To Rix’s prompt: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/630713.html?thread=3925689#t3925689

“Why are we doing this?” Drakur tugged at the thin veils and whispy pants. “You’d look better in this than I would.”

“We both know that’s a lie.” Dortha was a stout woman, an earth-witch and a tree-wife, the strongest Drakur had ever met. She was handsome, but not lovely, not in the way that people at the auction would drool over.

Drakur. Drakur was. He looked down at himself. “Okay. I look okay, I guess.” He wasn’t big and bulky like some swords-slingers (or like some farmboys) were. He was just… skinny and rock-hard. And apparently looked really believable as a harem slave.

“You look delicious. I’d buy you myself.”

“Now just remember, the point is to not let me get bought by anyone. We just want to get in there, not to have me go off with some frighting old crone.”

“I can remember a plan. Especially one I thought up.”

“Just see that we stick to it.”

~

“Thirty-five gold, do I hear forty? Forty gold, do I hear forty-five? Forty five, do I hear fifty? Forty five, going once, going twice SOLD to the woods-witch. Come get him, lady, he’s a sharp one, isn’t he? Look at that chest, look how it shines, you’re going to have fun with him, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes I am.” Dortha grabbed the leash wrapped around Drakur’s neck. “Come on, boy.“

“What happened to the plan?” He hissed it out of the side of his mouth as he stumbled along. Dortha was a double handspan shorter than he was, and she was pulling down on the leash.

“The plan succeeded. We got what we needed.”

“Then let me go!”

“Oh, no, I spent forty-five gold on you. I’m going to have fuuun.

“…shit.”

“You do look really good in the veils.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/507302.html. You can comment here or there.

To thnidu‘s prompt

“Kishiara, the Tower needs men right now.” The Elder was reduced to pleading. Then again, Kishiara was his last option. “You know that.”

“I don’t see why.” The Elder had chosen to talk to Kishiara during combat training; she didn’t take her eyes off her students as she fended off lightning bolts. “The sorceresses are doing fine.”

“Simple biology dictates that we need men as well.”

“Ugh. Can’t someone else do it?”

“Nobody else was… available.” Willing, he meant. Kishiara hissed.

“So it’s me by process of elimination.”

“Or the temple will only last another ten or fifteen years.”

“But I like – stop that, Jegan – like being me.”

“I know. And I apologize. But we all have to sacrifice something for the Temple.”

Kishiara couldn’t argue with that. They all knew what the Elder had sacrificed, decades ago when the need had been different. “Fine. Let me finish this class first.”

The Elder had not expected fast acquiescence. “So soon?”

“If not now, Elder, you will find my mind changed. Now… let me finish this?”

The Elder left, to prepare the ritual. They all had sacrifices to make. He reminded himself of that again and again. The tower would not live without men, and Kishiara was the only one who could provide them with men.

She went into the ritual pool naked, willing, her head held high although her hair had been shaven off as part of the preparation. In order to succeed, the ritual’s notes said, leave as much self as possible outside the pool.

Kishiara’s head went under the water. In due time – an hour that seemed an eternity – seven male heads emerged. The Tower had its sorcerers.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/502265.html. You can comment here or there.

For ellenmillion‘s Prompt

“Stand there.”

Terena had placed Tho off to one side and handed him a short blade. At first, he’d been a bit worried for his safety – she had dressed him in enough chain mail to make a handkerchief and just enough leather to hold it on, which left far more of him exposed than he liked.

Then he’d watched her go to work, with her sword-kin, and his only worries had settled in to “why can’t I move my feet?” and “exactly how silly do I look?” The blade looked as decorative as his armor, far too shiny to be an actual weapon.

Tho knew weapons. He’d been a blacksmith’s apprentice, before his village was sacked and he’d been taken captive. He knew armor, too.

Terena was carrying a weapon, a real one, and wearing real armor, a proper breast-plate, greaves, and leather under that. As Tho had learned in the last day and a half, she also had the muscle to carry both weapon and armor.

Tho did, too, of course. But Tho had a tiny shiny blade and tinier shinier scale maile. And feet stuck in place. Which really wasn’t a logistical concern, because Terena and her sword-kin were stacking up the bodies before they ever got to Tho.

He jabbed the silly blade into the arm of someone who fell too close to him, just to make himself feel better. The arm twitched and stopped moving.

“There.” Terena beheaded someone with a tidy swoop – the tiny spurt of blood suggested the beheading was just for show – and jumped on top of the pile. “That’s done.” She twisted back to look over her shoulder. “Well, now that I’ve paid for you, boy, let’s find out what you can do.”

Tho looked at the pile of bodies. Two days ago, those had been the bandits who had sacked his home. He looked at Terena and her kin, and then back at the bodies.

This, his mother would have said, was out of the kettle and into the fire.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/498534.html. You can comment here or there.

For inventrix‘s prompt

“…and always remember, when fighting the Hosether, is that the only true and clean way to kill is with a blade.”

Instructor Blaias had lost one arm, his off arm, in a battle with the Hosether (or perhaps the Glarth); now he taught the next generation of sword-fighters how to war properly and with honor.

They listened, the young students holding their practice swords, wide-eyed with awe. They listened as he worked them through their exercises. They listened as he showed them how to block properly, so that they would not lose an arm themselves, or a leg or their lives.

They listened as he told them the evil of sorcery. The way that a distance kill was both immoral and illegal, the way that the cleanliness of a blade finished the soul properly, the way that only sword-training gave a truly disciplined soul.

The student Gilcas listened as intently as the rest, learning the way to cut cleanly, for all that he missed his twin.

~

“…and always remember, when fighting the Rodrigerafaus, that the only true and clean way to kill is with a spell.”

Teacher Charis had lost her left eye and half of her nose in a battle with the Glarth (or possibly the Rodrigerafaus); now she taught basic spellcasting for the next generation of fighters.

They listened, the young apprentices. They watched, wide-eyed with awe, as she showed them how you killed someone without ever showing your face. How you took the personal out of the kill, how you took your own soul out of it. They watched as Teacher Charis showed them how to sling a death-spell, so that the death was quick and perfect.

They took it all in, as she showed them how a sword-death was both illegal and immoral, how the blade severed the soul from the body, so that it entered the afterworld bereft of its needed skin, the way that the death-spell finished the body and soul in one swift shot, the way that only spell-casting created a truly disciplined soul.

The student Sashlie listened intently, practicing the motions and whispering the words to herself, learning a clean death, for all that she missed her twin.

~

There was never a time when the Rodrigerafaus were not at war with the Glarth, or the Glarth at war with the Hosether, the Hosether with the Rodrigerafaus. There was never a time when those with swords were not up against those who slung death-spells.

“When you fight, the only true and clean way…” Gilcas, his sword hilt-deep in a Glarth soldier, thought the blood splatter across his face was anything but clean. He muttered a spell he wasn’t supposed to know, and watched the soul separate and fly away. There were a lot of souls leaving today, and the sun hadn’t reached its zenith yet.

“…make the death clean and perfect.” Sashlie used a forbidden knife-block to push a soldier off of her, and pressed a death spell into another soldier’s face. The look on his face was in no way impersonal; the feel of his death flooding back over the spell was intimate and dirty.

She watched the way the body twisted into the heavens. There were a lot of deaths for the gods today, and the sun was barely climbing up its stairs.

The two, half a battle-field apart, took it all in, using the motions they’d been taught and the lessons they had learn, for all that they missed their twin, for all that the cleanest of deaths left them feeling filthy inside.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/496898.html. You can comment here or there.

For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

Thanks to @Skysailor99 for the country & god names.

“There’s a problem with the second restriction.”

The country of Foros had a lot of gods, and, like any good nation with a lot of gods, it had a lot of priests.

Several dozen of them were, at the moment, staring at their holiest of holy oracles.

The oracles were not supposed to say things like that. They weren’t, for one things, supposed to be capable of that much coherence. The ones who could hear the god Eralon – or any of the gods, but Eralon liked to talk the most – they tended to go mad very quickly. And the rest could be induced to simulate madness with the right smoke.

The Lesser High Priest of the Evening was the first to recover. “Ye who is blessed with the voice of the gods, ye who sees the truth to save us weaker vessels from that which would break us, say again, please?”

The oracle looked at the Lesser High Priest of the Evening. He was a clever man, brighter than his superiors, and did not flinch when he felt the eyes of divinity looking back at him. “The second restriction of Eralon. There is a problem with it.”

Eralon, of all of their myriad gods, had given them the most stringent restrictions and the most elaborate requirements. “Oh voice of the gods, please tell us what the problem is, that we might correct it.”

He had never been all that fond of the second restriction, after all. Several of the others made sense, and, of those that didn’t actively help make Foros a better place, only the second and the seventh seemed to make it worse.

“It’s wrong.” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and when they focused on the Lesser High Priest of the Evening again, the oracle’s gaze – and her voice – were her own again. “It’s not a restriction at all. The girl who relayed it just had an allergy to frogs.”

The temple erupted into shouting. Showing wisdom that would probably save his life on more occasions than this one, the Lesser High Priest of the Evening grabbed the oracle and the duty scribe, and got them both out of the temple before someone could erase this conversation from the records.

Possibly someone with an allergy to frogs. Or someone with a bridge-making business.

Eralon Explains

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/455232.html. You can comment here or there.

For avia‘s Prompt.

It was said that the swan maidens made the best wine.

It was said that the lovely women with the feathered cloaks, the red-heads with the blue eyes and the hard fingernails that were really claws, that they felt no pain.

And not only did they feel no pain, but they had the best feet for trampling the spiny grapes that grew in the highlands, the best hands, long-fingered and slender, for plucking the skins for the finest sweet wines, the strongest arms and backs for carrying the fruit and working the presses.

It was said, too, that the tears of a swan maiden were the sweetest additive you could put in the wine, that their faint saltiness was surpassed only by a single drop of their blood added to a keg, that their suffering transformed a vintage from ordinary to extraordinary as nothing else could.

Much of this was lies. The swan maidens felt pain like anyone else. Their backs were not strong, save in their swan-forms. Their fingers were long, it was true, but they tended to be clumsy.

And all this only added to the tears added to the wine: and that, the tears and the blood, that was true. Which was why the crafty vinters of the highlands spread those other lies, and why they would, on the first clear day of Spring, stalk the banks of every lake in the mountains for the swan-maidens, to steal their cloaks, to force those maids to live with them and make their wine.

They would escape, of course, they always did. But the daughters they left behind would, some day, find cloaks of their own, and the cycle would begin anew.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/289724.html. You can comment here or there.