Chapter 8 – Bloody Secrets
"What the hell do you mean there's no alcohol in town?!" the tall, scantly-clad sorceress screamed at the innkeeper, causing several of the nearby patrons to turn with a start and causing the woman's shorter blonde-haired companion to raise an inquisitive brow. It had been dusk by the time the two women had reached the small town of Lonebury, though the place was so small it could hardly qualify as anything more than a village. The streets were unpaved and it couldn't have more than a few hundred residents. Still, they had an inn with a downstairs tavern, and until a few brief moments ago, that had been enough for both of them.
"Naga, it's okay. We already ate, let's just go up to our room." Lucia, the blonde swordswoman, said in an attempt to calm her traveling companion who for some reason seemed on the edge of panic. The sorceress turned to face Lucia.
"I come to a tavern expecting a filling meal and some fine wine or ale to go along with it! Not only is this particular inn out of alcohol, but now he says the entire town is dry! This is absolutely unacceptable! Customers, especially ones of my social graces, should not be treated in this manner! It's barbaric!" the sorceress ranted on, folding her arms across her ample bosom. "We're lucky we even managed a single room in a backwoods town like this."
"If they're out, they're out. Making a scene isn't going to cause alcohol to magically appear out of thin air, you know." Lucia retorted with a sigh, wondering why it was so blasted important to the haughty sorceress. Naga gave her a withering look.
"Someone should make a spell for that." The sorceress whined, appearing resigned to her fate. She turned back to the innkeeper. "Fine, old man. If you have no alcohol, we should get a discount on the room. It's the least you could do for such disappointing service, you know." The innkeeper blinked a few times, but could tell that the tall sorceress was growing irate and had no desire to cross her or allow her bickering to drive away any more of his customers.
"Alright, young lady. I'll give you the room for half price, just please stop yelling and causing a scene!" he said frantically, waving his hands at the both of them to shoo them towards the stairs. Lucia let out a giggle and grabbed Naga's hand, practically dragging the still-fuming sorceress upstairs. She pulled the sorceress into the double-bed room and closed the door behind them.
"Damn! I bet I could have talked him into a free meal too!" Naga said after the door was closed, still looking agitated. Lucia watched her for a moment as she unbuckled her sword belt and placed the weapon in the corner by her bed.
"Would you calm down? At least they had a room left. We could have been forced to camp out again." The swordswoman said calmly. "At least we got a nice room and a good meal."
"That I paid for! I wouldn't have paid for it if I'd known we'd have absolutely nothing to drink!" the sorceress retorted.
"We had water." The blonde replied. "Besides, you know I don't usually drink anyway." She added. Alcohol and Lucia rarely got along. Lucia, as fate would have it, was what was commonly referred to as an 'angry drunk', and mixed with her tendency to go berserk led to very bad things happening when she had too much.
"Well I do, so there!" Naga countered maturely, folding her arms and pouting a little. Lucia shook her head and let out another little giggle at the sorceress' somewhat comical response as she started slipping out of her armor. Curious, the sorceress moved over to the window while continuing to steal glances over her shoulder at the disrobing woman. Hey, she owes me anyway. Naga thought to herself as she examined Lucia's form. The shorter girl was in really good shape. Athletic but still sporting very feminine curves, Lucia's body showed that she engaged in physical activity regularly. She wasn't as thin by relative terms as Naga, her form slightly stockier due to her height, but she was still in excellent condition, and the sorceress found she was blushing in spite of herself, even moreso as Lucia pulled her pajama top over her head and glanced over, catching Naga's voyeurism red-handed.
"No peeking." Lucia said playfully as she pulled her pajama bottoms up. Naga made a face at her.
"You owed me, remember?" the sorceress replied, smirking. Lucia blushed a little before replying.
"Does this mean we're even?"
"For now." The sorceress said, thankful that the brief exchange had calmed her nerves somewhat. Lucia nodded and slipped into bed, intent on getting an early start so they could use the daylight to find the ruins. She knew they were probably heavily concealed by decades of disuse, and preferred to approach in the daylight where undead like zombies and ghosts rarely ventured. While Lucia silently contemplated the morning journey, Naga slipped into her own sleeping clothes and climbed into her respective bed, staring at the rising moon out the window for several moments before closing her eyes, hoping to doze off quickly.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Lucia asked, pulling the sorceress closer to herself as the two of them overlooked the vast, green valley beneath their isolated stone perch. Lucia reveled in the soft embrace of her companion.
"I never take time to just enjoy things. Maybe I should do this stuff more often." The sorceress replied, looking down at her young partner and brushing a lock of blonde hair from her face, pulling a giggle from the girl.
"You'll find there's a lot to life if you sit back and watch for it, Naga. Maybe beautiful things." The blonde replied, sighing again. "There's something I want to ask you."
"Oh? What's that?" Naga asked, taking Lucia's hand in her own. She looked down into Lucia's sky blue eyes, the morning sun dancing off of their crystal clearness as the girl's own gaze met hers.
"Do you love me? I mean, really?" Lucia asked, giving the sorceress' hand a squeeze. The sorceress tilted her head curiously, then replied.
"No." she replied, though her voice sounded…strange.
"Huh?" Lucia asked, looking a bit hurt.
"No. Stop." Naga said again. Lucia blinked.
"Stop? Stop what?" Lucia said, reaching for Naga's hand, which had suddenly drifted away. "Naga, stop-"
"-what?" Lucia said, her eyes suddenly open and greeted to a dark room, illuminated only by a shaft of moonlight peeking through the window. She took a moment to get her bearings, peering around in the darkness as her bleary eyes recovered from sleep. "A dream…", she whispered finally.
"Stop, don't do it…" Lucia heard, looking across the room. In the adjacent bed, Naga tossed and turned fitfully, and from her vantage point Lucia could see the thin sheen of sweat on the sorceress' brow as it reflected the moonlight. She realized the woman was having a bad dream.
"Naga?" Lucia asked gently. She'd heard somewhere that it was dangerous to wake someone out of a nightmare suddenly. Naga didn't respond to her voice, though her nightmare continued to grow more intense.
"Mama!" Naga cried softly. "Mama, look out!" Lucia felt a lump form in her throat, and had a sinking, dreaded suspicion that the woman's nightmare was firmly rooted in past events and not merely an ordinary nightmare, but a flashback to a traumatic event. Lucia stood and moved over beside Naga's bed.
"Naga, wake up. It's just a bad dream." Lucia said softly, again not wanting to pull Naga out of the dream with a start.
"Oh, Goddess. The blood…the blood….so much blood…" Naga started mumbling. She wasn't screaming anymore, but the eerie tone in her voice carried an even deeper sense of urgency, one approaching sheer panic.
"Naga!" Lucia called out more loudly, now realizing she needed to wake the woman up before the nightmare got too bad. She reached out to touch Naga's arm when the sorceress suddenly grabbed Lucia's hand, her eyes snapping open but no recognition or cognizance in them. They locked onto the blonde, but it was like she was looking through her.
"Vibration Blast!" Naga cried, the spell issuing from her other hand and slamming firmly into Lucia's midsection, launching the girl across the room to slam into the wardrobe on the other side where she fell to the floor in a heap. Naga immediately sat up, frantically looking around the room as the visions from the nightmare started to fade, replaced by stark reality. After she started collecting herself, she vaguely recalled Lucia's voice through the haze and looked across the room at the dark shape on the floor. "Oh, no!"
"Unnhhh…" Lucia groaned as she slowly pushed herself up off the floor. She was a little banged up, but it wasn't anything serious. She considered herself lucky Naga had chosen that spell or she might have ended up in flames or encased in a block of ice. Naga quickly hurried over to her, the luminescent orb from a light spell hovering in her hand.
"Lucia! What happened? What were you doing by my bed?" Naga asked, still unsure of exactly what had transpired. Lucia accepted Naga's hand as the sorceress helped her to her feet before returning to her bed and plopping down on it. Lucia sat on her own bed across from the woman.
"You were having a nightmare. I tried to wake you up and you blasted me across the room." Lucia related, rubbing her head where she was sure she was going to have a nasty bruise for the next few days. Naga looked sheepish at the discovery.
"Sorry, I…" she started, then sighed, unsure of what to tell Lucia. The blonde sensed her apprehension.
"Want to tell me about it?" Lucia asked softly, feeling that Naga was sitting on top of a lot of inner turmoil and letting some of it out might be healthy for her. The sorceress sat still for a moment, then shook her head.
"I'd rather just go back to sleep." She replied, laying back on her bed and staring at the ceiling. Lucia heaved a sigh of disappointment, but knew better than to try and force anything out of her. She'd have to wait until she was ready.
"Goodnight." Lucia replied simply, crawling back under her own blankets as the sorceress laid there staring at the dimly lit ceiling. Several minutes went by, the gears in her head turning so fast she feared they might wake Lucia up. Several more minutes went by after that.
"I lied to you." Naga said to the silent room, her gaze fixed firmly on one of the support beams above her. She heard Lucia move to face her, but didn't wait for a verbal response. "I wasn't born in a merchant family. I was born to nobility. My father is Prince Philionel El Di Saillune." Naga said slowly, her fists clenching and relaxing as she, for the first time since leaving her home in the White Magic City, revealed her true lineage to another person. Lucia gave no verbal indication, wanting to remain silent and allow Naga to speak.
"When I was fourteen, my father's enemies decided that the best way to get to him was to send him a message. They decided that the format of this message would be killing me, his eldest daughter." Naga said, her voice steady, though Lucia could detect a slight quiver in it that told her the sorceress was only barely holding herself together. "I remember hearing my mother scream, so I came running to see what the problem was." Naga said, her voice now trembling more noticeably, and Lucia could feel her own eyes starting to tear up as she realized where the story was going.
"I came into her room just in time to see him cut her throat. I remember he had these dark eyes. I think they were brown, but at the time they looked pitch black." The sorceress said in a faint whisper. "He had these….metal wires. That was how he killed his victims. Sometimes he'd impale them, other times he'd use them to garrote someone." Naga explained, desperately trying to maintain control. "There was this spell, Chaos String, that my mother developed to aid in construction. I used it on him." Naga said, a hint of anger coming into her voice as she recalled the moment. "I used it to take control of those steel wires of his, and I killed him." She spat, her body tense for several seconds before she relaxed. "There was so much blood everywhere. On the floor, on my mother, on me. It was everywhere…s-so much…" the sorceress said, finally losing control as she broke down into fevered sobs.
She jerked noticeably as Lucia was suddenly at her side, and opened her eyes to look up at the woman through blurry tears. She couldn't see the blonde's own teary eyes, but she felt it when Lucia leaned down and embraced her, and she submitted to the embrace, returning it in kind. The swordswoman held her sorceress traveling companion for several minutes as Naga's body was wracked with sobs, over a decade of repressed memories and painful turmoil bubbling to the surface all at once. Lucia weathered it, sniffling and sobbing a bit herself but mostly feeling grateful that she could be there for the woman. After a few more moments, the sorceress managed to collect herself and, with a sniffle, sat back and looked Lucia in the eye.
"Is that why you left home? To escape the memories?" Lucia asked softly, her hands still resting on the other woman's shoulders. Naga gave a short nod and swallowed, causing her chest to jump slightly.
"I always felt like it was my fault. The assassin had been after me, and he got my mother instead. If I had been there…"
"If you had been there, he probably would have killed you instead, Naga. You caught him by surprise. Your mother would have been heartbroken if he'd succeeded, don't you think?" Lucia replied, understanding how guilt could drive a person mad if they dwelled on it.
"That's why I started learning black magic. I knew that if I got strong enough, I would be able to protect the people I love, and they wouldn't be in danger anymore." Naga said, some of the strength returning to her voice as she thought about the vindication she'd been seeking since she left home that first night. "When I heard about Lina Inverse and how she was rumored to be the most powerful sorceress in the world, I decided that I would become her rival, learn everything she knew, and strive to be more powerful than her. I figured with that kind of power, nobody would dare cross the royal family of Saillune ever again." The sorceress explained, her shoulders drooping.
"Well, there you go then! You're Lina Inverse's Greatest and Foremost Rival, right? Who better than you to protect your loved ones?" Lucia offered, smiling at the woman. Naga was able to offer a weak smile back at the blonde before shaking her head.
"I'll never be as powerful as Lina is, Lucia."
"But you said-"
"I put on a show, that's all. I boast, I talk big, but it's always Lina that gets the credit. Every time we accomplish anything, it's always Lina's Dragon Slave. She's the heroine…I'm just…the sidekick." Naga said, feeling a wave of depression fall over her. They were words she'd occasionally considered but never dared speak out loud. Much of her confidence came from the idea that she could one day reach Lina's level, yet the younger sorceress had always shown herself to be stronger and more focused. Lucia took Naga's hand in her own and looked the woman in the eye.
"You're my heroine, and I'm your sidekick, remember?" the girl offered, smiling warmly at the sorceress. Naga looked into Lucia's eyes for a long moment before she felt emotion wash over her and suddenly leaned forward, pressing her lips to Lucia's. The swordwoman's eyes widened for a second in surprise before she closed them and returned the kiss, one hand moving up to run fingers through dark hair while the other remained gently planted on the woman's shoulder. The kiss lasted for several seconds.
"Lucia…" Naga said, but found she couldn't come up with any words to match the moment. The two women stared at each other for several more seconds before Lucia smiled.
"I think we should get some sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow or we won't make it to the ruins before nightfall." The swordswoman said, leaning back and watching the still-confused sorceress as she tried to sort out her feelings. Naga just offered a numb nod and lay back in her bed, pulling the covers up around her shoulders and turning towards the windows, still trying to comprehend what had just happened.
An hour later, Naga still lie in bed, wide awake. I can't do this. I can't DO THIS. She screamed at herself in her head. The sorceress propped herself up on her elbows and looked over at Lucia, seeing that the swordswoman was deeply asleep, a peaceful smile on her face. She felt a pang of guilt as she slid out of bed and began to get dressed as quietly as she could. She gathered her traveling equipment, then gave one last look over at the sleeping girl and sighed longingly. One day, I'll be ready for this. She thought to herself. I just can't take the risk. Not yet. With a heavy heart, the sorceress silently opened the door to the room and slipped out into the night.