Of Walker

Laok looked up and to the west, his nose held high, sniffing the air. There was the faint hint of smoke on the breeze. A campfire. He squinted, looking off into the distance. Yes, there was the faint plume of smoke in the sky. He smiled, a subtle and malicious expression creeping across his face. Gripping the stone he climbed down carefully. It wouldn’t do to break a bone so soon after he had eluded captivity, oh my no. He wanted to stay mobile, silent, quiet, and deadly.

Finally he reached the bottom of the stone outcropping upon which he had been perched and took off at a ground-devouring lope. The trees flashed by in his peripheral vision, barely noted except as obstacles to be avoided. His powerful legs bunched and he hurtled a fallen log, landing with a cringe on the other side. He was week, terribly week, he had to remember this, proceed with caution, the days of swaggering about and taking what he wanted were over for now, but would come again, he knew, oh my yes they would come again. He’d find his sister; find where that filthy human prince had taken her. If he had hurt her, there would be hells to pay. He would make the man rue the day he was born, take him apart piece by precious piece and savor every last scream, every whisper of agony until he begged for mercy. He would visit upon him vengeance for ALL he and his sister had to go through. He would find Shoda, he HAD to, she needed him, he was sure.

The crack of a stick brought him up short. He stopped, listening, his long ears pricked for any sound. His forestry skills were unmatched, weren’t they? It wasn’t him that made that tiniest of telltale sounds, was it? No! There, another rustle in the underbrush. He sprinted towards it and suddenly, a hare broke cover and he hurled himself forward, snagging a leg with one hand. He didn’t even bother to twist the creature; instead he simply took it by the neck and pulled, killing the terrified beast instantly.

“Who’s there?” A voice called out from the gathering darkness.

Laok cursed himself silently for his eagerness, his carelessness. But then, an idea struck and he drew himself up carefully, keeping low. “Who asks? Be you friend or foe to Carolin?” He called softly, ready to bolt should the strange voice belong to a soldier. He was in no position to fight.

“Who would ask? Be you Human, Jothani, or other?”

Laok sighed, relaxing instantly. Only a Jothani, other, or human sympathizer would ask if he was other. Carolin faithful only cared if you were Human or other. Their racist hate blinded them to everything else. “Jothani! And a fugitive! Sanctuary, please!” He called, standing up, doing his best to look the poor wretch he was.

A form parted the bushes and immediately Laok’s deep-seated, primal anger was awoken again and he hurled himself at the hapless man. Virgil screamed and fell back beneath the larger Jothani’s assault, “No! Stop, you can’t stop I won’t hurt you!” He cried, terrified for his life.

Laok straightened up, a feral growl escaping his lips, his face a mask of fury, “What did you do to her!” He yelled, holding the man up by the neck, pressed up against a tree.

“I freed her! I was coming back for you, I swear!” His throat worked painfully under Laok’s tight grip as his hands scrabbled futilely for purchase on the Jothani’s arms.

“Then WHERE IS SHE!” Laok thundered, his lavender eyes blazing with unbridled fury.

“She- she left, she didn’t want me, she left, towards Asumptee…” Virgil gasped. His legs were working, scraping desperately against the bark of the tree.

For having been imprisoned as long as he was, starved, and beaten, Laok was still a force to be reckoned with. He growled again and began to glow. He pulled Virgil down from the tree and started dragging him by the collar. He dragged him back to where he knew the campsite was. With an unnecessary force, born of pure viciousness, Laok threw the hapless man down, cracking his skull on the edge of the fire pit. Virgil struggled for a moment to maintain consciousness then, lost the battle, and all went black.


When he woke up again it was proper night, but the ground in front of his face was illuminated by an angry red glow. Where was he? He could hear the sound of someone working nearby, a fire, and he could smell roasting meat. He rolled over with a groan, but Laok was on top of him in an instant. The giant Jothan straddled his hips, his dark green hands clutching vice like at the front of his tunic. His face was frighteningly impassive as he just sat there, staring for a moment, his face eerily illuminated by the dancing flames. He looked like a demon. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he spoke, “Where’s my sister?”

Virgil tried to answer, but his throat was on fire. He coughed and spluttered and finally managed to croak, “I don’t know…”

That was the wrong answer. Laok’s impassive expression flashed to one of anger and he lifted Virgil’s chest up off the ground and slammed him back down again. He saw stars for a moment, “What did you do with her!”

“I- I freed her, but she didn’t want me-“

“Didn’t want you?” Laok’s tone was a dangerous whisper as understanding dawned on his face. He slammed the man on the ground again, “You perverted bastard! How DARE you force yourself on my sister!”

“I- it wasn’t like that! I didn’t force anything! She didn’t want me! She ran off, towards Asumptee, I… I never saw her again… I don’t know what happened to her.”

Laok’s lips thinned to an angry line in his face, “And you’re not going to.” He growled then punched Virgil in the jaw. It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. His head exploded in pain and tears sprang to his eyes. He was hauled roughly to his feet and dragged a short distance. Then, the ground beneath his feet disappeared. Laok was holding him out over a cliff. He couldn’t help it, he screamed, the long plummet to the bottom terrifying him.

Laok brought his face close to Virgil’s, stared into his eyes, and whispered, “I don’t EVER want to see you again.” And he tossed him off the cliff.

Virgil screamed again as the ground rushed up at him, faster than he would have thought. A ledge caught him, he rolled off, caught another, barely held. His hands were sweating, blood pouring from somewhere, pain everywhere. He slipped and dropped again, cracked the back of his head but held fast. Before he slipped into darkness again he stared upward and saw Laok, fury burning in his mockingly soft lavender eyes, the angry red glow of the volcano burning behind him.

Laok is a dick

Rain was sheeting out of the heavens with the endless abandon of a sky that was crying her heart out. Thick blackish green clouds roiled overhead, shifting endlessly and growling with what sounded to Shoda like a primal, malicious intent. But that could just be her mood. She sat with her back pressed up against a cold and clammy wall, slippery with years of mossy slime that had accumulated. A trickle of rainwater traced its icy path down her back, between her shoulder blades, but she was beyond the ability to care. Her arm throbbed with a dull red heat as sticky yellow ichor seeped from the week-old wound. Trying desperately to heal the loss of her limb.
“Psst.” A voice drifted into her cell, sounding like the barest dream, something out of her fever-induced nightmares. But it came again, “Psst.”
She cracked open her swollen and red-rimmed eyes, crusty from blood and sweat, “Whut?” she croaked around her freshly swollen lip.
“S-Shoda? A-are you there?” It was Laok.
“Yea… are you OK?”
Her brother grunted, scraping noises from the adjacent cell sounded like he was shifting position, “I can’t think Shoda, I c-can’t see… I… I think they took my eye…”
It came back in a flash, the swords glinting in the firelight, the rows upon rows of tents. Shoda groaned, “The arm…” Eyes already raw from the beating she had received began to well with tears once again as she thought of her village, and the burning shambles it must be by now. Her rivers clogged with bodies and the little earth and thatch huts burning. She thought of Roburt and couldn’t stand the memory anymore. She began to howl, a hollow, desperate, and hopeless sound. She howled with rage and sorrow. She howled until her throat was raw and she could only lean over on the dirty floor, her chest shaking with wracking sobs she was too spent to utter.
It didn’t help matters that Laok was so silent in the adjacent cell, only uttering an occasional whimper when he bumped into something.
She didn’t know what time it was, it was impossible to tell. The only window that she could tell was very far up and it looked like the path to it was crooked, so only the barest hint of light filtered down. She got more light through the tiny barred window in her cell door, through which she could just discern the light of a torch far down the hall.
She didn’t know how long she laid there, passing in and out of consciousness. The back of her head was throbbing and whenever she tried to sit up it exploded with pain. If she could just get to Laok they could help each other.
Eventually someone came and slipped a narrow tray of food under the door. It was thin porridge with a tough hunk of bread and a small tin cup of water. They were going to starve her! She wrestled with burning anger for a moment before it collapsed back in on itself and gave way to despair again.
“Why am I here? I didn’t do anything to deserve this!” She yelled at her door. Only her echoes were there to answer her. “Laok? Are you awake? Laok? Laok!” She couldn’t hear his breathing from the other cell; would she even be able to? But he wasn’t answering, had he fallen unconscious? Was he… was he dead? She threw herself against the thick iron-bound wooden door, trying to make enough noise to wake her brother up if he had fallen asleep. But the doors were thick, and didn’t echo. She fell back when the pain in her left arm wouldn’t let her continue. She kept calling his name. She called until her throat was raw with effort, until she collapsed into tears again.
She woke with a start. The tray of food was gone, and there was a scratching on the other side of her cell wall. “Shoda? Shoda please don’t leave me…”
“Laok!” She scrambled to the other side of her cell, pressing close to the wall, trying to get as close to her brother as she could, “Laok…” she sobbed, “I thought you had passed out… or died…”
He managed to laugh feebly, “I thought… I thought you had…” It was a feeble joke, but some combination of stress, pain and exhaustion made them laugh. The two Jothani sat side-by-side in adjacent cells laughing, releasing pent-up frustrations. It helped, it didn’t make the pain or hunger any better, but it went a long way to dispelling some of the despair the both of them felt.
“Laok, we have to get together somehow maybe…” She paused, uncertain.
“What Shoda? Spit it out!”
“Well, maybe, do you remember what you used to do to the fish?” Her tone was cautious, like she was probing the edge of an idea that didn’t bear thinking about.
“Yeah, what are you on to?”
“Maybe, could you do it to a- a person?”
“I can try.” He said simply, in a dead-sounding voice.
Shoda sat back, leaning against the wall and thought about what she had asked her brother to do. Finally, she voiced her thoughts again, “You’re actually scaring me a little Laok.”
“Why?”
“Roburt made us promise only to use our ability to help people I do-“
“We are, we’re helping ourselves.” Laok’s tone was unexpectedly sharp.
“That’s not what I meant” Shoda began reasonably.
“I know what you meant,” he snapped, “They put my eye out Shoda! Took your arm! What makes you think they’re planning on being any kinder now that we’re stuck in here huh? I don’t know about you but I’ll gladly do to them what they did to us and more to get out of here.” He lapsed into an angry silence while Shoda sat, stunned.
“I- I don’t want to fight” She whispered.
“Then don’t.”
Shoda sat, staring at the wall for a long moment before she crawled to a pile of moldy straw and curled up. Shivering, it was many hours before she managed to find sleep.

Of Emily

There it was sitting in front of him, just for the taking, his opportunity, his freedom. A guard stood with his hand on the cell door, lit from behind by the fitfully burning torches.

"The king wants you."

"Oh does he now? Fancy that."

"None of your lip beast, or I'll put your other eye out."

Laok chuckled as his head hung between his knees, "Do that and I'll be no use to anyone."
The guard just bent forward and grabbed the Jothani's arm and hauled him roughly to his feet. Laok had been imprisoned so long there wasn't much he could do to fight back... yet.

The tiny girl, almost skeletally thin, lay on a bed of finest linen and down, looking like some horribly starved effigy enshrined as a god. Laok looked down at the young princess in disgust. The guard had deposited him in the royal bedchamber where she waited, along with her nervous and fretting parents. He slid them a sidelong glance and smiled inwardly. Oh how far the mighty had fallen, to finally turn to /his/ aid.

Well, he had better get to work. He clicked in his mind and looked at the girl. He was momentarily taken aback by the amount of infection that laced through her, he had a moment of pure panic where he thought he would barely have enough energy to heal the girl, let alone enact his plan. Then he smiled inside again and turned to the king, his expression rearranged into one of worry, "She is very, very sick. I don't think I have the strength to heal her, at least not all at once..." He turned his gaze back to the girl, "Though maybe, over the course of a moon, if I was given more to eat..."

The guard grunted unhappily, obviously loath to give his prisoner any better treatment than he was already getting. The king, however, was almost ready to fall all over himself in his eagerness to supply Laok with what he needed. "Yes, double rations, and meat too, not just bread and water, see to it!"

The young Jothani extended his hand over the sleeping girl's chest, closed his eyes, and dove. He really wasn't very good at this. He did his best to ease her illness but expended much more energy than he should have. His healing was clumsy and poorly wielded, but when he finally pulled out and opened his eyes he saw that he had been able to do some visible good. She had a little bit of color back in her. She was still pale but no longer bordering on the transparent, and her breaths came easier without the rattling sobs she had before.

"Emily!" The king lurched forward and flung his arms around his daughter, tears welling up in his eyes. He parted her hair with shaking hands and kissed her forehead. "Why won't she wake?" He asked, his voice shaking.

"I told you, I'm not strong enough to heal her outright, it might take up to a moon." Laok was visibly wilting, leaning on a table for support. He was also quickly loosing patience and just wanted to go lay down.

"You can go then, and you'll get double-rations from now on, with meat thrown in." The king nodded to the guard who grabbed Laok roughly by his atrophied bicep and guided him back to his cell.

When the door clanged shut Laok had his head once again hanging between his knees. This time, however, his shoulders were shaking in silent laughter as he realized, the key to his freedom had finally presented itself.