Not even the Gods, apparently.
He had given up on the possibility of things making more sense and stumbled to his feet. The Maidens all seemed to rush him at once, making him frown at their clear distress over his ability to function.
“All right, knock it off already. I’m going to gather a few things I need in the forest. Pretty sure I can handle that much.”
Dolly had stepped forward, her hands clamped as if in prayer, her eyes emitting a silent plea.
“You need tea? I can gather the leaves for you,” she volunteered.
She was less of a dormouse than he thought. He scratched his head and shrugged.
“Need a few herbs, but you’re welcome to tag along,” he said, once again cursing the power of women and children.
Her eyes lit up so brightly that she thought she was going to hug him, but she bounced in place instead.
Spinning around, he headed into the woods, hearing her rustling around to follow.
He was usually okay with silence, but like most young ones, her energy made her incapable of being completely so. The sounds of her jumping from one plant to another and humming some tuneless merriment made him more nervous than conversation did.
“Your family ever let you go this far from Bryerton?” he asked.
Her head popped around a tree trunk, her curls still jostling even when she had stopped moving.
“Hm? Oh, no, not this far, but I know enough about plants in this area to know which ones you don’t put in tea at least,” she assured him, disappearing to her task once more.
He shook his head, dumbfounded for a moment with all that shining innocence. He carefully kept his distance, afraid that whatever taint he had accumulated with time would wither her instantly.
She didn’t share the same caution and he nearly jumped feeling her hand tapping on his shoulder.
“Hey, what’s this plant? I’ve never seen it before,” she said with a frown.
He looked at the fuzzy leaves with the curly blue hairs and nodded, reaching into his cloak to remove a cork from one of his small empty vials.
“Old Man’s Beard. If you find more, bring them to me, but don’t eat any. And try not to touch anymore if you don’t know what they are. Some plants can poison you with touch,” he warned.
She nodded her understanding and disappeared, sounding very much like a hunting dog on the trail.
He thought it might give him some peace to give her that task, but he scarcely took another breath before she was running back with a few more leaves of Old Man’s Beard and a proud smile that stabbed at his heart a little too keenly.
Is every innocent smile going to remind me of Brat?
It served him right to be tormented by that thought, but he didn’t want to entertain it, so he nodded at Dolly. He grinded the new leaves down and funneled them into vials while she watched.
“What do you use that for?” she asked, far too curious for his tastes.
“If you really want to help, don’t ask so many questions,” he snapped, hating the look of rejection he earned for it.
She had sulked away, but it had done as he intended.
He slipped along the trails, left to his own thoughts, simply glad for every moment the silence stretched on. He had found a few more of the herbs he used as antidotes, satisfied for a trip well made. He wished he could be more content, but when he stilled, he no longer heard Dolly rustling around.
Maybe she got upset and went back to the camp without me.
Great. All he needed was the scolding looks of Sunday and Cherry for his ill-treatment of the sensitive girl.
Grudgingly, he headed back towards the camp.
Or would have if he hadn’t stumbled headlong into a huge hole.
There were a certain number of seconds you could count to while falling where past that, you could kiss your ass goodbye. He had exceeded it, following the count with a string of curses at what a stupid way this was to die.
Except his feet had landed on solid ground and the force of the impact hadn’t rammed his shin bones through his shoulder blades. In fact, it had been no more jarring than leaping off of a porch.
It was pitch black wherever he had landed and he set about looking for his flint to get some light. A shining blue light beat him to it and he saw Dolly grinning at him. He stopped rummaging for his flint, narrowing his eyes at her instead.
“What sort of game are you playing?” he asked warily, his own hand going to his short sword.
“No game. Look, there’s a way out!” Dolly chimed in, stepping aside to gesture further along the tunnel.
How he could have missed the vibrant color-fuckery behind her, he didn’t know, but it made him wince at the sight of it. It was some ridiculous town of candy in the huge cavern. He looked up towards the hole, thinking he’d rather climb back up through it than walk through that sugar-coated nightmare.
She saw him hesitate, but took his hand, putting away her Key as she pulled him towards it.
Like with Brat, his feet fell heavy as if she were actually strong enough to pull him if he didn’t want to go.
“There had to be some other way,” he insisted.
“Aw, come on! Where’s the fun in that?”
“Do I look like I give a shit about ‘fun’?”
Things never went well for him and he looked at the cheerful candy panoramas with distrust, fully expecting one smiling lollipop to chomp him in half with cherry-flavored teeth.
“They won’t bite,” Dolly teased, but the fact that he had been thinking the exact opposite only made her cheer more ominous.
“You said this was a way out, right? Please tell me we don’t have to eat our way out.”
Dolly laughed as they reached a chocolate river. She didn’t slow even as they reached the edge. She hopped right in, pulling him in with her before he could even react.
He barely had time to close his eyes and hold his breath before he realized his feet were on solid ground. Peeking one eye open, he felt the sudden shift of vertigo, realizing he was on the ceiling of a giant room, all of the furniture on the… other ceiling above him.
“Dolly, what the hell did you pick that I told you not to?” he asked as he looked around.
Rummaging through his cloak, he found the vial he wanted, shoving a wad of the contents into her mouth first then his.
He clamped his eyes shut, feeling the herbs work through him, daring to open his eyes to see he was safely in a world that made sense. Dolly was groaning and vomiting next to one of the creeks that fed the bigger pond.
“What just happened?” she groaned, misery distorting her usually flawless dollish features.
“You touched a lovely pink plant with white bumps on it, didn’t you?” he asked, already knowing exactly what the problem was; Dolly wasn’t familiar with hallucinogens.
She looked ashamed, nodding before retching again.
“Lady’s Kiss. That would be why I told you not to touch anything. You’re lucky you didn’t overdose and get stuck in a nightmare.”
He didn’t add the part where it would kill her. He was just glad he hadn’t needed a crash course on how to keep her from dying of poison. Saving her from death once in a lifetime was plenty.
“Sorry, I should have listened… It was just so… pretty,” she said, sheepish at the silly reason for it.
He stood up, already forgiving it. She was suffering far worse than him after all.
“Wash your hands. We’ll head back,” he told her and she nodded.
Their trip back was much quieter, now that she was riddled with guilt for her thoughtlessness. He hated that sad look on her face and ended up sighing.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Just remember that for next time.”
Comforting someone just didn’t come easier no matter how much he tried.
“I should know better. I mean, I grew up on a farm. My whole life was pretty much nothing but plants and animals. Hey, do you have any siblings?” she asked, forgetting or just
not caring to adhere to his feelings about questions.
He laughed in spite of that.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
It was a deflection and thankfully it worked. She sniffed and tried for a smile. She was much better at faking a smile than he could ever be.
“I do. Always made fun of me for being naïve. Maybe they’re right, but I can’t help but be curious. There’s not a whole lot to do on a farm, you know? Papa never lets me hang around any other boys, says they’re all animals…”
He laughed at that.
“He’s not wrong.”
“You’re not like that,” she said with another sniff.
He hated to disappoint whatever knight in shining armor image she had of him, but he absolutely was. His tastes had never run to pure girls like her, but he sure as hell didn’t hesitate with the looser sort.
“I guess not,” he settled on, glad to leave it at that.
Dolly let the silence hang for a few moments, but cleared her throat to talk again once she realized he wasn’t in a hurry to do so.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
He laughed more in the short time he spent with her than he had the whole damn year.
“No, and womankind should consider themselves lucky.”
She frowned at that.
“Well, why? You’re handsome and considerate and helpful”
He nearly choked on his own spit, hearing that absurd list of all the things he definitely wasn’t. On the upside, at least she didn’t call him ‘cute’.
“You’re giving me way too much credit. Look, Dolly; don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you’re stupid, but when you say things like that, it’s clear you don’t know me very well.”
She frowned, meekly at first, but with gathering confidence as she started at him.
“You saved my life.”
He said nothing, just listened to the sounds of their steps in the overgrown thicket.
“You got me there.”
They had been content in the silence after that. He had even managed to not be annoyed as her out-of-tune humming had come back.
No one said anything as he sat back down on his bedroll, exhausted, while Dolly skipped over to the cooking fire to show Sunday all of the things she brought back to make tea.
Cherry watched him, an oddly proud look on her face. What, that he hadn’t managed to kill Dolly? Without knowing, he looked away, gazing out over the surface of the pond. He could use a bath.
The fastening of his heavy cloak seemed cloying and he unbuttoned it to let it fall away, peeling off the rest of the rubber coverings. The cold air made him shiver, but his skin tingled with the ability to breathe once more. He looked at the pond with longing, but he supposed it was a stretch to think he could bathe in peace. Not that he would mind if they joined him.
He felt a hand undoing the buckle of his shoulder guard and cocked an eyebrow at Cherry, but she was bent to the task.
“We can heal your weariness in these waters. We won’t be able to locate the others until you are able to fight off the dead that will be drawn here again,” Cherry explained, biting her lip.
“I can do that myself,” he reminded her.
Her eyes shot up to meet his for a moment.
“Just the guards. We will give you your privacy to undress,” she assured him.
“Far be it from me to object if you’re feeling particularly helpful,” he said, his eyes mischievous.
They weren’t feeling that helpful.
He frowned as they all shuffled to the fire with their backs turned, but shrugged it off as he undressed.
The frigid water wasn’t terribly arousing anyway and he slipped out to the middle of the pond with reluctant strides, the deepest part pooling just under his ribcage. He reacted with the instinctual disgust anyone might as the water began to warm rapidly, startled to find the Rain Maidens had slipped in unnoticed.
In this form, their beauty was both mesmerizing and terrible. Their eyes were darker than he remembered, their lips a deeper shade of purple. With their lips parted, he could see the sharp white eyeteeth. It reminded him once more that they were reapers of souls, not trembling little temple maidens.
He felt the water swirl around him in an intimate caress, the weightlessness as the bottom of the pond seemed to drop away, but still he stood suspended. The tension, the weariness, dissipated and a strength suffused him. The thrall might have made him feel limitless, but this made him feel whole within himself.
They drifted away at the moment he felt most complete and he simply hung his head, eyes closed, as his feet connected with the earth. He felt the rise and fall of his chest and the cold creeped back with painful swiftness.
“Ah, fuck! Cold,” he said, scurrying out with his teeth chattering, diving into the blanket that he had been laying on and rolling up in it to dispel the chill. He shot a narrowed look at the women who sat there with their backs to him as if they had never moved.
He hurried back into his clothes and found himself falling asleep on the soft grass.
An orange glow surrounded him this time, which was never ever good news. The flames brought the horrific visions, but this time it wasn’t the dismembered bodies of his parents. A man sat on a cast iron throne, his hair and arms ablaze with trails of fire, the furnaces of the demon’s eyes levelled on him.
He wasn’t sure if he couldn’t move or just didn’t want to. Trying to escape here usually just led to something even worse, so he returned its stare.
He could hear the crackle of the flames for far longer than he cared to.
“I don’t suppose your staring means you find me beautiful,” he finally said.
The man cocked an eyebrow at him.
“They just love you for my Mark,” came the deep bass of the man that confirmed his suspicions that this was the Flame God himself.
“Since when do Gods infringe upon the domains of others?” he snapped back.
“You are mine, brat. You were adopted from the Melikai,” the demon told him.
He supposed that was meant to startle him, but it made far more sense than a God greedy for the souls of other Realms. The word ‘brat’ was no doubt used on purpose as well.
“I needed you in the Anders, so I killed your birth parents. When you suckled on the teat of your adoptive parents, they were the next to go,” the Flame God pronounced cruelly.
Funny how even the lies of Gods smell like the same pile of horse shit.
“You could just drop the theatrics and say I was always meant to be a pawn. If you wanted to enslave a human, you wouldn’t have to go to such lengths,” he drawled out.
“Everything has limits, human. Even Gods,” the God continued, his words showing no urgency to get to the point.
“But you show yourself to me now,” he pointed out.
The Flame God turned one hand that had been gripping the armrest, a red flame igniting in his palm.
“To plant a seed,” the Flame God said, shooting the small red ball into his chest. It left the uncomfortable sensation of swallowing too large a bite of food.
“What did you do to me?” he hissed, grabbing at the spot.
“Among other things, it reins in your thrall. The world ill needs another berserker,” the God informed him in a bored tone.
“You don’t seem like the type to do nice things for people,” he shot back.
The Flame God threw his head back with an exaggerated laugh, sobering to shrug his shoulders.
“You will repay the favor in time,” the Flame God said with confidence. “Until then, try not to die.”
His eyes snapped open and Cherry was once more hovering over him, mopping up the sweat pouring from his forehead. He grabbed her hand and pushed it away, shaking his head to let her know he was fine. It didn’t seem to ease any of the concern out of her face. Non-verbal cues were a habit in his line of work, but didn’t translate everywhere, he realized.
“I’m fine. Just a hot dream invol
ving the three of you,” he mumbled hoarsely. It wasn’t exactly a lie but Cherry’s narrowed eyes told him he hit the mark where he was aiming.
It was already dark and the other two were asleep around the fading embers of their former cooking fire. That’s when he noticed that Cherry’s eyes were half-lidded and she struggled not to look tired.
“Go to sleep. I’ll be up,” he told her. Cherry cast a look of doubt before nodding. We watched her back arch and her breasts lift as she lifted her arms over her head, no longer able to stifle the urge to stretch. Without another word, she got up and made her way over to the palette that had already been spread out for her.
He didn’t have to wait long for Cherry’s breath to take on the somnolent rhythms of sleep. He stood a short distance away, not able to move right away as he felt an unfamiliar sense of duty towards them. He let his eyes drift shut and his mind clear in that instantaneous way that most people only dream about. In that state, he swore he could actually feel exactly where they were, the faint glow of their souls playing on the backs of his eyelids.
Brat would have a field day if they knew just how fanciful his thoughts were getting these days.
Once he knew they were sleeping deeply, he stole away, slipping down towards the little dirt road heading south. Something told him the thrall would whisk his ass back there if the Maidens were really in any kind of trouble.
He wasn’t sure why his feet were taking him down this road. Or maybe he did. It was an old haunt he frequented in his youth and there was no noble reason for why he went. He wanted the taste of the Flame God’s sulfur out of his mouth.
The little bar was rowdy at the height of the night, and he slipped in unnoticed with terrific ease. Wedging his way to the bar, he thumped his fist on the countertop, flipping the bartender a few coins. Seconds later, a sloshing foamy pint was deposited before him.
Elbowing his way to an empty chair, he dropped his coin purse on the edge of the card table, taking a swig of his pint as the suspicious eyes gravitated towards him.
“Room for one more?” he piped up.
The dealer dealt him five cards and he placed his bets.
After a couple hours of cleaning the table, he was ready to go. There was that usual insistence that he stay and a fistfight proved he was right. A scantily clad woman, the professional sort that always trolled bars, held ice on the silly little scrape on his chin.
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