The Dvergar regained his feet, gutting the orc champion with an upward swing of his axe. He fruitlessly pushed back against the orc tide, but the Dvergar line was already broken. More orcs charging into the breach separated the Dvergar into two groups. The lone Dvergar who was pushed back, seeing orcs swarm past on either side, yelled something in their coarse language.
The Dvergar children turned and began jogging up the pass, in an orderly formation. Even though they were children, those Dvergar were still armed and armored. In each of the two groups of Dvergar being pushed back against the walls of the pass, a Dvergar stepped back from the line and began to weave an Elemental Earth spell. The yellowish-brown lines of the spell patterns formed in the air.
My master nocked another arrow and quickly launched it at one of the casters. A Dvergar raised its axe, and the arrow shattered against the flat of the blade. My master laughed nastily at the hate filled glare the Dvergar turned on him.
The Dvergar casters finished their spells and tremors began to shake the walls of the pass. Running lithely to escape the tremors, my master cursed, curses so foul that only the orc language could express them. He glanced over his shoulder to see the walls of the pass collapsing.
Most of the orcs were trapped outside the pass, by a barrier of fallen rock they would need days to clear. Several ten-thousands of the orcs were crushed beneath the tons of stone. A few hundred who made it past the Dvergar were chasing the seven children.
Stopping for a few moments, the seven Dvergar children began weaving spells. Even though the threads of the spell patterns were not as bright, they are still clearly the yellowish-brown of Elemental Earth. Dozens of boulders began to fall from the sides of the pass. Any place where the rock walls were weak, they fragmented into a rain of stone.
Tens of orcs were killed, but the rest were only more infuriated.
My master rapidly nocked and fired arrows at the seven children. The weight and strength of their armor was only a fraction of what an adult would wear, and the arrows punched through the leg plates with ease. With severed thigh muscles and shattered knees, the Dvergar children attempted to continue hobbling up the pass, but after a few dozen yards they stopped.
When the Dvergar children turned to weave spells, my master fired more arrows. Their casting interrupted, when they were forced to focus on the arrows and dodge them, the children drew their weapons and formed a triangle, their backs to the center.
The orcs attacked, trying to wound and disable. Grimly fighting the children were brought down one by one, but they killed more tens of orcs before falling.
With gleeful malice, the orcs stripped the Dvergar children and tied them to iron stakes, driven into the stone of the pass. Using the clothing and items taken from the children's packs, the orc built fires and heated the blades of their knives to a red-orange glow.
Not one of the children screamed as the orcs peeled the skin from their bodies, emasculated them, removed fingers and toes, and put out eyes.
When the last child died, the orcs milled around sullenly. Tempers flared, and they began fighting amongst themselves.
My master laughed and drank wine, while watching the Dvergar children's torture and the orcs' internecine squabbles. He was Corialos Eagle Eye, a Hero of the LjosAlfar. I am Corialos' Bow, Stone Feather Death.
* * * * *
The sun is long set, when the vision ends. My dick and balls want to crawl up inside my body cavity. I know the pain of castration only too well. To be mutilated as they were without making a sound, the strength of will of those Dvergar children sends chills down my spine.
My eyes drift to Perzey, lying naked beside the river. She still does not understand what real strength is. Even though she has seen the power of Dvergar Transcendents unleashed, she has never seen their fortitude and resolve under duress.
Raising Stone Feather Death, I stare at it, a LjosAlfar bow. The Dvergar have no interest in archery, and almost never craft bows. Some have a love of crossbows, but they are few and far between. The Alfar, both LjosAlfar and DokkAlfar, are the masters of the bow.
The LjosAlfar, the players of Taereun always painted them in the light of goodness and righteousness, but that is far from the truth. There are only small groups of LjosAlfar in the Battleground of the Damned, but in the Lands of Despair there are several small kingdoms ruled by the LjosAlfar. The LjosAlfar are self-righteous zealots, ready to kill any and all who do not bow down and serve the Dragon Gods. As a Half-Dvergar, I came to understand the hate that LjosAlfar hold towards anything and everything Dvergar.
Now, I can feel a thread point in the bow, and I tie a soul thread to it. Even though I have heard tales of Legendary items having egos, this is my first time encountering one. Even if the bow is not truly conscious, it has a form of self-awareness. The chilling sensation of the bow's awareness sweeping through me inflames my own hate. My hate clashes with with bow's awareness, when it tries to reject the soul thread.
The bow is steeped in the blood of hundreds of millions of lives, its blood-lust is strong enough to kill on its own. It drives me back into my own mind. The world around me fades, leaving me trapped in my own subconscious. Screaming deep inside my own mind, I am losing the fight. Even if I wanted to, I could not break the soul thread anymore. The pain of the bow's assault, tearing at my mind, my sense of self, is maddening.
Pain. I know pain. I have two lifetimes of pain inside of me. Pain cannot beat me. I remember my own pain. With my own pain, I strike back at the bow. The pain of being crucified. The pain of being whipped to point there is no skin on the back and the raw flesh being salted. The pain of being castrated. The pain of being burned alive. The of being chained to a steel frame and being slowly burned with hot irons. The pain being stabbed through the lungs. The pain of dying!
“FUCK YOU!” My words echo off the escarpment.
I can hear my own voice again. The bows awareness has retreated. It only knows how to give pain, not how to suffer through pain.
Pulling a sheaf of arrows from one of my rings, I drop it on the stone next to me. Rapidly nocking and firing arrows in succession, I target the trees across the river. They are nearly a quarter mile away, well within the range of a non-magical stone bow.
BOOM! BOOMBOOM! BOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!
Pieces of the trees explode from the force of the arrows impacts, wood splinters flying everywhere. My arrows are slow. I can draw out only a fraction of the bow's true strength. In the memory vision, Corialos' arrows were breaking the sound barrier and staggering Dvergar more than a mile distant. Multiple sonic booms were clearly audible during the arrows' flights.
I feel the bow shivering in my grip. For now, it is too traumatized by my pain to challenge me again, but this is not the end. I know that as I dig into the pattern-memories of this weapon, there be more challenges. Once it is fully threaded and tied to me, I will have to break it to my will.
Lowering the bow, I look at Perzey crouched to the side. Naked, she is holding her short swords in her hands and staring at me. The mix of fear, lust and blood-lust in her eyes is arousing. I want to throw her on her back and fuck her senseless.
Licking her lips as she stands, Perzey's face is transformed by a feral smile.
“If you really think pain will will make you stronger, attack me!” The viciousness in my voice should be a clear warning to her.
Perzey dashes toward me, her swords stabbing and slashing at me from a different angle with every strike. The difference between yesterday and today is as stark as the difference between a storm darkened night and a cloudless noontime day. Her swords are weaving in and out in a subtly brilliant attack pattern. Ki flooding my body, I side step, my steps moving me faster than they should.
I cannot simply play with her this time. She is already forcing me to use Shadow Fist. Without having swords in my hands, I need to rely on the physics bending power of Shadow Fist. Letting her attack, I do nothing but avoid her thrusts and slashes.
Perzey's fighting st
yle is purely weapon focused. Not using any part of her body to attack, all of her strikes come from the swords. Even more obvious than yesterday, today it is crystal clear that this style was perfected in the dueling halls or on the fields of honor.
To be honest, there are flaws in Perzey's fighting style. Too many of her moves are exploitable by a pure fighter, who does not follow the rule of a dueling code. Her tits are too big, they get in the way with some of her moves. She would be better off, if she had small tits.
Moving inside her stabbing blades, I stare into Perzey's eyes. Shock overlays the lust and blood-lust, as my shove to her chest sends her flying.
Surging to her feet, she attacks again. The deadly dance of swords has a pattern to it. Even though the pattern morphs over time, it is still there. I wait for the inevitable opening, before stepping inside her attacks and slapping her in the ribs. As I duck under her blades, Perzey flies through the air again, a bruise already forming on her ribs.
Time and again, Perzey rises to her feet, and time and again, I slap her down. After an hour or so, she is covered with bruises, and her nose and her lips are bleeding. We are both aroused. I can smell Perzey's arousal in the listless night air. Her nipples are hard, and so is my dick. With my unsettled emotions, I cannot tell if we are sparring or engaging in foreplay.
Stepping into her attack, I violently twist Perzey's arms behind her back. With a soft clatter, her swords hit the ground and her lips part. Our kiss is a fierce contest of dominance, that goes on until Perzey slumps against me, grinding her hips against my groin.
Forcing her to the ground, I enter her. Our fucking is wilder than last night, as she constantly struggles against my primacy.
After our lust is spent and Perzey asleep, I sit up and settle into a lotus position to meditate. No matter how I try, I cannot find my center. My emotions are too jumbled up. I am not sure what I feel, nor I do I have a clue what I should feel. Too much has happened too fast.
Even though her mind is broken, I never expected Perzey's lust to focus on me. Her blood-lust, I can understand. If she were burning with hate for me, I would understand, but I cannot comprehend her lust. I do not even understand why she arouses and draws out such sexually violent desires from me.
At the sound of a twig snapping, I turn my head toward the woods behind me. Fifteen DokkAlfar, dressed in black chainmail and carrying glaives, are stealthily advancing toward us. They freeze, when my eyes settle on them.
Reaching to the side, I shake Perzey, by the first thing I grab, ironically or not, her tit.
“Perzey, wake up. Some ass-fuckers want to be killed.”
“Perzey wants to sleep.”
“Wake up!” I shake her harder.
Perzey abruptly sits up, her eyes glaring at the DokkAlfar. From the corner of my eye, I watch the cascade of emotions cross her face, before it settles into hate and blood-lust.
“Perzey wanted to sleep more. Perzey is going to kill the skinny bastards in chainmail.”
Hunted
*** Swamp of the Lost - Battleground of the Damned ***
Return: Day 11
The fifteen facings us, all have a height of six feet to more than six and a half feet, but very slender bodies, with shoulders noticeably narrower than my own. Even covered by armor, their builds make it clear that they are Alfar., and the cold hate in their eyes promising violence and pain makes it almost certain they are DokkAlfar. With their helmets concealing their faces, only those hate filled eyes give me any hints as to their thoughts.
In my Half-Dvergar body, all Alfar were my enemies. I needed to learn to tell one breed from another, to know what types of Power I might face. Most of the victims of the Great Fuck Over never bothered to learn how to tell what kind of Alfar they faced. Simply because of the black armor most of those players would assume these are DokkAlfar, but not all DokkAlfar wear black, like not all LjosAlfar wear silver.
The matching design and construction quality of the DokkAlfar's armor and weapons indicates, to me at least, that they are part of a well organized group, possibly a military force. The metal used for their chainmail and glaives is not one I recognize, its oily black sheen is not the result of lacquer, but rather the surface of the metal itself.
Crafted in the chest area of each DokkAlfar's armor is a single eye. As they move, the seems to shift so that it is always looking straight at you. The Smiths who forged their armor were as much artists as they were craftsmen.
Perzey and I are at a severe disadvantage, naked and tired from fucking for hours. I suppose I am not all that tired, but Perzey's body is not the equal of my own in strength or endurance. My weapons are stored in my ring, and Perzey's are in in her harness, which is on the other side of my body from her. The DokkAlfar are close enough to launch attacks against us, before we could free our weapons from their scabbards.
The DokkAlfar's postures give the impression they are contemptuous. I stand up casually, ready to move if they act, but they just watch me. Perzey moves behind me, circling toward her weapons belt with its scabbarded swords.
I spit on the ground. “DokkAlfar.”
Several of the DokkAlfar visibly stiffen, their hands tightening on the hafts of their glaives, as one takes a half step forward. When the DokkAlfar in the center of the line looks at the aggressive one, he steps back again. The helms of three of the others turn toward the one in the middle, so he is probably the leader.
“So are you going to try and murder me, or are you just admiring the size of my dick?” I use the Slave Tongue, so there is little doubt they can understand my words.
The probable leader, the DokkAlfar in the middle, touches his helm and an interesting t-lock type of fastener pops out on each side of the helm. He pushes up the visor of the helm, revealing a face that may cross the boundary into beautiful, even though he is male. All Alfar are like that, the males have such androgynous faces, with the right makeup they could pass for beautiful females.
“You aren't very impressive, when compared with an orc. If you surrender, I will have you killed quickly. If you do not, I will have you taken alive, and both your woman and you will be tied to a log while orc slaves rape you to death. The choice is yours.”
I bare my teeth, in a gesture resembling a smile, and gesture toward the spider tunnel. “You try, and I'll stake you to the cliff like your friend over there.”
The DokkAlfar's face turns ugly. “Do not associate us with a fool that follows the traitor with no name. We serve Lord Yggr, Wellspring of Fear, Dominator of All.”
Yggr, as in the Labyrinth of Yggr, is one of the Jotun Lords. They are referred to as gods in the few books I have seen with anything about them. Boran never talked about them much, but they were definitely enemies of the Dvergar in the past. At some point in the past, I am not sure how long ago, the Dvergar nearly exterminated the entire Jotun race in a war, but I am not too clear on what the war was all about.
The DokkAlfar sneers at me. “Besides, it was Dvergar that killed him, not you.”
Damn. I was hoping to bluff my way through this, but they already know what happened. I did not notice anyone else observing the Thugs, but that does not mean anything. They could have used scrying magic, or perhaps psi. Alfar are supposed to be almost as strong in the use of psi as in the use of mana. With luck, none of these are psis. In my Half-Dvergar body, I was lucky to survive the first time I encountered a strong LjosAlfar psi.
I shrug. “That doesn't mean I won't kill you, if you don't get the fuck lost.”
“It is a shame the Priest-Lord ordered your death. You would make an interesting slave. Breaking your body to break your mind would be an entertaining diversion.”
Glancing at the DokkAlfar to his right, the leader uses the DokkAlfar language. “Kill them.”
I move, a single ki powered step taking me between the DokkAlfar leader and the DokkAlfar on his left. Without wasting the time to pull a weapon from a storage device, I hit the DokkAlfar Leader in the back with a palm strike. The forc
e of the blow and the burst of ki send him flying into the river.
The DokkAlfar on the leaders left has already stepped behind me, and his glaive is sweeping toward me in an oblique overhand strike. I step back, inside of the DokkAlfar's optimal attack range. The DokkAlfar does not shorten his swing, so only the haft of the glaive slams into my arm as I deflect it. As I block the attack, the other DokkAlfar are already moving, some toward me and some toward Perzey.
None of the DokkAlfar show any sign of activated powers and no traces of ki, but they are still generally equal to me in speed, and the one whose glaive I deflected is roughly in the same range of strength. There are many ways that combat adepts use mana to enhance themselves, but most rely on activated powers and special attacks, because they are the easiest to develop. No matter the style or approach, there is always some incidental boosting of the adepts innate physical abilities. These DokkAlfar are different, they are almost certainly the rarest kind of adept, physical enhancement adepts, who rely on pure skill for their attacks.
The effects of physical enhancement are much like the effects of developing a body to be able to channel ki, but the process is completely different. When building a body's ability to channel ki, the continual forced flow of ki through the body causes it to be naturally evolved into a new and superior form. When using physical enhancement training, mana is forcible bonded into the very cells of the body. The body does not evolve, but it still become superior. The process is very similar to one of the methods of creating an Item of Power.
Jumping into the air as I spin, I pound a knee strike into the head of the DokkAlfar behind me. I hear his neck snap, under the combination of physical power and ki-based force. The DokkAlfar's body flies through the air like a limp rag doll, and the glaives of two others slice into my right arm and back. Even with Shadow Fist, I can only twist my body enough to limit the damage. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I dive toward the woods and roll back to my feet.
Path of Transcendence 1: Ultimatum of the Nameless God Page 26