Tribe of the Mountains Chapter 11 — Dark Plans

“Usually revenge is something stupid, useless, ugly and bad for the formation of a society.
But, depending on the circumstances, …”

Anora the first.
Philosophical musings.

You are having a vision.

In the vision you see that there is a large cave system in and under the southern part of the mountains that practically cross the two continents from north to south. In it lives a monster, a goddess, a creature old as the earth and immensely powerful.

This creature has four followers. They live in a nice cozy cave with a pool in the middle.

You can see that the cave suffered a series of alterations since its new residents came to live, it now has rugs on the floor, the walls were carved to make stone shelves full of clay pots, there are hammocks tied to stalagmites near the pool.

Nearby, in the complex of caves, there is an storage area full of dried meats and fruits, there is also a kind of workshop where many attempts to build a weaving machine resulted in stone and wood scattered all over the floor. But this workshop also has an oven and some pieces of iron, weak and breakable, a first experiment that may lead to better materials in the future.

In the pool cave, sat cross legged forming a circle near the hammocks, close to the pool itself there is a group of four young incredibly beautiful women. And, somehow, you know their names.

Anora is brown skinned, a brunette with straight luxurious black hair kept short with the use of a stone knife.

Erica is of a similar race, and also keeps her hair short but she is taller than Anora and would look boyish if her muscular arms and abdomen were not compensated by two big, very firm breasts.

Bastet is the smaller and also the most exotic, with skin dark as coal, dark short straight hair and green vivacious eyes with pupils that sometimes look like those of a cat.

Finally Erynia, with her blonde, almost white hair, pale skin, blue eyes and icy expression.

The four have perfect unnatural skin, no blemishes, no scratches, no acne. Their bodies are well toned, with long legs, wide hips and beautiful, long and sleek muscles.

They sat for hours, emitting no sound, moving very little. From time to time a dark tentacle would rise from the pool and caress one of them, sometimes even feed a girl with its dark juicy substance.

Their eyes are opened, looking mostly into space only moving a little in the direction of a face or another as their internal debate rages and here and there a flicker of expression can be seen.

Suddenly their eyes are filled with darkness, with a black substance akin to that of the goddess. Without looking at each other these creatures with black eyes get up. Their muscles moving with an unnatural grace showing for a bare moment the incredible amount of speed and strength within.

Erica, Bastet and Anora leave the cave. Erynia goes in the opposite direction, to the depths of the earth.

The cave remains there, silent, with only a few dark tendrils rising out of the water from time to time and searching around, as if missing the presence of the girls.

One of the tentacles appears to feel your presence. It comes in your direction.

The vision ends and you, a girl named Selen, wake up screaming.

Erica speaking:

After opening the forest to the goddess we stepped up our information gathering. It was a bit like hunting, but our prey was words and news. Our tools were mainly a veritable army of bats leaving the caves to feed before the rainy season came.

The fish also continued their mating ritual, eventually finishing it and going down river to wait for the rains at the swamps. During all the process we took more and more of the animals that fed on this abundant prey.

When the rains came we retreated to the caves to live in darkness. The pool of our cave rose, but the excess of water went to a side hole in the floor to feed immensurable depths where giant lizards and our beloved lizard women lived.

Bastet and I went to the drier caves to set a trap for gigantic scorpions that preyed on our servants. Anora tended to her herds, giving shelter but demanding milk and a few deaths in return.

I also did something that I love, horse breeding. With the help of my sisters and a few wolves we captured some horses on the grasslands and I spent a lot of time playing with them, changing them with the help of the goddess, to the extent that Bastet complained because of my lack of attention to her needs.

Of course I soon attended her needs. I may have been a boy, but I got better. I am not a fool.

Finally, when the land was dry enough for travel we sent our little scouts all around again and found a large caravan leaving last fall, the new domain created by Urk on the hill where our parents died, and going to New Rome, a large city at the eastern ocean.

This caravan had slaves taken from the three tribes of the free people. Urk had been busy, going to the traditional hiding spots of the tribes, stating that all was well, that the danger had passed and attracting unsuspecting people to his traps.

Even using bats and a few birds we couldn`t find any remaining survivors of the free people in the grasslands. Latter we found that the ones that didn`t trust Urk had died, killed by the dangers of the land, or been forced to seek shelter in one of the cities when they understood that rain and lack of enough people to deal with things like velociraptors, pterodactyls or deformed beasts from the pit would be their doom.

We had a long discussion at the end of the rain season; Erynia was worried about Stephen and wanted us to try to get him. She also argued that we needed artisans, mages, people with knowledge.

Anora wanted to save as many as possible and then think about what to do next.

In the end, the goddess interfered ordering us to do both. Get more people and use them to get not only Stephen, but all misfits, all that had a different way of thinking, all that didn`t fit. She craved domination of more people and we wanted to obey.

So, while Erynia remained making the tools that would help in the next phase of the goddess plans Bastet, Anora and I were going to catch and destroy a caravan.

We crossed the forest north of the mountains at night, called the horses that the goddess gave to us and continued into the grasslands.

Anora tells me that it is needed a hunter to describe hunting and mayhem. And tells me to “write a full account of our exploits” or something like this.

Well, since I have to continue telling this lets at least state that the horses that I bred worked wonderfully. I am really proud of that job.

The grasslands though, are getting more and more dangerous perhaps because now there are not something around one hundred thousand hunters going up and down and killing the worse treats.

Perhaps it is because all that magic cast close to it made the stone at the bottom of the pit emit pulses of raw magical power again. Like it did, in the old, bad times of legend.

Two days into our travel we met trouble.
I was hiding ahead, paying attention to the land, but it was my other senses, those attuned to all life around me, that detected a large creature in ambush ahead.

We were close to a water hole and it was midday. The ever so attentive Bastet had led us around velociraptor territory only few hours before and we all could feel the presence of a group of large elephants perhaps a half day ride ahead. Both the raptors and the elephants seemed to avoid this area but going a bit to the west would lead too close to the pit and to the east I was certain that a huge magical beast hunted, there were signs of its power all around us for one that could see.

<Anora, can you feel a magical beast ahead?> I asked.

<Yes, less powerfull than the one to our right though, I think that whatever is hunting to the west made this one here run in our direction.&gt Anora`s perfect face had a crease in her forehead as she told this.

I knew that my sister was hiding her magical aura, if she hadn`t the big monster to the west would be coming after us already. While I was thinking in what to do Bastet sent a mental image of us doing something much more pleasant. As always, this helped me to put things in perspective. The important was that I was a woman, feeling my naked pussy rub against a horse over which I had complete mental control, I was stronger than ever and much more agile than any man. The day was hot, but my skin was not burning much, my lovers were besides me …

That is when I understood what to do. I couldn`t feel magic, but looking into Anora`s mind I knew exactly where the beast was hiding.

We spread out, around the spot where the thing was, with Bastet`s horse coming closer to it but not close enough for most creatures to catch in one jump. As expected, the beast left its hiding place and started to run to get the horse. Usually it would get its prey since, as most ambush predators, it was capable of fast, short bursts of speed and most creatures take a little while to see a creature coming through the grass.

Bastet didn`t take a moment, even before she saw that it was a big lizard, a stone lizard to be accurate, coming after her she had already ordered the horse to move. A short burst of speed latter, made possible by muscles enhanced by dark tendrils of our goddess and they were out of reach of the lizard.

Usually arrows do not penetrate these creatures, they are named stone lizards for a reason. But some man eating plants can get trough and both I and Anora had arrows with special hollow tips containing the digestive acid of these plants.

Arrows hit the lizard in both flanks, they were not enough to kill it, or even penetrate deeply in its skin, but hitting close to its leg joints we made it much slower. Then, when she noticed that she didn`t need to run anymore, Bastet took her bow and hit the lizard with an arrow in one eye.

This was how our tribe hunted. Spread around the beast, shoot arrows coated in acid or poison, make it get confused, do not give a target. We knew how to clean the meat to make it edible after the creature was dead.

Few creatures in the grasslands had long range weapons and we were masters of the composite bow.

When the lizard finally fell we got to it. There was no time to cook or clean the meat, so, we simply let the parts of the goddess that were stored in our bodies (including the horses) feed. We had to touch our mouths to the meat so that the goddess would not be damaged by the sun, then from our mouths dark tendrils left, getting inside the meat and consuming it, storing the energy in the black deposits that we had in our bellies, muscles and even in parts of our heads.

People ask if I worry because many of my muscles are enhanced by dark fibers that actually belong to the goddess and that I am controlled by her desire and whim. Why should I care if she is also joined within me since she actually helps me through enhancing both my mind and body? It would be like worrying about the virginity of an old prostitute, wouldn't it? I chose to join my sisters and I decided that the price of having so much of HER inside was worth the dependence. I do not regret anything.

The horses ended up consuming most of the meat. I suppose that their bellies were a true pool like those in the caves by now.

After our meal we actually went faster, not sleeping or resting. Eating a magical creature increases the reserves of magic of another magical creature, so, Anora got a boost to her abilities and her restorative magic was stronger than ever. In a total of ten days from the moment that we left the pool cave we reached the caravan.

We approached it at night, using the normal humans’ bad night vision to our advantage.
Anora and Bastet could hardly contain themselves; they really wanted to do to the caravan guards what we had done to the lizard.

Am I the only one left with some mercy in our group?

<Yes, I know > Sent Anora with exasperation. <But I am really starting to dislike this thing, I can feel them, there are three wagons made of ironwood. They are using our wagons, large wheels, three axis instead of two, our wagons to cart our people into slavery. I know that I abandoned the remains of my tribe because none of them would escape with us. Rationally I can think that these same people that now are slaves would do the same to the cities if they could. We all know that we had to leave because …>

Bastet interrupted her <OK, Ok, calm down sister. Erica, this whole thing is a piece of shit and it has to stop. Simple as that. You feel it too, you know that we have to terrify these guys. We all can feel the suffering of the people on that middle wagon. This must stop now and with extreme violence.>

Bastet is usually a playful person, but when something must be done she does. This is one thing that I love in her. She is fun, but never forget her duties.

Unless she is asked to write a report.

<OK sisters, one last time, inhuman approach, sexual inuendo or discourse?> I sent.

< Sexy and inhuman> answered Bastet.

The decision was definitive. Exchanging information very fast we set the details of a plan.

For one day we just watched. We sent our horses some distance away, and through mind speak asked Erynia and the Goddess to send the birds that were still nearby. Slowly we got a sense of the content of the three wagons and who was who in the caravan.

They had four scouts mounted in good horses, but one of them was a tribesman, one of Urk`s own. Another, named Iuri, was bound by a quartz crystal stuck to his forehead, if he strained from the caravan the wizards in the first wagon would give a command and the jewel would start to convert ambient magic into heat.

Anora had her doubts about the ability of the mages to do this from a distance and she could feel magical, untrained ability in this youth. He might be capable of taking control of the jewel. A little bird “told” us though that his sister and mother were in the second wagon, as Urk`s crony loved to remind the guy all the time.

This one was a good candidate, Bastet was already choosing a female name for him. Iuria would not work, of course.

So, four scouts, one marked for violent death, one to be turned if he accepted and two to let the fates decide.

Three wagons, the first containing four mages, being three males and a female, the female being a rarity since in most cities a female with the gift was never allowed to learn enough to become capable of defending a caravan, a mystery that would remain probably unsolved.

The second wagon had about twenty slaves in chains. Eight children, four boys and four girls. Two young adult males and ten women, most of them young. By the talk of the male mages when they stopped to urinate we could deduce that many would go to bordellos all over the romanish empire. Also, the elder mage was not very happy with this job.

The slaves were never allowed to get out and the result was a terrible smell of human waste and sweat that could be felt even outside of the wagons and even by birds with little sense of smell. Apparently the slavers were afraid that the former tribesmen and women would disappear in their homeland, even the eight children.

The third wagon had five armed men and an assortment of goods for trade, we could not know what exactly, but were very interested.

Behind the third wagon rode the usual mules and armed men of a caravan. Apparently the merchants had not been able to get more wagons or had not trusted them too much.

The merchants themselves were in mules, we knew more than a few of them. Protecting this last group were ten men armed with bows, swords and a few enchanted shields.

OK, fifteen armed men, four mages, three merchants that knew how to fight.

Even I was licking my lips and excited by our plans now.