Penny

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene bowed his head and held his tongue, resolving to leave the talking to Solae. He wondered what bonded implied in Syshin society but supposed that it held enough truth in any case. There was a bond between them that went beyond fellow refugees. He wondered if it implied servitude as a liegeman an woman might define the term, or an emotional connection as between lovers. Again both held enough truth.

The interior of the starship/habit was surprisingly quiet. Normally a star ship was a nearly overwhelming symphony of pumps, motors, and electrical equipment. The subtle subversion of his unconscious expectations bothered him but he kept it from his face. The ship hadn’t been operational in many generations and the vast bulk of its internal machinery had been either salvaged or repurposed. The metal walls were still visible in some places but in others the Syshin had constructed their own internal walls from plant matter and red brown adobe. The resulting effect was not unlike the inside of a wasps nest, with dozens of small freestanding chambers constructed in what would have been holds and maintenance decks.

The technique had the added effect of making the space much cooler than it might otherwise have been in such a tropical environment, in places where the curvature of the hull as particularly extreme condensate dripped from the ceiling, often times into large pools fastened for just such an effect. Plants, some native a but mostly offworld varieties, grew around the fringes of the ponds with surprising profusion. Rene wondered if they would have been cave dwellers in their natural environment, or they had other ways besides direct sunlight to gather energy. The inside of the ship seemed almost disturbingly alive, more like a subterranean rainforest than a building as humans understood it.

Like most children Rene had gone through a phase of fascination with aliens. The reality was that despite the fact that a score or so of intelligent species had been identified, there wasn’t nearly as much interaction as one might imagine. Methane breathers from Hydax had colonized hundreds of worlds, but those worlds were so inhospitable to humans that competition for space or resources was virtually non existent. The same could be said of the majority of alien species known to man, with contacts existing mostly at academic levels and with tourism among the super rich. Only where metabolic processes were similar enough to allow the sharing of biospheres, did competition occurred. As with the Syshin, this usually didn’t go well for the non humans.

The Syshin watched them as they made their way down the long axial corridor of the ship. Many looked suspicious and others looked out right hostile, although they dropped their gazes as Nami swept them with her strange nonhuman eyes. There were a surprising number of them, adults as well as children, and they seemed to fill most of what Rene could conceive of as living spaces.

“They worry,” Nari explained when he mentioned it. Her words curiously clipped and with clicks deep in her throat that snapped off the end of her words. How Solae had managed to learn and speak the tongue was beyond him.

“With the..x-trouble, they worry humans turn on them, dangerous time,” the alien expounded. Her fears were probably justified, history was full of cases of minority populations suffering pogroms and massacres at times of turmoil and it probably wouldn’t take much for disgruntled workers to turn against the aliens when they were drunk on the equally potent intoxicants of alcohol and power. The Syshin had a strange smell to them, perhaps only noticeable when they were in close proximity, it reminded Rene of spice mixes from Xandar or Chem-hi, though neither was a perfect max. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant but neither could he have claimed to enjoy the scent.

“Damn,” Rene breathed as they stepped through a mud covered bulkhead. The space beyond must have once been the main hold, no other space on a starship permitted so much open space, and stretched at hundred meters in both directions. The ceiling was visible thirty meters above and hung with dozens of glow bulbs, each bulb dangled amid a field of green vines, some of which appeared to be fruit bearing. The floor of the large enclosure was equally verdant with green vines pouring out of opened ventilation shafts and trees and bushes of dozens of varieties neatly, if eccentrically, spaced. Older looking Syshin, many with colorful plumage moved amongst the trees, pruning and tending them with tools of recycled steel or reshaped stone.

In the very center of the hold stood a strange looking structure. It was nearly twenty meters tall and seemd to have been made on a frame of agricultural tubing formed into irregular pentagons which were then faced with the same adobe they had seen before. Unlike the earlier structures though, these surfaces had been polished smooth till they looked more like stone than mud. Many of the panels were painted with strange abstract art, mostly in greens and blues. The pentagonal panels fit together purposely but the lack of symmetry was unsettling to human eyes.

Nari paused and said something to Solae in Syshi. Rene kept his face studiously blank but nodded his head when Solae did. His skin was beginning to crawl and he tried to banish thoughts of what might happen if these negotiations didn’t go well. Would the aliens try to collect the bounty on Solae? Had they heard the offer. He resisted the urge to let his hand slip into the pocket where he held his pistol. For now he had to stay calm and hope that Solae knew what she was doing.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene felt a huge surge of relief when Solae relented. A tightness in his chest, something he hadn't been aware of until it departed, relaxed. He had only known her for a few days but he already cared for her more than he cared to admit. It wasn't a good idea to become emotionally involved. All of his training underscored that fact, but he wasn't able to stop himself. Solae's body trembled slightly and he hugged her close to him for a moment, offering what comfort he could. Instinctively he pressed his lips to her forehead for a moment and then released her.

"I could never regret keeping you safe Solae, no matter what it might cost."

The darkness and the pressure were unpleasant enough but the slightly sticky itch against his skin was worse by far. The truck rumbled along the rough dirt road, its heavy diesel engine snorting and snarling over the pothole pocked surface. Each jolt shifted the overburden of sugar cane atop of them, smearing the sweltering ponchos they wore with more of he sticky juice. They had left Oanh and Hyun Tae two hours earlier. Min Ho had provided them with a backpack full of supplies as well as some weapons and ammunition. As a Marine, Rene felt under equipped but it was hard to imagine a situation that extra firepower would solve.

They had said their goodbyes a few hours earlier. Min Ho, whose land produced sugar cane along with his other fruits and vegetables had arranged for a local trucker to pick up a load of the sticky stalks and take it to a mill outside the city. Because of the stink of the milling process the ramshakle factories were far outside the city and the one Min Ho had chosen was In the general direction of the Shyshin encampment. During the stifling ride the truck had been stopped twice at what Rene could only assume were checkpoints. Thankfully none of the Gids manning those stations had seen fit to give the truck more than a cursory inspection.

After a sweltering eternity the engine grumbled to a stop. Rene squeezed Solae’s hand and checked the pocket chronometer Min Ho had included with his gift of supplies. Two hours and eleven minutes of travel time. Twenty minutes more than the journey was predicted to take but reasonable considering the road blocks. Rene waited five more minutes before squeezing Solae’s hand a second time.

“Lets go,” he whispered and started shoving the stalks aside. It took a minute to shift enough of the crop to break free into the bright noonday soon. To Rene’s immense relief the truck was parked in a holding lot of hard packed earth, dusty and rough. A massive mill squatted across the lot, sending smoke and steam into the sky in slow lazy streams The air smelled of stinking steam and chemicals. According to Oanh, the driver would be waiting to negotiate the price with the factors a process that would take at least a half hour. There were a half dozen trucks in the yard, uniformly battered and all still loaded with piles of recently cut sugar cane. There was no one else in sight for the moment and Rene’s grip on his pistol relaxed.

“Looks like we are clear for now,” he told Solae as he helped her down. Both of them were covered in thin plastic rain ponchos, disposable garments now smeared with dirt and sugar cane sap. Rene peeled his off and shoved it into his pack before helping Solae out of hers. Across the lot there was a scrubby swale marked by unhealthy looking trees. They walked as rapidly as they dared across the dirt and slid down into the concealment of the low ground. An ancient railway track ran along the bottom of the swale but judging by the orange brown rust of the rails and the small sapling that grew up between them it had been abandoned for some time. Rene sank back against the embankment and sucked in a deep breath. He peered up over the edge of the swale but saw no sign that anyone was the wiser.

“Ok,” he said, mopping at the sweat and dirt on his brow. From here on out Solae, more familiar with the Shyshin would have to take the lead.

“Where to from here?”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene shook his head, partly in negation partly in wonderment. She was trying to protect him. Not only from the very real danger here but the future danger of entanglement with the nobility. He didn’t suppose anyone in the halls of power would be happy to see him again, he ran a very real risk of being shot on a trumped up charge of desertion if he showed up anywhere without Solae to provide an account of events. Hells, they might even decide he was a likely conspiratory and shoot him for treason. The irony of it made the corners of his mouth tug up into a grin that was wholly inappropriate for the situation.

“Solae,” he began and then paused trying to find the right way to convey what he needed to say. Things had been much easier when he had just been a grunt and needed to do little more than follow orders and endure the ire of whichever officer was unlucky enough to be cycled through whatever backwater they stuck him in.

“I’m not going to let you go on alone,” he said in a voice that had the calm certainty of an astronomical projection. Her hand was warm in his and he kept his pulse from raising only by dint of the training the Corp provided for operators who might be called upon to fight in vacumn suits where air was at a premium.

“What would my life be worth if I let you go off alone just to save my own skin?” he demanded. Solae was probably right in that, if they were caught, she would be spared and he would be tossed into a shallow grave or blown out an airlock. Even if that were true he might well be the lucky one. Rene had gone through the crushing loss of identity when he had been forced to enlist in the marines but at least his fall from grace had been political and not personal.

“It is my duty, to protect you Solae,” he paused for a moment and then forged ahead.

“My duty and my honor, after I get you somewhere safe… well we can worry about that if it happens.” It occured to Rene that if he took her up on her offer to lay low, and the Empire was eventually victorious, he might well be shot as a traitor for NOT accompanying her. If it came down to that, he would just as soon be shot by the enemy.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Min Ho lay a hand on the stunned marine's arm but Rene shook it off without malice. His insides churned with a confusing blend of emotions which aggregated out to a vague shock and the beginning of simmering anger and hurt. Had Solae really just attempted to toss him aside like an empty paper cup now she had had her fun with him. No, she had to be trying to protect him. With a sudden flash of insight he understood the anger he had sparked in her back at the manor when he had tried to protect her from her own decisions.

"You can't let..." Min Ho began but Rene cut him off with a curt gesture and started up the stairs, running his hand along the rough timber railing until he reached the top where he opened the door and stepped into the room they had shared. Solae's back was too him, as good as her word she was stowing the spare outfit that Oanh had provided into one of the travel packs. Though she must have heard him enter she didn't give any sign off it and he pushed the door shut. He wasn't under any illusions that a closed door would afford them any real privacy from the pair of retired spooks, but it was psychological comforting to close off the space.

"Have you lost your mind?" he asked in a quiet voice which telegraphed more of the hurt he was feeling than he had intended. The adrenaline in his system caused him to bite the end of his words and he forced himself to relax, trying not to make a tense situation worse.

"How in the void cares if I'm safer one way or the other. It is my choice to come with you Solae," he crossed the room as he spoke, taking her by the shoulder and gently turning her to face him.

"Even if it wasn't my duty, which, by the way, it most certainly is, you cant honestly expect me to hide here while you go off and put yourself in danger. I refuse to hide in a hole while you go off and face the Throne only know what all alone!" he realized that he had started to shout without intending too and deliberately lowered his voice to a more conversational level.

"Look, you said yourself that one soldier doesn't raise the threat level, but this is why they pay me the big Kay-Cee," he went on. The big Kay-Cee was a Marine corp joke. It refereed to a Kilo-Credit, which had once been the standard salary for a Marine. He gathered Solae into his arms, pulling the noblewoman close.

"I'd rather die than know that something bad happened to you and I could have prevented it," he concluded, raising her chin with his fingers to meet his eyes.

The ERP Discussion

smut between a human and a Ridley Scott xenomorph Alien.

@NuttsnBolts

Hey, whatever makes people happy, consenting adults and all that. Also the Sexual Politics of Xenomorphs would be an awesome article title...

The ERP Discussion

One or two is alright, I suppose, but when you see 'manhood' used in several sentences consecutively, it gets old.

@Hero

Using the same version of any noun repeatedly is always risky!

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

*Events of In the Rain*

New Concordia - Day 4

Oanh small fist rapped on the door, drawing Rene back to the waking world. It was early by any reasonable standard, the light of the new risen sun barely slanting through the room’s large window, but later than he would have been allowed to sleep at the Rat Trap. Solae stirred beside him, a shaft of sunlight lay across her aurite hair, blindingly bright in its refraction. For a long moment he ignored the insistant knocking and simply looked down at her marveling at her beauty.

“Some time before the Succession,” Oanh called, her voice muffled through the door but clearly intelligible. Muttering a curse Rene rolled to his feet and, with some difficulty, found where he had flung his pants the night before. He was still pulling them on when Oanh opened the door. She glanced from the half dressed marine to the naked Solae and raised an eyebrow.

“I see she took my advice about lowering her market value after all,” the woman commented. Rene felt his face go blank, muscles relaxing into neutral planes equally useful for ignoring the berating voice of a superior or for firing a round down range. He didn’t think Oanh had meant the comment as an insult but it stung nonetheless. Solae was meant for better than him. Oanh either read the expression on his face or realised what he might be thinking and cleared her throat. Rene wasn’t sure what reaction he had expected, but the disheveled bedding, and the noise they had made during the night were hardly going to go unnoticed by two intelligence operatives on watch.

“Min Ho wants to see you both,” she said directly, dropping her eyes in as close as she was likely to come to an apology. Solae was awake and sitting up now, still naked but unconcerned. The nobility as a rule were less prudish, at least in private, than many of those they ruled over. Oanh didn’t look directly at Solae and Rene felt a surge of affection as he imagined she was deliberately making the other woman uncomfortable in subtle rebuke for her comment of a moment before.

“We will be down in a second,” he told Oanh and politely but firmly shut the door before turning and crossing the room to the bed. He pulled Solae to his chest and kissed her lingeringly, it was only with reluctance that he pulled away to get dressed.

Min Ho was standing in the kitchen when they came down. The gray haired old man wasn’t wearing his tactical armor but was dressed instead in a simple farmers smock and trousers with boots of soft synthetic leather. Rene was amazed at the transformation of hardened assassin into nondescript farmer, though he realised he shouldn’t be. Min Ho had spent decades in a career where blending in was literally the difference between life and death.

“Ah, feeling better?” he asked, his eyes flicking between the pair. Unlike his wife he choose not to offer any comment on the previous evenings activity. Rene nodded, and to his surprise it was true. Whatever drugs Min Ho had passed him had restored him remarkably. The blackened bruises on his body were already changing to the bilious yellow greens he wouldn’t have expected for a few days and his body was markedly less stiff than it had been the previous day. Even for as little sleep as he had gotten he felt remarkably refreshed. Of course there were other forms of rejuvenation that had played a role.

“The Gids are on your trail,” Min Ho declared with characteristic bluntness. He spread a map of green acetate out on the table. Rene recognized it as the satellite composite the marines themselves had used. Min Ho thrust a finger at a junction of roads which Rene guessed, from the land marks he had seen, represented Lord Armon’s manor.

“They have some sort of specialized tracking unit, police forensics and some off world types, probably came in on that ship yesterday afternoon,” the old man explained. Rene frowned trying to figure out how the Gids had landed on the manor, had the looters found something? It seemed unlikely, nothing they were carrying was identifiable enough to telegraph Solae’s presence.

“Mia,” Rene breathed as the pieces fell together. He felt suddenly foolish and ashamed. Min Ho cocked an eyebrow. Rene shared a glance with Solae and then explained.

“The AI at the manor was shielding Solae’s CLTI,” he explained. Min Ho had doubtless heard of the trackers, probably even used them to track down nobles who he was contracted to surveil or remove.

“They must have deactivated her and got a ping off it. Stars I’m an idiot I should have smashed it,” he said with a shake of his head. He had considered exactly that when he had removed the thing but had decided against it. At the time he had planned to throw the thing in a river or hide it in a ground car so that its movements would lay down a false trail. The sudden arrival of the looters meant he hadn't had time to do anything but hope Mia could keep it shielded.

“I don’t like you moving about during the day,” Min Ho said soberly, “But I don't see that there is any choice.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The contrast between the opulent floors above and the mundane working space was jarring. Worse still the corridors that lead between maintenance and storage areas were of the same decorated marble as the rest of the palace. Doors of ornately carved wood opened onto greasy fabrication shops and warehouse shelving. Presumably the arrangement meant that a noble who had business here wouldn’t have to see the unsightliness necessary to run an establishment of this size. Sayeeda found the experience unpleasant in the extreme as though the hall way were a magical conduit with doors opening to alternate reality.

With Taya’s directions they raced down the hall and through several bays. Workmen in palace smocks watched them run past with shocked expressions, doubtlessly wondering what to make of the strange ensembles of battle gear and formal wear. Junebug as glad of their shock because she didn’t have her less lethal riot rifle anymore and she didn’t want to blast a half dozen civilians to paste if she could avoid it.

The roar of aircar fans filled the air as they opened the door to the hangar bay. It was an odd mix of stylish and practical, with expensive limousines and sporty compact air cars lined up in twin rows of glistening paint and sparkling chrome. High vaulting pillars supported a high ceiling which allowed even amateur pilots, as many of the nobles no doubt were, to land safely. The support pillars hung with vast silk banners twenty or thirty meters long, displaying the sigils and heraldry of Dar’mond’s noble houses, Aiden’s own sigil foremost amongst them.

At the end of the chamber a knot of armed men were climbing into a pair of air cars, their fans already running up to speed. Some of the men, not yet aboard, spotted the pair and opened fire. Plasma bolts burst on the doorframe and sprayed shards of jagged stone and flaming timber in all directions. Neil and Sayeeda both dived forward into the hangar, skidding on the slick marble flooring to land behind one of the pillars.

“Ok…” she began, ready to outline a plan but Neil was already on his feet. Yelling at the top of his lungs he took off along the right hand row of cars. The pilot had no weapons but made his hands into imitation pistols as he had when they landed and mock firing them at the gunmen. Junebug could only watch in horror as the fire shifted to him. Plasma bolts ravened through the air, one struck the hood of a red sports car igniting the paint and windscreen in a fireball of burning plastic.

“Make a distraction he said…” she muttered to herself, but it was too late to worry about strategy now. With the attention on Neil and the ongoing destruction of property he was causing, she jumped to her feet and bolted down the left hand side, keeping low to keep out of the sight of the gun men. Her formal shoes pounded on the marble and she was really glad she hadn’t worn heels for the opera this evening. None of the shooters even looked at her, their whole attention focused on the capering Neil as he doded and rolled from car to burning car.

By the time she reached the end of the chamber the big limousine was already lifting on air pressure. Throwing caution to the wind she lifted the shotgun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. The big weapon thumped hard against her shoulder and the windscreen starred in a thousand crazed stress lines. The glass had to be bulletproof and though the pilot was in no danger, no civilian reacts well to a point blank shotgun blast. The unseen pilot hauled back on the flight yoke and the big aircar lifted and tilted towards Sayeeda the back blast of its fans blowing her hair out in a short snapping banner and forcing her to narrow her eyes. It was an understandable mistake. If the pilot had kept his head, he could have slid out of the hanar on his air cushion and slipped away. As it as his panicked maneuver liftd the bottom of th car towards Sayeeda, exposing the micron precise fan arrays which powered it. She squeezed the trigger and held it in a long thumping, shoulder bruising burst, walking it down the length of the car. Thousands of pellets smashed into the fans, air intakes and control rigs. Several of the fans seized on the spot. The shafts, rotating at thousands or RPM, bound in their housings, cooking the bearings in a shower of sparks more brilliant than any firework. The imbalance in thrust flipped the aircar like a childs toy, smashing the top of it into a pillar that starred all of the bullet proof windows and smashed the chassis into mangled scrap. A hydralic line blew in a fireball that seemed boring amid the fountaining sparks. Either a saftey cut off finally kicked in or, less likely, the pilot was able to cut the power and the wrecked limousine slid down the pillar with a groan of rending metal and hit the ground, coming to rest nose to the ground and rear to the pillar at something like seventy degrees.

Sayeeda sucked in a throat flaying breath of air filled with the stink of a dozen different combustibles, and swung the shot gun onto the four gunman standing in open mouth horror. She dropped one with a shot to the chest and the others threw their weapons aside and ran for one of the service exits. Taya was shouting something in her ear but Sayeeda couldn’t hear anything over the thundering adrenaline, Whatever the girl needed would wait. Junebug staggered towards the wrecked car, making it nearly to the vehicle before the door cracked open and Alexander flopped out onto the stone floor. His handsome face was bloodied and the general’s uniform he wore as torn and disheveled. Smoke poured from the interior of the car.

“Sayeeda stop!” a voice yelled in her ear. She looked left and saw no one before she realised it was Aiden talking through her implant.

“Do NOT shoot him!” the Prince commanded. Alexander was on his hands and knees looking up at the shotgun wielding figure in her bizzare mix of evening gown and combat gear. Blood ran from both nostrils and one of his ears and a row of medals had gashed his chest during the crash. She leveled the gun at his face and pulled it in snug to her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Neil getting up from behind a wrecked air bike.

“THAT IS AN ORDER!” Aiden roared. The barrel of the gun wavered for a moment as the adrenaline began to drain from her system.

“Yeah,” she replied and then pulled the trigger. Alexander screamed in horror as the weapon clicked empty, its magazine expended. For a moment there was silence except for the crackle of fires and the differential pings of cooling metal.

“Yeah, no sweat,” she repeated, her voice weary.
@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla twisted with indecision. Her instinct was to hide in the temple and wait for whatever was out there to kill Gorn, hoping it would pass her by. She thought of the reavers claim about shielding her from the mutating effect of the waste and how it would fail were he to die. Something deep inside of her told her that he was telling the truth. If she wanted to avoid damnation at the hands of the ruinous powers she needed to keep the raider alive. Reluctantly she peered out from behind the titanic arch of the temple.

The courtyard as in chaos. Gorn was surrounded by a group of creatures that defied easy description. One of them looked like a woman carved of blue veined marble but her arms were replaced with a tentacles composed of glittering crystal knives. Another was a man with skin like a vultures neck and equally grotesque talons. As she watched third creature, a man wreathed in pulsing varicolored light struck at gorn with a spear of congealed shadows. The Norcan’s axes wove a web of steel around him, flicking aside blows and opening a path as he retreated, backing towards a large fountain.

Gripping her new found blade she ran across the courtyard on silent dancers feet. Without so much as a sound, she leaped into the air, landed on the crumbled base of a pillar and launched herself onto the back of a creature that seemed half man and half spider. The things coarse hair scraped her thighs as she landed, plunging the elven weapon into the joint between its humanlike torso and the spider like adomen. The blade slid in like a bullet through butter. The thing reared back with a scream of agony, thick yellowish blood spurting from the wound as the Tilean twisted the blade against suction, yanked it free and rolled off the things back. She landed on both feet and one hand, her sword hand free to slashed through the things hair covered leg a foot from the ground before rolling clear of the stricken beast.

Gorn shouted something at her in his own language which she neither understood nor cared to understand. She sprang to her feet and deftly parried a blade of run encrusted obsidian down and away from her body before slashing the eyes from its wielder, a woman composed of twisting gold filaments. There was a sudden stench of burning mushrooms as the wielder collapsed like a pile of wet pasta without so much as a sound. Three of the things came at her in a blur of tentacles and exotic weapons but she deflected the blows or pirouetted away from the strikes, dark hair flying in the breeze. She realized she was laughing as she vaulted onto another pillar and flipped over the back of one of the attackers, thrusting backwards into its body and then spinning to send its jewel infused head tumbling across the ancient flag stones.

Suddenly the plaza was clear save for the Tilean, the Norscan and the twitching bodies of whatever their attackers had been. Blood and icor dripped from Gorn’s twin axes, the bodies around him mute testament to the good use he had made of her unexpected appearance. Their eyes locked across the carnage. The reaver’s eyes flicked to her sword as she bought it down backward, poising the tip a foot above the ground, blade out behind and to the left in a duelists stance.

“Put it down,” the Norscan grated, eye flicking from the sword to its wielder as though he couldn’t decide where the threat truly lay. The blade of the weapon glinted in the lifeless illumination of the anemic arctic sun.

“You can’t…” Gorn began but Camilla was already sprinting towards him, sweeping her blade upwards in a disemboweling stroke. Steel flashed on iltimar as Gorn’s second axe cut down towards Camilla, but the lithe Tilean as already slipping sideways into the gap the axe’s parry had opened. The pressure on the axe was light but when the Norscan shoved Camilla merely stiffend her wrist and let the momentum throw her into a spin, bringing the blade around in a glittering arch. Gorn yelled a guttural curse and leveled an axe blow at Camilla’s midriff, concern for his duty to keep her alive forgotten. The darkened steel scythed empty air as she leaped backwards and cat like onto the edge of the well, paused a moment to regain her balance.

“The Prince take your bitch soul!” Gorn snarled but Camilla was already moving launching herself like a missle, with her meager but perfectly balanced weight behind the strike. The chaos worshiper batted her blade with one axe and bough the second up underhanded, like a man gutting a fish. Camilla sprung from the force of the first parry, spinning sideways and twisting in the air, flipping over the Norscan’s shoulder. With a roar that echoed off the surrounding mountain Gorn began to swing around but Camilla landed on both feet in a croutch and pivoted like a flywheel, one hand dabbed to the dusty stone to steady the stroke. The Elvish blade sliced through both of the reavers ankles like a razor through silk. For a moment Gorn seemed to stagger and then his shins came away from his ankles, the cut making a slightly downward angle from left to right and amputating the top of his right boot. Instinctively the big man staggered and landed on the stumps. Gorn screamed in pain and then toppled to the ground in a mound, axes clattering free of his grip. Camilla deliberately kicked both of the weapons clear and then lay the point of the curved blade to the vanquished Norscan’s throat.

For a moment she stood, totally motionless as blood trickled slowly from the stumps of the chaos warriors legs. His eyes locked hatefully on hers as she touched the point to his throat, waking a small droplet of blood around the razor sharp point. The ruin shuddered and the buildings bean to crumble, slowly at first and then as quickly as sandcastles giving way before the onslaught of the ocean, elegant ruins sinking into dust. As she watched the walls of the temple came down and she saw a statue as tall as the nave of the building, an elf she thought fleetingly but it only lasted a moment longer than the walls which had concealed it, returning as well to the tide of pale white sand flooding out in all directions. For some reason Camilla felt a feeling of grudging approval wash over her as the last of the statue vanished into ruin.

“The Winds will drink your flesh!” Gorn hissed. Camilla let out a breath, her throat dry from her previous manic laughter.

“Only if you die,” she replied, sliding the blade into her belt and picking up one of the gold filaments that remained of the strange woman. She looped the improvised rope around Gorn’s wrists and pulled the knot tight. Then made an improvised tourniquet for each leg. The reaver struggled but the blood loss and the shock of his wounds rendered him to weak to prevent her. Gorn’s lips struggled to move but he spoke quietly and insistently. Confident that the Norscan could do her no harm she leaned closer to hear.

“Slaanesh,” he whispered, his voice dripping with triumph, lust and dark hatred. Camilla slumped into the white sand of the ruins destruction, eyes gazing sightlessly at the shifting aurora of the sky.
@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

It became hard to keep track of time. Camilla trudged forward, through the snow, her wrists bound and attached by a rope to Gorn. The Norscan apparently needed neither sleep nor rest, though he periodically stopped to allow her to collapse for what felt like a few moments before he kicked her awake. Sometimes there would be a fire going and there would be some small badly burned creature in the flames. Camilla ate hungrily despite her revolution, trying to keep her strength up. Her heart ached for Cydric. There was no way to know if he even still lived. A glimmer of hope remained, perhaps the Nordlanders had prevailed, perhaps one of the maimed messangers had made it ashore and evaded the bulk of the stranded Norscans, but it seemed precious little to hold onto. Even if he knew of her, there was no way for him to find her across this barren waste, where the snow and wind devoured all sign of their passage.

After four such stops, she hesitated to call them days, the snow gave way increasingly to bare rock. A range of mountains rose in the distance and small streams flowed down from it, vanishing into sinkholes that Camilla imagined fell to the sea beneath the glacial ice. The sky above the mountains was lit by a couruscance of rainbow hewed light which seemed to pulse as though alive. The air warmed as well, astonishingly fast if she were any judge and a half day after leaving the snow fields she no longer needed the fur cloak that the reaver had given to her. Gorn himself spoke little answering most questions with little more than a grunt or a curse. He seemed to be growing apprehensive which could not have been a good sign.

Another day passed and they reached the foothills of the mountains. To Camilla’s surprise they came upon ruins nestled within the rocky bones of the mountain. That they were eleven was obvious but that elves had ever lived so close to the waste seemed impossible to believe. It wasn’t a large settlement, consisting of a few dozen lichen choked buildings and the stump of what had once been a tower, though time or some other calamity had long since toppled its smooth stone.

“We will camp here,” Gorn declared and, to her surprise, drew a short steel knife and sliced the bonds from wrists. Blood flowed painfully back into her fingertips as she flexed them, nail beds pinkening even in the chill air.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?” she asked as the reaver began to pile rotten timber together for a fire. Gorn laughed a short bitter laugh and shook his head.

“If you were to run now, you would be a drooling spawn before you ever reached the sea,” he assured her and pointed to the brand on his head. The flesh around it had blackened and the veins that spread from it were dark and spidery.

“Get too far from me and you will lose your protection, if I die you will lose your protection, your only chance of reaching the Altar of Urken-sugah unchanged is with me,” The Norscan grated. A flash of insight stole over Camilla.“

Your absorbing the magic, taking the taint into yourself, aren’t you?” she blurted. The Norscan nodded as the small fire caught, kindling crackling around the large pieces of detritus.

“They Prince will reward me when I bring you to his altar,” Gorn said, his eyes hardening into something distant an inhuman.

“You will kneel before me and beg me for my favor,” the Norscan wen’t on, relish creeping into his voice. He licked his lips and his tongue seemed longer than she remembered, slithering out of his mouth like a questing snake. The fire grew purple and for a heartbeat Camilla thought she saw a figure in the flames. She turned her eyes away trying not to think about it.

Camilla woke in the darkness. In the far distance something howled mournfully. To her suprise Gorn was slumped over, apparently asleep. As quietly as she could she came to her feet, uncertain of what she was going to do but certain she should be doing something. Unbidden, her eyes drifted to one of the building, a large oval shaped building flanked by crumbling columades. There was something there, a glimmer of something. Camilla cast a look back at the fire and her sleeping jailer. Gorn hadn’t stirred. Carefully she picked her way over to the building and peered through the ruined archway. Inside as a vast hall, something about it filled her with a mix of excitement and trepidation. With gentle footfalls she picked her way through the hall. Crumbled benches lay on both sides, leading up to a marble altar which was so coated with dust that she would never have picked out its purpose if the rest of the building wasn’t so clearly a temple.

In her mind great statues flanked the altar and she could hear a distant and fey chanting. The scent of blood and steel filled her nostrils as she stepped towards the altar and the chanting, music of a cold and deadly purity swelled in her mind. With a trembling hand she reached out toward the dust covered altar and brushed back an ancient and moth eaten piece of cloth. Beneath it a cruelty curved sword glinted. Its steel shimmered with intricately inlayed designs which faded along the length as though the steel itself were an unseen fog. Gold fillagree wrapped the handle and a small but perfectly cut stone of uncertain color.

“Ranald’s mercy,” she breathed and picked up the sword, finding it to be perfectly balanced. The cold chanting faded as she lifted the blade and she found herself alone in the silent temple. Outside a creature howled, far closer than before and she heard a throaty war cry followed by the scrabbling of claws on stone.