, do not believe me... it is the truth I have carried all your life." Kamakshi's gaze was full of pain, her voice flat and her hands now limp against the ground where she huddled.

"How did he die?" Damon wasn't certain he wanted to know, but this moment offered a distraction from the more weighty decision he faced in the morning.

"Feeding a dragon." Kamakshi shrugged, then wiped her arm across her face and spat into the growing fire.

Damon took a moment to realize she'd not meant it to be Sidero's intention to feed a dragon -- but that his violent death landed him in some wyrm's gullet. So light on detail as oft they were, he elected not to press further. Instead, he followed suit to Abhilash and splashed himself thoroughly with water from the rill. It was colder than the water source they'd used at the day's start -- but it had a familiar sweetness that reminded him...

"How far to South-wold, from here?"

"From gray-dawn, we could be there before the sun is clear of the mountains." Abhilash took a deep breath through her nose, catching the distant human aromas. "If we walk at your ease, we can be there by midday... if you are stupid and walk as you did today, it will take another two or three days."

"We could have been back, by now?!" Damon stormed forward and staggered, newly wary of a leap in the flames. "Why didn't..."

"And you would have listened?" Kamakshi scoffed. "Are you ready, now, to return to your tribe?"

He knew he wasn't. He had mountains of questions growing by the moment, and every answer seemed to only feed his uncertainty.

"What would you do, Ser Abhilash?" Damon hefted the title with both hands and swung mightily, though it seemed to strike her with no visible effect. She carried herself with either great guile or resolute indifference. In either case, she gave an honest answer for which he found himself still unprepared.

"I would be free, Damon." Abhilash stared into his eyes. "Either with your whelps in me or not, I would be free -- and if I cannot be free, I would die on the road toward it."

That doesn't answer the question! He wanted to shout at her, and felt he already knew the orkish retort that would follow: It is my answer, human, not yours.

Silence was the smarter choice, even though he hated it. It meant he was alone with his thoughts. Naked, in the dark, with two bloody ork murderers on either flank around the fire. They let him laugh in bitter revulsion of the moment, taking his cruel pleasure against his circumstances to witness the profound depths to which he was now properly fucked. When his laughter became sobbing, they let him -- each keeping their thoughts to themselves and not giving the other so much as a glance of acknowledgment. As the sobbing became a pitiable groan, they gave him no pity -- it was not in orkish custom to pity anything. Finally, Damon was quiet and seemed to have fallen asleep huddled before them, knees to his chest and his arms locked around them as he rested his face there. He was not asleep, for he would have lost his grip and splayed out -- thrusting one or both feet into the fire...

"Ask the nymph." Kamakshi at last broke the silence.

"What?" Damon's eyes were puffed and bloodshot.

"Ask the nymph in your tribe." Kamakshi stoked the fire and added another few small branches. "I think I may know how to begin making amends, if you do not kill me for all I have done."

For an instant, Damon thought the air was trembling -- maybe the heat, smoke, and weeping were playing tricks on him. He thought Abhilash had laughed aloud -- but she hadn't moved... perhaps his magic was making him crazy much faster than he'd ever imagined possible. Then again, he'd rarely even day-dreamed of becoming a Wizard. The notion brought him no pleasure, even now. Instead, he stretched out with his back to the fire and gave Kamakshi the only smart answer.

...