Red's CD Project Story 2: Part 22 – Power

Note: I expected to stay with the witch and Oan here, but the song steered me toward another direction. I think it turned into a good way to start the new disc.

Disc 2
Track 1: Broken, Beat & Scarred – Metallica

“They scratch me. They scrape me. They cut and rape me”

His name used to be Eglan Nas Ver Wetching, an Atlan noble of some wealth and power in the days before the splitting of the world by Tarek Grandar. He led armies across the vast sea in the east to conquer lands now lost even in legends. Never a handsome man, he grew strangely fond of his two younger sisters when he hit the age when boys started to notice girls. For years, he made veiled advancements toward the two girls. When they reached an age of consent, they both outright denied his intentions which drove him slowly mad.

He turned to battle, to war, to brutality, to things polite folks could not imagine. His armies butchered entire villages against the wishes of his King. Eventually, he was banished with penalty of death if he ever returned to Atlan. That was when he found the Dinar, or the Dinar found him. Hatala could not quite puzzle out how that had come about.

The Dinar called him Neros, which in the old tongue meant casket. The name came from the two wooden stakes that he carried on his belt loop. They came from the caskets his two sisters had been buried in when he was finished with them. A ghastly business there that even Hatala did not probe deeply into uncovering.

While he had never been a vision of beauty for any woman, he had not improved in appearance in his considerable age. As with all the ancient Dinar, which there were not many, his skin was light green and lined with thin purple veins. His eyes were nearly empty of emotion, his nose was all but gone, and dark blisters spotted his body. The dark powers of the underworld could maintain flesh for only so long. Soon, Neros would dissipate into spirit and return to the fires of the underworld. But his strength was not all gone. Contrary to his physical body, his spirit’s strength grew in power and vitality. That was how the ancient Dinar maintained control over the younger, more able-bodied recruits to the Dinar brotherhood. It was also what made him and his companions useful to her.

Taking them into her bed had started as a necessity as they traveled from Noce to Stra. Even though she was strong, Salama’s pull still called her back. The only way to quench that thirst was to engage in the acts. She had not lied to her father, the Dinar were brutal with her in bed. The brothers, Lars and Het, used her together, forcing her into acts no good woman would ever admit to. She had loved indicating such to her father, who would have betrayed her in a second to the lusty folk of Stra that wanted her dead from the time she was a little girl and they noticed she was different. The look on his face left a sweet taste on her tongue. She was different now more than ever, but no self-righteous people were going to bring her down. That was going to be quite the opposite really. The folks of Stra were in for quite a shock and those that did not bow down to her would be fed to the Children of Salama.

Neros drooled down at her naked and used body from the doorway to her father’s room. He was the ranking officer in the little band that Salama had sent with her to complete his wishes in Stra and beyond.

The sworn pupil of the Lord of the Underworld disrobed. Tufts of hair fell from his head with the black robe to the floor. Like many of the others, his lips were eroded away leaving his gray and black teeth grinning out at all times. She could smell decay emanating off him from across the room. The odor always hit like a punch in the stomach forcing vomit up into her throat.

“Please, be gentle,” she whimpered. He soaked in her meekness.

He was the roughest with her. He bit and cut, much like the others, but he scratched deep into her flesh, pouring out blood and tightened his cold, stiff hands around her throat till she was nearly unconscious. Her screams aroused him so she used all her strength to deny him that pleasure as long as possible.

When he grabbed the wooden stakes, the ones that had rotted, slivered and softened in the age since he first grabbed them from his sisters’ gravesite, there was no stopping the torrent of agony. He used them unmercifully on her, gouging and tearing away at her insides.

For her part, the pain was terrible but it also provided the lengthiest pleasure that any of the Dinar had been able to produce. Old flesh was indeed weak.

Neros, like Lars, Het and the fourth, a mute named Mahmet, who came a long time ago from beyond the Sorna, all believed she was their minion. Nothing more than a toy to be controlled, used and abused. So they believed and so she allowed them.

Power and authority were not always wrestled with the sword and the shield. While brute force was good for men, women had to use other means to gain their end. She had known from the moment she felt the sudden urge to run west toward Noce that she could not succumb totally to that desire. For her to maintain her own destiny, she had to be attentive, to watch, to listen and understand the weaknesses of those she was dealing with.

“You are not focused,” Neros voice sounded as if he had swallowed a handful of dirt. From his breath, it smelled like he ate a handful of another substance left on the ground.

“I fear the neighbors,” she lied. “They spy, they always have. We cannot have them aware just yet.”

He grunted. He may have been countless years old, but he still reacted to a woman’s worries the same as any other man with a grunt and a roll of the eyes.

“They saw nothing,” he bit into the flesh of her neck.

“We cannot be sure this way,” she held back a surprised yip from the pain. “The folk cannot know of us just yet.”

He pinned her shoulders down and stared with dead pupils down at her. Even so, she could sense his desire, his need.

“I will send Het and Lars with the children,” Neros sat back on his knees. “They will handle the neighbors.”

She was sure to sigh loudly and turned her face away. He could not see her wince that way, he loved to see his work strain out in the lines of her face and in tears that not even she could hold in.

“You know they will bungle it,” she sighed again and started to close her legs.

“Woman,” it came out almost as a plea. She could tell the tone even surprised him.

“I cannot provide you the proper attention with this weighing on my mind,” she turned back letting the full effect of her large green eyes to take effect. He dropped a hard fist down onto the mattress before standing up.

“You tease me,” he growled. “Be here when I return or I promise to make you feel ever inch of these neighbors pain.”

“Yes Lord Neros,” she sat up on her knees and bowed. He stalked out of the room, letting out a low whistle that called the other Dinar to him.

Hatala rolled around in the covers of the bed. When the door below closed, she laughed using her power to heal any wounds they had caused. It would not be long, she thought, until they were completely hers. It would all be hers, including him. The one they sought. The one who Salama truly feared.

She rubbed her stomach and cooed thinking about it. Before all was said and done, Hatala Del Aram would be second only to the Lord of the Underworld. Her offspring, well, that blessed creature may just supplant that lord as well. Then she would rule all.