end game **NEW**

Story by ANDERS, 2012

Warning: Content is only suitable for mature adults, contains explicit language and adult themes, including violence, blood and gore, graphic sexual content and nudity.

Disclaimer: All stories are a work of fiction. The characters do not exist, except in the mind of the author. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Tags: ff, adult, friends, fantasy

***

This is the companion story to (1) bone by starlight, (2) blood hawks, (3) rider on a dark horse and (5) storm gathering.

***

Sela watches with hooded eyes as the pyre burns, the licking flames sending a column of greasy, black smoke snaking skywards, smoke so dense and thick it blocks out the noon day sun.

I have become time, destroyer of worlds.

She stands axe in hand knowing that it will soon call down the unwanted upon her head, hungry misshaped men armed with spiked clubs and smiling women with bloody mouths filled with pointed teeth. The smoke is an ugly smear across the iron-grey horizon, a gaping wound visible for miles on end that bleeds its grief out into the vast cloudless sky.

None that walk, crawl, swim and fly in the 3 worlds shall escape my grasp.

But her vigilance is unnecessary, the world is contented to hold its breath and wait; it smells the anger simmering just beneath the cold glacial surface, the darkness within waiting to erupt in a wave of blood and rage for hers is a history of violence and vengeance.

Get up.

Around her nothing moves, the wind is still and not even the ravens dare call overhead. They fear the scent of death that clings to her like a cloak.

 Prepare to fight and win glory.

She burnt everything in the end. There wasn’t much to save, burnt the tent, the carpets and the cots along with the blood stained bed-clothes. The rancid smell of burning leather mixed with that of fat and hair makes her eyes sting.

 Conquer your enemies.

Collecting a small pack, she makes her way quickly on foot across the canyon back to the far end where the chestnut mare waits. The mare is restless, pulling at its tether eager to be away from the fiery hellmouth. Her eyes tearing from the smoke and the heat, she quickly mounts up and rides away from the blazing furnace without a backward glance. She has no time to linger on things past and miles to go deep into the hills.

They are but dust beneath my feet, and you are nothing but an instrument of my will.

***

“Your wolf is lost, daughter of Maud. Your creature has been destroyed by the bear.”

The doll speaks lazily with half closed eyes; it feels the heavy pull of its dreams slowly tearing it away from the waking world. In the eons since it was first imprisoned within a helpless body of bone, it has long pondered whether there was a difference between the two; the world that dreams and the world that summons it away from its slumber, and in its wisdom it decided that there was none. Who was to say if it was dreaming that it was asleep or dreaming it was awake?

The woman looks hard at the sole piece remaining on the board.

“Tell me, how did it destroy the wolf?”

“She is the avatar of the Great Bear, the first destroyer; the sire of the Witch Clans.”

The doll replies with a keen trace of irony as it watches the woman’s sullen face.

“She is a female, half breed. The spirit of the Great Destroyer has always chosen a male, full blooded host from the Clan of the Bear. Do not treat me like a fool, old one.”

The woman’s voice is sharp like a mouth full of snake teeth and heavy with accusation. The doll closes it eyes and listens to the many voices calling it back. It is tired and weary of this game and the promises of oblivion whispered sorely tempt it.

“It sees only the spirit of the warrior, not its form. In each generation a witch is born into the clans to sit among the circle of shamans, but the great bear only manifests itself when it finds a worthy host. Many generations pass before the bear returns and many more will pass before it comes again.  Do not fall into the same trap as the elders of the Witch Clan, whose bones litter the Temple of Eyes. Do not trust your eyes. Do not trust what you know. You should do well to remember that, daughter or Maud.”

The doll gives the woman a worn, bitter smile and then slowly glazes at the remaining figures on the table.

“Do you wish to choose another piece? Or is this tiresome game over?”

“I chose warrior against bear.”

The woman says triumphantly as she places the miniature axe bearer on the board.

The doll sighs and looks on as the pieces begin to shimmer and glow.

***

“I managed to save some clothes, the water skins and a blanket. I burnt the rest.”

Sela calls out to the woman slowly gliding her way through the still deep water. She could see the claw marks red and livid sliced across the olive skin and into the muscle of the swimmer’s shoulders and back.

She does not hear you. Like the water that surrounds her, she is lost in the flow and flux of her own swirling thoughts.

How someone was still able to move so fluidly after sustaining injuries like that disturbed Sela. A warrior in full leathers would have been cut into two, and she knows that Cress was not wearing her chain mail shirt. Sela had found them in the tent, next to the leathers carelessly discarded on the floor.

Dressed in just an undershirt of blue cloth found ripped and torn and still she moves through the water like a fish. She should be dead.

Sela frowns and hangs the pack up carefully on the branch of a nearby tree. She did not want the contents to get wet. Looking over her shoulder she sees Cress at the far side of the pool, her head and shoulders visible above the water line.

She is lost to you, trapped in savage dreams of blood and death of her own making. You cannot wake her.

Cress has not acknowledged her presence since she tracked her down hours ago to the hidden oasis. Fed by a series of underground springs, it was a secluded body of deep water shielded from plain sight by a thicket of thorn trees. Sela would not have thought to stop and look if she had not followed the trail of discarded entails on foot to find Cress sitting in the water trying to wash the creature’s blood out of her hair.

The creature she fought, that disturbs you too. How she managed to disembowel it with her bare hands. You found her spear, discarded by the side of the carnage. It was clean.

Sela is certain the remains she found at the camp were partially human; true wolves had no need for crimson-piped leathers and horses. They did not stand on their hind legs and weld weapons of steel. Yet, she could not explain the state of the body; the savage animal visage and the claw like hands belonging to some nightmare creature, a creature bigger, stronger and more savage than any human warrior, torn into two like it was nothing more than a bleating lamb.

It was wolf spawn. Those stories they told were true after all.

When she was young and lived amongst them, she had heard of the tales the Witch Clan told at the fire on their tribal hunts, tales about wolves that walked on their hind legs like men and spoke in the fine, sweet voices of women. When she asked the Mountain King about them, he would smile and tell her that she should not fill her head with such stories.

He lied to you. They are real. She would have known. Unlike her, you are not Witch Clan. The tribal hunts were taboo to your kind. You were never privy to their secrets.

Secrets hidden in stories full of fangs and claws that tear and shred; stories that walk and talk and eat and kill, only she found Cress alive in the end and after that nothing mattered.

She is lost to you. She is caught in the grasp of the Great Bear. She will destroy you. Run while you can. Go.

Approaching the water’s edge, Sela looks out worriedly at the figure sitting hunched in the shallows, shaded from the glare of the sun by the canopy of overhanging branches. In the half-light, she could not see its face only the small, thin torso covered with unimaginable cuts.

Look at her. She could not have survived the attack. Take your horse and leave before she turns on you and tears you apart like she did to the wolf. Go.

“Cress, if you can understand me. Please come out of the water.”

The figure looks at her with a shadow of a smile, their eyes briefly meeting across the span of time and space. Suddenly filled with a renewed sense of hope, Sela pulls off her leathers like a woman possessed and slips into the pool, the water is warm as it laps at her skin.

Paddling closer to Cress, she sees the other woman’s glazed eyes slowly widen in alarm.

She will rip you open alive end to end with her claws. She will spill your entails to the ground.

“Sssssshhhhh, don’t be afraid. Cress, it’s me. I won’t hurt you.”

Sela’s tone is calm and low as her fingers reach out to gently brush against the smaller woman’s arm.

“I want to see how badly you’re…”

She feels the words choked in her throat as Cress suddenly finches away from her touch like it was poison and makes to swim away.

You are dead to her. Go before she tears your heart out of your chest and eats it before your eyes.

“Please don’t go away. I’m sorry; I won’t try to touch you. I promise. Cress, please stay.”

Something in Sela’s voice catches Cress’s attention, making the smaller woman stop.

“I won’t touch you. Just stay. I want to see your wounds.”

Cress nods slowly and turns showing Sela the mess of welts that lined her shoulders and back. The horrific tears in the muscle and skin, too deep and too long to heal on their own were pulling back together and closing up.

You’re seen this before.

On the river Volga, she was standing there fighting for hours before you arrived, her comrades-in-arms lying long dead in the mud at her feet. She was cut and bleeding but she fought on relentlessly, unwilling to concede defeat. Only there were too many injuries for her to be still on her feet. She should have bled out ages before your arrival. She should have been dead.

How many times has she come through for you? All those battles, all those times you saw her hit, stabbed, shot and yet she fought on by your side, step by step never stopping, never allowing anyone to see to her wounds.

All those times she reached out to you as she lay on your bed, only to push you away. She desires and loathes you in turn. Wanting you but never allowing you to come close to her; becoming an object of skin and flesh you could never hope to touch.

You’re always known.

“I know, Cress. You don’t have to hide anymore.”

“You know nothing.”

The reply is softly hissed out between clenched teeth.

She is right you know nothing.

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. All I care is that you’re alive.”

Sela continues as she moves closer to the smaller woman.

She is the great beast made flesh.

“Stay away, I am a monster.”

The tone is flat and emotionless, as Cress swims out of the taller woman’s reach.

She is the destroyer writ large.

“Then I am a bigger monster. Don’t you know? Haven’t you realised? The best part of me is you. That night out on the Plain of Winds, I tried to tell you. The witch girl, I never told her I loved her.”

Sela can hear the trembling in her voice; hear Cress’s breath as it catches, watch as the other woman starts violently shaking her head.

She is rage incarnate.

“You love her, you have always loved her. You only love her.”

She is war.

“Why do you keep saying that? So you don’t have to hear the truth? So you can keep pretending that you don’t want me when you reach for me in my bed.”

Sela shouts back, her voice thick with venom fresh from the sting of rejection.

She is famine.

“I don’t want to listen to your lies. I don’t want to play your games. I am sick of you. Leave me alone.”

Cress spits back, her face livid with rage.

She is pestilence.

“Don’t keep pushing me away. It hurts so badly every time you do it because I want you so much.”

She is death.

Sela can taste the bitterness at the back of her throat, as her voice finally breaks and then she feels it, that strange peculiar wetness as it travels down her cheek. Her breath catches when she sees the raw emotions flutter across Cress’ face as the other woman’s fingers gingerly reaches out to gently catch the single tear on her fingertips; moving from surprise to puzzlement to pain.

“Don’t cry. You never cry.”

Cress whispers as she roughly brushed her fingers across Sela’s lips, her body suddenly pressed up hard against the taller woman, cradling her.

“Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

Caught in a compulsion not her own, Sela finds her lips parting to take Cress’ fingers deep into her willing mouth, sucking and caressing them tenderly with her tongue. Stifling a moan, her legs open as Cress gently presses a knee between them, her hands travelling up the smaller woman’s thighs, across her ribs to meet her small stiff breasts.

Cooing softly with pleasure, Cress watches with wet, shinny eyes as the other woman slowly begins to rub and thrust herself up hard against her, building up a rhyme fast and furious that finally explodes in a single sound that shatters the silence between them.

***

“I grow weary of this world, daughter of Maud. The voices sing to me, they call for me across the ocean of darkness.”

The doll’s voice is thick and slurred, heavy with sleep. The voices were more insistent now, and it could feel itself slipping away. Time no longer held any meaning for it, but it knew it would be soon summoned back again into this vile waking world that it despised, torn once more away from the familiar comfort of its dreams like a sucking babe from its mother’s breast. The Old Ones made no secret of their distaste in humanity, preferring to seed their offspring instead with feathers and claws. Humanity was too fragile, too uncertain of their place in balance of things, always seeking to alter or disrupt the course of events. It was tired of them and their petty intrigues.

The woman does not reply as she looks at the figures entwined on the board.

“Warrior tames the bear, but in turn submits to the woman under its skin. You have lost the axe bearer to the half breed. Was there ever any doubt?’

The doll smiles in quiet satisfaction as it watches the woman send the board and the pieces crashing hard against the wall in a fit of rage. The woman was a child in its eyes, a child who has much to learn before she could claim to be her mother’s equal.

Knowing its time was coming to an end, the doll closes its eyes and waits for the coming of the cool, calm darkness that will wash over it and carry it away.

***

Cress looks at the woman busying herself by the fire, her skin glowing in the light of the flames. Half dressed in leather leggings and an undershirt, Sela was smiling and humming to herself, happier than Cress had ever seen her.

You lower yourself to cook for her when you know she cannot return your affection.

“I have the pot cooking on the fire. I prepared the meat the way you like it; heavily spiced. We eat when it’s done.”

Sela says shyly as she settles down on the mat next to Cress. Cress nods and smiles in return. She is huddled under the heavy woollen blanket curled up on her side.

You lower yourself at attend to her wounds when you know she does not care for you.

“I need to check your wounds, put more ointment on them so they don’t scar. They’re healing fast.”

Sela puts her hand on Cress’ shoulder and feels the other woman retreating under her touch. She tells herself that contact is not welcomed because of the horrific injuries that covered the smaller woman’s shoulders and back, but deep inside her heart of hearts she knows better.

Cress did not often willingly allow herself to be touched, and since their encounter in the pool, Sela could feel Cress rapidly withdrawing from her, unable to cope with the surge of new emotions that now coursed though her blood. Cress has spent too many years wanting and hating her in turn. She would need time to adjust. They both did.

She shrinks from your touch, you know you are nothing but poison to her.

“Cress, when we get back to the Citadel of Roses, you can continue to stay in your own rooms. You don’t have to stay with me, although I would like you too. I want you to know that nothing will change unless you want it too.”

Wordlessly, Cress sits up and pulls off her undershirt. It was cut too big for her and hung loose on her small, thin frame. She had deliberately taken one of Sela’s shirts wanting to feel the other woman close to her skin. If Sela noticed, she did not say.

She will not return to the City of Gold with you, she fears and hates you and your kind.

“I cannot return to the Resurrected City with you. I was entrusted with orders stamped with the royal seal of gold. I have failed my orders miserably and lost a wolf pack in the process. They will hang me from the main gate as food for the ravens.”

Carefully removing the top off a small metal container, Sela gently rubs the black ointment onto Cress’ back. The wounds were almost healed now, the skin now closing up over the exposed muscle. They would be gone by the morning.

She does not trust your promises of safe passage. They ring hollow to her like all your other promises.

“If they touch a hair on your head, I will kill them and their entire house. There will be food a plenty for the ravens with a hundred royal heads staked out on the high towers.”

Cress takes Sela’s hand in hers and kisses the palm.

She intends to leave you. She intends to ride north by herself. She does not need you.

“No, don’t do that. There’s been enough bloodshed these past years because of your sisters and their endless squabbles. I don’t wish to be the reason for another cycle of violence. I will leave. I never really belonged there.”

“Where will you go?”

The question comes out in a whisper. Cress could see the fear growing in the other woman’s eyes.

She does not love you. She does not want you. She does not need you.

“I will follow the blood hawks north to the solitary forests. Is that stupid? I just feel that the fates have sent me here for a reason. There’s something I need to do.”

Why do you keep lowering yourself?

“I will go with you.”

Sela offers as she leans in closer and takes the smaller woman into her arms, kissing her softly on the nose with a smile.

Why do you keep clinging onto her?

“No, go back to the City. The courtiers have need of you there to stop your sisters’ senseless warring before they destroy everything. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine travelling on my own.”

Why do you punish yourself like this?

“Cress, please don’t push me away again after what we shared today.”

Sela’s tone is soft and low, the hurt coming through in her voice.

“Does it mean so much to you that I let you touch me?”

Cress reaches out and caresses the other woman’s face.

“You mean a lot to me.”

“Will you be happy leaving behind your estate, your stables, your servants, your everything?”

Sela nods with a smile.

“I earned them with the strength of my arm and the sharpness of my axe. What I earned on my own merits I can reclaim from my sisters if I have too, but I doubt that any of them are that stupid. The land and the holdings mean nothing to me, the Citadel was a prison before you came and it will be a prison without you.”

“You will miss your gardens; I know how much you love them.”

“It was all wasteland before you had the ground cleared and planted. I will miss you more than the gardens.”

“There’s a part of me you don’t know.”

Cress hesitates and then stops. Sela can see the uncertainty burning bright in her eyes.

“I know all I need to know.”

“No, you don’t. I am not what you think I am. I was 12 when my sire took Ari and me along to a tribal hunt. It was a rite of passage, for us to be accepted as hunters by the Clan. We were left out in the tundra to make our way back to the settlement. He taught us well. We knew how to survive outdoors, how to trap and hunt to feed ourselves. Ari and I were hunting rabbits when the man approached us. We thought he was lost. He looked so helpless. Only he wasn’t a man. He was a wolf wearing the shape of a man. Ari screamed as he grabbed her and I did the only thing I could think to do. I tried to stab him with my spear. Only it broke on his thick grey pelt and he laughed. He was tearing at Ari’s clothes with his claws. I drew my knife and I stabbed him through his foot.”

Sela holds Cress closer as the tears fall.

“He threw Ari aside like a toy and I shouted for her to go, to run back to the settlement to get help. His claws were sharp like blades; they cut me and when he was done. He started ripping off my clothes. I tried to stop him, push him away with my hands but he was bigger and stronger. He hurt me for a long time. I was crying. Everything hurt so much. And then I saw it. It was a bear, a great white bear and it spoke to me.”

“What did it say, Cress?”

“I didn’t understand. I was a child.”

“What happened, Cress?”

“Ari came back a day later with a hunting party. She says they found me barely alive. I was covered in blood, curled up in the remains of the man wolf. They carried me back to the settlement. Ari was hailed as a hero and I was never allowed to attempt the rite of passage again. I had allowed myself to be attacked and soiled by wolf spawn. I had forgotten the lessons by the fire. I was unfit to be counted among the hunters.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“I tore him apart with my hands, but it wasn’t me. It was the great bear inside of me. They didn’t believe me when I told them. They called me a liar; told me to forget what I saw, told me it was nothing but a fever dream. After that, they started to shun me. When I turned 15 I left with my mother to fight in the south. There was nothing for me to stay for. I was outcast unless I consented to marriage with a cousin to bear him a litter within a year. Ari stayed behind with my sire. She was always closer to him.”

“Is that why you didn’t return with them, why you chose to stay with me?”

“I have no place with them, and you were kinder to me than they ever were. Ari didn’t understand. She wanted me to return with her, to marry, bear offspring and rebuild the settlements. I could not do that. I could not stand the thought of being touched.”

“By a man?”

“By another person. It had come to that by then. I could not stand the touch of another on my skin.”

“We go north tomorrow then if your injuries permit you to ride. We will follow the blood hawks.”

“Does it bother you, that I may not allow you to touch me even after today?”

“It bothers me that you were hurt. It does not bother me otherwise. You may chose the time and place you wish to lay with me or not. I do not force myself on women. I am not an animal.”

Cress laughs and then looks at Sela with a smirk.

“You are very confident, axe bearer. I have always liked that about you.”

“What else do you like about me?”

 ”That you eat your meat heavily spiced.”

“Someone told me it was the only way to eat it… Cress, I’m glad you told me.”

“That was a long time ago. My wounds have healed and I have the scars to show for it. What about you? You could have any man you wanted and more. Your mother would have paid out a ransom in gold for them to sire a litter off you. Offspring to ride at the head of her armies as they marched north, south, east and west, she dreams of empire and you so cruelly thwart her by refusing …”

“I feel in love with a woman out on the river Volga. She could never understand.”

Sela quietly replies as she captures Cress’s mouth with her own softly at first and then more insistent as she feels the lips beneath her teeth part to let her in.

***END