I cast my gaze over the plains in front of us. In the distance, over a half day’s journey, I saw the pillars of towering trees that signaled we’d entered the eastern lands. Ancient trees that had been planted by one of the first hordes to roam that land, and their seedlings had spread. They looked out of place amongst the otherwise empty plains, but they would be a welcome reprieve. I enjoyed the hush of the forests of Dakkar, the quiet.
“Thatdarukkar, who saw you when you were a girl,” I decided to tell her, “it was very likely hewasfrightened.”
“Of me?” she couldn’t help but ask, frowning. “But why?”
“You are not the first being on this planet with hair like this,” I told her, trailing my claws down the light strands, feeling her shiver in response. “The first was a Dakkari sorceress, who was said to wield a great, unseen power.”
She stiffened in my lap.
“What?” she whispered.
“She destroyed almost an entire horde overnight, though some survived to tell the tale.”
“But…butwhy?”
“TheVorakkarhad been dishonorable. Not only to hisMorakkari, but to his own blood.” When I took my gaze from the forest in the distance, I saw her expression was astonished. Her emotions were so easy to read. It was…strange. Different. “He fucked adarukkar’swife, got her with child, and then killed the babe once it was born to hide his shame, especially from hisMorakkari.”
A soft gasp escaped her lips.
“That’s…that’s terrible. He killed his own child?”
I inclined my head.
“The accounts of who this sorceress was, or where she came from, are unclear, but it was assumed that she was a member of his horde. On the night that theVorakkartook his child’s life, she became enraged. Those that survived say she channeled Kakkari’s power, fed by hergrief. The account says she created a storm above the horde, bringing down unseen strikes that made the ground shake and fires burn. She destroyed everything. Everything theVorakkarhad touched, or cared for, was gone.”
Her neck turned and she gazed away, though her eyes were unseeing. I wanted to know what she thought of. I wanted to know what she was hiding, what she was truly afraid of.
“And the sorceress?”
“Gone,” I rumbled. “Disappeared. She was never seen again. Some believe that Kakkari’s power killed her as well, though her body was never found.”
“So that was why theDothikkarcalled me a sorceress,” she murmured quietly. “I had wondered.”
“He is a superstitious male,” I said, feeling a prickling of annoyance whenever I thought of him. “He did not know what to make of your sudden appearance.”
“That was a terrible story,” she said, her face still turned to the plains.
I chuffed out a sound of disbelief. “I quite like it.”
“Why?”
My shoulder lifted. “It is a story of vengeance.”
“Vengeance?” she said, frowning. Then her eyes returned to me. “More like unnecessary slaughter. The sorceress was wrong to kill so many. They were punished for their horde king’s crimes. Females. Children. What is so noble and honorable about killing innocent beings? She was a villain. That was not vengeance. It was murder.”
Her words struck something in me and I growled, “And what do you know of vengeance,leikavi?”
“Enough to know that sometimes you never get it,” she said, her voice throaty, her eyes narrowed slightly. “And that you can spend your whole life letting it consume you,poisonyou, or you can make amends in your own soul and move forward.”
For a moment, I was speechless, glaring down at her, my jaw tight.
“It was the horde king’s responsibility to bear his punishment on his own. Wasn’t his child’s death enough? Why spill more blood?” she finished, her eyes shimmering withtearsthough she glared.
“The horde is an extension of itsVorakkar. A crime brings about vengeance and there is no escaping it once it comes. That is the way of our world,” I grated.
“And sometimes,” she said, “I wish I was a part of a different world. Not this one.”
I thought of my family. Of my sister, my mother, my father. Of their cries and screams, of my lungs burning as I sprinted towards our home, panic and dread churning in my gut so strong I’d almost vomited. What I remembered most was that I’d heard my sister’s screams streets away. And no one had come to her aid.Ihadn’t gotten to her in time.
