by Loki Renard
Reed scowled at the tall, buxom lady. It was hard to be annoyed at someone so bewitchingly beautiful, but Reed was used to doing hard things and she managed it quite nicely. “I do not have a chest infection. I'm not even coughing.”
“No, you're gurgling and rattling in your lungs," Ayla replied.
“Ratling in my lungs. Heh.” Reed looked at Rog. He was not smiling. “Why so serious?”
“You're going to have to quit smoking for a while and take care of yourself," Ayla said. "Sleeping indoors will help.”
Reed waved her concerns away. “I'm fine. I'll just...”
She paused mid-sentence, planning to start the world again. It didn't happen. She shut her eyes, hoping the world would disintegrate as it usually did. When she opened them, Ayla was still there. Reed frowned and tried again. Again nothing happened. She started to panic. The power she'd had for as long as she cared to remember, the power that righted all wrongs, that undid all things done - was gone.
“You broke me!” She snarled at Ayla, her usually mellow and pleasant expression contorting fiercely.
“You broke you, actually," Ayla said calmly. "Your frivolous use of your gifts, coupled with your physical deterioration has rendered you impotent in that regard."
Reed did not understand a lot of the words, but she understood that her powers were gone. She understood that without them she was just as dangerously vulnerable as everybody else. It was Ayla's fault. It had to be. Everything had been fine until Ayla showed up. Reed lifted a trembling finger at the witch.
"Get her, Rog!"
She smirked as she said the words, thoroughly enjoying the prospect of seeing the mean witch taken down by Rog. He might not have looked it, but Chief Rog was the best street fighter in all of Clitera City, so they said. He made a tidy income from regular underground arena brawls held in the low lanes, enough to keep the Ratlings fed and clothed, even the ones that didn't have any marketable skills themselves.
Again, Reed was disappointed. Rog didn't so much as flex one of his muscles. "I'm not an attack dog," he replied. "You can't sic me on people."
"I'm glad one of you has some sense," Ayla murmured.
"Well I'm going to get an attack dog," Reed said. "A big mean attack dog with jaws wider than your head and I'm going to set him on you, witch, you see if I don't."
"I look forward to it," Ayla said dryly. "But first you're going to stay in bed until that infection is cleared."
"I am not. I am not staying anywhere. I don't stay places, witch. I make them."
Ayla turned away, ignoring Reed's grand declarations.
Reed took the opportunity to nudge Rog in the ribs. "Why did you let her take me?"
"You passed out in the street, Reed. You really are sick. You know I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, don't you?"
Scowling, Reed inwardly acknowledged that things likely were okay if Rog was there. "I probably passed out because one of her spells," she surmised. "This is probably all a trap to steal our toes and shave our hair and..."
"You're being silly," Rog observed.
"I haven't even started being silly," Reed replied, watching Ayla wring out the wash cloth. Steam rose from the bowl along with a pretty floral scent that slowly filled the room.
Reed did not like this Ayla and she did not trust her one little bit. As soon as she got her powers back, Ayla was going to pay. Oh she was going to pay big time. She was going to pay the biggest of all time. Contenting herself with such vague but satisfyingly vengeful thoughts, Reed snickered to herself and sank slowly beneath the covers.
Just as the final drips were wrung from Ayla's cloth, footsteps could be heard pounding up the staircase. The door to the room flew open. Mace appeared, panting with the exertion of her mad dash.
"Chief! We have a..." she glanced around the room, saw Ayla, and modulated her message. "We have a... cat situation."
Rog was off the bed in an instant. He moved with such urgency that he was out the door and stampeding down the steps before Reed could so much as emerge from the covers. For a horribly long moment she was forced to do battle with sheet and blanket, flailing against the soft shackles that somehow seemed to have wrapped themselves about her like lovesick pythons. When she did manage to disentangle herself from the depths of the bed, she made a similar run. All thoughts of witches and sickness were driven from her head. She had to go. She had to help.
Before she got anywhere near the door, Reed was arrested by an arm wrapped around her waist, swung off her feet by her own momentum, propelled backwards and finally tossed back on the bed.
She glared up into the crystal green eyes boring down at her. "I have to go."
"You're not going anywhere." Ayla gestured toward the door, her long arm graceful with the movement. The door obligingly swung itself shut.
"You don't understand," Reed pleaded. "There are people attacking our base. My friends need my help."
Ayla was not at all moved by the news. "What help will you be passing out all over the place and without a single power at your disposal?"
"I need to go," Reed persisted.
"You don't." Ayla said firmly.
"They need my help!"
"That is unfortunate. Perhaps if you had not squandered your gifts and turned to a life of petty crime and incessant smoking, you might have been able to help them. Now, lay down."
Reed's eyes grew wide at Ayla's remark, made with casual candor that belied its cruelty. "You are a horrible person," she said. "The most horrible person I have ever known. You take the concept of horribilitude and you build an extension upon it, rooms and rooms filled with yet more awfulness. I will not stay here with you!"
Standing up, Reed made to push past Ayla once more, but her escape attempt was ill fated. Ayla caught Reed by the wrist, spun her about and landed a very firm slap right across the middle of her cheeks. Reed howled in outrage, and then again when the treatment was repeated.
"Unhand me! Unhand me this instant or I will remake the world and you as the excrement of a hound!"
A volley of hard slaps burned their way across the center of her bottom, making her dance on the spot, gasping with pain and rage. Then Ayla's arm wrapped around her again and she was drawn back against the witch's body. Reed felt the breadth and the softness of the woman holding her as she squirmed for escape. But there was no escape. There was only the calm of the witch and the firmness of her embrace.
"Rog strikes me as a capable man," Ayla murmured in Reed's ear.
Reed nodded, tears welling in her eyes. "He is."
"Then put a little faith in him and give yourself a chance to heal." The witch's hand settled on Reed's bottom, a gentle warning touch. "You are much further out of your depth than you imagine - and you are sicker than you know. Get into bed and I will see what I can do to make you well."
Reed did not want to lay down. She wanted to go to Rog, to the tunnels where the Ratlings lived, to the place that was yet again under attack, probably by the city guard who thought nothing of exterminating those who dwelt beneath Clitera City like their vermin namesakes.
"You don't understand..." she whispered the words, her lower lip trembling with rage and fear. "You don't understand."
Before Ayla could learn what she did not understand, the door slammed open once again. An old woman hobbled in. Her face was all screwed up, wrinkled skin forming a topological map of irritation.
"I'm not staying here anymore. She's driving me crazy!" The old lady made the declaration, stopped and squinted her eyes at Reed, then looked up and glared at Ayla. "Who is she and why is she crying?"
"Atrocious, this is the summoner," Ayla explained.
"Summoner?"
"This is Reed. I told you about her."
The old woman's expression cleared. "Oh, the druggie."
"Druggie?" Reed shook her head. "You have it all wrong. I commune with the plant spirits. The Blue Lady speaks to me, Bako whispers secrets in my ears. I see things that never were and those that will be. I kn
ow the meanings hidden inside words. I learn the secrets of the stars. I touch everything and I walk with nothing..."
Atrocious farted loud and long, interrupting Reed's ecstatic speech with the fulminous gases of her interior.
Reed burst out laughing. Ayla silently held her breath. Having gained the floor, Atrocious continued on her tirade.
"Rogette is terrible. I will not stay here a minute longer. Her and her vagina. Birthed half the city as far as I can tell. I'm surprised there's not a person clawing its way out of her womb right this second, the way she talks about it all."
"She's just proud of her descendants," Ayla said, speaking somewhat nasally as the gases wafted pungently through the small space. "It's very natural."
"I saved the whole world and I don't go on about it as much as she goes on about what came out of her vagina. If I talked about what came out of my vagina that much..."
Reed looked on, quite amazed at the old lady who seemed to be named Atrocious and who was clearly not as impressed by Rogette's fecundity as Granny Rogette was.
"... floppy lips!" Atrocious finished her speech and set her wattly jaw. "I want to go home."
"I don't think that's going to be possible yet," Ayla said. "There is still a lot of work to be done with Reed."
Atrocious grumped for a moment, then scowled at Reed. "Stop being stupid." Having delivered the wisdom of her years, she turned to Ayla. "There. Done. Can we go now?"
Ayla smiled slightly. "If only it were that simple."
Chapter Nine
"Soldiers?" Rog asked the question as he and Mace gained the tunnels, pausing at one of the hidden entrances in the Low Lanes to get their breath back.
"Worse," Mace said. "Cat. One cat. But it's the dangerous one."
Rog's handsome face screwed up into a scowl. "I thought we agreed she could have the High Lanes. We stick to the Low Lanes."
"I guess Callista changed her mind. She's taken Georgie hostage. Says she won't let her go until you make her."
Rog swore under his breath. "Where are they?"
"The octagon."
The octagon was the place where the eight main tunnels under Clitera City joined. It was large enough to fit fifty people and still feel spacious. Usually it was reserved for Ratling council meetings and special gatherings. It could be a cacophonous space when several voices rose at once, but when Rog and Mace arrived the entire place was silent, being commanded by one woman standing in the very center. A few of the Ratlings had stayed to try to support her captive, but they were not suffered to free her. If they got close enough to untie her, Callista would lash out with a hard cut of her whip. More than one Ratling was nursing a thick nasty welt on back, shoulder or butt.
Callista was a young woman dressed to impress. Her legs were encased in skin tight leather leggings that showed every round and curve of her long limbs. Her upper body was sort of covered, in the sense that you couldn't see her nipples. You could see practically everything else however, including the upper and lower curve of her breast. The middle of her bosom was covered with a shiny black band that could not have provided much in the way of support or protection from the elements. Her arms were much more modestly covered, long leather gloves running all the way up to her shoulders, where they were secured in place with spiked circlets. It was a shameless outfit for a shameless woman.
"Oh look, it's the Chief Rat," she sneered upon seeing Rog.
"You promised not to come back here."
Callista twirled the short whip between her fingers and gave a little shrug. "I got bored."
"You cannot invade our territory every time things get a little dull."
"It amuses me. I do what amuses me."
Despairing of Callista, Rog turned his attention to the hostage. Georgie, a small, shy woman, was bound against a vertical beam. She had been tied very effectively and artistically with criss-crossed rope wrapped around delicate areas of her body. She did not look overly distressed, but there was certainly a blush to her cheeks, no doubt from the triple strands which passed firmly between her legs.
"It's a cat's nature to play with a rat," Callista smiled when Rog looked at her askance. It was not an entirely pleasant smile. Callista was never entirely pleasant. She was sometimes not terrible, and that was all anyone could really hope for.
"Let her go and get out of here," he said. "I'm not in the mood for your little games today."
"Aw, poor Chief Rog," Callista pouted. "Is life hard for the little vermin man?"
"Untie her," Rog said. "Before I take that whip off you and use it on your hide."
Callista's ruby red lips spread wide. "You tease." She lifted her leather-clad hands and drew the tail of the whip between her thumb and forefinger. "You'd never lay a hand on a lady."
Rog's eyes narrowed, dark lashes meshing for a moment. Then an idea came to him. He relaxed and smiled.
"I don't have to. If you don't leave this second, you'll have someone much more formidable to deal with."
"Who?" Callista cocked her head to the side, raven locks falling over her shoulder. "Not that ridiculous Reed."
"Someone new," Rog said. "A witch."
"Pffft!" Callista let out a cackling laugh. "Oh by all means, set a crone on me. I don't believe in magic any more than I believe in your non-existent virility."
Chapter Ten
Whilst Rog argued with the half-dressed intruder, the summoner had finally gone to sleep, put out by a potent potion slipped into her water. After hours of argument, the little room at the top of the tavern was quiet.
"She's pretty," Atrocious said, peering down at the prone woman.
“Hm? Yes. I suppose she is.”
Atrocious hobbled back to the chair at the edge of the room and sat down. “You know I'll be gone soon.”
“No you won't.” Ayla snapped the words sharply. “You know I don't like it when you talk like that.”
Atrocious smiled softly, the wrinkled corners of her mouth barely moving with the motion. “You may not like it, but it's still true.”
Ayla sank to her knees by the bed, ostensibly to take the summoner's pulse, but Atrocious saw how the witch hid her eyes.
“I wish there was a way to stop the tyranny of time,” Ayla said softly. “But I cannot defy the natural order of things.”
“No, and you shouldn't try.” Atrocious said. “Whatever comes after this life, I'm ready for it.”
“Please don't talk about that.”
“There is something else, Ayla. I know there is. This old body. I'm tired of it.” Atrocious held up her arm and shook the folds of wattly old skin. “Look at it.”
Ayla turned and looked. “You're as beautiful now as the day I found you peeking in my window.”
A laugh escaped Atrocious. “Now you are lying. I'm decaying, Ayla. I'm alive, but I'm rotting.”
“Atrocious!” Ayla cast a stern look at the love of her life. “I asked you not to speak that way.”
“Rotting right here in this chair,” Atrocious cackled with perverse glee. "I'm turning to dust and flaking away. I can smell it. Can't you?"
“You're not too old to spank,” Ayla muttered.
