The Druid and the Igniad Ch. 06

Arkis patrolled the forest outside the village. Walking the wilds gave him a small measure of peace, as it reminded him of the roaming times, the good times he had with his wife so many years ago. Suddenly he stopped, for he noticed tracks in the fluffy forest loam. A small group of people had passed by there, towards the village. He knelt down and touched a fuzzy leaf hanging from the broken stem of a nettle plant. The tiny hairs on the leaf still prickled his fingertip, indicating that it had been broken recently. He followed the trail.

Meanwhile, Gern stopped walking towards the steaming pool of the sacred spring. He cupped a small pile of gemstones in his hands, but they were momentarily forgotten. In the light of the red moon, he had just caught glimpse of Lu, her naked body framed by a rising column of steam that emanated from her seat on an outcropping of rock above the pool. It was as if the heat of the hot spring was being drawn to her. He stopped and stared at her in awe as she sat meditating. She was absolutely still, with only her wafting hair of oily black smoke fluttering in the rising air.

His heart swelled with a warm, peaceful love. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, and more. He knew in his soul that she was who Gaia meant for him to share his life with. Whether he lived to old age or met his death in the next battle, she was worthy of all the love he had to give. No regrets, no aspiration for more than nature would allow. He was hers, for as long as she wanted him. He knew that even if he lived a long life, he would one day die, being mortal; and she, immortal, would live on, forever young.

He did not expect her to never take another lover. That would be cruel to wish upon someone who lived for millennia beyond him. He hoped she would live for so long, and if he had to sacrifice his mortal life to save hers, he would gladly give it. And if he lived again in some other body, some other form, he would gladly sacrifice that life, too. He was a father because of her, and for the first time in his life, though he was not yet old, he was at peace with no longer being young. He had reached true maturity.

Lu felt the glow of his love, and opened her eyes. She didn't even need to try to open an empathic link with him. It came freely whenever he was near. She closed the gates in her mind, adding a prayer of thanks to Gaia at the end, though Labolas taught her that such closing prayers were not necessary in meditation rituals to achieve the desired result.

She stood up with an easy bound of refreshed energy and stretched, lifting her arms above her head. With Opal's help, her belly had recovered quickly from the stretching it had endured from holding her child, and her abdominal muscles had returned to their usual tautness. A couple of days after Awenn's birth, her breasts swelled with milk, making them teardrop from her chest. The swelling subsided when she fed her infant daughter, and after many days of sporadic feeding, at last her daughter fell into a somewhat more regular sleep cycle, allowing her some time to herself.

She looked at Gern, and smiled. He smiled back, and the mutual joy brightened them both into grinning at one another. Lu leapt down from the ledge and dove into the pool with the sleekness of a magma eel, and a moment later, stood out of the shallows. She felt her sex grow silky with sudden arousal, even though she had not been thinking about coupling with him. Her body had gone through many changes lately, and after refreshing herself with magical energy the idea of using some of it enticed her.

"Lu," Gern said, "look, I found these gemstones just laying in a pile off the side of the trail!"

"You're touching them?" Lu remarked with a scrunch of her face.

"They look polished. Rudy, amethyst, and carnelian. Who would just leave these lying around?"

"I did," Lu said as if it should have been obvious.

"Oh. Do you want them?"

"No," Lu said, again, as if it should have been obvious.

"Do you mind if I give them to the village gem cutter?"

"It is strange, but I don't mind."

"I know our ways can be strange to you," Gern said as he set the gemstones down with a smile, "but we like to imbue some of our inner beauty into things."

"Wash off in the water, and you can share some of your inner beauty with me." Lu smiled. She slid her hand over her protective pelvic crystal, and willed it to release itself from her skin. The translucent crystal became heavy in her hand, and she pulled it away. Gern walked towards her as she set the crystal down on a portable wooden table containing the multitude of vegetable oil pots that provided her nourishment. Their baby lay asleep in a nest of ferns nearby, woven by Opal, who combed her algae-smooth green hair beside.

"Opal," Lu said, "Gern and I will be back in a little while."

Opal smiled with a blush, and nodded her approval.

Lu thought about inviting Opal to join them, for she also sensed arousal in her, but somebody needed to keep watch over little Awen. Lu trusted Opal completely, as Opal had a special connection with the child, being the one that initiated her into the waking world, and Lu into motherhood. Lu took Gern's hand in her's, and they walked down to a lower pool amongst the cascading reservoirs of the hot springs. There they locked lips in a gush of sudden, unbridled affection, and Gern yanked his belt loose. They both felt a surge of yearning to join as intimately as possible, their feelings shared between them lucidly in their empathic link.

"Do you know how much you mean to me?" Gern asked.

"I do," she replied. "you are also that to me, and no one can ever replace you."

Gern kissed her again, and pushed his heavy leather kilt down to crumple around his feet. His phallus swayed heavily, already half-swollen. He pressed his hips to Lu's as he placed his hands at the low flares of her hips. The smoothness of her skin against him spurned a tingling in his seed giver, which began to rise between her thighs as she leaned into him on her toes. She moaned into his mouth has she felt the top of his shaft nudge against her bare mound, and Gern groaned though a smile as restraint became too much to bear.

He pushed her up against the cliff wall, his love member springing free and elevating to its fully erect angle. He knelt down on one knee and bent Lu's ebony leg over his shoulder, giving his tongue open access to her slit. He laved at it with his mouth muscle, her heat bathing his face. His nose nudged the top of her nether lips, massaging the nub of her hot flower. She moaned through an indulgent smile as she felt her cleft become slick from without and within, and she caressed his broad shoulders.

With one hand, Gern stroked his length, enticing it with a rehearsal of the sensations to come. As his arousal elevated, so too did her's by grace of her empathic link with him. He fondled his love member until he felt his hand smear his leaking excitement over the tight skin.

Lu longed to feel him inside her. She communicated her passion by tugging at his hair, careful not to burn it with her elemental power. He gave her pedals one more long lick with the flat of his tongue before rising up, keeping her leg bent over his shoulder. He hooked a hand under her other knee, and she felt her core become juicer as he pressed her up against the cliff, spreading her open.

She laced her hands together behind his neck, and her dark eyelash-rimmed pools of violet gazed into the radial forest of his irises. She felt his love, his loyalty, and his complete acceptance of who she was and what she meant to him. She marveled at him, and leaned toward him to kiss.

Gern's lips met her's as the tip of his shaft found her lips below. He felt her opening to him, her hot cleft like a volcanic fissure between two separating continents, the force in his heart just as unstoppable. They moaned in unison as Gern's hard length slid into her. His full shaft was enveloped with one smooth upward stroke, and a slippy bath of heat sent shivers up his spine.

Lu knew her elemental power could not harm him if she didn't wish it to, so she let her energies flow. The pool beside them boiled, filling the air with a plume of steam that flowed down the mountainside. Gern kissed at Lu's neck as he slowly withdrew from her depths, her nether lips squeezing him, protesting the removal. He pushed into her a second time, faster than before, and then a third, grinding his pubic bone against her hooded pestle.

Her fingers gripped his hair, and she tilted her head back, exposing her neck to his lips and teeth. He propelled his love stem into her rich depths, his breath on her neck as he focused on the sensations and feelings they both shared. With her unpinned leg she dug her heel into his hip, jolting against him to meet his thrusts. Sexual energy poured into them from some mysterious power, and neither of them wanted anything else in that moment. Gern pulled Lu against him as he soared to heights of ecstasy in his flesh, and he bit her neck as he was overtaken by the primal power, rushing towards release.

Lu's legs quaked as a rush of hot nectar broke free inside her, and ripples of inescapable orgasm crashed into her body. She cried out in joyous surprise at the sudden arrival and strength of her crescendo, uncaring if Opal or anyone else heard her. Gern felt her cream anoint his manhood as he continued to drive into her, and he felt the pressure mount in the base of his stem. She wrestled her leg free from his shoulder so she could wrap both legs around his waist and grind against him, desperate to feel him fill her, to join her in orgasm. Gern could feel her quivering sheath pleading for him to burst, and he moaned with three mighty breaths, and jolted Lu with three final thrusts, then tensed every muscle in his body as he came inside her.

Lu trembled with the sensations she channeled through her link with him, and it spurned her orgasm to last longer, reverberating throughout her being, shuddering with excitement at the thought that she might become pregnant again. Her sheath milked his pulsing length, and he rhythmically massaged her quavering inner walls until he could summon no more of his essence to give her.

Gern held Lu close against him as he was jolted with aftershocks, which she echoed through her link. She basked in a warm glow of peace, her slit leaking her crystal clear arousal like the languid flow of molten rock after a titanic eruption. Despite her slipperiness, she felt like they were fused together, welded forever in their immense heat of passion. She nuzzled his ear with her lips.

"I love you," she murmured.

Gern was about to whisper his love back to her, but something cracked his tranquility, and the hairs on his neck prickled. Lu sensed it too, only much stronger. She felt fear break forth unbidden in her heart, and her certainty of why was as strong as the fear itself.

"Awen!" Lu exclaimed as she gripped Gern's shoulders.

Gern quickly slipped out of her and grabbed up his kilt. Gern wrapped it around his waist as he ran to get up to Lu's living area, but Lu's powerful legs enabled her to leap clear over the rocky shelf separating them from the higher pool, and she crashed into the shallows with plumes of flame sprouting from her hands.

Opal was a hostage with a knife to her throat.

A grey-bearded man in dark leather armor had clearly gotten the drop on Opal, and five younger men in similar garb surrounded him. One of the men knelt beside Awen's nest, and reached for the child.

"Stop!" Lu commanded. But the man did not stop, he scooped the basket up into his rough arms, and Awen stirred in her sleep, and began to cry. The other men surrounding Opal and her captor had their bows out, and drew back the notched arrows, ready to protect their leader.

"Get your hands off my baby!" Lu cried angrily. The flames in her hands spread up her arms and wrapped her body in fire.

"Don't you care for this lovely creature?" The man said, with the knife to Opal's neck. Opal clutched the man's forearm that pressed across her breast, and frozen in terror.

"Let them both go," Gern said as he arrived from the edge of the stone steps, "and you may get out of this alive."

"What are you going to do, druid?" The man sneered. "You have no weapons!"

"I do!" Arkis called from the mountain trail behind them, and pulled his bowstring to his cheek with an arrow ready to fly. "Release the girl or die a coward!"

The man turned his head to look at Arkis and a light of recognition lit up his expression.

"Arkis, is that you?" The grey assassin asked.

"Oskar?" Arkis said, suddenly horrified.

"Well I'll be damned. Figures that you'd be fighting with the tree-huggers."

"Arkis, you know this man?" Gern demanded.

"I'm guessing--" Oskar said, "that you neglected to tell them about your past, 'little brother'. Who's the real coward, here?"

"Your brother?" Lu asked.

"He's not my brother!" Arkis exclaimed angrily. "And he's not my friend!"

"Bloody right!" Oskar sneered. "You betrayed us! Shall I tell her, traitorous dog? Shall I tell her what you did?"

Arkis gritted his teeth, the shaft of his arrow steady on his finger against the bow.

"Arkis and I ran a gang back in the day," Oskar explained. "Our biggest heist was stealing a haul of enchantment crystals from your own mountain, igniad. Arkis and his girlfriend made off with the whole lot of them before we could cash 'em in." Oskar leveled his gaze upon his old compatriot. "I spent years tracking you, but you were always good at hiding."

"And you always talked too much!" Arkis retorted. "You know I can put this arrow where I aim it, Oskar."

"I'll slice the pretty's throat wide open before your arrow leaves the string! You know I'll do it."

"Lu!" Arkis called out to her, "He will kill her as soon as his men make it out of the village with the child!"

"Nachoza sabbi..." Lu recited, tracing a pentagram in the air with a flame-trailing finger, "mightier than thou am I, release her now or die!"

Oskar laughed, and with his free hand lifted a crystal shard from a chain around his neck.

"Your charms won't work on me, igniad. I am warded from such magic. You don't seek work with a witch queen without protection."

"Save Awen!" Opal cried out. "I gladly give my life!"

"No!" Lu asserted. "Don't hurt her!"

"Enough of this," Oskar growled. "Take the kid!" The other men, including the one holding Awen's basket, made off down the winding mountainside trail, into the deepening shadows of the night.

"Stop! I'll turn you to ashes!" Lu flared.

"I think not," Oskar said, pressing the tip of his keen dagger to Opal's tender neck. Opal sucked in a breath, feeling the point dig into her soft skin.

Lu took a breath and stared at the dagger as she conjured a symbol in her mind's eye, then quickly recited: "Nulut aem mina!" She clenched her fist around a bright ball of flame, and Oskar' dagger suddenly groaned metallically as it glowed red hot in his hand. His skin sizzled before his reflexes kicked in. He cried out in pain as it burned his flesh, and he dropped it, but not before jerking it against Opal's throat, slicing her deep.

"No!" Gern shouted.

Opal fell to the ground, bright water gushing from her wound. Arkis let loose his arrow, and it pierced the assassin's leather armor. It sank into chest, lodging between his ribs. Oskar barked at the biting pain, and collapsed to his knees.

Lu and Gern rushed to Opal, and Lu cradled her head. Life water, sparkling with magic, ran from Opal's wounded throat, and her eyes met Lu's.

"Go," Opal managed to say, her windpipe still intact. Lu pressed her palm over the cut, trying to stop the bleeding. She tried to remember the healing spell Labolas had taught her.

"Arkis, keep on them!" Gern commanded.

Arkis ran down the mountain after the kidnappers, and Gern leapt to his feet to follow.

"You'll be alright, Opal," Lu said. She put both hands over Opal's wound, and recited: "Esaeu lizze raeq gia." Golden fire emanated from Lu's palms, and Opal cringed as the wound sealed with a burning scar.

"Go," Opal said again. She was weak, but the bleeding had stopped.

Oskar coughed a sinister laugh, said: "You have already lost. Evalyn will purge this world of-"

Lu whirled around, bellowing in rage, drowning out his next words. She launched herself at the dying man, wound up a flaming fist and leapt upon him, smashing his breastbone with her knee and opening her fist in front of his face.

"Minaxunrsiz raeyda!" Lu roared, and white fire erupted from her open palm. The flames blasted away Oskar's features, rendering his head to ash and bone in seconds.

"Come!" Gern called, already leaping off a ledge onto the top of a tall conifer tree. "Aspen and Pine," Gern called to the trees in the moonlight, "please help me be fleet to save my daughter!" The tree took his weight and bent, arching downward and steered him to the top of the next conifer on the steep slope below. Gern leapt onto that tree, which bent to accommodate his step even before his foot reached it. The tall trees ferried him down the mountain swiftly, and he caught up with Arkis, who was right behind the dark-armored men.

Lu's long legs propelled her down the mountainside, her naked body wreathed in fire which struggled to hold onto her, such was her speed. She ignored the trail and leapt from ledge to ledge, wishing that she were wearing the metal shoes Gern had made for her. The impact on the stone against her bare feet was painful, but she knew her diamond bones could take the punishment, and pushed herself harder.

Gern called to the briars, and thorny vines curled out to snag at the fleeing men. One tripped, and smashed his face against a rock, but the one in front with Awen had reached the first buildings on the mountainside. Soon, the rest of the men were out of the vine's reach as well, and they ran across the rooftops toward the town walls. Gern and Arkis stayed close behind them, but Arkis couldn't find an opening for a clean shot.

Lu made it to the rooftops, but the tiled surface was unfamiliar to her, and the fired clay tiles came loose under her feet, causing her to tumble. She slid to a stop just before reaching the edge, and scrambled to build her momentum again.

The four remaining kidnappers jumped down, one after another, to a tall ox-cart laden with supply crates, then to the road. Awen cried out from the lead man's arms, and the scant people on the dimly-lit street looked up from their mundane tasks. Two guards stationed at the torch-illuminated gate perked up and pointed their spears.

"Hey!" One of the guards barked. "Hold it!"

Two of the assassins charged forward and parried the guard's spear-thrusts, getting close with their daggers. With the guards occupied, the other two assassins, one clutching the child against his chest, barreled through the open gate. Gern and Arkis charged through as well, leaving the guards to fend for themselves against their opponents. Lu leapt off the crates of the ox-cart, leaving flaming footprints on the wood. She slid low through the dust by the gate, sweeping one of the assassin's legs out from under him. He went down and took a spear to the belly as Lu left them behind.

They were in the army camp outside the village, now, where tents and campfires stretched for nearly a league into the surrounding forest. Lu thought the warriors would surely aid her, but the air was thick with arguments, fist-fights, and sultry moans from many tents. As well, the kidnappers were moving faster than the alarm could spread. The dark-armored man who wasn't carrying Awen threw smoke bombs to cover their escape, and Arkis crashed into a naked woman who had just rushed out of a tent to see what was going on. Lu leapt over them and came down next to Gern, who was running almost as fast as she was, the grass under his feet seeming to spring under his step and push him along. The throngs of warriors around them barely had time to register that the archdruid and a fiery igniad were running right past them.