... but only for a month, due to the start of my first semester at university!
The next chapter will be published mid-October-ish, because that's when I hopefully will have finished my course planning and acquiring all of the materials I need. Busy busy :)
Stay tuned!
Montag, 19. September 2016
Donnerstag, 15. September 2016
Happy Hannahdays! Off to Greece
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| Not really where I'm going, but holy crabs, look at that beauty! |
No posts for me for a while, I'm going to Greece today and I'll be there for a week. Don't worry though, I'm taking my laptop with me to write whenever I find a moment!
I'll be back. With pictures!
Freitag, 9. September 2016
Friday Fade-Out! - Bending the Unbreakable, Part 12
Find the entire story here!
The terrace was shrouded in nightly darkness that was only broken by a few braziers along the carpeted walkway. Another half dozen sat near the oval marble table near the banister. A blood fly was circling Rhys’ goblet of wine, confused by the iron-heavy stench of the black flintwine sloshing around inside it. He had accompanied the Duchess Ilydra to her residence an hour ago, fully expecting Gusmerja to be done with the human servant by then, ready to take charge over the man he had risked his lieutenant for.
He had been waiting ever since, and still there was no sign of the old Lamia. It irked him greatly, this waiting game, but his impatience was enough of a shameful weakness for the noble to keep quiet about. He was too young to be taken seriously anyway, there was no reason to feed into the mirth of the other Ailill nobles. Most of them had two-hundred or more years on his young 168 years of age, and as each and everyone of them, he had spent the first 120 years on education, schooling and training in any and every craft beneficial to his rank and status.
At last, the door on the other side of the big terrace opened. The human’s bandages stood out like signaling lights in the dark night, but his skin was just as fair and easy to spot. As much as the earl had proclaimed his human slave to be an assassin, a dog to be sicced on those who displeased its master, there was not much true skill to mortal… yet. Of course, had the earl’s little human been able to surpass Rhysling’s training as an assassin, he would have lost his faith in himself and the Lord and Lady.
Rhys watched on silently as the human walked across the open space, his face a mask of defiance and anger. Gusmerja didn’t bother coming with him and turned at the door to close it silently behind her as she went back inside.
They were alone, at last.
The human stopped five feet away from the table and eyed him with suspicious, flinty glances. He wore the spell-bracelets, just as Rhys had ordered, but by the way he held himself, the Ailill already knew how little the mortal liked the adornments. He would like them even less in a few moments. That thought made Rhys smile.
“I will spare you pompous introductions,” he said, “because for now you will call me either ‘master’ or ‘sire’, nothing more, nothing less. You do not need to burden yourself with titles, my full name, why you are here or why you are still alive, those are things we will talk about at a later point in time.”
With those words, Rhys put down the goblet, pulling himself more upright. He could see the anger flare in Niro’s face and he could almost taste his need to defy him. But not yet, the time had not come and there weren’t that many chances to break the vicious cycle the human had kept going with his last master. This was one of those chances, and Rhys wasn’t going to let it slide past.
“Before you speak, I will finish,” he said, holding up a hand to ask for silence. “You have already noticed those bands of mithril ore I had my healer put around your arms and legs. I also know you have no control over magic whatsoever, which means you won’t be able to resist them or to break the hold I have on them, and through them on you. They are imbued with a series of spells that will use your life force against you at my command, and at the command of the person who made them. I will use them to control and punish you when I see fit.”
By now, the human was agitated, his hands constricted into tight, angry, white fists, his teeth grinding with the force of his rage, the muscles in his thighs tense with restraint. He looked positively livid, ready for a demonstration, a test.
“I have no use for a guard I have to constantly supervise, and I definitely have no use for a servant who defies my orders,” he finished, smiling suddenly. “Will you obey me?”
The answer was bit out with a growl of triumph, a sparkle of fiery hate in those honey-colored eyes. Just one word, filled with all the impotent rage, a dozen years worth of abuse to no avail, and all the heartfelt, pure hate a single mortal being could summon.
“Never.”
Rhys closed his eyes as tumultuous joy flooded his system. How the earl could have misinterpreted this much power, this much force of will, he would never understand. No mistreatment, no ill-usage of punishment had broken that one boy, and now Rhys had him for himself to bend what could not be broken, to make him into something breathtaking.
Lifting one ashen hand from the table, he made a simple gesture, uttering words of magic. ‘Constrict,’ he said, and through his will and power the bracelets around Niro’s arms pulled his limbs to the back until both lower arms lay hands to elbow against each other. Then the metal bands wound themselves around both of his arms, fixing them together tightly.
Niro’s face went pale, then red as he tried to pull against the immovable metal, then pale again as the newly formed shackles around his arms started to pull downward, towards the bands around his ankles. A glimpse of fear shone through the helpless rage tearing across his face, but it was quickly hidden as he stumbled to his knees in order to not fall onto his face. Moments later he fought so stay upright and on his knees, kept down and controlled by the bindings the spell-bands formed. He still struggled for quite some time against the unyielding force of magic, only ceasing his fight when he was out of breath and covered by a sheen of sweat.
Rhys watched this with a placid smile, taking a sip from the flintwine as the human still tried to gather his wits from the unexpected experience.
“What have you done to me!” Niro yelled, his voice shivering with rage.
Carefully placing the goblet on the stone table, Rhys shifted his pose into one of casual alertness.
“I told you what I expect of a servant, and I asked you if you were willing to comply. You told me in no uncertain terms that you wouldn’t, and thusly won’t be of any use to me as a slave,” he explained, straightened his deep-black vest and stood up to walk around the table, towards the kneeling, huffing human. “Nevertheless, you will be of use as my pet, since this is the only other rank I could bestow on you, except for ordering your death. A pet, you see, does not need to roam free or to have an opinion. A pet just has to amuse its owner, who I am.”
Rhys gathered the folds of his wide, flowing linen pants and crouched next to Niro’s twitching, kneeling form. He was close enough to touch if he decided to do so, but not close enough to get bitten or hit by Niro’s head, careful to keep enough distance between them so the rage wouldn’t spill over and enfold him too. His eyes shone like quicksilver, impenetrable, cold and sharp as a blade as he examined Niro’s face with a pondering glance and a small smirk.
“Right now, I want you immobile and calm, and I want to touch my purchase. Since there is no need for you to want this, I made sure you won’t be able to stop me from doing that, just like I will force anything else I might want to do on you.”
It was a beautiful sight to see the young man blanch, to hear how his breath quickened and sharpened, to smell how fear floated through his veins and into the sweat still escaping his skin. Rhys wondered idly how much Niro had learned of Ailill society in his time at the earl’s court. Judging by the way he reacted to those last words, it couldn’t be all that much. It was common knowledge that the Ailill as a people viewed rape as heresy, something never to be done, never to be condoned. Torture of any kind was common and due to their ability to heal easily and quickly and live to a very old age, they tended to get very, very creative at it, but rape was unheard of.
Rhys didn’t plan to explain this anytime soon, though, because having his new pet off-kilter and afraid was part of the way to turn him around. For Niro not to know this, he would have to be untouched, a virgin to the craving of the body for touch. That thought made his blood roar through his head.
With a deep breath to calm himself, Rhys raised a hand. It hung in the air for a moment, then he slowly, calmly, reached for Niro’s face.
“Don’t touch me!” the human screamed. His voice was still shaking with fear and tension. Only the Lord and the Lady could fathom what kind of horrors he was envisioning at this moment, but none of them would match with what Rhys actually planned.
His fingertips touched Niro’s hair. The human flinched hard enough to bounce his knees against the flat granite floor of the terrace, expecting a hit that never came. Rhys didn’t stop his foray at this though, he had already seen it coming. Instead, he buried his hand into the dirt brown, unkempt hair with deliberate care, rubbing his fingers over the skin of his head in slow circles.
The brown strands of hair did not reflect the lights of the braziers like they should have, and Rhys found the reason for that in the waxy feel beneath his fingertips. He was unclean, his mane unwashed for probably several days. Not dirty, although the smell of soot stuck to it, but not fresh enough to shimmer with those highlights he had seen when he had first noticed the youngling being led the gallows.
It was not a big inconvenience and Rhys knew the gashes on Niro’s back made it hard for him to bathe himself, or be bathed by another, but the knowledge awoke a hunger in him to see his pet clean, warm from the heated water, with hair shimmering like bronze.
The lean, muscular body kneeling before him shivered with anxiety, and for a while, Rhys watched the play of light glittering over his sweat soaked arms. His pet was on the small side of what he had seen in human males so far, but not too small. Standing, he would probably fit beneath Rhyslings chin. He was a perfect size for the Ailill’s preferences in a companion, but not too tiny to make him unfit for serving the more grim purpose Rhys intended for him.
It took a little while for the human to calm down enough for those little twitches and the shivering to die down. Rhys never wavered in his slow, affectionate caresses, and he never moved his hand away from his head. The neck-ruffling stench of fear and sweat permeated from the cowering figure, but at least he didn’t look ready to fight for his life anymore.
When Rhys finally removed his hand, the human had a dazed expression on his face, too confused to struggle for longer.
“We will see how trainable you are, pet,” he hummed, smiling at the wide-eyed expression on Niro’s face.
The terrace was shrouded in nightly darkness that was only broken by a few braziers along the carpeted walkway. Another half dozen sat near the oval marble table near the banister. A blood fly was circling Rhys’ goblet of wine, confused by the iron-heavy stench of the black flintwine sloshing around inside it. He had accompanied the Duchess Ilydra to her residence an hour ago, fully expecting Gusmerja to be done with the human servant by then, ready to take charge over the man he had risked his lieutenant for.
He had been waiting ever since, and still there was no sign of the old Lamia. It irked him greatly, this waiting game, but his impatience was enough of a shameful weakness for the noble to keep quiet about. He was too young to be taken seriously anyway, there was no reason to feed into the mirth of the other Ailill nobles. Most of them had two-hundred or more years on his young 168 years of age, and as each and everyone of them, he had spent the first 120 years on education, schooling and training in any and every craft beneficial to his rank and status.
At last, the door on the other side of the big terrace opened. The human’s bandages stood out like signaling lights in the dark night, but his skin was just as fair and easy to spot. As much as the earl had proclaimed his human slave to be an assassin, a dog to be sicced on those who displeased its master, there was not much true skill to mortal… yet. Of course, had the earl’s little human been able to surpass Rhysling’s training as an assassin, he would have lost his faith in himself and the Lord and Lady.
Rhys watched on silently as the human walked across the open space, his face a mask of defiance and anger. Gusmerja didn’t bother coming with him and turned at the door to close it silently behind her as she went back inside.
They were alone, at last.
The human stopped five feet away from the table and eyed him with suspicious, flinty glances. He wore the spell-bracelets, just as Rhys had ordered, but by the way he held himself, the Ailill already knew how little the mortal liked the adornments. He would like them even less in a few moments. That thought made Rhys smile.
“I will spare you pompous introductions,” he said, “because for now you will call me either ‘master’ or ‘sire’, nothing more, nothing less. You do not need to burden yourself with titles, my full name, why you are here or why you are still alive, those are things we will talk about at a later point in time.”
With those words, Rhys put down the goblet, pulling himself more upright. He could see the anger flare in Niro’s face and he could almost taste his need to defy him. But not yet, the time had not come and there weren’t that many chances to break the vicious cycle the human had kept going with his last master. This was one of those chances, and Rhys wasn’t going to let it slide past.
“Before you speak, I will finish,” he said, holding up a hand to ask for silence. “You have already noticed those bands of mithril ore I had my healer put around your arms and legs. I also know you have no control over magic whatsoever, which means you won’t be able to resist them or to break the hold I have on them, and through them on you. They are imbued with a series of spells that will use your life force against you at my command, and at the command of the person who made them. I will use them to control and punish you when I see fit.”
By now, the human was agitated, his hands constricted into tight, angry, white fists, his teeth grinding with the force of his rage, the muscles in his thighs tense with restraint. He looked positively livid, ready for a demonstration, a test.
“I have no use for a guard I have to constantly supervise, and I definitely have no use for a servant who defies my orders,” he finished, smiling suddenly. “Will you obey me?”
The answer was bit out with a growl of triumph, a sparkle of fiery hate in those honey-colored eyes. Just one word, filled with all the impotent rage, a dozen years worth of abuse to no avail, and all the heartfelt, pure hate a single mortal being could summon.
“Never.”
Rhys closed his eyes as tumultuous joy flooded his system. How the earl could have misinterpreted this much power, this much force of will, he would never understand. No mistreatment, no ill-usage of punishment had broken that one boy, and now Rhys had him for himself to bend what could not be broken, to make him into something breathtaking.
Lifting one ashen hand from the table, he made a simple gesture, uttering words of magic. ‘Constrict,’ he said, and through his will and power the bracelets around Niro’s arms pulled his limbs to the back until both lower arms lay hands to elbow against each other. Then the metal bands wound themselves around both of his arms, fixing them together tightly.
Niro’s face went pale, then red as he tried to pull against the immovable metal, then pale again as the newly formed shackles around his arms started to pull downward, towards the bands around his ankles. A glimpse of fear shone through the helpless rage tearing across his face, but it was quickly hidden as he stumbled to his knees in order to not fall onto his face. Moments later he fought so stay upright and on his knees, kept down and controlled by the bindings the spell-bands formed. He still struggled for quite some time against the unyielding force of magic, only ceasing his fight when he was out of breath and covered by a sheen of sweat.
Rhys watched this with a placid smile, taking a sip from the flintwine as the human still tried to gather his wits from the unexpected experience.
“What have you done to me!” Niro yelled, his voice shivering with rage.
Carefully placing the goblet on the stone table, Rhys shifted his pose into one of casual alertness.
“I told you what I expect of a servant, and I asked you if you were willing to comply. You told me in no uncertain terms that you wouldn’t, and thusly won’t be of any use to me as a slave,” he explained, straightened his deep-black vest and stood up to walk around the table, towards the kneeling, huffing human. “Nevertheless, you will be of use as my pet, since this is the only other rank I could bestow on you, except for ordering your death. A pet, you see, does not need to roam free or to have an opinion. A pet just has to amuse its owner, who I am.”
Rhys gathered the folds of his wide, flowing linen pants and crouched next to Niro’s twitching, kneeling form. He was close enough to touch if he decided to do so, but not close enough to get bitten or hit by Niro’s head, careful to keep enough distance between them so the rage wouldn’t spill over and enfold him too. His eyes shone like quicksilver, impenetrable, cold and sharp as a blade as he examined Niro’s face with a pondering glance and a small smirk.
“Right now, I want you immobile and calm, and I want to touch my purchase. Since there is no need for you to want this, I made sure you won’t be able to stop me from doing that, just like I will force anything else I might want to do on you.”
It was a beautiful sight to see the young man blanch, to hear how his breath quickened and sharpened, to smell how fear floated through his veins and into the sweat still escaping his skin. Rhys wondered idly how much Niro had learned of Ailill society in his time at the earl’s court. Judging by the way he reacted to those last words, it couldn’t be all that much. It was common knowledge that the Ailill as a people viewed rape as heresy, something never to be done, never to be condoned. Torture of any kind was common and due to their ability to heal easily and quickly and live to a very old age, they tended to get very, very creative at it, but rape was unheard of.
Rhys didn’t plan to explain this anytime soon, though, because having his new pet off-kilter and afraid was part of the way to turn him around. For Niro not to know this, he would have to be untouched, a virgin to the craving of the body for touch. That thought made his blood roar through his head.
With a deep breath to calm himself, Rhys raised a hand. It hung in the air for a moment, then he slowly, calmly, reached for Niro’s face.
“Don’t touch me!” the human screamed. His voice was still shaking with fear and tension. Only the Lord and the Lady could fathom what kind of horrors he was envisioning at this moment, but none of them would match with what Rhys actually planned.
His fingertips touched Niro’s hair. The human flinched hard enough to bounce his knees against the flat granite floor of the terrace, expecting a hit that never came. Rhys didn’t stop his foray at this though, he had already seen it coming. Instead, he buried his hand into the dirt brown, unkempt hair with deliberate care, rubbing his fingers over the skin of his head in slow circles.
The brown strands of hair did not reflect the lights of the braziers like they should have, and Rhys found the reason for that in the waxy feel beneath his fingertips. He was unclean, his mane unwashed for probably several days. Not dirty, although the smell of soot stuck to it, but not fresh enough to shimmer with those highlights he had seen when he had first noticed the youngling being led the gallows.
It was not a big inconvenience and Rhys knew the gashes on Niro’s back made it hard for him to bathe himself, or be bathed by another, but the knowledge awoke a hunger in him to see his pet clean, warm from the heated water, with hair shimmering like bronze.
The lean, muscular body kneeling before him shivered with anxiety, and for a while, Rhys watched the play of light glittering over his sweat soaked arms. His pet was on the small side of what he had seen in human males so far, but not too small. Standing, he would probably fit beneath Rhyslings chin. He was a perfect size for the Ailill’s preferences in a companion, but not too tiny to make him unfit for serving the more grim purpose Rhys intended for him.
It took a little while for the human to calm down enough for those little twitches and the shivering to die down. Rhys never wavered in his slow, affectionate caresses, and he never moved his hand away from his head. The neck-ruffling stench of fear and sweat permeated from the cowering figure, but at least he didn’t look ready to fight for his life anymore.
When Rhys finally removed his hand, the human had a dazed expression on his face, too confused to struggle for longer.
“We will see how trainable you are, pet,” he hummed, smiling at the wide-eyed expression on Niro’s face.
Mittwoch, 7. September 2016
Editing and the confusion it causes
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| Me, supposedly. |
I'm confused by this. I got my first novel back with a very nice rejection letter (not sarcasm, those guys were really great), so I decided to do a bit of quality checking and editing before submitting it to the next publisher, seeing as how I got a few good hints why my story didn't fit their profile. My only problem is that I really don't know how to make it any better, except by adding to it where I deleted stuff before. I hope I'm not arrogant, I don't think I am; I'm just really happy with my work as it is. I don't see the need to rework big parts of the story, and the feedback I got also didn't sound like I'd have to. Maybe I simply chose the wrong publisher, maybe I'm delusional, maybe I'm just not that good at writing readable Science Fiction. Maybe romance just doesn't mix with detailed futuristic worlds. Maybe...
So now I'm confused. Dear author buddies, am I the only one who actually is happy with their work? Does nobody else reach that point of 'yeah, baby, this is it!' that I feel when a novel is done? Should I listen to my gut feeling and not do any major editing, or should I get help and trust in others to tell me where I need to work on my novel?
Or should I just submit it to another publisher?
Dienstag, 6. September 2016
European Bachelor Kitchen
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| "Consumed Schnitzels in Vienna since January 1st:" |
I'm a foodie. I love food, eating out, cooking, trying new things, doing the whole nutrition thing guerilla-style. This may be one reason why I'm always wondering what other people have in their fridges, especially in other countries. I mean, I know what Germans do, because their cuisine is very similar to traditional Austrian cuisine, except for the thing where we cook totally different meals out of the same ingredients and name them after each other's cities and all that.
I try to replicate dishes from other countries, but there is no way for me to know which of those are recipes a single household would cook regularly, or what the "great 10" are; I mean the ten most wide-spread dishes of a country (or county), because those are the dishes that actually give a feel for the "taste" of a people.
I tend to not believe master chefs, TV shows or online advisors, though. Have you ever watched those? The amount of fresh ingredients is staggering, and who the hell has Mascarpone just standing around to whip up with five different freshly chopped herbs after a nine-hour-day?
No. People don't eat like that as long as there are no children to feed or guests to impress. But what do you eat, then?
There must be other people out there, wondering too. I'll go first and try my best to describe Austrian singles cuisine, but not today, because this will take time. In the next few weeks, I will post my most common food items, the stuff I always keep in stock, and the ten dishes I cook most often and also like best.
I'll even add the recipes, for those of you brave enough to try post-war cuisine!
And here's the runner-up for next week, place 10 on my food scale...
... you guessed it. Schnitzel!
Freitag, 2. September 2016
Friday Fade-Out! - Bending the Unbreakable, Part 11
Find the entire story here!
Inside the small cell there was no way of telling the time. Niro woke up with a thundering headache and prickling, uncomfortable tightness all across his back, still shackled to the bed in a spread-out fashion. He had no inkling of an idea how long he had been out, or why he still wasn’t dead, but the itching around his chest and stomach hinted that somebody had stitched him up and bandaged him with a vengeance while he had been out. The room was still the same, filled with the scent of torches and processed herbs, but additionally, there now was a note of stale male sweat.
Somebody had put a wool-knit, checkered blanket over his feet, legs and backside, keeping him warm and covered in his dreamless sleep. The scratchy wool also hinted to his nakedness beneath it.
It was a distressing idea to think that someone- probably Gusmerja- had taken off his clothes while he had been totally helpless. They had seen him naked, and he hadn’t been able to shield himself from their glances as they examined him inch by inch. The thought made him shudder violently. The movement triggered a series of painful, tight tugs all across his back, reminding him that all those stitches needed care and minding. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from tugging at the shackles keeping his arms stretched to the top end of the bed. They were cast iron, but mercifully wrapped with thick linen to keep them from rubbing his wrists raw.
Niro frowned and turned his head just enough to look at the contraptions. His master wouldn’t do such a merciful thing, as he firmly believed that those who deserved being shackled, also deserved being in pain to remind them of the errors of their ways. And the earl had a well-known dislike for Lamias, talking often about the depravity and beastliness of those blood-sucking creatures. One such as the earl would never pay a healer like Gusmerja to take care of a slave, he’d find it distasteful.
But then, who else would give a horse’s shit about a broken human man and his well-being?
Niro pondered this for a while, feeling the calming effects of the wiggleroot drift through him. Maybe his master had finally relented and sold him to a gladiator’s school or some other business where he’d do manual labor, far away and unable to screw important things up. The thought of having been sold hurt his heart, which was strange, for he had never loved his master or the estate. He had loved having a home, though, and knowing how things worked there. Everything would change with a new master, and change was not something Niro embraced easily.
As he lay there, he got restless and disheartened. The healing woman, Gusmerja, seemed nice enough despite the things Niro had heard about her race, so maybe her master— and through that, his master— would be as likable. If he was Lamia too, Niro would have to cope with that. Maybe he had been bought as a light snack. For all he knew about the blood drinking snakepeople, they liked the taste of pain, or fear, or hatred like some people preferred special brands of wine.
The Ailill, on the other hand, liked him for being human. They didn’t like the whole species of humans, they actually looked down on them quite blatantly, but they liked humanity’s disconnection from the earth and the circle of life. As Ailill, Fae people, they were tightly bound to the rules of life and death, to powerful, overwhelming magic that affected their life quite strongly in a multitude of ways. Humans were not so influenced by the forces of fate and earth, and they could murder and lie and infiltrate to their heart’s content, making them prime candidates for any dirty work a nobleman might think of.
The Pander wouldn’t have fixed him up. They were as gruesome as the Lamia were bloodthirsty, living off the dead flesh of living things like ghouls, but calm, wise and even-tempered with a strength to be revered. Still, a Pander master would have simply eaten his rotting body, no healing required.
And lastly, the were the Nightgigers. No, there was no possible way a Nightgiger had bought him, not even the Ailill had ever been able to truly contact them, let alone find out who ruled them. There was still some uproar about the idea of Nightgigers even being sentient, intelligent higher life forms, and in some parts of the world they were still called animals. On the surface, they actually acted like animals, like an ancient cross between the Pander and the Lamia, only much more terrifying. They were said to hunt for children reckless enough to leave their homes at night, but in truth they took any warm flesh, any blood available, as long as it was that of a humanoid creature. They didn’t like the taste of the Pander people, and they usually went after weak, frail, hurt, dying or freshly dead victims, always outside, never inside a building. All of this made them bogeymen for every defiant or nagging child, a natural threat for travelers, and in the end, not much of an enemy for the war-wise peoples.
‘An Ailill noble, or a Lamian noble,’ Niro decided. The stitches on his back itched a bit, so he tried to wiggle on the bed in hopes the bandages would help ease it. This was how he found out that another strap of leather fixed his hips and behind to the bed, making it impossible for him to move from his resting site.
Against his better knowledge, Niro had to smile. Whoever had bought him, they weren’t stupid. Shackling him like this could only mean they knew how capable he was when it came to breaking out, and this in turn meant they had talked to the earl earnestly enough to get him to admit to all the shenanigans Niro had played on him in the years. The earl hadn’t sold him as a pig in a poke, which surprised him a little, mostly because he wouldn’t have believed anyone would want to buy someone so troubled as him. It didn’t bode well for his future, too. Troublemakers weren’t bought to keep for long.
The door opened and Niro instinctively tugged at the shackles and straps, but to no avail.
“Stop squirming, little one. If you tear your stitches I will be mad,” the wizened voice of Gusmerja scolded as she shuffled into the room. She came to his side, leaned over his back and prodded at the bandages, looking for signs of blood at the white cloth, but found none.
With a satisfied click of her tongue, she turned away and walked over to the side table, where a few dozen trinkets, flasks, stacks of paper and bags sat. Picking up a brownish, wooden quill with no feathers, she unplugged a small, earthen firkin and dabbed the tip of the quill into blackish ink, writing down this and that on the top layer of one of the paper stacks. “I will give Count Greyfell a list of medicines and salves to cure your back and keep the fever at bay, but I will tell you this, too,” she explained, her voice trudging behind as she concentrated on writing. “If he offers you medicine, and if he tries to apply a salve, you are to obey. Not only because he says so, but because I do, and I, my dear boy, do not care for politics, just for your health.”
Niro’s instinct was to resist the order, just as he had resisted almost any other order of those who treated him like an unruly child. He thought better of it, though. The Lamia healer had no interest in controlling him, no gain from his obedience other than his health. There was no small triumph to score by ignoring her words, and now that he was not on death’s door anymore, the old need to survive flared to life. Medicine, salves, those things he could cope with. A count on the other hand…
“Who is this Count Greyfell, Gusmerja?” he asked with a low voice, still unsure what to make of her.
She halted her writing at the sound of his voice, turned her wizened head and smiled broadly, showing her long, pointed canines blatantly. “So you remembered my name, very good. Not everyone could resist the effects of the root like this, impressive.” Then she turned back to her writing, once more ignoring his question until she was finished.
At last, she cleaned the quill with a small wad of cloth, put it away and rolled the finished paper together. It went straight into a leather sheath and was put away, but her hands kept busy. This time, she grabbed one of the satchels sitting at the back of the table, put it in front of her and opened it to examine the contents. Whatever was inside that satchel, made her face look worried, but only slightly.
“You must be one bag of trouble for the count to be restrained with instruments like these,” she huffed after a moment of shock, then put her hand inside the satchel and pulled out four rings of some kind of metal. It had a blueish tint to it, not shiny like a polished armor, but dull and glittering like the front of a storm cloud. Niro could make out small blackish bands of what looked to be writing. Runes maybe, or just decorative symbols, one could never know.
“What are those?” he asked, worried by her worry, more than by his own knowledge. Those rings were too big to be meant for fingers or ears, or toes at that. They were wide enough to fit around his wrists and ankles, though.
His question seemed to be inside of the range of topics Gusmerja was ready to answer. “Those are Mithril spell bracelets, very rare, very expensive,” she explained as she stepped closer. “And since I have strict orders to put those on you before I hand you over to the count, you’d better be wary of what you say in his company. He is known for his effective handling of unruly children, and with those magic trinkets he won’t need to touch you.”
Suddenly, Niro didn’t want those things anywhere near him. Tugging at the shackles and straps, he gasped for air, growling, “don’t you put that spellwork on me, woman! I will hurt you if you do!” The movement made his back hurt, but this time he didn’t stop.
Unfortunately, neither did Gusmerja. Clicking her tongue in disapproval, she first gave him a slap on the back of his head. “Stop your struggling, I will do as I was told, and so will you,” she growled, and then proceeded to speak soft words of magic to the metal bracelets. They opened to her bidding like flowers to the sun, breaking on one side as the other side just bent to the force of her will.
“Don’t do this!” It was all Niro could do, beg of her, hiss at her, order her, but none of it worked.
One after the other, the Lamia put the bracelets first around his wrists above the shackles, then around his ankles where they tightened just above the protruding bones.
“See,” she finally said, stretching her back until her old bones popped, “it didn’t hurt the least. And as soon as you have calmed down enough, I will untie you and bring you to your new master.”
“I am calm!” Niro roared, only to realize this wouldn’t get him free anytime sooner. He tried again, this time with a calmer voice. “I am calm, really.”
Gusmerja just laughed with that kind of humor only the wizened folk had, and turned away. “Sure, sure. Calm as the River Dauntess at spring,” she scoffed, and turned to leave.
Once more, Niro couldn’t do anything but lay there and wait.
Inside the small cell there was no way of telling the time. Niro woke up with a thundering headache and prickling, uncomfortable tightness all across his back, still shackled to the bed in a spread-out fashion. He had no inkling of an idea how long he had been out, or why he still wasn’t dead, but the itching around his chest and stomach hinted that somebody had stitched him up and bandaged him with a vengeance while he had been out. The room was still the same, filled with the scent of torches and processed herbs, but additionally, there now was a note of stale male sweat.
Somebody had put a wool-knit, checkered blanket over his feet, legs and backside, keeping him warm and covered in his dreamless sleep. The scratchy wool also hinted to his nakedness beneath it.
It was a distressing idea to think that someone- probably Gusmerja- had taken off his clothes while he had been totally helpless. They had seen him naked, and he hadn’t been able to shield himself from their glances as they examined him inch by inch. The thought made him shudder violently. The movement triggered a series of painful, tight tugs all across his back, reminding him that all those stitches needed care and minding. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from tugging at the shackles keeping his arms stretched to the top end of the bed. They were cast iron, but mercifully wrapped with thick linen to keep them from rubbing his wrists raw.
Niro frowned and turned his head just enough to look at the contraptions. His master wouldn’t do such a merciful thing, as he firmly believed that those who deserved being shackled, also deserved being in pain to remind them of the errors of their ways. And the earl had a well-known dislike for Lamias, talking often about the depravity and beastliness of those blood-sucking creatures. One such as the earl would never pay a healer like Gusmerja to take care of a slave, he’d find it distasteful.
But then, who else would give a horse’s shit about a broken human man and his well-being?
Niro pondered this for a while, feeling the calming effects of the wiggleroot drift through him. Maybe his master had finally relented and sold him to a gladiator’s school or some other business where he’d do manual labor, far away and unable to screw important things up. The thought of having been sold hurt his heart, which was strange, for he had never loved his master or the estate. He had loved having a home, though, and knowing how things worked there. Everything would change with a new master, and change was not something Niro embraced easily.
As he lay there, he got restless and disheartened. The healing woman, Gusmerja, seemed nice enough despite the things Niro had heard about her race, so maybe her master— and through that, his master— would be as likable. If he was Lamia too, Niro would have to cope with that. Maybe he had been bought as a light snack. For all he knew about the blood drinking snakepeople, they liked the taste of pain, or fear, or hatred like some people preferred special brands of wine.
The Ailill, on the other hand, liked him for being human. They didn’t like the whole species of humans, they actually looked down on them quite blatantly, but they liked humanity’s disconnection from the earth and the circle of life. As Ailill, Fae people, they were tightly bound to the rules of life and death, to powerful, overwhelming magic that affected their life quite strongly in a multitude of ways. Humans were not so influenced by the forces of fate and earth, and they could murder and lie and infiltrate to their heart’s content, making them prime candidates for any dirty work a nobleman might think of.
The Pander wouldn’t have fixed him up. They were as gruesome as the Lamia were bloodthirsty, living off the dead flesh of living things like ghouls, but calm, wise and even-tempered with a strength to be revered. Still, a Pander master would have simply eaten his rotting body, no healing required.
And lastly, the were the Nightgigers. No, there was no possible way a Nightgiger had bought him, not even the Ailill had ever been able to truly contact them, let alone find out who ruled them. There was still some uproar about the idea of Nightgigers even being sentient, intelligent higher life forms, and in some parts of the world they were still called animals. On the surface, they actually acted like animals, like an ancient cross between the Pander and the Lamia, only much more terrifying. They were said to hunt for children reckless enough to leave their homes at night, but in truth they took any warm flesh, any blood available, as long as it was that of a humanoid creature. They didn’t like the taste of the Pander people, and they usually went after weak, frail, hurt, dying or freshly dead victims, always outside, never inside a building. All of this made them bogeymen for every defiant or nagging child, a natural threat for travelers, and in the end, not much of an enemy for the war-wise peoples.
‘An Ailill noble, or a Lamian noble,’ Niro decided. The stitches on his back itched a bit, so he tried to wiggle on the bed in hopes the bandages would help ease it. This was how he found out that another strap of leather fixed his hips and behind to the bed, making it impossible for him to move from his resting site.
Against his better knowledge, Niro had to smile. Whoever had bought him, they weren’t stupid. Shackling him like this could only mean they knew how capable he was when it came to breaking out, and this in turn meant they had talked to the earl earnestly enough to get him to admit to all the shenanigans Niro had played on him in the years. The earl hadn’t sold him as a pig in a poke, which surprised him a little, mostly because he wouldn’t have believed anyone would want to buy someone so troubled as him. It didn’t bode well for his future, too. Troublemakers weren’t bought to keep for long.
The door opened and Niro instinctively tugged at the shackles and straps, but to no avail.
“Stop squirming, little one. If you tear your stitches I will be mad,” the wizened voice of Gusmerja scolded as she shuffled into the room. She came to his side, leaned over his back and prodded at the bandages, looking for signs of blood at the white cloth, but found none.
With a satisfied click of her tongue, she turned away and walked over to the side table, where a few dozen trinkets, flasks, stacks of paper and bags sat. Picking up a brownish, wooden quill with no feathers, she unplugged a small, earthen firkin and dabbed the tip of the quill into blackish ink, writing down this and that on the top layer of one of the paper stacks. “I will give Count Greyfell a list of medicines and salves to cure your back and keep the fever at bay, but I will tell you this, too,” she explained, her voice trudging behind as she concentrated on writing. “If he offers you medicine, and if he tries to apply a salve, you are to obey. Not only because he says so, but because I do, and I, my dear boy, do not care for politics, just for your health.”
Niro’s instinct was to resist the order, just as he had resisted almost any other order of those who treated him like an unruly child. He thought better of it, though. The Lamia healer had no interest in controlling him, no gain from his obedience other than his health. There was no small triumph to score by ignoring her words, and now that he was not on death’s door anymore, the old need to survive flared to life. Medicine, salves, those things he could cope with. A count on the other hand…
“Who is this Count Greyfell, Gusmerja?” he asked with a low voice, still unsure what to make of her.
She halted her writing at the sound of his voice, turned her wizened head and smiled broadly, showing her long, pointed canines blatantly. “So you remembered my name, very good. Not everyone could resist the effects of the root like this, impressive.” Then she turned back to her writing, once more ignoring his question until she was finished.
At last, she cleaned the quill with a small wad of cloth, put it away and rolled the finished paper together. It went straight into a leather sheath and was put away, but her hands kept busy. This time, she grabbed one of the satchels sitting at the back of the table, put it in front of her and opened it to examine the contents. Whatever was inside that satchel, made her face look worried, but only slightly.
“You must be one bag of trouble for the count to be restrained with instruments like these,” she huffed after a moment of shock, then put her hand inside the satchel and pulled out four rings of some kind of metal. It had a blueish tint to it, not shiny like a polished armor, but dull and glittering like the front of a storm cloud. Niro could make out small blackish bands of what looked to be writing. Runes maybe, or just decorative symbols, one could never know.
“What are those?” he asked, worried by her worry, more than by his own knowledge. Those rings were too big to be meant for fingers or ears, or toes at that. They were wide enough to fit around his wrists and ankles, though.
His question seemed to be inside of the range of topics Gusmerja was ready to answer. “Those are Mithril spell bracelets, very rare, very expensive,” she explained as she stepped closer. “And since I have strict orders to put those on you before I hand you over to the count, you’d better be wary of what you say in his company. He is known for his effective handling of unruly children, and with those magic trinkets he won’t need to touch you.”
Suddenly, Niro didn’t want those things anywhere near him. Tugging at the shackles and straps, he gasped for air, growling, “don’t you put that spellwork on me, woman! I will hurt you if you do!” The movement made his back hurt, but this time he didn’t stop.
Unfortunately, neither did Gusmerja. Clicking her tongue in disapproval, she first gave him a slap on the back of his head. “Stop your struggling, I will do as I was told, and so will you,” she growled, and then proceeded to speak soft words of magic to the metal bracelets. They opened to her bidding like flowers to the sun, breaking on one side as the other side just bent to the force of her will.
“Don’t do this!” It was all Niro could do, beg of her, hiss at her, order her, but none of it worked.
One after the other, the Lamia put the bracelets first around his wrists above the shackles, then around his ankles where they tightened just above the protruding bones.
“See,” she finally said, stretching her back until her old bones popped, “it didn’t hurt the least. And as soon as you have calmed down enough, I will untie you and bring you to your new master.”
“I am calm!” Niro roared, only to realize this wouldn’t get him free anytime sooner. He tried again, this time with a calmer voice. “I am calm, really.”
Gusmerja just laughed with that kind of humor only the wizened folk had, and turned away. “Sure, sure. Calm as the River Dauntess at spring,” she scoffed, and turned to leave.
Once more, Niro couldn’t do anything but lay there and wait.
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