Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 10

"They need tunics." Damon pushed the painful crashing sound back in his mind, trying to keep his footing as the first icy waters of an impossible fate raced around his ankles and sent shivers through him.

"So, no fucking, then?" Abhilash planted a hand on her hip, tilting her head to flex her neck with a loud popping sound. "You humans..."

"You have my seed." Damon looked about the house, deciding to give Abhilash his summer tunic.

The sorcerer's voice had the same flat, emotionless tone from before; the she-ork hated it.

"It..." she wanted to tell him, but the words were wrong. She couldn't quite form them together, how she wanted him to look at her -- to desire her as she had come to desire him... the way he'd looked at her from between her legs, with delighted, eager wanting instead of the mindless, selfish hunger of an ork in rut.

"How many survived, and what shite bargain was struck in exchange for your life?" Akuji's jaw clenched, interrupting Abhilash and forcing Prende to concentrate on suppressing the stewing rage in Akuji's chest that wanted to boil-over and flood the room in bloodshed and screaming.

"Not his life, human." Abhilash stepped behind Damon and wrapped her free arm about his chest, the sword loose in her other hand behind her back. She leaned her head over Damon's shoulder and licked his ear. "He gave himself for all of South-wold."

"For Sidero's protection?" Akuji scoffed. "A fine bargain from an ork."

"A bargain between Sorcerers." Abhilash corrected, letting her hand drop at Damon's turning about.

"Put this on." Damon pressed the tunic to her hand, either oblivious or ignoring her exchange with his father. "I'll see if I can find another one... Ginga may have..."

His voice trailed-off as he walked heedlessly from the house, possibly having already forgotten Ginga's wailing departure.

"What did you do to him?" Akuji crossed his arms over his chest, fists clenched tight to keep from throwing himself bodily at the she-ork.

Abhilash smirked at him and tugged the tunic over her head.

"I let him pleasure me." Abhilash purred at the recollection, her eyes staring past Akuji for a moment before taking the measure of this human again. "He is magic-crazy... and a stupid human."

"I think the two of you should not talk to each other." Prende frowned.

...

"Ginga?" Damon stood outside her home, dumbly staring through the doorway as the sun beat against his shoulders. A handful of villagers gave themselves any excuse to walk by him and welcome him back to South-wold with vigorous hand-shaking, shoulder-slapping, and crushing embraces that reminded Damon of...

Sweat rose on his forehead and he shivered, coughing involuntarily at the memory before he managed a weak smile and shook his head -- no, he didn't need anything urgently and he was... but his explanations fell flat, there, met with curious silence and confused stares before being brushed-off as no more than rattled nerves for his ordeal and the burden of their shared losses within the village. Nurcan emerged from Ginga's family home and gave Damon a withering glare.

"Now what, boy?" Nurcan bristled, her loosely tied bun little more than a suggestion from early in the day, and her graying hair danced about in the breeze.

"Is Ginga home?" Damon fumbled his hand through his hair, wincing as he caught a tangle and decided better of it.

Nurcan rolled her eyes and gave a burdened sigh before looping her arm around the young man's shoulder and dragging him away from the Tanner house. When they were near a dozen paces along, and still moving as brisk as Nurcan could manage, she wheeled sidelong and cuffed the back of his head.

"Are ye touched, boy?" Nurcan spat. "Back from the dead not a day, and ye've no manners a'tall."

"I thought she might have a tunic..." Damon's brow furrowed in confusion, not fully aware or comprehending Nurcan's meaning.

"For one of your uninvited guests, I ken." Nurcan wrenched a handful of Damon's hair about her hand and led him further away, closer to the creek. Damon stumbled to follow her, but quickly matched her pace while still unable to clearly grasp the angle of her argument.

"Nurcan." but she would not have it.

"Silent, boy, 'til I set you right." Nurcan chewed the words through a clenched jaw. "Or s'help me, ye might wish not t've come back."

He plodded alongside, into the small bean and pepper fields that looked months-grown in scant days, the bushes and vines raked along the edges and tops of his feet as Nurcan hauled him between rows before she spun about.

"Damn ye, child, what do you remember?" She demanded, looking him square in the face.

"Well, I just..." and he started to point back toward Ginga's house, but Nurcan interrupted.

"Before that."

"I was..." and his attention turned back to the stream.

"Before that." Nurcan sighed, clutching her head and only giving him cursory attention as he mulled the idea a moment.

"We, we were walking..."

"Before that." Nurcan put a hand on each of her hips and tapped her foot impatiently, worrying her lip with her teeth.

"...I... I was..." his hesitations gave Nurcan enough to prompt him further.

"and before even that?" Nurcan leaned forward, narrowing her eyes at him as he struggled with memory. "What was before all of... that?"

She waved, wide and dismissive at once, which seemed to catch Damon by surprise -- as though there hadn't been anything before those memories. Nurcan watched, pained to force such a confrontation but afraid he would be no use or help to himself otherwise. Its like was not so rare in the world that she had not seen it before in nigh fifty winters. Oh, the mind could break in ways she had yet to imagine, to be sure -- but she had seen something enough like this more than once. It took patience, or time, or some fierce shock perhaps... some unknown thing to stir the mind from the wounded slumber in which is had come to rest.

"What...?" and he struggled. What had been a weighted curtain had become several newly-mortared stone walls and a valley of thick fog between him and his past. Much of the past day had been spent in avoidance of the thickening barrier, as it was still a rickety construction. It would take a pittance of effort to remove a single stone, breathe a mental blast to shatter and scatter the whole of it, revealing that which he had chosen to forget...

His hands were shaking, again. He wondered if there was even a point of reaching backward, kindling memories and confronting the unbroken chain of events that set his feet where now he stood.

"Damon." Nurcan had meant it to be a question, but placing her hand on his shoulder had turned the inquiry into a statement of fact.

He paled. A sharp intake of breath and his eyes were wide and staring as the flimsy bulwark toppled in pebbles and sheets of stone crumpling like spilled laundry to the floor. Pooling like Ginga's summer dress... the blinding light of summer's last rays shining over her brown skin and glowing sea-blue inside her eyes, as she whispered she would marry him. Around and behind her, creeping from the edges of a future he'd already lived through, memory stained with yellow-gray eyes and booming laughter... throbbing drums...

Screams. At first, it had been the terrible death-cries of friends, the wailing of newborns... then, the anguished cry pulled out of his own lungs in a short, ragged sound all too familiar to the ears of South-wold. Now, he was a river that looped on itself -- draining into its headwaters. Shuddering and retching, he dropped to his knees.

Nurcan followed, clutching him to her bosom and offering what assurance she could that he was still alive, safe among his people. As he was tossed-about in the whirlpool of his own torments, Nurcan reached for something that had closed the distance between his past and his present.

It was a child's song.

...

"Rut it." Abhilash growled, breaking her gaze from Akuji's dark eyes and stomping out of his home. If she could corner the Sorcerer anywhere his father was not, Abhilash meant to mount on his cock and take her satisfaction from him. If his seed was half as magical as it had been two days ago, it would be a good way to spend any time in this village. The whole place reeked of the nymph's influence; sex-stink permeated every house and lane she could smell. Frustrating nausea aside, it made finding the flat, sexless smell of Damon much easier as the Sorcerer seemed to dampen everything in his passing.

"Where do..."

"No, Akuji." Prende turned and put her palm flat against his chest. "Your attention should be on South-wold, should it not?"

"And she's an ork in..."

"Bound to your son's protection, yes?" Prende tilted her head, raising a red-gold eyebrow.

That much seemed true. Akuji nodded, jaw still clenched. A gentle, golden hand caressed his cheek and his eyes followed the line of her arm down, skipped over the fabric's false modesty to the line of her neck and up, up to the green wells of her eyes. His nose filled with the scents of tart peach-fruit and sweetened cream, his cock swelling in appreciation of the nymph's allure.

"You're a dangerous creature, Prende." Akuji gave a dark-humored grin, trying to shake the cloud of lust from his mind. He didn't see her frown, or the pain behind her eyes.

"I know." She was smiling warmly, again, standing on her toes to kiss Akuji's mouth.

The silken, feathery touch of the nymph's lips carried a power in its lightness, and Akuji kissed her hungrily in reply. His tongue sought the inner shape of her lips before he thrusting into her mouth in reckless earnest. He pulled her to him, feeling the swell of her breasts through the cloth between them, the smooth angle of her leg as she hooked her heel behind his knee and effortlessly tackled him to the floor. Before his back hit the floor, driving the breath from him, Prende was already straddling his hips and squeezing her knees against his ribs. She was at once impossibly light and immovable. Akuji's pride marked this injury but he gave no complaint.

"South-wold." Prende smiled down, then sprang to her feet and walked out. "Tonight, celebrate your son's return."

...

Abhilash sniffed deeply, ignoring the muttered curses, surprised yelps of alarm, and general commotion her passage created in the village. She only hoped that whatever tar-like foulness currently seized the Sorcerer's lust could be shook loose with a vigorous tonguing of his cock... she didn't know if she had the patience to try anything else.

The thrice-damnable aching in her head pulsed its reminder at her -- he'd either run into a wall, stepped on a sharp stone, or been given a sound thump for whatever new mischief he was making. The march up from the river-camp of Inkar had given her time to study in small ways how the curse was working. Casual insult or injury to Damon's person seemed to only create a buzzing-like irritation behind her eyes. More severe injury created a painfully urgent desire to fly to Damon's side to shield him. Resisting any of it took effort. The harder she fought each compulsion, the more it hurt. One day, either the magic or her will would break and the struggling would end. Grinding her teeth, she followed the bland, stifling stench of Damon to the smaller fields near the river.

She heard him cry out, felt that terrible need rise up her spine and spread down the back of her throat into her limbs. She fought back, seeing Damon slump to the ground... letting the prisoner-warden in her mind hammer the bars separating them as it howled furiously at her... letting the blood run from her nose as the horizon of the world crowded closer and turned red, until all she saw was a narrow tunnel leading her toward the sorcerer. Now, he was tucked to Nurcan's bosom, and the fledgling shaman was singing Damon's magic back at him. It did something, but it was not the magical panacea it had been.

...

Kamakshi watched the older human woman dragging Damon toward the river, dangerously close to where she hid. She found their exchange curious, until Damon collapsed into her wailing like a struck animal. Abhilash was fast approaching, and it was plain by the bloody-orange hue of her eyes and the streaks of blood on her face that she was in thrall to her curse.

Rut it.

Kamakshi stood from her hiding place and coughed-out a command against Abhilash, her doomed daughter seizing all at once as if lashed-about with iron chains pinning arms and legs together. Kamakshi's eyes locked with the dull, dark eyes of the human woman whose chanting had stopped.

The element of surprise gone, Kamakshi gave a snort before striding forward to check on her daughter and Damon both. She walked with casual slowness, shoulders back and chin raised slightly -- her eyes giving defiance to Nurcan who yet huddled with Damon held close to her. The younger male seemed unaware of his surroundings, and continued his pitiful sobbing even as Kamakshi strode past and knelt at Abhilash's shoulder. Prying the sword-hilt from Abhilash's fist, Kamakshi maneuvered the weapon away from her daughter's reach before placing her free hand by the young she-ork's mouth. Damp, shallow breath slipped across Kamakshi's palm and she allowed herself a moment's relief that the curse had not killed the exile. Stroking her hand over Abhilash's scalp, Kamakshi was amused by the bristling stubble growing there. She took one moment more to give her own skull the appraisal of her palm before standing again and regarding the two humans more squarely.

As quickly, others of the village were gathering -- more than half with weapons readied -- even while Akuji ran toward them. The rush of anger growling around the humans did not appease Akuji, and the nymph's hold on him slipped back even though his voice was raised in command that all stay their hands.

...

Damon was wrestled back and forth in his mind, pinched in the vise of the moment and pulled into the future and refusing to leave the past as he confronted revelations of himself he could not yet understand. He was shards of different pots, dissimilar for all their similarity. All jagged, thicker and thinner edges unable to fit together to form a single usable whole. Who he was and had wished to be, who he'd become and might yet become... an unnameable pitch fixing the lot together in a painful amalgam that was equal parts and yet no one thing together. The wails of childhood, afraid of the unknown dark and the real dangers outside the light of hearth and home... now the cries of lust that followed the night of terror that seemed to slam shut the door of his past as he was ripped from the womb of his home. Who was he, now, when such a twisted fate contrived to sever the last ties he had to a life before becoming a sorcerer... before being taken by the Sidero... before yielding himself in that backward bargain that was and was not foul magic in the raw?

No more death.

The call had been his own, if it had been any human voice in Kamakshi's breeding bed -- but Damon could no longer swear it had been him. There seemed to be something else within his mind, mashing these broken fragments of himself together without regard to his wishes. In the Sidero camp, he had wished to die -- and was denied. Though he had not known the poison was given to him at the time, his body (or what waited within) had changed that toxic magic into something else. It was no accident. It was no instinct.

"Stop." Damon climbed to his feet, heedless of the streaking tears and snot running down his face.

...

Kamakshi surveyed the thickening ring of humans, as it looked all of South-wold was gathering against her. The crone, Nurcan (yet Kamakshi knew not her name), had drawn between Kamakshi and Damon -- but made no other move against her. Akuji, whom Kamakshi remembered and gave herself time to devour the look of him as her hand flexed about the sword-hilt in her hand, now glared with open hatred of her while his arms and hands braced to either side and his throat barked out warning.

"Be still!" Akuji bellowed. "My son is returned... be still!"

Yet the growls and aggrieved invective spat toward the orks did nothing to cool his own ire, and it felt as though Prende's influence had vanished. Else, the nymph's power was simply overwhelmed by the rancorous blood-lust of South-wold's families. The Head-Elder's hands flexed uneasily, but none advanced closer.

Kamakshi gave no thought to the humans outnumbering her; powerful magic and an enchanted blade gave her a sense of invulnerability in that moment. Perhaps, in a rush, they could overwhelm her -- but she was Kamakshi, and she did not fear the wrath of these feeble humans.

That she looked as cool as Akuji felt enraged was enough to give the Head-Elder pause, and the bloody vengeance boiling in his chest shivered to a steaming. He directed his attention to his charges -- friends and neighbors all, with a dozen newly arrived from Meadowbrooke -- and bid them again stay their hands.

What apparition Kamakshi next witnessed set uncertainty into her nerves, as the nymph arrived at the back of the throng and her presence with her like a wall of fog advancing in the predawn to catch the waking world unawares. Prende threaded forward between the humans and laid a hand on Akuji's shoulder. Her glittering emerald eyes were holding Kamakshi's gaze in what appeared a wholly one-sided contest of wills. In truth, Kamakshi had collected her energies into herself, marshaling every muscle and bone into coiled readiness without the semblance of moving. To face the unknown power of the nymph, she would need to strike such a blow as to slay the creature outright, to close the distance before the fae bitch could summon her power against Kamakshi. She could feel the silken caress of Prende's magic as it reached toward her mind, a far cry from the unquenchable hunger she'd felt during her heat in the time before she had mastered her own body. It was not an aggressive presence, which made Kamakshi all the more wary of it. As with Damon, the least threatening power could be most insidious. There was no time to consider whether the two were of a like kind, for the nymph took a step forward and stood just ahead of Akuji in the void between Kamakshi and the villagers.

She would lunge, the blade's thrusting arc would catch the fae in the throat or breast, and she would drive forward -- spearing the fae and Akuji in the same blow. From there...

Icy, creeping fingers clawed up the base of her skull, and a slithering, mesmerizing presence pricked her ears as the faint voice behind her cut through the rising din of her own heartbeat. As before, she could feel the iron weight of it all around her, but she knew it's source now. Where once it had caught her by surprise and shaken from her a bargain, now she felt the slap of it against her resolve as the gentle lapping waves of some mountain lake. It rushed about her, seeking any breach of her defenses, and still whispering its promises.

What will it give and what will it take?

It had asked this of her once before, when a human in her breeding bed had risen from the furs like a fiery gout from the belly of the earth -- and his eyes had shone black, ringed with golden light reflecting not the red glow of her braziers. Teasing her with visions of her own memory, taunting her with annihilation or oceans of worshippers at her command. She had visions of the Sidero rising like a tidal wave to flood over the whole of the continent and beyond to lands she had never seen. She witnessed as the entire line of Sidero was butchered down to the last whelp. What would it take to become the matriarch of a horde more legendary than Sidero himself? And what of herself would she give to satisfy that lust for power?