Of Bonds Forged Ch. 06

Sylanna released him and touched the other man in the same way and the fact that every sense had touched something foul didn't surprise her and was what she'd expected from the first one as she saw within him the sights, sounds and sensation of him bouncing madly on top of the woman she knew from him to be his brother's wife. She also knew that it wasn't a memory, but a desire. The creak of the bed was vile, though that was nothing compared to the ape grunts he made or the ridiculously over the top sounds of ecstasy coming from her. It was almost a caricature of sex.

She extricated herself from it gladly and used the simplest of magic to open the door. Before her was the magic flared between their forms like the fire from a star. From Vale's mind it spread outward and Sylanna was momentarily awestruck by its beauty. She approached with all caution, uncertain of things in a way she had rarely been ever in her life. Close enough to them now to see her eyes closed and expression blank, while the man stared to the ceiling, blank as the rest.

She thought to try to touch Vale as she had the others and she felt a momentary fear of getting swept up in the flow of whatever this was by jumping headlong into the raging current over one of the quiet tributaries. The fear made her smile and she plunged headlong.

* * *

Sylanna found herself back inside one of the rooms of their guild safehold. They were as hidden from society as the mages themselves. Theirs burrowed deep within the grounds of an old castle well outside the capitol city, making use of the seemingly infinite underground maze works that all major castles in the land had to thwart intruders and allow nobles and their families avenues of escape when the land was ruled by blood feuds and naked power grabs. Sylanna found Vale in one of the small alcoves. There was nothing special about the room. Indeed, it appeared now as she remembered it. It was a small study or eating area where people went, often alone, to take a meal or meditate.

Sylanna saw Vale in the center of the room before a single wooden chair that had clearly seen better days. "Vale?"

"I'm here."

"We are, yes." She looked around, hoping to find some other clue than the chair, which seemed obvious in its importance. "But why here?"

"I guess because this...is the one of the safest places I've ever been."

She scanned the room again unable to see it. "Here?"

"When I first came to our guild, I could do almost nothing, even after studying for more than two years." I feared I never would. I feared being the mascot or an object of pity. I'd never get my guild markings and all I would ever be is a pleasant semi-public face of the guild running one errand or another forever. I'd have some safety and security. I'd have a decent life, but I would never be a mage."

"It was so difficult for me to grasp even the first steps. It was hard to find help because not very many saw value in me, so if there wasn't anything in it for them at the end, what was the point for them?" Her voice turned sad, "All I'd wanted was to succeed."

But she smiled, "But then I broke that chair."

Sylanna shrugged in indifference, but there was a hint of humor to be heard, "I, too, can break a chair."

"Mistress Bryana tried to help me lift it and I shattered it into a thousand pieces, then she set me to picking up those pieces. She helped me because she wanted to. Because she saw value in me, asking for nothing in return beyond that I do my best and that my best to be better than the day before. I remember thinking that, if someone like her saw value in me, maybe there was."

"She spent countless hours helping me until I could stand on my own." She turned to Sylanna And...when we speak of it from time to time, she is never proud of herself for it. She never thought of it as some good deed done that she can congratulate herself for. She is proud of me. And this is the place where I found faith. In magic. In her. In myself. I don't suppose you understand that."

"The desire to be something that is your own? To not be a weak object of pity? That, Denna Vale, is a part of why I use the veils so that others see what they wish to see and not see me. I do not want to see their scorn or pity. I am proud of what I shaped myself to be. I used that in many of the wrong ways in the past. I understand that now, but I will not loathe everything about what I was or what I am."

"I do not loathe you, Sylanna, though you certainly seem to invite me and others to." She was curious now. "But why are you here?"

"Why are you?"

"I needed a place to be calm. I needed a place to regain myself. I touched the talisman as we had discussed. I felt his anger. I felt his desire to raze me to nothing. And I was angry. I was angry at him for all that he'd done and would do if we failed here."

She was not an angry person by nature and feeling that rage at all was unsettling, much less directing its full force at someone. Such things had happened rarely, but there was always a certain cold calculation to it. They had deserved it. They truly earned and deserved what they would get from her. It wasn't just a blind strike wanting nothing more than to see the other fall before her to nothing.

"When we struck, I knew that I was certainly the better of a man who knew nothing of magic. I pierced his anger. I could have turned him into those that ended up as the worst of his victims, but the desire to attack an animal as a greater animal frightened me. So I pulled back. The magic was shaped to seduce now, so I let it. His deepest wishes and desires. I know that he is held and calm, so I decided to afford myself the time to be able come to him in the same fashion."

It seemed almost unfathomable and Sylanna didn't hide it. "You don't know? How could you not know?" The force of will in this little thing and her ability to project without truly being aware of it to pierce and control the subconscious was nothing less than extraordinary. The talisman and her own anger changed her, awakened something within her.

"Know what?"

"You have them all, Vale." She smiled at the enormity and wonder of it. "I didn't go through every room of this place, but I have no reason to believe that you don't have everyone that was touched by my own magic, jumping from one to the next until you have them all."

She was stunned silent and shook her head. "No. That's just...no." She turned away and looked to the chair that she once couldn't lift without shattering it into a thousand pieces. As she looked more closely, she found that it wasn't whole. As she looked deeply she came to realize that it was pieced together as a puzzle would be, with lines of force as the glue holding it all together. Looking more deeply, she found herself whispering what she saw. "A man on the beach. A woman with a home, children playing. All those pieces telling their own story within the people who held them.

She felt she could go deeper within each of those pieces and hopes and stories, but she began to fear that if she did, she'd lose the control she had. Sylanna sensed the anxiety, too, and did not dismiss it. "Be calm, Vale. There will be time to explore this later. Indeed, I encourage it. But stay in this moment. Stay in the moment where you are calm and in control. You can feel Solos in this place? You are tied to him here more than the others?"

She nodded slowly, reaching out. "He's just outside." She felt his happiness and serenity.

"Then I will see to any stragglers and prepare the women to leave this place. Unless you feel that you may need help."

She thought again, "No. I think I will be all right." She wasn't sure of that all all, honestly, but Vale felt she could maintain the current status quo for a time, so long as she didn't dwell on the enormity of it.

"Do not dwell on the chair," Sylanna advised gently. "It is as it is and as it should be. Do not let it frighten you. No one is harmed. Let it be and focus on Solos."

Suddenly left alone again, this place felt less safe than ever before, but that only served to motivate her to finally deal with Solos.

* * *

Solos was happy indeed. It had been a long time coming. He didn't know how long, but he remembered many deals being made and more than a little blood being spilled, but it was done. His reach had been expanded. He had no desire for the world, only for a larger slice of it, and that he had. What he wanted was his and no one questioned his right to it. All there was now was to control it and enjoy it.

And, just now, he was thoroughly enjoying plowing a lovely body with a mane of hair flowing down her back an almost orange red while there were the hands and lips of two others on either side of him did their level best to amplify his pleasure. And in the corner on her knees was the plump little mage looking as he met her, save for a hand deep under her clothes, rubbing herself furiously, whining as she did so.

He liked having her around. She'd shaped herself nicely into a happy little pet, more than willing to help him in whatever he asked. He saw the value in her, as she was more learned in how and where to apply pressure other than brute force to get him what he needed. And now all she really craved was watching him with his women or being that woman. He really didn't mind that either and she could suck well and she knew how to move those hips.

He plowed the redhead with such abandon that he grabbed onto the headboard with both hands to drive, sending her into a shrieking orgasm. So engrossed in the sensations in his cock he was that he hadn't immediately noticed that that the talisman was no longer tapping in rhythm against his chest.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, Lord."

"Mmm...yes, dear girl. Yes, indeed."

"You can finish your good time as you please. I know that it always upsets me when reality intrudes when I was in the middle of a wonderful dream. After that, we can discuss what will become of you and your trades."

"What will happen is that I'll finish with this one and then you and I can have a go."

"No."

That confused him, but not enough to care. His lusty, dreamy gaze drifted over to her and that he saw the talisman around her neck, and that happiness was replaced by confusion and anger, "What the fuck? Give me that back."

He reached for it and planted face-first and naked into the ground. There was no time. He had to get up. He had to move. It was closer, and if he didn't move now, he knew he would be consumed by it, so he ran, his blood like ice despite the pounding of his heart and the ground he was eating in those massive strides. He miscalculated. He'd tested himself against this thing and he'd failed. He could turn and face it, but not like this, not while it had every advantage. He had to hide. He had to find somewhere to go until he could lose it and even the odds later.

His eyes scanned frantically, so consumed with escape that he had no time to devote to watching his footing. One bit of earth dipped lower than expected and he tumbled forward end over end. Pain shot through him from his twisted ankle and the various bits of the forest floor that bit into his skin. He bore the pain and tried to right himself, but the pain simply wouldn't allow it. He may have actually broken the damn thing.

But the Goddess smiled upon him. Before him was an animal den. It was hidden by the brush and remnants of snow, but it was there. His peered into it for as long as it took for his eyes to adjust, keenly aware that the thing was hunting him, growing closer with every passing moment. No sign of anything alive within it, he crawled in headfirst, then turned himself to face outward, reaching around to pull down brush from around him and settled in, pressing his back to the dirt, so that it would have to come close before it had any chance of seeing him. He smelled whatever lived in this thing and knew that may well serve to conceal him.

The presence drew closer. It went from this wild malevolence as it stepped closer finding sharper focus until he could hear footsteps on the ground. One after the other. Calm. Measured. Without a care in the world. His eyes darted to and fro again and his hands groped the dirt for anything sharp or blunt that he might use if it found him and tried to get inside. Finding a stick with heft and point enough to use as a makeshift spear, he, for the moment, planted it in the earth as a pike and waited. Closer and closer until the steps stopped and a pair of green eyes peered inward. "Are you all right in there?"

Confusion reigned until he came to the slow realization that she was the pursuer. It was she who created fear and dread within because, even knowing it was her outside, it was all still inside. "Honestly, I understand hunting for food, but I never understood doing it for the pure 'sport' of it. It always seemed to me to be akin to killing something just to watch it die, and I find that...awful."

"Either way, I don't imagine it's fun to be on the other side of it. Running. Afraid. Fearing you're going to die. I can keep you here if you want, but I don't want to. I can keep you here until you understand."

"Understand what?" He could focus on a voice. That he could focus on. It was rational It was a lifeline. It wasn't the paralyzing fear that filled him.

"That you don't control the talisman anymore. You never really did." She considered it. "Neither of you did. It was just a pool of magic opened at the right time. Or the worst one, and it waited for a mind. You shaped it, and used it with no understanding of the cost. There are things that I don't understand about what has happened even now."

She sat on her knees over the entrance. "But magic isn't for mundanes to play with."

"What do you want?"

"I want safety for the women. I want them free. I want them never to be taken from or brought to you in chains again, so that means you will be gone from here. You. Your men. All trace of you. I do not care where you go, so long you're far, far from here. Go hunt, fish, or trap, but trapping people is off limits. Go somewhere and make your money and make your name to help others. Earn the nobility you pretend to have, Lord."

This woman. This little thing daring to tell him what to do. He would get out of here. He would get out and she withhold learn hard lessons of what it was like to be hunted.

"Thought the naked man who is stuck in a dream in an animal's den that might just as easily be a shallow grave. The longer I'm here, the more I could root around, which isn't something I relish. I could find things here. I could find the things that you were certain that hid under your bed as a child. I could loose much upon you that would make this a beautiful memory."

"While I am doing that, there's still the matter of your body outside of this that needs to eat, drink, and truly sleep or else it will die, but I don't want to do that. I would still like to part ways peacefully if we can agree."

"And you will not try to hunt me. If you do, you just might find me in your sleep. Even the thought of doing so or trading flesh again will repulse you because when you think of it, you will think of all the pain you've caused."

Vale leaned closer to the gap and opened her mouth. What came out was a sound that the damned would flee. It was as if the howls and death rattles of every animal he ever killed mixed with the sobbing and plaintive wails of all the women that passed his way in bondage. The pleas, the crying, the gnashing of teeth. The sound of it was so powerful, his eyes watered to free-flowing tears, even as his eardrums shattered and his bones shook. The scream did not end until he screamed into it.

His face was in the dirt. His body was quaking, and the tears simply would not stop.

"Can we agree?"

* * *

It had been a long ride for Petrik and his men to get from where they started to here. He hadn't been happy to have been sent on the errand, leaving a comfortable manor and life to hunt a missing person. And his attitude hadn't brightened with the cold nights, his days on the back of a horse and the incessant grumbling of the men with him. He let it go most of the time because they were good at what they did when it came down to it, and if the bitching kept them warm, so be it.

At the end of it all, he'd just hoped that he hadn't been sent all this way for nothing. He wanted an answer and the sooner the better, preferably one that didn't have him riding through miles and days more of creation to find the woman he'd been sent to find and he rolled his eyes at the prospect of the task stretching out. It had taken him long enough just to get to the place where he could trace Delvine's route. Everyone who hadn't seen her and the ones who had helped narrow the search.

On top of that, what he had heard from his superiors suggested that they were on the right track. This Solos had become unreliable of late. Thus far, he had broken no agreements, but he had made it clear that the current association wasn't profitable enough for him. Petrik had been sent to renegotiate within reason. His employers valued reliability over money, and were usually willing to make accommodations up to a point. A little more money up front, the occasional bonus, or other incentive was usually enough to put these country rubes back in line.

But that one of their most reliable couriers had not made her scheduled check after heading in his direction did not bode well for Solos, or perhaps her. He would go there under the pretext of a renegotiation, suss out this Solos and his defenses, and find out what happened to Delvine. If she wasn't there, he'd move on as much as he hated the idea.

But if she was there, against her will or not, he and the two dozen men be brought with him would act. It was only a matter of who the targets would be.

"Well, that's something," one of the men behind him said.

Taken from his thoughts by the observation, he looked ahead on the road to find half a dozen men on either side of the road sprawled on the ground with two women between them. Scoping the environment around them, Petrik saw that with the tree lines slightly more dense here it might have been a good spot for an ambush. His group closed on them. One was tall and lean, the other shorter and more rounded, but they both appeared untroubled standing next to their horses.

"How are you?" the shorter one asked amiably before she noticed them looking at the downed bodies before them. "Don't worry about them, they're just incapacitated. If you're wondering what they were doing out here, they were waiting to try to kill you."

"Well, then, I suppose I should thank you. And you are...?"

"No one you need to worry about, but my name is Vale. My companion doesn't talk much, as she generally hates other people." There was agreement in the taller one's eyes. "I'm here to tell you that the path you're on is closed to you."

"And how do you know the path I'm on?"

"Where else would you be going but to Solos?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Fair enough. We have business with him."

"Solos is no longer in business. He went out of his way to run afoul of mages, so he will no longer be a concern of this region."

"Can I take that to mean that you're now in charge of his interests?"

"He no longer has concerns here," she repeated smoothly. "What will become of the fort ahead is something to be decided by others not us. The mages may take it. We could have use for such a distant place. Or the military may seize it to create a standing presence here, especially since many of Solos's dealings were, shall we say kindly, not honest. All that matters to you is that there is nothing on this path for you."

"Well, I appreciate your candor here, and, since you have been so straightforward, I'll return the courtesy. Since you know of Solos, his work, and enough of why we were coming and where we were coming from to be here to intercept an ambush by his men and meet us, we still have business with him and you probably know what that is."