Topic: The Adventures of Kith, the Cat, and the Khatun
Subject: In Adedre's Chambers
She reclined in the hammered copper tub, her frail arms draped over either edge, and exhaled. The sound of it was like dry leaves pushed before the chill winds of an early autumn storm and that long breath carried an odd intermingling of gratification and annoyance. The contentedness, she felt, was well deserved; the agonizing ecstasy her men had brought upon her just before she had sacrificed them for the sake of her growing army was well worth that peace and, a part of her, at least, languished in that pride and pleasure. The irascibility, though, threatened to overwhelm her gratification. She was silently furious that some skulking shadow had set loose the kazari from its cage and even more so that her still-living guards had yet to prove themselves capable enough of bringing the beast to heel.
“Something troubles you, mistress,” one of her attendants asked, her young voice muffled slightly behind the bone and leather mask that she wore. The girl was smart enough not to wait for a reply before pouring a bucket of freshly heated water into the witch’s bath.
“Of course something troubles me,” Adedre hissed, her yellow-eyed gaze slitting as it burned into the acolyte’s heart. Although appropriately cowed by the rebuke, the girl didn’t think to retreat; instead, she did as was expected and, setting the pail aside, sprinkled more herbs into the already pink water, then took up the brush and resumed scrubbing the blood from her mistress’ jaundiced skin. “My prize has been stolen from me,” Adedre groused, on arm falling from the lip of the tub to stir the still reddening waters in which she sat, “only days before I was to offer it up to the fires and too little of the blood in my dungeons, now, is that which I have called forth.”
“Of course, m’lady,” the attendant murmured, plucking a scrap of skin or flesh from the coarse bristles of the brush and placing it on her mistress’ lips, “Forgive me for provoking your sour thoughts.”
“Hmph,” the witch returned, her tongue sliding across her lips to claim the scrap as the girl resumed her attentions with the scrubber. “It is not your forgiveness for which you should plead, child,” she cooed, slowly chewing the morsel the attentive girl had offered, “but, should you have any feeling for any of the incompetents I have hired as soldier, guard, or jailor, pray your gods that they find my cat.”
The girl’s head dipped, just once, in the semblance of a nod. “I have no care for any of them, mistress,” she murmured, “only to attend your desires and serve your wishes.”
“Bright girl,” the witch sighed, lifting a hand from the steaming waters to trace a finger along the hard-angled jawline of the girl’s mask, the delicate curve of her neck, and finally, the subtle swell of a still budding breast where it hid beneath rough robes. “Take care with your cares, though, hmm,” she purred as the girl gasped in response to the sudden pinching of her nipple, “Supposing my desire was to add your young and tender bones to my army?”
“My body and bones are yours to do with as you please, mistress,” the acolyte shuddered at Adedre’s cruel attentions, though the strokes of the brush were never interrupted, “I would prefer to continue serving you as I am but, if that is what you require of me, I would willingly submit. Devourer be praised.”
“Devourer be praised, indeed,” Adedre purred, her bony fingers seeking out the opening of the attendant’s robes, then. “Remind me, once more, of your name, child.”
“Tecla, m’lady,” the girl panted quietly, trying not to quiver overmuch as Adedre’s hand found the naked flesh beneath her garment, “My name is Tecla.”
“Tecla,” the witch breathed, her eyes fluttering closed even as her fingers found the clasp at the girl’s throat and, with a flick, set the rough fabric falling from the girl’s shoulders, “of course. I have your sister in my employ, as well, do I not?”
“You did, m’lady,” Tecla shuddered, desperately trying to ignore the goosebumps that spread over her exposed flesh, “She gave her blood to your glory three moons past.”
“Mmmm,” Adedre moaned, the cold tips of her fingers tracing sigils out of the prickled flesh beneath them, “Nuria, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, m’lady.”
“Yes. I recall her well,” the witch sighed, fingers pushing the fabric of the girl’s robe past the gentle curve of her buttocks. “Your mind is keen for the keeping of time, Tecla. Do you begrudge me a day of those three months past?”
“Not a one, mistress,” Tecla gasped, trying not to shudder too much in protest as to where her mistress’ probing digits had found their way, now, “Nuria was yours, as I am and… oooh!”
Adedre Undolithe tittered huskily as she lifted Tecla to her feet, not exactly with tender attention. “I think you’ll be better able to scrub the rest of me, girl, if you were to join me in the water.”
“Y-yes, mistress.” The brush had already fallen from Tecla’s trembling hands and she lifted them, then, to reach for the buckles that held her mask in place.
“No,” Adedre purred without having opened her eyes, “leave it on. I’ll not be requiring anything beneath it, just now.”
“Y-yes, mistress,” the girl conceded, hands falling away from the buckles as she tried to dampen the slow rocking that had started in her hips in order to lift a leg over the tub’s edge without falling in in the process.
Just then, a thudding knock sounded at the chamber doors, the bluntness of it instantly stilling the attentions of the witch’s fingers and causing Tecla to hesitate in entering the bath. “What?!?!” Adedre demanded, her eyes snapping open and glaring in the direction of the door as the girl wavered over the tub’s edge.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Lady Undolithe,” a ragged voice responded from the other side, “but I’ve news.”
The witch growled her irritation. “Enter,” she demanded, “and speak!”
The door swung open, then, and one of her guardsmen hurried in, pausing only an instant to gawk at the scene that greeted him before dropping to a knee and fixing his gaze on the floor. “M’lady,” he puffed, “I… I…”
“Tell me that you’ve found the beast,” Adedre snapped.
“N-n-not as yet, mistress,” the guard stammered, daring not to lift his gaze to meet hers.
“Then what in seven hells can be so important that you have seen fit to interrupt my bath?!?”
“The… uh… skeletons, m’lady,” the guard swallowed, “Uh… some of them have… erm… a handful, truly…”
“Spit it out you chittering piece of offal!”
“Some of them have escaped the ground, mistress, and are making for the city,” the guard coughed, “I was sent to make you aware.”
“WHAT!!!???” Adedre screeched, bolting upright from her bathwater with such force and ferocity that she nearly lifted poor Tecla from her feet. “How is that possible?”
“I – I dunno, ma’am,” the guard replied, trying to genuflect even lower (as if such a thing was even possible) as Tecla stumbled and fell into the tub, “As I said, ma’am, I was just sent to relay the message.”
The witch’s mind raged. How had this happened, she couldn’t help but wonder. Her intent had been to raise only the bones within the confines of her manor and, as was her intent, they were to stay within its walls. “You,” she hissed as she stepped from the tub, a twiggy finger stabbing through the air at another attendant who had, heretofore, been standing silently in a corner of the room, “Fetch me a clean gown and see me dressed!”
The attendant turned her masked face from the corner, bowed her head, and acknowledged the command with a meek “Yes, mistress” before doing as she had been bidden.
As the witch prowled angrily across the floor, she imagined that, in the throes of her agony and ecstasy during the summoning, she had forgotten to place certain limits on her summoning and, in the dawn of that realization, her breaths became all exasperation. This bodes not well, she fumed, making her way to her dressing screen even as Tecla emerged from the red-tinged bathwaters sputtering and coughing. At the sound of the naked attendant’s gasping, the witch whirled about, her narrowed eyes fixing on the nude-except-for-the-mask form that crawled from the tub before darting to the kneeling guard. “And, you,” she growled, finally evoking eye contact from the young soldier, “tend to that one!”
“Er… ah…” the guard hesitated for an instant, his uncertain gaze almost not daring to look upon the young thing crawling out of the water but unable to do otherwise, “Y-yes, ma’am.”
The other attendant, in that short span of time, had returned with a gown and a towel and, while Adedre was being dried and dressed, the witch eyed her young acolyte as the guard led her, timidly, toward the rumpled sprawl of the mistress’ bed. “Tecla,” the witch called.
“Mistress?”
“When he’s finished with you, kill him.”
“Yes, mistress.”
Posted on 2019-10-11 at 19:39:10.
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Topic: The Adventures of Kith, the Cat, and the Khatun
Subject: No rest for the wicked
He sighed, exhausted and aching but, somehow, content and the sigh gave way to a satisfied purr. Propped against the trunk of an ashoka tree, he pressed a hand against the wound in his side to stop the blood from seeping and, closing his eyes, inhaled deeply, relishing in the scent of the orange-yellow flowers blooming amongst the branches. A breeze stirred through the forest, then, carrying upon it other smells and sounds which gladdened his heart and eased his pain. Beneath that breeze, too, his ears caught the soft padding sound of foot-falls approaching through the undergrowth.
“You are wounded,” a gruff voice rumbled from above him when the foot-falls ceased.
“It is nothing,” Ch’dau rumbled in reply, “The boar was not as dead as I had thought. Used the last bit of its life to gore me when I set to gutting it.”
He opened his eyes and looked up. The blur of deep green leaves and orange-yellow flowers rippled in the pain that hazed his vision but, as he blinked again, the miasma cleared and the saffron hue of the ashoka’s flowers dissolved behind the darker auburn tint which colored the fur of the kh’ur looming over him. There was something familiar about his brother in the hunt but Ch’dau wasn’t entirely sure he recognized him.
“You can make it to the ramada, then,” the red-orange kazari queried, “if I carry the pig for you?”
“I can carry my own kill,” Ch’dau snorted, shifting his weight to get his feet under him and trying not to cringe at the effort. He pulled himself up and reached for the boar’s carcass.
“Good,” the other kazari chuffed in reply, turning to stalk into the jungle, “your ancestors await.”
Rrowl? For a second, Ch’dau forgot the boar and turned in search of the other kazari but he had already disappeared into the jungle. It was then that Ch’dau realized that the forest around him had a notably ethereal quality to it. Is this the Eternal Hunt?
“Come, Kh’ur Ch’dau,” Rrowl’s voice called from deeper in the wood, “It is time that we feast.” The same wind upon which that voice was carried blew through the branches above Ch’dau’s head with enough force to cause the boughs to creak like rusting iron hinges…
*****************************************************************************
He woke with a start and found himself already on his feet. Gone were his visions of the Hunt, the voice of Rrowl, and the warmth of Capashan winds. In their stead, now, were only the cramped confines of the dingy closet, the smell of mold and must and blood, and the dark in which it all hung. The only things that persisted from his sleeping vision were the pain of his wounds and the creaking. He shook his head and snorted, chasing off his waking confusion, and his eyes snapped toward the door of the tiny room in which he and Kithran hid.
“…would’ve checked this one, already,” a murmured voice came from beyond the door as it began to slide open, “I mean it’s right at the bottom of the stairs fer Salerna’s sake.”
“If it’d been checked,” another voice answered, “someone’d’ve marked it…”
Ch’dau turned with the intent to rouse his new companion from her rest but found that she had already slipped from beneath the shelf and was standing behind him. Sliding her daggers free, she looked up at him in their cramped space and grinned; “After you, Ch’dau.”
He nodded, one hand flexing around the hilt of the sword he’d taken and the other holding up two fingers to indicate the number of guards he expected to be on the other side before he reached for the door and tore it open.
Caught by surprise, the first guard spun and staggered into the tight confines of the closet, his fingers had scarcely been wrenched from where they had grasped the latch and hadn’t even thought to reach for his weapon before the cat-beat had stepped over him, and reached into the corridor to snatch up his partner. There was no roar, this time. There was scarcely even a snarl as Ch’dau unceremoniously hauled the second guard into the closet and ran a blade through his belly. Behind him, the first guard tried to struggle to his feet and get hand to hilt, all at once, but Kith’s daggers had already found their way into the soft spots between neck and collarbone.
As the first guard gurgled his last, Kith pulled her blades from his body and Ch’dau dropped the body of the second alongside the first, even as he pushed the door shut with one furry foot. He regarded the two fresh corpses as a puff of air escaped his lips; then, his ears and tail flicking, his gaze found Kith. “Excellent,” he chuffed, “They will never find us here…”
Posted on 2019-10-11 at 12:31:19.
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