by Ther Renard
The witch raised a curious brow. "You think people are replaceable?"
"No," Normine said. "I do not think people are like arrows in a quiver, one as good as the next. But I know that loss is the shadow of love."
"If I do not love, then I cannot lose," Ayla said, uttering the words low.
"Wrong." Normine poked Ayla gently. "If you do not love, then you live forever in the shadows. You have the pain without ever getting the pleasure."
Normine's words brought a smile to Ayla's face. "You are rather wise, for a short lived mortal brat."
"Aren't I just?" Normine agreed, pressing an impulsive kiss to Ayla's cheek.
The witch blushed, then let out a small exclamation as Normine's hard palm caught the underside of her exposed left cheek in a sweeping upward motion.
"You didn't think this little talk would stop the spanking, did you?" Normine said, maneuvering Ayla back into a prone position. The witch ended up with her hips pressed against Normine's thick thigh, her upper body supported by the breadth of the trunk as Normine's callused palm fell in a flurry of hard slaps which set Ayla's ample bottom jiggling.
"I'm not much of a believer in talking solving problems," the soldier said. "People tend to hear things then carry on acting the way they always did. But they think twice when they've got a sore backside to sit on, don't they?"
If Ayla agreed, it was hard to tell. The witch was making very un-witchly sounds as Normine's relentless palm played a fast tattoo against her cheeks.
"Now I know it's been an awful long time since you were spanked, so you're probably tender," Normine said. "But as I see it, there's no time like the present for getting into the swing of things."
The soldier spared no energy in the spanking. The sound of her palm sweeping against Ayla's berobed bottom echoed through the forest, making birds fly from their perches with a hurried quickness.
"I hope you learn your lesson, little witch," Normine said, reaching down and stroking Ayla's hair back from her face so that she could look into the woman's tear filled eyes. "Because if you don't, I'll take you out here again and switch you 'til even your most potent salves don't take the sting away, you hear me?"
Ayla did not reply, so Normine held her hair back and slapped her bottom until she cried out in the affirmative.
"Good," Normine said. "You just remember you can't fit the whole world on those pretty shoulders of yours. And no matter how long you live, you won't be too old to fall in love or have your ass smacked neither."
~~~
In the aftermath of the disciplinary interlude, Ayla and Normine sat astride the log and chatted in the easy way new friends who feel like old friends do. Ayla's rump was tender, but not to the point of pain. Normine had been quite expert in the application of her palm.
"Doesn't that feel better?" Normine winked.
"It does," Ayla admitted. "Like stepping through a door in time. It took me back."
"I have time traveling hands," Normine said. "It's a talent of mine. Don't tell anyone." She winked archly, making Ayla laugh at her overwrought exaggeration.
"You are very light, for a soldier," Ayla observed. "Those I have known before you have always taken life very seriously."
"Only a fool takes life seriously," Normine said, pressing against the log with her hands so that her hips and legs lifted, leaving her arms to ripple in muscly fashion. "It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever encountered. I mean, my sister is missing a foot. Have you ever heard anything quite so stupid? She was always losing things, but I never thought she'd go so far as to lose her foot."
Ayla reached out and covered Normine's hand with her own. "The Leg Maker will build her another. It will not be the same, but it will be functional. She will make a full recovery."
"Of course," Normine said. "And then we will go back to slay people who have failed to stay dead. Ho Hum."
"I hope that this war ends soon," Ayla said, her expression growing quite serious. "The power exists to end it almost instantly."
"It does? Then why is it not ended?"
"Because the one who possesses it does not know how to wield it." There was frustration in Ayla's tone, but Normine simply laughed.
"Well of course not," she said. "It wouldn't make for a very good story if someone just waltzed up and slew the Blood Witch, now would it?"
"Life is not a story."
"Of course it is," Normine said. "Actually, it's a lot of stories being told over and over again."
"Is it?" Ayla cocked her head and smiled with genuine amusement. "Do tell."
"Haven't you ever noticed?" Normine swung herself back and forth, still balancing on her palms. "There are stories and people live them out over and over again. You know you're caught in a story, when you just get pulled along with events you want no damn part in. Heroes rise and heroes fall. There's a war here today and a war there tomorrow. Why? What's the point? One day we're burning witches, the next we're begging them to come patch us up. It doesn't make sense unless it's all a story."
"And how does this story end?" Ayla continued to humor Normine.
"The same way these stories always do," Normine said, managing to shrug even with her weight being borne in queer fashion. "Things will probably get so bad it seems as if all of Lesbia will be plunged into darkness, for, I don't know, a thousand years. But just before that happens, whoever has this power will work out how to use it and unleash it on the Blood Witch - probably destroying herself in the process, because that's how these things go. We'll need a sacrifice. Goes with the Blood Witch theme."
Ayla's eyes narrowed. "I fear you might be correct."
"It's all so obvious as to be tedious," Normine said, settling her buttocks back on the log. "No point worrying about it really, is there?"
"I do not intend for there to be a sacrifice," Ayla said. "There has to be another way."
"There's not," Normine said. "The story demands one. Can't you feel it?"
Ayla shivered. She did feel it. The scariest part of all Normine's nonsense was that it had the ring of truth to it.
"Don't worry," Normine said, her green eyes sparkling with joi de vivre. "We will have some fun before it winds up and takes us with it."
Chapter Thirty Six
Back at the end of Lesbia, Atrocious and Rogette crept along the tall roof and made their way to the rock face, where, sure enough, there was an opening. It was not the escape route Atrocious had hoped for. It was small and irregular and barely seemed large enough for a person to pass through.
"Here," Rogette said, pointing. "Through here."
"It's too small," Atrocious said. "I can't fit."
"If I can fit my ass through there, you can."
Putting her reservations aside, Atrocious began to squeeze through the crevice. She discovered that she could fit in the rocky space after all if she contorted her body and shimmied along in the tight space. She thought she saw the light at the end of the passage, but before she could reach it she found that the craggy walls narrowed so severely there was no hope of fitting through. She began to squeeze back, but she found that she could not. She'd gotten herself well and truly stuck, like a sausage in a vice.
"Rogette, help!"
Her cry was was lost in a sudden whipping cold wind which shot right through her bones and made her shiver violently.
"There is no way out, but through me."
Ariadne's rasp was in the wind, speaking to Atrocious through the element.
"Let me go!" Atrocious cried, her teeth starting to chatter.
"There is no escape," Ariadne cried, her voice rising with the gale.
Atrocious felt the gap closing around her, stone grinding against her flesh. Though there barely seemed room to breathe still there was the wind, the piercing, shrieking wind that consumed all that was not rock.
There was no doubting that Atrocious was experiencing the wrath of a goddess. Ariadne's outrage lashed at her in stinging slashing rain, cold welts rising against her skin. With nowhere to hide,
Atrocious cringed under the onslaught, unable to do anything but survive it.
She was on the verge of losing consciousness, perhaps of losing life itself, but before the worst happened she found herself pushed free. Somehow the tunnel was wider than it had been. She did not know if magic was at work, or if the torrent of wind and rain had eroded the rock away. She did not know and she did not have time to care. She fled, but the gusting wind followed her and the driving rain nipped at her heels as she scampered back to the roof.
The crevice slammed itself shut on her heels as a powerful wind picked her off her feet and sent her tumbling from the roof. She would surely have been seriously harmed but the wind was sweeping along the village floor with such fury that it softened her landing. It was a mild mercy, and a minor one.
Climbing to her feet, Atrocious found that she was being stalked by Ariadne, whose face had been all but consumed by the close knit swirling shapes. She was rain and she was cloud. She was ice and she was wind.
Atrocious cried out for Ayla, for Kira, for her own dead mother, but nobody could save her from the wrath of the glittering goddess.
"How dare you run from what you are?" Ariadne's voice came in a clap of thunder. "How dare you deny destiny?"
Taking to her feet, Atrocious ran from Ariadne. The village was being battered by the storm, shutters were slamming back and forth, leaves and grasses were tumbling through the air and trees groaned with the effort of staying rooted in soil. In blind fear, Atrocious ran across the village, over the grassy field and found herself at the edge of the void.
There was nowhere left to run. There was nowhere to hide as Ariadne approached, a vortex of lightening and hail swirling about her compact form. Atrocious crouched at the edge, cringing in the face of what was surely her doom.
Ariadne's golden eyes flashed with rage. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but whatever words she might have said were consumed in the gale that blasted Atrocious clear off the cliff.
Atrocious fell and she fell and she fell and then she fell some more. The only company she had were her own screams as she descended into the growing blackness. Her cries echoed in the space, returning one upon the other until she was surrounded by a cacophony of her own making.
Her scream reached an almost inhuman pitch and then there was a new sound.
FWOMP!
Atrocious landed on something soft and downy and very white. She was no longer falling. She was being carried on the back of a giant white dove. She clutched at the large wiry shaft of its feathers as it rose out of the darkness, bearing her aloft. And then there was silence and there was beauty. All of Lesbia was laid out before her in a neat patchwork. But she saw more than green valleys, lush forests and tawny towns. She saw darkness spreading across parts of the land like ink spilled from a pot. She saw it and she knew it for what it was, the corruption of blood magic.
The dove spiraled high, showing her the beauty and the pain. Then it turned back toward the village from whence she had come.
"No!" Atrocious tried to steer it somewhere else, but it seemed to know its own path.
The bird delivered her back to the village at the end of Lesbia where the sun was once more shining in a pale blue sky, where Ariadne was waiting at the edge of the great cliff. Her anger seemed to have faded, for she was smiling.
The dove glided over the cliff and faded away as it touched grass, depositing Atrocious safely back where she had begun.
"Well," Ariadne said. "That was a lot more useful than the mage infestation."
Atrocious' heart was filled with fear. Her knees knocked and she barely dared speak at all. The wrath of Ariadne was a wrath like no other and she never wished to see its like again. No wonder Ayla had obeyed the high witch without question. Atrocious stared at Ariadne, completely stricken as the woman walked toward her.
"You did well."
Atrocious could not speak for fear, her throat was tight and her mouth was dry and she did not know what she was being praised for.
"Summoning a dove," Ariadne explained when Atrocious only stared at her blankly. "A little cliche, but that hardly matters."
"But...I... could have died."
"There's not much point in a savior who can't even save herself, is there?" Ariadne shrugged. "If a gentler method were effective, I would use it, but you only seem to consider your powers worthwhile when you're on the verge of death. Still, practice is practice in any form. Let us see what else you can come up with. Try to be a little more original this time."
With that, Ariadne summoned a strong gust of wind and cast Atrocious off the edge of the cliff.
Tumbling down, down, down into the endless depths yet again, Atrocious was not quite so much scared as she was angry. She screamed as she fell, but it was not a scream of fear. It was one of pure rage. And what it pulled out of the void was something almost unspeakable.
It plucked her out of the air by sweeping up between her legs much as the dove had, but it was not nearly so comfortable a landing. She landed atop the creature's back and slid down what felt like a plate of living iron. Her backward slide was arrested by a large vertical spike at least five feet high. The creature was replete with them, large black protuberances sticking out of armored shell. Four wings beat the air, two forward, two aft. They were thick and broad but translucent and rounded at the outer edges. There was no name for the beast she had summoned, no name she knew anyhow. It had a long, likewise spiked tail and six armor plated legs with great shining hooks of bone for feet - but what was truly fearsome about the beast was its head. Its long neck made a clanking sound as it turned to cast a look at her and she found herself gazing into the open befanged maw of a... a... she didn't know what. Its amber eyes burned with fire - not metaphorically, but literally. The creature was ablaze, and out of its pointed bill - which was like that of an oversized duck, eight rows of jagged teeth crashed against the air, dripping molten goo as it flew.
It rose high above the village above Lesbia then dove down, cutting through the air with a screech that tore the wind in twain.
Atrocious saw Ariadne as a small, swirly dark dot against the village green. She smiled, but it was not a nice smile. It was a toothy grimace of revenge. She did not utter a word to the winged daemon. She did not need to. It knew what she wanted. It knew what it had to do. It opened its mouth wide as it streaked towards Ariadne in a predatory dive.
There was nothing the high witch could do. She was unprepared for the horror of Atrocious' mount. Great gobs of fire fell all around her, cutting off any attempt at retreat as the beast thundered closer.
Atrocious held tight to the creature's spike, her eyes lit with much the same fire that animated her beast. The steep dive flattened out as the death swoop began, grass rushing past Atrocious' toes as her beast arched its neck and struck out at Ariadne.
There was a booming sound as the beast's teeth made contact with the high witch, a shock wave that rippled through the already battered village, but which did most of its damage to Atrocious' beast. Atrocious was thrown half a mile away and landed in a bush, muddied and bruised. Of the summoned creature, there was no sign. It had dissipated under her, leaving her to Ariadne's tender mercies once more.
Atrocious groaned and crawled out of her bush, determined to get to her feet before Ariadne drew close. She almost managed it. She was on her knees when Ariadne stalked over, her gaze imperious and cold.
"You tried to kill me."
Atrocious glowered at the high witch. "Yeah."
She waited for Ariadne to strike her down, beat her, lash her, or more likely, throw her back off the cliff. But all Ariadne did was lift the corner of her mouth in a slight smirk.
"It certainly took you long enough."
Chapter Thirty Seven
Atrocious was not the only one to be swept up in the tornado of Ariadne's fury. Kira, Rogette and Thorberta had been likewise caught by it and cast far from the village. They landed in treetops many miles away, safe, but with very little in the way of
supplies besides that which they had strapped to their bodies.
Born to heights, Rogette had no trouble disentangling herself from the leafy vines and making her way down. Kira had more difficulty, but her strength was a boon as she lowered herself between branches. Thorberta dismounted simply by falling out of the tree. Her method was by far the fastest, though it did cause her to yelp when she gained the forest floor.
"We're lost," Rogette declared. She looked rather pleased about that fact. Thorberta was completely disinterested in the idea that they were lost. She was gazing at Kira with an expression that seemed to indicate she could not possibly be lost if the warrior was there.
"The light is going to fade soon," Kira said, immediately practical. "Let's gather some wood, make a fire and set up camp."
Rogette and Thorberta fell into line immediately, so quickly that one would never have known that they had quite literally come down in the last shower. Within minutes wood had been collected, a circle of stones had been erected to create a fire pit and Thorberta had chased down a large and juicy jackrabbit. Rogette added to the feast by pulling some wild carrots and before night fell there was a bunny on a spit and carrots cooking in the ashen edges of the fire.
"What now?" Rogette asked the question, looking to Kira for the answer.
"Now we find the Blood Witch," Kira said, her brown eyes gleaming in the fire light.
"We're not going to go back for Atrocious?"
"There is no way into Ariadne's village but through her, or Ayla," Kira explained. "This all ends with the Blood Witch. That is where we will go.”
"Maybe Atrocious will free herself?" Thorberta made the suggestion whilst hungrily eying the baked bunny.
Rogette burst into laughter. "Atrocious couldn't free herself from a hemp sack."
"You're mean to her," Thorberta observed.
"I am not, we're friends."
"Frunds." Thorberta repeated. "That is not how frunds are."