Chapter 13: The Next Step
Perpendicular
Flames licked at the night sky. Maybe it was the day and the smoke blanketed the light on this dark marrow? I didn't really care. Everything is smoke and ash. Death and destruction everywhere I could see.
Helsingborg lay in smoldering ruin. I could identify a few of the bodies as my family, but the others were burnt beyond recognition. There was a complete darkness that enveloped the great hall as puffing smoke rolled its way across the ground and up to the heavens.
I walked along the broken street and turned to see how the whole town fares. In all honesty, the earth itself appeared scourged without a chance of reprisal. Was this another vision of what is to come? Fate being shown to me once again?
"It could be. Today is going to decide that," Tiresias, blending so very well with the catastrophic background, speaks to me in a gent's tone. "You have problems, we all do, but you must learn to forget." It sweeps a hand across the field of carnage, "Let it go or fate will decide to take it all from you."
I stare at the dark Shade with a mix of confusion and rage. There are so many things that have happened because of this creature and now I wanted to find out if it was immune to pain here as it is in the woke world. With a silent cry, I charge at Tiresias.
"Wha-," it had a physical body! My shoulder connects with it and the Shade is flung to the ground. I am breathing heavily in excitement, my eyes flashing dangerously down at this horrible thing, and my mind races on how best to extract my revenge.
Looking about, I quickly wrench free a blackened stake of wood and raise it above my head. Tiresias turns to look up at me in time to roll away from my downward smash. In response, I sweep the stake across the ground to be met joyously with the Shade's arm and rib-cage.
"STOP! I CAN'T PROTECT YOU IF-," my foot finds it again and again striking it into the waist and stomach as both my hands hold and pummel the creature's chest. I can see fear ripple through its features. Funny, I can't see the Shade's eyes. It's almost like there is only empty pits for where they should be.
Burning. I feel myself grow hot and burn from the feet up. Looking down, I see my toes and soles scorched by the blazing earth. Fumbling, I fall back and find a cooler ground to stand on.
Tiresias rolls onto its side and stares up at me. The thing doesn't look very pleased with me right now, but it can go fuck itself. I feel a bit better after treating the demon with some payback.
"Don't do that again," it whispers. "Had you done that at any other time, when there were enemies around, you would regret it... If you lived." Tiresias picks itself back up and walks over to where I stand before kneeling at my feet. "You'll walk funny for awhile."
I lift my foot up to see the blackened blisters forming on the bottom. This is just another dream, being taken advantage of, but still a simple vision. Right?
"Bingo," it strikes its finger out at me, "but I have to insert it into your mind. That means," the Shade pauses a moment to consider its next few words. "I guess it is kind of like tricking your mind. You won't have this damage when you wake up, but the pain will still be there."
I am suddenly reminded of when I had been dismembered. The pain had been real, I could feel it, the loss of my hands and feet, but that didn't appear to linger after waking.
"Big difference when I'm not being kicked around like a rag-doll," it notes. "You fucked up again, but... Maybe this will help today." I watch the Shade stroke its chin between the forefinger and thumb in contemplation. "In fact, I know this will do the trick."
I really am getting sick and tired of this Trickster. If it wants me to do something, it should say it directly and not have all of these annoying images and riddles for me to figure out. A part of the issues I am having is not understanding what is going on.
It shakes its head. "No. You have to understand and that is through experience and learning," it points out at me. "You might not really be aware how little you listen to anyone."
The smoke becomes thicker the longer we speak. Soon, the earth I stand on begins to heat up as well. Watching the Shade, I take note that it hops on one foot, then snaps its fingers, and I feel the new heat give way to nothing.
"Sorry, forgot, my fault," it raises both its hands in the air in surrender. "Okay, I think you unintentionally saved your family. Congrats for being a complete Bastard," it winks at me and blinds my vision with an ultra bright smile...
I open my eyes and roll over on the bed flinching. My hands shoot down to my raised feet. Each fingertip tenderly inspects the bottom, feeling nothing but the smooth sole, but the searing pain being incredibly fresh.
There are a few minutes or more that passes before I gingerly get out of bed. "Oh fuck..." I nearly fall to my knees as I take my first few steps across the wood flooring. My way to the door is reached at an almost equal span of time it took to get out of bed.
My way out into the hall is taken slower. I had expected the uproar of feasting and challenges, but instead am greeted with almost silence. Most of the men in the great hall appear to be slumped and snoring in their cups or plates.
Slowly, I make my way to the wash-room. I had no desire to take a bath, but I really could use some cold water to dunk my feet in. If anything, it might soothe some of the pain away.
Opening the door, I see the tub still being flung onto its side. I had not noticed before, but it appeared that there might be a warped edge on the side it crashed on. Sometimes I wonder where my aunt harnesses such strength from.
I kneel down to the tub and attempt to lift it. As I do, there comes the sound of footsteps, and I duck down behind the open cavity of the tub. No way do I want to explain what I am doing to one of my sisters or aunt.
The steps echo in the room until I see the outline of a broad set of shoulders and a pair of copper eyes staring down at my hiding spot. "I thought I saw a moose."
My icy-blue eyes flash wide and constrict with anger, "Fuck you!" That only seemed to make him smile. "You can go to Hell!" He doesn't seem phased by that at all.
"In time, yes. We all will," he looks over his shoulder, "but I doubt it will be filled with fire and brimstone. Likely salty water and Swedish sands." That gives me pause. What the Hell is he talking about?
"Swedish sands?" The Earl looks back down at me and squats on the bottom side of the tub. His arms cross and rest on the good up-turned side of the tub while he looks at me in wonder.
"If you don't know, then I can't tell you," he raises a hand up to his raptor-like hairstyle and gives it a double-digit tap upon the temple. "Only those who are involved need to know." This fucking prick!
I push up from the open side of the tub and reach out to grab him for answers. He hops back, doing a little hopaty to right his balance before straightening up to stand. A chuckle breaks out of him.
Pushing away from the tub, I scramble to go around it, but suck in my breath through clenched teeth and stumble to the ground. My feet radiated a shot of pain that paralyzed me before I could take no more than a few stomping steps to Vloros.
He comes down to my side and I try to push him away from me. Again, he overpowers my attempts and holds my hands down. His eyes dart down around my legs, ankles, and feet in concern and confusion. One more time, I struggle to get him away from me, and yet again he grips my hands tighter with his body pressing close to mine this time.
I am breathing quickly, glaring at him, his face pulling away from inspecting my lower half to turn face-to-face with me. My icy-blues lock with his copper set. We don't say anything, just looking into each others eyes in a too close for comfort proximity.
Then he leans in and presses his lips to mine. My eyes light up wide as dishes and my struggle is renewed. I push against him to knock his masculine body away, but it seems to only enforce his own powerful frame to envelop me. I am flattened to the floor on my back.
My hands are pulled up above my head and he lays a single grip around both of my wrists to easily hold them in place. The tingling in my lips become more as he presses harder. I can feel his free hand roaming over my sides before they slide up to the slight curve of my breast hidden in this red dress.
His thumb finds the concealed tip of my mound of flesh and it brings out more of a fight within me when my nipple hardens under the electric shock of his touch. I kick, attempting to knee or strike with my burning feet someplace convenient for me. Again, he presses his thick-muscled thighs between mine to keep my legs separated.
Then the unexpected happens. He lifts his lips from mine and looks down at me. I take in what gulps of air I can before the desire to debase him comes. My mouth opens to yell insults at this Liv bastard once more, but he shuts me up with a squeak.
I feel his tongue thrashing and entwining mine. Dug deep in, he scores a pin against my tongue and I taste him. It is not unpleasant. Overpowering, but... Mint?
Without realizing it at first, I should have been more protective of myself as I feel the thickening length of his manhood press through each other's outfits. My legs come up around his to at least press and kick my heels into his calves. All that seems to do is force my legs further apart as he spreads his own wider.
By now, I am hot and confused, angry and afraid, unable to tolerate a moment longer of this treatment, but curious of the glowing heat that shocks through my being and wells within my core. I lean my head back and he follows with a deeper kiss, preventing me from breathing steadily, and giving him more room over my taller frame for him to maneuver.
I feel his free hand dip down on the floor. It digs under my back and the lace that drawn my dress snug-tight to my figure is being pulled loose. When he succeeds, he immediately begins to pull down the dress from my shoulders.
His lips part from my bruised and tingling ones. I am panting heavily and stare up at him in worry of what he may do next. It doesn't take a moment for him to show me. He lowers himself down, along with pulling the dress further from my shoulders to expose my bust, and his lips encompasses the nipple he had been teasing for awhile.
If I could, I would have bitten my own tongue. This man had caused the most horrid noise to come out of my mouth. A moan escaped me and I could only react quick enough to clench my teeth shut to muffle it.
That tongue that had danced roughly with my own had now picked up a new partner to do circles around. He played on the smooth surface of my breast with more vigor than he had in the depths of my mouth. It had become nearly numb before he switched with my neglected partner. It stood up readily erect as if waiting for the turn.
I eventually lifted my head to look down at him. As I did, I think he felt the movement, and responded by coming back up. His kiss once again took my breath away and laid my head back on the wood floor.
That free hand hand gone low and I could feel the shuffling of my dress being pulled up to my waist. A touch that I had never felt before, even after I had personally cleaned there with hand or rag, had shot a lightning bolt straight up through my body. A sensual muffle creeps out of me around his lips.
He laid his hand across and spread the center of me open to probe within wet depths. My legs tensed around him and I couldn't prevent my back arching high to press my bared bosom into his solid chest. I felt light headed and couldn't begin comprehending what it is Vloros has awoken in me.
One stroke after another, he runs his finger up and further within me until I feel the pouring-wet excitement run down my bottom and beneath me. He pulls his hand away, making me feel a bit disregarded for a strange time. I feel his lips pull from mine before I see his face.
He lifts his head and shoulders up and begins to shuffle himself out of his own pants. It didn't occur to me that he no longer held my hands down. I am far to stunned to act or understand what is happening anymore.
I feel him lower back down onto me. Our lips meet once again and I feel myself greeting his tongue with my own entering his mouth. A hand lays upon the side of my face while another strokes along the side of my bosom with a flicking thumb keeping my hardened flesh up and alert against him.
There is something hot running up between my legs. A length that is rigid and pulsing with heat. It strokes up against me and slides itself back down repeatedly in an exercise of rhythm. A coat of my own excitement makes it easy for it to move in its fluid motions.
After a time, my eyes widen, body goes still, arms and hands reach around his shoulder to dig the tips of my nails into his back, and a scream is muffled in each other's deep mingling kiss. I feel torn, a blade so thick and round that it spears up through me and holds my impalement in place.
Both of his hands come up to my cheeks and he kisses me tenderly for a second before I hear his comforting voice soothing me with shushes and comments that I cannot begin translating from his country's tongue. Those lips bless my chin and what of my cheek his hands do not hold. He hunches his back to peck his lips down the line of my jaw and make way for the vulnerable exposure of my throat.
I lay still, panting quickly, but I catch my breath in the next movement he makes. His hips pull back enough to leave room for him to drive further within me. Then again. Again. More he pries his length to expand the sheathing depths for his manhood.
My eyes close and I hold him all the tighter to feel with my eyes. Both of my hands stroke over the stretch of his rippling back. I fight the urge to lower my hands down to feel the exposure of his strong buttocks, but am won over by the sheer availability presented to me by my reach.
As I touch him from behind, he pushes harder into me, faster, and drives me to holding onto him harshly as I am taken. I lose all the air in my lungs from a jolt upon powerful jolt charging up to build into something great. The very boundary is met and the static lights me up all over my body. I tense and press up against his mighty frame as I am electrocuted into bliss.
At the same time, he shoves powerfully up into me and I feel the glowing heat of something spread within me. The pulse of his length throbbing from within me provides a pleasure that has me craving to never let him go. My hands grip onto him and hold his hips against me for long as I can.
He raises his face back up to mine and stares his copper eyes into my half-opening icy-blues. A kiss planted on me and I tenderly return it for a time. The plateau that I had been laying on is slowly, gradually, and eventually lowering back down to the Earth.
My eyes widen and I glare up at him. With my hands free now, I cuff him on the side of his ear once, then the other hand reaches beneath his jaw to tear his face away from mine. It seems to caught him off guard for the moment.
Only a moment. His hands grab the both of mine and he holds them down at my sides. A grin spreads up the side of his lips and he gives me another playful kiss upon the lips. Then another kiss down on my lower lip. Another on my chin. A few more pecked down the curve until he is laying them under my jaw. He keeps going lower.
Eventually, he makes his way back to my breasts where he entwines the first nipple between his lips and a pinch centered in his teeth. A lap at my bruised nipple and he repeats the process on biting the other. He gives me a look, smiling, and goes back down to treating my breasts with soothing remedies to coax the bites he made.
I feel him rising back up my body, his hands pushing mine back to a regular place above my head, and locking my wrists into one gripped hand. He lays his free hand down along my cheek, lowers his lips, and gives over another series of kisses before I feel the hardened tool of his masculinity revive.
"No," I barely whisper, "Please no." I try to shake my head, but his hand holds my cheek steadily within his palm so he may silence me once more within the depths of our intimate mouths. His kiss drives up and my own leaves an aftertaste of his mint lingering between us.
Again, I feel his manhood stretch me within. His hips presses between my legs and forms a rhythm of pushing himself deeper in me slowly. There is the physical reminder of a charged spark in me that sends a sparkling glow radiating out from my core.
I do not know how much time had passed or how often he caused me to feel the pleasures of a woman, but the memory will forever me branded in my mind. All I could recall after he released his seed in me the last time was me curling up on the floor. I had passed out into darkness, but did not dream.
The next thing that I sensed was the warmth of his broad chest and body encircling mine to him. We both still laid upon the wash-room floor and I doubt that we either would be welcoming the cramps that come from such bedding today. I look, with blurry eyes, across the floor at the tub.
It was turned upright. Standing perfectly as if it had been situated correctly before my aunt had knocked it over. Quickly, I look around in search. The movement causes Vloros to stir from his rest around me and I can feel the squeeze of his thick-muscled arms trapping me to him.
"Let me go," I ask soft and eagerly. My hands come up to his, just to lay the warmth of my palms, and ease him to give me freedom. "Please, Vloros, let me go."
"Not again," I hear him say. "I did once and that cost me when it should have profit," his hands come up to hold around my shoulders and tenderly stroke the naked goose-flesh that have risen in the chilled morning.
"Vloros, I will repay you," I began to detect my breathes quickening.
"Oh?" He sounded interested. "How? Do you intend to at least return my family's sword?"
That made my heart sink. Unknown to anyone, I had traded that in for the journey from Riga to Hammerhus. It is not exactly something I believe could be tracked down after this amount of time passing. Gently, I shake my head in rejection.
"No? Then what do you have to offer that equals all that I gave, tolerated, and had stolen from me?" His voice was becoming an odd mix of irritation and amusement.
"Take her," we both whip our heads around to see my aunt sitting down at the bottom of the doorway. Her back is pressed to it, apparently to keep people from coming in uninvited, and getting a sight of the two of us.
I feel Vloros's hand playfully smooth out the dirty blonde roots of my head before he sits up and stands to dress. "I had intended from the start," he gazes down at me for a second before turning to Dorte. "I still demand compensation."
"Aland," my aunt throws out a name of an island between the Finns and Sweds. "If the campaign is a success, as a marriage gift, you will receive Aland."
"Why would I take a simple island so far removed from my homeland?" He straightens his tunic out before kneeling down to assist me. I jerk away, but he still catches my arm and raises me up to my aching feet. They do not hurt nearly as much anymore.
"You know very well the value of that island as a way-point when he sits on his throne in Hatuna." Hatuna? Hatuna is in Uppland. That is the capitol of the entire Swedish people.
"What is this campaign?" I interrupt the two of them while I try to pull up and straighten down my dress in Vloros's hand. Before I let them respond, I go livid, turning on my aunt immediately, and I scream, "NO! I AM NOT MARRYING THIS MAN!"
"You are," my aunt plainly states. "Besides, no one else will now. Enough important guests have seen or now know of the position you two have been in overnight." This causes my face to burn and glow bright.
"I take what is mine," he strokes my shoulder with one hand while still holding my arm firmly with the other. "I never gave her permission to leave me," he looks slightly up to me, "did I?"
My red face probably didn't have as much intimidation that I would have liked, but I still glare daggers down at him. "No," I state again, "I am not marrying you."
"You have no choice," my aunt again states this plainly. She turns her attention to the Livonian Earl, "Here?"
"Might as well. I would never have an opportunity to have such a gathering of powerful and valued individuals to witness such an occasion." There is a smile lighting up his face as he continues to look at me.
"I said no!" I yell at them both. Vloros tilts his head with a tsk and my aunt begins to stand.
"We will see," comes out of my aunt's mouth. She walks over to us and offers a hand for me to take. Then, she turns to Vloros, and the glare that she gives the man does what I wish mine could. He lets go of me with a chuckle.
I'm not given the chance to do more than be released when Dorte snatches my wrist and pulls me to follow her. I turn my head in time to catch Vloros waving me goodbye before closing the door. I suppose he wants to wash up?
"Tell me," I look ahead at my aunt as she speaks, "was it snake's blood or yours?" I am taken back by that question. What the Hell did she mean by that?
"I don't understand."
"The blood on your crotch," she states while we walk through the hall. Plenty of people are awake, aware of us, and are giving me some grinned looks as they enjoy feasting on their breakfast. "Was it your time or had there really been a snake as Dorit claimed?"
"It..." I take a moment to make this claim, because it really wasn't a snake, but it had not been me who bled. "It is as Dorit claimed." I watch Dorte's head lower for a moment and then shake.
"This marriage must go through soon as possible."
"No!" I yank back, trying to loosen the grip my aunt has on me.
Instead, it provides her a reason to be pulled in so a stinging slap can streak across my face. My ear rings and it leaves me standing stunned. Some of the people that I currently am looking at appear frozen from the display of violence. Then they go about as if it is normal.
"You will listen and obey," her voice is once again plain and flat. I now know that she is trying to hold in her emotions. She is likely not to want a display of the same rage we had all witnessed days before. The jerk on my wrist gets us both moving again.
We find a room and she has me enter with the door being closed behind me. I am not sure why I've been secluded until I hear the sounds on the other side of the door. She is barring me in.
"Wha- WAIT! WHY!" I rush and slam myself to the door, backing enough for a utilized void to appear, and attempt to open the door. It remains stiff and motionless.
"You will remain here until it is time to be bathed and dressed." I hear this and go into a fury, knocking, slamming, punching, and kicking at the door for something to give. Then I hear the fading steps of my aunt go someplace else down the hall.
I turn around and lay the back of my shoulders against the door. Breathing quick and heavy, I lower down, giving my face someplace to bury between my knees, and I rock steadily with my heels being the braced-swing.
Under no circumstances had I ever considered this to be a possibility. If I thought all was lost before, now I know more can be taken, and if fate had its way that much more. I lift my face up from its resting place to call out.
"Tiresias!" I look around, listening, waiting for it to appear. Nothing. Frantically, I search longer before calling again, "Tiresias! Please come out!"
Again, nothing. Not a single peep, no shadow play, and certainly not a gleam of that ridiculously bright smile. The Shade is absent. Where is it? Why now when I have an actual need for its company?
I break. Tears run down my face and I shake with a shattered resolve. My legs are clenched in a tight embrace and I bury my face back into those knees while I rock myself for remainder of the morning...
