Her eyes met his, undaunted by his rough handling. “Do you still itch, does it still feel like your blood is acid? That your thoughts are mired, that with each step, you were further enslaving yourself to the pain?”
The question threw him off before he realized what she meant. The itch under his skin. The one that had started when she came to him in the cave. The one he had been downing vials of human and orc blood to counteract. It all made sense.
“Youdid that to me?” he asked, his voice low with anger.
“Compulsion,” she said as she continued to clutch her stomach. “It has a way of making you do what you never intended to do. Why else would you be here? Do you still ache or has it worn off now that you are here?”
Astegur threw the hag’s arm back at her and surged to his hooves. How dare she force his hand. “Mistfucking witches. I should have known.” He grasped his weapon and towered over her slight frame. “Do you really think you can control one such as me?” The flames in his belly roared, eclipsing reason. “A commander of bulls and barrier hunter? I have stood against centaurs, orcs, and hordes of hobgoblins and have come away the victor. I am heir to the Bathyr and have left piles of corpses rivaling the height of our mountains in my wake!”
The female’s lips parted slightly and her eyes widened to orbs beneath his poised axe. “You cannot hurt me,” she whispered, her face growing white with fear, her eyes watering with pain.
Astegur drew his axe back to strike. “Even magic has limits,witch. You will learn what I can and cannot do.”
She remained on her knees before him. She did not flee from him or seek safety. He wanted her to run or to fight back, but she remained still. He tensed his fingers and raised his weapon for a swift killing blow. She lowered her head. The loss of her eyes upon him halted his strike.
Did she want to die?
Astegur lowered his axe, confused. He wanted more from her than her death.
He could kill her and dispel the magic she obviously held over him. The female would have been perfect if she had been human, if she’d had pure blood. Maybe that was why he could not kill her.
There was always a possibility that I would kill her. She sent for me anyway.
“I will spare your life because you helped my brother, but the next time you try to command or compel me or one of my kind, be sure that your head will be taken and staked at the borders of our lands.” He towered over her, swallowing her in his shadow. “The debt is paid.”
When she lifted her head, he turned away, grabbed his belongings, and strode out of the crumbling stone building. He did not want to be in her presence any longer.
“Wait,” she called from somewhere behind him.
I am not supposed to be here.He was wasting valuable time. It didn’t matter if Prayer’s hag enticed his curiosity. He was not a being to be used—by anyone. The idea flooded him with fresh anger, even contempt. But he did not hesitate as he stormed away from her, and did not turn back when her voice continued to trail after him.
Leaving her alive was the first mercy he had ever shown.
Outside the temple, he came across a rickety, rotting path that led straight through the settlement. It was parallel to the mountains he could barely see lining the gray sky to his left. He followed the path toward the green orbs in the distance where they pierced the mist.
Her scent followed him out into the open air and beckoned him to return. It played at his curiosity and his ingrained need to know his surroundings, his enemies, even if those enemies were sly and intriguing. He ignored his musings as lies and magic.
Midway down the path old buildings, broken and falling apart, arose on either side of him and between them were thralls. He had never seen so many gathered in one place before. And the more he took in his surroundings, more thralls appeared.
Thralls were once human who had not died before the mist curse stole their senses. They were shadows of their former selves, weak and nearly mindless. Sometimes, they appeared to remember things from their former lives but only for a moment, and only when someone with magic and willpower demanded it of them.
They were little better than the undead that blighted the labyrinth. The only differences between the two were that undead were ravenously hungry, and could not be commanded unless they belonged to a powerful magic-wielder. A creature had todieto become undead. A human had to be cursed by the mist to become a thrall.
The great liches of the labyrinth often had thralls employed as servants, and undead mesmerized to fill their armies.
But there was no lich in these lands that he knew of, only a mist-witch.
He spat.What a waste of blood.
Astegur left them behind without a backwards glance. He walked through the rest of the settlement without incident, approaching the first green orb that would lead him away. Each step he took, the hag’s scent grew stronger, enticing him to go back. To sniff her flesh. To investigate her body and find its source.
For all he knew, the smell was nothing more than part of his own weak delusion. He wanted the female from the cave; he did not want a mist witch.
The fog thickened as he passed by the first orb. Astegur squinted his eyes and cut through it with his body, but when he did, his horns rammed into a large stone wall.
He drew back with a growl and looked upon the sudden, unexpected barrier in his path. His face slackened as his eyes trailed upward. He took a step back.
It was the same stone building he had just left.
