Unconquered Pt. 09

I lifted my head from where I had been resting it -- against my knees as I sat in the briefing room of the Starshrike as we soared away from Samsara and back towards the wilderness with our tails between our legs. Ceaith was still leaning against the wall, her hands slipped into the pockets of her tight pants. She looked at June with a little sneer. "For miss realpolitik, you have a shitass long view on things. Good thing you're cute at least."

June opened her mouth to respond, but Ceaith lifted her hand, flicking out a finger.

"One, the choosing of an Unconquered is such a powerful magical moment that it can't not be found by scrying or prophecy or whatever. If the Regent has even halfway decent thamaturges, then he'll have know that an Unconquered's running around. Two, the people hate the Regency. But they won't have the courage to be against it unless they know that they have an Unconquered on their side. Now they do. And three..." She shrugged. "Without the Unconquered, that statue would have killed thousands. And it would have been a tragic accident -- something to blame on an engineer. Now? Now, only a few dozen were killed by the Guard. Not by an accident, not by a mistake, not by a disaster. By. The. Guard. And those dead include nobles."

She smirked. "In this one act, Ember's just set the kindling that becomes the fire that burns the whole Regency down."

"It's not good enough," I said, frowning.

Ceaith looked at me, her ear flicking. "Huh?"

"I'm the Unconquered," I said, my thumb pressing to my chest. "I'm not supposed to get innocent people killed."

"Too bad," Ceaith said.

"Too bad?" I asked, standing up, my hands clenching.

"Yeah, too bad," Ceaith said. "You're in a war, sunboy, people die in wars. Innocent people. Even if you don't do anything wrong, even if you fight as squeaky clean as you can, you're still going to fight absolute bastards. Absolute bastards don't fucking care whose village they burn. They'll burn it." She tossed her head, then began to prowl closer and closer to me, glaring at me. "So take all that guilt you're feeling, squeeze it in a tight ball of rage, then hatefuck that rage down the Regent's throat when you rip off his mask and tear his lower jaw out of its socket."

Our noses were almost touching. I was also harder than I had been in ages. Ceaith panted softly, her tail twitching from side to side. But then her face twisted and she turned, throwing up her hands. "Or, you know, whatever!"

And with that, she stomped off, heading out of the room, brushing past June as she did so.

"Fuck," June hissed. "I hate it when I'm not the most cynical bitch in the room."

I started to walk forward. June opened her mouth -- but Chirp put their hand on her shoulder, shaking her head. I didn't have time to think about that. Instead, I was just letting instinct burn through me as I followed after Ceaith, but she moved so fast that I lost sight of her twice, whipping around corners, leaving only her tail to indicate where she had gone. She came to one of the training rooms -- and as I walked up to the door, I heard the soft whump whump thump of fists slamming into leather. I peeked around the door and saw Ceaith punching one of the punching bags. Well. Not just punching. She was slamming it with her knees, her elbows.

She finished off her flurry, let out a yowling roar, then slammed her forehead into it with a headbutt that would have sent teeth flying. Instead, the rope tore and the bag smashed into the wall, then collapsed onto the ground. But that wasn't enough for Ceaith. She dropped onto her knees, her claws springing out, and she began to slash and hack and cut at the bag, ripping the leather apart. Shards of leather flew into the air, and sand spilled onto the ground as she tore and tore. Then, the tearing slowed. She panted, her head ducked forward.

"I hate this..." She whispered, then began to cry, her head ducking forward.

I felt as if...

Maybe I shouldn't?

What if my urge to go in, to help Ceaith was just...just...just because I wanted to go in and fuck her while she was all mixed up? How scummy was that? But...no. No. I shook my head. I absolutely refuse to fucking allow my good instincts be second guessed, undermined, and shot to shit by my own worries about supernatural marriage. I was in control. And I was going to help my wife, because she was crying and she needed my help.

I stepped into the room. "Hey..." I said, quietly.

Ceaith lifted her head. Despite there being no time for her to fix her up or wipe her eyes or anything, she looked normal. "Sup, sunboy," she said.

I bit my lip. "I think you got him."

I nodded to the ripped up punching bag.

Ceaith shook her head, slightly. "Eh, he might be twitching," she said, looking at her claws. "What's up?"

"I think that's my question," I said, walking into the room, then kneeling beside her, my knee creasing the mat slightly. "You okay, Ceaith?"

Her large mane of brown hair bristled up slightly. She looked away. "You know, I had a dick once?" She asked, her voice blunt, harsh edged.

I blinked. "Zuh?"

"I was born a dude," she said, looking at me. "You know, female lions don't have manes."

"I'm so confused," I said, my brow furrowing.

Ceaith shrugged a bit, frowning at me. "Come on. Like you'd want to fuck another guy, right?" she asked glaring at me.

"I'm not just here to fuck you!" I said.

"Oh, yeah, sure, you just came here to talk to me out of the goodness of your heart," she said, her ears flicking back. Her tail twitched from side to side. "Come on, you're, what, fourteen years old, you're basically hormones."

"I'm eighteen and I'm not controlled by my dick," I said, glaring at her. "Why are you doing this? Gods, I just came to try and help!"

"Well, maybe I don't want your help!" Ceaith said, sitting up, her hand sliding along the ground, drawing a set of five, parallel lines through the sand. "What if I want to just be myself and not have all my thoughts fucked out of my head by sun-magic. You can talk anyone into anything with the right magical push -- maybe I don't want that." She thrust her thumb against her chest. "Maybe I'm just saying anything I think it'll take to get you out of here and out of my fucking hair."

"You went with trying to ick me out because you were born as a man?" I asked. "Rather than just, you know, asking me to go? What is wrong with you?"

Ceaith scowled. "You're some rube from the backwoods, I know what you people think like."

Ember stood. "Fine. I'll go, and you can just be sad and mopey and-" He shook his head.

"And what, a bitch?" Ceaith asked.

"You said it! Not me!" Ember pointed at her as he backed away.

"You were thinking it!" Ceaith snarled.

"I was not!" Ember started for the door, then blinked as he ran into solid metal. He blinked, then pushed at it. "Hey, what the fuck?"

"Not opening it until you two deal with this bullshit," June said. The seams of the door flared and glowed with eldrich light, then flashed as symbols of holy writ appeared and solidified. I hissed as I jerked my hands away from the door, wringing out my fingers as they stung and sparked with the contact.

"Chirp!" Ember shouted through the door. "Xora! Get June out of the way and let me out."

A long silence followed.

"N-No!" Chirp squeaked. "Sorry, Ember, but she's right."

"For fuck's sake," Ceaith hissed from behind me. I glanced at her and grinned, sheepishly -- and she shook her head, putting her hand against her forehead, her ears twitching upwards despite herself. She showed her teeth in what might have been a smile. "Fine." She nodded. "Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine fucking fine!" She stomped away from me. "You know what pisses me off about you, Ember?" She pointed her finger at me, turning around to face me. "You're too fucking nice."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, my voice growing sarcastic.

"My brain and my body say ick, but my soul says yes," Ceaith said. "Do you know what that's like?"

"I can guess!" Ember said, leaning against the door before hissing and jerking away from it, wincing as he did so. "Is it where you second guess every single thing you feel, every instinct you've got, because it goes against everything you think you know? Where you spend a good solid half minute thinking about whether you should go in and comfort a girl you like because she's sobbing her eyes out and you almost don't do it because you're scared that some sacred chains in your head are yanking you around by the tip of your dick so you fuck her."

Ceaith's hair was bristling. "Yeah!" She said. "That's spot on. And...then you get mad and...say...stupid shit." She looked away.

"I mean," Ember said, slowly. "If I was the kind of guy who'd freak out about you being a guy, then becoming a girl, then I think I wouldn't be the kind of guy that you'd even want to..." He trailed off.

"Except I don't!" Ceaith said. "But I do. But. Argh!" She put her hands over her face, then dropped them. "What are lesbians like in your home?"

"W-Well, I only...knew one..." Ember said, then blushed. "A-And most people in Rataka didn't really talk much about their...you know..."

Ceaith sighed. "Well, I come from a city in the Burning Sea -- a place called Ari-La-Lasha..." She crossed her arms over her chest and began to pace. "Me and my sister, Thalestasia, grew up in the slums. It wasn't so bad. We stole things, we ate the things we stole. You know." She shook her head. "B-But...I knew from pretty early on that I liked girls. But I hated myself. It took meeting a shifter god for me to...realize...what it was." She sighed, then kicked at the ground. "Thally was cool. But most of our fences treated me...different." She paced more and more, faster and faster, like a caged animal. "Wait, first, fuck, tell the others to go. Now."

I nodded, then stepped up to the door. "Hey! June!"

"Not letting you out," June said, casually.

"I know," I said. "Leave. We want privacy. No one listening in."

"Okay," June said, sounding annoyed. I perked my ears and heard the soft sounds of footsteps -- and a tiny rustle of bat wings. I nodded, then looked back at Ceaith. She smirked at me.

"But...that all changed," she said. "When I started wearing red. Lesbians wear that in Ari-La-Lasha. That's why I still wear it." She brushed her hand along her red vest. "Then shit got a little better. But I had to act the part. Wearing the wrong color and acting the wrong way, it got you in trouble with the law, with other people." She looked aside. "But it's more than that. If it was just law and shit, then, you know, fuck that. The law can't tell me what to do. Hell, the law couldn't even make me keep my dick..."

She trailed off, chewing her lower lip. "I...I guess I just...I feel like...if I give into you, I'll be spitting in my own face. And the face of every single other girl I've ever loved. Like, I'll be betraying them. Does that make any sense?"

I nodded, slowly.

"Well," I said. "Why don't I try being a girl, then?"

Ceaith blinked at me.

"What?" she asked.

I grinned, then focused, and the she/her pronouns that I had found in my soulgem popped out, glowing as they landed in my palm. I held them up, then wiggled the shimmering bead of possibility from side to side. "Tada!"

Ceaith blinked again.

"What? No!" She said, shaking her head. "Fuck! No! Absolutely not!"

My brow furrowed -- but before I could even ask a question, Ceaith had slapped the pronouns out of my hand. She grabbed my hand, squeezing it. "I saw you in these pronouns, you fucking moron. I saw how utterly miserable you were. I spent years of my life being that kind of miserable, do you think I'd wish that on anyone?"

My hand cupped her hand. Ceaith froze. Her tail froze. Her ears were twitched up. She trembled . I could feel it, quaking through her whole body. Her two-colored eyes, one bright gold, one bright blue, gleamed up at me, he pupils dilating, as if she was more excited than she had ever been in her life. Or more terrified. My breath caught and my nose flared and I drew in the warm spice of her scent. Now that she had mentioned it, her lightly tanned skin and her scent did speak to me of warm deserts. Of tanning oil and harems and the broad swords of exotic, far away stories. I wanted, at that moment, very badly, to kiss her.

Instead, I whispered. "Thank you."

Ceaith leaned in.

To call it a kiss was a misnomer. Kisses were a little bit less tentative and ephemeral. Kisses involved contact beyond the lightest brush. Kisses didn't feel as fragile and experimental as smoked glass or captured dreams. But the moment was not fleeting. Instead, Ceaith's lips and mine remained in that moment, pressed together. I did not kiss back. I didn't even dare to breathe. Instead, I let Ceaith touch me -- and then as she drew back, she looked into my eyes. I didn't know what she expected to see. I didn't know what she did see.

But whatever it was, it made her chuckle nervously. Her voice was soft. "Just...trying it out."

I nodded, slowly.

"And even if I go further, I top," she whispered. "You know what that means. Right?"

"Pegzola," I whispered back.

Ceaith blinked slowly. "Peg. Zola." She said the word in two chunks. "Peg zola. Peg. Zola."

I flushed. "H-Hey, you try and come up with a neologism w-while under pressure!" I said.

"Pegzola!" Ceaith grabbed me by the throat and began to shake me -- but her shoulders were shaking in laugh. I mimed choking, my tongue sticking out as she shook me more and more. "Pegzola, sunboy!? I'm going to fucking destroy your ass!"

"Is that a promise?" I 'gagged' out. Ceaith laughed, shoved me back against the wall, then leaned in.

This time it was a kiss. A kiss with tongue. A kiss with teeth. A kiss that drew blood. Ceaith drew back, one of her sharp canines glittering with ruby red fluid and she licked it up with a little snarl, her eyes glittering slightly. "Don't get use to that," she hissed. "I'm thinking that you're not that good at kissing. I'd put it at five out of ten, you know. If I was rating kisses."

I wiped at my bleeding lip. "I haven't kissed back yet, Ceaith."

She snorted -- and I heard it then. A quiet, thrumming purr. But before I could remark on it, before I could enjoy it, Ceaith slipped past me, brushing against me with the arrogant assumptions of a born cat. The door hissed open for her, the seals having faded. Either June's magic had faded with her leaving, or her magic had figured that we had gotten past our 'bullshit.' But as I watched Ceaith go, I had to admit...I wasn't sure if we had. Ceaith had experimented with kissing...but kissing was one thing.

The whole rest of it was something else. Even if gods above and the sun himself, I wanted to do way more than just the rest. I wanted to peel Ceaith's clothes off with my teeth and fuck her brains out against a judo mat. I wanted to screw her until she turned into butter and had six children. I wanted her whole soul with an intensity that shocked me. And yet...in the same way that she didn't want to see me with the wrong pronouns, I didn't want her to force herself into a contortion she hated. I reached up and pressed my thumb against my cut lip, a tiny gold flaring around my thumb-tip, the wound sealing up tight.

The last person in the world I wanted to see stepped in the doorway, filling the space that had once been filled with Ceaith with the sight of the scrawny, liver spotted, wrinkly frame of Goat Who Wrestles. He was puffing on his pipe, small circles of green smoke rising into the air. Two of the smoke circles formed into the crude shape of human figures, grinding themselves against one another in an extremely sapphic way.

Goat beamed.

"Women!" he said. "Can't live with them. Can't live without them."

"Except you can, and you can," I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

Goat chuckled. "Maybe that's just me then." He aimed the stem of his pipe at me. "Time for training. Drop and give me six hundred and one half push ups."

I groaned.

"In the comments!" he said.

"The wha-"

"Now!"

TO BE CONTINUED

[1]Goat blurred across the deck of the ship at lightning speed -- his feet slapping on the wooden planks. He came to the sack and then kicked out hard with one leg. The blow slammed into the sack and the whole thing began to swing wildly. The sound of it reached Ember's ear a heartbeat later -- a meaty thunk. Goat then struck the back with a backwards elbow strike, pirouetting around, letting out a fierce 'kiiyah!' before his elbow drove home. The impact was too much for the leather sack. It split along one seam.