Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 10

"I was there." Akuji loomed toward him, staring at Damon. "I saw..."

Akuji stopped.

"I don't remember." His mouth wagged as he struggled against an iron-banded door bolted against his recollection, unable to open it -- Akuji was forced to peer under the edge of the door and accept what little passed through. "Light? Drums. I remember the drums. Billsby, as you said... then... then... feeling sick, drunk... then Kamakshi, I think... and she said she was keeping you."

"What about the others?" Damon's voice sounded vacant, disinterested. "Have they said anything?"

"We've not spoken of it..." Akuji shook his head, having stepped away from the impassable portable against his memories. "After... I... how did you know it was poison?"

"Abhilash and Kamakshi told me." Damon nodded, his face unreadable or emotionless, still naked even in his own home yet seeming unaware of his nudity. "When we left the camp."

"They live? You..." Akuji's face filled with wrath. "You brought them here?!"

"I did, Da." Damon looked up in confusion, seeing his father's anger and finding no heat in it. "I didn't have anywhere else..."

The blank expression, the casual admission - it was more than Akuji's addled mind could bear. His palm lashed out in a blur, clouting Damon on the side of the head. His son seemed to see the attack yet didn't flinch. As though even this didn't matter. The young man's head whipped to the side from the clapping blow of Akuji's hand to his cheek, Damon staggering on bloody feet backward a pace.

"Ma..."

"Don't!" Akuji barked, clubbing Damon's face with a now-closed fist. "Don't you dare call on her, now!"

"What would you have me do, Da?" Damon straightened and looked his father in the eyes, blood leaking from the side of his mouth and a heavy bruise beginning to swell beneath his eye - still his voice carried no emotion. "I did not ask for this. I tried to kill myself, and that failed. Matta's poison failed. Even an ork mule with Billsby's magic sword could not kill me. What would you have me do, knowing that I cannot die - or be allowed to die? Kamakshi's daughter is on her way, now - for she, too, is cursed."

Akuji's hand went to his belt knife, his mind now divided in where to aim bloody vengeance.

"How can you know this?" the father seethed.

"Because Kamakshi cursed her own flesh and blood." Damon looked down at Akuji's hand, the threatening angle of his father's shoulders - still his chest beat a sluggish pulse and he could not stir his emotions for fear or anger. "Are you so eager to test it? I don't know why this has happened, but I know I cannot escape it."

"You're cocky from your brushes with death." Akuji snarled, now at odds with himself. To protect his pride, his village, his hatred, or his son... he stood in a rage-fog with open sky in any direction and no clear path forward. Damon's eyes glanced over his shoulder, toward the door. Akuji's knife cleared its sheath as he spun about, Damon's voice droning behind him.

"Don't kill him." and brown-green knuckles smashed against Akuji's brow, sending the man toppling backward -- a senseless heap -- into his son.

...

Damon watched the nymph, whom Nurcan called Prende, as the fae haltingly explained the healing magic that could mend flesh and bone. In his brief life, Damon had believed Ginga to be a truly fetching woman. Now, Ginga's countenance seemed drab in comparison to the innate radiance of the fae creature. That Prende's body looked perfectly proportioned to itself, in a state of twinned vigor and fertility; the fiery locks curling down her shoulders over the simple tunic that, try as it might, could not conceal her curvature or the honey-gold of her skin. He had thought that budding leaves in the Willow Wood were among the most dazzling of green, until looking into Prende's eyes. Even now, his mind tugging restlessly at the intractable lump in his chest that was his heart, he felt his loins offer their own approval of the nymph's appearance.

Nurcan could scarce blame the poor lad's arousal in the nymph's presence, but his nakedness didn't do much for her own concentration as she kept directing her attention to the lesson and not the bare, virile flesh surrounding her in Akuji's home.

Ginga traded visions of wonder and horror at each occupant of the house. She, too, was split on the matter of her approval or disposition in the nymph's presence -- desperately denying her lustful thoughts as father and son were in the same room with her and Prende.

Akuji, unconscious, was arranged on his bed for Nurcan and Prende to fret-over with magic, his nose a flattened assortment of blood-clots and jagged skin. His forehead was purple and swollen, darkening the pits around his eyes and making his head look overlarge, misshapen.

Abhilash scowled at each of them, sitting cross-legged on the floor with arms folded over her breasts, and the magical blade carefully situated flat across her thighs in easy reach -- in the furthest corner of the one-room house she could manage. The nymph, predictably, made her uneasy with lust. Nurcan, the older human female that had confronted her while returning Akuji shortly after the raid, made her less uneasy -- but the woman was some sort of fledgling shaman, and that kept the she-ork's hackles raised. The younger female, Abhilash heard the name Ginga from Damon's own lips and the female stole glances at him from time to time. She was clearly rutting both Damon and Akuji, Abhilash was certain by the smell of her -- but there was a stinking, fear-like human smell of shame on her that Abhilash found quite unpleasant. Damon looked to have changed into a different skin, his face unreadable and his scent equally flat... even his arousal smelled mechanical, which Abhilash found especially noisome. Surrounded by humans, naked, with no clear path to slaking her hunger for either sex or violence, Abhilash watched and waited.

"Less tension in the fingers, here." Prende's fingers were gliding over Nurcan's skin, gently guiding and prodding the human's hands in the proper direction. "When the resonance is right..."

Prende made a strangled clicking sound.

"What?" Nurcan frowned, drawing her hands back. "Perhaps you should show me, before you have me practice such a thing."

"Alright." Prende smiled before changing her posture to direct herself toward Akuji. "Watch carefully, and I will go slowly."

Damon's eyes widened as he leaned forward, hoping to see something of the spell he had used in the nymph's movements. The sound had been entirely different, perhaps the fae's own dialect or a different magical language. He didn't know enough to even know whether that was a possibility.

Nurcan gave intent study, focusing her gaze to see the ethereal as she'd been instructed. The ripples of magic were there, moving in every direction as always. Prende's hands moved, skimming from rippling peak to rippling peak... each digit caressing or plucking or jabbing at a different point of a wave, some in succession, others in adjacent waves... and Nurcan was aware that the magic was coalescing far more quickly than anything she'd personally attempted.

When Prende made the same sound, Nurcan realized it was a compressed thing -- a dozen or more syllables all crammed into one impossible note.

The magic gathered into a visible white nimbus that suffused into Akuji's face, and Prende deftly reached down to lift the mangled skin as bone and tissue began to right itself. The gentle wheeze and gurgling whistle of Akuji's breathing through his mouth as blood and mucus ran down the back of his throat twisted into a phlegm-ridden series of coughs before settling into a quieter gushing of air and snoring.

"It can be faster -- but you need clear knowledge of each bit of bone and flesh." Prende caressed the side of Akuji's nose and the man stirred restlessly even while the deep bruises around his eyes faded from view.

"I have butchered my share of beasts." Nurcan scowled. "As well as stitching and binding plenty of hurts. I see the wisdom of what you are saying, but you will have to repeat that cant many times for me to learn it properly."

"Is there a stronger one?" Damon blurted the question, his eyes widening in surprise of himself.

"A stronger incantation?" Prende cocked her head to the side, her eyes catching hold of Damon with new curiosity. "It can be recited more quickly or many times..."

"What are you getting at?" Nurcan cut over the nymph, her dark eyes lost in the deep shadows around her face. "You know something of healing magic?"

"He does." Abhilash belched the words out, to Nurcan's fierce grimace of disgust and offended thrusting of her shoulder to keep purposely aimed away from the invader.

"A sort." Damon nodded, his voice still flat but the intensity in his eyes giving Nurcan a greater unease than even the presence of the damnable ork and her stolen magical sword.

"What incantation do you know?" Prende's own face was shining inquisitiveness, and the gleam in her eyes felt summery as Damon locked gazes with her for an instant.

He hesitated, stammering as he looked away and suddenly unable to remember the strange, familiar, complex syllables. His jaw clenched twice with thought, and Nurcan suspected he might just deflate with shame the instant before he closed his eyes and began mumbling what sounded like a lullaby.

Abhilash had heard the gibberish before, but now it sounded more like a song and less like a profound meaning beyond mortal comprehension. Prende listened with barely-contained eagerness. Nurcan and Ginga recognized the song immediately.

"A mother's song?" Ginga suppressed the urge to smile, thinking it somehow deeply impolite in that moment.

"A child's song." Nurcan corrected. "My grandmère sang it to us, when we were little -- frightened in the dark -- to quiet us. My father sang it, too, when my children were young... I've sung it."

"It's a spell." Prende listened, brushing the voluminous locks of hair back behind her ear to reveal a shallow lobe and faintly tapered helix that added an elfin quality to her already captivating beauty. "But in the tongue of dragons."

"Well, I've never seen it used but to hush babes." Nurcan gave a deep sigh and rubbed at her temples. "I suppose you ken the meaning beyond 'hush, ye child'?"

"The word has layered meaning." Prende shook her head, which Damon found caused his lips to part as air hissed between his teeth and his still-erect prick throbbed.

"By the... get some clothes on, Damon!" Nurcan snapped at him, which seemed to shake him from his momentary stupor. "Was this not your home? Ye do not sit naked before your elders... it's not proper."

Abhilash snorted, earning a stabbing glare from the crone but little else as Damon shifted about to stand and sought his own clothes from a shelf above his narrow summering cot. The ork spared a thought to why her mind wasn't stabbing with pain in time to the uneven footfalls as fresh, bloody footprints traced his path across the hard-packed dirt and straw floor.

"I can milk his rut-stick, if his hardness angers you." Abhilash offered, leering spitefully at Nurcan. "Would that be proper, before his elders?"

Damon pulled a pair of loose breeches over his legs and tied the belting strips snug about his waist. His cock was chafed by the fabric, and strained to find a better vantage of the nymph... or the ork, or Ginga... or even Nurcan for pity's sake... to no avail. Thus abused and denied, it grumbled to quietude in the long moments after Damon rejoined them and sat on the floor where he'd been.

Ginga watched with unmasked lust, managing to restrain the guttural eagerness seeking escape from her lungs at the sight of him. Abhilash likewise found the nymph's amplifying presence to be causing her loins to urgently demand satisfaction on the sorcerer's dick, without regard to who was present... elder, human, or otherwise. While the human girl had been dumbstruck by the ork's blatant impropriety, she couldn't help but wonder at the willfulness of it... such that she'd entirely forgot to be outraged that the ork spoke of milking Damon like common livestock. She blushed, stifled panting at the image in her mind of it, and gave a moment's pity to the man for what he endured to have survived the ork camp after being taken. He seemed a shadow of himself, for all the joy he'd shown at seeing her, and his face showed nothing of the warmth that he'd directed at her... only stilted confusion between long bouts of impartial observation.

That he didn't even respond to the lewd proposition by the ork female -- with apprehension, disgust, or fear -- gave Ginga a heavy moment of pause for what must have passed between them. It made her self-conscious and deeply jealous. That jealousy was beaten back by self-recrimination for bedding Damon's father when she'd thought her former lover not even growing cold in death. From this, a deep mistrust of the nymph sprouted. Ginga huffed softly, smothering the swarming locusts of doubt to give her attention to Prende as the nymph casually explained several different, conflicting interpretations of what had been sung to her since she was a small child and even sung by her to the younger children (siblings and cousins, all) who might've been having nightmares or were especially croupy.

Then Ginga noticed the bloody tracks and the blackened cake of dirt and blood on Damon's feet. A fresh wave of guilt struck over her for ignoring such obvious injury, as Akuji had been dressing Damon's feet before she left. When she, Nurcan, and Prende had arrived, the ork had been there, standing in the corner furthest from the door, as Damon sat on the bedside next to his father and stared at him with vacant eyes... he'd looked like some statue of himself, and the looming hulk of the ork female and the naked steel in her hand were some hellish manifestation of evil that lurked in the thin shadows within the house.

"With me is Abhilash." Damon had said, proclaiming without force. "She returned me to South-wold, unharmed."

That was all. Then, he'd asked if Prende could heal his father. He'd said nothing else, but moved away from the bed to sit at the hearth.

To reveal a child's lullaby to be the incantation of some dragon's spell... Ginga wasn't sure what to think. Prende's musical voice grated on her ears, suddenly. Grated because it was so perfect, so melodic, alluring and arousing. Grated for all the desire dredged-up in what felt a moment of her own confusion and greed -- what right did she have to desire the hearts and beds of two men? The flush of shame and guilt punched her in the stomach and she blurted the first thought that came to mind.

"I'm with child." Tears swelled in her eyes as Damon looked up at her, pain burning in her heart as her stomach churned... his face did not smile, his eyes did not widen. It looked as though she had said the sun was still shining. He looked unsurprised and unmoved. The ork female, however, seemed most interested in her outburst, and her lips parted widely in a grin.

"So many whelps, sorcerer." and she leaned forward to clap a congratulatory hand on the back of his shoulder, rocking him forward with the blow.

The revelation that Damon must have sired more children among the orks struck Ginga so suddenly she cried out, betrayed agony shrieking from her as she fled through blinding tears. Nurcan swore, scowling one eye at Abhilash as she gave chase to the retreating young woman. Prende's confusion was much the same as Damon's, which made the human laugh with hollow self-reproach.

"Whither my anger?" he mused, looking first to his hands, to the leaking wounds on his feet, then to the nymph. "Can you heal my feet?"

"Yes, then let me fuck him." Abhilash grunted, narrowing her eyes at the nymph -- though she also wondered what the slight female tasted of and whether that tiny body was as adept in giving pleasure as Prende's magic gave arousal.

"Of course." Prende smiled, nodding with her head and shoulders in a half-bow.

Repeating the spell as she'd demonstrated to Nurcan, Damon was staring at the curve of the nymph's throat and the pout of her lips. When Prende tilted her head to inspect his feet, Damon's breath hitched in his throat. The flash of brilliant green as she looked up at him set his heart to thundering in his chest... yet his mind was stuck elsewhere, wondering at the provocation of lust and the absence of any genuine desire. Now, he felt trapped within himself, and his body behaved of its own accord -- his wishes ignored or forgotten entirely.

"It is good that you returned." Prende smiled, though Damon only half heard her.

"He is healed?" Abhilash grabbed his left ankle and lifted, spilling Damon backward where he sat.

The wounds on his feet were thin lines or broad swaths of bright pink-white skin crisscrossing his otherwise pale brownish-red soles. The ork scowled at these, further proof of her mother's claim that Damon's magic seemed something "other" than healing magic. The nymph's hand dropped onto Abhilash's wrist, catching the ork's attention.

"Does he desire you?" Prende gave Abhilash a flat stare, and the ork felt a chill run through her lust, a skilled skinning knife that pared desire from the meat of her being.

"I desire him." Abhilash growled. "That is all he demanded of me."

"My head..." the grumbling of Akuji signaled his rousing to consciousness, and attention turned to him as he stirred upon his bed.

"Be still, or I will crush your face again." Abhilash warned, letting-go of Damon's leg to free her hands for fighting if the need arose.

Prende was already busy directing her influence at Damon, though she was getting mixed responses from him as if he were only partially there, and she nearly did not envelope Akuji with her power before he sat up on his bed -- a hand grasping for a knife no longer in his belt.

"Why are you here?" Akuji looked more confused about his own state than the presence of the she-ork positioned beside his prone son on the floor. His fingers traced over his nose and forehead, to the dwindling aches there and the thin ridge of scar that angled down the right side of his nose where the skin had torn jaggedly. Swinging his feet to the side, his legs dropped over the edge of the bed and he sat up.

"I am here because he is here." Abhilash jerked her chin toward Damon, who had busied himself with standing and tapping his mended feet against the earth-and-straw floor.

"She brought me back." Damon glanced up, the moment of relief vanishing from his face as quickly as it came. "I said she is cursed. For good or ill."

"Kill her and be done with it." Try as he might, Akuji could not muster the ire he'd felt earlier -- and now he knew it was Prende's influence upon him. "Still your magic, nymph. I will have my vengeance."

"Not today, Akuji." Prende placed a motherly kiss upon his brow and stood. "Today, we must celebrate Damon's return."

How Akuji had stilled himself at her touch, he did not know. He had not felt her influence in that moment, which confused his senses. Perhaps it was a deeper need within himself, yet undefined, that had known before he was aware of it. In any case, he nodded mutely and looked at Damon. Abhilash, more prominent at his side as she stood beside the young man, had a look of impatience but was otherwise not outright hostile. Not the sort of thing he expected of ork raiders, cursed or no.

"How long will you stay?" Akuji asked, and Damon felt the hammer-blow against his mind.

"A few days, at most." Damon sighed heavily, feeling the ringing steel-on-steel battering of the unknowable future against him -- demanding entrance into this moment where nothing needed to make sense, and nothing urgent was happening. He'd hoped to exist in that strange half-alive stillness indefinitely, but the rivers of Time did not relent and soon...