Uncertain Future Ch. 04

"What are you talking about? What is this 'saving her for me'?" Tarok growled.

"Well, I guess it's time you know about the purpose of this girl. This virgin." The lascivious sorceress blinked at Tarok and continued. "Look at me, Tarok. See my body? Oh, don't sneer, I know you or any male would drool over me. Don't you even wonder why I look this marvelous? I mean, I was alive before you were even born. Pfft, of course you don't, you're too stupid to realize that. Well, I tell you, it's not easy. The alchemists have devised ways that can let you live longer, but there is none that can stop the aging process. Those who live for more than 100 years all look like dried-up prunes. But not me, I found a way to keep my youth, and I need girls like this one to do it." She walked towards Lara, grabbed her head and pulled a handful of her hair, eliciting a yelp of pain from Lara.

"Stop that! What are you going to do to her?" Tarok said.

Melisza let go of Lara. "Don't like it when I touch your slave huh? Fine, you're lucky I'm in a good mood. Anyway, I have to sacrifice a girl. Annually. Not just any girl. She must be an adult so that her life force is fully developed. She must be young so that I can absorb her youth. And a young virgin is the best of all. It was getting difficult to kidnap young girls in recent years. The war had forced people to move to the cities, making my sources of prey dwindling. I haven't been able to get my hands on a virgin for 5 years now. It was getting annoying. Finally, Lady Luck—that snobby bitch!—smiled upon me today. And now I have a virgin to sacrifice, plus a giant toy to play with," she said with an ear-to-ear grin, her face was beaming with a morbid and sinister joy, the kind of joy that few people possessed when they're about to kill someone.

Lara didn't cry after hearing about her bleak fate. Everything was simply too much for her to handle. She was enervated and felt no impulse to do anything at all. Lara was never a fighter. When she was growing up, Lara complied with the trajectory that was set by her foster mother to become the next priestess. After waking up inside the cell in Tarok's base, she meekly accepted her fate as a slave. And now when her life was about to end so suddenly, Lara habitually gave in.

I'm pathetic! She thought.

The witch stroked Lara's neck. "Mmm, just imagine seeing blood pouring from this neck excites me. You like your dress? It is a sacrificial dress, made with the whitest material I could find, so it will soak as much blood as possible. I just love seeing purity defiled."

Melisza walked, almost tiptoeing, around her sacrificial virgin while she examined her doomed prey one more time. She could hardly contain her excitement.

"I must say, this girl is quite a looker. Might be the prettiest one I've got in a long while. Well, I'll put this beauty to good use. Get up." Melisza pulled Lara's limped body up by the shoulder. "Well, Lara and I have some business to attend. As for you, Tarok, have the rest of the day for yourself. Consider this as a token of my appreciation—even though a beast like you hardly deserve it—for saving me this virgin." She sang and turn towards the staircase, pulling Lara with her.

"Wait."

Melisza turned around. "What now?"

"I want to say something to Lara," Tarok said calmly.

Melisza stared at Tarok, as if not sure whether she heard correctly. "Why?" She asked at last, her eyes narrowed.

"Just some last words. The girl deserves it."

The witch thought about his request before rolling her eyes and sighed. "Fine, consider this my 'gratitude', and it will be my last. Be quick. You waste enough of my time already." Melisza nudged Lara towards Tarok. However, her legs were so weak that she stumbled forwards and fell on her knees.

Tarok reached out to Lara, but the chain unexpectedly shrunk, stopping his hands from moving.

"No no. You're not touching the girl. Just say what you want to say already," Melisza barked, growing increasingly impatient.

Tarok shot a spiteful glance at Melisza and quickly turned his attention to the unresponsive girl in front of him. "Lara, look at me. Lara," he called to her gently.

Lara sluggishly looked up and saw his curious pair of blue eyes looking at her. Those mysterious eyes had caused her to freeze with dread when they burned blue with explosive fury. But now, they were oddly comforting.

"Be brave, Lara. Don't give up. I need you to be strong."

What?

Did her ears deceive her? There had been quite a few surprises coming from him today, but giving her encouragement? Through her desperate eyes, she saw that Tarok was sincere. Tarok wanted to say something more but a snicker from behind Lara stopped him. Melisza was covering her mouth with her fist.

"'Be brave?' 'Don't give up?' Gods, Tarok, I didn't know you were such a dear." At this point she didn't bother to contain her laughter anymore. Her body was shaking so hard from laughing that she had to hold on to the staff to keep balance. "You just keep amaze me with your stupidity. Saying those things to a dead girl? Dear, oh dear, how pathetic."

"Laugh all you want," Tarok said with an uncharacteristic calmness in his voice. He turned to the giggling witch, his eyes hardened. "But neither Lara nor I am the most pathetic one in this room."

The laughing stopped.

"We're not as pathetic as you, who need to kill an innocent girl just to lengthen your life." He sneered at Melisza, whose lips was thinning under her arrested breath.

She walked silently towards the minotaur, harshly pushing Lara out of her way. She stopped and bent down in front of him, her face was inches from his. "Oh, now I'm pathetic huh. I harm girls, how deplorable I am!" She whined in a high-pitch girlish voice. "Don't act so high and noble, you shit. You're no better than me. You harm girls too."

Reaching an arm backwards, she grabbed Lara's shoulder to pull her closer. "Look at this one's neck. Look at it! Why is it bruised and marred like that? Care to explain, Tarok?" She stressed the word "bruised" and "marred".

Her accusation caught Tarok off guard. He bit his teeth and looked away from her charging gaze just for a second. "I didn't mean to do it," he uttered.

"Reaally! Didn't mean to do it." Melisza turned to Lara. "Is it true, Lara? Did he just 'accidentally' bruise your neck?"

Lara was about to say "not accidentally", but the young priestess hesitated when she looked at Tarok. His head hang low but his eyes looked to her. She instinctively felt as if he was waiting for her answer. Lara remembered his outburst of anger that frightful night, and how he looked at her neck later in Erika's office.

Lara swallowed. "I think so," she muttered weakly. Lara saw Tarok relaxed when she said it.

"You THINK so?" The witch snapped, her hand clenched hard on Lara's shoulder, causing the poor girl to wince. "Did he do this to you or not?"

"Y—yes, but—"

"Then he fucking did it. Why can't you just give me a straight answer?"

"Hey! You're hurting her," exclaimed Tarok, which drew the attention of both women.

"Oh! I'm sorry. How careless of me!" Melisza said unapologetically. Nevertheless, she let go of Lara and turned her attention squarely on the minotaur.

"I've got a feeling, Tarok, that you seem to...," she paused, her index finger doing circles in the air, "care too much about this lowly wench. You care when I touch her, you snapped when I squeeze her too hard. Not to mention those 'last words' of yours. Why's that, huh?" Even though the witch merely whispered to Tarok, the stillness of the room, save for the faint flickering of candles floating above, allowed Lara to hear it all. Suddenly, she found herself wondering the same question as Melisza.

Tarok didn't answer her. Instead, he did something that scared Lara witless. He spat on the witch's face. And because she was just inches away from him, she received the fullest effect of the insult.

"You evil bitch. You think you're so beautiful, aren't you? Let me tell you something. You're nothing but an old, ugly hag, who had to kill young girls just to prolong your wretched life. Your powers are stolen, your beauty is fake, just a paper-thin mask that you wear to convince yourself that you're not completely worthless. NOTHING about you is real. You. Are. Pathetic." Tarok growled the stream of insults at Melisza without taking a breath.

Lara was utterly terrified. She couldn't fathom the reason for Tarok's tirade, nor could she imagine the terrible consequent of that be. Unfortunately for Lara, she didn't have to wait to find out.

A purple light flashed and a glimmer of metallic silver appeared on Melisza's hand. Lara barely saw the tip of the knife before it plunged straight into Tarok's left chest.

The young girl would have made a startled scream had her hands weren't quick enough to cover her mouth. And she had to look away when the knife slipped further into his chest. Rivulets of blood spewing from his wound and quickly stained the white tunic that he's wearing. Despite being stabbed in the chest, he barely flinched, his face still glued on Melisza's with an unyielding hatred.

The witch let go of the knife to grip the staff tighter, so much that her knuckles seemed to turn white. Thunder cracked. Then, instead of a single bolt of lightning, the staff formed some sort of thunderstorm cloud and spew forth a constant stream of electricity towards Tarok. So much power is escaping from the gem that it created a disturbance in the air and sent breeze-like shockwaves through the room. Tarok roared from the painful lightning storm coursing through his body. He slumped to the ground. Then the witch, with her hairs standing on its end and flowing backwards due to the turbulence in the air, started to scream insults at him. She had finally reached her breaking point and had gone mad with fury.

Lara was frozen with fear. She couldn't hear what Melisza was saying, nor did she want to. The intensity of her anger was astounding. She was sure the evil witch would not stop until Tarok burned. And the thought of Tarok's death scared her even more than her own death. Her eyes started to swell up from the morbid scene in front of her. She was watching someone dying.

Then Lara saw his eyes. He lifted his head just for a few seconds, not to confront the witch in front of him, but to look at her. Despite the intense pain he must be feeling, his twitching eyes focused only to her, then they made a quick dart to the staff before he collapsed completely to the floor, each of his muscle twitched with every stream of lightning that course through him. The last thing she saw was his face contorted in pain. He still screamed, but his voice was getting hoarser and quieter.

Using his last ounce of strength, he had told Lara what she had to do. His earlier words rang like a bell in her head. "Be brave."

She had to be brave. Now. To save herself.

To save Tarok.

At the moment, Melisza was too occupied with torturing Tarok to pay any attention to Lara. Even though she was kneeling behind the witch, she was still too close to do anything without being noticed. Straightening up, Lara nudged herself slowly back and away from Melisza using her hands and feet, and she did it as discretely as possible. Luckily, the livid witch was blind to her surrounding, her rage-addled mind fixated only on murdering the minotaur in front of her.

Lara tried to get up. Her legs shook so bad from fright and pressure. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she stood up, feeling calmer and less frightened. When her eyes are opened again, she noticed a surreal scene in front of her. A purple-colored halo enveloped the dark outline of Melisza's body. The storm of lightning produced explosions of snapping and cracking which served as the background noises for Melisza's cursing. At her feet, Tarok still valiantly endured the assault, but it seemed he was reaching the end of his rope, the tendons on his neck strained so much it could snap.

Lara tore her eyes from Tarok to focus on her target: the staff. With no time left to think, she acted. She grabbed the staff below the spot that Melisza was holding and pulled backwards with all her might.

Lara pulled hard enough that varnished wood of the staff slipped from Melisza's fingers, and in the process, Lara felt on her back and glided on the smooth wooden floor three feet away from the witch. Immediately the thunders and lightning dissipated. The force of the tug pulled the witch around, allowing Lara to see the utter shock on her face, her hand swung in the direction of the now out-of-reach staff, fingers stretched dramatically. She staggered but kept her balance. Her mouth opened to yell a curse at Lara, but before she could make a noise, an ear-piercing bang of snapped chains erupted behind Melisza. Tarok lurched forward, his giant hands grabbed the witch and pinned her to the ground.

Lara looked at the wooden staff in her hand, which she pressed tightly against her body as if it was her most treasured possession. Without its owner, the powerful beacon-like illumination from the purple gemstone was reduced to that of a dying wick. Lara didn't know much about magic, but it seemed the staff was the source of Melisza's magical powers. Losing contact with the staff caused her magic spells to weaken and allowed Tarok to escape the chains. Lara sighed in relief. She did it!

Using her elbow as balance, Lara sat up, still clung tightly to the staff. She smiled at Tarok, wanting to tell him she'd got the staff. But the smile died halfway on her lips.

Tarok didn't share her jubilant relief at all. Instead, he had the same facial expression of that night when she accidentally kissed him. In addition to the searing anger, there was also murderous sparks in his eyes. And it frightened Lara immensely. She involuntarily slid away from him.

The talkative witch was silent, partly from shocked, but mainly because of the inhumanly large hand that was covering her throat. Steam flew from the nostrils of the owner of that hand, sweeping her face. Then the hand slowly but inexorably closing around Melisza's throat.

Lara didn't see anything more after that. She lay face down on the wooden floor, still clutching the staff, and did her best to cover her ears from what's about to happen.

--***--

A minute later, it was over.

Lara was a mess. Nothing in her short and gentle life could have prepared her for what just had happened right next to her.

Tarok stood up and walked towards Lara. She couldn't see him, but judging by the looming shadow that was blocking out the light, he was standing right in front of her.

Lara lifted her head just in time to see Tarok bent over, left hand reached to her. Lara recoiled and crawled away from Tarok. No hand touched her, however. He retracted his hands and stood up straight. A forlorn look filled his eyes before he turned his attention to the wooden staff at his feet. Lara had let go of it while scurrying away from Tarok.

Raising his leg so that his thigh was at a right angle with his calf, Tarok stomped his hoof on the purple orb. For a split-second it didn't seem the magical gem would break, but the force of Tarok's leg forced the crystal-like material to give way and the orb shattered into a thousand pieces. The moment the orb broke, flashes of blinding light poured forth from it and a massive shockwave flew through Lara like a gush of stormy wind. Then the shockwave dissipated, as sudden as if had appeared. At his hoof there were only colorless shards of broken glass with no purple tint.

With the magical gem gone along with its magic, the floating candles began dropping down to the ground, making small "thud" sounds all around the room. None hit Lara nor Tarok, but some of them landed on wooden furniture, flickering flames licked the hanging tapestries and wooden objects. Soon, small fires started to spread everywhere around them.

Tarok surveyed the room before pausing at the double doors at the opposite side. But he didn't walk towards it yet. Instead, he turned towards Lara. Despite her fright of him, he walked deliberately to her and in one swift motion, swept her up in his arms. Lara screamed when he touched her, but he held firm nevertheless, denying Lara's any chance to wiggle out of his grasp. With determined steps he walked towards the door. He raised his left foot and kicked it and the slab of wood collapsed to the ground. With her face protected by her arms, Lara saw nothing but felt her quaking body rose and felt with each of Tarok's steps before she fainted from exhaustion.

As always, thanks for reading. Comments are appreciated.