The Saga of Tallia the Unwilling

He... or rather more accurately... she leapt to her feet, startled, naked and lit by the flickering campfire light. The warriors hands roamed across his own body like he was exploring an entirely new landscape. Everything... everything had changed! Gods on high and in hell, was he still asleep? What weird dream was this? Yet Tallus could find no way to wake.

The truth came upon the warrior suddenly, trampling over him like a great bull and forcing him to face a new reality. Tallus was no longer himself. Tallus was entirely transformed. He had once been a tall, lean, muscular but definitely male warrior covered in hard-earned scars. Now, Tallus was a woman. And not just any woman, but a tall perfectly sculpted figure of unmarred womanhood maybe two or even three hands greater in height than he used to be.

Every scar was gone, every injury healed and instead Tallus now looked very much like a marble statue of some goddess breathed with life. She was powerfully built, broad shouldered but curvaceous; beautiful and yet strong; feminine and yet imposing. Long black lustrous hair blew loose in the night breeze and Tallus' eyes, once a grim grey, now shown like brilliant burning emeralds. And his dick... yeah, that was gone.

"Wow," Hilarius managed clearly somewhere between shock and arousal.

The transformed Tallus stopped inspecting this new and utterly unfamiliar form and instead turned towards Hilarius. Her eyes burned with jade fury at this... this CURSE! Yes, it was most definitely a curse! "Where is the damned sword?"

"That's the other weird thing..." chattered Hilarius. "When I dragged you to camp... I mean you were so heavy I could only barely move you let alone your gear.. but it sort of followed you. I mean, it didn't exactly follow you, it just appeared next to you when I was gathering firewood. Anyways, I cleaned it up a little." Hilarius presented the still unsheathed sword, bright shining in the flickering firelight to the warrior goddess now standing before him.

Tallus took hold of the sword. As she held the weapon, Tallus was now stunned to realize that the strange runes across the blade were now clear in their meaning: "Know this worthy warrior, if you wield the Sword of Celaeno in battle, forever will you be bound to the blade by blood."

And then the sword spoke. The words were not uttered aloud but instead seemed to echo inside Tallus' head. The voice that spoke them sounded at once both proud and regal, but definitely feminine. "Behold, the bond is made, sword-sister. Long has it been since I have been held by thee, my beloved."

"Bond?!" said Tallus aloud. "What bond? Change me back, devil!"

Hilarius could hear nothing the sword spoke but seemed to immediately understand. "Wait! Don't change back! This is a real opportunity..."

"Shut up, Hilarius. Who are you? What are you? What have you done to me?" Tallus demanded of the blade.

"My beloved, Celaeno, I am the sword which was made for you. I am the rune blade born in the heart of the mountain by the god of the forge, who to fulfill his sacred oath to your grandfather, crafted me of star metal mingled with your blood so that you would never die but instead be reborn eternally."

"I am not this person... this Celaeno. I am Tallus!" the warrior proclaimed angrily to the blade.

"Of course you are. It is not in my power to destroy what came before, but instead to transform you into the visage of the immortal Celaeno, called the dark one, last of the twelve. I give to you, sword-sister, her strength and resilience, her power and beauty. But it is for you, my beloved, to decide what shall be our purpose. Know this, the blood of the ancient Amazons now flows in your veins and to be one of the twelve is to walk the road of heroes."

"What are you talking about? Amazons? The twelve? I care nothing for this madness! Change me back, you damned piece of junk!"

"You are angry, beloved, and overwhelmed," said the sword. "This too shall pass. In time you will understand. Find peace for there is no undoing the bond as long as you walk amongst the living. The bond was told to you and you accepted this mighty gift in the only way that truly matters -- through blood and battle. But fear not, beloved, you shall not walk this road alone, for I shall be forever with thee."

"Told?!" cried Tallus, "I was told nothing! I had no idea what I was being offered! I still don't understand!"

"We shall speak again when the time is right. Until that time, walk the road of heroes, my beloved."

And then sword was silent. Tallus shook it violently. "Wake up, you son of a bitch. Wake up! I reject the bond! Turn me back! Turn me back or I'll shatter you into a thousand fucking pieces! TURN ME BACK, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" The warrior was screaming now, less and less coherently.

She swung the sword as hard as she could at a nearby fieldstone as if to somehow punish the blade. But all that did was shatter the rock with an impressive shower of spark and stone. She stumbled backward wildly off balance and fell on the grass beneath the tree. Not dissuaded by this ungainly foundering, she leapt to her feet and yelled again, but all this yelling yielded no answer from god, man nor beast.

"Shit!" screamed Tallus finally only to the dark and open sky. She returned to the campfire, sat down and tossed the sword aside with great disdain.

"So, how did yelling at the sword go?" asked Hilarius, watching all of this with interest as he snacked on an apple.

Tallus scowled. She looked at the grinning rogue across the fire and seriously considered using the devil-haunted sword to separate Hilarius' head from his shoulders. Instead, she just glowered silently. She wrapped herself once more in the grey, thread-bare blanket near the fire.

"I'm cursed," she muttered. "Gods on high and in hell, I'm cursed! I've touched some sorcerous witch-blade and now I'm doomed." She stared into the fire and for a ridiculously long period of time, there was only silence save for the crackling of the burning wood. Hilarius, predictably, disrupted her brooding by yammering.

"Can I make a few practical points?"

Tallus said nothing.

"First, that sword (which saved both of our lives by the way) is obviously magical and thus very valuable. I have heard stories of a wizard back in Yaath'Xin who may be able to help us... I mean, you... change back. But that wizard is going to want payment. So, let's not do anything hasty with destroying the most valuable thing we currently own."

Silence still from Tallus. 'Oh, yes,' she thought, 'that's what we need... to get a second wizard or witch or whatever involved. I'll likely end up a female toad before this all over.'

"Second, let us consider... is this really a curse? I mean you were handsome enough before. I was totally into you, certainly. But now... wow. I mean no disrespect here, but you are totally hot. Like goddess-level hot. Take it from me. I'm something of an expert. On a scale of one to..." Hilarius took a breath and got back on topic. "Anyways, all I'm saying... is this the worse thing in the world?" Tallus was now deep into fantasizing about a dozen way to kill Hilarius slowly if only to gain a reprieve from his ramblings.

"Third, we killed the monster!" Tallus glanced at Hilarius angrily. "You killed the monster! Nobody ever survives encountering that hell-beast, but we did, which means there is a tidy pile of silver waiting for us back at Zhang Zhen. None of your current clothes or armor fit anymore. We could use that money to get you something better than a tattered blanket to wear."

Tallus cocked an eye brow at that. This was actually a good point. She needed clothes. Even her sandals didn't really fit right anymore being both too wide and too short.

"But there is the matter that they know you, the old you, back in town and you are not going to pass for Tallus the Grim, famed monster hunter, anymore. No way. You need a new name, at least temporarily, until we get this curse-opportunity-thing sorted out. What did the sword call you? Kelly something..."

"I'm not using that name," she growled.

"Ok, yeah, obviously not that name. That's a terrible name. So, pick something else."

She stared into the fire and made a quick decision. "Tallia. Tallia will do."

"Tall-ya? That's just the feminine form of Tallus. Surely we can come up with something better than..."

Tallus, now Tallia, gave him that 'I'm-having-a-bad-day-don't-fuck-with-me-Hilarius' look. She had a lot a practice making that look.

"Tallia! I like it!" proclaimed Hillarius enthusiastically.

The newly transformed Amazon said nothing else. She had finally reached her daily tolerance for chatter. She balled up in the grey cloak and went to sleep. Hilarius, undaunted, continued talking anyway.

"Yeah, you look exhausted. You should get some sleep. Don't worry... I'll keep watch... and tomorrow, we'll get back to town and get our reward and then...."

That was the last Tallia heard as she collapsed into exhausted darkness once more.

***

The journey back to Zhang Zhen thankfully proved a simple matter. Despite Hilarius being the worst watchman ever and immediately falling asleep on duty, no one robbed them or murdered them during the night. That, Tallia decided, probably had more to do with the horned bear killing everything near its lair rather than either luck (which had clearly abandoned him...her) or Hilarius (who seemed likely only able to talk attackers to death).

They recovered the dray horse they had left tied near a stream well away from the beast's lair. Tallia managed to jury-rig a crude but functional tunic from the cloak and some other bedding. It was itchy and one good yank away from complete collapse, but it served well enough. Her ill-fitting sandals hurt her feet but she could tolerate that for this short trek. They even managed to recover the slain beast's head, horn and most of its pelt which they dragged bleeding back into town.

When they got back to the farming community, it was obvious by all the gasps and shocked looks that no one there ever expected to see the monster hunters alive again. Hilarius began loudly proclaiming that the pair of them were the greatest monster hunters in the land and that at last the dread beast was slain.

Tallia cared not all for these theatrics and trumpeting. To her it was all empty noise and worthless bluster. She wrapped herself in her tattered ill-fitting blanket and staggered past the throng, her feet throbbing from the ill-fitting footwear. She spoke to no one, not the cheering farmers nor the stunned looking headman. Flowers fell upon her but she felt nothing but deep melancholy.

She retreated quickly back to their room in the one and only inn in this tiny settlement. The chamber was intended for the visiting emissaries of the peasants' overlords in Yaath'Xin, but it had been a long time since they had received any communication from their uncaring, distant masters other than the occasional scroll that used a vast quantity of unintelligible legal gibberish to say 'Pay taxes now or we'll burn everything to the ground'. So now the room was being used to shelter monster hunters.

Hilarius served as a functional enough liaison and managed to have wine and food sent up to the room. And for nearly three days, Tallia slept a lot, ate a little and drank herself into wine-soft oblivion again and again. She sheltered within this little redoubt content to ignore the world and sulk about her cursed condition. The road of heroes indeed.

Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, Hilarius braved the room and interrupted Tallia's deep and durable funk. "I bring presents, oh bright and beautiful one. Presents upon presents!"

Tallia, feeling neither bright nor beautiful, shifted in her filthy bed. She was distressingly sober this morning. That had to be remedied. "Just bring me more wine, you damned pest."

"Nope, no more of that. You drank it all. Sorry," said the chipper little rogue.

"Then what good are you?" she cursed.

"Is that anyway to talk to your best friend? Besides, do you want your new clothes or not?"

That actually got her attention. Her current makeshift garments had gone from threadbare to genuinely foul in the past three days. Even the fleas were starting to complain about their working conditions. In truth, she was eager to be rid of the whole kit -- clothes and fleas alike.

"Show them to me," she demanded.

"Oh no, most mighty and mopey one! Not until you've had your first present. I've paid for a hot bath to be drawn. Once you are bathed and not completely gross, only then you can have your new clothes."

Tallia sat up in bed, still bleary eyed and Hilarius continued chattering.

"I've had a local tailor make you a most beauteous set of scarlet raiment, but no bath... no clothes. Unless of course, oh Queen of Smells, you desire to continue to revel in your filth."

"A bath..." she muttered. "Not the worst idea you've ever had, you scurrilous scoundrel."

"Hilarius lives to serve, my lady," said the rogue with a mocking bow.

Tallia considered throwing a very heavy, very empty clay wine bottle at the thief's head for calling him... her a lady, like somehow acknowledging the curse made it more permanent and powerful. But, she instead paused. What good would it do? Tallus... Tallia... ME!... had always taken pride in her own clear minded practicality amidst an often crazy world. It had kept him... her alive on the streets of that damned city of devils and in the so-called gladiator school which was more like a prison and even in the arena of the mad princes.

What did she know? The curse was clearly not going to just dissipate on its own here in this rice-farming dump of a town. The sword had said not a word in days, despite her drunken ravings. When she threw it out the window two nights earlier, it appeared right next to her only a few minutes later. And no doubt between this room, his presents and Hilarius' raft of other vices -- their monster-slaying money must be either entirely or very nearly gone.

'So, what was it going to be, Lady Tallia?' the Amazon thought to herself. 'Are you going to force some poor pitiful posse of peasants to oust you out of this increasingly disgusting room or are you get off your ass and do what you've always done -- solve your own damned problems?'

'Gods on high and in hell,' she thought, 'the worst part of this personal epiphany shit was that it meant acknowledging that Hilarius was, this one solitary time, briefly (and likely somehow accidentally) right.'

And so she rose. She stretched out, popped her neck and rinsed out her mouth (where something had clearly died) with a great draught of water. She tossed the foul make-shift clothing into the pile of rubbish and shattered wine jugs that had accumulated in a corner of the chamber and spoke to Hilarius in a clear, powerful almost musical Amazonian voice.

"Lead me to this bath!" she proclaimed.

The baths it turned out were on the level just below the emissary's chamber. Tallia strode through the inn gloriously naked. The few serving girls and the innkeeper that saw her, gasped and stared in wonder. One stable boy sweeping the floors nearly exploded. And how could they not be taken back by her? The people of Zhang Zhen were not a tall people. Industrious, honorable, even learned by the standards of this dark age -- yes. But short. And now a nearly six and half foot tall vision of divine beauty strode (let's be honest... more ducked) through their halls. It was like a goddess had come down to visit them from some distant empyreal dominion, granted a goddess that was currently filthy, flea-bitten and utterly disheveled.

The baths themselves proved to be most splendid. The inn was built over a small, natural hot springs, both containing and concealing the fount. The so-called baths were actually a pool, square and almost fifteen feet on a side. The stone that framed the pool was wide enough to serve as a bench and obviously ancient -- worn marble cut in some bygone age, smooth and snow white on the main but here and there veined with rough ebon stone.

The pool was shallow for someone of Tallia's height but still deep enough to sit within. The water was intensely hot and delightfully cleansing. "Drawing a bath" actually meant paying for both a modicum of privacy and for the old cold dirty water to be drawn out in buckets and for new clean piping-hot spring water straight from the source to be allowed to flow in via a small bamboo gate of cunning construction.

Tallia submerged immediately and eagerly in the shallow pool, sliding down almost prone. She rose up, leaned against the marble and then soaked in the wonderfully hot water. All the filth and exhaustion floated away and for a few seconds all seemed right with the world. Hilarius stripped and joined her in the pool leaning against the opposite side, keeping a respectful distance but sporting his usual wicked and self-satisfied smile. Tallia had seen him naked before, of course, but now appraised him with new eyes.

Hilarius was a handsome enough fellow with a raffish charm, once you got past the incessant chatter. He was slight, yes, but compact and muscular. His hair was fire red, streaked with the odd wisp of yellow. His tresses were unusually long and lustrous for a man and when untied his fire-locks well-framed his almost elfin face. His eyes were amber and keen. He seemed utterly incapable of growing even the hint of a beard or moustache even though Tallia had never seen him shave.

Hilarius was obviously a mixed-breed for his skin was too dark (being a lovely even bronze, like a permanent suntan) for the northern origins his reddish hair demanded. His teeth were remarkably clean and white for this age, and Tallia knew he was unusually vain about them, tending them with picks and brush both morning and night. But his best feature, if Tallia was being honest was his butt. It was a splendid bottom, full of graces both feminine and masculine -- muscular from a life of constant toil and travel and yet still shapely and soft, ready to be grabbed and...

Tallia shook her head, breaking off this train of thought. She was spending far too much time focusing on her traveling companion's posterior. She instead just closed her eyes, leaned back and amidst the steaming hot water, scented she now noticed with jasmine, drifted away for a few precious moments lost in silent reverie. Of course, it did not take long for Hilarius to ruin everything by talking.

"Second present!" he announced and he clapped his hands.

Tallia assumed this was the aforementioned clothing. "I'm going to soak for a bit longer before..." Dressing. She was going to say 'dressing'. But as she opened her eyes and gazed through the dreamlike haze of the hot-springs, she instead saw a beautiful little porcelain doll of a young woman, disrobe and enter the pool. She drew close, smiling wantonly, at the naked Amazon.

"This is Jia! You have her for an hour! She is most highly regarded and does not mind that you are a... well, you know."

Tallia rolled her eyes. Hilarius had hired her a whore. Of course he had. What most pissed Tallia off was that she hadn't seen this incredibly predictable event coming and could have saved some money by commanding the rogue not to do it. But then, when had commanding Hilarius anything ever worked? What was certain is that the coin was now gone. The seas might boil away, the wind might grind every mountain to dust and all the stars might fall from the sky -- but even then, no one will have ever managed to get a refund from a working girl.

"Hello, Jia," said Tallia with a resigned sigh.

"Greetings, Nu Shen," she said softly in heavily accented Imperial. 'Nu Shen' -- that was the farmer's tongue for something like goddess.