Chains of a Succubus

by Lanak F Tanor

  I rubbed my eyes as tears wormed down the side of my temples. My father had always stopped me from doing anything through which I could prove myself. I was doubtful he would even allow me to become the next mayor. He would always tell me ‘a ruler understands his people’.

  Nonsense.

  A ruler understood power. People were just an element that reacted when power was subjected to them.

  As for our blasted town, I would take the place to newer heights. I would found a kingdom of my own. I would take all nearby villages under my command. If they resisted then they would pay. This town would be the capital of my kingdom.

  I had no intention of dying without doing something big.

  And for that I needed the ability to see stats that father so easily dismissed as useless. Stats would allow me to know if doing something was wise or not. Stats were a plus point, in contrast to what father had said. Having the ability to see stats and not having it was not the same.

  I shot a fist into the air.

  Nobody shall stop me from doing what I wanted to do.

  ***

  Chapter 3: Lanak Tanor

  It was the best sleep I had had in a long while. I had never thought my creaky, moth-eaten bed could be so comfortable. But the knowledge that I was not going to be lying down on it for a long time somehow softened the bed to an astounding degree.

  Once awake, I sat up and looked about my room. My house consisted of only three rooms. My carpentry instruments were strewn about the place. I had never really thought much about my home, even though I had spent decades ever since I had given up being a succubi tamer.

  After half-an-hour the wizard arrived and with him came a small crowd of people. Zurk came as well to bid me farewell.

  “I’ll miss the fishing trips,” I told him.

  “Not the last one though,” Zurk said somewhat darkly, “but you can miss the ones before that.”

  The wizard had brought a horse along as well. It was the same one I had seen the previous day. It was a majestic creature. But looking at the eyes of the beast I felt like there was something very wild about it. I wondered if the horse would be a good ride.

  “I hope you had a good night,” the wizard said to me. Yesterday night, the wizard had seemed to have a kind face. But today in full light, he seemed less kind to me.

  “I had a great night,” I told him.

  “His name is Bagh,” the wizard said, patting the horse. “He knows the exact location of the… vehicle which would help you cross the great distances in a relatively short amount of time.”

  With some help of the wizard I mounted the horse. It really was a tall beast and I felt like I was sitting on a great platform above everybody else. Without any word or action from me, Bagh began to move at his own. He went at a relaxed pace. The wizard and the townsfolk followed me to the gate of the village. I waved back at them all as I exited the gate, and then I looked back no more.

  Bagh increased his speed, breaking into a gallop.

  I rubbed Bagh’s neck to bond with him better. I wanted to be on good terms with him after all. But he shook his neck, seemingly irritated and I decided it was a better idea just to sit and wait for him to deliver me to the location of the said vehicle.

  The morning soon became noon. The mid-day sun beat down hard on me. Sweat dripped from my nose and I wished Bagh would stop, so that we could take some rest in the shade of some tree. But the beast just kept moving, unaffected by the sun. When I checked my stats I saw that my strength level was falling. I finally decided I needed to be the boss of the situation.

  “Stop, Bagh,” I ordered. I would have pulled the reigns, had they even been there. A vocal order didn’t seem enough to stop the animal.

  “Stop, Bagh,” I said again and this time I softly kicked his sides. Bagh turned his head around at me. He didn’t look happy. I glared at him.

  “It’s important for the quest,” I said. And I meant it. I needed my strength for the quest, right?

  Bagh turned his head forward and kept moving. I was struggling to believe that he was totally ignoring me when he suddenly stopped. I waited a second to see what Bagh would do next. But he just kept standing. I jumped down from Bagh’s back reckoning it was safe to do so.

  I went and sat down at the foot of a big tree. The shade felt like a soothing balm. The wind blew and I absolutely cherished the cool air. Bagh however remained standing in the sun.

  “Come to the shade,” I said to him. “It feels great here.”

  He didn’t move.

  Fine, I thought. If he didn’t want to rest, I didn’t care.

  I took out my water bag and took a few gulps. Suddenly a fruit landed on my lap, falling from the top of the tree. I looked up to see some squirrels at the top.

  “Thanks!” I said to them and took a bite of the fruit. It was fresh. Once done, I rested my head against the trunk of the tree and I closed my eyes. I dozed off.

  When I opened my eyes again, I realised to my horror that there was no Bagh. I stood up, my heart beating fast.

  “Bagh!” I called out. Did he just leave me? Wasn’t it his job to take me to the vehicle? I cursed myself. I had totally trusted the horse, even though I had not liked his behaviour. I had never come this far from the town in this direction, and I didn’t know now if I could make my way back to it.

  Then a thought clicked in my head.

  The map.

  I quickly opened the map. It came to little use however. It didn’t show the location of the town although it did show my own location, which wasn’t that helpful. And when I tried to zoom into the map to get a better idea of my own location, the map turned to meaningless pixels.

  Great.

  And then my ears caught a sound behind me. A sound of movement. I turned, almost knowing it would be Bagh. Instead, I saw three men.

  They were wielding swords.

  It was quite clear that they were bandits.

  One licked his lips.

  “Hey, old man,” he said to me. The bandit had a goatee. He looked like one filthy bastard.

  “What do you want?” I asked. I fought to hide the fear in my voice.

  “Anything and everything you have,” the man said.

  “I just have a water bag and some dried meat. Nothing else.”

  “No money?” one of the other bandits asked. He had a clean shaven head.

  The third bandit laughed. He was a skinny kid who seemed to have aged prematurely.

  “Only an idiot would travel without money!”

  “I do have money,” I said. “But just a few coins.”

  I really missed my dagger. I had lost it in the river the other day. Darn it. I should have at least brought some other weapon. What had I thought the quest to be? A kid’s adventure?

  “Few coins are better than no coins,” the kid said, flashing yellow teeth.

  It was at that moment when an unknown sense of determination came to me. Perhaps it was the sheer instinct to survive for I knew that the bandits were never going to let me go even if I gave them everything I currently had. Perhaps it was a remnant from my time as a succubi tamer when I had singlehandedly tackled down groups of succubi, sometimes with little more than my bare hands.

  The element of surprise…

  Yes, that’s what I needed to use right now. Anything to put the bandits off guard. I would either run or kill them with their own weapons.

  “Fine,” I said to the bandits.

  I took my bag into my hands.

  The bandit with the goatee extended his hand, though I knew he would stab me with the sword in his other hand the moment his fingers touched my bag.

  Instead of giving him my bag, I flung it. The bag sailed over the heads of the bandits. As they looked up, I decided that fleeing from them would do no good as they would still pursue me, and without the horse I would have a hard time getting away from them. In two seconds I decided that I was going for the kill.

  The eyes of the bandits were fixed on the bag as it f
lew over their heads. I took a quick step forward and before any of the bastards could realise what I was doing, I wrenched the sword from the hand of the man with the goatee. By the time my bag had landed in the bushes behind the bandits, I had already sliced the throat of the man with the goatee.

  He fell to the ground, grabbing his throat, even as gore leaked out of it. It was a pitiful sight as he struggled on the ground. In a few moments he stopped all movement. His two friends fell on their knees beside him.

  “No!” they cried, “Brother, you can’t die!”

  The two remaining bandits snarled at me. There was sheer venom in their eyes. For a moment paralysing fear took over my core. Even if there had been some chance of the bandits letting me go had I given them my bag peacefully, now I knew that the two wouldn’t rest without killing me.

  Unless I killed them.

  The skinny kid came running at me with his sword. He was strong despite his size and as our swords met, I could feel the intensity of his strength, and I had to back a few steps.

  He didn’t wait even a second and swung his sword again at me. At the same time the other bandit ran behind me. I wasn’t sure what to do, and in a bid to save myself from the swords coming in from both sides, I ducked. The result was that the skinny bandit, overcome with his own inertia, tripped over me and his head collided with the head of the other bandit.

  I quickly sprang back to my feet, and watched as the two bandits fell down. This was my chance to run, I thought. I didn’t really want to kill the bandits. But I knew that they would pursue me and if they ever found me sleeping in the open at night they would be sure to slit my throat. No, I didn’t have the luxury of mercy.

  The kill was quick.

  I pounced upon the fallen bandits. I stabbed the kid in the neck and he gargled in his own blood and died soon after. The stouter bandit grabbed my leg and gave me a pull, trying to throw me off my feet. I did fall. But by sheer luck I fell with the tip of my sword pointed at his face. The sword pierced into his eye, and he cried out. I took the chance and slit his throat and soon he was lying dead as well.

  I stood up, panting.

  Four killed in the span of two days. Three bandits and a succubus.

  While I regretted the death of the succubus, for she was just a girl under an evil spell ultimately, I didn’t give a shit about the deaths of the bandits. They should have found a better way to make a living instead of killing and robbing innocent travellers.

  Subconsciously, I began to walk away from the corpses of the bandits. Then I remembered my bag. I quickly went back and picked it up. The first bandit that I had killed still lay near it, his listless eyes staring at me. I didn’t like the look on his face at all, and I bent and closed his eyes. Then I went over to the other bandits and closed their eyes as well.

  I picked up the swords of all the bandits. I reckoned they would come in handy if a similar situation awaited me in the future. But the swords could just not be put inside the bag. Wait a minute.

  I held the swords in my hands and then I willed them into my mind. It worked!

  You have absorbed two swords!

  The swords disappeared from my hands and they appeared as icons in my peripheral vision. Over the years I had gotten too used to carrying things around in my hands. All the same, I did feel a bit of mental weight because of the swords. But that couldn’t be avoided.

  I pondered over my next course of action. Should I continue travelling towards the nearest glowing spot? That was the rational thing to do, since I didn’t know if I could find my way back to the town.

  Mere moments later however, I heard a neigh.

  Bagh appeared from behind a number of trees.

  “Ah, so there you are,” I said. “Leave me when trouble comes and come back when the trouble’s gone, eh?”

  Bagh made a face that I knew was a glare. I guess I had gone too sarcastic with my comment. But Bagh came and stood next to me as if he wanted me to climb onto him.

  I grimaced. I hated the beast. But I still did need him.

  “Fine,” I said. With some effort I hauled myself onto his back.

  For the next few hours we travelled. I didn’t ask Bagh to stop anywhere, although after a time I was having a serious ache in my back from all the sitting. I could see my health and my strength decline slowly. I hoped a night of proper rest would get back the levels up. At least that was how it used to be in the days before I had renounced the ability to see stats.

  We reached a dryer place. I had never travelled in this direction before and I couldn’t believe that in just a day’s ride from our green town, a place could exist that was almost a desert. The trees were bare and skinny and there were only a handful of them. The terrain was rocky. Once in a while dust would blow with the wind and I would have to cover my face to avoid the dust from entering my nose and eyes.

  It was about an hour after the sun had set that Bagh abruptly came to a stop. I had only been thinking to tell him we had travelled enough for the day and was pleasantly surprised with his behaviour.

  “What, so you are finally tired of travelling too?” I asked him. “Do you have any idea how bad by butt is aching?” Bagh began to make snorting sounds as if he wanted me to get down. I happily jumped to the ground. I stretched myself. It felt so good.

  I heard some sounds and turned to see the horse begin to move some small stones from the ground. Did he mean to eat those? I shrugged and decided to leave Bagh to his business. I meanwhile searched for anything dry that I could use to make a fire with. It wasn’t hard as there were plenty of dead shrubs and bushes and the occasional branch lay on the ground as well.

  I materialized two of the swords that I had taken from the bandits and hitting one against the other over the heap of dried plant remains, I was able to create sparks and soon I had a fire going. After the sun had set, the heat had almost entirely gone. Heck, I was feeling cold now. The horse, meanwhile was still busy with his stones. I took out some of the dried meat that I had brought along and chewed on it. The dried meat would last me barely a day or two more and then I would have to catch game if I wanted to eat.

  As I was chewing, there was a sudden flare of light from the place from which Bagh was moving the stones. I nearly choked on the meat and I had to drink water to calm down my throat.

  I sprang to my feet and went over to the spot. Bagh promptly moved away as if he wanted me to take a closer move. The flare of light occurred again. I saw what was creating it. A spherical orb of sorts., the size of a foot ball. It was metallic. I bent and picked it up in my hand.

  I looked at Bagh.

  “You know what this is?” I asked. As if in response, he neighed.

  There was what appeared to be a button on one side of the orb. I looked at Bagh, not knowing if I should press it. Bagh neighed again.

  I pressed the button.

  The moment I did so the orb doubled in size. The next moment it quadrupled in size and became so heavy that I had to let it fall to the ground. And the orb just kept getting bigger, so that both Bagh and I had to move away.

  Within a minute, the orb had achieved its ultimate size, and ceased to become any bigger. It was now the size of my house back in the town!

  “What the hell is this?” I asked Bagh.

  Bagh turned around and he galloped away, back along the way that we had come.

  Great.

  Now I was abandoned in the middle of a desert-like place with my only companion being a giant metallic sphere that I had no idea what to do with.

  Wait a moment.

  The wizard had said that Bagh would get me to the ‘vehicle’ which could get me from one place to another much quicker. Bagh’s job was done so he had gone back to his master. So this giant sphere had to be…

  I scratched my chin and moved round the sphere in circles. The button was still there on one of its sides, except it was a lot bigger now. Then I noticed what I reckoned was a small handle on one side of the button. I had not noticed it earlier as it had be
en too tiny to observe.

  I grabbed the handle, and I pulled.

  The button opened, almost like a lid, revealing a hole in the sphere. I could look inside the sphere through the hole. It was pitch black, but I knew that it was hollow.

  I put my head inside the sphere. Immediately claustrophobia caught me.

  The fire I had created was still burning. I went to it and brought a burning stick along and tried to look inside the sphere. It only illuminated a small part of the sphere, but it was enough to show that there were several lever-like sticks at certain points all about the inside of the sphere.

  The lever-like sticks took me back to a different time when I used to drive cars. The claustrophobia left. I threw away the burning stick and then with much effort I was able to enter the sphere. Once inside I grabbed one of the levers and I moved it. After all, what could go wrong?

  The next moment, the lid of the sphere snapped shut, and I was stuck in total darkness.

  “No!” I cried. I didn’t want to be trapped in a hollow sphere forever!

  I hurried towards the place where I believed the lid was. Instead I tripped on what must have been another lever. I fell face first, my head hitting another lever in the process and turning it. Immediately, the sphere became illuminated in a greenish light that was very cool and relaxing to my eyes. I rubbed my head and groaned as I got back up to my feet.

  My eyes fell on what was a chair… no, a throne! It was located at the centre of the sphere. I hobbled to it and sat down. It was a huge contrast to sitting on Bagh’s bony back. The seat had a cushion which made me feel like I was floating.

  There was a board on the part of the sphere that faced the seat. The board was filled with all sorts of levers and buttons. And at the centre of it was the imprint of a hand.

  Curious, I placed by right hand over the imprint. Immediately a notification popped up in my vision.

  You are in the Sphere!

  Would you like to control the movement of the Sphere with your mind or would you like to use the levers, buttons and the levers?