Nua listened as the impossible happened before her eyes, [Flowing Water][Counter Strike][Weapon Enhancement]. Vargas’s body glowed as martial arts of one of the most feared black operations units across the world, were presented to her.
[Perfect Strike][Speed of death][Undead Strength][Endurance of Unlife] Nua activated martial arts of her own, and as he came on, she wondered what the hell he was talking about. “Snap out of it, Vargas! I’ve never killed you!” She shouted at him and as he closed in, the broken wooden sword was easily blocked, only for his body to twist and his leg come out in a kick that forced her to spin backward on her heel to avoid.
She leapt out into the training room to avoid being confined, and he followed almost as fast. “Have you gone mad?!” She bellowed at him as she took up a practice sword. He did the same, and came on with both the broken weapon and the intact one.
‘He’s faster than Timnah, Vargas wasn’t like this before… there’s no way he could improve this much, this fast…’ Nua thought, deflecting blows as she responded to his attacks by taking to the arts of her faith. Like they were tailor made for it, her constant blows forced him both to respond and to follow her, while her attempt at grabbing him with Yersin each failed.
Mystery piled on mystery, and her cursed dress was nothing but an inhibition, it was a relief when her sword broke, making it shorter, in the familiar shape of a knife. She deflected his blow and struck him in the sternum with the flat of her left palm, but before Yersin could even begin to drain him, he jumped back, and then with the force of powerful legs, sprang forward with killing intent.
Nua bent backwards, allowing him to fly over head, then pushed off the floor with her fingers and landed on her feet, they whirled to face one another again, he took up the stance of his homeland, and she of her faith. Like strange mirrors of a twisted nightmare, the moment held until...
Sado came charging in like a roaring bull, his martially enhanced body was backed by enchanted gear, as were the pair of guards he brought with him. ‘It’s only Vargas, he’s…’ Sado cut off his thoughts as, to his shock, the common sergeant moved like a god of war, flowing around every blow and making constant counter attacks to every thing that came his way, the two soldiers with him kept trying to hem him in, only to find he was always using one to block the other.
Where one struck low and another high, Vargas’s body seemed to flow between them, spinning like a wagon wheel and his wooden sword caught one of the soldiers in the head.
Sado’s confidence was unshaken, but his concern went up. ‘I fought headmen ranked adventurers, one after the other, and not one of them could flow like that.’
The Fallen Prince was quick to speak up.
“Mistress! We’ll bring him down, please stay back!” The golden collared Sado said, sounding every inch like the Prince he had been, and then he acted as the soldier, the warrior he had been, his blood was up and his anger great, his sword flew out to remove Vargas’s head from his shoulders, only to find the man had dropped. Heavy blows hammered against Sado who, like a mountain, was unmoved.
Nua did as Sado wished and moved back as the defeated Prince pressed relentlessly against the former elite. The pair he brought with him moved to encircle Vargas, only for him to leap back against the wall, push off, and sail overhead to land on the opposite side, keeping them away from himself.
Her face twisted in wrath, she demanded answers, “Why did you do that to her?! Freyjin wasn’t just your friend! She was your comrade?! You fought together!” Nua gritted her teeth, and that seemed to reach the maddened slave. It made him freeze as if he remembered what he’d done.
He looked over to her, like he wanted to say something, but he never got the chance.
Solution entered behind him, and her fist slammed into his back hard enough to send him flying through the opposite wall and tumbling among the crashing debris.
Sado and his companions immediately relaxed and approached the fallen Vargas. They stepped through the hole in the wall and around the stone debris expecting a corpse, only to find that, though he was unconscious, he was miraculously alive. He and the pair with him raised their swords over his back to finish the downed Vargas off. “What in the world happened to him…?” Sado shook his head with awe.
Nua wiped her forehead. “He was with an elite unit in a now extinct country of my homeland. That is the only place he could have learned those arts, or that battle stance. They were the second most feared unit in the nation at the time, specializing in guerilla warfare, small unit tactics… I thought they had been largely wiped out by the Dark Savior. I guess she missed one. But…” Nua reached up and touched the short hair that hung from her head, “I’ve met the woman, and I would suppose that like this, I must look at least enough like her to trigger…” She waved a hand toward where they stood. “That.”
“Do we kill him?” Sado asked.
“Of course.” Solution answered.
“No.” Nua shook her head, and Solution snapped her gaze to her student.
“I want to know why he’s here, what if he was a plant, and if there are more? I’ve heard rumors of surviving individuals and small units in the wilderness or outlands… it doesn’t seem likely that he came this far for that. But I can’t rule it out either.”
“Sado, you and your companions wait outside, send one to get some adamantite chains. We will confine him, but first I want to question him.” Nua ordered, and reluctantly, Sado and his companions sheathed their swords, the pair who had joined him, grabbed him beneath his armpits and dragged the limp body back into the room, following their former Prince.
“As you wish, mistress. Just please be careful. That one is tricky.” Sado said, and bowed deeply and departed.
When they were gone, Nua looked over to Solution, “Teacher, I didn’t expect you to respond so quickly.”
Solution shrugged, “I always know where you are, and whether you’re in real danger.” She tapped on her cheek as if thoughtful, and Nua touched that spot on her face, where inside of her cheek, Solution’s mark rested.
“Of course you do.” Nua said with fond exasperation, “Would you be so kind?”
“No, I won’t be kind, but I will do it.” Solution said whimsically, her armored legs did not even clink as she approached the unconscious warrior of a dead nation. She reached down, her slime arm extending far beyond the human guise it wore, she engulfed his body and raised him up, then set him against the wall. His head hung limply as if asleep.
Nua positioned herself beside her teacher’s flowing arm and crossed her arms behind her back. “Wake him.” She ordered.
It was not a pleasant wakeup, Solution’s acidic body burned as rapidly or as slowly as she liked. She cut it off as soon as his eyes snapped open in pain, but he didn’t scream.
His eyes darted around him, and fell, to Nua’s surprise, not on Solution who was very ‘noticeable’ but on herself.
Before he could speak, Nua did, “Why did you do that to Freyjin?! Why did you try to kill me?!”
Vargas blinked several times as events came rushing back to him, and he was the man Nua knew again. “I didn’t! I mean… I didn’t mean to! I did but it was…”
“Who are you, really?” Nua demanded, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “You fought the Dark Savior and survived, I know that much, and…” She inclined her head, “my compliments. I didn’t think anybody had ever survived a fight with her before outside of the created servants of our god.”
Vargas struggled in vain, “Mistress… I won’t fight, please, let me down!”
“Then you don’t need to be let down. Solution, if he struggles, remove his legs.” Nua ordered, and Vargas froze, looking at her in horror.
“The truth!” Nua’s blue eyes blazed at him.
“My name ‘is’ Vargas. I never lied to you, mistress, I promise. Yes, I fought… the one you call the Dark Savior. I fought in the west, after the last great siege there, I and the rest of us, we withdrew. I was part of a team sent to try to imitate her tactics, draw her out, and kill her. As you speak of her as though she were still alive, I assume we failed.” He looked to her for confirmation.
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“Yes, you did.” Nua said abruptly, then raised an eyebrow, “Do you truly not know what happened afterward?”
“I don’t! I guess my uniform looked like the ones of her elites and… to tell the truth, I had no memory of the fighting, so no connection to anyone. With no idea where to go, I went with the one who rescued me, joined a merchant eventually, found myself on a ship, then another, then another then… I wasn’t.” Vargas blinked back tears.
“I met a woman, I fell in love, we fell with Komestra and… it’s the truth! I swear it in the names of all the six gods!” Vargas exclaimed.
Nua’s wrath was unsatisfied at the mention of the gods of her tormentors. “You, a human supremacist… married an elf of all things?! Does she know what you were?! What you are?!”
Her wrath began to dissipate ‘slightly’ when his head drooped, “I got my memory back just before I was given my leave, Freyjin and I were dueling, I was trying to help prepare her to fight you for her children’s freedom and she got in a lucky blow. I… no, I didn’t tell my wife when I went home… I couldn’t.” He raised his head to look down at Nua, “I couldn’t!” He exclaimed desperately.
“So it really is just a coincidence then?” Nua asked him, “You’re not a plant meant to avenge your nation’s defeat?”
“We lost?!” Vargas exclaimed the question, “Please! Tell me! Tell me what happened to my country! I beg you…!”
Nua looked to her right and up at Solution’s face. “I believe him.” The monster said firmly, “His pain about that is too deliciously real for me to doubt it.”
“Go on, you know more about what happened than I do.” Nua instructed, and Solution’s sweet smile drew closer as she walked closer to the confined human. “After you were killed, the city your people were holed up in… was erased. Everyone was killed except for six people, not even the foundations of the place remain, the one you failed to kill, she diverted a river to wipe it from the world. After that, the Demon of the West marched all over the southern region, Wheaton was wiped out, and so were most of the towns and villages along the way. The short version is, your country made the wrong people mad at it.”
Solution giggled as the blood drained from his face, “By the end of the war, your people were eating their own, and if you want to know why anyone survived in your capital at all, it was her.” Solution cocked her head back toward Nua.
“What?!” Vargas exclaimed at the impossible.
Solution giggled at his disbelief, “She argued persuasively against killing you, and your Cardinal Raymond? He betrayed your nation, his comrades, all dead except for one I know of, and she might as well be. Only a shadow of worship for your gods survives, and your pathetic notions of human supremacy…?” Solution cocked her head toward Nua again.
Vargas' face was a whirlpool of shifting emotions before he settled on ‘despair’.
“I guess you really weren’t kidding when you called yourself ‘elf fucker’ before.” Nua glared up at him, “How many of my race did you do ‘that’ to in order to trap us?” Nua jerked her thumb toward the place where Freyjin lay.
“A lot.” Vargas admitted. “But I didn’t start that war! Blame your king for that!”
“He is dead. His daughter killed him and took the throne, your ‘trump card’, she turned on you too, and rules as the new Queen.” Nua said flatly and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her though! I swear!” Vargas jumped back to the matter of Freyjin, “It’s just… she was an elf, and I… everything came back, I lost reason…!”.
“So is your wife, as I recall. Would I be rewarding you if I chose to call in her debt, and then sold her into slavery, is that what you want, to see her in a collar again, isn’t that where you think she belongs?” Nua asked, watching his face carefully. She was not disappointed.
“No! No!” He cried out, “She didn’t do anything! She’s pregnant! Please!” He yowled desperately and hung his head again. “Just kill me… in the name of the gods… just kill me… I can’t live with this. I can’t live like this.” His blue eyes were clouded over as he begged. “Please… mistress… I feel like I’m torn in two…”
“I’d say the memory loss is real enough.” Nua said flatly, “From human supremacist to slave of an elf, an elven wife, and a half elven half human child on the way. No wonder you lost your mind. First, before I decide how or ‘if’ to end your life, how do I help Freyjin?”
“The trap… it’s meant to get elven mages to use their mana to try to heal someone, weakening them before an ambush, it just takes more powerful magic than the one who used it.” Vargas was taking deep breaths, “I didn’t mean to hurt her like that!”
“Right… we’ll deal with that issue later. So it’s like a curse, that’s what I always suspected but… I’ve never seen it up close.” Nua said with almost passive curiosity as she went to inspect the injury.
‘The unfamiliar is always vexing. But when your enemy is ‘that’, the familiar is worse.’ Nua reflected as she approached the unconscious Freyjin. She checked the woman’s thigh, ‘Thankfully, I have Yersin’s mana to draw on.’
She took off her left glove, then hesitated. Freyjin’s equipment was a mess, ‘With just a wooden sword, he utterly demolished her, and she wasn’t weak… and the Dark Savior annihilated those people… by the bones of my god, what would I give to equip an army with that runic gear. Just as soon as I am able, I’ll reach out and forge a trade treaty.’ She shook off the wayward thoughts before they carried her too far, the mess that was ‘Freyjin’ was truly vicious, blood at the forehead, broken bones aplenty at the ribs, arms, and legs. Unconsciousness was a blessing, really.
But one question lingered. ‘They liked to use my kind for their amusement… fucking humans… did he…?’ She didn’t finish the question, instead, gently opened Freyjin’s thighs and moved the undergarment aside. ‘Alright so he didn’t violate her. Maybe he really did lose it, and then when he saw who I looked like… well damn.’ She moved her hand over the black mark on Freyjin’s left inner thigh. ‘You should kill him. Quickly. Who knows how many of my people he killed himself? How many were carted off to slavery… but then there is the amnesty.’
The black gem glowed faintly, and Nua recalled Raymond’s final words to the world, if not to her. ‘Let the hatred die with me.’ That was his request. ‘If I kill Vargas for who he was, I’ll be spitting on Raymond’s last wish. What am I going to do, ride back and hunt down everybody who ever did evil to my race? No… but he’s here and it would feel so good… but then again, he was loyal until he got his memory back… and he begged for his wife to not be made to suffer for him. Curious response, a man divided and he begs for death. Death is a mercy. I am not inclined to mercy, even though…’ She looked back toward the way she’d come, ‘It would feel really, really good.’
The black marks were receding back to their source, slowly but surely.
When it was gone, she stood and returned to the room, he was still stuck against the wall, enveloped in the unbreakable slime monster’s grip. “Teacher… let him down, and please tell the healer he can return, Freyjin will survive.” Nua said, and with a sound ‘hmph’ that said she was already bored, she let Vargas fall to the floor in a heap.
Burn marks covered the visible flesh and there were probably many more spots not visible that were just as seared from the dissolving acid. Still, he barely winced. ‘That’s their pain tolerance for you.’ Nua thought.
“I didn’t get to eat much of him… but… I suppose I’ll be feasting soon enough.” Solution gave a creepy smile that chilled Vargas’s blood, her perfect golden curls bounced as she spun away and departed, leaving the two alone briefly.
“So she’ll live… thank you, mistress.” Vargas said with relief, and Nua lifted her large dress, and swung her leg out. Her foot caught him in the face, snapping his head to one side, and then she planted her foot behind him.
“So you want to die, do you, slave?” Nua snarled down at him, “Scum… trash… how many of my people did you use for sport…?” She approached, snatched him up with her left hand by gripping his brown hair and yanking him up, she slammed his back against the wall, and he hung, limp.
There was no rage in his eyes when he looked at her, only conflict, only pain. “Just kill me… please… I know what I did… I know… you don’t know what it’s like!”
“What?” Nua asked bitingly and bared her teeth as he groaned under her tightening grip.
Vargas’s eyes didn’t leave hers, though he didn’t register the pain of dangling from her left hand. “I lived two whole lives… one as… that. And then here… after forgetting the old life. Elves were my friends… my wife is an elf… when she told me she was pregnant, my first thought was to abort the half-breed… I didn’t say it! But the other half my life is… that’s everything I wanted! Just get it over with! I attacked my mistress, that’s a death penalty here! Just execute me as a criminal and…”
She dropped him to the ground, towering over him as he lay in a crumpled heap, Nua put her gloved hand on her hip and kept her left hand out over him, and spoke, “Death is three things. A convenience. An inevitability. And a mercy. If I do nothing, you’ll die sooner or later anyway. If I kill you, I’m inconvenienced because… as much as I dislike to admit it right now, you ‘are’ a useful soldier. As to the last… as much as I would enjoy killing someone from your country… I argued for mercy once, and… someone I… I cared about, care about, very much, his last request was that my race’s hatred die with him. I may not be ready to let go of my hatred for you… slave.” Nua put her foot on his neck, and began to apply pressure, he did not resist. “Not after all that you’ve done. But I couldn’t say no to him all the way, and I am not about to give you the mercy you ask for, just because you ask for it! Do you understand me?!” Nua demanded, and a very little nod was managed.
Her blue eyes blazed down at him, “You belong to me. If you want to challenge that… tell me. I will crush you again, and again, and again, until you remember you are nobody’s superior by birth. You’ll have to take the status you want, with your own hands. Whether it is your freedom… or simply your death. I’m not doing the work for you… but I will make it possible.”
“So… now what, mistress…?” Vargas wanted to look away, but the way she loomed over him it was like looking up at the sky. “You’ll be confined, and healed. I will leave off the part about attacking me, but you will answer for what you did to Freyjin, and the other three. You attacked your comrades, so your comrades will punish you. You will run the gauntlet. If you die, you get your wish, if you don’t, I’ll instruct them not to hold your…” Nua thought it over, looking away a moment, “We’ll call it a drunken mistake. Freyjin wasn’t awake for most of the beating, was she, slave?”
“No… no mistress. I just… I must have kept hitting her… after.” Vargas clutched his head, ‘Why did she have to be an elf?!’ He screamed inside his head.
“I see, so that’s what you did to your friend.” Nua spat, “Well, then as far as she’ll know this was just a training accident, you got help for her right away, but in a drunken state you mistook help for a threat. It might not be the sturdiest story, but it doesn’t need to be. We’re going to be leaving tomorrow and people will put it out of their minds.”
“Why… why are you really letting me live… mistress?” Vargas asked, suspicion in his tormented eyes.
Nua’s tone and face were loveless as she looked down at the broken man. “Like I told someone else a long time ago, I won’t have you taking the easy way out. You want to die? We’re going to a battlefield, die doing something useful for me or for your comrades, slave. I’ll tell you this though, you try ‘anything’? You try to attack me without warning, or I catch you trying to force yourself on an elven woman the way your country used to love to encourage, or you turn on your comrades…?”
Nua crouched down and grabbed him by the throat, and life began to agonizingly drain out of his body. His mouth opened and his face was awash with pain. Her eyes locked onto his from inches away as she squeezed, and he felt the cold and icy breath of a corpse on his cheek. “...And I will have you skinned alive like I did to Tlizen. Do you understand me, human… you have two ways back into my good graces. A useful death, or a useful life. As of right now, you’re even worse off than you were when I pulled you out of that fucking cage.”
She let go, and he simply lay there. “Never question me like that again, slave.” She spat the order just as the healing magic caster returned, “Go heal Freyjin, you can do so now.” Nua said, then pointed down at Vargas, “Then after Sado and the others return and have him secured, heal him.”
“Yes, my lady.” The healer replied, and Nua turned to leave. She looked down at Vargas one more time, “Explain your punishment and my ‘story’ to the others when they come back, let’s see if you can start winning my favor again slave, by speaking the truth when it is going to hurt.”
Nua then left the training hall, took a deep breath, composed herself, and began the lengthy walk back to the main hall of her estate, where she met Kaiji rushing in her direction clutching a sheathed blade in her hands.
When Kaiji spotted her, she rushed over in small, steady steps that created clicking noises which echoed off the walls. “Mistress, is everything… is Freyjin…?”
Nua waved both her hands up and down at the elbow, just in front of herself, slowing Kaiji’s words. The ruby lipstick Priceless had applied made her smile shine and the lady Aiwenor cocked her head sweetly. “Everything is fine, or will be shortly. Freyjin will be up and about in no time. Now come along, in a few hours only steps away, a prosperous future is waiting for the House of Aiwenor. Are you going to delay me from it?”
Kaiji’s mouth fell open dramatically, “My lady, I would never…” The scandalized expression disappeared and she met her lady’s smile with one of her own. “Come, let me escort my goddess to her salon, there is an early arrival who is eager to see you.”