Suharto Thirteen
Thirteen
spoilers: situation on the 1-15th and later of Septimus 195 NC
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Tin gracelessly followed the gentle brook until it met the big river. The Aken, more adept at slithering than swimming, forfeited a kilo of his flesh to the local fish during the struggle, ultimately finding refuge within the rich wickers where the stream cascaded into the expansive river.
Then Tin braved the bigger water expanse as well. He emerged precisely at the bifurcation where Chinos River divided into two slender branches: the North leg, which journeyed towards the majestic Great White Mountain Range and the sources of Chinos itself, and the South leg, meandering towards Smallake—which is jargon for small lake, despite it being anything but small. At the tip of the river's peninsula lay a charming fishing port and the quaint village known as Dutch’s Net.
Of course the critically injured Aken failed to relish at the local scenery, or dedicate any time to sightseeing. He shared a spot with the snakes and the water pigs, playing the role of a wayward crocodile whilst his injuries slowly healed.
Two weeks later Tin knew there were twenty brick houses in the village, four warehouses at the docks, but the locals –the majority of them part of the same family- were away to Riverdor, delivering their wares to the local markets. It wasn’t something done on the regular since the capital was closer via the river, but the Dutch were a patriotic bunch and wanted to make coin only from their compatriots?
Um.
That doesn’t sound patriotic at all! Tin thought amused and scraped the excess organic paste down his left forearm with the steel curette tool. The arm itself shorter, each finger joint sporting stitches where he had inserted the lengthened phalanges. Got that right, Tin decided and dropped the tool inside the leather folding bag.
Ahm.
For the most part.
The leg add-on was correct in its length, but he’d trouble creating an Aken knee with one hand, so Tin now walked a little tenderly. At least the new knee is free from arthritis!
Yep. He also needed more construct salve.
Good quality material is not easy to come around, he thought and stood up with a spasm of pain. His new staff, just a long hardened on fire thick oak stick. Tin stabbed it down to perceive the empty village from the porch of Irina’s house.
The absence of locals had helped the lurking Aken to infiltrate the village and take it for his own.
Ah.
The girl.
Tin turned his head to look at the naked body hanged from the ceiling’s support beam with meat hooks. Well, the body was missing some parts.
Be precise. Be professional.
Uhm. So, it was most of the left leg that was missing, yep, all of right arm and an eye. Ha-Ha.
Oops.
Tin needed one, as the little fish had gotten his inside the stream. Buggers! A couple of toes also, but those he made easily with pieces of bones leftover from Irina’s leg.
You don’t cut as much as you’re missing, but a bit more to have leeway.
The mutilated Issir female cracked open her good eye and stared with horror at the smirking pleased Tin .
Eh.
Didn’t I kill her? He wondered a little perturbed.
I was busy with the baby.
Ah, yes.
Right.
Good-good.
“Where’s is he?” Irina asked with a croaky voice. She needs tighter vocal cords to sound more like Atae. A couple of more bodies. I’m lacking resources.
“In the bronze tub,” the Aken replied with a grimace of annoyance.
You’d think with this being a ‘village’ more material would have been available.
Ah. Such a waste.
“Why?” A traumatized Irina rustled slowly, in and out of consciousness due to blood loss.
What manner of stupid query is this?
“I don’t want to lose any of the liquefied flesh,” Tin explained, the sound of bubbling coming from the filled with alkaline solution tub, located in the adjoining room of the farmhouse. He stood near Irina’s face to gain inspiration and memorize her facial features, so he can reproduce them later.
Use the remade daughter to take out the father and his sons.
Keep the higher-quality salve for himself.
“Please, not my baby,” Irina whispered sounding really sad and Tin blinked at the unserious plea. You think they are growing on trees wench?
Hmm?
“How about you shut up?” He argued a little peeved and the woman lashed out on him stretching her neck. Tried to rip his throat out with her teeth but the Aken stepped back, raised his staff and cracked her once on the head, taking care not to destroy the skull underneath.
It’s a pain in the arse to create a human cranium from scratch.
Time-consuming.
Ayup.
A good one especially.
Or an Aken’s for that matter.
Now a dog’s… Tin ruminated briefly before recoiling at the sound of voices carried over the village’s square from the direction of the docks. …is much easier.
What in a pig’s arsehole?
The local caravan returned?
Hmm.
Aha. It must be.
Very nice.
A timely development.
An untimely interruption.
Eh.
Damn it.
He cursed ten minutes later, the voices coming much nearer and right at the edge of the square.
“I’ve seen a Northman before,” a young fiend’s voice said in rough Issir jargon. “But you look strange.”
“Where are the locals Marn?” A singing female voice asked, and the pleasant hum brought a spasm of fear and rage on Tin’s face. He moved slightly on the clay roof tiles, as his new leg had cramped and the hooded ranger flinched hearing the slight noise from twenty meters away –and four below- his hiding spot.
Nervy Imperial cunt!
Neanderthal of the woods!
“Dort is here and Irina,” Marn had replied as if to set Tin up, but the Zilan didn’t pay him any attention. She stood watching at Tin’s general direction already, left arm signaling for that tall human, Bear Crug, to come up from the back entrance of his building.
Hmm.
The situation had deteriorated pretty fast yet again, after that small respite. Tin sighed, a small black fly strolling on his sweaty forehead –very annoyingly- and Dort stepped out of his own house across the street, much to the young man’s enjoyment.
“That’s Dort,” Marn said truthfully and Aeleniel turned to glance at the Issir male standing in the semi-darkness of his porch.
Some of Dort is there, but has a soul-leech lurched in him. It don’t matter what kind, any kind. The dead are not picky. They’ll fasten themselves to the host and do what they are told, so long as you hold the thread. In time, little of the host remains, but what emerges rarely is what the intruder once had been.
With some exceptions, eh kid? A stronger host, or prepared, might overcome a weak intruder, wrestle back some control, but even then the final product is never the same. Other times, the intruder is too-powerful to control, or shape into something more-useful and crazy monstrosities might walk with another’s skin. A murderous fiend, or a cunning ghoul in the skin of another. The products of an unskillful, or clumsy Bonemancer.
“Where’s the woman?” Aeleniel asked Dort, who shrugged his shoulders and reached to get a harpoon from the table. “Step away from the weapon,” the ranger warned and freed her longbow passing the bowstring over her head, and then twirled it to grab the arrow rest lithely.
Showoff.
Dort paused, his hand extended over the fishing harpoon. “I was about to go fishing.”
Do as you’re told, Tin told him. Fucking idiot.
I… can use the harpoon, Dort said.
Not you. Eh, the other guy could. I know it’s confusing.
Just play dumb. Trust me, it’ll come natural to you. Uhm.
Dort could, the ‘Dort’ man insisted. I’m Dort.
Shut up.
“Bear keep an eye on him,” Aeleniel ordered the beefy Nord that was walking towards Tin’s building and he halted, afore turning around with a grunt.
“We’re hunting the locals?” He asked in his baritone voice.
“That’s Dort,” Marn told them, now sounding a little nervous. “He’s my father’s cousin?”
Cheap comedy for free right there!
“Irina’s… place,” Dort said in a monotonous crackling voice, as the pressure had gotten to him. Fresh constructs are like that. “Is over… there.”
Don’t play Dort that well, you darn fool!
Aeleniel moved slowly towards Irina’s farmhouse, which presented a problem, Tin hoped to overcome, but for the matter of the grinded flesh, matured into salve, he was creating inside the other room. Tin needed that to use as healing ointment amongst other things.
She so annoying, he thought very peeved. It’s been weeks, just fucking go away darn it! Take the win and run, you stupid …um… persistent, imperial cunt! People have moved on already… yep, they have… sheesh!
Blasted big-eared barbarians with no other interests in their spastic lives than pestering the more-intelligent species!
Tin heard the floorboards creak when the Zilan ranger stepped on them. A loud chicken rushed across the outside yard, golden-brown wings flapping and small talons digging at the pebbles. Tin crooked his mouth, long fingers wrapped around the laid by his right side staff, and Aeleniel’s voice rang inside the farmhouse.
“Irina O’ the Dutch,” Aeleniel said in her bizarre mix of Imperial translated in Common. “Come forth.”
Tin let out a breath he was holding and whispered a brief incantation, fresh bones igniting in his new left hand, the palm skin burning as the teleportation spell took.
“LEAVE BOY!” Aeleniel bellowed, either because she had spotted Irina’s corpse swinging at the soft breeze, or because she had gotten a whiff of Tin burning bones and she looked to shield him from harm. Talk about an oxymoron. The Aken had stood up in the meantime, walked to the edge of the farmstead’s rooftop and then blinked out of existence.
Tin landed on the yard’s soft ground, near the tracks left by the chicken earlier, moved fast while the others were standing still bathed in a milky white light and reached Bear who was on his way towards Dort. The Aken paused mid-stride to gather himself whilst the world returned to normal, and when it fully did he swung the long staff with both his arms. His normal-sized left arm and the one Tin had taken from Irina, and then repurposed.
Bear sensed something was off, but was slow to react and got a solid whack on the back of his big cranium that rocked him good. The Nord faltered forward with a pained grunt, Dort leaped from his porch to run east with Tin looping around between two farmsteads, already burning bones in his satchel to gain ground on the female ranger that jumped out of Irina’s front door.
“The Aken!” Aeleniel barked at the dazed Bear loosing an arrow that smacked the fleeing Dort on the back and catapulted him forward. The construct regained his footing and kept faltering away deeper into the woods.
“Ah,” Bear grunted. “I didn’t see him!”
“Did you?” Aeleniel asked Marn and the little fiend pointed an arm towards the spot where Tin had ended up. “Are you sure?”
“I saw something,” Marn told her.
“He might be confused damn it,” Bear cursed. “I’ll go after Dort.”
Good.
“How far is the South Branch from hither?” Aeleniel asked Marn heading between the two village buildings to follow in Tin’s footsteps. They weren’t many footsteps left behind, unless you knew when and where to look.
And she did.
Hmm.
Tin retreated behind a chestnut tree, left his staff by its trunk and stooped to pick one of the harpoons he had hidden there about a week back. He leaped over the narrow path and landed on a short bush three meters away. Aeleniel appeared behind the chestnut tree just as Tin retreated deeper inside the wilderness, next to the small forest path. The ranger paused to examine the staff he’d left behind and then secured her longbow over her head. She slowly unsheathed a straight blade shortsword, and a gleaming steel peleg with a curved handle.
Tin looked about the forest trail, saw a big oak tree with thick, heavy branches that hanged not two meters above the ground, standing between two young pines at the edge of it –about five meters away and promptly headed there to ambush the ranger in the shade.
He almost made it to the oak tree, the summer sun half-hidden behind the thick canopy, but whist the Aken kept his eyes on the searching for him ranger, he stepped on a thin half-covered fallen branch with leaves still on it, left in the middle of the path.
The branch snapped in half, probably sawed off on its underside and Tin’s right foot was caught in a loop of hemp-rope, just as the two broken parts of the branch catapulted upwards. The Oak tree’s lowered much thicker branches abruptly returned to their normal position and the now freed broken twigs twirled around the Aken’s foot –guided by the tied rope- and took it with them.
Oops.
Tin was yanked upwards, his caught left foot leading and his bald head flipped upside down after it gave a good scrape at the ground. The next moment the scowled Tin flew briefly towards the now located much higher canopy and then swayed back and forth like a pendulum over a market table.
Idiocy.
Ahm.
Fucking mouth-breathing, sweaty… try-hard blue cunt!
The angry Aken folded his right leg at the knee joint forward and then raised his torso to approach the tied foot. He tried to untie the knot, realized it was too tight and reached in his satchel for a scalpel. Given Tin was still upside down and hanged from a branch –a good eight meters from the ground- the moment he opened the leather bag most of its contents got spilled down and landed on the forest trail.
Oh, oiled fishhooks!
A snarling Tin pulled at the hemp rope to weaken it, his leg cramping and hearing the ranger coming straight for the mantrap she had set up herself –no sane local would have placed a hidden snare in a commonly used path- he redoubled his efforts to free the foot. Quickly abandoning the idea to gnaw through it –no time for that and anguish aside, Tin didn’t have the teeth for that- and worked to remove his boot instead as the rope had looped around it just over the ankle.
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Uhm.
Come on!
Eh.
“Gaah!” Tin bellowed as he dropped from above, leaving a dangling dirty boot behind, but made no other sound when he landed damaging his right knee and almost dislodging his freshly installed human left. The grimacing Aken staggered forward, arms flailing and moved across the path to reach the soaring shrubberies, when he heard twigs cracking right behind him.
He ducked instinctively and went into a twirl, the tossed axe whipping past his neck. Aeleniel leaped right after the peleg, as the Aken rolled on the ground to get away. He found the harpoon dropped near some of the contents of his satchel, made a quick decision to go for the weapon, put his hand on it, but then growled as he got stabbed in the left kidneys.
The blade bursting out the front.
Tin swung the harpoon in an arc backwards, whilst twisting away from the shortsword, but Aeleniel yanked it out timely and dodged in the same move. She sidestepped to avoid it on the return and then leaped backwards a good three meters.
Not in retreat.
Aeleniel went for her longbow –then secured over her back, she had it loaded in a breath, a terrifyingly calm sequence of fluid moves using both her arms and fired the next. She moved so fast her figure blurred briefly before Tin’s ogled eyes.
The arrow scrapped Tin’s heart, but skewered his lung and lodged in the scapula bone, before he’d the time to hurl the harpoon. Well, he hurled it just the same, stumbling back and going from just about to faint from a heart attack, to snapping awake from the jolt of pain of a deflating lung.
Aeleniel dodged the harpoon, it had scrapped her left shoulder, but dropped to a knee in the effort, whilst Tin ducked for the ground and the scattered spilled bones trying to get away. He grabbed a handful, but the ranger’s solemn voice crackled disturbing the forest’s peace and stopped him.
“It’s over Suharto,” Aeleniel said as a glowering Tin turned around, then shot him again.
Bitch.
I was about to fake-surrender!
Tin stumbled back a couple of steps, while she reloaded and broke the arrow shaft protruding from his right thigh.
“I’m Thirteen,” he hissed, blood bubbling out of his mouth. “You got the… um, the wrong man. This is a severe mix-up!”
“Sure,” Aeleniel spat and fired another arrow right through Tin’s throat.
“Btchhgld,” the Aken cursed incoherently drowning in his own blood, a moment later or ten, and cracked his blurry eyes open. The ranger had gone to pick up her peleg and now returned, a grim expression on her face. “Ergl… um…”
He grabbed the bloody arrow and slowly extracted it from the wound, almost severing his vocal cords and damaging the epiglottis, the forked tongue dancing in and out of his gore-covered mouth.
“Who else has come over?” Aeleniel asked the struggling Aken and Tin’s gawking snake eyes stared at her with barely-contained hatred.
“Arg… don’t… know shit.”
“You killed Tanulia,” Aeleniel hissed and slashed at his arm to stop him from removing her arrows. The blade lodged between mid and ring finger and almost split his palm in two.
“Ah! Curse you!” Tin growled and Aeleniel’s boot snapped his head back. She caught him with the square heel on the jaw and cracked it.
“I… don’t know her,” Tin grunted. “Uhm, or you.”
“You’ll lie like a cowardly dog?” The ranger hissed.
Yes?
“Where did you get the leg? The right arm,” Aeleniel asked irate. “I can see the bloody stitches! You murdered the whole village! What was in that tub you vile creature?”
None of your fucking business!
“I had an unrelated accident… vicious bitch! You got it all wrong!” Tin snapped back and Marn came out of the foliage, all that bogus boyish demeanor wiped from his face.
Aha.
Tables are turning for the good guys!
Uhm.
Aeleniel heard the local Issir boy move behind her and glanced back. “Stay away, he’s dangerous,” she advised, forgetting her own words.
Yes he is.
Tin had killed those he had found in the settlement. I mean who wouldn’t in his place? He had spared no one obviously, since he was in dire need for supplies, freshly out of helpful personnel and out of pure professionalism.
Awareness.
Purpose.
So plenty of good reasons.
Yep.
“I can watch,” the fake ‘Marn’ replied with a gnarly smirk and something in his tone alarmed Aeleniel. The ranger span around, the rebellious fiend lunched at her dislocating his jaw, the flesh tearing at both his cheeks to reveal the bloody gums, but instead of Aeleniel’s throat his teeth snapped close on the ranger’s right leather vambrace –worn over her forearm- instead. She had raised it to protect herself and the Fiend Tin had caught mistakenly when he created the construct, tried to chew through the armour to reach the flesh, and broke most of his human teeth on the metal-reinforced vambrace.
Idiot.
Tin left fist smoked as the bones ignited and the injured Aken –already standing up- leaped backwards and out of existence.
Still alive! Tin thought elated, the sounds of the released Fiend fighting with the ranger disturbing the dense forest.
He landed at the edge of the spell’s radius and limped away as fast as he could heading south. Tin had aimed for Chinos’ southernmost 2nd leg. The Aken stayed on the human and animal trail for a while and then got out of it, using the thick grass and vegetation to cover his tracks.
Twenty minutes later, dead tired, bleeding down his chest and throat –though he’d plugged both injuries with torn cloth and a fresh coat of construct paste- the scowled Tin reached the banks of the river with the ranger still not near him.
Unless she was unlucky Aeleniel should best Marn for sure. The fiend was too young to learn new ways in two weeks and what it knew didn’t fully translate in the realm of the living. In time, Marn would have turned into a lethal, very cunning predator, but at this point the merger of the kid’s soul with the fiend had produced a rather weak creature.
Still dangerous.
It had almost strangled Tin in his sleep, after pretending for a couple of days, everything was normal. Had he not been so badly injured Tin would have noticed the symptoms earlier, but… well, he hadn’t.
Tin groaned and then paused near the water to look up and down the river shores. Each breath clogging his airways with blood. He spotted a small wooden pier about a hundred meters to the west and narrowed his eyes seeing a small river boat tied there.
Have the humans returned? Tin wondered and decided that he should take the boat.
It was too early in the season for them to have come back from Riverdor.
Take the boat and preserve your strength.
Force the stubborn bitch to swim across.
Yep.
Tin approached the peaceful pier, walking with a limp on his ‘good’ leg due to the hip injury and having to navigate the new limb –his left- that hadn’t fully mended yet, made his walk very awkward on the muddy terrain. The hot sun, especially after coming off the shade cast by the trees, had him sweating profusely.
The six oars on the boat were left inside and the vessel was tied with a line on an iron horn cleat wedged on the wooden deck’s sides. A fresh rope and a nicely painted white river boat that read ‘Lis Berends Co’ with black paint on the starboard side of its hull.
Hmm.
Tin put his hurting foot on the narrow wooden deck of the pier and then retracted it. He turned his head to the quiet treeline starting about thirty meters from the river banks and noticed a well-dressed man was walking towards the pier briskly, murmuring to himself. Tin stepped away from the remote landing-stage and dug inside his satchel for a weapon. He found a scalpel in his smaller tool bag and slowly extracted it, lowering his torso on hurting knees, not to appear too intimidating.
“Get the axe Sontar,” the approaching figure griped to himself. The man not well-dressed but in uniform. A dark blue redingote, with ivory buttons half-hidden under a nice hooded cloak. Very heavy for the season. Em. Uhm. “This is getting quite ridiculous,” the hooded male continued, sporting a scabbard with a sword in it. The handle of Imperial design, much as the marine uniform and dark blue pants.
Shite.
What in all hells is going on here?
Um?
“Hey you… disheveled ugly local,” Sontar said noticing the ravaged by severe face spasms Tin standing near the pier. “That’s a rented boat mister and it wasn’t cheap… wait a salty minute,” Sontar paused with a frown and then opened his eyes wide looking flabbergasted.
“I’m a scholar,” Tin assured the stunned Zilan marine and cursing on the inside burned bones to teleport himself as far away as possible.
The spell-poisoned, coughing and vomiting Aken landed near the forest, stumbled on crackling joints and burning with fever muscles, and then started running awkwardly for the trees again.
Head further east, cut south again to reach the river and this time swim straight across! He admonished himself, clenching his jaw to power through the final stretch and find cover. The running Tin caught out of the corner of his ogling right eye another hooded figure coming out of the woods, from the side leading to Dutch’s Net –a good two hundred meters away.
If not further.
While quite afar, the figure looked taller than Sontar –left behind at the pier- and as he snapped his arms open to discard the cloak -upon noticing the limping to safety Aken, the sun bathed the dark metal torso armour the stranger wore underneath and made it flash a brilliant white.
The stranger disappeared from sight momentarily and when he appeared again had all his weight resting on the right leg –the latter sunk in the soft ground, his armoured frame stooped lightly forward as if the stranger had just tripped himself up on the muddy terrain…
Or perhaps hurled a spear?
What?
Tin twirled around panicked and then heard the projectile screaming as it teared through the air with monstrous speed.
The spear thudded on the Aken’s ribcage, skewered him sideways alike a dear, dislodging and destroying most of the organs inside his chest cavity and then exploded out of the other side, but not before lifting the croaking Tin off of his feet and sent him violently crash on the ground.
Four meters from the first trees.
Ouch.
Eh.
Fuck.
This is bad.
Uhm.
The worst possible outcome.
Fucking Luthos!
“Damn it Aquilan!” Sontar cursed sprinting near the other Zilan brute. “Is that him?”
“That’s an Aken,” Aquilan rustled and lifted the spear –still skewered through the mostly unresponsive Tin- to carry it and the still nailed Aken near a tree trunk. He stabbed the spear a good foot in the trunk and unsheathed a sword with a forward curve on its blade, a hoplite’s Kopis.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
What’s this? The fucking empire’s return?
“Is it… Suharto? Can’t really tell them apart,” Sontar queried also armed with a sword. “Where’s Samblar?”
“He’s probably dead. The nice ‘ranger’ he found, very likely murdered the merchant for the coin he carried on him. I located the path they take through the woods,” Aquilan told him and looked at the quiet forest. “Where are they? Your servants?” He asked the bleeding out Tin.
“I’m… a peaceful explorer…” Tin croaked, spraying gore out of his nostrils and feeling on death’s door.
“The missive said they’ve found the Aken,” Sontar noted. “In Crimson Forrest. The battle happened kilometers from here and on the other side of the river.”
“It’s not that far,” Aquilan grunted still scanning the forest.
“He’s… gone. The Bonemancer… they have his body in Quarterport!” the ravaged by organ failure Tin croaked. “I need… a healing potion.”
“Hah,” Sontar guffawed. “I have to write a report about all expenses mate,” he told the dying Aken. “Ain’t putting in there that I’ve spent resources to heal an Aken. Sorry.”
“Fuck… ahm, you?” Tin offered a polite response.
“Someone is coming,” Aquilan warned the affronted Sontar and signed for him to keep his eyes on the dying Tin. Well, Tin had already stopped most of the internal bleeding, but he couldn’t move at all. Some of it was the spear that had him nailed on the trunk like a trout, and his cracked spine.
Yep, it was bad.
And it all went to hell after that.
“Where’s the merchant?” Aquilan asked the bloodied ranger that emerged from the forest path and she paused, not particularly enthralled upon spotting her fellow Zilan.
Hmm.
“Samblar is fine,” Aeleniel replied with a glance at the mangled Tin still nailed on the tree. “Aquilan, of Cyran. To the heavens above our greetings.”
“Um,” Aquilan grunted, sober face distorted by suspicion.
“By the grace of Abrakas. She has imperial armour on,” Sontar said. “Are you injured sister?”
“Just scratches.”
“A construct?” Aquilan probed, examining her bloody face intently.
“Might have been a fiend in the flesh,” Aeleniel replied, her bow lowered and inserted arrow pointing to ground. “I need to go back and finish it off. That’s Suharto.”
“He denies it,” Aquilan replied. “Your name… sister?”
Aeleniel stood back with a grimace.
“Hardir rules in Goras,” she told the sober Aquilan.
“He does.”
“Offered amnesty to all exiles is the word?”
“God damn it Aquilan,” Sontar cursed and approached them. “I have a bottle of good salve for the scratches—”
“I make my own, marine,” Aeleniel cut him off.
“Name is Sontar, of Mirthral. 2nd Officer aboard the galleass Arassil. Admiral Flandryn’s flagship,” Sontar corrected her waggling his blue eyebrows.
“Who told you about the Monarch’s order?” Aquilan intervened.
“Lithoniela, of Baltoris.”
“Aquilan, this is enough,” Sontar grunted.
“You are not truthful. Where is Samblar?” Aquilan insisted.
“Beyond the river with Azrael, my pupil and a human. I didn’t harm the merchant Aquilan,” Aeleniel replied. “Suharto…”
“He’s not Suharto,” Aquilan stopped her. “Suharto wouldn’t have made a mistake with the Fiend. This is a construct probably, or an imposter.”
“Maybe he did it on purpose.”
“No one would,” Aquilan replied thoughtfully. “Who gave you the bow? I can hear its humming! What does it say?”
Aeleniel grimaced, slotted the arrow into her quiver and passed the bowstring over her head, to carry it on her back. “Master Faelar.”
“You’re Aeleniel,” Aquilan said and with a purse of his mouth sheathed his Kopis. “Why hide it?”
“Why hide the Monarch’s order Tetrarch?” Aeleniel retorted and glanced at the frowned Sontar. “I owe you my life Sontar.”
“Well,” Sontar started not fully certain what had just happened, but willing to fully exploit it. “We could perhaps talk about it over lunch?”
“I’m not interested,” Aeleniel replied calmly and pointed at the watching them snarling Tin. “I want him killed.”
Shite.
“Wait!” Tin gasped croakily. “I know where Suharto is!”
“He’s lying,” Aeleniel told Aquilan. “He murdered Tanulia.”
“It wasn’t me! No, ehm… not me. Uhm. Someone else… pretending to be an Aken… Ahm. Probably still lurking in the woods! Yes.” Fuck, this isn’t going to work! “Zargatoh is on Eplas!”
“No, he isn’t. The witch killed him,” Aeleniel retorted and stepped near the tree opening her strides. Aquilan’s hand grabbed her shoulder and span her around.
“What witch?” Aquilan rustled a query and Aeleniel pursed her mouth frustrated.
“Aelrindel, but she was killed also,” she replied with a glare at the beefy Hoplite. “A lich killed her inside Rida’s palace.”
“A Lich.”
“It’s all I know.”
“From whom? The witch is dead, you claim.”
“Step out of Wetull Aquilan and you'll learn a thing or two you’ve missed about the realm.”
“That so? So Faelar allowed it?” Aquilan grunted, still sounding surprised.
“Faelar is dead,” Aeleniel hissed. “And so is Baltoris Aquilan. Why defend her orders? She had the Cryptae abolished, your authority removed. Installed Nym’s Circle inside the palace.”
“I serve the Phalanx,” Aquilan replied soberly and waved for her to finish what she had started. “And it was Saevelos that whispered it in the Queen’s ear,” the Tetrarch added hoarsely.
“Why not take it to Lord Anfalon? He could have had Saevelos removed,” Aeleniel asked a little confused. “How could he possibly have her ear? Who was he working for?”
“There was no conspiracy. The 5th Hoplite’s reasons were his own. I had to respect them,” Aquilan replied. “Lord Anfalon heard of the matter.”
Aeleniel nodded, then reached down her weapon harness for the peleg. She walked up to the trapped Tin, the Aken’s face distorted with spasms and paused to stare into his swollen eyes.
“Bygone’s… be bygones?” Tin offered absent any other options.
You do everything right and the realm turns on you.
Not fair.
Nope.
Uhm.
“Would you have spared me, if I stood in your shoes? Hells… Any of us? Nah, the thought didn’t even cross your mind. You could have been an explorer Aken. But you wanted what Suharto had. You are tainted. Am I right?” Aeleniel asked him somberly.
“Suharto ain’t your problem. The Elder of Galith shall make clay statues of you all,” a bleeding down his mouth Tin told her with a crooked smirk and proud he’d managed to keep his voice steady for once. “Just to make sure he’s dead.”
“And you’ll see none o' that,” Aeleniel replied and swung with the small axe. The sudden pain brief and lost in the simmering agony Tin felt from his ravaged body, even with most of his nerves under the self-induced necrosis, it has always been there.
Years upon years.
Until it wasn’t.
-
“Who’s he?” Zargatoh asked eyeing the shaking Tin like a bug. Wiris ‘Green’ turned her striking Nord eyes on him, the comely Issir female as dangerous the Elder O’ Galith, as she –he the better word to use- was based on a Tangod Kobnot blank. A construct crafted by Zargatoh that retained almost intact the original brain of the host. The ability to learn far greater, if the mind survived the horrific ordeal of death and rebirth. Wiris had and no one knew more about the Elder’s craft than her was the word. Even Suharto steered clear of her, unless he couldn’t avoid it.
Tin started shaking even more and Suharto who had just inserted a new eye on the giant four armed Z’Gruk glanced towards the copy of himself.
“Thirteen,” Suharto replied. “Used a piece of cervical vertebrae,” he added with a grimace of discomfort and an angry glance at Wiris. “I had her do it, since Four’s fingers are still mending, but she didn’t dry the marrow fluid properly. I think she did it on purpose.”
“He won’t be easy to control in time. Not easy to dispose of,” Zargatoh noted and stood up with a last glance at the repaired Z’Gruk. “Get it with the others. The Zilan landed reinforcements tonight.”
“He’s too much of a coward to do his own thing. Don’t worry,” Suharto replied to his back and patted the four-armed ogre on the shoulder to stand at its full eight feet height.
“Look,” the hairy Z’Gruk rustled hoarsely, when his red eyes stopped on the slightly smirking Wiris. “Smell nice.”
“You should put a cock on them,” she suggested sultry and Suharto grimaced in frustration.
“Get her away from here,” he grunted and Tin blinked not expecting the order. He gulped down, walked to the much shorter than him human construct and paused to give her the chance to walk after her master.
Wiris wetted her lips with a pink tongue, then reached with a manicured hand to touch Tin’s naked chest. He run her fingers down his belly, which was pleasurable, paused over the belly button teasingly and then abruptly stabbed her finger inside, puncturing the skin.
Deep.
“Blasted hells! Get your crazy arse away from him!” Suharto barked and rushed near the doubled over Tin, while Wiris walked near the Z’Gruk and painted her initials with Tin’s blood on one of the silent giant’s beefy forearms. When she finished and while Tin was rolling on the ground howling in agony and bleeding like a cracked wine barrel, the Z’Gruk had a gruesome smile on his scarred square face.
-
Shit, I ain’t fully dead yet, you sweaty cunt! Tin exclaimed silently, surprised and cautiously optimistic, mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out, well after his head had stopped rolling. The severed head struck a jutting root during its descent and launched itself behind a dense thicket of berries. Next, it encountered a crack in the earth, brimming with water and sloping towards the south. The detached, bloodied head floated towards the river, bobbing rhythmically in the shallow currents.
Sometimes Tin could see some of the bright sky and the sun, others the bottom of the brook. He could have reached Chinos 2nd leg potentially, but while Tin got excited at first for the possibility of a last minute escape, he soon realized this was all a cruel ruse by the god of luck. A wild hairy pig snatched the Aken’s head out of the stream and hunted it about for a while. The pig left after eating half of Tin’s face an hour later, leaving a single, yellow snake eye behind under a scratched but intact forehead.
Half an hour after that or thereabouts, a pissed off Aeleniel appeared, Good grief, can this woman hold a grudge or what? This time the ranger had brought a hammer with her.
Bloody Imperial philistines!
Uh.