Strange Tales of the Deadslayer #8

Author's Note: Deadslayer's back!

Next up... drumroll please...

...The Dungeonrunners.

[story] [combat/violence] [non-sexual gore]

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‭My eyes go wide as Kana’set finally bares what’s beneath her veil: her mouth stretching nearly ear-to-ear, totally lipless, and filled with deadly fangs! In addition to two larger ones where a human’s canines should be – used for injecting venom, if my prior knowledge of snakes has any bearing here – the rest of her mouth is filled with smaller teeth that arch backward, allowing them to latch on, grip, and tear. I hate to sound shallow, but she’s seeming a lot less beautiful to me now – and what’s worse, all the other sisters of the Oasis Coven are starting to remove their veils, revealing similarly serpent-like faces beneath! It’s starting to look like I’m seriously boned!

I attempt to shove Kana’set off of me, only for one hand to slip and the other to just awkwardly bump into her shoulder (forgot I was still holding the goblet!) and she wastes no time in lunging forward, chomping down viciously on my bare shoulder, near my throat. There’s a searing pain that suddenly shoots through me, though I realize it’s from the fangs alone – the smaller teeth don’t seem able to penetrate my flesh, like trying to cut through cardboard with a butter knife. Nonetheless, I feel an intense, burning heat starting to spread like wildfire across my body, already overtaxed by strong drink and exhaustion.

Instead of pushing, now, I sort of half-lunge, half-stumble forward, barely making my way out of the throne and dragging several of the furs and silks I’d been sitting on along with me. I try a sidelong swat with the back of my hand, but the clumsy attack is easily deflected by Kana’set, and as I try to roll over onto my back, I find more members of the Coven swarming around me, pulling at my limbs with surprising strength, splaying me out so they can better control me. I feel another pair of fangs dig into my thigh, another into my arm, each accompanied by a blaze of pain like sticking my hand into a nest of yellowjackets. I can feel my heart start racing in my chest as venom courses through my body, and I’m forced to wonder if my body isn’t quite as resilient against internal toxins as it is against external damage.

I let out a whimper of pain, but am weirdly surprised by the sound that actually comes out of me. Not a whimper… a groan; a defiant, heroic groan! I feel my exhausted muscles flex against the steely grip of the serpentine sisters, turn my head to find Thiu, and see her in a far more perilous situation than I am – while she’d previously been enjoying what looked like some deep, slow, satisfying sex, she’s now being crowded by more and more of the covenites, and… while I may not be sure exactly how resistant I am to these bites, I know she isn’t. I came to this world with the body of a warrior, a hero, I was given a chance to be something better than what I was. It’s time to start acting like it.

There’s a strain, not just in my body, but in my mind, pushing through the haze of drunken weariness, the pain shooting through every part of me. I need to focus on just one thing – first, make a fist. I grit my teeth as each finger of my right hand curls in, then my thumb around those, and my entire hand tightens. My forearm follows it, then my bicep, then my shoulder, then my back, and I curl my arm inward with a sharp yank, sending the ‘sister’ clutching to it flying forward. “I… am not… your prey…” I growl, my abs tensing as I force myself to sit up.

My words cause Kana’set to pause, though not out of any sense of fear. Rather, she detaches her fangs from my shoulder, keeping a hand pinned to my chest and looking down at me with an expression somewhere between disappointment and smugness, like a cruel mother watching a child fail at a very simple task. “My love, you’ve been our prey since we first laid eyes on you. Dangerous game, perhaps… but game, nonetheless. The perfect little morsel to have some fun with before you and your little friend became the vessels for our next clutch. Even now, the venom should be making you slower, stiffer. Preparing you for your next few months as a warm, living, conscious incubator for a new generation of sisters.”

That doesn’t sound good! I always had a (healthy) fear of tarantula hawks growing up, and I’m not pleased to imagine that fear coming to life now. Unfortunately, what Kana’set’s saying is true – I can feel myself getting slower, weaker. Even as I try to force myself to sober up, I’m afraid I might have been too late. That there’s too much venom in my blood for me to fight back. I strain, reaching my now-freed arm towards Kana’set’s face, managing to plant my palm on her cheek, though I can’t seem to close my fingers enough to squeeze. “I… am….”

“Is that really the best you’ve got, my ‘champion’? A few feeble words, one last little act of defiance, and now… this? I must say, I’d be embarrassed if these were my final moments.”

“The Krruya….”

“Mmm? What are you even trying to do? Crush me? Can you even move your fingers?”

I can move them. So little that even I can barely perceive it. But I can move them. Even as more and more venom is pumped into me from the rest of the Oasis Coven swarming around me, I feel my shaking fingertips press into Kana’set’s skin. “The Deadslayer….”

“Oh, this is very cute,” she purrs, caressing the side of my face in an almost soothing way, mirroring the way my stiff hand cradles her own. She has no fear of me, anymore, so confident that I’ve been paralyzed outright, she doesn’t even try to move my hand from the side of her head. “You are nothing more than fertilizer for our children, mongrel.”

“I am…” I swallow hard, summoning every last bit of strength I have left – not just the strength of my body, but my mind. The strength of a kid who survived being bullied every day in high school, the kid who’s gasped for air through who knows how many asthma attacks, who was dropped in a completely unknown world and managed to make it this far. My strength. “I am Allara.”

I make a fist, one that Kana’set’s head happens to be in the way of. There’s an explosion of blood and bone that showers over my naked body, and a chorus of deranged wails and hisses from the other sisters. My other arm swings wide, shaking another woman free of me, and I force myself to stand, raining a rapid, brutal barrage of punches down on the snake-maiden gnawing at my thigh, quickly rendering her into a tangle of crunchy, crimson limbs. My attention turns back to Thiu – finding my worst fears come to pass. I wasn’t able to get to her in time, and several of the sisters have buried their fangs into her, latching on, injecting her with their venom. Already, her open eyes have gone glassy with paralysis, but… maybe not death. Maybe not yet.

One of the Oasis Coven rush towards me with a shrill, vengeful wail, arms held forward and toxic maw held wide to bite, but she doesn’t have the reach I do. I lash out with one arm, jaw locked and eyes grim, taking her by the throat and squeezing until I feel vertebrae begin to pop and sever. I don’t see them as women anymore, not as people, but as what they are… monsters, monsters who would kill Thiu, would kill me, creatures of death and deceit who prey on those who would offer them aid.

The light leaves the sister’s eyes, and I pull forward with an impossibly sharp yank, hearing every one of her ribs pop as I free her spine from her body. In the same moment, I lash forward with the bloody bone-cord, bisecting one of the creatures envenomating Thiu down the center, skull to pelvis. While they may be stronger and more durable than an ordinary human – likely even more than the Xai – the sisters may as well be made of wet paper compared to the beasts I fought in the arena, the behemoths I massacred as the Krruya. They’re all already dead, they simply haven’t realized it yet.

I’m alerted to another one of the sisters only by the sensation of two pinpricks in the back of my neck, but she has no time to inject me with any more of that paralytic toxin. I reach one hand back to grab her by the head, quickly slinging her forward over my shoulder until the other hand can grasp her ankle. With a single swift, outward jerk of my arms, I tear her in half, and toss the pieces away, not missing a step on my death-march towards Thiu.

Three of the creatures are crouched around her, though as I approach, dripping with gore, they seem to quickly understand exactly how dire their situation is. Three sets of fangs detach from Thiu’s unmoving body, and one brave covenite charges me, only to receive a front-kick to the body that sends her careening through the wall behind her. The other two are not treated so gently – I side-step a lunge, then stuff my hand through the blue-veiled sister’s back, cramming it up through her ribcage and tightly gripping her lower jaw from within, wearing her entire body as a glove with which to beat the other sister into a fresh heap of bone and offal.

I drop down to my knees in front of Thiu’s stiff body, pulling her slowly into my lap, cradling her. I’m uncertain how many of the Oasis Coven I’ve killed, but if any remain, they’ve wisely fled. It’s just me and her now, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ve failed her. If I became complacent in this crazy world, led her away from her people and into danger, if I’m the reason she… died. Still, though, there’s a glimmer of hope – Kana’set said that we were supposed to be kept alive to be incubated, even conscious. Maybe she’s still in there.

“I’m so sorry, Thiu. I don’t know if you can hear me… o-or understand me. I can’t believe I brought you here, let my guard down. I just wanted things to be good, just for a little while, and…” I swallow hard, shake my head. She’s stiff as a board, but whether from paralysis or rigor mortis, I don’t know. I check her pulse, and feel nothing, but who’s to say that a Xai’s heartbeat works the same way as a human’s does? “Just gimme something, okay? Anything. Move, whisper, just something that tells me you’re alive. I… I’m not sure I can do this without you.”

My heart sinks as I sit and hold her. As seconds turn to minutes, the pain from the sisters’ venom becomes more acute, and I remember that I still haven’t gotten a real chance to rest or sleep during all of this – and now, it looks like I never will. My hope and focus on Thiu’s survival begins to wane, and my attention is drawn to everything around me, this paradise where I thought we may be able to stay… or, even if I still had to leave, maybe somewhere Thiu could be safe. How wrong I was, huh? Now I sit here on my knees, with Thiu’s body draped over my thighs, surrounded by gore and body parts, the fruits of my rampage. Just like with Ciphia, and the city of the Xai, I’ll leave this place leaving only corpses behind, marching onward with no direction or companions, just a wandering brute in a hostile world.

Even with this new body, this new strength, is it worth it to have to live that kind of life?

I let out a long breath, and finally ease Thiu off of my lap, laying her gently back onto the floor. I’m on my own, again, and as much as I’d like to rest, it really doesn’t seem like doing it here’s as great of an idea as I first thought. Maybe I can–

I’m startled by the sound of a cough, and my eyes snap back to Thiu. Her chest tenses, heaves, and there’s another cough, followed by a dribble of yellowish-green fluid from the corner of her mouth. I quickly sit up and turn her onto her side, and am rewarded by a third cough – then a retch – and a splash of the same liquid drips onto the floor. “Thiu? Thiu! Are you okay?”

“Xai… not… poison…” she groans, her eyes opening, turning and wrapping all four arms around me – two around my waist, two around my shoulders, burying her head in my chest. Wait… it makes sense! Kana’set said the Coven’s relationship with the Xai was ‘strained,’ what if the Xai had a natural resistance to their venom? It seems like Thiu metabolized it almost immediately, like her blood filtered it through her lungs, or… I don’t know, something like that!

I wrap my arms tightly around Thiu’s slender figure and give her the gentlest squeeze I can muster, just letting her know I’m there for her, that we’re… that we both made it through this. “I thought I’d lost you,” I whisper.

“I hear… heared you,” Thiu crawls more fully into my lap, straddling me, and plants a tender kiss on my blood-spattered lips. “In darkness. I hear.”

I give her another soft squeeze, returning the kiss, holding tight to her. It’s strange – despite being naked in one another’s arms, the moment isn’t erotic, not exactly. It’s something different than that, something more. Part of me wants to say it feels romantic, though I don’t really have enough experience in that department to say for sure. But we endured something today, like we’ve been enduring for some time now. Despite our language barrier, and being from entirely different worlds, I start to wonder if I’m… falling… for Thiu.

“We need to get cleaned up. Maybe there’s a place we can rest for a while, without, um…” I glance around the feasting hall, the throne I’d been lounging so carelessly on, the furs and silks scattered, goblet laying on its side, rolling slowly in no general direction. The presence of all these things, though, is diminished by the trail of carnage I’ve left on my way to rescue Thiu. “Uh… without all the bodies.”

Thiu nods, nuzzles into me, making no move to stand or otherwise disengage. I don’t hesitate to lift and carry her, making my way past and over the half-dozen-or-more corpses I’ve decorated the place with.

To say this little estate has lost some of its magic is an understatement. The incense has burned out, the music has stopped. No more buffet of buxom beauties to greet us with honeyed words, soothing touches, or needed gifts. It feels empty now, hollow, a testament to the betrayal we survived at the hands of the Oasis Coven. That said, it still provides the resources we need to prepare for our journey back into the wasteland. I find a pool of clean water – some offshoot of the oasis itself, I guess – and use it to fill a few waterskins before getting Thiu and myself cleaned up.

Unwilling to return back to the banquet area for our old clothes, we make do with scavenged outfits from what seems to be the sisters’ primary sleeping place (essentially just a heap of blankets and pillows, upon which the sisters evidently just lay in a big, sexy pile). Thiu gets a short, slinky green dress (nearly as transparent as her old one!) that compliments her lavender skin, while I… well, I’m just too big for any of these garments to fit me, so it’s time to make my own. Using scraps of blue, white, and black fabric from other gowns and veils, I manage to make a new approximation of my old ‘loincloth and haphazard bikini crop top thing,’ which… I mean, I am killing that look, so I may as well stick with it.

As we’re trying to pack whatever food seems least perishable, though, I lay my eyes on something of genuine interest: a mural, set into one of the estate’s largest walls, of what appears to be a map. Huh! I can’t actually remember ever seeing a map of where I am, and it may be interesting to see if I can make heads or tails of it. The little bits of text on it are, unfortunately, entirely useless to me, totally illegible, but I feel like there are a few landmarks I can make out. That black bit has to be the star-marsh, just at the edge of an endless ocean of darkness. That makes that part the city of the Xai. There’s the wasteland, and… the oasis, where we are right now!

With something of an idea of where I actually am, I start looking around at my surroundings. At the very center of the map is a large, dark citadel, where I can only assume Thodax has his HQ. In the exact opposite direction of the way I’m heading, back past the Xai, is a small settlement that might be Ciphia’s village, though there are more tiny towns dotted around the more hospitable-looking sections of the map. East – if such a thing even really exists – seems like the right way to go if we ever want to leave the wasteland. But if Thodax’s base of operations is there, and he encountered Ciphia and I there, then he isn’t heading east, he’s heading south, still searching for the Tora’sai.

So, if I want to find Thodax, and save Ciphia, then it looks like I’m heading south too.