Raska Tales: One Small Gift

This is my erotic story entry for the 2019 Literotica Geek Pride Day Story Event.

Welcome to Raska.

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Raska Tales:

One Small Gift

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It takes something special to be something to everyone, but it takes something extraordinary to be everything to someone...

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She had a legend to find.

Seven years to the day had passed since he had vanished into thin air at the eclipse of what had been one of the most destructive battles this city had seen since the Declaration. The Crown's wisest casters and most powerful wizards had been tasked with uncovering what had become of him, yet they moved at a slug's pace. All their efforts yielded the success of a whisper in a windstorm. Their actions hampered by the infighting and arguing over which direction to take or path to explore in their new grand mystery.

But that was before the war. In a time when they could bring the entirety of their knowledge and magical power to bear. The day the rebellion claimed its first heavy blow to the crown, and the stability of their nation fell into question, their focus shifted elsewhere, and the efforts fell upon just a handful of the willing.

Hands like hers. To seek out the reason why the fabric of the realm seemed to have swallowed both him and the beast he fought and wink them from existence. After years of research and exploration, she now knew. Most of the answers lay before her.

A final ritual was all she had left to do to bring the Hero home.

...

The first rays of the morning sun peeked out over the horizon between the tops of the broken, stonework buildings. Each of the decrepit structures crooned their own sorrowed whistle with the breeze that passed through their shattered windows and crumbling walls. Murders of crows watched her from their roof-top perches as she took her time walking down the empty street between piles of rubble and glass. Rats retreated to their holes as a crimson tint took over the sky above.

Snapping like a whip at any exposed skin, a wicked breeze kicked up into a gust to stir a storm of sand and debris over the flagstone street. She could hear the entirety of the Ruined Quarter howl in mourning with how the air twisted and screamed through its forgotten paths. With these haunting sounds came the unnerving chill upon both nerve and skin. Shivers rippled over her skin and broke out into goosebumps.

It was a day as foreboding as when He vanished. A day that she remembered quite well.

Pulling her maroon cloak in closer around her body, she pressed on into the wind down a familiar block. Just a few streets down she came by a shop that once boasted hundreds of sweets and fresh fruits in its front window. A dozen lineups of tasty morsels now replaced by bits of smashed glass on ruined shelving. The bright yellow stonework that made up the building was now faded and chipped as to leave only clues to its once bodacious façade.

Standing before that storefront, the woman stopped a moment to close her eyes and let her memory come to her. She recalled her first meeting with Him over three decades ago. A dire time it had been for her; a small girl, kneeling upon a mat by the bright red door of the confectionary. Clutching desperately to a roughly carved, wooden bowl and begging for coppers from any who could spare one. Hunger was burning the meat off her bones, which themselves were growing weak from her fourth day without a scrap to sate her. Another day and she'd be just another corpse in an alley or the sewer. Another nameless victim of poverty.

Yet that day was the one he chose to pass by.

She had been hunched over her lifeline bowl, her body wrapped in rags and a robe nearly twice as large as she could fill out. The ridges of her backbone, prominent through the worn cloth on her back, drew more ire from those who witnessed it than pity. Children kicked at her, wealthy verbalized their disgust, guards waited for an excuse to force her elsewhere. None were aware of how little more her frail heart and body could take.

It was near the time that the sun rose to its highest point that a pair of travel-worn boots stopped in front of her. At the time she had thought the footwear beautiful. A hand length short of the knee and crafted of fine, black leather striped with grey highlights, indicative of a distinct species of wyvern she had heard the guards speak of. Along the length of each boot, where the sole met the body, were shaped pieces of red iron that capped the toes and cupped the heels. A design perfect for mounting spurs or delivering painful kicks.

Her awe ceased when one of these boots rotated toward her, toe in line with her jaw. Instincts had her braced for what was expected to come. Another broken bone or lost tooth alongside a shattered nose. Following the blow would be a quick curse from the guards as they ran off another abuser of the homeless. Perhaps they would catch him this time. Perhaps she would die.

The tear was already prepared to fall from her eye, but something else fell in its place instead. A gold coin.

It had been lowered with care into her bowl before those majestic boots turned again and strode off. So amazed she had been at the awesome sight of that piece of metal that she hadn't even squeaked out a thank you. By the time her sense had come around tell her to do so, she just caught a glimpse of His back as it disappeared into the crowd. Not that she knew who he was then.

He hadn't become the man the Empire loved yet...

...

Drawing her thoughts back into the present, crushing down the memories of that time, she pushed on past the sweets store and down through the district ruins. Not more than five blocks down, she stood at the edge of a crater that He had left during the battle. It was as deep as a horse was tall, consuming the whole of the street and half of the buildings on either side. Everyone thought that the blast of magic would have killed Him. Other civilians caught in it left not a bone to bury and yet when the smoke cleared, His magical shield faded, and He gave that sword of His a flourish before charging again.

Sliding down into the crater, she skidded to a stop just shy of the center and stumbled forth another few steps. When her footing was regained, she came to kneel down at the spot where He had cast his shield spell and put her hand to the ground. Trace bits of magic prickled her senses. The sheer power of the spells colliding still left a taste strong enough for her to detect even after all the years that had passed. It was enough for her to get a feel of essence she needed.

Closing her eyes and allowing her strength in the arcane reach out, she breathed a sigh of relief as her magic latched on to its metaphorical scent. Focus shifting to her right, toward the partially collapsed tunnel of the city sewer, she returned to her feet and took a few small steps toward that dark place.

Even after years without use, the smell of that river of waste still managed to churn her guts. Even more so than it had before. Drawing a torch from her pack, she gave a snap of her fingers and had a spark appear in the oiled rags to engulf them in flame. Taking one last breath of fresh air to ready against what came next, she raised her firelight and ventured into the darkness.

Piles of rubble and fungus-spawning dirt forced her to tread carefully with each step to maintain footing in the entryway. Some stone pillars, once carefully crafted to hold up the street above, now lay shattered across the ground with sections of the roof suffering a similar fate. Dirt that had been held up by the structure now piled in, walling off the underground nearly to her shoulder's height. Blocking off one half of the sewer and filling up the waste canal.

Crossing over the dirt bridge and proceeding along the side of the sewer that still stood intact, it did not take her more than a dozen paces to reach the end of the destruction. In this unscathed section, the arching ceiling in the underground gave a woman with her stature a good half-head of room. Stone walkways on either side of the tunnel gave one plenty of space to avoid the sickly brown, stagnate river running down the middle. Yet now she clearly recalled how He had to hunch slightly when He had come down here as part of his duties. How he specifically walked along the water's edge, so he still had the clearance to swing a sword...

Before she really could help it, she found herself immersed in her memories again. When she first saw his face, heartbroken as He saw the home she had made in one of the alcoves down here.

At the time, her belly was full of fresh food and she wore proper clothes that were only a little bit bigger than she was. Purposely purchased so that they could be worn for another year at the least before she grew out of them. And boots. Good boots with only a single hole between them that covered her feet in preparation for the coming winter. All of these comforts obtained thanks to His gifted gold coin some months prior. For the first time in her life since she lost her home, the times were good.

It was evening, and she had only just started to curl up on a pile of loose dirt and old clothes to sleep when she heard a ruckus somewhere down the tunnel from her. Not wanting to get involved, she pulled a wooden crate over herself to hide and listen for whatever was happening to stop. But then came the sound of steel ringing against steel. The agonizing scream of one, and then several, of the city's criminals meeting a bloody end through both magic and blade. She thought it to be a gang war with all the fighting she heard, but of course, she had been proven wrong.

As she had found out later, He had been asked to retrieve a stolen heirloom and claim bounty on a man wanted for the theft and the murder of another. In His hunt, He was ensuring to do a thorough job at clearing out the criminals of Agdent's underbelly.

If only she hadn't been trapped in ignorance at the time...

Two zetrans is what it took until the fighting ceased. Not long after, He had come patrolling through the sewer looking for runners. Leaving no stone unturned, he tossed up the sizable box she hid in the hope to catch one of the men he'd been hunting. Instead, he found her. Trembling in her hideaway and begging for his mercy as he stood over her with his bloodied longsword in hand.

She still hadn't known him then, hadn't known it was his gold that steered her life toward improvement those four months prior. All she knew was that a man covered in the gore of others was looming over her with his weapon ready to kill. It was that moment, that fear, that desperate surge of instinct that finally awoke what lay dormant within. Her instructors called it her awakening. That first time when her ability began to stir, and just in time to come to her panicked defense.

She threw her hands up defensively and gave a terrified cry. She'd heard the words a dozen times from wizards and sorcerers in public demonstrations and in her desperate attempt to keep a killer at bay, mimicked it as best she could.

A thousand times she'd tried to do magic before, but of course, this was the one time it worked.

Light illuminated her palms, and the blast of thunder that followed threw Him across the sewer into the far wall. The magical discharge did not leave her unscathed, however. Pain crushed her chest the same way a belly flop into the river did, slapping her body with a life lesson and sucking the air from her lungs. Bells of the smallest chime rang in her young ears, air was hard fought to be brought into her lungs. He was slow in trying to right himself from the stone floor with a groan of pain that she could hear even through the ringing.

With that, she decided the best thing to do then was to get up and run. Stumbling at first, her limbs were uncooperative in her pain before her heart began to race. Thoughts in her young mind screamed for her to get away from Him. Him, and the blood, and the fear, and all the terrifying things in the sewer that could kill a girl of a mere eight summers. With all she could muster, she raced to get as much of a head start as she could because once He recovered, He chased her.

Begging for her to stop.

Had she known then what she did now, she wouldn't have tried to get away. He wouldn't have had followed her through all the nooks and crannies and back spaces that his larger body barely squeezed through in its armor. Both of them would have been paying more attention. And maybe that ambush could've been seen...

...

Shaking her head free of that memory, she stopped at a door backed with rusted iron bands leading into a sealed room of the old tunnels. Raising her palm and giving a short incantation, there was a blast of energy from her fingertips that tore the whole thing off its hinges. Stone collapsed, dirt rushed in from above, yet a simple shield spell kept the minor cave-in from harming her or even soiling her boots. As the dust settled and the final stone fell, she tentatively stepped forth into the room where she had inadvertently led Him right into the trio of killers all those years ago.

Just as she suspected, the mummified bodies of the men that had attacked them still remained. Over thirty years later, and nobody had bothered to remove them. Nobody cared to. Two of them were simple cutpurses that were killed quickly; the third was decapitated so his head could be turned in for a reward. Once that door closed, there was no way into this room. No airflow, no traffic, not even the rats could touch them.

She knelt down beside the dark stain on the ground and nearly petrified bandages that had once been soaked with His blood. Once so carelessly discarded, these trace remains from the wounds He had sustained now offered the one opportunity she needed. A fact she respected as she reverently picked up one of the decades-old rags and tucked it away into a leather pouch on her belt.

With the final component on her person, she rose to her feet and turned toward the corner in the back of the room. Eyes falling on the spot where He had bandaged up the wound that she earned when one of the ambushers had tried to slash her in two.

There wasn't much that she could remember from immediately after that incident. Her blood loss had been too severe to keep her coherent. She recalled only that he'd tended to the hole in her side, cleaned and bound his own, then scooped her up to run back to the surface. To his very verbal panic, she had blacked-out on the way up. But when she woke in an infirmary at the Regent's keep, she found out that he had been attacked twice more before escaping to the surface streets. That he received more injuries on her behalf...

That he nearly gave his life for a girl he didn't even know. Who had done nothing but blast him with magic and lead him straight into danger...

It had sent the local nobility into a frenzy.

Everyone with nothing better to do wanted to know who he was and who she was. Where he learned swordplay and where she learned how to utilize her magic. The astounded awe they had when they heard of this fierce Elven blademaster who could take on a dozen armed foes while protecting a child in his arms. He had two marriage requests from keen nobles seeking strong grandchildren and two offers to join the city guard and the imperial army. All of which he denied in favor of remaining a self-employed and untethered adventurer.

After that came the rumors. First that she was His sister, then that she was His daughter. Both sort of made sense, as she was half-Elven herself, but the theory was quickly quashed by any who had seen both of them together.

His hair was an inky black while hers was a chocolate brown. He had pale skin that was a stark contrast to the almond color of hers. The dark green of his sleek, powerful eyes was akin to the pine trees in mid-winter, while her wide, yellow-hazels spoke of her heritage in the mountains west of the Empire. Even his speech marked him a far traveler as he spoke with the accent of the far north that she couldn't imitate if she tried. Not that she heard it enough to even attempt to.

In the bluntest of terms, they had nothing in common. The only feature they shared was long ears and even then, hers were stunted by her mother's race.

After their adventure in the sewer, aside from a short meeting in the infirmary and passing moments in the halls of the keep, she didn't get many chances to speak with Him. The nobility's new-found interest in her kept her confined to her newly issued quarters when not being inspected by the healers or interrogated by individuals trying to wrangle more facts or gossip about her life or His.

In fact, she only caught one more proper meeting with Him before He was out of her life for years. It was at a grand dinner with several nobles celebrating his services to the city and commending his bravery. A full night of lords and ladies prodding him for tales for their bards to later recant to tavern-goers in exchange for coin. When it was over, they went before the regent, and her fate was announced.

He had sacrificed a good sum of his reward to have her enrolled in a magical academy. Where her talent could be explored, refined, and allowed to flourish for the good of the Empire. There were to be baths, books, warm food, clean beds, and most of all: people who actually gave a damn about her.

She collapsed on the spot. Caught in His arms to cry sweet tears of joy and new-found hope. Nobles swooned, bards took note, and when she had the strength to stand again, she righted herself enough to bow to her savior.

It wasn't until then that she saw his boots. The striped wyvern skin and red iron banding. She choked on her own voice trying to verbalize her recognition. But then He took His leave, and a servant escorted her to her decided fate. Speechless and heartbroken that the man who had saved her life for the second time was gone from her life, again.

...

Shaking old memories from her mind, she discovered a stray tear running her cheek. A swipe of her hand had the offending drop removed from her face as she hurriedly removed herself from that room.

Through a few navigating errors and avoidance of collapsed sections of tunnel, she took some time making her way back to the surface. When she found herself below the open sky again, sucking in a lungful of fresh, clean air, it was just in time for the first drops of rain to fall. Overcast had moved in since her descent to the darkness, and the foreboding shadow of a storm cloud lingered above. The breeze carrying with it the smell of encroaching rain.

Drawing up her hood, she hurried through the dead city district to make her way to the very spot He had vanished: The old square.

At the time, it was the furthest place from the evacuating people to where He could draw the monster. Several guards gave their lives for him to lure it where he wanted, charging the creature to buy the Hero precious moments or to draw attention away from fleeing innocents. Most of their names were now engraved on the cenotaph the Regent had built where both her savior and the monster disappeared.

Standing before that monument, she looked about the square and sighed at the destruction that was still to be cleaned up. The rubble that went ignored because of the war. She remembered the ceremony the city held here when she and a handful of others were granted their titles of Sorcerer or Sorceress before being awarded their brands. Thousands of people were here that day, thousands of nameless individuals that she didn't care to know. But out in that crowd, standing humbly among the citizens, was Him.

Despite the years that had gone by, despite her shift from a mundane wizarding school to the Guild of Sorcerers and her rising through the ranks, He was there. Bearing witness to her final ascension as the enchanted brand of her branch of the guild, heated by her own magics, seared a symbol into the back of her dominant hand to forever mark her as a full-fledged Sorceress.