#fyli mountains

[omorfomyalo]

Was it the slippery rocks that made it heavy?

Or it was the sun lying to our faces ?

Fyli mountains, Athens, Greece

#mountains #cloud sky #sunset #emptynest #light #nature #heavy thoughts #sundrop #fyli mountains #athens #greece #daytrip #getting lost #climbing #photography #nature photography #mountain photography #sky photography #story behind

[for-peace-war]

art by @idrawbuffgirls

This is the final part to the Great Winged One series I did.  Last night the heroes entered the mountain and after defeating the sleipnir Vanjir and the valkyrie Aesera, may have allowed an ancient evil back into the world, but... also prevented an apocalyptic joining of worlds.  It was a lot!  So again, I want to thank: @lordcaliginous, @i-am-guinevere, @scowlet, @perfectperfidy, @diermina and @that-green-nut for sticking through my attempt at pathfinder/conaning a story out of thin air.

Also thanks @mcsars for introducing me to the setting and giving such a good place to start with an AU.  So again, thanks to everyone and when I start my next series up I’ll get back to these hour writes! Cheers.

OH and @idrawbuffgirls FOR THIS ART. YOU ROCK!

THE GREAT WINGED ONE.

Follows Part I.

Follows Part II.

Follows Part III

Follows Part IV.

Follows Part V.

Follows Part VI.

Finale.

CHLORIS THE CORINTHIAN quietly collected the clothing of those convalescing within the chilled cabin.  A gentle fire warded what cold it dared from the interior, but from the shivers that ran along the men about her there was little doubt in it—the wintry frost had found its way into them, and only the strongest of those gathered would survive. That sentiment, one of strength and those that possessed it in its zenith, followed her as she moved sightlessly from one of her convalescents to the next.  How had she come to safeguard so many, she wondered, when only days before she had not been able to protect even herself?

Mindful as she was of her condition, it was the lack of her hand rather than the absence of her sight that dogged her in those waking moments.  She could still feel the phantasmal pain of the arrow piercing the white raven she had imbued with her sight—still feel that arrow lance through her eyes and cast to the ground crimson tears that she would never see. The magicks she had been expected to use were old and dark, and though her better judgment would have warned her against them, there were few things that could motivate a decision more rapidly than the ire of a Ymirish lord.  Even more so, the ire of the Jarl Grimtor, whose barbarity was second only to the delight he drew from the cries of his victims.  Sightless or not, she would never be able to forget what she had seen within captivity—she would never forget what it meant, truly, to be without power.

But sight—sight was something taken for granted.  She could hear those she tended to and through that, knew where they were. The smell of their wounds had not yet soured and so she could see those as well; she knew the number of them, had patched and bandaged them to the best of her ability.  In the absence of sight her senses had gained a preternatural edge, compensating in ways that no human would have been capable of were they not blessed by The Great Mother and the secrets that the woods whispered when frosts melted and spring’s breath was fresh within the air.  It was within the northern climes of the Pictish Wildlands, not the decaying fyli of the Karpasha Mountains, that she had learned the most important lessons of magic—true, terrifying magic.

The Pictish Wildlands were a savage wasteland to some, yet the very ground that had been seeded in the blood of generations spoke with such fervent admonishment of mankind and expectation for that which would follow, that she knew far better than to consider any part of it a waste.  The very skies above hungered there, and that hunger bred within its bowels such true and raw power that even a woman blinded such as she, could yet see the beauty manifested within the awakening might that was come of its mounting urges.  Yet for all of this, she had not been captured for her knowledge of those untamed wilds—and she had not been named for them, either.

She was but Chloris the Corinthian. And she wasn’t even from Corinthia.

Had she ever truly seen, though?  The eyes were deceptive and the faces that she had known did little to tell her of what she saw when a person was before her.  It was not until they were freed to show what was beneath the mask of their existence that the truth was known and by then, was it not always too late?  She had scars to remind her of that—upon her back, and forever straining against her heart where her trust should have been. Even before she was without sight, she realized, she was sightless. Had she ever seen anyone?  Could anyone?

A cough came from the man to her left, whose body she had found curled up beneath a tree and nearing a death that would take him from the lands of his ancestors, into the frozen hell that swirled about them.  Even had she not, with the white raven, seen their lot emerge from the snow then she still would have known he was a Zingaran: she could smell the salt of the sea in their blood and hear the crashing of waves when they breathed.  The man’s cough was stronger than it had been the day before, and promised to discharge some of that which coated his lungs and forced his ragged breathing to hasten.

“Where am I?” The man asked.  She had not expected him to awaken so suddenly.  His voice was weak, yet there was the virile lust for life within it that the swarthy men of the Zingaran coast braced life with. “You—”

“You are safe,” Chloris answered.  She felt her way from where she stood, to the table nearest them, and from there moved with a warmed cup of broth to offer him something to drink.  His breathing resounded throughout the air for her; his motions became faint lines that were traced in her mind a thousand times.  No, she could not see the dusky Zingarana, but she could feel him—she knew where he was, even if he did not.

From the opposite corner in the room, another voice rose. “Marioso, yer aliv-ed. Gods be damned, I tho’ I were due fer’a promotin’.”

“Darmino, you live?”

“Yer damn’t right I is.”

“Ah, what good news. The captain—”

“The witch’rn’t sayin’ nothin’a the cap’n.”

“The witch? Madam—”

She began to speak. “My name is—”

“It dern’t matter what she am say ‘a her name, Marioso.  She be a witch’r frost’n fell magicks, cullin’ yer ‘fore ya’ spake ill’r her dark gods.”

The man, whose name must have been Marioso, took in a quiet breath.  Chloris could feel his patience returning to him, like a hound that had been long without its master.  Once he had wrestled it into submission, she supposed, he might be free to speak more earnestly.  Until then, she remained quiet—and the other spoke in her place.

“Have you offended our hostess in some way, Darmino?”

“Gods damn’t truth ain’ done a thing t’er!” His protest caused her to wince, though she tried her best to conceal it.  Loud voices—anger, were things she had learned to avoid or endure.  Perhaps her attempt to conceal that had not been as successful as she wished though, for the man that had been harassing her—Darmino—found a somewhat softer tone.  “When I wok-ed up and she’s there with’r crow teats all in me face, I tol’t her true—‘I’ma man’a fair haired asternations, I din want any a wha’ yer offerin’,’ and she said—”

“I am shocked she said anything to you after that, you cantankerous scab. Where are your manners, Mr. Marachino?”

“Ain’ never held ‘rm.”

“Mitra be praised,” Marioso said.  At long last he seemed to remember that she was standing there, for he reached for the broth and drank of it steadily with a shaking hand. “Forgive my companion his indelicacies, madam. We are indebted to you—and men of the Cavallo repay their debts, on our captain’s honor.”

“Maybe if yer the cap’n there’s honor,” Darmino said. “If Valensi’s dead, anyroad.”

“If he has died in pursuit of—”

Chloris interjected. “ He hasn’t.”

“Hasn’t?”

“He hasn’t died.”  She drew her arm back and set the emptied cup down, then felt her way to the wall and removed the poker from it.  The fire had to be tended once more, for of the three men she had retrieved only two had awakened—and the third trembled now more than ever.  The smell of death was upon him, but she had seen it turned back before.  She had seen it turned back, many, many times before.

From both men, sounds of joined relief flooded the erstwhile tense cabin.  “Oh, what joyous news,” Marioso said. “It was a damnably bold plan he had, and when our trap failed! Oh, but we have prevailed. I—ah, my ribs.”

“You are much wounded,” Chloris said. “Please, do not move.”  She wished she had her other hand then, so that she might move her hair from her face as she tended the fire, but the stub wiped at ineffectively, and her hold on the poker felt suddenly hollowed for that reminder. Was she not much wounded?  And yet, she could not stop moving—if she did, then they were all ended that evening when the cold came and the darkness with it.

“What of the battle, then?” Marioso asked her.  She could imagine his eyes, seafoam green and sweltering with delight, cast upon a body that had been broken and beaten more times than there were days to the year.  She felt flustered by that attention, and continued to stir the fire for whatever traces of warmth it might have provided. “How did we come to be here—how did any of it come to pass?”

At that, she spoke a single word. “Treachery.”

“Madam?”

“The girl—of the Wolflands,” Chloris went on to say.  She had seen Caethe through the eyes of the white raven, and done all she might to alert her that she had.  Jarl Grimtor was no great thinker and by saying she used the snow to alert him to where she was, she also gave the girl a chance to flee—which she had. The Zingarans had done their good service, certainly, but the girl and her wolves had been considerable in setting into motion the events that followed.  Even as she thought of them, they seemed too fantastic—it all seemed too unreal.

“Caethe,” Marioso said.  “We occasioned upon her on the way up.  As I recall, the captain had a desire to see her informed of our plan to aid her, but the Stygian—Tsekani, was it? She said it would be a better ploy if she did not know. That a cornered wolf fought thrice as hard as one that knew it could escape.”

Chloris believed she concealed her revulsion at the mention of the Stygian’s tactics.  It was true, a cornered animal did fight to the end, but the Pict was a member of a pack—and the presence of her friends, she had seen, was what pressed her beyond the point others would have endured alone.  As Marioso made no mention of her response, she assumed her deception had prevailed.

Or else, the Zingaran was merely too nice to show otherwise.

Outside of the cabin, stalking about it protectively, the dire wolf that had shattered her arm so that she might slip free Jarl Grimtor’s chain, howled but once.  He had found something. Chloris had taken to calling him Vigo, and he responded kindly to it—never so much as to seem tamed but answer her if she needed him at any moment. Had the Child of Wolves known that she had not meant to harm her? Was Vigo’s presence a reminder that their shared blood mattered more than the sides they had been on in the battle?  She did not know.  But she knew that she could vividly imagine what he must have been feeling then, rushing about the snowy battlefield and consuming whatever had not yet been taken by the elements or the wild.

She could feel in her blood—the blood that had dripped down her cheeks after the white raven fell—that she was as free as he.

Marioso politely clearing his throat called her back to the present.

“You spoke of treachery, madam?”

“After the Wolfchild—Caethe—was rescued by her companions upon the winged wyvern and Vigo had pulled me to safety—”

“I’m sorry, madam.  Vigo?”

“It be thar devil wolf she is nightly fuck’t by in the shade of—”

“Mr. Marachino!”

“Well, I ain’t tellin’ a fib!”

“I am certain that whatever relationship our hostess has with this creature is a consensual endeavor in husbandry.”  As he worked through that sentence, Marioso seemed to stumble more than his companion had when he tried to stand.

Despite herself, Chloris could not but bashfully smile and blush.

“I do not couple with the wolf,” she said.

Marioso’s relief was audible. “Oh, well.  If you had—and I do not mean to imply that you had—but had that been the case, no gentleman of the sea ought inquire or conspire against you on that account, madam. I assure you—”

“Oi! ‘m well glad yer nay be our cap’n, Mariosi! Y’r talkin’ more’n a preddy har what know’t I wan’r somethin’ bad.”

“I’ll never understand your turns of phrase, Mr. Marachino.”

“Aye, well, anyroad—go back to talkin’ wi’ yer lady.”

Marioso, as if given leave to actually speak, went on. “My lady, please do continue.”

“You do not need to call me that,” Chloris said, but went on. “After we were safe, the others realized that Jarl Grimtor was injured.  Ymirish lords are not loyal—they respect strength because they fear pain. Two of them—Joratun the Mighty and Thoramun Blooddrinker, broke away from the offensive and pressed in upon Jarl Grimtor.  I believe they felt that in his weakened state they could fell him.”

Joratun, Son of Brator, had been as close to a right hand as Jarl Grimtor may have known, excepting his son—who he had, in a stroke of genius motivated by her entrapment—seen sent to the interior of Glacimar itself.  With Grimthor Jarlblood no longer at his father’s side, Joratun and Thoramun made their move—and discovered why the jarl stood where he did.

“Scurrilous dogs,” Marioso breathed under his breath.  “Have these creatures no honor?”

“Not them,” she concluded. “But another.”  At that, she was reminded of what had been lost to that point and spoke more directly.  “Jarl Grimtor struck both down, but his injuries forced him from the field.  They say that the Nordheimers were able to defeat the lone Ymirish lord, Morfund the Breaker, and that—well, the mountains now call for a new thane. They say this woman, Aesileif the Aesir, will conquer the mountain and that her brother, Torman the Vanir, who was slain in felling the Great Winged One Aesera will be the hero to ordain her ascent.”

She understood very little of how Nordheimer culture operated, though the title seemed to imply that one person would bestride both Vanaheim and Asgard, joining them together and uniting a legacy of hatred under one fist.  A hero would be needed to preside over the joining of the mountains, and if they had indeed slain a Valkyrie then a great deed had been accomplished to merit their challenge to the heavens.  It seemed that a new thane may come of the savages of the north, as dangerous a thought as that may have been.

But she also knew that so long as Jarl Grimtor lived, that title would be a meaningless one.

“I cannot believe we prevailed,” Marioso said. “I mean—I knew we would, but what luck.  What honor—oh, how can we repay you, indeed?”

He may have meant it as a general courtesy, but she took him at it.  “There is a man among the captured, Grimthor Jarlblood. He and I were as one for a time, and I would see him granted the freedom he was promised.”

She did not mean to seem desperate, but she knew her words left her with more alacrity than civility mandated.  These were not the words of Chloris of Corinthia, she knew.  They were of the woman that had bandaged that poor half-giant, and seen him back to strength countless times.  They were the words of a woman that knew what love meant, and knew that the only reason he had not died was because of it.  Not carnal love and its brutality, but something more resplendent—something that did not take, but only gave and surrendered willingly to the strength of the moment.

“I do not know what it will take to see such done, but I will give my all for that endeavor.”

“An’ me,” Darmino said. “Since yer hair too dark fer a proper thank-fuck, least I can’der is see this Grimthorn soaks’s sword back in yer. If ol’ Garibaldi don’ go dyin’ on us, I’m speakin’ fer’m too.”  The sickly man’s cough could have been an assent—or his soul leaving him.

Chloris thought to speak more of the matter, but the howl that she had heard before was joined by a sudden growling.  Outside, Vigo had found something indeed—and that something had found them. “Stay here,” she told them, and without considering how defenseless she was against the world without, she ventured into it.

The snow as cold under her bare feet and yet it did not stop her stride as she moved in the direction of Vigo’s growling.  Under it she could hear a voice calmly speaking, and for the time being preventing him from advancing from his place.  What was she doing? Why?  Even if she were to summon any spells in the cold, what chance did she have of defeating someone that she couldn’t see? And to what end?  To protect Zingaran sailors that surely were as false as everyone else? Logic, reason—sheer self-preservation told her to trust for once in something other than the good of the world, and to take back to her own path as she had denied herself for so long.

But she was not a solitary creature, she knew.

A crow would always need its murder.

She allowed her feet to see for her—to guide her, until finally she felt Vigo’s back, bristling with raised fur, against her hand.  The chilled air was heavy upon her, but she knew that she had within her enough strength to forge from the prevailing winds a blade to severe the limbs of any monster daring to challenge her friend—or those she protected under her wing.  Yet when she looked to the one that had so agitated Vigo and threatened her home, she was dumbfounded.

She could not see him—and yet she could.

For the briefest moment, a golden light illuminated the darkness that had become her world.  This man was wounded—injured in a battle she could not comprehend, and yet the force of his existence fluctuated with a radiance that faded with each palpitation.

“I do not wish to kill your companion,” the man said. “But I must go to Jokullgard.”

“He will not harm you,” she said. “If you do not harm him.”

The man was quiet. The light upon him faded further until it was but a whisper—though no longer did Vigo growl.

“I am Keleos the Kothian,” he said. “You have my word that no harm will come to you.”

For but a moment, Chloris thought of saying what she had always had—that she was Chloris the Corinthian, a scholar of ancient texts that had been abducted by Jarl Grimtor and forced into service.  There was truth in that lie—more truth, in fact, than lie.  But that which had bound her to it; that which had for so long shackled her into place, was no longer there.  She was free—as free as the savage lands from which she had come.

“I am Qali the Crow,” she said. “It is good to see you.”

#conan #qali the crow #writing exercise #the great winged one

[travelpenandpalate]

In 480 BC high above #Athens near the ancient mountain village of #Fyli, Persian King Xerxes I watched his superior fleet be destroyed below by the outnumbered Greek fleet in the narrow Straits of Salamis ending his hopes of ever adding #Greece to his empire. #travelwriter #culturaltourism #ancienthistory #Greekhistory #navelbattles #PersianEmpire http://ift.tt/2kDxhon

#IFTTT #Instagram

[for-peace-war]

First image is provided by @diermina​ Second image is provided by @idrawbuffgirls​

So this is really different.  In the Conan event I ran on Wednesday, one of the characters—a concubine named Beata—was expected to die in an Attack of Opportunity from a hidden enemy; however, he rolled low and she ran past him and eventually to “freedom.”  Not expecting this but seeing the chance to expand on some more lore, well. This story happened.

Diermina was practicing speed painting and produced the above image, which stunned me! The epic piece from Kelzack, well.  It’s beneath the cut for a reason and I’m really thankful to both of them.

Eventually, I am certain, the heroes will make it to the Temple of Longing.  Eventually...

This piece was 1 hour, 13 minutes of writing!

THE TEMPLE OF LONGING.

Follows: Prologue.

Follows Part I.

Follows Part II.

Follows Part III.

Follows Part IVa.

Follows Part IVb.

Part V.

BEATA THE BRYTHUNIAN’S breathing beggared her battered, bruised, though becomingly beauteous body beyond belief. For all that she had experienced, all she had not seen—she was not yet broken.  So long as she kept moving, she told herself, she could never be broken.

Behind her, the battle surely raged on—and her sisters, those beauties that had been brought from all about the world at the behest of their benevolent benefactor, were imperiled in ways she could not fathom.  It had all happened so suddenly: happened so quickly, that in the moment it took for her to realize she was running, she had already become something that rode a line she could not yet comprehend, but knew not to deviate from.

They had been attacked.  The Aquilonians were always a threat she had heard of, but as her beloved Dorogoy, whose voice she could hear within her mind even as she staggered through soft sand, had told her not to fear—she had not.  He may have been the Satrap Mostafa to some, but to her—and only her—he was Dorogoy: the man that had saved her from a life of certain misery.  The man that had, in her time of need, been all that kept her from falling beneath sands that were far more deadly than those that she then staggered through.

Before her, the world had become a sea of that sand.  The passing of the storm had been a gradual thing, filled with terrifying sounds and shouts that denied the human world.  As but a girl had she been taken from Berthalia, in Southeastern Brythunia nearest the Karpash Mountains, yet even then she knew words of the mysterious beyond—words that filtered from the mysterious fyli of the mountain and reached the ears of those that would one day sell her: that would one day free her from the weakness that was a land burdened with beauty and a lack of brawn to see it protected.

Those words of her childhood, which spoke of ghosts and phantoms—spirits that hungered for blood, or the sweet things that filled the heart in less corporeal ways—had been tales mean to scare her.  And for a time they had done just that: they had stripped her of courage and of strength and left her a passive and docile little creature that obeyed the words of her family—that family she had been born with, not the gift that she would one day be given.

The gift that at that moment, she was certain, the dead were feasting upon.

“The blood of boyars is within you,” her father had said as he bit the coin used to purchase her.  The Boyars—those disreputable fools that had lost a land, lost a people—lost a world, because they could not agree to come together at their time of need.  Yes, some kept that title, but they wore it as any scavenger did looted armor: ill-fitted and ridiculously, yet capable of protecting them from those clumsy fools that would have otherwise challenged them.

That could not be what she was descended from, she knew.

That was not something that her Dorogoy would have desired.

It was the thought of Dorogoy—always the thought of her sweet protector; her master, that kept her from falling where she was.  The sky above them had been a brilliant blue when the Aquilonians freed them from the palanquin, but as she ran it betrayed itself to a shade violet and slowly became something darker.  She thought of the blood she had seen: of the flesh that hung from the mouth of one of her sisters—perhaps Titre?— that had emerged from the confines of her own palanquin a changed beast.  She thought of the eunuchs, risen from the dead that grabbed her; of how they had beaten her, of how they had torn at her until her veil was lost and she, in her bedraggled state, had been freed to flee from their pursuit.

What land was this that they had been birthed into from the darkness below?

If she could but find her Dorogoy—if she could free herself of a world without him, she was certain, she would be safe. For he would never fail her; he would never leave her to suffer a world in which she walked and he did not.  No, somewhere among the endless sands she would find him, and once she did—once she did, she would know the comfort of his arms again.

It had taken her years to know that comfort though.

When she first arrived in the pleasure palace, she was little more than a child.  Satrap Mostafa had gained her from the hands of a man that had gained her for his own tutelage.   At the time—that time before Dorogoy—she had not known what these people wanted of her, though soon enough it became apparent: a Brythunian beauty was a golden commodity, and if the blood of boyars shone within her then she was all the more splendid.  In passing had she been seen by the satrap, who did not yet wear his iron mask, and he had requested her.

“She is not yet trained,” the merchant had said.

Dorogoy, in a voice smooth as the silken sheets she then longed for, answered. “She is perfect as she is.”

It might have seemed foolish to say it—but even then, she had seen the majesty that was the man he would become.  He was tall, but not immense.  His eyes were light brown and gentle, though sharp when he was alarmed and glowed with a sort of calming majesty.  In years to come he would wear an iron mask over those features, and yet she had never felt deprived by that.  The mask was not cold to her—it was warmed by the man within it.  His hands were still warm; his voice still a song of devotion. And even then—even before she knew what a man truly was, she had known that he was among the best of them.   The merchant had tried haggling, but her Dorogoy would not be persuaded.

She was perfect as she was.

She was his.

The muscles in her legs had gone from hot to cripplingly heated.  Each step she took was a protest against the inevitable; a denial of the death that lingered upon the horizon.  Her throat was raw and wretched; her breath, scented not in dates but the vomit that had been forced from her when she fell.  It had been when her hands felt the warm sand beneath her that she knew she could sink into it: sink into the silt and vanish as so many had before her.  All she needed to do was give up; to let the world know that the blood of boyars burned just like any other beneath the merciless sun. How ashamed she was to think of those moments, which had been but an hour prior and yet felt like a lifetime.   She could have let go—would have let go—and become one with a world that had been attempting to devour her since first her blue eyes opened and the breeze danced within her blonde hair.

Beata had never been the best at anything.  When she had arrived within the harem, there were already a few that were counted as legendary among Mostafa’s possessions.  Diwa the Drujistani, who spoke of death and whispered tales of a distant land, was possessed of a touch that could turn flowers black, or see those things fallen brought back from the beyond.   Once, when she was but two summers past her arrival, had she seen just that—a dead rat, touched by the Drujistani and made to dance with the shifting of her fingers.

What could she offer to the man that had purchased her in comparison?

Norra of Nordheim, a woman whose hair matched her own but features were stronger by several harsh degrees, was strong and could wrestle men as if she were born with the same steel within her body that they knew.  They had become closer than any other—shared a palanquin and spoke the same languages, and yet there was nothing about her that would have placed her above even her.

She did not possess Vithika’s winding hips or Ilahe’s voice.  When she thought to develop some talent of her own, it had always been to the detriment of her station.  With tears had she turned to another for aid, for some sign that she might be able to earn the admiration she had for so long desired. But no one could help her.

No one, that was, save for one person—the Fiend.

He had tricked her with the promise of something that would make her beloved Dorogoy see her.  Promised to give her a world of experience that would win him her heart.  And so she had left the confines of the pleasure palace to visit the garden with him: to hear his words, to see his mysteries and learn from his secrets.  The Fiend had been convincing in that he seemed a simple man: thin, clever, and quick to smile.  But all things about him were false.   All he knew were lies. Lies—and lust.

The memory of what followed the Fiend’s treacheries burned hotly within her.  It burned up to her neck, which was still covered by her collar, and caused an old injury to inflame.  There, against the sand, she surely could have fallen and perished—yet, as she thought of that lesson she had learned, perhaps the only lesson that truly mattered, Beata pushed herself up and staggered in her step from the blue skies into the violet.

How old had she been then?  Fifteen—sixteen, to the day?  The Fiend had sought to corrupt something within her; to take something of her that she had not yet known could be taken.  But when he made it clear what he desired—and that truthfully, her Dorogoy would desire it one day, she knew that whatever it was could not be abandoned.  That she could not let this fiend, this liar—this beast, to so harm her.

So she snatched the knife from his waist.

Sharp things had never been to her liking.  Since she was a child, Beata had felt that violence was something to be avoided at any expense.  The Fiend, though a thin man, was still taller than she was—and stronger, and when she took his knife he laughed as if she had told him a joke far cleverer than she could have imagined.  They were alone in the garden; shadows the only witness to the cruelty he would have visited upon her. So in her moment of desperation—perhaps, in the moment of her awakening—she did all that she could.  The knife found its mark.

The scar yet lingered across her throat.

Diwa would later call it her First Death—a gift, she said, from a god that loved her more than any other. As the knife ran along her throat she felt blinding pain and in an instant, the horror of her body falling out of her control.  She thrashed; blood slipped past her lily-white skin and rosined the ground a roseate hue spread by her flailing arms.  In an instant she had seized control of what she was and defended what she believed was hers to defend.

The Fiend slunk away—never to be seen again… or so she had believed.

Had it been he that she fled from, more so than the corpses that walked?  Across the horizon he had been a sticklike figure and yet, she knew his stride well enough.  Never had she spoken a word of his deeds to another, yet he knew—and she knew—that his life was held in her hands.

Would he have spared her, as she had spared him?

“My perfection,” Dorogoy Satrap Mostafa had said, softly and with a kindness she had known could come of him.  When she awakened on her own bed, she felt his hand tenderly touching where the scar that would forever make her act of defiance was. “Would you have left me in a world without you?”

She wept. “No.”

He kissed her forehead.  Then her temple.  He whispered in her ear.  “You are mine.”

As the years passed he would kiss her more after that day; each year a little lower and a little longer.  His touch had become more than a comfort—it was an obsession.  By the time that he kissed her—truly kissed her, she had become so inflamed for him that she no longer knew what life had been like before he had visited himself upon her.  Even when the tender flowers of her maidenhood yearned for his touch, had he been gentle and kind with her.  That which the Fiend desired; that which he sought to steal from her, remained as true to her then as ever it would.

She was his—and she was perfect the way she was.  Those words had been what kept her moving, even though the world had become only a dark shade of what it once was.  A shade that, as she walked, began to turn from the rich and majestic violet in the sky, to a faint red and finally, crimson that lined the horizon.  Wherever she was—wherever she went, she knew, she would have to find him so that she would be safe.

Diwa the Drujistani’s words returned to her as she walked. “Life can only be appreciated through Death,” the Drujistani witch had whispered.  Her eyes, amber lined with crimson streaks, had begun to glow with interest at that. Never before had Beata seen her show such interest in her—in her life, and death, than she had after those words. “You have known First Death. What is there to fear in the one to come?”

She slowed in her stride as she recalled those words.  Was it death that she feared—truly? Since first she had begun running; since first she had thought to call back to the others, it had not been with the understanding that she feared the end of her life.  The terminus of all things, it had to be said, was death—and that terminus, though daunting, was one she had indeed experienced before.  Death had changed her—first or otherwise—and made her see the beauty of a man that stood somewhere in the distance.

All she feared was losing him.

She could not live in a world without him.

Beneath a crimson sky the abattoir stretched in grim salutation.  Overhead, carrion birds sang a dolorous song that echoed off the emptiness of a world hungering for those very souls that then slipped from it and into a darkness beyond time.  Beata had exhausted her will to run.  She walked then, past bodies partially covered in sand, and standards of both armies scattered about.  A golden eagle, clutching a Mitran sun girding a gladius, stuck at an awkward angle from the ground: its shaft broken, and the banner beneath it waving in a hollow, cold flap.  On the wind she could hear the moans of the dying—and of the dead—and knew that wherever she was going, she would need to go no further.

To her right, an immense bird descended and caught hold of a man that had crawled free his sandy grave.  Its head was absent skin; its body a massive plumage of black that made it appear more shadow than avian. She heard the man’s moan as it cracked his bones—heard not pain, but the pleasure of death overtake him.  Beata lifted a hand to her mouth and walked on.

There, in the middle of the gathered bodies of the dead, she saw a single horse.  Upon its back, a thin figure sat.  That thin figure, cast against the red sky, was nearly a shadow itself—but she could see the glint of iron upon its face.

Immediately, she wept.

“Dorogoy,” she said—her voice dry, her words a scratchy protest against motion.  But she rushed to him and fell to her knees in relief.

The lone rider—her Dorogoy, descended from the horse and crossed the sands with measured steps.  She looked up at him, at his cold mask, and began to speak.

He silenced her with a finger.

No longer did she feel warmth upon his hand—no longer did she feel his hand at all.  The bony digit that silenced her was the steel that had been within her protector.  She heard his voice on the winds about her, bidding her to be still—to be silent.  Loyally, she held as she was.  Beneath that mask, Beata knew, the lovely face she had adored was no longer there.

“Would you live in this world without me,” the wind said to her as it swayed about her.  His thumb, a sharp and bony thing, slowly ran beneath her eye, pushing away tears.  He used it then to lift her chin… to draw her up before him.  But a girl, she should have trembled—as a woman, she looked boldly into the mask that was before her.

The land that she had found herself in—the land that the others were in, was not the one they had once known.  Of that, she could have no doubt.  But true to this world or any other, she knew—knew as much as she knew the blood of boyars, or the scar on her throat, or the pains she had endured to stand before him, that she had nothing to fear.  It had never been the face of her Dorogoy that had intrigued her—it was what glowed within him.

He gestured to the horse, as stripped of flesh and bone as its rider.  With grace, Beata allowed herself to be helped into the saddle, and then felt the weight of her Dorogoy settle into place behind her.

The Zuagir Desert.  Drujistan.  Hell. Wherever they were, it didn’t matter.  As the horse started off at its deathly slow pace and she felt her Dorogoy’s arms settle around her, Beata knew that she was where she belonged.  Diwa had been correct: after experiencing First Death, what did she have to fear of that which was to come? Life could only be appreciated through death—and Death, surely, could only be savored with life.

No other girl of the harem could have said that.  If Death had become her master, then he had been correct so long ago, when first he laid his eyes upon her.

She was perfect as she was—perfect and his.

#beata the brythunian #conan #writing exercise #art