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Image Credits: Title Image of Brook by Eduardo. Divider licensed for use in publishing from Photoshopgraphics.com ~Sephrena.

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Anya`s Journal

After I became part of the tribe, Erynia told me all about her plans to free Stephen. I suggested some modifications and we started to implement the revised plan using the last two days of the holidays.

The first thing to do was to move to an apartment on the ground floor, with easy access to the sewers. This was easy to justify to the landlord since we were now officially married, my husband had money and it was reasonable for us to move to a larger apartment. We got one of the largest apartments with three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen big enough to put a table on it and receive a few visitors.

Not even my father`s home had been so big. Now we had space and the next logical thing to do was to buy slaves. Erynia didn`t like the idea, but it was what everybody would be expecting us to do and, if the slaves were beautiful women, they would serve two other very important purposes.

So, I went with my husband to the slave market in the last day of the Aesir`s holiday. Since it was Morrigan`s day, the slave markets offered discounts in the price of “prisoners of war” and it was actually normal for a newlywed couple to visit the market on this day. The place was well organized, with a heavy labor section, one for household slaves and one for special slaves like scholars to teach your children, and pleasure slaves for your bed.

We found Melusine within a cage inside the household section. According to the slave master, she was well educated and would serve a man in bed if trained. She was also really, really beautiful and I wondered why she was not sent to be trained as a pleasure slave. Her price was also a little high, but within the price range between a simple maid and one of the special slaves.

I took Erynia by the arm and we went to one of the food stalls to eat (our third meal that day and it was midday yet) and talk about our options.

“Erynia, what do you think of Melusine?” I asked with a little frown.

“Well, a blue eyed redhead, Nordic, from the Osir people. Must have been sold by her father. I heard that they got mutant rats attacking their crops last harvest, so, she is actually fatter than I expected. Did you notice that they cut her nails very short and that she is using a collar even inside the cage? They probably are not feeding her very well also. Even though they are keeping that magical slave collar on her, I can feel that she has some magic about her. I suspect that she has at least some minor body magic and has seriously hurt one of the slavers before.”

Erynia said this all without once altering her cold expression with no inflection on her voice. It was if she was talking about a broken wheel in a cart and not a woman sold by her father in times of famine. And yet, I had not noticed any of these things. The collar, which I had taken for granted as being there to emphasize and show off a slave`s large breasts, was actually restraining her with a magical stone.

“So, do you agree to buy her?” I asked a bit nervous. Now I really wanted this girl. She would be a nice addition to the tribe and, well, to our bed.

“Yes, she and the two white cat girls” Erynia answered.

“Cat girls?” Selling white cat girls was illegal! Black ones like Batet were fair game, but the white ones only came from Melbur clan and were considered part of the Melbur household. That merchant worked for house Melbur, for moons sake! How could he sell them from that house?

“They do not show cat girl features, no glowing eyes and probably only a little improved vision in the dark. I have been looking at them since we got into the tent and would not have noticed anything different if not for the goddess inside me. To the goddess they feel somewhat similar to Bastet. The feeling is a bit weaker, but it is there. They are also from clan Osir, not Melbur, so …” She said this last fact with that little twitch of her head that she uses when she wants me to figure the rest out by myself.

“Melbur and Osir had their last fight more than a hundred years ago, they are illegitimate or descendants from a rape that happened long before Melbur came to Thebes” I finished with a little smile that she corresponded. To this day one of the few pleasures that Erynia shows in her face comes from teaching me things. The damn cold bitch is weird this way.

We went into the tent and used a magical blue stone to pay for Melusine and for the girls, named Anya and Beitha. Anya found it weird that she had the same first name as me, but I simply started calling her Ane two, which brought a smile to her face. The two girls proved to be well mannered and to accept their fate. Melusine, on the other hand, had stated quite clearly to Erynia as soon as we opened the cage that she would come with us but would not be her plaything. Erynia`s answer was short and cold:

“Do you prefer to be a escaped slave in this city full of soldiers, to stay here to be sold to one of the big farms or to come to a household where the job is light and there is only one male to make demands?”

After this Melusine followed us quietly, considering her options. We got into a carriage rented for this purpose, with a cage in the back to hold our new slaves. Then we drove to our little glade outside of the city and asked them to drink from a cup of water after we had drunk from it.

Of course there was more than water in that cup. All of them accepted the goddess' offering. Now, we had more than enough people to implement the rest of the plan.
 
 
I believe that every maid in Melbur`s house was surprised when I went back to work after the holidays. But, to anyone that asked, I answered that my husband was breaking in his new slaves and that I was contractually bound to finish with the house - a contract whose escape clauses included the payment of a large sum of money if I left before giving three months of warning to the house. This was true, the house had me in a contract more strict than the usual since I worked in the library and because Elric was the biological father of my child.

Once I passed by the two guards at the door and entered the library, I could feel the presence of a male behind one of the walls, near the ceiling of the huge chamber. It appears that I and Stephen were being spied from a secret passage. So, I continued my work as usual, first cleaning the place then being at Stephen`s disposition to take books from shelves, catalog new magical stones made by him and help him in his research.

Stephen was, as always, in his wheel chair, studying a set of books at a table in the center of the library. He had to produce about ten magical stones per day. The double of what a normal mage would make. But, if he accomplished his quota the rest of his time was free to do whatever he wanted. Since Stephen slept very little and liked to make new stones, he would frequently use half of his day to do research on various topics.

Stephen was one of the few mages capable of making stones from any area of magic (fire, kinetic and body were the areas known at the time) and even make those distant communication stones that seemed to be from a new area of magic, something related to lightning. But Stephen`s stone making ability had a limitation: he could only charge up the communication stones. The problem was that he had little raw magical power. Although his stones were a higher quality than most being made, he could not fuel a fire stone, for instance, with enough magic to do any real harm to someone.

Elric tried to keep his pet artificer happy and supplied him with all books that he asked for, even in subjects not related to magic. Everybody in the household was afraid that Stephen might one day find a way to charge stones and build to himself a magical armor capable of destroying the building or something like this. Logically, it is stupid to keep an inventor captive in a room full of things that he can use to invent; so, if you must do it, at least keep him happy and under strict surveillance.
 
 
The first time that day that Stephen had called me to help him, it was already afternoon. He had just finished his quota and wanted me to get him a book on dragons and their behavior patterns. I brought that together with Galenus book on the wasting disease.

Stephen looked at my face with curiosity then and I made a little sign with my hand - a sign that meant stop and listen in the little sign language that he and Erynia had developed so long ago.

This, of course, brought his full attention to the book in his hands, to the marked page and to the sentence that I had underlined using a piece of the chalk that he kept by a blackboard to the side of the library. The sentence read: “The plebeian believe that the wasting disease came from the dead body of a goddess, buried deep within the northern mountains.”

Stephen looked from the book and, trying to keep astonishment from his face asked me: “Hum, it seems that some of these are linked to Hecate. Could you please bring me that book over there?”

Of course, there is no link between dragons and Hecate, but our spy within the wall might not be so cultured. While I brought him the book, but with a NOT HECATE written in large letters on the front page, I asked: “Sir, aren`t dragons from the time before the cataclysm? Perhaps a book on historical suppositions?”

“Anya, Hecate is old, certainly she was around before the star created the pit.” He answered.

“But, what other creatures were around when the pit was created?” I answered.

At that moment I noticed that our little spy, perhaps tired of our academic discussion, perhaps because he needed to pee, had left his post. So, I turned my back to Stephen while pretending to look at a row of books, put my hand inside my dress and took a piece of paper that had been hidden in a “special place” (oh, the advantages of being a woman). Then I took a book on the legends of the cataclysm, placed the paper within (yes, the paper left a nice smell on the book) and brought it to him.

Stephen`s eyes looked like two saucers as he recognized the encoded and very complex diagram draw in that piece of paper. I couldn`t understand half of it myself, but Erynia told me that there was a message with details of what we were and our offer to him, plus something of our plans of escape encoded in that drawing of an ancient goddess and in the weird letters surrounding the picture.

I couldn`t even look at the damn thing without my eyes hurting. I could almost swear that the picture had moved “down inside” making me feel weird until I could deliver the message, but Stephen looked at it for a second, wrote something in the back and gave it to me saying. “I agree with all my heart, some ancient creatures were here with the dragons and forgive me, some ancient goddesses are not like Hecate.”

All nice and cozy, but the fool here had to hide the damned thing again and I could swear that the goddess in the paper was smiling with mischief when I looked at her briefly before. Well, let ´s just say that I excused myself saying that I needed to pee and went to our little employee bathroom. Once there, I re-hid the damned piece of paper.

When I returned to him, we continued our talk, now discussing about Hecate, Isis, Persephone and even Aphrodite; Stephen seemed to be suddenly very interested in ancient strong goddesses - especially those related to dark magic and mysteries.
 
 
After my day of work was finished, on trying to leave and return home, a guard escorted me to a small chamber with only a chair as furniture. There were two men there, one completely average Greco and another completely average Nordic. When I say average, I mean it. They had average build, average height, nothing remarkable about their faces, had no prominent features at all. It was even difficult to describe anyone of them except as generic Greco or Generic Nordic. In other words, spies treated with body magic to be completely forgettable.

As soon as the guard closed the door behind me, the average looking Greco man said: “Please have a seat... Lady Anya the First.”

“Pardon me, sir?” I answered showing apprehension in my face as I eyed this person.

“In your marriage contract, it is written Erynia the First as your husband, isn`t it?” The Greco continued in sarcastic tones.

“Sir, unfortunately my husband was renamed by the emperor when he decided to come this way to the Nordic lands. If you desire, I can bring a document proving this tomorrow. We plan to change it back to Eric Deepwood as soon as possible.” I admit that we had thought that the marriage contracts would be beyond Melbur`s house power since we had paid for sigil and our witnesses didn`t have much time to read what Erynia wrote. Well, we had an escape plan, but that really had been a stupid move.

“And why use the name given by the emperor?” The Greco man asked as he walked behind my chair. The Nordic was in front of it with a smirk on his face.

“You never know sir, the emperor has eyes everywhere... even where you might least expect it.” My face was now showing true abject terror, but inside I was cold. I believed that I could kill these two if needed. A false belief I would later learn, but it kept me calm inside at that moment.

Now the Greco was in front of me. He had brought forth a blue stone in his hand, the same one that we had used to buy the slaves the day before. “By emperor, you mean the same one that gave these stones to your husband?”

“Sir, this is what my husband told me.” Now my face showed true fear but I kept my voice clear.

“Do you know that the names Erynia the First and Eric Deepwood are magically engraved in this stone? Only a very good mage can see the damned writing.” Now the Greco stopped with his face mere inches from my face.
“No sir, I didn`t know that and I also believe that my husband does not either.”

Well, we really knew. We also knew that blue stones with this kind of engraving were only given to the emperor`s personal guard. The only known mine of these stones was heavily controlled by the empire and stones as clean and easy to enchant as the one that we had used were rare. Erynia had been mining these by the hundreds deep below the earth, but nobody outside of the tribe knew this.

“Let me look at this stone on your chest” He said with anger, almost spitting in my face.

I took the stone out and immediately felt the strong, very strong desire to contact the goddess. I went pale and started to sweat as he looked at the stone slowly and with care. Finally, after what looked like an eternity, he gave it back. I immediately placed it around my neck, if the goddess had not been warned about this possibility, we would have wasting disease alarms all over the city by now.

“Tell your husband not to leave his home until told otherwise, unless it is to book passage in the first ship to leave for Deepwood after the end of your contract. Tell him that we don`t like jokes with our honor and imperial agents spying on us. You will bring back a token of passage for a ship and a copy of the document renaming your husband tomorrow when you come to work.”
 
 
The next day I brought the forgery of a document made with the imperial seal and also a token proving that we were booked in a ship. Also, my husband told everyone in the building that he would stay home with his beautiful slaves. He even sent Melusine to the market to buy a cask of good ale and an amphora of wine. She was also seen in different stores buying a variety of sex toys.

We actually used the sex toys.

Everyday the Greco and the Nordic would take me to the interrogation room and ask me everything about what was happening in our home. I, being a good terrified girl, told them every little game, every little sexual thing that we played. This kept them nice and satisfied for a while. They did a full body search on me once, including a cavity search. But the goddess allowed me to hide letters deeper than they could find. So, I continued to carry messages for a few days.

Every day, Melusine carrying Sonia, Ane two and Betha left our apartment in the afternoon to go place flowers in our little shrine to the goddess outside the city walls. There they would contact our sisters and, later, share the information with us.
 
 
Three days after I came back to work, the Tribe attacked a caravan of slavers that had just left Resistance going to Last Fall. The memories of that ambush are available to all of the tribe, so, although I was not there I will tell the tale here so that the children that read this account of our history will understand what we fear and why rescuing Stephen was so dangerous.
 

 

 

 
The Memory of the Attack

The ambush started well, the scouts of the caravan didn`t see the ten women plus fifty wargs and ten velociraptors being ridden in the high grass and behind the small hills typical of the grasslands. It was a big caravan, with thirty soldiers protecting a cargo of sixty slaves, mostly women but there were no ironwood carts this time, and they had only three mages: a kinetic mage, a heat mage and a body mage. The last one was the only mage wearing magical armor (kinetic stones), since it is impossible to cast fireballs or throw enemies away if you are using magical stones to protect yourself. They disrupt any magic that passes too close to them.

When the sun was setting and the caravan getting ready to camp, the tribe appeared all around them. They came from holes in the ground and camouflaged hiding spots. The wargs were the first to attack, appearing all around the caravan. The guards and the merchants found themselves outnumbered with a warg larger than a pony attacking them from each side. They didn`t last long. Even the conductors of the three slave wagons had barely time to notch an arrow before the huge beast was biting their throat out.

The kinetic mage sent one warg to the sky, but another came from behind and bit his leg, while a third came and closed his strong jaws on his head. The heat mage threw a fireball that burned four of our wargs, but Erica hit him with an arrow containing a little bit of the goddess in the tip and he went down, being eaten alive by Her.

By now our warriors had appeared from underground and were mounted upon the goddess' horses. They were throwing arrows into the fray, finishing not already killed by the wargs.

The body mage was the problem.
 
 
When the wargs got near him, he used his magic to enhance his speed and strength. It is the only kind of magic that can be used with magical armor since magic does cannot go through it.

In seconds the damned man was a blur of motion. With his sword, he decapitated a warg that was attacking him from the front. He used his shield to hit and kill the warg attacking him from the left. He then sidestepped the warg attacking him from the right while the one from behind was repelled by his armor.

We sent two raptors after him next and he killed both with a fast movement of his body. Even the regeneration given by the goddess was not working well since his sword was full of stones set to make it cut better. Our arrows were not penetrating his armor and he had so many magical stones that it was obvious that his armor, sword and shield would have magical charge to withstand a long time.

Anora ordered a retreat. We kept attacking him with bats and birds to distract and confound while our warriors scattered the horses and pack mules. Then we attacked him with four velociraptors and ten wargs all of them shooting dark tendrils from their mouths. When he got close to one of them the others attacked from the flanks and all this time five of our warriors were surrounding him, shooting poisoned arrows from horseback.

We lost two more wargs, but finally a dark tendril landed in his arm. The little piece of the goddess walked over his body and found the faceplate, where it lodged itself making him blind by covering the eye holes and attacking his eyes at the same time. He had to use magic to regenerate his body and avoid infection by the goddess, he managed to bring one arm to his face and take the tendril from there but by then two wargs had attacked his legs and managed to bite, even if not penetrating much due to the armor.

When he freed himself from the wargs he was moving slower. Now we could see his movements. So, we simply kept surrounding him, shooting arrows while we sent warriors to get the wagons and move them out.

Then we did a complete retreat. We sent bats dropping pieces of the goddess on him until he was covered in tendrils and, while he got free we took all that was left, mounted our horses and fled.

The crazy guy even tried to pursue us a little, but he was on foot, and he had used too much magic in the fight to still be able to move faster than a horse or warg.

If we had ambushed him in the middle of nowhere he would have died, but as it was, he retreated to the direction of Resistance, reaching the city in the next day. By then our Tribe was far away, dealing with the slaves.
From the sixty slaves we gained from this conflict, thirty converted the next day. The others we guided to a place near our woods, and there we helped them to establish a settlement. This was something that we always knew that we would have to do sooner or later: the choice given to us by our goddess towards others would always be a choice between certain death in the grasslands or joining us. This was not a good choice... and we didn`t wish to have more converts by this way.
 
 
The body mages guarding Stephen`s door now terrified me. I saw that they were using only a few kinetic stones, but I was sure that they could move faster and were stronger than we. Just when I was finding myself so superior to the slower, weaker normal humans, we found that there were others above us in the food chain.

We had to face them to free Stephen though, so four days after I first came back to work, we implemented the next phase of our plans. In that bloody day, Erynia, looking exactly like me, went to work in my place. I left the building later in the morning, with my face completely altered by dark tendrils placed between my bones and skin.

Melusine, carrying Sonia, Ane two and Betha, left our apartment in the afternoon to go place flowers in our little shrine to the goddess outside the city walls. They all had bought horses to do this with and pretended not to notice both the spies and thugs following them.

The thugs had been a nice addition. That was the result of Melusine saying a “bit too much” at a tavern when buying beer for her master. She drank a little of the ale that she was buying and told the tavern master, besides anyone that wanted to listen, that she and the girls were hiding a little of their master`s money near the shrine. Only four thugs came, but, together with the four spies, they would do.

As soon as the girls were out of range of the damned red stones, a large group of birds plus two pterodactyls that were lying in ambush, attacked the men that were following them. The survivors from the first attack found two little fast girls attacking them with supernatural speed, feral savagery, and equipped with very good knifes enchanted with magical stones to cut through normal armor.

I and Melusine were around as backup, but thankfully were not needed.

Later in the day, the zombies that had been the brave men following the young girls, moved slowly towards the direction of the city. Their open wounds were covered by muddy ash to avoid the damage that the setting sun might do to the rotting flesh.

We waited by the river for the rescue that was coming. A group of our sisters had stolen a boat at Resistance.
 

 
Erynia`s Journal

Dressing as a maid to enter my father`s house was an interesting experience. If I knew how invisible this would make me, I would have done this sooner back when I was dating Stephen. Even with security paying attention to the “Empire`s whore”, after being searched at the entrance, I was free to move around.

Getting into the library and seeing Stephen for the first time in years was difficult. He had aged more than I expected. His once clean face was covered in an ugly beard. He had allowed his twisted legs to get atrophied and his torso was not as muscular as it had been.

Of course, his eyes lit up as he recognized me. Anya is strong and has an iron will, but she has no magical aura. Even wearing the damned magical stone, I couldn't help but see his eyes bulge as soon as I entered the room. Unfortunately, I had to deal with some things first before I could greet my lover properly.
 
 
Whilst I was dusting here and there, pretending to organize books and other things I also passed close to his table many times. Stephen kept giving me little magical stones that I set in a previously ordained configuration, hidden among the books. These were communication stones Stephen had already charged, and they began working as soon as they were placed. At the same time, I also located the secret passage into the wall and the little spy placed there. After three days of tedious observation, he was getting bored and left his post many times to wander about.
 
 
At midday, our little spy went to get some lunch. As soon as I felt his departure, I dropped the collar with a kinetic stone to the ground. As we had imagined, the stones that we placed around the library concentrated my instinctive communication with the goddess in a single direction, where we knew that our signal would not meet any of the red stones that detected “wasting disease.” We placed a set of stones outside the city walls to guide the signal in the direction of the caves, so now, Stephen and I had a stronger communication with the goddess than I had had in a month.

Finally free to be myself, I jumped to the spy holes in the wall and dropped two little stones through them to wait for our little spy. I then rushed back over to Stephen and kissed his astonished face. Before he could say anything I kissed his lips and sent a good portion of goddess inside of him. I wanted my Stephania to be ready as fast as we could.

Stephen was put to sleep while the tendrils changed his body. It would not be possible to do much for his legs, they would remain distorted and short until we got to the main body of the goddess but the tendrils could run inside his distorted limbs strengthening them and reducing the pain. Stephania would be able to walk with the help of a crutch.

Interestingly, the goddess soon sent me a message to masturbate so that my pleasure could be used to reinforce Stephen`s mental change into Stephania. He had been castrated by my father for violating his daughter and had been denied pleasure for so long that my pleasure alone would be more than enough to do the mental shift.

Of course, I could see the irony of masturbating in that house, in a library where two powerful body mages guarded the only door to the outside and with a spy in the walls. I smiled when I heard the body of the spy fall right after I started to masturbate. Perhaps my actions distracted him and he didn`t see the little stones? I would always wonder.

One thing that I do well is to curse people and those two little stones had an echo of my worst memories imbibed in them. The little spy probably didn`t last a second as soon as he got near them.
 
 
By mid afternoon, Stephania opened her eyes for the first time. The beard had fallen, her features were softened and her torso was already showing two little breasts. It would take months for her face to change completely, but the important part was that now she could talk to me trough our collective mind.

We stood there looking at each other and exchanging information by mindspeak as the day passed. The ideal would be to wait for darkness, but I was afraid that the two master spies of my father would want to interrogate Anya again. I was not sure that I could defeat them.

There was no door leading to the spy holes in the wall. I could not feel any secret passage, the windows of the library were narrow and high in the wall. There was only one way out, through the body mages.
The weirdest thing is that I and Anora are body mages also, but we learned to use magic to alter the bodies of other people, while the two guys at the door had learned to use the same kind of magic inside their bodies making themselves stronger and faster trough a series of exercises and devotion to the magical martial arts. They also could increase their abilities for a while using their innate magic and, as the Tribe had learned, this made then better fighters than even our enhanced selves.

Well, it would be body magic against body magic. The door of the library was at the end of a corridor but it was a very well traveled corridor, so, we had to be discreet. It was an extra disadvantage for our side
I left the library saying to the guards that I would go to the kitchen get some soup for Stephen and I did just this, but used the trip to spread some more of our little communication stones, basically allowing me to act in the building using the body of the goddess as a weapon.
 
 
When I returned, I pretended to trip on the hem of my dress, dropping hot soup, full of goddess, into the face of the warrior to my right. When his companion noticed the dark tendrils suffocating his partner, I threw a set of stones on the floor and cast the worse curse that I could. I really went inside me. I remembered all the feelings of the betrayal when my father`s guards left me to the Tribe, being taken from my horse, the attempted rape, the mistreatment in the hands of Urk, seeing Stephen being castrated, and the infernal emptiness that filled me when I realized that my father had planned to use me to start a war! I used it all in a single spell.

The guard that was also being attacked by the goddess tendrils died immediately from my spell. The other one though, still had the energy to lift his sword and come after me. He had used his own magic to fix his body and counter my spell, but apparently did not have enough energy to increase much his speed now. I saw him coming and, despite the confined space of the corridor, stepped aside and avoided being skewered by his short sword. Then I tried to strike him with the big kitchen knife that I had hidden under the tray of soup. He avoided it and, with a fast movement, reversed the direction that his sword was going, doing an upper cut that cleaved through the knife and some of my fingers.

There was no blood or pain. In the dark corridor, the goddess sealed my wounds while I gave a step back, as if to run. I then opened my mouth and hurled a dark tendril at him. Coiling that thing in my throat had really hurt, but it was worth it since the tendril, now free of my body, entangled my opponent`s arm and started to climb it, aiming for his head.

The guard tried to scream, but the stones that I had dropped earlier, in the beginning of the fight, blocked sound.

While the guard was trying to tear the tendril from his arm, Stephania, listening to my mindspeak, opened the door at his back and threw a heat stone on the floor right between the guard`s legs. Charging that stone had been difficult since neither of us was a heat mage. A blast of heat rose above the stone, scorching the body of the guard and burning the tendril that was attacking his face.

The blast was not as powerful as would have been had the stone been properly charged, but it did do its job of distraction by pain. He let his sword fall from his blackened fingers and this was enough for me to approach and give him his last kiss ever.
 
 
By now the body of the first guard was full of the goddess, becoming a zombie under our control, and we ordered it to stand guard in the doorway. With luck, in the semi darkness of the corridor, it could pass for a living being for a while. It would look like the other guard may have gone off to the bathroom.

We dragged the desiccated body of the other guard towards the back of the library and hurried out of the building. Stephania disguised as a somewhat short maid. Once outside, we donned our collars with kinetic stones that blocked our communication with the goddess. I also allowed the tendril that was giving me the appearance of having black irises to retreat within my body and change my appearance a little. Now, with my blue eyes clearly visible, I no longer looked like Anya.
 
 
We knew that, at the servant`s gate, the guards of the compound would be more alert and perhaps would check who we were. But the commotion in the street caused by zombies attacking one of the city gates currently had their full attention, so we passed by without incident. We found the local bath house I had earlier scouted and dashed inside. While the city was awash in turmoil with ancient fears resurfacing, we took a bath. Afterwards, we swapped out our clothes for some that I had left well hidden earlier. Now, we left the bathhouse as a farm lady and her female dwarf companion.

The fuss from earlier had passed as the eight zombies that attacked the city had been easily defeated. But, I was quick to notice that some people from the Melbur house were on the streets looking for us. They would not find us though, since they were looking for a woman with black eyes with a cripple for a companion, not a lady with bright blue eyes together with a dwarf woman that clearly could walk, albeit with the help of a cane.
The zombies had not attacked the city close to the gate that led directly to our little glade, they had circled the walls and attacked a smaller gate, closer to Melbur home. With the zombies defeated, a large group of farmers gathered by the gate leading to the glade, wanted to go to their homes after a day of selling their vegetables and grain. The city guard decided to send out a few troops to see if things were safe. An hour later, once it proved to be, they allowed the gate to open and everyone to pass.

We still had to walk for an hour before we were out of range of the red stones. Then we contacted the other girls by mindspeak and they brought two horses for us. Now all we had to wait for was the boat that was coming. Of course we didn`t wait close to the glade that we had dedicated to the goddess. This would be the first place where Melbur house would look. It was kind of fun since we had “little bats” flying around showing to us where everyone in the region was. Melbur house didn`t risk sending out a lot of people to search beyond the walls, and those that were outside the city were searching in the countryside away from our position.

Melbur house also didn`t want to tell the city guard that someone had stolen their most valuable slave, killed two of their few body mages and left a zombie in their house. There is such thing as “loosing face” after all.
I wonder what they thought of the little note that Anya left in our apartment? Something along the lines of “Hehehe! Bye losers!” was written, but with much more venom.
 

 
Melissa and Alysa`s Rescue Journal

Since we have to write this as debriefing after our mission, let`s start by the obvious: Girls, don`t do this unless properly trained and let`s pretend that you will not do it at home.

Do what? Sneak into Resistance, steal a little boat that they used to carry about ten slaves up river from time to time? Yeah girls, Anora is around and she demands that I prove that what we did was “morally justifiable”, as if she didn`t look when a dull knife was used on a captive`s private parts a year ago. Pure hypocrisy in my humble opinion, as if we were going to be saints from now on...

OK, OK mother Anora, we will justify our actions. Resistance is a nice city, we do not have any grudge against them, but we bankrupted that ship captain that had worked hard to buy a single small ship because he was using it to carry slaves. And, by the way, everybody around here, even the “Free People” always had slaves. Slavery is justifiable under almost all religions in this area and...

OK, back to the subject before an angry goddess makes me ugly. We had been training under aunt Bastet for the past year. She taught us to scale walls, hide in shadows, throw knifes, and use blow darts among other nice things. We had been playing a little game against our pack of wargs for the past three months. The wargs would hide a bone and guard it. We would then try to sneak into the pack and take it from them. If we failed, we had to hunt a deer and give it to the pack for food. If they failed, the goddess forced them to stay at the cave for half a day.

The best wargs at the game, the ones that remembered to pay attention to the bone after half a morning had passed, were marked to mate in the next season. So, the wargs were very well motivated as were we.

It took a month before the wargs started to become predictable. In two months time, we were winning more than losing. The goddess then sent a pair of shadow cats to help the wargs. In two more months we finally won one match against their combined forces and Bastet considered that we were ready.

More than ready!

The normal humans are practically blind in the dark and the goddess covered our faces with a part of her body, giving us breathable air even under the water and the ability to see life forms in the dark. We crossed the river, scaled a pier near the little boat, and hit the nearby humans with blow darts before they knew what was happening. We then took the boat and were far away by the time that anyone could raise the alarm.

There was pursuit, but not for long. By the middle of the next day our little birds told us that the boats had retreated back to Resistance. We were sure that most boats in the river had, by now, been warned about us and that we would face a blockade once we proceeded on towards Antigon. Since even in the dry season the river was full of side channels and places to hide we knew that, thanks to birds taken by the goddess giving warning we could hide from the other boats.
 
 
The only enemy that we feared was the creature that Erynia had seen in her way downriver. This “king of the river” would certainly demand tribute as it did from all other boats.

So, it was no surprise when, on our first day of travel, the same big, ugly head, seen by Erynia, emerged from the river, looking down upon us. We bowed our heads in respect and got on our knees, awaiting for its decision upon our fate.

The creature startled us by using mindspeak.

“It has been a while since the Goddess of the Mountains came to this river. She was once a respected and feared neighbor to my race, we are glad to see old deities coming back to life but we still demand payment for the use of our river.”

We could feel that the creature was female and she had a deep voice that reverberated in our minds.

Melissa was the one that got courage to speak. “The goddess admits that she has forgotten a lot, but she remembers that the great ones from the river like different fish. We have brought such a bag for you. These fish were created by our tribe and are full of what we are calling hormones. If eaten by a human, they would make a male grow breasts. In excess, this would even reduce his male parts.”

We both felt a little headache as the creature looked deeply into our memories of these fish. The goddess allowed it and even sent some memories of her own, with information about underground rivers and caves. It was not explicitly said, but information was also part of the payment.

“Interesting fish and interesting discoveries. I accept the payment and will even allow your future journey upstream to go undisturbed. But I must warn you that if you hurt any of the fishermen or regular captains in this river you will not leave this place alive, and your 'goddess' will suffer consequences.”

We lowered the sack containing the fish and the creature allowed us to continue downstream. It was clear that we would have to avoid confrontation at any costs while still on the river.
 
 
We navigated a maze of channels to avoid Antigon and the boats placed there. Near Thebes, though, we could not avoid been seen by farms or hamlets, so we traveled by night and remained hidden at the margin during the day. Thus it took three nights to get near Thebes and we met the girls at night on one of the river beaches at the northern side of the island.

There were few river beaches suitable for loading horses into boats. Even though our boat had been made to pass through channels and to be placed on a beach in case of a storm, the beach must have a reasonably low inclination and sand not too rough lest it be impossible to bring it back to the river with the extra weight of the horses. Truthfully, it would have been impossible without a pier if we were not stronger than we looked and the horses taken by the goddess.

Of course the beach we wanted to land on was being watched. Before we landed the boat, Alysa had to jump in the water and swim around behind our adversary's postion. Then, when she was in place, we allowed our boat to approach. Alysa put the watcher to sleep when he spotted us. A pity, he tried run to his horse as slumber overtook him.

Thank the goddess he was not using one of Stephania's communication devices!

Anya and Melusine stood watch around our beach looking for more spies while we, Erynia and Stephania, loaded the boat. It was fast since the horses were incredibly obedient. We even took the messenger`s horse, making it part of the goddess, and loaded it onboard the boat.

Yep, four horses and seven girls plus a baby in a boat made to house ten slaves in a cage plus four sailors. The boat was a little tight on space because of the horses, but still manageable. With the help of the wind we managed to go upstream and soon the island of Thebes was out of our sight.
 
 
Despite the boat being full and low on the water, now we had seven people to row - all of them with strength and endurance above the normal for a human. Helped by the wind, we rowed like madwomen throughout the night and made half the distance to Antigon. But there were war galleys coming up the river after us and also a large number of boats from Antigon were coming downriver as well.

To our dismay, we found that they were now using a different kind of red stone. It appeared to be adjusted to detect wasting disease only in the direction to which the main face of the stone was pointed, but had a much longer range. Using it, they started to find our bats and owls in the sky and shoot them down with arrows. Our long range scouting was being dwindled.

There were also men coming in horses following the river and small boats coming in numbers to search the channels. So, we decided to take one of the channels that everyone knew led only to the middle of the jungle.

Once deep enough within the jungle, we made camp and rested beside the channel. The deep tropical forest gave us cover while using eagles to see our opponents from a distance.

After a few hours of rest and a light meal, we continued up the channel as far as our boat could go. Then we left most of our gold, clothing, and even the saddles in the boat and entered the forest. Erynia asked permission of travel for the spirit of the place and it allowed us to cross his domains as long as we didn`t harm a tree or take an animal for our goddess.

At the beginning, we didn`t have much food, but the goddess would send a pterodactyl carrying supplies every night and thus we could walk slowly, disturbing little. We neither hunted nor left any trace of our passage through this part of the forest. After three days in the jungle, we reached the grasslands and there we met five of our sisters surrounded by a large number of the goddess' beasts. They also had brought one of the Tribe`s big wagons. Finally! It was with pleasure that we rested laying in the straw bedded wagon while we were ridden to the safety of the caves.

Now aunt Anora, can we go and train?

Bastet told us that she has a surprise, especially made for Urk, to be delivered to his master's chambers in Last Fall and that we get to deliver it.

Can we?

 

 
 
To Be Continued...