Nirrvash Enjoy!
Once again, Stella and I found ourselves going through the hell of getting through the misshapen space to the echo of the past. All the nasty things I was already familiar with were there,; raging headache, my whole body a mess, hurting like crazy, my stomach upside down, the taste of vomit in my mouth, the smell of it assaulting my nose. Not to mention my uncomfortably wet shorts.
Yeah, we were at the birth of another cycle.
The remainder of the last one we spent in the presence of Rairok. He was kind enough to tell the others to get lost. Of course, the beast was more polite. When they came to him demanding answers from us, he told them to wait a few days, knowing that by then the cycle would end and everything would start all over again. Honestly, I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was going through. The idea of finding out that I was just a memory, a record, and that my life, my suffering, was a thing of the past without anyone remembering me was terrifying.
I had nothing but admiration for Rairok.
“You there, Stella?” I asked. Sure, I could see her lying in her own vomit next to me within my domain, but her pained, moaning reply was comforting in a way. No, I didn’t enjoy her suffering. Quite the opposite. It hurt me to see her like that. What comforted me was to know that we both made it. That we both didn’t lose it yet and were of sound mind - albeit, on second thought, her moaning wasn’t quite as convincing in that regard.
“Potion?”
“Yeah,” she rasped with considerable effort, and I, having her permission, took out a bottle of healing potion, uncorked it, and poured it down her throat. While I was able to put my regeneration to work right away, it took Stella a while to get her auras going. Nevertheless, all things considered, she was back on her feet faster than the last time. Which didn’t mean that the Aura Warrior was all the sooner fit enough to walk all the way to the cave. She still needed a ride.
But her ride had other business to take care of first.
***
Watching Korra bite into the roasted meat was a sight to behold. She didn’t care about manners, nor did she use her hands to tear off chunks, which Stella would have found acceptable. The hybrid simply held the meat with both hands and bit into it like a wild, hungry beast. To make it even easier on herself, she shifted her teeth, digging into the meat with razor-sharp fangs.
Granted, with the contents of her stomach on the ground, even Stella was starving. Or rather, she craved a decent meal. With the dawn of the new cycle, the hunger that had gripped her guts at the end of the last one had disappeared - not the taste for anything other than stale bread and water, however. Alas, her body didn’t let her dig in. To take anything but the potion while her insides were a mess would be dumb.
And so, annoyed at the sight of Korra, even jealous, she waited for her moment.
“Enjoy your meal?” Korra said with a full mouth, lips and hands smeared with sauce, as Stella finally took her rations out of her spatial storage and laid them out on a blanket she had spread out on the ground. Not exactly what she insisted on at every meal, she wasn’t opposed to sitting on a rock or in the mud if necessary, but why not make eating more enjoyable when the opportunity presented itself? They were high on a cliff overlooking the surrounding forests . . . and it wasn’t raining buckets.
“Thanks, I would say the same to you, but . . .” Stella said, pointing back at a young woman sitting on the ground a few meters away from her, wagging her tail contentedly. And it wasn’t just the big bushy tail. Her wings fluttered with every bite she took, while her ears danced with delight. “You’re obviously enjoying yourself already.”
Korra just shrugged, smiled from ear to ear and took another bite. ‘Beast.’ With that impression of her in mind, Stella followed suit and, with more civility, set about eating. Sure enough, as the first bite of marinated meat with sprouts wrapped in a breaded pancake caressed her taste buds, she too would have wagged her tail in bliss if she had one. It took all her willpower not to pounce on the food like Korra.
While they both enjoyed this guilty pleasure, they regretted it not long after on the way to the cave. Riding a beast wasn’t much fun on a full stomach, especially when you weren’t quite fit yet, and the beast itself whimpered with every leap from stone to stone and suffered no less. They both felt even less inclined to gather firewood in the woods for the night before the rains began. And yes, this time, Stella was determined not to leave it all to Korra, but to lend a hand.
It pissed her off to no end to have to rely on the efforts of others while she sat around helplessly doing nothing but recuperating. The perfect time for her dark thoughts to prey on her mind. Especially with the knowledge of what they were facing here, she was reluctant to take any chances and let her thoughts run wild. She saw herself better off pushing the limits of her body and doubling down on her healing auras while walking in the woods than sitting on her ass in the cave.
“Weren’t you whining about being stuffed less than an hour ago?” Stella asked, eventually sitting down by the fire as Korra pulled out another piece of meat. How much that woman could eat was simply mind-boggling.
“Better than bitching about stale bread later.”
“Hey, I wasn’t bitching about it,” Stella objected. “I just didn’t eat it.”
“Whatever.”
“Honestly, it still amazes me that you did. Were you really that hungry?” Korra might have told her that it was a habit from the time when she had a collar around her neck, but . . . it was on Stella’s mind, anyway. She would have to force herself to eat it. “Can’t you go without food for a few days?”
“Yeah, I could,” her friend and squadmate shrugged. “I think . . .”
“But?”
The hungry beast stopped eating for a moment. “I need to work on my skill. And before you start, I know they don’t work here, and no matter how much I eat, I always end up with the same weight at the beginning of the cycle. This is about the habit.”
That wasn’t what Stella expected to hear from her. “A habit?”
Korra nodded. “Do you know how hard it was to force myself to eat more when I was already full? For over a year, I was used to eating just enough to hold off my hunger. Imagine me starving here, cycle after cycle.”
That was actually a good point. They had no way of knowing how long they’d be here; it could be a few days, it could be a few years. That was long enough to build up habits, good and bad, to drag into the present. “I . . .”
“Besides, I need the weight for my shifting. It takes a lot out of me every time, and we don’t know when or how many times I’ll have to do it.”
“But we do,” Stella argued, well aware of how limited their knowledge of future developments was. All it took was a small change in what they did, and whatever they experienced in the previous cycle could change completely. In fact, they were betting on it.
“When they put us near Rairok, hopefully I’ll turn into a full beast the first night and show Ronnu that I’m up to the challenge at the front-lines. But then what? We don’t know shit about what happens next”.
That was unfortunately true. Since they had spent the remaining days of the last cycle under Rairok’s protection, it was impossible to guess the chain of events beyond that. The only sure thing was that Ronnu wouldn’t let them onto the battlefield. There was no way that one fight with her could have made any difference to their fighting abilities. “I think we are in for some training. At least, that’s what Grand Commander Ronnu mentioned.”
“Yeah, and what she threw at Stouch to arrange.”
“He’s a good man, little ones,” Traiana spoke, sitting with them by the fire. “He takes his job seriously and assigns you to those he deems most suitable.”
“Do you know who that might be?” Stella asked, curious about who might be training her and glad that the ancient woman had dared to join them again. She basically hadn’t shown up for the rest of the cycle, using the excuse that she didn’t want to distract them so they wouldn’t give themselves away, which wasn’t exactly a valid excuse when they basically announced out loud who they were on their own. If Stella had to guess, the woman was surprisingly overly self-conscious about her past self.
Sure, Ronnu wasn’t what she’d pictured Traiana as, far from it, but knowing what they were up against here, when she already knew the truth, she didn’t see it fit to judge her. At first, Traiana’s reluctance to tell them the truth had irritated her. Now she understood and at times wished she were able to curb her curiosity.
“The 7th Rosicrucian Order is full of brilliant people, little one. What I mean by that is that it’s hard to say in whose capable hands you might end up. Though whoever it will be, they will be a great help to you.”
So much bragging that Stella was a hair’s breadth away from smirking and making a remark. It would be so easy and harmless if she were talking to a friend, like Korra, and not to the woman of legends, a hero on whose help they counted to get back home.
“They can’t all be that good,” the full-mouthed shifter objected to her horror.
Stella coughed, choking on her own saliva. “Korra!”
“What? There has to be someone like us, right? Some new guys.”
“You’re right, little Guardian,” Traiana said before Stella could utter a word, surprisingly not outraged by what Korra said, as she thought the woman would be. “While the 7th is indeed the order with one of the lowest casualty rates, as you were told, not everyone comes back from a battle. There are novice knights. Even one-star knights like you, but more experienced than you.”
That was a way of saying that the two of them were weak despite their level. Not something Stella felt offended to hear. Her instructors and teachers didn’t hesitate to throw things like that at her all the time. It motivated her to work harder. However, it did make her wonder how Captain Rayden, for example, would fare in comparison - or Deckard. Would they be able to utilize powers comparable to the knights of equal strength of this era? Was the system a hindrance or a crutch to them, as its creators had intended?
Stella couldn’t wait to tell them what they had learned here. Yet at the same time, she was dreading it, dreading the consequences it might bring. Even thoughts of panic and the collapse of the Sahal Empire came to her mind, that she would always be remembered as the messenger of truth that brought the downfall.
A worry for later, she tried to tell herself. They had to get back first, after all.
***
The next morning, they both stood outside the Forest Gate for the second time, hands in the air, no tools on their bodies except the two swords at Stella’s waist. The swords that were immediately confiscated from her.
Once again, a feeling of unease washed over her. The lack of anything besides a few pieces of clothing and boots made her feel more naked than if she had been standing there, stripped, in the rain. It was almost uncanny how one got used to having the tools with them, relying on them.
Regardless of how she felt about the lack of tools, it was not long before they both walked in shackles, escorted by two knights, through the encampment to the Cages, a place that gave her goosebumps.
There were simply too many beasts.
Stella was no stranger to their presence. She had faced many during her training and quite a few in Fallen’s Cry with Squad Four. Spending days surrounded by them without talking to other humans was new to her, though. Not to mention Rairok, who, despite his lanky appearance and affable nature, was still a five-hundred-level beast.
Sure enough, Korra was there, and Rairok turned out to be a good talking companion. Yet it wasn’t quite the same. He was still a beast, and this friend of hers, who walked beside her in handcuffs, could at times seem more beast-like than human.
“What the fuck are you doing here, boys? And who are those two hussies?” The voice belonged to Knight Commander Taiult, sitting in a chair under a tarp stretched between several cages. The place was his office, so to speak, as well as a warehouse for the Cages and the Pit. Chains, shackles, collars and other such things for dealing with the beasts hung in the stands. And the man, no armor, no frills on his shoulders that made it hard to tell his rank - Stella had a hard time finding a reason for that - wasn’t there alone. Five others, the same as last time, were tending to the equipment, and more could be seen moving through the corridors between the cages.
The two knights escorting them saluted. “Sir, these two, members of the Dia Eichenralke, have shown up at the Forest Gate. Knight Commander Sarralot has ordered us to put them in a cage for the time being.”
“Has he?” the man said, getting up from his chair and giving Korra and her a hard once-over. “Dia Eichenralke, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” one of the knights confirmed.
“Looking for a battlefield to die on?”
“No, sir. To fight on, to prove our honor,” Stella argued, just like last time.
“Yeah, yeah, if you’re so eager, you can prove it in the Pit.”
Stella glanced in the direction of the makeshift arena, then at the cages with the beasts inside that surrounded it. “I must say, it’s impressive that you managed to capture so many of them alive.” New tactics, flattery. Arguing with this man was pointless. It got them nowhere last time.
Knight Commander Taiult stopped and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, someone who can appreciate the work. You don’t see that very often. Well, we’ll find you a nice place to stay. Somewhere where you can appreciate it even more. Come with me, boys; I’ll show you where to put the two hussies.”
“Yes, sir,” the two knights saluted with far too much satisfaction when her attempt to reason with him failed, before pushing them both to move.
The man was truly insufferable.
In any case, it was Korra’s turn.
***
“Could we go this way?” I pointed in the opposite direction of where the obnoxious guy was taking us. He stopped in his tracks and looked back at me to make sure I was serious. Then, when he realized that I was, he flushed with anger. “Who the fuck do you think you are? This is not an inn where you get to choose where you lay your head. You sit your asses where I tell you, Eichenralke hussies!”
He then beckoned to the knights. “Let’s go. I know of a couple of smaller cages that will just fit these two. That should teach them not to talk shit.”
“I must insist that we go there,” I said as he started to walk down the corridor between the cages and the knights pushed Stella and me to follow him.
“Fuck, you’re a dumb hussy, aren’t you? Didn’t they teach you when to shut up?”
I didn’t give a shit what he said. “There’s a beast I have to meet.” Rairok.
“Don’t worry, hussy. I’m going to put you right next to one of the finest beasts we have here. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it,” he said with a nasty grin on his face. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the beasts he had in mind were not pleasant to be around.
“Please, it can’t be such a big deal to put us in the cages on the other side of the Cages where . . . ?” I stopped myself from saying Rairok’s name out loud.
“Her yapping is worse than Martrall’s hyenas in heat. Do you have any gags?” the Knight Commander asked, completely ignoring my words.
I tried. Like Stella, I tried to reason with him. And like her, I failed. So I took a breath, and after seeing her brace herself, I let my presence out as we discussed. It brought the unprepared knights and the insufferable man to their knees. Alas, they were back on their feet, eyes wide, weapons in hand pointed at us, as quickly as my presence had faded.
“You . . .” As angry as he was, the insufferable Knight Commander didn’t get to finish the sentence before Rairok’s presence hit us all. It wasn’t as overbearing as my outburst, a sign of his control, but more of a greeting, something I tried to imprint on mine. And it seemed to work.
“Didn’t my friend tell you there was a beast she had to meet?” Stella remarked a little too smugly, but I couldn’t help grinning as well.
This time, the man, although obviously furious beyond belief, seemed to get the hint.
“Shall we go then?” I pointed in Rairok’s direction.
Nirrvash Enjoy!
Once again, Stella and I found ourselves going through the hell of getting through the misshapen space to the echo of the past. All the nasty things I was already familiar with were there,; raging headache, my whole body a mess, hurting like crazy, my stomach upside down, the taste of vomit in my mouth, the smell of it assaulting my nose. Not to mention my uncomfortably wet shorts.
Yeah, we were at the birth of another cycle.
The remainder of the last one we spent in the presence of Rairok. He was kind enough to tell the others to get lost. Of course, the beast was more polite. When they came to him demanding answers from us, he told them to wait a few days, knowing that by then the cycle would end and everything would start all over again. Honestly, I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was going through. The idea of finding out that I was just a memory, a record, and that my life, my suffering, was a thing of the past without anyone remembering me was terrifying.
I had nothing but admiration for Rairok.
“You there, Stella?” I asked. Sure, I could see her lying in her own vomit next to me within my domain, but her pained, moaning reply was comforting in a way. No, I didn’t enjoy her suffering. Quite the opposite. It hurt me to see her like that. What comforted me was to know that we both made it. That we both didn’t lose it yet and were of sound mind - albeit, on second thought, her moaning wasn’t quite as convincing in that regard.
“Potion?”
“Yeah,” she rasped with considerable effort, and I, having her permission, took out a bottle of healing potion, uncorked it, and poured it down her throat. While I was able to put my regeneration to work right away, it took Stella a while to get her auras going. Nevertheless, all things considered, she was back on her feet faster than the last time. Which didn’t mean that the Aura Warrior was all the sooner fit enough to walk all the way to the cave. She still needed a ride.
But her ride had other business to take care of first.
***
Watching Korra bite into the roasted meat was a sight to behold. She didn’t care about manners, nor did she use her hands to tear off chunks, which Stella would have found acceptable. The hybrid simply held the meat with both hands and bit into it like a wild, hungry beast. To make it even easier on herself, she shifted her teeth, digging into the meat with razor-sharp fangs.
Granted, with the contents of her stomach on the ground, even Stella was starving. Or rather, she craved a decent meal. With the dawn of the new cycle, the hunger that had gripped her guts at the end of the last one had disappeared - not the taste for anything other than stale bread and water, however. Alas, her body didn’t let her dig in. To take anything but the potion while her insides were a mess would be dumb.
And so, annoyed at the sight of Korra, even jealous, she waited for her moment.
“Enjoy your meal?” Korra said with a full mouth, lips and hands smeared with sauce, as Stella finally took her rations out of her spatial storage and laid them out on a blanket she had spread out on the ground. Not exactly what she insisted on at every meal, she wasn’t opposed to sitting on a rock or in the mud if necessary, but why not make eating more enjoyable when the opportunity presented itself? They were high on a cliff overlooking the surrounding forests . . . and it wasn’t raining buckets.
“Thanks, I would say the same to you, but . . .” Stella said, pointing back at a young woman sitting on the ground a few meters away from her, wagging her tail contentedly. And it wasn’t just the big bushy tail. Her wings fluttered with every bite she took, while her ears danced with delight. “You’re obviously enjoying yourself already.”
Korra just shrugged, smiled from ear to ear and took another bite. ‘Beast.’ With that impression of her in mind, Stella followed suit and, with more civility, set about eating. Sure enough, as the first bite of marinated meat with sprouts wrapped in a breaded pancake caressed her taste buds, she too would have wagged her tail in bliss if she had one. It took all her willpower not to pounce on the food like Korra.
While they both enjoyed this guilty pleasure, they regretted it not long after on the way to the cave. Riding a beast wasn’t much fun on a full stomach, especially when you weren’t quite fit yet, and the beast itself whimpered with every leap from stone to stone and suffered no less. They both felt even less inclined to gather firewood in the woods for the night before the rains began. And yes, this time, Stella was determined not to leave it all to Korra, but to lend a hand.
It pissed her off to no end to have to rely on the efforts of others while she sat around helplessly doing nothing but recuperating. The perfect time for her dark thoughts to prey on her mind. Especially with the knowledge of what they were facing here, she was reluctant to take any chances and let her thoughts run wild. She saw herself better off pushing the limits of her body and doubling down on her healing auras while walking in the woods than sitting on her ass in the cave.
“Weren’t you whining about being stuffed less than an hour ago?” Stella asked, eventually sitting down by the fire as Korra pulled out another piece of meat. How much that woman could eat was simply mind-boggling.
“Better than bitching about stale bread later.”
“Hey, I wasn’t bitching about it,” Stella objected. “I just didn’t eat it.”
“Whatever.”
“Honestly, it still amazes me that you did. Were you really that hungry?” Korra might have told her that it was a habit from the time when she had a collar around her neck, but . . . it was on Stella’s mind, anyway. She would have to force herself to eat it. “Can’t you go without food for a few days?”
“Yeah, I could,” her friend and squadmate shrugged. “I think . . .”
“But?”
The hungry beast stopped eating for a moment. “I need to work on my skill. And before you start, I know they don’t work here, and no matter how much I eat, I always end up with the same weight at the beginning of the cycle. This is about the habit.”
That wasn’t what Stella expected to hear from her. “A habit?”
Korra nodded. “Do you know how hard it was to force myself to eat more when I was already full? For over a year, I was used to eating just enough to hold off my hunger. Imagine me starving here, cycle after cycle.”
That was actually a good point. They had no way of knowing how long they’d be here; it could be a few days, it could be a few years. That was long enough to build up habits, good and bad, to drag into the present. “I . . .”
“Besides, I need the weight for my shifting. It takes a lot out of me every time, and we don’t know when or how many times I’ll have to do it.”
“But we do,” Stella argued, well aware of how limited their knowledge of future developments was. All it took was a small change in what they did, and whatever they experienced in the previous cycle could change completely. In fact, they were betting on it.
“When they put us near Rairok, hopefully I’ll turn into a full beast the first night and show Ronnu that I’m up to the challenge at the front-lines. But then what? We don’t know shit about what happens next”.
That was unfortunately true. Since they had spent the remaining days of the last cycle under Rairok’s protection, it was impossible to guess the chain of events beyond that. The only sure thing was that Ronnu wouldn’t let them onto the battlefield. There was no way that one fight with her could have made any difference to their fighting abilities. “I think we are in for some training. At least, that’s what Grand Commander Ronnu mentioned.”
“Yeah, and what she threw at Stouch to arrange.”
“He’s a good man, little ones,” Traiana spoke, sitting with them by the fire. “He takes his job seriously and assigns you to those he deems most suitable.”
“Do you know who that might be?” Stella asked, curious about who might be training her and glad that the ancient woman had dared to join them again. She basically hadn’t shown up for the rest of the cycle, using the excuse that she didn’t want to distract them so they wouldn’t give themselves away, which wasn’t exactly a valid excuse when they basically announced out loud who they were on their own. If Stella had to guess, the woman was surprisingly overly self-conscious about her past self.
Sure, Ronnu wasn’t what she’d pictured Traiana as, far from it, but knowing what they were up against here, when she already knew the truth, she didn’t see it fit to judge her. At first, Traiana’s reluctance to tell them the truth had irritated her. Now she understood and at times wished she were able to curb her curiosity.
“The 7th Rosicrucian Order is full of brilliant people, little one. What I mean by that is that it’s hard to say in whose capable hands you might end up. Though whoever it will be, they will be a great help to you.”
So much bragging that Stella was a hair’s breadth away from smirking and making a remark. It would be so easy and harmless if she were talking to a friend, like Korra, and not to the woman of legends, a hero on whose help they counted to get back home.
“They can’t all be that good,” the full-mouthed shifter objected to her horror.
Stella coughed, choking on her own saliva. “Korra!”
“What? There has to be someone like us, right? Some new guys.”
“You’re right, little Guardian,” Traiana said before Stella could utter a word, surprisingly not outraged by what Korra said, as she thought the woman would be. “While the 7th is indeed the order with one of the lowest casualty rates, as you were told, not everyone comes back from a battle. There are novice knights. Even one-star knights like you, but more experienced than you.”
That was a way of saying that the two of them were weak despite their level. Not something Stella felt offended to hear. Her instructors and teachers didn’t hesitate to throw things like that at her all the time. It motivated her to work harder. However, it did make her wonder how Captain Rayden, for example, would fare in comparison - or Deckard. Would they be able to utilize powers comparable to the knights of equal strength of this era? Was the system a hindrance or a crutch to them, as its creators had intended?
Stella couldn’t wait to tell them what they had learned here. Yet at the same time, she was dreading it, dreading the consequences it might bring. Even thoughts of panic and the collapse of the Sahal Empire came to her mind, that she would always be remembered as the messenger of truth that brought the downfall.
A worry for later, she tried to tell herself. They had to get back first, after all.
***
The next morning, they both stood outside the Forest Gate for the second time, hands in the air, no tools on their bodies except the two swords at Stella’s waist. The swords that were immediately confiscated from her.
Once again, a feeling of unease washed over her. The lack of anything besides a few pieces of clothing and boots made her feel more naked than if she had been standing there, stripped, in the rain. It was almost uncanny how one got used to having the tools with them, relying on them.
Regardless of how she felt about the lack of tools, it was not long before they both walked in shackles, escorted by two knights, through the encampment to the Cages, a place that gave her goosebumps.
There were simply too many beasts.
Stella was no stranger to their presence. She had faced many during her training and quite a few in Fallen’s Cry with Squad Four. Spending days surrounded by them without talking to other humans was new to her, though. Not to mention Rairok, who, despite his lanky appearance and affable nature, was still a five-hundred-level beast.
Sure enough, Korra was there, and Rairok turned out to be a good talking companion. Yet it wasn’t quite the same. He was still a beast, and this friend of hers, who walked beside her in handcuffs, could at times seem more beast-like than human.
“What the fuck are you doing here, boys? And who are those two hussies?” The voice belonged to Knight Commander Taiult, sitting in a chair under a tarp stretched between several cages. The place was his office, so to speak, as well as a warehouse for the Cages and the Pit. Chains, shackles, collars and other such things for dealing with the beasts hung in the stands. And the man, no armor, no frills on his shoulders that made it hard to tell his rank - Stella had a hard time finding a reason for that - wasn’t there alone. Five others, the same as last time, were tending to the equipment, and more could be seen moving through the corridors between the cages.
The two knights escorting them saluted. “Sir, these two, members of the Dia Eichenralke, have shown up at the Forest Gate. Knight Commander Sarralot has ordered us to put them in a cage for the time being.”
“Has he?” the man said, getting up from his chair and giving Korra and her a hard once-over. “Dia Eichenralke, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” one of the knights confirmed.
“Looking for a battlefield to die on?”
“No, sir. To fight on, to prove our honor,” Stella argued, just like last time.
“Yeah, yeah, if you’re so eager, you can prove it in the Pit.”
Stella glanced in the direction of the makeshift arena, then at the cages with the beasts inside that surrounded it. “I must say, it’s impressive that you managed to capture so many of them alive.” New tactics, flattery. Arguing with this man was pointless. It got them nowhere last time.
Knight Commander Taiult stopped and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, someone who can appreciate the work. You don’t see that very often. Well, we’ll find you a nice place to stay. Somewhere where you can appreciate it even more. Come with me, boys; I’ll show you where to put the two hussies.”
“Yes, sir,” the two knights saluted with far too much satisfaction when her attempt to reason with him failed, before pushing them both to move.
The man was truly insufferable.
In any case, it was Korra’s turn.
***
“Could we go this way?” I pointed in the opposite direction of where the obnoxious guy was taking us. He stopped in his tracks and looked back at me to make sure I was serious. Then, when he realized that I was, he flushed with anger. “Who the fuck do you think you are? This is not an inn where you get to choose where you lay your head. You sit your asses where I tell you, Eichenralke hussies!”
He then beckoned to the knights. “Let’s go. I know of a couple of smaller cages that will just fit these two. That should teach them not to talk shit.”
“I must insist that we go there,” I said as he started to walk down the corridor between the cages and the knights pushed Stella and me to follow him.
“Fuck, you’re a dumb hussy, aren’t you? Didn’t they teach you when to shut up?”
I didn’t give a shit what he said. “There’s a beast I have to meet.” Rairok.
“Don’t worry, hussy. I’m going to put you right next to one of the finest beasts we have here. Trust me, you’ll enjoy it,” he said with a nasty grin on his face. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the beasts he had in mind were not pleasant to be around.
“Please, it can’t be such a big deal to put us in the cages on the other side of the Cages where . . . ?” I stopped myself from saying Rairok’s name out loud.
“Her yapping is worse than Martrall’s hyenas in heat. Do you have any gags?” the Knight Commander asked, completely ignoring my words.
I tried. Like Stella, I tried to reason with him. And like her, I failed. So I took a breath, and after seeing her brace herself, I let my presence out as we discussed. It brought the unprepared knights and the insufferable man to their knees. Alas, they were back on their feet, eyes wide, weapons in hand pointed at us, as quickly as my presence had faded.
“You . . .” As angry as he was, the insufferable Knight Commander didn’t get to finish the sentence before Rairok’s presence hit us all. It wasn’t as overbearing as my outburst, a sign of his control, but more of a greeting, something I tried to imprint on mine. And it seemed to work.
“Didn’t my friend tell you there was a beast she had to meet?” Stella remarked a little too smugly, but I couldn’t help grinning as well.
This time, the man, although obviously furious beyond belief, seemed to get the hint.
“Shall we go then?” I pointed in Rairok’s direction.
