>
> “What’s the bow made of Lith?” the boy asked from his frozen tree, his rich violet hair a curly mess and flustered from the cold long ears sprouting out tauntingly.
>
> “Whispering wood,” Lithoniela replied, using her teeth to tighten the string’s knot. She glanced at his surprised expression and smiled.
>
> “Why is it painted like that?” he probed, strikingly handsome face ever curious.
>
> “It’s not paint. It’s a song, you just have to listen to it,” Lithoniela said fixing the bow string on the ancient bow. “It is a special tree that it’s made of, only growing near Edor Lake in Cydonia.”
>
> “Can we make more?” The tall boy asked and jumped lithely from the tree, dousing her in snow and ice on purpose. “How much does it worth?”
>
> “Not like this one, we can’t,” she replied sadly, cleaning her long braided hair from the snow. “And you can’t buy it. You can only earn it.”
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Aelrindel, of Edlenn
The Bonemancer’s Effigies
Part II
-Six and two hundred-
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Aelrindel reached the unmoving Gimoss and kicked him hard in the knee to retaliate for some of the earlier abuse she had received. She then ducked under a retaliating punch afore jumping away just to be extra safe.
“What do you want harlot?” Gimoss rustled sounding annoyed.
“It’s night,” she hissed. “We are supposed to go after them. It’s your bloody plan!”
“We’ll approach, but wait for it to come out. They can’t see me, but them are slippery motherfuckers.”
This was the most sense he’d made since she met him.
Yet still Gimoss didn’t make any sense at all.
“How do you know an Aken is around?” she probed and watched Faelar and the others reach the west wall of the camp. The place seemingly empty now of the day scavengers.
“You told me they are in Raoz. This is Raoz.”
“I said, we bumped into a couple in Rida,” she retorted crossing her arms on her chest mimicking him. “That’s a reach we’ll find them here in the middle of nowhere!”
“That’s a battlefield dumbbell. Where did you expect them to hang around? The local market? This is a Necros goldmine. Bonemancers are Necros with a lofty name. You get it? I hate dumbbells! Don’t be one!” Gimoss growled.
Aha.
“Still, I’ll have you know I killed Zargatoh,” Aelrindel said pressing her lips tight a bit annoyed. “So that’s one less we need to worry about.”
“AHAHAHA!” Gimoss guffawed tipping his head back.
“I blew him up seriously,” she hissed and the dead wyvern put his chariot helmet on without replying. “He didn’t see it coming.”
“Even if that’s true,” Gimoss grunted. “He would have had a backup. Did you check the head?”
Aelrindel licked her lips unsure.
“I don’t understand. The head?”
Not much was left.
“Only bone they can’t remake. Something must be left behind. To make an Effigy of yourself you need to remove one of your own bones. Not all are extractable and the head is fatal to remove. Haha. Hah! AHAHAHA!” Gimoss stopped his insane laughing and stared at her with his freakish split eye. “Be a good harlot now. Say thank you for the lesson oh, great Gimoss. Let me suck your cock out of gratitude. I know you’re thinking about it. You didn’t have to wash. I haven’t repaired the nostrils fully.”
Ugh, not this line again!
“Fuck you,” she hissed.
“As Glen would say,” Gimoss retorted tauntingly. “Twas my meaning.”
Wait… What?
“Hey,” she yelled seeing the masked freak starting towards the partially standing wall, her friends had gone behind. “Why did you let them approach first?” the sorceress asked running after him, since Gimoss didn’t bother pausing to answer.
“Another dumb query. Cutting your hair has dropped your intelligence in half,” Gimoss said.
Rotten piece of shit!
“You used them as bait?” She snarled irate and shoved him away to push through a crack in the wooden wall and into the open field.
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Aelrindel got out behind a meter high pile of burned bodies and almost crashed on a retreating man heading for the opening she had just emerged from.
“Watch it kid,” the man said and pushed her away.
Kid? What the fuck?
“Hey,” she hissed on his back and the man paused to look at her. “What’s going on?”
“The freaks are out. Safety is the other way,” the man replied and turned to run away stopping abruptly skewered right through the neck by Gimoss’s spear. The undead brought him closer like a thrashing fish and reached with his free hand to finish him off.
“Noble Goddess! What are you doing?” Aelrindel admonished him. “He wasn’t a construct!”
Gimoss tossed the man’s ripped out bloody jaw away, the tongue still flapping on it and then removed his spear to slot it on his back again.
“Those are,” he said pointing with a gruesome blood dripping finger. “He was just unlucky. Blame Luthos! Bad shit happens when you’re out grave digging. He played the odds!”
Aelrindel turned around with a hiss and spotted Caruso decapitating a Lorian fifty meters away. Lithoniela stumbling to her feet seemingly unharmed and Faelar chopping another body up as fast as he could.
Shit.
The sorceress rushed towards them, but she stopped again hearing Grogoceq’s voice coming from the treeline across the opening Prince Nout had cut out of the Oasis. She snarled, boots standing on soft ground, old ashes, soil and bones all mixed in, her eyes looking about for more of them.
As luck would have it there was a Cofol standing next to her. Dressed in pieces of armour, no shirt, but a saber in hand. He was listening to Grogoceq talking with Faelar. Aelrindel frowned turned her head around and spotted another one’s back two meters away. This one had no armour on, but carried a longsword.
Faelar yelled for them to fall back and Grogoceq blinked out of existence. Every construct moving silently towards her friends obeying to their puppeteer’s command, but for one. He stood four meters away to her right, an Issir dressed in mail carrying a spear. The man blinked in the dark, but the sorceress could see his young face pretty well. He made a step towards her.
Then another.
“More are here,” the soldier said and it was unclear to whom he was talking to. “Leave.”
Aelrindel raised her hand to blast him away, but a spear whooshed from further back and skewered the construct from the sides. In through the left, out the right shattering ribs and severing his spine. The ‘Issir’ folded sideways as if broken in half and went down still alive. A worried Aelrindel reached him with a thread and wished the night away to nullify Grogoceq’s advantage.
The Aken could travel really far in the dark.
Kalina Gail…
The Bonemancer had grabbed Lithoniela. But she was still fighting him and they popped out of the woods again.
A sphere of pure white light appeared over the field. It washed the darkness away and revealed Grogoceq’s constructs. All twelve of them.
Fuck.
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Caruso cut an arm off and jumped away from a thrusting spear. Faelar rolled on the ground and shoved his dagger under the chin of a Lorian soldier, but had to dive out of trouble immediately as another three rushed him. Two Cofols and an Issir.
Everyone was moving against them and Grogoceq had appeared at the edge of the trees he’d come out from now still holding a dazed, but still fighting Lithoniela by her left arm. Aelrindel ‘touched’ another construct with an essence thread, but paused unsure on how to stop him and a plainly dressed Cofol girl shoved a small blade in her back grazing a lung. Aelrindel twisted around shocked and in pain and the girl blinked, bloody kitchen knife in hand.
“The witch is here,” she droned afore her head exploded. Gimoss had hit her so hard her spine snapped and ripped out of her navel. The smell of her innards, mixed with foul gore splashing the ground stomach-turning.
“Arrgh!” Aelrindel gasped, grinding her teeth and bleeding down her back. “Didn’t see that cunt!”
“There’s another one,” Gimoss told her and shook his shovel to clean up some of the gore. “They made you. We need to flash him out.”
“Fuck it,” the sorceress hissed and glugged a healing potion down. “Go help them you bastard!”
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Caruso killed a construct, but another came about missing an arm and attacked him. The mercenary retreated measuring his steps. Faelar had killed three of them and seeing Aelrindel approaching grabbed a handful of arrows, cracked a vial open and doused their steel tips with black naphtha. The ranger run the dripping tip on his belt buckle to create a spark and lit it.
“BURN THE WOODS!” Faelar bellowed as he started firing one flaming arrow after the other, his finely lacquered longbow singing and the smell of incense mixing in the air with that of blood and guts. His face looking a bright white under the levitating sphere of light hanging over the field.
Aelrindel couldn’t risk it. Grogoceq got a knee from a still hooded Lithoniela, but used his staff to smack her once upside the head and she went down. No. He made to approach her but stopped shuddering.
Stay, the sorceress had commanded.
The Aken stood back and stared at her stumbling towards him, a touch of surprise on his face. Then he took a forward step tauntingly and then another, tapping with a finger on his many bone ornaments and pendants hanging from his neck. One of them black as coal and vaguely familiar.
Son of a bitch, Aelrindel thought grinding her teeth and breathing heavy.
Be rooted.
Grogoceq stooped to drag Lithoniela with him, but a long leaf wrapped around his arm and pulled him back. The Aken grunted and ripped his arm free, only to realize his legs had sunk into the soil and thin vines were climbing up his knees.
“Ah, you damn witch,” he spat with a smack of his lips. “Naught but myself is here. I kill you both and no one will ever know.”
Aelrindel glanced back and sighed relieved seeing Gimoss arriving to help the others finish off the constructs.
“Days old,” Grogoceq told her testing his bindings, fucker is not looking too concerned. The sorceress reached him gasping for air, taste of blood in her throat. “Not a big loss. Easily replaced. How are you gonna replace her?”
Aelrindel turned to check on Lithoniela, but the girl looking back at her wasn’t Lith. She had her cloak on, but her plain scared face was that of a Cofol girl.
No.
“You don’t need magic to make illusions in the heat of battle,” Grogoceq told her. “The mind sees, what the mind wants to see, if the alternative is too scary to fathom,” he added with a smirk and blinked out of existence, the smell of burned bone in the air.
Aelrindel recoiled still shaken at his trickery and felt the Aken appearing behind her. She twisted around and the staff found the top of her shoulder instead of her head. The sorceress dropped on her knees with an angry groan and the Aken towered over her ominously.
“I’ll make a harem of you. Make ye fuck yourself and then eat your own flesh. Over and over,” Grogoceq told her unable to contain his excitement. “There are bones enough.”
A livid Aelrindel whipped her arm out and grabbed his wrist, before he could use his staff again. Grogoceq flinched feeling his bones breaking, a smirk still on his mouth and reached for his pendants. For a moment Aelrindel thought she’d seen one hand too many rifling through the Aken bone ornaments covered chest.
Alurae…
“DON’T!” Gimoss bellowed to snap her out of her murderous trance. “I need the body.”
The fuck?
The Aken showed her his teeth in the pretense of a smile, one snake eye turning slowly white as if rotting away. Faelar and Caruso came running as fast as they could towards them, the ranger already readying another arrow.
You got to be kidding me! The sorceress cursed and stood up on shaky legs.
“Stay back!” She ordered Faelar. “Don’t shoot!”
“Where’s Lithoniela?” Caruso asked, a welt under his eye the size of a small apple.
“Doll do you have him?” Faelar queried calmly not lowering his bow.
“No,” Aelrindel replied with a grimace. “That’s Gimoss.”
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“Mother of all griefs,” a bewildered Caruso said not five minutes later, eyes darting from the corpse of Gimoss sprawled next to the towering Aken, the latter standing with long arms crossed over his chest, broken wrist dangling and a shovel instead of a staff strapped on his back. “Someone explain what in witch’s tits is going on here!” he breathed once deeply and glanced at a dark-faced Aelrindel. “Apologies lass.”
“They took her,” she hissed not minding him, turning her head to glare at the ranger stitching her wound, the same way he would a dead cow for a roast.
“Another one?” Faelar said with a grimace and shoved her face forward with his free hand.
“The same,” Gimoss explained. The wyvern was wearing the Aken’s body now. “He’s near.”
“How do we flash him out?” Faelar asked casually, apparently not too shocked at the revelation.
“Guys, I need someone to give me some insight here,” Caruso protested civilly.
“He’s in the woods,” Gimoss replied. “Probably made another copy to be able to handle the abundance of material.”
Caruso looked about them, spotted a corpse still moving and went to finish it off.
“We need to burn the field again,” Faelar decided, finishing up her poor back. “I’ll go after it.”
“You’ll stay,” Gimoss told him. “The witch will come with me.”
“I don’t trust you Gimoss,” Faelar retorted and glared at Aelrindel. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Why did you kill Zilyana?” Aelrindel asked the snorting undead wyvern.
“Couldn’t help myself. She looked like your sister and you I suppose. Better body,” Gimoss replied indifferently. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but this look is horrible harlot. You’ve let yourself go.”
The sorceress gulped down her face pale.
“That’s him alright,” she croaked.
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The sorceress accepted the dagger from a sullen Faelar, the old ranger looking ancient as if he’d burned out his remaining years in a day.
“I can’t let you go alone. I swore to your mother,” he told her a tick in his right eye and she touched his wrinkled face softly to sooth him.
“Do what you have to Faelar,” Aelrindel whispered. “I can’t allow him to take her. We kill the monsters right?”
The ranger nodded, his eyes tensed. “Right,” he croaked.
“That motherfucker is moving fast,” Gimoss grunted cutting them off. “All this soft-arse bullshit ain’t helping!”
“Go,” she hissed and stared at the mercenary. “Finish up here Caruso. Use a heavy tool, if you can’t get a fire going. I know Ralnor keeps details to a minimum, but no one expected this.”
“Worst job I’ve ever taken lass, bar none and I raided Nikah’s cellar,” he agreed with a grimace. “Don’t worry about me. I’m committed.”
With a sigh, the sorceress rushed after the already moving fast Gimoss. His new body giving him much greater mobility and larger strides.
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The darkness inside the woods was thick. It took a moment for her sensitive eyes to adjust, but still she found the terrain difficult to traverse. Bushes had sprang between the trees, vines interconnecting one with the other and for a while they moved in silence, with Aelrindel trying to keep up with the possessed Aken male.
She didn’t even know if that was the correct term.
“How did you do it this time?” she whispered when he paused to stare at a path created deep in the woods leading to the north side of the lake.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“You know,” Gimoss said keeping his voice low. “He carried a bone with him to shield him from your charms. I just had to come close enough to use it.”
Of course.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s still here. Looking at the bottom of a pit of sorts,” Gimoss replied. “He warned the other though. Talky motherfucker.”
“How do they do it?” Aelrindel asked, following after him when he started to move again. “Is it a spell?”
“A radius, they can increase it if they burn someone else’s life-force. They don’t like that because it ruins the bones, so his copy might not have warned the others still. We must make sure he doesn’t.”
“It will help if I know the plan,” Aelrindel griped slapping a curious bug away. The bug cursed her lineage and buzzed off to complain to his friends.
No, fuck you! Aelrindel yelled at the creepy crawler.
“It won’t,” Gimoss rustled. “You’ll talk in your sleep, or in your dreams. You’ll whisper to your lovers to impress them and brag to your friends. It takes years to travel in this form and you’ll fuck everything up in that time.”
Whoa.
“I’m not stupid Gimoss,” she hissed nigh insulted.
“I would laugh hard, but I don’t want this sneaky cunt to know we’re coming for him yet,” Gimoss replied surprisingly softly. “But you’ve spilled your guts to a duplicitous thug, whilst taking it up the arse with enthusiasm and then made deals with people far smarter than you. The first could be a rumor, but the latter I know for sure.”
My pretty sorceress, the pirate murmured in her ear.
“Ehm,” Aelrindel hissed her cheeks burning. “I had to do something!”
“Also… something hitched a ride in your dagger,” Gimoss continued extending a long arm to stop her, cupping her breast fully in the process and giving it a good squeeze. Aelrindel recoiled angry. “It whispers in that fool’s ear I’m sure. Whatever the Aken did, wasn’t what they intended and they know it.”
“Why?”
“You can’t bind anything to a wyvern’s bone, it’s not a lamp. It hurts to connect with it in spirit form,” Gimoss rustled. “But it can be a door for some powerful pain-tolerant motherfucker lurking between realms, if he can hold on to it and he has rage enough, or scores to settle.”
“Like you,” she hissed rubbing her hurting chest.
Gimoss nodded.
“See?” he taunted. “All you need is a good ole fuck and your brain will start working again. Don’t pout, I needed it too. It’s how these stupid weak bodies work. Fucking bullshit!”
“You said to keep quiet!” Aelrindel admonished him.
“That was then. He’s twenty meters up ahead near the shore. They hate swimming,” he told her and stepped back several large strides to hide behind a large trunk. “I had to warn him, so it can be believable you’re alone. You’re a walking idiot in the woods, but I need to remain unseen. Go get him sorceress. Save the girl, succeed where your mother failed. For poor Rin. May she be resting in pieces!” The Aken/Gimoss urged her popping his hideous head out, long arm appearing to give her a thumb’s up and a wide disturbing grin.
What?
You fucking piece of shit!
The crack of a snapping branch chilling her boiling blood.
“Is that you?” Grogoceq asked, in his slithering alien accent and then clicked his tongue. “What happened?”
Shit.
Aelrindel glanced at the old tree, the last afore the large opening leading to the shore of the lake. She was never fond of climbing, but her hand touched the smooth trunk and felt the fig tree’s heartbeat in her mind.
The calling to reach the top of the canopy strong.
“Eh. He’s gone, isn’t he?” Grogoceq said and she saw his shady long figure moving about in the opening. The moonlight making his copper-colored skin appear a dark blue where it wasn’t painted white. “Is that you witch?”
Ugh.
“How did you do it? Magic?” Grogoceq asked. “I bet you’re spent now eh? Come out, let us talk. I’m more reasonable than the other guy.”
Fuck it.
“I thought you were the same,” Aelrindel said and pushed the branches aside to step into the opening. An artificial one, trees cut and stubs uprooted at a ten meter radius to the edges of the water. Even the soil scrubbed clean and turned flat. Grogoceq took a step and touched the bottom of his long staff down. The top of his head bald and a little pointy.
She couldn’t find any difference between the two copies other than the different robes. This Aken Effigy had a pair of blue ones on and wore a woman’s gold bracelet on his right hand.
Or a girl’s.
He noticed her stare and grinned. “I had to give her up. He insisted. Rank and all that. It was a good enough plan.”
Faelar had sliced the girl’s throat unceremoniously, before they realized she wasn’t a construct. You face an Aken Bonemancer and you’re never the same afterwards the old veterans always remembered back in Dan, when Sulynor and Faelar were in their cups.
There was always trickery involved.
“Where’s is she?” Aelrindel hissed and reached for that large tree with an invisible thread.
“Let’s make a trade,” Grogoceq retorted and touched his bone covered chest. The vines jumped towards him, but they were late and coming from too far. A loud flapping sound was heard, as the pungent smell of burned bone reached her nostrils, an extended thin root going through his chest and then the Aken jumped away almost to the edge of the water.
Unharmed.
Aelrindel hissed irate and stepped forward, her right palm facing the ground, arm extended. Another step and her right boot stepped in squelchy mud, a three meter wide not very deep hole filled with it, but deep enough to trip her up.
“Watch your step,” Grogoceq snickered unable to contain his glee, as Aelrindel stumbled forward with a yelp arms flailing, then slipped properly and went splashing down in the thick muck.
Shite!
She thrashed right and then left in her attempt to find dry ground, her face and neck covered in badly smelling mire, but determined to get out. Grogoceq’s staff smacking her once on the left shoulder when she did.
Aelrindel felt her still healing, stitched wound below her shoulder blade open up again.
Ouch.
Fucking pig!
Grogoceq flipped the long staff in his hands, pulling it back, but just as he whipped it forward again aiming for her head a powerful breeze blew out of the trees and pushed him backwards two meters. Aelrindel got up cursing under her breath and raised her right arm.
Khael.
The watery mud turning to ice behind her.
“Too far,” Grogoceq snickered and jumped away from the trees just in case, landing four meters to her left. A large heavy piece of hardened mud smacking the center of his body when he did.
The tall Aken doubled over with a muffled pant of pain and then he was hurled sideways by another blast of roaring wind, several branches snapping all around them in a pandemonium and bombarding the Aken. The opening filled with debris. Grogoceq stumbled to his feet groaning and holding his left side.
Cante nae calae.
“Fucking witch,” he cursed livid and ogled his snake eyes seeing the small fireball traveling towards him. The Aken blinked out of existence, the trees behind his disappearing body exploding in bright flames.
Aelrindel reached for the next root to make another one, a large apricot tree dying nearby his fruits turned black, but smelled the Aken on her back and switched to a levitate spell to move away. She jumped impossibly high, her body weightless, but the long staff caught her right thigh on her ascend and messed up her landing.
Bad.
Oh, for crying out loud!
Aelrindel plummeted to the ground, amassing bruises faster than an overworked port whore does rushes, arms flailing to find purchase and her left knee buckling when she did.
“ARGGH!” she cried livid and felt Grogoceq’s long finger penetrating her ribcage and anchor on a thin bone. A savage pull and the edge of the bone snapped with a jolt of pain that pierced her brain, the skin tearing even more when his long finger exited covered in blood.
Aelrindel went down on her hurting knees with a gasp, her legs turning to rubber. The emboldened Aken reached and grabbed her by the throat to lift her back up again.
“My first vote when I turned Elder,” he rustled in her face reminiscing, breath smelling of poison. “Was to have you killed and turned into clay statues,” Aelrindel gasped, gulping blood and feeling her chest burning where the bone protruded out of the wound. Grinding her teeth she reached for Faelar’s dagger strapped on her waist. Keep talking bitch. “Flesh on the inside. I changed my mind. I’m going to make a couple of hundred of you. More. Aye,” he decided and grimaced, one eye closing when her blade pierced his lung.
“That’s what the other guy said,” Aelrindel spat and a groaning Grogoceq let her go faltering on his long legs, the dagger stuck in his chest. The sorceress landed on weakened knees and stumbled backwards herself, trying to find her footing and failing, a glowing hand pressing the bleeding hole to repair some of the damage.
She didn’t even see the staff coming at her.
A crack and her head snapped back violently, the back of her dome turning numb. She lost her senses for a moment and found them when she crashed hard on her back.
“Gaah!” The sorceress whined hurting so much and in so many unlikely places she couldn’t feel anything else but pain. Ugh. At first she thought her neck had broken, then her head, but other than a large throbbing swelling on her left temple and her scrabbled brains, the Aken’s blow had failed to take her out somehow.
“I don’t like dead subjects,” Grogoceq answered her riddle. “It’s not pleasurable. Others preach differently, but I’m fixing to start my own school. Now seeing as I have been caught unawares in the past, I try to plan accordingly,” he added and removed her dagger, dark blood pouring out of the wound. The Aken were notoriously difficult to kill. He flipped it in his hand and slotted it in a harness under his robes, worn over naked skin. The fact she could see his thin copper-colored cock dangling underneath almost made her vomit.
The Aken grunted and reaching grabbed her by her hurt leg, in order to drag her ten meters near the other side of the artificial beach, where he’d set up a small now extinct campfire, right next to a pile of supplies covered with a blanket. The opening probably their base of operations.
Grogoceq had been in Queen’s Oasis Lake for a while.
“There she is,” he told her and pulled the blanket away to reveal a tied up with a thin hemp rope Lithoniela. The rope so tight, it had cut into her skin and turned dark with her blood. The female Zilan’s torso naked, the skin a pale white, a long thin cut low on her belly fiercely red and still bleeding, the blood pooling at her navel.
Motherfucker!
“Still alive,” Grogoceq assured her and pressed the thrashing sorceress back down on her arse with his long staff. “Fire another fucking fireball. See if you get me this time,” he taunted. “I fought a thousand battles you stupid bitch. The Painted God shall assure I live forever, times six and two hundred.”
The number of bones his original body carried.
Aelrindel blinked, set her jaw and tried again anyway. The dark opening deep inside the idyllic Oasis turning sinister, the top of the nearby trees bending and the moons turning brighter in the clear desert sky.
Scratch one time out smelly fucker!
The Aken’s long leg caught the chanting sorceress right at the bleeding wound and lifted her clean off the ground, Lith’s muffled gasp the only warning. Aelrindel felt the weakened cracked rib breaking properly this time and she got to hurt her right elbow on a sharp branch as a bonus. A large piece of skin tearing right off to her wrist and flapping over her hand like a long sleeve.
Ugh.
Ouch.
“Umph,” she managed to say, her mouth locked from agony.
“You’re not worth the trouble,” Grogoceq decided with a grimace and then flinched trying to blink out of existence, Faelar’s singing arrow faster than him. The Aken stumbled backwards, but found his footing and jumped over the tied up Lith, Aelrindel’s knife in hand and an arrow protruding out of his back.
“Show some fucking backbone for once,” Faelar rustled and came out of the trees. Aelrindel was so happy to see him she started coughing up, blood mixed in her spit. “What would Suharto say?”
The Aken smacked his lips and stood up. Faelar slotted his bow over his shoulder and reached for his steel peleg.
“You owe him a leg. Twenty six fucking bones from his first body. Wasted,” Grogoceq spat angry and reached to extract the arrow from his back, the joints on his arm cracking, the angle unnatural.
“It was a good trap,” Faelar admitted proudly and glanced at the two females. “I really hoped he’d land on his bald head and rid myself of an Elder.”
“The war was over ranger. Fucking hypocrite,” Grogoceq grunted and sheathed his dagger on his harness again. Faelar’s dagger technically.
The former Imperial Ranger grimaced, old face hardening.
“Apparently it hadn’t,” he rustled and sidestepped as the Aken had ‘Walked between the Realms’ again, a thought apocryphal dark magic spell the Bonemancers of Galith had perfected during the war and appeared next to him.
Close, but not close enough.
Grogoceq swung with his staff, but Faelar rolled under it and chopped him once above the knee. The Aken pulled it back, but he wasn’t fast enough and the ranger’s blade turned red. Faelar sidestepped out of the way, removed the satchel’s strap over his head and tossed it towards the sorceress.
It bounced on the ground once and rolled next to her injured hand.
Grogoceq tried again swinging his staff like a two handed sword, but the ranger ducked under it and snapped his arm to cut him across his belly. The Aken blinked out of existence and the duel turned savage right after that.
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Aelrindel reached inside the leather satchel, the rich smell of sage and incense reaching her when she opened it, Faelar was notorious for not expending supplies, a tearing eye on the two old enemies duking it out under the moonlight. Faelar jerked his head away, the ironwood whooshing a hair from his nose and then dived out of a brutal downward cut. The staff bounced off the ground, the ranger rolled again to his right, just as the Aken blinked out of existence again and reappeared where Faelar ended up.
Down came the staff, the old ranger dodging it sidestepping and going for that hurt knee again. Grogoceq grunted, the smell of burning bone so thick, Aelrindel felt her stomach turning, despite burning incense herself to cast a rejuvenation spell.
She needed ten fucking seconds, since this wasn’t a battle spell.
Or thirty, since her hurting mind just couldn’t function under these horrible conditions!
The Aken popped out behind Faelar, the staff already in full swing aiming for his neck, but stopping on a raised arm. Aelrindel heard the bone breaking from five meters away and flinched panicked trying to remember her chants with Lith’s muffled horrified cries not helping her at all.
Goddess!
What the fuck!
Where’s that stupid wyvern!
Faelar ducked under the returning staff, his jaw clenched and left arm broken below the elbow, a bloody bone protruding under his sleeve. Grogoceq roared irate at the near miss and jumped back, turning a swing into a lunge. Faelar parried it away with the exotic throwing axe and the Aken flipped the long weapon in his hand to come at him again. The ranger going as fast in the return with his own weapon. A gawking, manically chanting Aelrindel caught out of the corner of her right eye someone getting out of the lake.
The blank-faced Issir wearing rusting chainmail and armed with a spear, walked slowly on to the beach, soaked white head covered in weeds. Faelar had wounded Grogoceq’s other knee, the joint almost severed there, but the Aken blinked out of existence with a shriek and escaped him.
Fuck!
Aelrindel thought seeing the surprised ranger stumbling to his legs and then going down on a knee. His own dagger stuck in his chest.
Oh, no god dammit!
Noooo!
A white-faced Faelar glanced at the shocked sorceress and then at the approaching her construct that had come out of the lake. He grimaced, Grogoceq limping slowly towards him bleeding down both knees and with a grunt flipped the peleg in his hand, caught its butt and hurled it across the large forest opening as hard as he could.
> “There you are,” Faelar said looming over her and picked her up easily in his arms. “Your mother wants to talk with you.”
>
> “You smell funny,” Aelrindel gripped hugging his neck, naked legs dangling over his strong arm and sniffed at his dark-green leather armour. “And I can walk, among other things,” she teased him with a wicked smile.
>
> “I smell of foul monsters Doll,” Faelar replied and tossed her over his shoulder to give her a nasty slap on the bum. “And you’ll walk on your own someday, but not today.”
>
> “Did you kill them foul monsters?” She asked with a pout that usually worked on him and her mother shook her head smiling seeing them approach, long legs resting on a small table in the shade of her Orchard.
>
> “It’s what your mother and I do,” he replied and with a twirl dropped her down to stand on her own. “Any way we can.”
The steel axe smashed the construct that had reached the two females on the left side of his head, the cranium caving in and changing shape, red flaps of dark skin unfolding, face distorting and his eyes blasting out of their sockets in a spray of gore. Grogoceq cursed and kicked the wounded ranger down, just as the Issir collapsed on his destroyed head with a shudder.
Aelrindel stopped her stupid spell and started another. Her essence reaching deep in the cleared out ground for the still living roots sleeping there. The Aken cleaved Faelar on the head breaking his cheekbone and then turned around to glare at the slowly getting up sorceress.
“For fuck’s sake,” Grogoceq cursed and started limping towards her frustrated. “You can’t best a Bonemancer in the dark you stubborn bitch!”
“You can’t best a witch in the woods you dumb fuck!” Aelrindel roared livid, bloody spittle flying out of her mouth and the ground opened under the Aken’s injured legs, hundreds of small and bigger chasms, white roots bursting out of them to tie him up.
“Hah!” Grogoceq snickered and tried to move his leg, the roots tightening up and traveling upwards whilst pulling him down. The flesh opening at the joint, blood pouring down his sinewy elongated shins and the bone cracking until it snapped and his right leg detached at the knee. “Shit! Oh well, I’ll just do it the fast way,” he grunted grinding his teeth, whilst eyeing her with hatred and reached for his chest where his many bone-pendants where hanging.
He never got to touch any of them.
Another hand sprouted out of his exploding chest cavity, ribs and sternum cracking open outwards like a giant strange flower, the ornaments flying everywhere, this new hand covered in gore and equally long. The gory hand moved about, cracking and twisting at the joint and then reached upwards for the traumatized and utterly shocked Aken’s neck. The brutal third hand grabbed its neck fully, long fingers wrapping around and pressing down hard. Grogoceq gasped trying to breathe, his mouth opened wide, forked tongue dancing this way and that, spraying blood. He tried to reach back with his left hand, whilst broken ribs, pieces of his torn blood-dripping lungs fell between his legs, along with half his yellow fluid leaking liver.
Grogoceq, the one getting strangled through his innards from the back, found the other Grogoceq’s snarling manically head and sunk his long thumb into his milky left eye viciously. The eye popped, white and red fluids soaking Gimoss’ face and then the real Grogoceq’s neck snapped with a loud crack, a moment before Aelrindel emptied her stomach between her legs.
She didn’t have time to open her mouth fully, so some of the puke came out of her nose.
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“It’s alright,” Aelrindel kept murmuring moments later, untying Lith’s binds with trembling hands. The tortured younger Zilan groaned desperately when she did and spat a mouthful of blood mixed with pieces of flesh out, shaking even more than the sorceress. “We’ll heal you back up again,” Aelrindel assured her glancing at the body of Faelar. The ranger had crawled near the large fig tree, leaving a blood trail behind that appeared black in the dark, one side of the forest burning fully now, filling the opening with long sinister shadows.
“He cut… something out,” Lithoniela gasped clasping at her bleeding wound. Aelrindel found another healing potion in the satchel and paused unsure for a moment, but then offered it to the pale-faced Lith.
“Take it,” she hissed, decision made. “I’ll see to Faelar myself.”
She could cast another spell.
“He’s gone,” Gimoss informed her indifferently. He was stooped over the dead Aken and slowly ripped the skin and scrapped the flesh off his face with his nails. The sound so disgusting, the scene so grisly, a distraught Aelrindel would have fainted, but for the blind rage that exploded out of her.
“Shut up!” She growled and stood up, her knees buckling, one of them swollen grotesquely. “Where were you? You fucking rotten bastard!”
Gimoss, now in the body of the twice killed in a night Grogoceq, an eye missing and leaking foul fluids down his hated face, picked up the bloody flayed head and looked at it closely for a long moment.
“Fuck you!” Aelrindel hissed livid at his indifference, tears running down her dirty face and made to walk towards the unmoving ranger. Gimoss dropped the bloody skull down and stepped on it. Once and the bone cracked. Twice and it gave, splattering the Aken’s brains around his foot and on it. “Oh, gods!” She gasped, having witnessed enough horrors to never sleep again.
Gimoss extended an arm and stopped her when she tried to walk away.
“Use the axe to break the construct’s head,” he told her.
Aelrindel turned to stare at the dead Issir. Lithoniela had stood up, her expression dark and went to do the ghastly deed herself.
“What about the other bones?” She asked, her hands shaking and seeing black spots in her vision, the crackling lights of the spreading fire not helping.
“You pulverize the head and you’re fine,” Gimoss replied. “The rest is tales with little worth and superstition. Did you think I used the shovel, because I’m weird?”
Yes? She thought.
They both watched for a while a crazed Lith chopping the Issir’s smashed skull into ever smaller pieces with Faelar’s axe, not bothered from the blood splatter soaking her. “Same way you know if you killed the original,” Gimoss added and stepped out of the disgusting pile of mushed bloody bones and brains he was standing in. “It’s much more elongated than a human’s, or a Zilan’s skull. Not as robust as a dwarf’s. Or the way a Gish’s skull is rounder and smaller. Though much tastier.”
Aelrindel blinked at the casually thrown remark, her swollen temple throbbing.
Gimoss sighed and stared at the flames eating away at this part of the Oasis forlornly. Then he turned to glance at the still smashing the Issir’s head Lith and the now sobbing Aelrindel. He smacked his mauve lips, long forked tongue darting in and out, snake eye slowly turning into his usual black and red wyvern colors.
From a distance you could mistake it for burgundy.
“It’s a better body this. It will do,” he told her, as if she cared about his stupid body. “It helps in many ways witch,” Gimoss grimaced and stared at the night sky for a moment. “Long road ahead of me. I reckon ahead of you, or short. Eh. You fought bravely today little witch. Aye. You made your mother proud. Never gave up, much as your sister.”
Aelrindel shook her head in despair. She didn’t want to hear this at that moment.
“Not many can stand their ground when certain death and mutilation stares them in the face,” Gimoss continued casually. “Those that do, have a chance to grasp an unlikely win. It’s not luck. Luck is no armor. The moment you believe it, you’re back into the mud. Luthos offers ye the mummer’s trade and he’ll screw you raw where it hurts the most. But you did stand your ground, so take pride in that. Look ahead.”
Aelrindel wiped her eyes with the back of her good hand.
“Wow. Here come the dead wyvern’s wise words! You expect me to do this shit all over again?” the sorceress croaked, her mouth hurting when she talked.
“You can’t be that stupid. It’s fucking unnatural,” Gimoss grunted. “I said you fought well, not that you would’ve survived. Do you know what unlikely means? Anyway, you only breathe because we had a deal. That’s it. If it’s advice you seek, then I suggest you retire somewhere afar both of you.”
“Like in Wetull?” Aelrindel asked sniffling.
Gimoss stood back with a frown, lanky body towering over her and shook his bald head disappointed.
“I take it back,” he grunted scrunching his mouth in disgust. “You actually are a total buffoon. Dumber than a bag of hammers. A brick can run circles around you dumbbell! Fuck! PRAISE BE GIMOSS THE TOLERANT! Eh, that makes two of you by the way,” he murmured after his outburst, eyeing the mess Lith had made in her frenzy. “Then again, add that other fool into the fucking mix and you girls can make a traveling troupe! AHAHAHA!”
Gimoss, now in his Aken body that steel shovel strapped on his back, walked out of the burning Oasis that night and disappeared into the desert. Aelrindel was certain they won’t ever see him again in her lifetime.
But right at the end, she did.
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read it at Royalroad : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/46739/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms
& https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47919/lure-o-war-the-old-realms
Scribblehub https://www.scribblehub.com/series/542002/touch-o-luck-the-old-realms/
& https://www.scribblehub.com/series/547709/the-old-realms/