Lesbia Chronicles: Over Witch's Knee

by Ther Renard

  Ayla looked at her long and hard. There was little reason to fear Kira, even if the intervening years had sharpened her teeth, she was still a puppy. "You have not hunted me this far to see me tossed into a fire." Ayla spoke with certainty.

  "Silence, witch!" Kira snapped the order with the easy authority of one who has become accustomed to being obeyed. "Present yourself for arrest, or face the consequences!" She put her hand to her waist where a short silver dagger was sheathed in her belt.

  "Careful," Ayla warned. "Your knowledge of me is as healer to a wounded youngster. You may not like what I am to an arrogant soldier who is old enough to know better. "

  Kira sneered as her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the blade. "What will you do to me, witch? Turn me into a toad? Cover me with the plague? I do not fear your kind."

  In the face of Kira's arrogance, Ayla's patience waned. "I have not come all this way to be yapped at by a whelp who does not know when to shut her mouth and open her ears. If you do not cease your threats and start listening, I will thrash you where you stand."

  A faint blush appeared on Kira's cheeks. She gave Ayla an incredulous look as if to say, "Do you not see what I am? How strong I am? How dangerous I am? What are you compared to me?"

  ~~~

  Glaring at the witch she had started to think she'd dreamed up in the first place, Kira hardly noticed the magic drawing all around them. For years she'd tracked Ayla. She had found plenty of witches, but no pretty elven woman with kind green eyes and a gentle touch. To see her again was a terrible kind of wonderful.

  The magic worked whilst Kira stared. The trees did not seem to move and the land was solid under her feet, but when she glanced around the tavern was gone and the forest was silent.

  "Where the hell are we?" She panicked and drew her blade, though she knew it was useless against the kind of magic that held her prisoner.

  "Worry less about where you are and more about who you have become," Ayla said, ignoring her distress. The witch was just as Kira remembered her, though the robes she wore were dark and a hood covered her golden hair. She had a face of uncommon beauty and wisdom and those eyes - Kira had thought she must have dreamed those eyes, but now they were looking down at her with a focused fury that made her innards tumble. Feeling a trickle of uncharacteristic fear down her spine, Kira tried to walk away from the witch to see where she was but somehow the trees curved around and she ended up standing back in front of Ayla.

  "Let me out of here!" She made the demand with the blade extended towards the witch, the threat of physical violence unspoken but obvious as her smooth face contorted into a fierce mask.

  "Be quiet and be still," Ayla ordered. "You are like a baby bird squalling when there are foxes about."

  "What are you talking about, witch?"

  "Has it not occurred to you that there might be a reason no witches have been caught in decades? One does not cross our kind lightly."

  Kira laughed arrogantly. "I have seen many of your kind. I fear none of them."

  "That is because you have picked at the low hanging fruit, those too young or too terrified to stand up to an Imperial uniform." Ayla's face drew closed with scorn. "I am disappointed in you."

  "Who the hell are you to be disappointed in me?" Kira threw her scorn right back in her face. "Who the hell are you at all? You're no-one, just some forest witch."

  Ayla's brow twitched with irritation. "And you are an ill-educated little wretch doing untold harm to those who have helped you. When I met you I saw something in you, something special that brought you back from death's door. You had the capacity for untold courage, for being a force for good in this world. And now you hound those who are weaker than you, hunt the vulnerable and torture those who have never done anyone any harm." The witch gave Kira a look of unbridled disgust. "I almost didn't bother coming for you."

  "Well feel free to fuck back off to wherever you came from," Kira sneered, hiding the hurt under a facade of indifference. This was not the reunion she had imagined in all the years since meeting the witch for the first time. She had hoped the witch would be impressed by what she had become. She'd had fantasies of Ayla bowing before her, begging for mercy and then being ever so grateful when it was granted. "I'm doing the queen's work. I don't need approval from next year's kindling."

  Rage flared in Ayla's eyes, but she kept her composure. "Do you know why I came for you?"

  "No idea," Kira said. "Last I saw you, you were leaving me in the middle of fucking nowhere."

  The witch's voice became as cold as ice as she glared down at the soldier. "Because I saved you when death tried to claim you. Your existence is my karma and if you become the destroyer you seem to be so intent on becoming, then it will be my duty to see you returned to the grave."

  Kira's eyes narrowed. "Have you come to threaten me with death? I don't fear death - and I don't fear you."

  "I have come in the hope you can be redeemed," Ayla said, her expression softening slightly. "You have strayed far from the right path, little warrior, but there is still a chance for you to come right, though time grows short. Your karma is coming for you as surely as I have, and you will have to pay the price for the evil you have done."

  Kira opened her mouth to make a reply in her own defense, to tell the witch how hard she had worked, how much she had pleased her superiors, but a cold wind had begun to blow. She knew immediately that it was far too powerful to be of natural origin. She looked towards Ayla to see if the witch was the cause of the sudden inclemency just as the wind whipped into a frenzy with a banshee howl, lashing the witch's golden hair about her face. She stood solemnly, seemingly indifferent to the supernatural storm being unleashed upon their little gathering.

  "Make it stop!" Kira covered her face with her arms as the wind grew strong enough to push her around. She dug her heels in but still she drifted around in circles, creating ruts in the dirt as the wind made sport with her.

  "I cannot stop what is coming," Ayla said, her voice somehow coming clear through the wind.

  "What is coming?" The solider screamed the question just as the wind whirled into a tight gray spiral before her. Kira looked through squinting eyes as it coalesced into a short figure, one of the most daunting women Kira had ever seen. Not only was she possessed of the sort of beauty that made Kira's loins tighten almost immediately, but she was curious looking too, her visage covered in black slashing lines.

  "By the great goddess' teats, that was impressive," Kira said. She was far too amazed by what she had seen to be afraid. "How did you do that?" She wandered up to the woman whose eyes blazed with a golden fire and circled her curiously. "I've never seen anything like that before."

  "SILENCE!" Ariadne boomed the word loud enough to make Kira jump back like a frightened cat.

  Her retreat was short lived however and almost immediately she slunk back forward, peering at Ariadne with irrepressible inquisitiveness. "Are those tattoos?"

  Ayla hid a smile as Ariadne bristled with confused fury. The typical reaction to seeing the great witch manifest was more of a crying, weeping, pants soiling reaction. But the young leather clad soldier did not seem to be afraid at all. She sheathed her knife and stood back, her hands on her hips as she looked Ariadne up and down. "What are you, then?"

  "I am your doom," Ariadne said in a voice that made the trees tremble and pebbles dance across the earth. She glared viciously at the unfortunate young wretch, waiting for the begging and pleading to start.

  Kira looked at her with wide eyes, then raised a brow and uttered a single word. "Nicceeeee."

  "Bow down and prepare to die!" Ariadne's furious roar made the earth shake beneath Kira's feet as the witch unleashed tectonic rage. Her dark hair streamed out about her shoulders, flailing in the winds of anger.

  "Prepare to die?" Kira held up a finger. "Hmmmmm okay. Ready," she said a moment later, grinning unrepentantly.

  Ariadne lifted her arm, a ball of lightening coalescing in her palm. "Die, arrogant imperial scu
m!" The bolt raced out of her hand and zapped towards the dead center of Kira's chest.

  Moving with blinding speed, Kira dodged just as the witch released the bolt. It zapped harmlessly over her shoulder as she raced towards Ariadne, dipping under the witch's arm and twisting behind her back, her dagger pressed against the witch's throat.

  "Shall we discuss this 'dying' thing?"

  A blast emanated from Ariadne's core, hurling Kira across the clearing. She slammed heavily into a tree and slid down, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth. She looked to be unconscious for a few seconds, but then her eyelashes flickered and she shook herself off and regained her feet.

  Ariadne smirked unpleasantly and stalked towards the bruised and battered soldier, the lines on her face shifting into a feral pattern reminiscent of a jungle cat.

  "Neat trick," Kira noted through bloodied lips. She spat a mouthful of the red stuff onto the ground. "You'll have to teach me how to do that sometime."

  "I will teach you nothing!" Ariadne lifted her hands above her head, a roiling ball of fire forming between them. "You will die for your crimes." She cast the ball at Kira, who ducked and rolled to the side, avoiding the explosion as it smashed harmlessly into the ground, boiling Kira's discarded blood away in an instant.

  "I don't die easy," Kira said. "Sorry about that."

  "Then you will die slowly," Ariadne declared.

  "To be fair, I was dying slowly before you got here," Kira pointed out.

  Ayla palmed her face as Kira antagonized the powerful witch. Ariadne cried out in anger and lifted her hand once more, coalescing elemental blue ice into bolts that she shot towards the young soldier, who dipped, dived, ducked, and dodged them all, finally ending up laying flat on her back, laughing with what sounded like genuine glee.

  "Ariadne, please," Ayla spoke softly and with reverence. "I beg you to show her mercy."

  "Show her mercy? She shows no regret, no contrition. She dares laugh in my face!"

  Kira kipped up to her feet and brushed herself off. "Oh come on, you're toying with me. You could strike me down where I stand if you wanted to."

  "That is true," Ariadne admitted, somewhat mollified by Kira's acknowledgment of her powers.

  "You're just grumpy because you want me to cry first, well it's not going to happen," Kira said. "So kill me if you want to kill me, or keep playing these games it's all the same to me."

  Ariadne stalked towards the soldier. She looked up at the Imperial, her golden eyes swirling with passion as she grated a question out. "Why do you not fear death, youngling?"

  Kira gazed down at the witch, her expression becoming solemn as she spoke. "Why would I fear release from suffering, from a body that decays and degrades, from wants and needs that are powerful but meaningless. I will never sit at a hearth with my babies. I will never grow old and gray. I am a warrior. I was born to be killed. Whether that happens today by your hand or tomorrow by another foe's blade, it matters little to me."

  "Then you will suffer the same tortures you inflicted upon my children," Ariadne declared. "You will be whipped as they were whipped."

  Kira's eyes flashed. "I'd rather you killed me."

  "No," Ariadne said. "I think you will have a very long life indeed, warrior."

  "Not if you try to whip me I won't," Kira growled.

  Ariadne smiled, pleased at the reaction. "So we have found something you do fear." Her golden eyes flashed fire. "Take that vest off. I will not waste my time whipping leather."

  Ever defiant, Kira crossed her arms over her chest. "Make me."

  The witch laughed, a humorless thin sound that was caught by the breeze and whipped around the clearing in an echo. "Make you? I could unmake you by pieces. I could disassemble every part of you and make you fresh from the elements in any form I chose. You have no concept of what I can make you do." Ariadne drew closer, crackling with energy that nigh sparked from her fingertips. "Take the vest off, Imperial."

  Kira leaned down, her brows drawing together as she smirked arrogantly through her bloodied lips. "You first."

  Almost snarling with rage, Ariadne lifted a finger and brought it up to the deep 'V' where the vest displayed a hint of cleavage. A light sparked at the end of her digit and she bought it down, down, down, slicing the leather as cleanly as if she wielded a sharp blade. Kira watched, stunned as her single layer of clothing melted like butter and slid off her shoulders, leaving her topless.

  "This is how you did it to those tender witches, isn't it?" Ariadne hissed.

  "This is definitely not how I did it to anyone," Kira replied, hooking her thumbs in the waist of her britches. She was clearly unconcerned by being topless. Her firm, round breasts sat high on her frame, brown nipples forming peaks in the frigid air. Far from being cowed by her nakedness, she was empowered by it, her bare torso proving to be taut and toned with a hard abdominal plane made lean by years of physical rigor.

  Kira was magnificent in her nakedness, so much so that both Ariadne and Ayla paused for a moment, caught in a reverent gaze. It was all the opportunity the soldier needed. The blade holstered at her hip leaped into action, flashing silver through the air. There was a shout of surprise and Ariadne leaped backwards as the tip grazed her skin, then smiled a dark, angry smile.

  "You missed, Imperial."

  "Did I?" Kira cocked her head to the side, smirking as the witch's gown gave way at the seams and dropped from her body in a heap of black satin and velvet with a dramatic FWOOOOP. Ariadne was not nearly as intimidating when dressed in a frilly white petticoat trimmed with large lace flowers. "That's adorable," the young soldier grinned.

  Ariadne let out a cry of rage and made a hurling motion with her hands. A shock wave emanated from the witch, catching Kira in its blast and sending the soldier crashing to the ground. In the same instant Ariadne's gown reformed itself, lifting from the dirt as unseen fingers resewed the necessary seams. "You lack respect," Ariadne growled as she advanced on the fallen soldier. "I will teach you some."

  "I thought you weren't going to teach me anything," Kira said, trying to sit up. Her muscles strained, but she could not move from the ground. Ariadne came to stand over her in triumph. It became clear that she was not going to be able to move a muscle without Ariadne's explicit permission.

  "Face the ground," Ariadne ordered, shaking her hand in the air. A long leather horsewhip materialized, as if it had always been there, hanging in the fabric of space and time, waiting to be called forth.

  "Make me."

  This time the response was angry, afraid. Trapped in the witch's unseen bonds Kira fought down panic. It wasn't the pain she feared. Pain was nothing. It was the indignity of it all, being forced to take the submissive role. She would rather have died than be held in the dirt and lashed like some disobedient peasant.

  Ariadne did not bother to make any reply, she simply lifted a finger into the air and Kira found herself lifting and tumbling like a seed on the breeze before coming back to earth with a solid thud. Again she tried to push up from the ground, but her fingers clawed at the dirt to no avail.

  Wasting no further time, the high witch lashed the whip down across the warrior's back with a fearsome cracking that cut across her flesh, breaking the skin almost immediately. It was followed by several more equally vicious lashes, each of which left a solid red mark that flowered into bloody flesh here and there where the lines crossed. It was brutal and it was merciless but aside from the sound of the whip the clearing was silent. Kira did not flinch or whimper, she was like stone as the leather landed across her bare flesh again and again.

  "Why isn't this working?" Ariadne finally threw down the whip and stalked around to take Kira by the chin. She stared into the warrior's defiant eyes, fury meeting fury. "What trick are you playing, Imperial?"

  Blood trickled slowly from the corner of Kira's mouth, but she made no reply. She was beyond the capacity for speech, in a place where the bodily brave retreat when life becomes too much to bear. It was Ayla who fina
lly spoke for her.

  "She cannot feel it."

  "Are you mad?" Ariadne hissed the question. "She bleeds!"

  "You cannot reach her by hurting her. It is nothing to her." Ayla spoke softly, her compassionate green eyes welling with what looked like tears. "She has been bathed in pain from the very beginning. I doubt she knows what the absence of it feels like."

  Ariadne snarled and released Kira's chin. "You are saying I cannot kill her, cannot whip her. What can be done with this Imperial wretch?"

  The world seemed to take a breath as Ayla did. "You came for revenge," she said gently. "But you found something far more precious. A warrior with a sensitivity to magic. A soldier who does not fear death. A woman who stands in your presence as an equal."

  "She will never by my equal," Ariadne snapped.

  "What is an Imperial?" Ayla persisted. "It is little more than a uniform. An allegiance. Uniforms can be discarded and allegiances can shift."

  Some of the anger faded from the high witch's expression as she listened to Ayla. "What are you suggesting?"

  "You came to destroy an Imperial. You can do that without harming this girl any further. You can take what was theirs and make it yours."

  "Mine you say?" Ariadne looked down at the prone warrior thoughtfully. "Hm. Mine."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Hold still," Ayla chided gently as Kira squirmed, sitting backwards on a chair so her arms rested on the back, her legs straddling the seat. The witch was dabbing Kira's wounds with a cooling, healing salve.

  They had traveled far from the little glade beyond time, covering miles in the flash of an eye. Ariadne's magics were powerful beyond imagination, so much so that Kira did not question it when she found herself in the cozy interior of a little wooden house. Ariadne had not lingered long, leaving Ayla to the task of cleaning Kira's wounds. Tending to the wounded was clearly not Ariadne's style. She specialized in making the wounded, not healing them.