Hubris - 62. Episode 62

Crowe was pinned to Barghast's chest, a rabbit trapped in the grip of a beast. Part of his mind wasn't sure if he was still dreaming or awake. His body was all too aware of what was happening. He reminded himself this was Barghast; he reminded himself he was safe. The lycan would never do anything to hurt you. Not intentionally. And yet their physical proximity was a reminder of just how much bigger the Okanavian was than he. Barghast clung to him, a growl vibrating in his throat. Something hot and warm and sticky and hard to the touch pressed against the practitioner's skin. A reminder of what could happen if the barbarian didn't get his needs satiated.

Barghast's arousal poked at him insistently, his cock pulsating in the night. The smell that came from him was strong and swampy. “Please twin o’rre,” he whined. “I need this. I need you - “

What you need to do is get as far away from me as you can, Crowe wanted to tell him. There's a darkness ahead of us…you can't sense it, but I can…and it's going to swallow you whole. He inhaled, but it was not the smell of burning flesh but of burning wood he breathed in. He reminded himself he was awake. This was happening. “Alright,” he heard himself say. “Alright.” It was the only word he seemed capable of saying. His head fell back into the crook of the lycan's arm, his skull cushioned on a pillow of fur. He looked into the lycan's golden-orange eyes. I trust you. I always have.

He relaxed, letting the knots of tension all over his body unravel. He submitted to the lycan. A second later he felt Barghast press the head of his cock to his backside; a thin liquid leaked from it, soaking his skin. The Okanavian made a thin whining sound in his throat as he pressed in. Crowe worried that he would shove it in, but the barbarian merely started grinding his hips, working it in slowly. The practitioner could only imagine the amount of restraint it took to keep from giving into his baser urges.

Crowe grinded his hips in rhythm with the lycan's, his blood thick in his ears. He was vaguely aware of the fire burning a meter away and the stars dancing overhead with their cold glow. But for now all that matters was that it was just the two of them. Together, alone. He’s not dead. He’s right here with me - where he should be.

Barghast's beastly scent grew stronger as the seconds turned into a minute. There was no getting away from it. Crowe found himself moaning as the Okanavian's cock slid deeper and deeper inside him, propelled by his natural lubricant. He was grinding his hips faster now and the practitioner pushed back to meet his thrusts, his pale skin glistening with sweat.

“Twin o’rre,” Barghast growled, the speed of his thrusts easing into gentle strokes.

“W-what?” Crowe gasped, gulping for air.

“I love you. I love being inside you.” Barghast's cock swelled inside of him. The practitioner could feel the round nub of his knot pressing against his rump.

“I love you, too. I love it when you're inside me, too.”

Barghast leaned forward until his lips touched the sorcerer's. His tongue probed insistently at Crowe's mouth. His paw wrapped around Crowe's cock.

“Ah!” Crowe gasped, pulling back from the kiss. The friction from Barghast's padding sent waves of pleasure from his groin up to his belly.

“Twin o’rre? Did I hurt you? Do you want me to stop?” The Okanavian's voice came out somewhere between a whine and a growl.

The practitioner slammed his palm down on Barghast's paw. It was his turn to growl through gritted teeth. “No, don't you dare stop!”

Barghast's paw pumped in tune with his hips. His eyes burned like coals in the night, the same orange-gold as the flames. He clung to Crowe as if afraid the ocean waves would come and wash him away. He was bigger than the practitioner, stronger. This fact always existed in the back of the practitioner's mind. He could hurt me if he wanted to was tempered by the knowledge that his furry companion never would. There was a thrill in this. No one has ever made me feel the way Barghast makes me feel. Not even Bennett.

Now when he looked back Bennett and his old life seemed to belong to someone else. We were just children? What did either of us know about love? What he had with Barghast was simple and primal and powerful. To be held, to be claimed, to be consumed - to not have to fight for the affections of another - was a relief.

Barghast's knot entered him with an audible pop. The lycan was thrusting into him faster now, his arm anchoring him to his chest while the rest of the world rocked to and fro. The Okanavian let out a thin mewling sound, which meant he was getting close. And all the while he had ceased to keep stroking Crowe’s cock.

“I’m getting close,” the practitioner said, looking up at the lycan through slitted eyes.

“I am too,” the lycan rumbled. “I’m going to fill your belly with my seed.”

The sorcerer let out a hoarse chuckle. “It's a good thing I can't get pregnant because I would have had several litters by now.”

Something mischievous glinted wickedly in the lycan's eyes. “It doesn't mean we're not going to try.”

The pressure became too much to bear; his nerves were assaulted by an onslaught of sensations, fireworks exploding throughout his body. He was full and warm and safe. He breathed in the musk of his lycan. How could anything feel better than this?

He felt Barghast tense and let out a final snarl. Then he howled. At the same time liquid warmth flowed into Crowe’s belly, the practitioner began to shudder with his own release. A release that was so pleasurable it was almost painful. Stars exploded and reformed behind his eyes.

When the waves of pleasure ended the practitioner sagged against his companion, spent, his belly full of seed. The tension of the previous few days - and thoughts of the nightmares that awaited him in his sleep, lurking like the most devious of predators - were gone for the time being. This is reality, he reminded himself. This is what matters. What we share. What exists between us. We are inextricably bound.

“Twin o’rre,” Barghast groaned. He tucked a lock of hair out of Crowe's eyes. “There has never been a better lover than you. Of all the things we've witnessed together in our travels - both the beautiful and the terrible - you still leave me in awe.”

A question poked at Crowe's mind. He didn't want to ask it, but he could feel it weighing heavy on his tongue; it filled his mouth with the unpleasant taste of black smoke. “Have you had other lovers…before me? Back home?” He tried to smile but it felt stiff and foreign on his face.

“Others?” Barghast's eyes widened and his ears flattened.

Sensing he’d asked the wrong question, Crowe waved it away hastily. He turned away. “Forget I asked. I didn't mean to insult you…” He reached for the blanket, wanting to pull it up to his chin, wanting to shield himself. Before he could reach it a large digit curled under his chin, lifting his face up so that he had no choice but to look into those golden eyes that had become so familiar.

“There is nothing you can't ask me, my beloved,” Barghast rumbled. “There is no truth, no secret I wish to hide from you. And there is nothing you could tell me that would make me ashamed of you. Do you understand?”

Crowe nodded, trying to dispel the lump in his throat. Of course Barghast sensed his inner turmoil. The lycan pressed his forehead to the practitioner's. “You are my first, you are my only. You are my always. Gaia gave you to me. She put me in your path; she made me just for you. Have you had other lovers?”

The herald forced himself not to look away. Rather than pull away he snuggled deeper into the Okanavian's embrace. “Would it hurt you if I said yes? It was in my other life. Long before I met you…long before any of this.” He waved his hand to indicate the world around them.

“I will admit I do not like the idea of you loving others before me,” the barbarian admitted with a growl, “but it does not hurt me or make me feel anger towards you. I know your world was very different from my own. And how could others not fall madly in love with you? What was her name?”

“His.” Crowe felt the blood rise to his face, making his cheeks burn. “I’ve never been with a woman…and I'm not really interested in them. His name was Bennett.”

Barghast's eyes narrowed. “You’ve mentioned him before. What happened to him?”

Crowe thought of Bennett lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Was he really dead or had that just been an illusion fabricated by Hamon’s necromancers? “We went our separate ways.”

                                  …

The waves of the Gaulhill Sea crashed against the sand, red with blood; foam broke apart against the bulk of overturned caravans. Human figures laid face down in the dirt but little else moved except for the seagulls who flocked to feast on unresisting flesh. All else was quiet and as still as the grave. Crowe and Barghast stood at the top of a sand dune, surveying the scene. Though nothing of immediate threat had yet to present itself, the smell of blood was pungent in the air.

Barghast had climbed off the horse and now paced back and forth, cursing in Okanavian under his breath. Saliva dripped from his muzzle. Crowe knew the smell of the blood, in such great quantity, was very likely driving the lycan insane with temptation. Crowe took a cautious step towards Barghast, but maintained a safe distance; while Barghast had never hurt him, Crowe had yet to test the barbarian's resistance when it came to his hunger for blood. Seeing that Barghast was in no condition to go any further, Crowe said, “You stay here; I’ll check things out.”

“No!” the lycan snapped. His eyes burned like gold rings of fire, reflecting the light of the failing sun. In less than an hour it would be dark. The practitioner did not want to be anywhere near the wreckage after the moon came up. There would be no keeping Barghast calm then with his fear of restless spirits. “You must not go down on your own! It could be unsafe…”

The sorcerer sucked in a breath, forcing himself to be patient. His nerves had been wound tight since waking up at camp that morning - since before then if he was being honest with himself - and now he knew he was not the only one. “There could be survivors down there who need our help. I’ll be back before dark.” He pulled out the revolver he now kept stowed away in his pocket as consolation. “I have this and my rod with me. If I bump into danger, I won't be brave. I’ll come running back.”

When the Okanavian marched away from him with a growl, the herald could no longer keep his frustration at bay. He jumped off Mammoth's saddle, kicking up puffs of sand. “We don't have a choice, Barghast. Caemyth, the city we are headed to, is past the wreckage. We're going to have to brave through at some point. I need you to stay here while I scout around the area.”

“Bad things happen when we separate, but there are times when we must in order to survive,” Barghast conceded reluctantly.

“This is one of those times,” Crowe finished for him, “and it will be brief.” He pointed up at the sky, resting a hand on the Okanavian's shoulder; the lycan flinched slightly beneath his touch but did not pull away. “I’ll be back before the sun sinks below those clouds.”

Grabbing the horse by the reins, Crowe started the descent down the hill. What should have been a tranquil scene was shattered by the carnage below: the waves stained the beach crimson; the twilit sky was oblivious to the dead below. Refugees who had been beset on by something monstrous and clawed. Many of them had simply been hacked into or sheared open with almost surgical precision. There was no shortage of severed limbs, arms separated at the elbows or hands. Trails of intestines twisted between the curve of seashells that poked out from beneath the sand.

Nothing had been spared in the siege gone by. The trail of slaughter continued as far as the eye could see. Just when Crowe would begin to hope he’d seen the worst of it, he would pass a wagon and discover more: mutilated horse and oxen, glassy eyes staring blankly up at the heavens. You’ve seen such slaughter before, he told himself. It should not surprise you. And yet he braced through the terror, his throat parched and white knuckles, his legs shaking. If not for his death grip on the reins he was not sure if he would have been able to stand upright. Cans of salted pork and canned vegetables and crates filled with precious belongings littered the beach. The crash of the ocean waves were a deafening roar in his ears.

The deeper he ventured into the carnage the more he wished he’d brought Barghast with him. The corpse of a mother rested against a wheel, a blood-stained bundle cradled in her sagging arms. A doll rested face down in the sand. Crowe watched the doll pass in his field of vision, unable to take his eyes off it. It was this sight that propelled him to turn Mammoth around and head back in the direction he’d come from and it was then he heard the voice singing over the waves.

“May I find splendor in the Eternal City…the place I’ve never been able to call home…”

The voice, uneven and forlorn, pulled Crowe from his saddle. The voice belonged to one who was on the cusp of adulthood, whose life was about to be cut brutally short. The air around Crowe suddenly felt incredibly cold. He knew that he should turn back from the horse, that he would not want to see what remained of the person just around the corner of the fallen wagon, but he could not resist the dreadful curiosity that pulled him forward; for he knew, somehow, in some dreadful way, that the face he would see would be one he recognized.

“...surrounded by people I’ve always known. You have no idea how good it feels to see you, you have no idea how long I’ve been on my own…”

Shadows hid most of the stranger from view but the practitioner could see just enough to turn his blood cold. His eyes trailed from the outline of the stranger’s head to the string of tendons and flesh where his legs ended just below the hips. No more, Crowe thought. Back up. I don't want to see any more. Back up before he…The stranger leaned forward then and his face caught what remained of the waning light. A single blue eye fixed on him from a ruin of flesh, blood, and bone. The rest had been removed in the single stroke of a claw that had completely taken away the nose, lips, and left eye. It made the wistfulness in the singer’s voice all the more disturbing. All the more chilling to the bone.

That single eye fixed on him. The stranger stopped singing. The place where the lips should have been twisted into something that might have been a smile. “Wait. I know you. I've seen you before. Dreamt of you…”

Crowe shuddered. The apparition’s single eye pinned him to the spot. “I don't understand. We’ve never crossed paths before…”

The apparition lifted a single shaking hand. He spun a finger around and round in the air. “You don't see it because you don't allow yourself to see it…That you are trapped in a loop you can’t get out of. And we are trapped with you.” His palm twisted around so that he held it out to the practitioner.

The herald could not look away from the ruined face nor could he turn from the offered hand. Though there was nothing recognizable about the face before him, he found himself kneeling beside the boy and taking the offered hand. “You were too late to save us this time, but you can still save her…”

“Her? Who? I don't understand.” The boy’s hand felt cold to the touch.

“The girl. Felisin. She ran into the caves. Again…”

“The caves. What caves?” The boy's pulse was a dull, irregular throb against his own.

“Your path will intersect with hers soon enough.” The apparition fixed him with a ghastly grin. Thunder clouds rumbled overhead; Crowe could smell rain in the air. A storm was brewing.

Crowe uttered a truth he could no longer deny: “I don't understand. I’ve never seen you before in my life and yet we’ve crossed paths before. What is your name?”

“Ashe…” The name left the boy's mouth in a final, shuddering gasp; a second later his hand went limp. His head tilted back against the belly of the wagon. His single eye continues to stare lifelessly at Crowe with an urgency and knowingness that had yet to fade in death.

He wasn't sure how long he crouched there, the corpse of the dead boy still in his hand, before he heard voices. They were coming from the West, from the direction of Caemyth. Staying in a crouched position, he raised his head slowly. Six figures stood fifty paces away on horseback. All of them were armored and armed with rifles. Searching for the silver torch of the Theocracy, the practitioner breathed a sigh of relief when he saw one of the soldiers carried the blue diamond banner of the resistance. Two of the soldiers climbed down from their horse. Crowe could not hear their voices from this distance. He decided to approach them.

Cautiously he ducked out from behind the wagon. “Excuse me!” Feeling like a fool, he trudged towards the group. He felt exposed and wished, again, that Barghast was with him. He kept his hands in the air, away from his pockets.

The first soldier to sense him spun around with a curse, training his rifle on the practitioner; a heartbeat later five more rifles followed suit. “Stop!” a deep voice barked. “Not another step unless you want to be riddled with bullets!”

“I mean you no harm,” Crowe stammered. “I only heard voices and thought help had come along at last.”

A lantern bloomed in the night. The man who had spoken just a second ago lifted the lamp in the air and matched forward so that the practitioner could now see his face. A single blue eye glared at him from a mane of white hair; the other eye was hidden behind a black eye patch. Scars in the shades of lines and divots marked his face like tributaries. It was clear to Crowe in an instant that the man had seen many battles and would not hesitate to have his troops open fire if he deemed it necessary. Such a man was not to be crossed lightly. The more he stared, the more he sensed there was something familiar about the man. A name writhed on his tongue wreathed in smoke, just out of reach enough to be unobtainable.

The man thrust something into Crowe's hands. “Is this you? Are you the herald?”

No longer sure if he was dreaming or not, Crowe unfolded a piece of parchment just as thunder flashed overhead. On the piece of parchment, drawn in charcoal, now slightly smeared, was an unmistakable portrait of himself. He handed the portrait back, suddenly and irrationally afraid that it might burn him. “Y-Yes.” He suppressed a shiver. “My name is Crowe.”

The man nodded with a grunt. “It's about time! We’ve been searching for you for two days…”

“What?” Crowe blinked. Not for the first time he uttered, “I don't understand.”

The man’s scarred mouth twisted into a cynical sneer. “That makes two of us. Still, my troops and I are only paid to do what we're told. Governor Matthiesen wishes to speak with you.”

“He knows I’m coming to Caemyth?” Crowe scanned the other five faces who watched him every bit as closely as they watched him. Faces he didn't recognize.

The man rolled his eyes. “It's all he’s talked about.”

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Commander Lucijan. I don't have time to introduce everyone to you. I was told to bring you to the governor as soon as you arrive.”

“We can leave straight away, but first I must grab…”

One of the troops raised her rifle. “Someone else coming from the North - a big fucker from the looks of it!”

Crowe threw a glance over his shoulder. He didn't need to search for long before he found Barghast marching towards him. Crowe did not like what he saw. The lycan had drawn to his full height, his hackles raised so that his fur stood on end; his ears were pressed flat against his skull, his claws unfurled. Saliva dripped from his muzzle which was parted to show his teeth. I left him to wait for over an hour, the practitioner thought with a surge of guilt. An hour in which the fear and the hunger built. Now he's going to get himself killed because he thinks I'm being attacked.

“He’s with me! Please don't shoot!” As Barghast closed the last of the distance, Crowe shielded the lycan with his arms or did his best to; with now six rifles trained on the Okanavian, the practitioner would have made a poor shield. He pressed his hands to the lycan's chest. Barghast felt feverish to the touch. His chest and throat vibrated with an angry growl that made Crowe's fear grow with every passing second - fear he would not be able to restrain the barbarian this time. Barghast hung back but just barely. Crowe could sense his restraint on the urge to keep going forward, to attack. “Barghast,” he whispered, “you’ve got to calm down before they shoot us both. These are resistance soldiers, they are not torchcoats.”

“I thought…I thought the torchcoats had come for you again…that you were hurt.”

“I’m not hurt. I just got distracted. Barghast, we must leave this place. We must go with them.”

The lycan tensed with another snarl but he did not take another step forward, nor did he stop glaring at Lucijan. “Go? Go where?”

“To Caemyth. There is someone who wishes to speak with us. But first you must calm down.”

Crowe wasn't sure how much time passed like this with his palms pressed into the lycan's fur, the lycan glaring at Lucijan, Lucijan and his troops in turn aiming at the lycan with their rifles, when he felt Barghast take a step back. All at once all the fight and lust for blood seemed to drain out of him. His hackles fell. His shoulders sagged. His tail drooped back into the sand. Crowe glanced back at Lucijan. “Please…have your men put their rifles down. He’s only responding this way because he thinks you're a threat.”

Lucijan nodded before lowering his rifle. The rest of the troops did the same following a gesture from his gauntleted hand. “The governor said you would be bringing a lycan companion with you. This is the first one I’ve seen…any of us have seen…this far North. Are you sure you can keep a leash on him? Because with claws and teeth like that I won't hesitate to put a bullet in him if he charges at my men again.”

“I understand.” Lowering his arms, Crowe breathed a sigh of relief. “It won't happen again.”

Lucijan nodded again, this one with the air of satisfaction. “Well if we're all done posturing then we should start the journey back to Caemyth. It will be morning before we reach the city.”