Voidhawk - Redemption

by Jason Halstead

  Rosh chuckled. “Helping me kill a couple of overgrown orcs don’t mean I need you.”

  The demoness smiled. “You would have slain them, but I have watched and learned. I answer only because you asked. I am yours to command.”

  Rosh started to turn away but stopped. He looked back at her and shook his head. “Uh uh. No way. Let’s do this.”

  “Master?”

  “Fight me, damn you!” Rosh snarled, drawing his blade. “And I told you to stop calling me that.”

  “Fight you? To what point? If I win I would be destroyed for breaking my bond to you.”

  “When death can’t be cheated it ain’t about trying to stay alive, it’s about how you died.” Rosh said, swinging his sword menacingly. “Now summon that witch blade of yours and that whip, we got some things to set straight.”

  Volera dipped her eyes to the ground briefly. “I obey, though it will mean both our dooms.”

  A puff of smoke announced the arrival of Volera’s re-forged sword. Just in time, for Rosh’s sword crashed into it and drove it down and aside. Volera stepped back, spinning with the momentum, and emitted another burst of smoke. When Rosh could see her clearly again she stood in her full demonic regalia, sword in one hand and whip in the other. Her wings were tucked behind her and small horns sprouted from her forehead. Her skin, bronzed so deeply it was nearly red, was on full display since she wore no clothing or armor.

  “You fighting without no armor?” Rosh asked, dropping his sword a few inches in surprise.

  “Against your blade and strength, it serves no purpose. Displaying myself is better, it will distract you.” Volera cracked her whip and moved towards Rosh with a speed and grace that had him on the defensive. His sword flashed in the afternoon light, then flashed anew as it met Volera’s. She spun it away from the impact and struck again at a different angle. Rosh’s blade defeated hers again.

  The implements of war struck again and again. Volera’s expression changed as well, turning into a sneer and then a snarl. She lashed out with her whip, forcing Rosh to retreat to avoid the stinging barbs. He offered up his arm letting the cruel edged strands of the whip wrap around it. He let go of his blade with one hand and wrapped it around the whip, yanking hard on it to tumble the demon off balance even as he parried a strike with only one hand on his own blade.

  “Not so savage after all?” He teased her.

  Volera snarled, then bowed her head.

  “You got more than that,” Rosh said. “What about them demon powers you got? Use it all. No more questions, no more doubts, and no more you giving me grief!”

  “I…yes Master, your wish is my will.”

  The ground burst beneath Rosh’s feet. Dark and oily looking tendrils wrapped around his legs. Volera yanked on the whip at the same time, pulling Rosh off balance and forcing him to drop his arm to the ground. Another tentacle snared his wrist, pulling it firmly to the ground even as the other tightened their hold on his legs. Volera drew back her blade and struck, the movement so quick it seemed a black blur in the sunlight.

  Rosh yanked on the whip, pulling her so forcefully that she stumbled forward and lost the whip. Her sword struck the ground. Rosh yanked with his other arm, tearing the tentacle that held him and reducing it to smoke that sank into the ground. He stood up, his dropped blade all but forgotten. Volera was there, her sword slashing in at him. He struck it, accepting a minor cut on his upper arm for the chance to hit the flat of the blade with his fist from below. It flew out of Volera’s hand, sailing through the air to strike a tree and stay quivering in the bark. Smoke burst forth from where the demonic blade had pierce the tree. A moment later the smoke thickened as the blade dissolved into the sulfurous nothingness it had came from.

  Rosh looked down and, with a wrenching lunge, tore one foot free of a demonic tentacle. His next step freed the other leg. Volera backed away and glanced about, her ebon eyes casting for a weapon or tool to use. She scowled and hold out both hands, confusing the warrior with the strange pose. Smoke swirled between them, connecting her hands then expanding beyond them. It faded a moment later to reveal a knurled and studded staff with cruel blades on either end. She spun it in her hands before advancing.

  Rosh threw his hand back without thinking, reaching back for his own sword. It still lay within the small field of oily tentacles. It slid across the ground and then flew through the air, sliding into his palm. He swung it around, connecting with the midpoint of the bladed staff Volera bore and cutting it in half. It burst apart in non-light, dissolving into smoke even as the strange explosion of dark energy left them stunned for a moment. Rosh recovered first and drove his foot into Volera’s chest to send her flying nearly a dozen paces before her wings unfurled to soften her fall.

  Rosh barked out a laugh. “That all you got?”

  A pyre of flame crashed down on him, the force of it dropping him to his knees and making him drop his blade all over again. It burned at him and ate through his clothing and into his skin. He roared in agony, reminded of the pain he had felt only once before in his life. Fighting as though the weight of a thousand suns was upon his back, he forced himself to his feet and stumbled forward, emerging from the pillar with flames clinging to his skin. His hair, on fire, fell from his scalp and pieces of flesh hung bubbling from his body. Volera stood there, watching him as each step seemed one destined to end in collapse.

  He endured, the flames slowly fading. He felt only agony, and that agony turned to rage at any who would inflict such pain. Only one thought drove him, to bring a similar level of misery unto Volera, for she had brought it to him. He grabbed her, the skin on his hands loose and shifting even his fingers clamped about her. She gasped, her soulless eyes staring into the cloudy and burned orbs he could barely see out of. She was little more than a shape to him, but he had her and nothing would stop him from having his vengeance.

  His clothing had been consumed or fallen off, all save his boots. He slammed her into a tree, knowing she could take the blow but secretly hoping it would hurt. With her thus pinned he forced himself on her, driving between her legs even before she could fully grasp his intent. In the back of his mind a small bead of doubt troubled him as to why it was so easy for him to invade her in such an awkward position, instead of fumbling about like a boy laying with his first woman.

  Volera gasped, then her lips curled into a smile that teased Rosh to new levels of anger. She wrapped her legs around him, opening herself further to him, and accepted every carnal abuse he drove into her. Any doubt as to her victimization was erased as Rosh’s eyes healed and the details of her face came into perfect focus. She was enjoying it and, as his rage slipped to give him a moment of lucid thought, he realized that the pleasure she was giving him was beyond anything he had ever experienced. Rosh groaned and felt his will melting. All the time spent so near her, being teased by her mere presence, overpowered him and forced him to drive against her harder and harder.

  Volera smiled wickedly and licked her lips. “I can taste your soul, Master. You will be my finest—“

  “No!” Rosh barked at her. He drove against her harder yet, forcing her up a few inches on the tree, and held himself still while he sought to lay his claim on her in the oldest of ways. She shivered and threw her head back, letting out an unearthly moan that made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Even more troubling was the incredible sensations that came to him below, encouraging him to give everything he had and more.

  Volera looked down at him and smiled again. “You’re mine now.”

  Rosh shook his head to clear the lethargic thoughts from it. He felt more than just his release, he felt as though something was being siphoned from him. His very essence was dimming. Volera seemed to grow heavier in his arms as his legs trembled. He shook his head again, this time in refusal. Summoning up a surge of strength from a hidden well within, he lifted her up and forced her off of him. She wailed and struggled, but Rosh ignored her flailing. He threw her to the ground and fell on top
of her, feeling fully refreshed by the time he had fastened his hands about her legs and drove her knees into her chest to immobilize her.

  “Maybe you liked that but I ain’t never met no woman who got pleasure from this!” His inner fire was so incensed that spittle sprayed from his lips. He positioned himself with one hand and drove in again. His eyes bulged at the new an unfamiliar sensation, then gasped anew when he saw Volera close her eyes and smile as she accepted the new intrusion.

  “This body is built for giving pleasure or pain, before you are through with me you may not know the difference.” The warrior only growled again and redoubled his efforts to punish her.

  Time passed unnoticed around them as they strove for victory against one another. Pleasure did indeed turn to pain, and then once again to pleasure. The sun slipped beyond the trees and then the horizon, casting them into a darkness that was barely noticed. The flames in the small clearing had long since flickered out. Around Rosh and Volera the vegetation faired far worse, either being crushed by their passionate and violent combat or burnt to ashes by the heat that Volera put out.

  With the sky beginning to lighten in the east, Rosh finally grabbed a handful of Volera’s hair and yanked her head away from his groin. Her eyelids fluttered open, her hands still straining for him. He stared down at her, his rage all but gone and in its place a deep weariness that reached to his soul. He ached in other places as well, even though the rejuvenating curse that was his rushed to restore his vitality. The draining weariness had lessened with each release throughout their encounter, now he felt nothing aside from the normal desire to collapse that accompanied such a powerful peak.

  Spittle and other fluids dripped from Volera’s lips to run down her chin and fall to the ground. She shuddered before him, then began to dip her head. Rosh yanked on her hair, pulling it back up. Her eyelids widened and took in the sight only inches from her face. She gasped anew, then whispered. “I yield, Master, I can take no more.”

  Rosh stared at her his own eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You have done what no mortal has ever been able to. You have bested a Fury both in the arts of war and of pleasure. I have failed, but I pledge myself to you for all eternity if you will have me.”

  “Thought I was already stuck with you,” Rosh grunted. His body was recovering from the ordeal but his mind remained leaden.

  She nodded, her movement abbreviated by the hand in her hair. Rosh noticed and released her, then let his own hand fall to his side. “You have conquered me, My Lord. I was bound to you as a Fury but with this failure I am no longer what I once was.”

  “What in the void are you on about?”

  “Our battle has been watched. I am present not only here, with you, but also in my own realm whence I came. My masters and kin knew of what took place, and as soon as I realized defeat so too, did they. I have been cast out from the order of Furies. My rights and powers as such are gone, now I have only what I have learned within me and that which you grant me.”

  “What I grant you? I got no right to grant nothing.”

  She shook her head. “You’re no mere mortal, Master.” Rosh scowled, making her flinch, but when he did nothing else she continued. “You have accepted me, I am yours to do with as you wish. Before you could bid me as you desired, but I had others upon whom my existence depended. Beyond your own, that is. Now you alone control my fate.”

  “Can’t I just let you go?” Rosh asked.

  A shiver passed through her at his question. “You can, but I will fade. I will do what I can to exist, but that means preying upon any I come across as my life fades and I try to restore it with that of others. With you I will only cease to exist should you will it so. I have no soul of my own to bind me to this realm, and now I am wholly upon this plane of existence and no other.”

  “And these powers you seem so uppity about?”

  “Master, after our battle you have defeated and exhausted me, yet you have filled me with more life energy than any of my kind has ever known. It will fade, over time or with use. I can restore it, leeching power from others or through direct action of my own. Direct action such as what we have done.”

  Rosh shivered. Another night spent like that he suspected would kill him. He was bone weary but something she said clicked, he did feel stronger than ever before. “You got any more of them bonfires?”

  “Bonfires? Oh, the pyre of flames? No, that came from my prior connections with otherworldly sources.”

  “What can you do then?”

  “I know some minor spells, but I must learn it anew now, not unlike a sorcerer or a wizard of this world. My understanding is great, as is my reserves of power, but until I learn the formulae and—“

  Rosh waved her off. “You’re talking without saying nothing. So you got all this power but can’t do much with it. Some power that is. Fine. Reckon it’s time you learned how everybody else does things then, hard work.”

  “Master, I am not the only one who is changed by our time together.”

  “What?” Rosh barked out at her.

  Volera turned from him, walking to the remains of the broken and burned cart. Rosh watched her, able to almost completely ignore the sway and swell of her naked hips. She bent down to sift through the ruins, forcing Rosh to fight harder to ignore the image of perfection she so innocently yet lewdly displayed. She arose a moment later with the broken blade of a knife. She wiped it clean and returned to stand before Rosh, holding the blade up to him. Rosh stared at it, then let his eyes focus on the image reflected in it. It was far from mirror-like, but what Rosh saw made his mouth dry.

  “Forgive me Master, but what are you? What power do you channel? I ask only so that I might serve you better,” Volera added hastily.

  Rosh tilted the blade to stare at himself, then finally lowered it and looked down. His eyes returned the same image. It was barely beginning to grow light out, but he could tell his skin was tanned darker. Of greater impact was his size. Rosh had grown. Not in height — he already towered over all but the tallest of men — but in thickness. Now that he dwelt on it he realized he felt larger as well. His arms and legs rivaled the trunks of trees. His back felt sturdy enough to spare a team of horses and pull a loaded wagon himself.

  “I don’t serve no one but me,” Rosh snapped. He stretched his arms and felt the thicker muscles stretch. He had not thought it possible for a man to be stronger than he was, but now he knew he was proven wrong. “Damn elves done this to me though, not the shifty ones either, but some old elves we rescued.”

  “We, Master? I did not help with this.”

  “Not us we, some of us that was on the Voidhawk. Ship I sailed on for a piece.”

  “You speak of them as though you are still with them.”

  Rosh chewed on his lip for a moment before he shrugged his shoulders. “Ain’t never worked with no one since them I guess. Don’t mean nothing by it. Anyways, I helped them out and this was what they done when I got hurt bad helping them. Better than dying, I guess. Least that was what Dexter, my Captain, reckoned when he had ‘em fix me up.”

  Rosh took a few steps and picked up his sword. It gleamed as well in the pre-dawn light. Showing him his reflection again briefly until he lowered it. He glanced around at the clearing. “You got no finger wiggling to magic up some clothes?”

  Volera frowned and cocked her head. “Just simple glamours. Illusions that would do you no good for you know them to be false.”

  Rosh scowled. Volera hastened again to explain, “Others would see them, provided they have no reason to doubt or do not possess a keen understanding of you.”

  “You saying we’d still be naked but nobody would know it but us?”

  “Yes Sire, I am.”

  Rosh nodded. “All right, do it. And stop with the Master and Sire and My Lord talk.”

  Volera’s lips opened and closed. She nodded stiffly then whispered some words in a language Rosh could not make out. He felt no different and Volera still displayed herself in a way that
was impossible for a woman of her age and proportions to do. He shook his head to clear the thoughts of impropriety then stopped when he realized something about her.

  “Wait a minute, you saying this is how you look now, normal that is.”

  “I don’t understand? Do my looks displease you? When you accepted me as yours I took on the form you have shown the most appreciation for. I am bound to it now, until I can learn magic to change it.”

  Rosh waved her off. “That ain’t what I mean. I just noticed you ain’t got no horns or wings or tail.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought passing as a human woman would be better.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Kinda liked the tail though,” Rosh admitted.

  Volera smiled softly, which made Rosh blush for a moment at the many uses she had shown her very flexible tail could perform during their battle. “I will seek to learn magic to reshape myself at your whim.”

  Rosh grunted. “Let’s get going. Sun’s up and we need to put some miles beneath us. Spent too much time in one place.”

  Chapter 6

  The remainder of the trip to the Kingdom of Verdune was a simple affair, though not one filled with boredom. Volera was reminded several times that, trapped in her new form, she required many of the same things that mortals required. Food, drink, and even sleep. Similarly, she spent many hours suffering until she discovered the secrets of relieving herself. That altered Rosh’s dark mood at her erratic behavior into a deep belly laugh that he still chuckled at nearly three weeks later.

  Conmora was a massive city strung across multiple levels. Hawkers plying their wares mixed with the houses and businesses of commoners at the base of solitary mountain. Hills and harsh terrain surrounded it, assuring an easy defense from invaders or, it turned out, patrols belonging to the Kingdom of Verdune. Raiders and bandits plied the hills, thriving like cockroaches.