CHAPTER EIGHT: QUID PRO QUO
You shall not fall in battle, nor be maimed,
until your sword is deep inside your foe.
Both men will see the goddess on that day;
and, 'til then, shall you be the Battle-Blessed."
-Ubba Wyrlock, from 'The Epic of Rurik'
While the tower at the site of the burnt-out great hall was under construction, there was no proper home for a jarl. Igna Battle-Blessed had situated his stronghold in the carpentry house. That was the next-largest building in Rouentz, though it was actually four separate two- and three-story buildings connected with walkways and pressed right next to one another. It was there that the wrights, carpenters, and other woodworkers of Rouentz plied their trades... or had plied them. Where they were now, Thea couldn't say - but there was a lot of woodwork to be done in the recently-captured village, and none of it was happening in the carpentry house.
Igna ushered Thea into the building with his two surviving tattooed yeomen close behind. Much of the carpentry equipment had been moved, some of it taken out of the building and dumped out in the yard beyond and some simply pushed to the walls and draped with silks or furs to spruce up the place. The rooms were littered with Igna's spoils - family pewter, the occasional trinket or religious icon in silver, and lots of little baubles of semiprecious jewelry. There were lots and lots of weapons, too. Maybe, if Thea could just grab one, she could...
"You are thirsty?" the warlord asked. Before she could respond, he poured a generous portion of mead into some family's stolen pewterware and slid it across the table, indicating that Thea should drink.
"Thank you," Thea said. Her voice sounded very small.
Igna said something and then gestured for his yeoman to translate for him, a big, blond, tattooed man every bit as battle-hardened as the warlord. "Igna asks why you are here. He knows you are not from this village - from Rouentz - because your dress is too fine and you are far too delicate to be a farmer's girl."
Thea took another sip of mead, hoping it might help to calm her. "I'm here with my friends," she said. "My friend Matthias has a daughter, a girl named Maddie, and he had a vision that she was here. We've come to find her." That much was true, even if it wasn't the whole truth.
Igna nodded and ran his finger along the silver and lapis jewels woven into his beard. He started to speak, a wistful look in his eyes, and then the yeoman began to translate. Interestinly, as they conversed, Thea found herself understanding more and more of the foreigner's tongue. The yeoman's translation gave her something to compare Igna's words to. It was, frankly, a bit unsettling how quickly her understanding of their tongue sank into place, each new word engraved into her memory. But even more unsettling was what she learned as Igna bragged and his yeoman translated:
"Your friend's vision was true," the yeoman said. "Maddie... yes, that was her name. I brought your friend's daughter here as my thrall. A pretty girl, and smart - I thought she might serve as my bed-thrall after her first blood in three or four years' time. As yeoman under Rurik Koenig, I had ten families in my freehold, and few enough with pretty daughters, so I took whatever I could get, you understand?"
Igna chuckled. "I treated her well, fed her every night, and hit her seldom - a very fine girl. But now I am Jarl and have hundreds serving under me... no need to be hasty or desperate. No need to marry a slave-girl. When I took this village and Rurik named me Jarl, I sacrificed my three girl-thralls in his honor. I sacrificed them tobmighty Soenim, that he should bless me with a jarl's wife… and it would appear my lord has delivered."
Thea gasped and dropped the goblet of mead. "You killed them?!" She'd felt fear - fear for her friends, fear for Matthias's daughter and, most of all, fear of what Igna might do to her. But now that fear was slowly replace by an anger far colder and far more powerful than simple fear. "You killed children," she said.
Igna watched the mead ooze across the table and dribble to the floor, but did nothing about it. "You do not understand," he said. "It is a great honor - the girl is a thrall no more, sacrificed to Soenim in triumphant glory. Your friend's daughter was my favorite, my first sacrificed, and Soenim smiled upon her. Now she shall not grow old, nor die in bed as old women and cowards do. She might serve as a shield-maiden in Sturmborg, or else be born anew as a free woman. I, Igna Battle-Blessed, Jarl of Rountzhelm, have given her the greatest gift."
"All you did was kill an innocent girl," Thea said quietly. "We're all born free. It's men like you who drape us in chains."
"Nonsense..." he grunted and stood, tossing a rag over the spot where mead had pooled upon the floor. "I tire of talk. We retire to my bedchamber, where you will ply me with delights and your foreign babbling will bother me no more."
+++++
Igna and Thea left the yeoman behind, the tattooed warlord guiding her up the stairs and into the only third story area of the carpentry house where a tall person could walk upright without banging their head. The warlord had moved everything out and converted the room into a sizable bedchamber,with a window view of the whole village - a nice enough area, though it still smelled of cedar and pine. Given the flimsy garments and bits of jewelry piled by the bedstands, it was obvious the warlord had entertained at least a few guests up here already, likely terrified girls from the village. Thea wondered what had happened to them. Igna gestured that she should disrobe and get on the bed, but Thea hesitated in the doorway.
"What happened to the girls?" Thea asked, but the warlord didn't understand Aurilic, or at least not much.
"Your wearings," he said - that was about the extent of his Aurilic. "No wearings."
"I'm not..." she said in Igna's own tongue. "I can't..." What would she possibly tell him? What would he do when he found out she wasn't a real woman. That she couldn't pleasure him in the way that women typically please men, couldn't take his seed and bear him children? Would it anger the man... would he kill her for it?
"You speak our tongue?" he said. She hadn't spoken a word of it as of a few hours ago, but increasingly many pieces were fitting into her vocabulary as she heard more and more of it.
"I speak a little," she said.
He approached her, running a hand down her side, his breath sour with faint notes of mead. "Then understand this, woman. I will have you, whether you want me or not," Igna stated. "Pleasure me properly and I shall name you my wife - a great honor. One day, I shall reign koenig over a thousand thousand hearths..."
"A million," Thea said.
He ran his fingers through her hair, marveling at its silken darkness. "...over a million hearths, then. Yet I might scour them all and never find so lovely an orchid. You will be mine, woman of the North, and when you are withered and gray and I am many years dead on the battlefield, gone to join Soenim in his mead-hall, you will know that welcoming my seed was your greatest honor in this life. My sons, born of your womb, will be kings."
"I..." Thea steeled herself, looking the man in the eyes. He was a monster - of that, she was sure. But he also possessed a twisted sort of honor. "You can do what you want with me, and I'll submit. But you have to spare my friends."
Igna disrobed and poured himself a great goblet of something much stronger than mead. Standing naked in the lantern light, he took a few hearty gulps of it and wiped his mouth, the liquid dark and beading at his beard. "Your friends shall live to see another day... all but the brave one. Him, I've already sent to Rurik Koenig, the blessed heathen and his golden armor, and his sword... for, until the day I challenge him in battle, I shall honor Rurik. Your warrior friend shall live until Purgistok. What happens to him beyond that, I cannot promise. The others, though, are safe for today. Will you come to bed now?" He took another gulp and placed the cup heavily upon the night stand.
Thea nodded and bit her lip, hating how Igna fed off her fear. Hating how she could tell that he reveled in intimidating her and at the thought of breaking her like a horse. Igna lay on the bed and watched Thea undress: her boots, her top, her skirt, and her stockings. Her underskirt, as flimsy and audaciously short as it was, she kept on, not wanting him to notice what wasn't there. Astrilla hadn't blessed her with a woman's sex. Igna would discover that soon enough, but it felt like every moment he was pursuing her was a moment she could keep her friends safe. She crawled up on the bed, across the silken sheets, her back slightly arched. Igna greedily took in the sight, eyes glinting in the lantern light, his member fully erect despite the alcohol. His breathing huffed as she eased along his body, running her plump breasts against his tattooed skin.
Something flashed in Igna's eyes and he reached out, flipping Thea down onto the bed and pinning her arms against the mattress. She couldn't possibly resist such strength. Her heart was thudding so fast she could hear it, and she could see the veins in Igna's neck bulging, the man driven half-mad by the sight of her naked (well, almost naked) body. He leaned down and whispered, hot and stinking in Thea's ear:
"Your friends are safe for another day," he said, "because, as Rorik sacrifices your golden friend, I will sacrifice the others at Rouentz's first Purgistok in three days' time. All except the pretty one, whom I'll give to whichever yeoman pleases me most. And you shall be my prize.."
Igna Battle-Blessed hovered over Thea for a moment, pinning her into the satiny softness with a manic expression on his face. His tattoos, once quiescent, pulsed with a faint blue light. He spread her legs with his knees and then thrust...
+++++
Igna Battle-Blessed's warriors carried no swords, for it was prophesied by Ubba Wyrlock upon Igna's name-day that he would die with his sword deep in his foe, that he would suffer neither death nor scarring in battle until that day. And the mystic's words rang true, for Igna became one of the mightiest Runed Men - some said a favorite of the war god Soenim, himself. None could defeat him in combat, though many tried, and many considered it a mere matter of time before he challenged great Rurik and became koenig himself - king of all the lands across the north sea. Indeed, none would ever best Igna in battle (though the gold-clad foreigner had come very close), for the warlord's imperviousness was prophesied. The spirits of fate, fickle though they are, abide by prophecy... though they also delight in confounding mortal expectation...
Trying to penetrate Thea should have caused nothing but a moment of confusion, and perhaps some mutual soreness - there was nothing down there to penetrate, after all. But Igna was too drunk and too lust-addled to notice, so he thrust toward the womanhood he assumed to be there. And his assumption became correct in the moment his member thrust forward. Thea's womanhood suddenly opened like a bloom and accepted him. And something shifted deep inside her. The cold anger that had been building in Thea expanded, reached out through her newly-formed womb, and devoured the energy it found in Igna Battle-Blessed.
Igna gasped, his eyes rolling back, his tattoos, swirling and complex and still-glowing, sliding right off of his skin and into Thea, followed by every bit of color and essence that gave him life. He collapsed on top of her, limp, ashen-gray, and very dead. She pushed him off without much difficulty, his body suddenly as insubstantial as dry leaves.
The whole room was bathed in a brilliant light - white, blue, orange, and yellow in various measures, all the colors pulsing and shifting around the room. It took Thea a moment to realize the color was coming from her. She felt an enormous reservoir of power welling up within her, feeding right into her anger as she saw Igna's lifeless body, saw the clothes of other women from the village discarded by his bedside, and as she thought about poor Madeline Mendic, Matthias's daughter, killed in the name of a foreign god, dying in terror and pain at Igna's hands, just as her brother before her had. Rage roiled up within her. This invasion was unacceptable.
She gestured at the door to Igna's bedchamber and it blasted open. She didn't touch it, nor even consciously do anything. She simply willed it away and the obstacle was obliterated. Igna's two remaining yeomen heard the massive crack of exploding wood and started up the stairs, axes in hand. They readied for combat, activating their rune-tattoos.
Thea sighed at the sensation. The tattoos swirled with their bearer's life energy in delicious patterns. They were patterns dedicated to another god, true. Strange and foreign, they marks unknown to her, but she could make them her own - let that other god come after her to reclaim them if it dared. Filaments of light reached out from her body and drew their energy in, the tattoos sliding right off of the men, and all of the life energy attached to it rent from their bodies and drawn into hers. Her womb pulsed with it. Her brain pulsed with it. Her whole body pulsed with it. The men died, just as Igna had, reduced to lifeless husks in an instant.
She destroyed the front door and walked out into the Rouentz commons, mostly-naked and glowing like the noonday sun. Men shouted in alarm, the church bells rang, and invaders and townspeople alike scattered in utter panic. Two archers took shots at her; the first arrow, she annihilated before it could touch her, and the second she looped around as it flew, bending its path with a gesture and skewering the archer through both hands. A strange voice issued from her mouth:
"These lands are not your vassals to enslave.
Leave now or be consigned to dusty graves -
Astrilla's fury greets you, savage knaves."
Her voice resonated with the volume of a thousand Theas and in a thousand simultaneous tones - aloof, annoyed, exhilarated, disappointed, and deeply, deeply angry. Some of the invaders threw themselves prostrate before her - that was proper. Others fled in abject terror - that was also proper. Others had the audacity to attack her. Mere mortals attacking her! Hers would be a savage lesson. Little arcs of light pulsed out of her body, flitting out - once, twice, thrice, touching upon the chests of the combatants and instantly incinerating their hearts. Let savages revel in barbaric torture, she wanted only to set wrongs right... which meant killing the invaders like the insects they were… and which meant rescuing her friends, too.
They were being kept at the ruins of the great hall in the reinforced area that would one day serve as the cellar of the keep. Thea strode toward it, killing two more marauders and paying the rest no mind as they fled into the night. Whoever fled her town, she was content to spare. The iron bars of the secure area bent before her, yielding to allow her to pass, their tips glowing orange-red from the heat. Two more invaders died with little pulses of light and the lock of the great iron cage melted away at her touch.
"Th... thea?" Larian said.
"I am Thea and much more,
my friends. Behold the open door:
step forward and be slaves no more."
"What happened to her?" Matthias whispered, though Thea had no trouble hearing him at all.
"Matu, who seest the dead," she said. "Lead me to where your daughter lies."
Matthias nodded uncertainly. His hair had grown woolly, dark at the roots and graying at the tips with little bits of glowing ember peeking through. He plodded ahead of her, past the commons and past the granary, out to a portion of the palisade where perhaps twenty sacrificed dead had been hung, bloody runes carved into their flesh before they'd died. There were men and women, young and old, and half still wore the chains of thralls. Nobody moved to stop Thea's passage, all of the invaders having died, fled, or found spots to hide. A few brave townspeople gathered around to witness the supernatural spectacle.
Thea could see the sacrificed people - not just the hanging bodies, some of them starting to stink and rot, but also the souls still attached to those bodies. Perhaps a dozen remained, milling about that charnel yard, and Thea could feel the weak fibers connecting them with the living world, weak and attenuating by the second. The rest, presumably, had become unmoored from the world and gone to wherever the dead reside.
"Life for life's a bargain fair;
set quick the blood and breathe new air."
A great reservoir of power still pulsed within Thea, though it had been slightly diminished by her incredible display of power these past few minutes. She could, she realized, return life to these poor shades... but only two of them. Two out of a dozen. She wanted to cry - she knew perhaps half of the dead, and she knew most of them to be good people. One of them was Fra Hollen, his empty eyes staring into nothing, even in death the split circle symbol of his god dangling from a chain around his neck. And one, she knew, was Maddie... she knew because she looked like Matthias, because she still had her thrall's collar around her neck, and especially because Matthias had collapsed to his knees, looking upon her shade and weeping hot tears.
Thea wept, too, because she wished she could bring everybody back from the dead. None of these people had deserved to die in fear and agony. None of them had deserved to die at all. But she had to choose two - that was all the power available to her. She pushed that great reserve of energy out, pushed it into the dark night about them, glowing with the sparks of a million million stars, and infused that energy into Madeline Mendic and into the youngest slave girl, the girl who was Maddie's friend - even in death, Thea could feel the bond between them. It made sense that it should be them - those two were the youngest of the lot and had the most life left to live. Fra Hollen, fine man that he was, was also a fine drinker and gourmand and would have been lucky to get another decade. All of these people deserved a second chance, but Thea had made her choice. The power flowed from her, out into the night air and into those two girls, a torrent that became a trickle and only stopped when the source of the energy - Thea - was completely exhausted.
"I'm... finished," Thea said, and she collapsed to the ground, her power completely spent.
So is this just the power to rob people of their god's blessings? So far the apparent limit is having to get the enemy Scion to d*ck her, stealing it like a Succubus, and then robbing any Anointed from range if their Scion superior has already been killed. Potentially also that she can't hold on to the stolen power indefinitely and must spend it on some sort of spell or lose it over a short duration. Means that she's only useful in a conflict if she can seduce a Scion into f*cking her, or if she learns some mortal magic of her own. Tell me she's still just as vulnerable to mortal magic and blade.
Thea can rob people of their god's blessing with their consent - she does so later in the novel. However, there are certain powers that she only has in Astrilla mode, where the goddess is fully occupying her body rather than lending a fraction of her powers. This includes doing so forcibly*, killing people with directed blasts, and resurrecting the recently-deceased. Most of the time, she's only got a regular array of scion powers and, though arguably more powerful than most other scions (at least as her powers are unlocked), she isn't OP and can be killed like a regular person (albeit one with some pretty serious advantages over a regular person).
*This takes a lot of her divine energy, though, so she couldn't do it to, like, dozens of Runed Men.