Armored Heart: Silk and Steel. Chapter 4

Samara stood at the entrance of the five crags lands, feeling the stiff breeze tumble her hair. It was a cold wind, blowing off the distant high peaks, and Samara savored the goosebumps it raised on her exposed skin. The chill focused her and distracted her, though it was with a fond smile that Samara recalled just why she needed the distraction. Her body still ached in the best possible way.

She would have called herself insatiable, but her Bonded was strong and virile and had sated her time and again. They had lain in passion with no regard for their mission today, and even with the fatigue and soreness that had been the price, she wouldn’t have done a thing different.

Moragrin stomped in front of her, his golden tail swishing wildly. “Daray preserve me, the lot of you,” he growled. Beside Samara stood Sharvor, Mortah, and Lillitha. The old lion had dragged them away from the sled, leaving a few other tribespeople to finish packing their supplies. The look in his eyes told Samara everything she needed to know about the Caller’s intentions, and for the moment she kept the pleased smile off her lips and tried to stare straight through the beastkin.

“This nose doesn’t miss much these days,” he said with a shake of his head that set his mane dancing in the wind. “But even if I were in bed with a sickness, half mad with fever, and flirting with old Tenebor himself, I would still know you four spent the night fucking instead of resting!”

Samara watched while Moragin turned and began back down the line the four of them made. He was right, of course, they could be called on to fight a legendary beast as early as that afternoon. And they were not rested, confidant warriors. As if to illustrate, or perhaps just very poor timing, Mortah let out a powerful yawn before he could stifle it.

“You wouldn’t be yawning if you had a speck of self control, dirt swallower!” Moragrin bellowed, an inch away from the dwarf’s face. “Now, I am prepared to ask, cajole, and possibly even beg our lord Daray to help you sorry lot,” He stopped in front of them, daring any of them to contradict him. “Are you lot worth it?!” He bellowed

“Yes Caller!” All four of them said in near unison.

With a barely satisfied grunt, Moragrin nodded and gestured back toward the sled. “Then,” he stern demeanor melted into an excited grin. “Lets go hunt us a shadow panther!”

That got a round of cheers from not just the four of them, but the other villagers and warriors that had come to see them all off. Even Aldercan, astride one of his horses that he had released from the strange floating carriage, seemed in high spirits. Once Samara had her axe slung over her shoulder, she stood with the other four warriors and boldly strode out into the grasslands and towards their fearsome quarry.

The sun was high in the sky and the peaks a smudge behind them by the time they reached their first landmark, and it was a grim one. Shining on the horizon, like a shard of mirror glass, was an evil place.

Samara had rode near it a handful of times in her life, and to even imagine it sparked unease in her gut. While the old city of wizards had been cut away from the world by the gods, the outposts and remnants of it still remained. “Palas Arsylwi,” the barbarian muttered darkly. It wasn’t the evil speech that wizards used for their magic, but the foreign words still felt clumsy on her tongue. “The beast has its lair near there?”

Aldercan squinted at the distant, reflective tower and nodded. “Ah, the old outpost.” he said dismissively. “I believe we will pass by it, yes.”

Samara nodded, feeling both thrilled and unnerved by Aldercan’s nonchalance. As she walked with the group, her mind kept circling back to the wizard that joined them. He was polite, friendly, and had a way about him that made Samara trust him easily. But to dismiss the taboo site so easily, it rubbed harshly against everything she had been taught about it.

Palas Arsylwi was forsaken by the gods in just about as dramatic a fashion as you could expect. Honor and glory were absent, love was banished, nothing grew there, and a foul malevolence made even the idea of mercy a fantasy. The foolish among Samara’s tribe that ignored Moragrin and the other Callers never came back the same.

Some simply went mad, their minds shattered by the evil of the place. Others, the taint found its way inside them. Transformed by the sheer wickedness of it, they returned as if stripped from everything that made them human. They walked, talked, fought, and bled as any other sapient. But there was nothing behind their eyes. The souls were gone, and their minds chained and—

A sharp splinter of pain gouged into Samara’s mind for a split second. A flash of confusing memories and plummeting dread, followed by the briefest imagined flash of herself as one of those mind-chained fools. Then it passed, leaving the barbarian swaying and blinking in the bright sunlight.

“Are you alright?” Sharvor was at her side, and Samara gratefully leaned into his reassuring sturdiness.

“Just a bit of a headache,” Samara dismissed, searching her mind for anything else that might have stabbed her. Nothing stood out, so she shrugged and met Sharvor’s eyes. “Maybe Moragrin asked our Lord to send a few sharp reminders to rest on the eve of battle in the future?” she joked.

Sharvor rumbled a low laugh and Samara felt much better for hearing it. “Maybe I should prepare myself as well?” he added, wrapping his arm around Samara’s shoulders

“Prepare yerself for what?” Mortah asked, walking up to them with Lillitha in tow. “You see something out there?” he gestured to the wide flowing ocean of grass.

After filling the dwarf and elf in on what happened to Samara, the four of them continued on in silence for a moment before Sharvor heaved a heavy sigh. “Forgive me, my friends,” he began, turning to Lillitha and Mortah. “But, you two, together?”

Mortah grinned while Lillitha looked away. “Well, obviously she was’na able to resist my charms.”

“It was a moment of weakness, Mortah” Lillitha said firmly, clenching her fists. “You are a fellow warrior. It is not the way of my tribe to lay with those you shed blood with.”

Mortah only gave her a wink before turning to Sharvor. “The forbidden fruit got ’er” he stage whispered. “But damn if I couldn’t see the lust in her pretty golden eyes and-

“Blue,” Sharvor interrupted.

“Whas that?” Mortah asked, confusion furrowing his thick eyebrows

“Lillitha’s eyes are blue, not golden,” Sharvor repeated, peering at the shorter warrior.

A look of disorientation passed over Mortah’s face for a long moment. Turning to look at Lillitha, who was also giving him a searching look, the dwarf eventually shook his head. “So they are,” he said with a shrug. “Guess the night whas more draining than I thought it was.”

Hanging back some to allow Mortah and Sharvor to talk, Samara kept pace with Lillitha. They walked in silence for a time while the barbarian went back over the previous night in her mind. Everything up until Lillitha offered to bathe with her was crystal clear, but the bath itself was… odd.

She was positive, certain even, that she and Lillitha had simply bathed, talked, and then started fantasizing about getting fucked. But… why had they started fantasizing?

“Lillitha, do you remember last night clearly?” Samara asked, hearing her own confused unease in her voice.

“I do,” Lillitha said firmly, and Samara was ready to simply accept that and move on. Then her friend breathed out a deep sigh. “And I don’t.” She gestured to Mortah. “Mortah is a fine companion, and I would trust him with my life. But it is just not done to lay with your companions! It can cloud the mind in the heat of battle.” Lillitha explained, her elegant speech sounding more and more unnerved the longer she went on.

“Problems, ladies?” A refined voice behind them asked. A spark of anger bloomed in Samara’s breast, and she whirled around ready to unleash her tension on whoever was listening in to her private conversation.

Aldercan’s pale, handsome face looked back at her and that spark of anger vanished with a suddenness that left Samara lost for words. Beside her, Lillitha looked similarly dumbstruck. “Forgive me for listening in.” They both nodded, and Samara instantly forgave the wizard. The fact that he had commanded it, not asked, only barely registered before she forgot it completely.

“We were just talking about last night,” Samara began, the distressing feelings already fading in the face of Aldercan’s trustworthy demeanor. “It feels like the jester god Kukoro himself has been tampering with my memory.”

Aldercan smiled indulgently and gave a little chuckle. “Based on Moragrin’s bellowing before we left, you and your friends had a late and exciting night?” he asked, then continued right past Samara before she could answer. “It’s bound to leave a few foggy spots.”

Samara slowed her pace, taking his suggestion seriously. “I… suppose,” she conceded.

“It’s not something my people usually get, but I guess it is possible,” Lillitha echoed, a look of thoughtfulness on her face.

“Just try to ignore it, you need to keep your focus on the upcoming fight, afterall,” he told them both with a condescending firmness that ordinarily would have stoked Samara’s temper to a boil, but from Aldercan she simply nodded.

Lillitha hurried forward to join Mortah and Sharvor again, and Samara turned back to nod her thanks at Aldercan. Just for a moment she could swear she saw a look of intense scrutiny on his face before it slipped into a look of affable concern. “Go on, no need to play nursemaid for me, Samara,” he urged with a little shooing motion.

The early morning passed by as the party marched further eastward. The weather was pleasant enough, the persistent breeze keeping the summer’s heat from becoming too unbearable. It would have been perfect if not for the direction that they were marching in.

The evil tower loomed ever closer, a sharp intrusion on the natural order of the grasslands. It reflected the sunlight regardless of the actual position, so it always glimmered on the horizon. As they got closer and closer to it, Samara felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her senses screamed at her that she was being watched, and from the reaction of her companions they all felt the same.

“I don’t see anything,” Lilitha said calmly, her bow in her hands with an arrow already nocked.

Aldercan brought his horse up, looking around the seemingly peaceful scene. “Something the matter?” He asked in polite confusion.

“Something is watching us,” Sharvor said quietly, taking his spear in hand.

Samara joined her Bonded, battle axe held ready in both hands. “If Lillitha can’t see it, it could be a magical beast,” the barbarian said cautiously.

Moragrin stepped forward and nodded. “I’ll call Lord Daray to reveal anything hidden,” he declared, only for Aldercan to quickly shake his head.

“Allow me, Caller,” he said, the respect in his voice adding another notch of admiration to Samara’s view of the wizard. “I won’t be much help in combat, but I can spare you the ragira cost of this.”

Moragrin looked thoughtfully at the wizard for a long moment, something Samara felt was bordering on open disrespect for Aldercan’s kind offer, then nodded wordlessly.

“Powers of light and wind, reveal yourself to me!” The wizard called, throwing his arms wide. Little motes of light gathered at his fingertips, which burst forward with his final incantation. “Cruthaich mealladh”

The motes of light swirled in the air, zipping like fireflies and glowing like tiny suns. For a moment, even Samara found a kind of beauty in the display. Then her distrust of the devil arts of wizardry returned, tempered by her trust in Aldercan, but still rasping across her sensibilities.

With a flash, the motes collapsed together into what looked to Samara to be a large translucent disk. It hovered unnervingly in the air, turning to display a stylized human eye. It roamed over their whole party before one of Lillitha’s arrows passed right through it. “It’s a magical construct,” Aldercan noted, watching the strange eye fade back into nothingness. “But the good news is there is nothing on the other side of the spell. I suspect it was something built into the old observation tower.”

“And it lasted this long?” Sharvor asked, a deep frown on his face.

“It’s not impossible for magic to last so long,” Moragin said, hesitantly, while glaring at the space the disk had been. “But we have never felt this disturbance here before.”

“Likely something inside the tower changed,” Aldercan mused, his eyes fixed on the distant tower. He spoke with such confidence that Samara found herself nodding along.

“It’s nothing dangerous?” She asked, hoping his answer would put her Bonded and Moragin as at ease as she felt.

“Not at all,” the wizard responded firmly. “Unnerving perhaps, but that’s all.”

Mortah and Lillitha were already nodding and ready to continue when Sharvor approached Samara from the side, his frown still marring his face. “Samara, my Bonded, I am troubled,” he growled.

Falling into pace as their party continued, Samara searched her mind for what could trouble her Bonded. They were on their way to fight a great beast, the magical mystery was settled, the weather was fair, and they had friends and companions around them. The settled earlier issues with her memory notwithstanding; It seemed an ideal day to her. “What troubles you?” she asked

“You, Samara,” Sharvor stated flatly.

The barbarian stopped dead, feeling a prickly fire stick into her chest. It wasn’t as if she and her Bonded never argued, but it was always a private affair. She glanced around, seeing that every other member of their traveling group was occupied. Secure enough for now, she moved close to her Bonded and hissed “Explain yourself,”

“Since that wizard came to the village yesterday, you have been acting strangely,” he commented with a calm demeanor that only added fuel to the tight angry ball forming in her chest. “I know, for a fact, you share my wariness for wizards. But this Aldercan arrives, and you look at him like Daray himself.”

The angry spite focused crystal clear in Samara’s mind, and her lips surged forward before her mind could even see the words. “You’re jealous of him,” she accused. Carried along in a heady mix of temper and exhilaration, she let the river of thought pull her along further. “I have eyes for no other man, Sharvor, but this petty whining reeks of weakness.”

She had scored a telling blow. Only someone that had known every facet of her Bonded would see it, but the subtle narrowing of his eyes and the sudden tightness in his jaw gave it away. “You are mistaken, Samara,” he growled in response.

She didn’t mean to take it further, but the frustration she felt about his mistrust of Aldercan stoked her temper. The wizard had done nothing to warrant his suspicion! He was leading them on a grand hunt, treated their tribe of savages with respect and grace, and spoke for a man that had such grand plans for the entire grasslands.

“Sulk like a wounded pup, if you must,” Samara huffed, increasing her pace. Her own pride felt wounded, and for a moment a wave of confusion passed over her. She was defending a wizard and a stranger over the objections of her Bonded. But she trusted Aldercan, damnit! She knew in her bones, in her deepest self, that she should trust him. That her whole tribe of savages...

The confusion only got worse as that word rolled so easily though her mind, forcing her to rub the heel of her hand against her forehead. She hated being called a savage, and before yesterday would have never considered calling herself and her tribe that. And yet here she was, letting it flow through her thoughts like water.

Confusion curdled into an angry, tense frustration. She felt...off. Awkward and out of step in a way that had nothing to do with the physical world. Her fists clenched and unclenched, while her Fury sparkled to life and began looking for anything and everything to justify itself.

By the time sunset arrived, Samara’s mood had only fouled further. She was terse and cold with her responses and sullen and snapish in her silence. Moragrin had banished her to the rear guard the second time she snarled at a minor inconvenience. Her friends had all dropped by in turn to offer companionship, even Sharvor had forgiven her earlier attitude enough to try to make amends. And she had rebuffed them all, unable to appreciate their efforts through the tension that had gripped her.

So she walked alone, guarding the rear of the convoy some fifty paces back. Contradictory thoughts chased each other in circles, offering no relief to her increasing confusion. She trusted Aldercan, without reservation. And she had no reason to do so. It made no sense, and yet it was as natural to her as breathing.

The wizard was important, he had to be. As the tension built, Samara looked toward the group. She could find him. He would know why she was feeling like this, he had to.

To her surprise, it seemed Aldercan had the same idea. The wizard was striding toward her. He had pulled the hood of his robes up, despite the setting sun, but she saw his wise knowing expression and the tension coiling in her heart lessened, slightly. “Aldercan I wanted to—”

Before she could give voice to her jumbled emotions, Aldercan silenced her with an upheld finger. That alone might have been enough, but what Samara saw robbed her of any capability to speak.

Aldercan closed his eyes while his very flesh shifted. It flowed like water for a moment, barely a blink, but enough for the medley of images to stick in Samara’s memory. His face darkened to the color of pitch, became more delicate, more feminine, and just before Samara’s voice returned, Aldercan opened his eyes. His warm, enthralling, golden eyes.

Samara’s gaze locked onto those impossibly beautiful eyes, barely registering that Aldercan’s face had shifted completely. It was familiar, beautiful, and impossible to—“Remember, Samara.” Alexis’ voice slipped around the barbarian’s mind like silken fog. The night before slipped back into focus, and confusion melted away in the tide of golden bliss.

Her knees trembled, dragging her down to kneel before the disguised catgirl, until a gloved hand shot out to steady her. “Stay standing, Samara,” Alexis ordered, quietly. The urge to kneel vanished, and the barbarian was left gazing dreamily forward. “Leaving Sharvor alone was a mistake.” Alexis mused softly. “But, thankfully, it’s too late for him to ruin my plan.”

Whatever plan Alexis was talking about sailed clear over Samara’s pacified mind. There was only the gentle shifting gradients of gold pulling her attention deeper and deeper with every passing moment. She had forgotten to remember, and now she was remembering to forget. It sparked a warm, soothing heat that quickly spread through her whole body. She had obeyed, and now she got her reward.

“You’re going to listen to everything I say, Samara, aren’t you?” Alexis teased quietly. Samara smiled sweetly, nodding and stepping closer to the cat girl. “Such a good girl!” Even if the praise was dripping in condescension, it still flared the heat in Samara’s body into a wet sticky pulse, moistening her folds and pulling a sigh from her lips.

“Now, you’re going to feel so much better after we talk.” Alexis promised. “You’re not going to be confused anymore about how much you trust Aldercan, because you’ll know I am Aldercan.”

“You... are Aldercan?” the incongruity forced itself though the golden fog, escaping Samara’s lips as a question. A frown followed suit, tossing the numbing golden fog into vortexes and eddies that shocked Samara’s enthralled mind.

Before it could do more than make her frown though, Alexis grinned at the barbarian. “Awww, did I confuse your savage little mind?” She cooed affectionately. Samara nodded, savoring the tone even as the barbed words lost their string in her foggy mind. “I am a shapeshifter, Samara,” she said, pride infused in every word.

Samara blinked, taking in this new information with the subtle pleasure Alexis’ golden fog supplied in abundance. Shapeshifters popped up in the legends of her tribe, as they did with the dwarves and elves. They were extraordinarily rare magical creatures that could change their form like Samara changed clothes.

“Now,” Alexis’s tantalizing voice snared Samara’s attention again. “As much as I would love to just make you obey,” she purred, trailing a gloved hand down Samara’s cheek. “It’s far too soon for that.” she sighed longingly, and Samara felt a surge of sympathy.

It felt wrong that Alexis was uncomfortable with anything, and if making Samara obey would ease that, she wanted to volunteer. “I’ll obey... I don’t want you sad or hurt,” she breathed warmly.

That earned her a searching look, followed by a surprised smile that felt like pure warmth on her soul. “Yes... yes, you will obey, won’t you?” She asked, her smile turning to a knowing smirk. “Just because you want to, even,” she continued, as if the idea were some fantastic novelty. “But... you don’t like lying, do you?”

“I don’t,” Samara confirmed with a slow shake of her head. Daray praised honest, open combat. Clever tactics on the battlefield were one thing, open deception was another. It was a skill she had never bothered to cultivate, and felt a kernel of shame form in her stomach. She was going to make Alexis feel sad, all because of her failings. “I’m sorry,” she added.

“Oh don’t worry too much about it,” Alexis said, consolingly. The shame building in Samara’s stomach quickly snuffed itself out. “You’re not going to lie,” Alexis mused thoughtfully. “You’re just not going to tell the whole truth.”

Samara waited placidly, drifting in golden tranquility. The beautiful cat girl’s suggestion was much easier to take in. There was a world of difference to her between openly lying and holding back a fact until it was the right time to deploy it. A memory popped up in the languid river of her thoughts, one the few times she had bested Moragrin in a duel. She had been practicing a new feint and strike combo for weeks in secret, and only revealed it to the Caller when it clenched the bout for her.

“There’s a happy smile,” Alexis said, her voice cloyingly sweet. “So, you’re not going to tell your darling Sharvor about my real identity until it’s time for his surprise. Him and Moragrin.”

“What surprise?” Samara asked dreamily.

“A surprising one,” Alexis teased mysteriously. “You’ll know it when it’s time, don’t you worry about a thing.” A rustle in the grass behind the shape shifter made the top of her hood shift, and Samara realized a moment later it was her ear perking. “Quickly, who is coming?” she hissed urgently.

“Sharvor,” Samara replied, still dreamily smiling.

“Shit,” Alexis swore, and then her flesh again rippled like water. Only a few heartbeats later she was Aldercan again. Freed from the beguiling golden eyes, Samara as a wave of vertigo washed over her.

“Play along,” he said firmly but quietly. “I do apologize, Samara,” he continued in a conversational volume. “I’m just used to pouring on the charm. Being a people person is part of the job, but I’ll keep it to a minimum around you,” he finished just as Sharvor reached an arm span from the wizard.

“Something I should know?” Sharvor asked, and Samara could hear the strain in his voice.

“I wanted to talk to Samara about,” the wizard circled his arm in a vague gesture to encompass the whole of their traveling group, ‘everything. And I apologized for plying her with my charm, it’s a habit from being an emissary.”

Samara nodded, getting up to speed with Alexis’ plan. “I apologize for acting like a mule’s ass, Sharvor,” she said with honest contrition. She was truly sorry she had snarled like she had, knowing now that there was a perfectly good reason she trusted Aldercan. She had been charmed by Alexis. In retrospect, the awful flash earlier of herself as a mind chained horror made a grim kind of sense as well.

She watched as Aldercan expertly talked his way through Sharvor’s frustrations. A complement here, a mostly true statement there, and Sharvor’s strained smile became more natural the more he spoke with the shape shifter.

Tentatively, Samara experimented with the thought of telling her Bonded that Aldercan was a shapeshifter. That he had charmed her, Lillitha, and likely Mortah as well. The immediate sensation of dread and guilt was a powerful deterrent against even idle speculation. She couldn’t let Alexis, or now Aldercan as well, get hurt.

The moment she let the thought go, she was rewarded with a teasing tingle along her nerves. Samara wasn’t a fool, she knew that was just as much Alexis doing as the prohibition had been. That didn’t make it any less effective.

“Let me apologize again, Sharvor,” Samara caught the tail end of the conversation, hearing in his voice that the wizard was wrapping up his confrontation with Sharvor. And her wonderful, amazing Bonded was nodding along with the wizard with an honest smile on his face. And Samara couldn’t do a thing to warn him. Alexis had kept her promise, she hadn’t made Samara lie. She just wasn’t allowed to tell the truth either.

Sharvor turned back to the group as night fell fully on the grasslands, a campfire already illuminating the rest of her companions. She turned to Aldercan only to be met with a shake of his head. “Go on, go mingle and apologize with your friends Samara.” he said with a knowing smirk. “You have a shadow panther to slay, probably tomorrow. And, of course, my surprise,”

Nothing forced her to obey, aside from the knowledge it would feel wonderful when she did, but Samara did as she was told anyways. Alexis wasn’t likely to explain what scheme she was plotting, and the shapeshifter would just enthrall Samara with her eyes if she just pressed too much. So she turned and followed Sharvor towards the warmth of the firelight, trying her hardest to ignore both the pleasant hum of pleasure she felt, and the growing dread of just what she was being walked into.