A Dark and Deadly Beauty

The Aftermath

“Shut your warbling c**k-holes!” Electra warned the group of whispering fay at her back. “You’re so loud, the rebels could sneak behind you and ram a sword up your arse before you even knew they were there. I don’t intend to end my life skewered on one of their pig-iron blades, so be silent and stay alert!”

It was nearly Yule, and she had been brimming with excitement to celebrate with her brother, Colm. For the first time in years, he was well enough to share a traditional luncheon with her and hang the evergreen garland on their door and hearth. The fire would roar and ale would flow. Their lips would be shiny from the grease of a well-roasted duck breast and their stomachs would be near bursting from the fresh bread and winter vegetables Colm had meticulously grown in the garden.They would sip tea and nibble on spiced raisin hand pies while they exchanged gifts and fondly remember the Yule of their childhood where they ate tea cakes in the kitchen of the brothel, surrounded by women who doted on them. Then, they would dress in finest silks and attend the Solstice Feast at the palace- dancing and drinking and jumping over bonfires until the first moon of winter had faded into the dawn.

Before Colm was healed -before Princess Emilia had burned his curse from his blood with her crimson magic- Electra had spent Yule alone, sharpening her blades and drinking expensive wine by the fire, while her brother lay in a drugged state in the darkness of his sickroom. He had been broken, body and mind, and couldn’t even stir to take lunch with Electra.

But this year…this year would be wonderful. Electra felt like a child again, counting down the days until Yule and waiting with crushing anticipation until she and Colm would share in the warmth of this sacred occasion. Nothing could have dampened her delight.

Or so Electra had thought.

But then the Captain of the Guard, Lucien, had pounded on her door in the middle of the crisp night with the unwelcome news that another human trade caravan had been attacked- this time with casualties. A man and his wife had been burned alive, caught in a ring of magical flame. Their cart had been sacked, the goods stolen and things he criminals had no use for were scattered along the road like refuse.

So, she gathered some folk from her guild and headed to search the area along the route.

It had been a solid week of searching, camped out in a thicket near the coastal border of the realms. The salted ocean water thrashed the shore on one side, and the frozen woodlands loomed with heavy, treacherous silence on the other. Sleeping on a ice-glazed bed roll and briskly washing in the glacial waves of the frosty sea before slipping back into the same stinking, unwashed travel clothes was making her irritable and short- tempered. Not that she usually had a long temper, but…

Now she glided through the forest, a ghost on the breeze, with her deadly-sharp hatchets at her hips and her curved karambit knives settled comfortably in her palms like the hands of an old lover. A fisherman, whose tongue was loosened by a fistful of copper shillings, had told one of Electra’s scouts that a group of folk had been traveling the back-roads of the coast, making camp outside of border villages. As soon as the report reached her ears, Electra gathered her crew and spread through the forest like a sinuous mist.

She had made a mistake, though. The crew she brought with her were talented, so talented- but also green. She had hoped that taking some of the top students of her guild on this mission would give them real-life experience, that they would shed the cloaks of novices and rise to meet the challenge. But these fay, still so young in the scheme of things, had shown a disheartening lack of discipline this entire week.

Electra wasn’t completely heartless. She turned a deaf ear when they moaned about the bland food and cold beds. She looked away when they overindulged on wine by the small fire, snoring drunkenly through the night and waking up hungover and groggy the next day. She said nothing as they sniped at each other, out of fear or discomfort, and tried to remember what she was like on her first guild mission all those years ago.

But she would not, could not, tolerate such foolish behavior while they actively pursued violent criminals into unfamiliar hinterlands. Whispering like children while they should be watching each other’s back was not only a mark of immaturity- it could be a death sentence. And she sure as hell did not want to have to pen letters to the mothers of these chattering twits and explain that their precious baby caught a rebel's arrow in their throat because they couldn’t still their mouths.

After barking at them, Electra felt a shift in the crew. The group, two women and three men, would have been used to curt orders and blue language- they were War Guild after all. But,this was no practice drill. Shame and chagrin were painted across their faces now, all except one man.

While the other four looked rightfully abashed, he towered over his peers with a mocking sneer plastered on his fanged mouth. He was a giant, immovable and daunting in stature. Strapped to his back was a broadsword, but in his hand was his true weapon- a staff capped with a crown of serrated metal. His skin was creamy white and blemishless, stretched over bulging muscles that he displayed in an ornate sleeve leather vest that he wore open,despite the cold. His name was Sesto, the rising star of the Warfare Guild.

“Seems like Lady El’s on the rag,” Sesto smirked at the other men, who smartly kept their eyes on the trees they wove through.

Most grown men would wince away from the condescension in his eyes. Most women would simply walk away from the scornful words of such a hulking, imposing form. Electra wasn't like most anybody.

She stopped in her tracks, her heel coming down near silently on the leaf-carpeted forest floor. She didn’t even turn her head to look him in the eye.

“Perhaps, Sesto, if you spoke out of your mouth instead of your ass, folk would be more interested in what you have to say. That said, regardless of what end you’re braying from, I would strongly encourage you to shut it before you end up on latrine duty for the remainder of our mission. If you think your weak words will prickle my skin, you’re mistaken. And if you think I will allow you to endanger this crew any further with your pointless jabber, then your mind is as weak and useless as the flaccid tube of flesh hanging between your thighs.”

Now, she did turn and look. She kept her face neutral, but inside she was giggling at the crestfallen face of this bully of a man who would talk down to her because she is small and a woman.

She laughed even harder in her head when she heard his meek, defeated voice call her a “frigid b***h” and the group resumed their noiseless hunt for the rebels.

Electra couldn’t have timed it better if she had used a crystal ball and dark magic. Just as the watery autumn sun set behind them, casting long and welcoming shadows that offered additional cover beneath the barren trees, the group’s tracker signaled that she had picked something up.

Claris, a stocky and plump young fairy woman with a shock of olive green hair, had the nose of a bloodhound, the eyes of a falcon, and the ears of a lynx. Pair that with her keen intuition and a mind as sharp as a bee’s sting, and she made one of the most skilled fairies in the guild- despite mediocre performance in combat. She could wield a sword well enough to save her own skin, but her real gifts were her senses.

Claris snuck up beside Electra, her breath tickling the back of Electra’s neck.

“I smell a campfire. Smoky… like it’s just been extinguished. Odd considering it’s almost dinner time and it’s near dark. There are feet shuffling, not hurried or busy. About one and a half kilometers south of us. I think they may be preparing to move camp.”

“They probably move in moonlight, making it harder for us to catch them and even harder for traders to see. Smarter than I would have assumed…” Electra said.

She waved to the rest of the group to huddle around her. Hunched together, she spoke low and steady. “We’re coming up on their camp. Claris believes they may be moving locations. We have the advantage here. The dusk can conceal us, and they will be occupied. The King would prefer for this to be deathless, but do what you must to defend yourselves. They have a fire elemental with them who's already killed two humans, no doubt they’d shed few tears over us. We also have no idea what the others are capable of. Our goal is to detain them all and bring them to the Capitol for trial. But, even if this goes t**s up-we need to capture at least one and bring them for interrogation. Small pockets of rebellion like this grow, it’s better if the Crown can nip it in the bud before it spreads. Questions?”

She could taste the anticipation in the air, as sharp a tang as vinegar on her tongue. Energy rolled off of the five of them, eagerness and fear and cockiness and rhapsody. Electra was indeed a seasoned warrior, but these wet-behind-the-ear younglings were about to get their first glimpse of the blood-pumping violence they had been training for, and she was glad to be able to usher them towards it.

They broke and moved through the fading light, flickers of flesh in shadows and shade. Meters and minutes passed and then, they were there.

Claris was right. The extinguished campfire still wafted thin plumes of white smoke. Rucksacks and bed rolls had been piled into a rickety cart. The unenthusiastic mule hitched to the cart looked ahead, dead-eyed and unbothered. But the camp was empty, save for the rustle of wind through the branches and the twisting haze of the dying coals.

Electra caught Claris’ eye and watched as the tracker’s mouth, soundless, formed the words “They’re still here.”

Claris could hear them, the ragged intake of their breathing. She could smell the odor of their unwashed bodies and the fresh sweat trickling from their pores. But somehow, despite her sharp eye roving across the area, she could not see them.

Electra held up a fist, ordering the crew to hold. Stay in the shadows, her eyes urged. Protect your back. Don’t get careless.

Then, Claris saw it. A ripple of air, a wave of iridescence. That was all the warning she had before the cart ignited and grew into an inferno.

“They have a Light Manipulator!” Claris screamed.

Well, s**t. Electra hadn’t expected one of those. It was a rare elemental gift, indeed, to be able to bend light to blind your enemies or make things vanish in plain sight.

The fire burned unnaturally hot, and the frenzied mule, who had been made to appear bound but was in truth loose, bolted clear into the woods. It brayed pitifully, weaving between roots and tree trunks. In it’s haste, the poor animal charged into an invisible, but very solid body. With a thud, a blonde haired woman appeared out of the air and dropped like a graceless pigeon to the ground.

An instant later, the light shield dropped and the stunned faces of the rebels stared back at the warriors.

Bless that stupid mule, Electra thought as she advanced with her blades held high. Of all the folk he could have trampled in his escape, he took down the light bender and gave her crew a fair fight.

The sounds of close combat bloomed all around her as her warriors descended on the scraggly pack of rebel fay. Electra raised her blades and blocked the blow of heavy fist from a gangly man with silvery fish gills along his throat and face. He was the tallest and loudest, so Electra savored the look of awe and shock on his face when the petite, brown-skinned woman, no taller than his chest, kicked him across his hips and made a sickening crack.

They were fairies, in a magical world with magical powers, yet Electra’s adversaries never ceased to underestimate her because of her s*x and stature. Well, she thought as she dodged a clumsy punch, she would prove them all wrong.

She ducked swiftly under his arm and delivered a powerful jab to his left kidney. With a sweep of her leg, she brought her boot up and landed a kick to the small of his back, sending him staggering. He tried to turn to face her, but she shoved her foot between his ankles and tripped him, sending him sprawling like a splayed hen ready for the spit.

Before he could move to get up, her knee was on his chest and her blades were at his throat.

“Hey there, big man. You should hold very, very still,” she gloated menacingly.

Sure, he was big. But, he was c**k-sure and untrained. He didn’t take his defeat well.

“Don’t act so superior, woman. You’re nothing but the King’s rabid lap-dog,” he spat.

A dangerous smile spread across her face and she raised a curved knife to his cheek. Delicately, she sliced a line over his cheekbone and watched droplets of blood rise through the broken skin. She leaned down, until her breath fanned across his wind-chilled face.

“A lap-dog, eh? And what are you? You’re no fighter, that’s for sure. And you’re not an elemental…or else you would have used your powers by now. Let me guess…you’re an alchemist, inspired to take up the cause of your fellow alchemical brother- the traitor Princeling that left this land with his head hung low. Deluded, misinformed, pathetic, an exile. I suppose if my options are to be like you or to be a lap dog…then woof woof.”

The sounds of fighting faded slowly. With her opponent subdued and bound, she took stock of her crew. They were all alive, thank the stars, but several were wounded. Bloody wounds and purple bruises marked them all.

Sesto had gotten the worst of it though. He had gone after the fire mage, and had taken a blast of flame to the side of his head. Sesto had managed to douse the flames before they consumed him, but the fire mage had fled into the darkened forest.

Blistered and raw, his ear and neck were already weeping with pus and what little remnants of hair on that side were badly charred. He would need medical attention at the nearest village to keep his burn from turning gangrenous before they could make it home.

Electra had gotten a fleeting look at the mage before he ran, and she would make sure to remember his face- the crooked nose and sallow skin, the short spikes of hair that looked like dry wheat chaff. Something in Electra’s gut told her he had been the leader of this rebel party. A coward and weak willed, but cunning and dangerous all the same. She would face him again, she knew. And when she did, she would bring him to his knees.

In total, they had captured three.

Electra’s alchemist.

A winged fay who now sat with her wings clamped together.

And the light manipulator.

The rest had escaped, gone to ground to lick their wounds. There was no point in pursuing them.

So Electra guided her team, and their bound prisoners, back to their camp by the light of the proud autumn moon. She passed hard wheat biscuits out and passed around a bottle of wine, and found a jar of pain-relieving liniment to spread on injuries. Sesto’s burns needed most of it, but no one complained. A knife scratch or bloodied nose was small in comparison to what he would endure without the medicine.

They sat around the small fire on their bed rolls and ate, the only noises were of chewing teeth and gulping throats.

“Men,” Electra said, breaking the post-combat reverie, “You all did admirably. All of you can return home with your chins high.”

“Cheers, Lady El,” Claris raised her biscuit in a mock toast.

“We will camp here tonight,” Electra continued, “At dawn we will make for the nearest town and I will hire a merchant with a carriage to carry us home. It will be a long, hard day of travel, especially for those of you with bad wounds, but if we push through- you will all make it to your own beds by midnight. Sleep now. I will take the first watch.

Full and exhausted, her crew dropped onto their beds and we’re all asleep before their heads hit the ground. The prisoners were bound to the thick trunk of a pine, covered in blankets and droop-headed. If they slept or simply hung their heads in despair, Electra couldn’t tell. As long as they didn’t cause trouble or wake her folk, she didn’t care.

The fire burned low as she sat in the night, letting her mind wander to images of crispy roast duck and sticky-sweet pies.

Though tomorrow would be arduous, Electra’s heart felt lighter than it had in days. Her men were alive. They had fulfilled their mission. And she would make it home for Yule, with days to spare