by Loki Renard
"Oh she is? Well that's nice."
Stop being prickly," Rog said, tapping her nose with his forefinger. "This will be good for us. A new hangout."
"You think she's going to have the likes of me hanging out in her place? What am I going to do whilst she's riding you, Rog?"
"Eat her food," Rog suggested. "She has it all imported from around Lesbia, and Iskendar. It's good eating."
Reed shook her head at him. "You think with your dick and your stomach."
"And they're both feeling fine," Rog grinned. "Maybe you should try thinking with your dick some time."
"I have more sense than you," Reed replied, giving him a dour look.
"You've gotten serious since you stopped smoking. Maybe we should roll up some herb and you can relax a little. You're on edge, Reed."
"Of course I'm on edge! My powers are gone, there's one wicked witch stalking me and another wrapping herself around your unmentionables. We're losing everything, Rog."
"No we're not. Things are changing, that's all. It's just change." He reached out and grabbed her close. "Maybe this is what we need."
Reed scowled at the wall over his shoulder. This was definitely not what she needed. It was time to get rid of those pesky witches once and for all.
*****
"I don't think that Reed has much of a sense of humor," Rogette said, dealing the cards fresh.
"She's up to something," Atrocious said. "I can feel it in my bones."
"Reed does not take anything lying down," Crispin agreed. "And she is very protective of her friends. She will not accept interference from the widow..." Crispin's eyes flicked toward Ayla, "... or anyone else, for that matter."
Ayla smiled slightly, the corners of her lips curving up as her cheeks dimpled with amusement. "It has been rather a long time since I crossed swords with a summoner."
"You and I never crossed swords," Atrocious said.
"No, but the summoner before you was certainly handy with a blade." Ayla extended her arm, pushed up her sleeve and and showed a thin line which ran from under her shoulder all the way down to her elbow.
Crispin's fine brows rose. "A summoner did that to you?"
"Every one leaves her mark," Ayla said, lowering her sleeve again. "But not every summoner loves me. Some of them never so much as like me."
"How could they not like you?" Rogette's brow wrinkled a thousand times.
"Hard to believe, I know," Ayla said, her lips quirking.
"I didn't like you at first," Atrocious said, swiping two of Ayla's cards. "Maybe Reed will come around."
"Is she still the summoner if she doesn't have her powers?" Rogette bagged two cards from Atrocious and put four together in a clump in her hand.
"The summoner is the summoner," Ayla said. "The powers wax and wane depending on the woman, but the essential nature does not change."
There was a rustling on the stairs, enough of a sound to make the women fall silent. Reed was coming down, moving quietly as if she wished to slip by unnoticed.
"Where are you going, Reed?" Ayla asked the question pleasantly.
"Wherever I please." Reed gave up sneaking and stomped down the stairs. "This city is still mine."
"It can't be easy, owning a city."
Ayla made the comment innocently enough, but it made Reed snarl. Her curls partially obscured her face with their dark coils as she descended the rest of the way then stood, feet apart, eyes glittering at the calm witch.
"I have made this city over and over," Reed said. "There is not a person in the place I have not brought out of nothingness. I may not now be that which I once was, but I still have sway, witch. So I tell you for the last time, leave.
"I will not leave," Ayla said, putting her cards down and rising to her feet. She was much taller than Reed, and much more curvaceous. The feminine swelling of breast and hip were highlighted by the fine and flowing fabric of the sea green robe, the hem of which collected dust and ash as she stepped toward the angry summoner.
Reed gave her a quick up and down look, the sort of look that would have been more natural coming from Rog when facing an opponent.
"I would once have taken you apart with my mind," Reed said, her teeth flashing under curled lip. "But I will do it with my hands if I must."
Ayla spread her arms, then placed her hands behind her back, lacing her fingers.
"Be my guest, little summoner." Her hair fell in pale silken walls about her elvish face, highlighting the intensity of her gaze.
"Crispin," Reed said. "Back me up here."
"Crispin cannot back you up," Ayla interjected. "For Crispin is my servant now, aren't you, dear?"
Crispin nodded reluctantly. "I'm sorry, Reed."
Taking a step back, confusion and anger chased across Reed's face. "Rog has become a gigolo and you a servant? What is become of this world?"
"This is the world as it really is," Ayla said. "This is the world without your meddling."
"No," Reed replied. "This is the world with your meddling. And I will not stand for it."
"Come play cards, dear," Rogette interjected.
"I would like to, Granny Rogette," Reed said. "But I'm afraid I have some witches to burn."
"Oh," Ayla said, her expression becoming nostalgic. "It has been such a long time since anyone threatened to burn me."
"Who was the last?"
"Kira," Ayla replied. "Oh how Kira wanted to burn me."
"Poor Kira," Atrocious murmured.
"Poor Kira," Rogette agreed.
"I bet Kira's glad she's dead," Reed snapped. "It means she does not have to deal with the likes of you."
No sooner had Reed spoken the warrior's name than the flames of the fire died down and flickered near the wood as if huddling for comfort. Ayla snapped her fingers and Reed was drawn forward inexorably, her feet sliding against wooden floor boards until she was a foot away from the witch.
"Without your powers, you are very much vulnerable to my magic," she said, her eyes narrowed at Reed. "I tell you now, do not speak ill of the dead."
"Why? They're dead," Reed snarked. Outside, the wind began to howl. Droplets of rain fell on shuttered windows, first slowly, then with increasing intensity.
"There is no such thing as death," Ayla lectured her. "Not really, you of all people should know that. There is but the turning of the wheel, the transformation of one into the other."
"Kira can suck me," Reed said. Having found a weak point, she clearly intended on exploiting it. "Kira can come back from the grave and stick her tongue right in my cun..."
SLAM!
Every candle in the room went out and the fire died down to hot embers. The door of the tavern flew open. Something large and dark and wet walked in... and every soul besides the little party by the fire fled in its wake.
Chapter Eighteen
Rain pelted the cobblestones outside, a backdrop of dashing water which made the figure loom larger than life and darker than death. For a long moment, nobody moved. Nobody so much as breathed.
The figure extended an arm and pushed the door shut. The moment the door hit the jamb, the fire blazed high again, casting a merry glow throughout the room. The figure lifted its hand and pushed back the hood that cast its features in shadow. The wet fabric fell back to reveal a scarred, but still handsome face. It was a woman with dark eyes, and darker hair coiled about her head. A strong woman. A brave woman. A legend.
"Kira!"
Atrocious and Rogette rushed from their seats, fetters of age falling as they ran to the warrior with all the alacrity they had in their youth. Kira swept them up, one to each arm and pressed kisses to their wrinkled cheeks.
"You're not dead!" Atrocious cried.
"You're not old," Rogette added.
It was true. Kira had not aged a day from when they had last seen her. She was still in the latter part of her prime, still full of vigor and strength.
"I decided not to get old."
The sound of her voice, warm and husky
, and very much alive, bought both Rogette and Atrocious to immediate tears. The warrior did her best to console the elderly women clinging to her, but they were quite impossible to settle. They wailed and they wept, each holding fast to the dark leather of Kira's armor as if they were afraid she might de-materialize.
"It is good to see you," Ayla smiled. She was not nearly so effusive, but there was real pleasure in her eyes as she looked upon Kira. "It has been too long."
"It has been far too long," Kira agreed. "Ariadne has kept me busy."
"And young," Rogette sniffed, running a wizened old hand over Kira's cheeks. "She has kept you young."
"I cannot do her work if I am feeble or dead," Kira said. If she was shocked by Atrocious and Rogette's advanced years, she did not show it.
"We have gotten old," Rogette pouted.
"Rogette especially," Atrocious said. "Look how watery her eyes are, how knobbly her knees!"
"And you!" Rogette replied. "You look as though you had already died! A corpse not even warmed up so much as put in the sunlight for a bit. Is that hair in your nose? Or the legs of the flies feasting on your wasting flesh?"
"Nothing has changed with you two," Kira laughed. "You are the same as you always were."
"That's true. Rogette always did have a time with vaginal continence," Atrocious sniped.
"And you were always obsessed with my pussy," Rogette replied.
"Granny!" Rog's mildly scandalized tones rang out over the affair. He was standing at the top of the stairs, wearing just his breeches. The noise had clearly woken him from his slumber.
"Kira," Rogette said. "This is Roger. He is my grandson. Isn't he handsome?"
"Hello, Roger," Kira said politely.
"He's a whore," Atrocious said, "like his grandmother."
"How dare you!" Rogette screeched, raised her hand like a claw and tried to rake Atrocious' face. "How dare you speak of my family!"
"Granny, it's okay," Rog said with his good natured smile. "She's right, in a way."
Kira held Rogette back quite easily by looping a muscular arm about the old lady's waist. "All these years and you still have not learned how to ignore Atrocious, hmm?"
Rogette seemed to blush. She squirmed, she hid, she avoided the warrior's gaze. In short, she behaved as though she were a naughty young woman caught fighting.
"Rogette was always a slow learner," Atrocious said.
"And you," Kira replied, turning a dark gaze on the wizened summoner. "You can watch your lip too."
"I am old enough to pee myself every time I sneeze," Atrocious said. "I need not listen to the likes of you anymore!"
"The likes of me?" Kira chuckled. "Oh dear, sweet Atrocious, you have no idea what I am these days." Kira ran her hand down Atrocious' back and lightly patted her hip. "Run along to Ayla, before you get yourself in serious trouble."
"I don't run," Atrocious said haughtily. "I hobble." She did not hobble or run away, but instead stayed attached to Kira's right side. She was old and frail, but it would take more than a few stern words to send her scuttling away.
"This is Crispin," Ayla said, pointing out the lanky elf still sitting at the card table. "And there's someone else you should meet..." She looked about for Reed, but Reed the summoner, Reed the brave, was gone. "Come here," Ayla said, gesturing to Atrocious and Rogette. "Let Kira come close to the fire. She is soaked."
"I have no need of warmth," Kira said. "But you two ladies," she looked down at Atrocious and Rogette. "You are beginning to shiver just from being near me. Perhaps we will go to the fire."
She carefully lifted Atrocious and Rogette, one in each arm and carried them toward the blaze. Crispin and Rog looked on in silence. They seemed to sense that what was taking place was of great importance to the elderly women, and did not open their mouths to interfere in the moment.
Settling next to the fire, the disparity in time's vicious onslaught was more obvious than ever. Both Atrocious and Rogette bore wrinkles upon wrinkles, skin hanging down off faces elongated by the passing of seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into lifetimes. But Kira's face was almost untouched. Her skin was taut, if scarred, only a few fine lines here and there to mark the passage of her youth.
"How are you still so young?" Rogette asked the question with a sort of wistful jealousy, huddling close to Kira's side.
"I gave myself to Ariadne," Kira explained, wrapping an arm about Rogette's thin shoulders. "I do not age. I no longer draw breath from the air. I do not eat. I do not breathe. I do not sleep. I am sustained through her. I am her servant..."
"But you still seem like you," Atrocious interjected.
"I am still me," Kira smiled. "All that has changed is my source. I am no longer animated by sun and water. I need no longer consume the flesh of beast and plant. I thrive on her power. To me, she shines more brightly than the sun."
"You got poetic," Atrocious said, wrinkling her nose. "You never used to be poetic. You used to be all... hitty and smashy."
"I can still be hitty when required," Kira said, her lips quirking with amusement.
"What did you come for, Kira?" Ayla asked the question with a certain intensity. She was standing next to the fire, her arms folded across her chest. She was clearly pleased to see Kira, but the intervening decades since their last meeting were not so long from her perspective. Kira's appearance did not elicit the same fevered excitement in the witch as it did her charges. "I take it this is not a social call?"
"Ariadne wants the second summoner," Kira said. "She has asked me to bring her in."
Atrocious scratched her nose, then picked it. "If Ariadne wanted her, why wouldn't she just take her? Why didn't she just ride in on her breezy chariot and snatch her?"
"I do not question Ariadne. I do her bidding."
"Oh you're a mindless peon now, are you?"
Kira shot Atrocious a hard look. "Watch your mouth, my girl."
"The more her strength wanes, the more liberties her tongue takes," Ayla said, fixing Atrocious with a similarly stern look.
"I will be dead soon," Atrocious shrugged. "I may as well say that which I like ere the end."
"Do not count on death," Kira replied.
"I supposed you escaped it," Atrocious said. "By becoming Ariadne's angel, her very own warrior messenger."
"I did," Kira said. "And this game you are playing, this pretense of age. You have no need of it. You still have the power to remake yourself."
"I used up all my power making the world," Atrocious replied. "These days I barely have the power to make it to the sewer shaft."
"Do you think Ariadne would make me her angel?" It was Rogette who asked the question. She had been silent, but she had also been staring at Kira's face fixedly from the moment the warrior had arrived.
Kira turned kind eyes on the woman who still bore a mark on her wrinkled forearm, a light horizontal scar from an incident so long ago it was barely visible among the detritus of age. "I think only Ariadne can answer that."