Tales of Blackwood: The Call

• Posted by Tae-Rai August 26, 2014 - 369 views

  Tales of Blackwood: The Call

  Note: This is an almost direct sequel to Soneca's blog, 'Forgiveness of a Saint'. I recommend reading that before continuing with this for extra clarification.

  Mature content below. 

  It was once again a clear and calm night in the Brawler’s Hollow. Grass blades swayed in the wind as the sun crept down below the horizon, bathing the entire area in a soft red-orange light. Guard patrolled lazily, their bows clenched in relaxed hands, and people of various ages and races inhabited the large clearing, either hunting the game in the surrounding woods, speaking quietly to their friends or practising their techniques against the training dummies. Only one pair of people caught the Serpent’s interest, and it was them who she watched from her position up on a small grassy mound.

   

   

  The Master, an Imperial swordsman of great skill and poise, was currently sparring against a lesser beast, at least in the Serpent’s eyes. The Monkey, a filthy neighbour of hers from the great land of Akavir, was attempting to contest him. It was laughable, really, as he attempted to attack the Master again and again with his sickles, only for the Master to either nimbly side-step them or bat them away with his dai-katana in an almost bored-like matter. The Monkey was growing frustrated; everyone could see this, as his hits become harder and sloppier. Those who were also observing the spectacle were either chuckling with amusement at the anticipation of the Monkey’s eventual defeat or watching with bated breath as they dread to see how the Master would end him.

   

   

  They didn’t long to wait. The Monkey grew impatient and leapt into the air, spitting with rage and chattering loudly about ‘How Monkey would hurt bad man’. The Tsaesci groaned internally and rested her face in her scaled palm. How did a creature with this stupidity live to reach adulthood?

   

   

  As he leapt into the air, a single vicious strike came from the Master and his sword struck the Monkey in the right ankle and flipped him straight out of the air. There was a nasty crunch as the primate fell, hitting his head upon the ground with a heavy THUMP. The Master turned away and left him where he was, out cold. Those who watched too turned away, not one person willing to assist the crazy Monkey.

   

   

  The Serpent rose, uncoiling herself from her position and slowly slithering her great golden form down towards the make-shift arena the Master and Monkey has occupied. The former turned and glanced over his shoulder, spying the Serpent, and he gave a nod of approval, before calling out to the others of the Hollow, asking for another sparring partner. While they  were distracted, the Serpent loomed over the Monkey, sneering. She poked him with her katana, seeing if he really was out cold. He didn’t make a sound, save for the short ragged breathes echoing from his chest.

  
  
  The Serpent then smirked wide, her mouth parting and baring long fangs. Was this it? Had the time finally come? She grasped him by the back of his shirt and threw him over her shoulder roughly, ignoring the blood dripping down her scales from a wound on his forehead. Oh, yes, it was time! How many times had she been insulted by this vile beast? How many times had he thrown his own filth at her? One time too many, on both accounts. And now, her revenge was near.

  
  
  She moved quickly out of the Hollow, avoiding the eyes of the guards, her mind ringing with excitement. It was almost close to a child-like glee. She hoped the Saint was not busy. After all, what better way to celebrate a new friendship that to inflict sweet revenge? But in her heart, she knew their friendship had already begun… The Serpent had taken the Saint as her ahn aejude, her One Friend, something very rare indeed for the Tsaesci. She called into the evening, and from the skies came a falcon. She gave it a command, to seek out the Saint, and he obeyed, soaring away deeper into the Woods.

   

   

  With the Tsaesci, those raised in the Kingdom are often cold and untrusting, as the Serpent was. Attacks from the Ka Po’ Tun are still a daily occurrence, and thus, many Tsaesci do not trust outsiders to their great land. There was said to be a very strange but fascinating occurrence that happen amongst those who ventured outside the Kingdom, as the Serpent and a few others had. It was called the Ahn Aejude (or One Friend, in the common tongue); where a Tsaesci would forge a stronger-then-blood bond with a race that was NOT a Tsaesci. It was not understood very well, but those Tsaesci who had such a friendship were viciously protective, loyal to the end and cared quite deeply for their One Friend. That is the bond that the Serpent had with the Saint.

   

   

  She broke through the tree line and came to a clearing with a deep trench, lined with both long-dead and fresh corpses, with flies swarming around them and maggots writhing inside their rotting flesh. A shack stood nearby, its door closed and windows drawn shut, and across from here was a tree-stump, bloodied and with a hand imbedded into the wood by a simple dagger, pale long fingers outstretched in an endless grasp.
  
  
  The Serpent hissed quietly, a greeting to a figure curled beneath a tree by another, much recently dead corpse. The Saint stopped petting the Serpent’s falcon that was perched upon her shoulder and rose to her feet, her eyes widening in surprise at the sight of the serpent returning to the scene and the lump now occupying her shoulder. She opened her mouth to speak, only to be drowned out by a shrill shriek.

  
  
  The Monkey sprung back from the Serpent’s shoulder, crying out in his screech-like tongue, and landing a few feet away. He began to chant, “Evil snake! Bad snake! Snake hurt monkey! Monkey hurt snake back!” The Monkey drew his steel sickles from his back and clicked their strangely-curved blades together, the sound ringing through the clearing. The wound on his head glistened, crimson staining his fur.

  The Serpent curled her tail behind her, eyes on the idiot Monkey but made no move to draw her own weapons. Her hands clenched and stretched, like the claws of a falcon waiting to clench its kill from above. No other thoughts raced through her head except for one… My prey!
  
  
  The two Akaviri raced at each other, the Monkey shrieking and the Serpent hissing violently with a fiery vengeance in her emerald eyes. The swords clipped her shoulders, bouncing off the pristine dark Dragonguard armor she wore, and her hood flared out, a vicious snarl echoing from her maw. Her hoodguard snapped into place, the linked metal fitting snugly inside it and tightening, protecting the soft delicate flesh.

   

   

  The Serpent and Monkey collided hard, before both came down, rolling onto the ground in a tumble of scales and fur. Her strong tail came up and slammed down on his legs, before a single crack was heard from the left one. The Monkey cried out, screaming an insult at the snake before leaping up and used his one good leg to propel himself at her.

  
  
  The Serpent rose, fangs bared and caught the Monkey in her strong arms, ensnaring him and crushing him against her chest in a vice-like grip. The elegant serpent flexed her neck, a sinister smirk spreading across her face, before her teeth met his soft, unguarded gullet. She grasped it tightly in her jaws, feeling the taste of blood touch her tongue. The Monkey’s swords fell and she greedily clenched down harder, before thrashing her head from side to side, ripping flesh and spraying gore onto herself and the ground.

  
  
  She released him and curled over his fallen body, blood trickling down her chin as swallowed the taste of him. She had forgotten all about the Saint and her condition, for there was only thing in her mind. Only the call of the blood mattered now, the call to hunt… The call to feed.
  
  
  The Saint rose from the ground and approached the Serpent cautiously, watching the elegant serpent with curious, alit eyes. The Serpent circled the fallen Monkey, watching his chest rise and fall with each gasping breath. He didn’t speak, but grasped his bloodied and mauled throat, his expression one of shock and fear. Was his death near?

  
  
  Then, something spread down his body, something indescribably painful. Like someone had put his veins on fire, like they were melting him from the inside-out. He screamed, and the sound echoed around the clearing as he struggled, trying to put out the fire that was nowhere to be seen. It was so hot! It was blistering! The Monkey looked at the two women and he begged, begged for them to stop the fire. All he received was cold looks of cynicism.

  
  
  The Serpent hissed in her native tongue, something so foreign but so beautiful at the same time to the Saint’s ears. She cocked her head, her expression one of childlike delight, watching her dear friend circle the fallen monkey writhe in pain from her Tsaesci venom. She wondered what the Serpent would do, how the great serpent would end his life. It was all too much, she let loose a chuckle.

  
  
  The Serpent’s eyes snapped to hers and for a second, they flashed with some form of savage rage, but then they calmed and the snake murmured quietly to her. “Hush, tsic aejude. I must work in peace and quiet.” She lifted her wide head and unclicks her hood guard, letting the metal work relax and fall. “Now, watch…”

  
  
  She reached down and grabbed the Monkey by the scruff of his neck, before tossing him onto the stump with the dismembered hand. She asked the Saint to wait by him and to heal his neck, to which the Sain obeyed. She skipped over and stood over the Monkey, her hands glowing gold under the night sky. The Serpent slithered into the shack and slammed the door, while the sound of breakage came from within.

   

   

  The Monkey gasped a long breath as his wound magically formed back together, but blood still gurgled in his throat. He turned his head towards the Saint, mouthing a thank you at the woman, despite the burning sensation still raging in his heart. But the Saint simply giggled. “A crazy sinner is still a sinner,” she sung in a sickly-sweet voice. “Now, I wonder what my friend will do to you... Shall she cut you up, and turn you into stew? Or will she skin you alive, and sell your hide?”

  
  
  The Monkey’s eyes go wide with shock and he struggled, trying to sit up and wriggle away, despite his broken leg. The Saint flashed a grin, one that a trained eye might say was full of malice, before a sharp blade pierced his leg in a quick rigid motion, a single drop of poison sliding down the knife-edge like a bead of sweat. Oh, how glad she is that she saved this toxin…

  
  The monkey fell back, feeling his muscles spasm and then become still as the paralysis poison took a hold of him. His eyes could only watch in horror as the great Serpent returned, the door to the shack slamming open. For a brief second, his eyes saw blood-stained walls and cruel metal devices that could only be described as torture tools, designed to cause agony and distress. He tried to scream, but his jaw wouldn’t move. It was like someone had locked it shut and thrown away the key. And the scorching… It was worse than ever! He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t move, it was like he was being scalded from the inside-out!

  
  
  Under the Serpent’s arm was a leather roll and as she approached the Saint, she could hear the clink of metal scraping against one another. She tilted her head to the side, her mouth forming a small ‘o’ of surprise, but then she closed it and pulled her legs up onto the tree stump and sat cross-legged beside the frozen Monkey.

  
  
  The serpent dropped the roll and unfurled it, revealing a collection of strange and deadly-looking instruments held in place by straps, their blades daunting and bizarre. The Serpent looked up and caught the Saint’s eye, watching her, gauging her reaction to this new revelation. The Saint said nothing, but smiled sweetly back at her friend.

  
  
  The Serpent’s mouth spread into a disturbing grin and she chuckled low, pleased with herself. “The poison, aejude… How long until he can move?”

   

   

  The Saint didn’t answer at first, she was too busy humming absentmindedly, but a sharp hiss from the Serpent returned her to Nirn. “Oh, it will only last for three minutes, silly!” she laughed. “Be quick!”

  She needed no more urging from the Saint. She slithered over to the leather roll and withdrew a scalpel-like blade from the sheath. She held it above the monkey’s chest and looked in his eyes. They were frozen orbs, dark emeralds that were far inferior to her own eyes. She would have them soon… After all, she was not called the Taker of Eyes for nothing.

  She pressed the blade down and cut through flesh and sinew, before folding back the skin and fur like it was simply a piece of cloth. Then, she sliced through the muscles of his chest and the blood poured. So much blood…. The Serpent’s head swam as she felt her need to feed grow stronger. She pushed and she struggled, swimming against the tide of instinct that flooded her very soul. The Saint raised her hands over the monkey and used her knowledge of the healing arts to stop the flow, just to keep him alive for just a bit longer… A task that the Serpent would be thankful for later.

   

  
  The Monkey laid open, still paralysed, as the Serpent worked above him. A bone broken here, snapped and pulled away, and then an organ extracted away there. Her hands were soon coated, gold shimmering beneath the red and yet still the Saint watched, watching the Serpent dismember him alive, with the skills of well-trained necromancer. But the Saint knew the Serpent was not a user of those dark arts… No, this was all for fun. And something she had done previously.
  
  
  And then, there was a moment when the Serpent grasped the Monkey’s heart in his chest, feeling its rhythm falter and waver as her venom took a hold of his system. The dosage she had injected into his system was small, something that she would have barely noticed. For if she had meant to kill him… He would already be dead before her.

   

   

  The Saint drummed her fingers on the trunk, almost impatiently, but still observed the serpent before her with inquisitive eyes. She watched as the Serpent drew her own blades, the metal almost glowing in the moonlight, before she slammed the exotic sword down onto his hand, severing fingers. Again, the Saint closed the wounds, but she allowed the appendages to remain severed. They were soon swallowed by the Serpent. The Saint laughed softly and murmured to the Monkey, despite his current paralysis state. “We’re gonna slice you, dice you, chop you, cut you…”

  
  
  The Serpent dropped the Monkey’s heart back into his chest cavity and turned back to her kit. The paralyse poison was beginning to wear off, and the Monkey could feel new pain slowly coursing through his body. At first it was his hands, numb and heavy, then his leg, broken and snapped. It soon withdrew from all his limbs, centring on his open chest, and the monkey let loose a scream of agony.

   

   

  It was short lived, as the Serpent then forced his jaw open and ripped out his tongue with her bare had, before she hacked away at his knees and elbows with her katana, crimson streaking through the air. She asked her Aejude to heal the stumps and the Saint did so, watching with gentle curiosity and giggling almost as much as the Monkey once was. The limbs were soon tossed away into the trench, joining the Wizard’s past victims.

   

   

  The Serpent slithered back and admired her work, leaving the Monkey broken before her. In her hand was another object, a scoop like object with a curved blade. She came from behind the Monkey, standing above his head and smirking down at him. She wanted him to feel fear, for her face to be the last thing he ever saw. She watched the Monkey whimper one last time, before she used the scoop to pull both his eyes from his skull, the foolish Monkey screaming in agony all the way.

  
  She knew it was over then, and that there was no more pain to cause the Monkey. She held his eyes in her fist, clenching them before they burst, and the soft jelly ran through her fingers like thickened water. The Serpent once again impaled her fangs into his throat, felling the blood pool in her mouth. She drank greedily, before she whipped her head to the side, ripping flesh and sank her teeth deeper into his throat. His corpse was now her meal, and she was hungry. Very hungry…

  
  
  The Saint slipped off the stump and stood back, watching as the Serpent fed insatiably on the primate’s body, observing as the Serpent’s great jaws clenched and ripped sinew as if it was simply butter. So it was all true, every rumour of the Serpent being like vampires, every whisper of them needing to feed on the living or dead… It did not shock her, no, but it made her wonder… The Saint smiled wide, happiness radiating from her very soul.

  
  The Serpent drew back and hissed wildly, her muzzle coated in blood and gore, as her primal instincts took over her mind. But still, she turned, seeking her companion, as she feared the Saint had fled. But then she saw the Saint by the shack and she calmed slightly, her hissing jaws slowly silencing and her partially flared hood relaxing.

   

   

  For a moment, the Serpent and the Saint gazed at one another, neither one breaking eye contact with one another. The serpent’s eyes never blinked, as is her biology, but the Saint’s flashed with something the elegant snake had seen only twice before. Was it bliss, or was it distrust? She did not know.

   

  The Saint walked slowly towards the serpent and lifted her hands to the Serpent’s maw, wiping the gore away from it with her palms and clearing her face of the substance. She cocked her head to the side, watching the Serpent with curious, alit eyes, and the snake observed her right back, staring with unblinking eyes. Green met blue, and neither broke the stare.

   

   

  “Ahn aejude...” The Saint said softly before she wrapped her arms around the Serpent’s midriff, clenching her tight in a hug. “Feed, my friend. You deserve it. And soon... We will hunt again together once more. Would you kindly?”

   

   

  A feeling of peace settled over the Serpent and soothed any natural bloodlust the serpent may have had for the Saint in her current state. She nodded at the Imperial and soon her arms came around the younger woman and returned the hug. Why, she did not know. But it felt... Right. Her head came down onto the Imperial's shoulder and laid there, staining her robes crimson.

   

   

  The Saint smiled wide. “I love you, ahn aejude,” she whispered softly as she caressed the Serpent’s hood with one slender hand. “You make me happy. And together, we will purge this land of its sinners…”

   

   

  “You must understand…” The Serpent began, as she pulled back a little to look at the Saint with eyes akin to emeralds. “That my people… We do not feel love like yours do. It is a foreign concept to my mind.” She paused, but then a smile touched her scaled lips and spread wide. “But if I could feel it, I would have it for you, tsic ahn aejude.”

   

   

  No more words were shared between the two as the serpent simple bowed her head again and once again rested it on the Saint’s shoulder. The Saint smiled wide, perfectly at bliss in the arms of the large and bloodied Tsaesci, ignoring the bloodstains on her shoulder. It was there where they remained still for a while, until the darkness took over the evening, and hiding the sins of those who had done evil. Both Serpent and Saint were content, and that was all that they cared about for now.

   

   

  But soon they would leave and strike again, taking the life of the next sinner to catch their eye. It did not even matter if they were or not, for it was the call of the blood that drove them both. And it pleased them both to obey it…

  ~ Tales of Blackwood ToC ~