Limit

A small digression. An excerpt from an old story that I didn't dare describe vividly back then. It was written by hand, but this excerpt is in electronic form. A time of magic, warriors, and travelers. A story about love and envy, friendship and loyalty.

***

I watched the campfire smoke in a half-daze. The pine logs crackled loudly, exuding resin and burning with a blue flame. The stars were fading in the pinkening sky. A new day was beginning. But I didn't want to do absolutely anything.

Marauding enemies, raping and killing. They accuse innocent girls of connections with Satan and of causing problems, and then religious fanatics burn them at the stake. What won't you believe during a war. They pray to idols, gods, forest spirits. And even the alfs, dryads, and nereids have entered the war. This is not our war, Cassil and I had nothing to defend. What we could have defended was long ago ravaged and burned to the ground, and not far away, a hill. A mass grave for a hundred or two inhabitants. Once a village full of life, now only embers and corpses remain. A handful of children who managed to hide in the nearby forests died of hunger and in the claws of wild beasts. Only three survived, but they too disappeared from those parts. Only about ten years later, one of those children appeared. A tanned brunette, fighting like a beast. Not tall, flexible as a willow and deadly, like her paired blades, whose edges are coated with the fat of enemies mixed with poison. Periodically, she would burst into battle, slaughter the occupiers, and vanish. Many land governors placed a bounty on her head, but she was never caught. Until one fine day.

Hissing from a painful blow to the ribs, from an enemy I pulled off his horse, I stepped back. In his hands, he held heavy knuckle dusters with sharp spikes. They tore my clothes and the skin on my right side, and several ribs clearly cracked with a crunching sound. But the condition didn't seem fatal. It wasn't fatal until a local priest stunned me on the back of the head, shouting to burn the pagan creature.

I only regained consciousness from sharp pain and stench. Vile rats, smelling fresh blood in the damp cell, decided to feast on a still-living body. Pushing the vile creatures away from my side, I sat down by the cell wall with a groan. My back was chilled by the stone wall, and my side was bandaged with expensive fabric torn into strips, long soaked in blood. Who bandaged me with such expensive batiste remained a mystery. But not for long.

When my eyes more or less adjusted to the gloom and the flicker of a smoking torch further down the corridor, I noticed a dozing figure in the far, dark corner of the cell. It was a girl, my age. Her curly blonde hair was matted with dirt and stuck together with blood. Her eyes and cheeks were sunken, her clothes torn into bandages for her own arm and my side. The noise of heavy boots distracted me from examining my cellmate, followed by a bucket of icy water.

— Wake up, ladies. No time for lounging! — The jailer leaned towards us from the other side of the bars. What a vile appearance he had! Yellow and crooked teeth, some chipped or knocked out in street fights, a face reeking of stale alcohol and covered in days-old stubble. Faded eyes the color of withered autumn greenery. The only thing I had the strength for was to spit in his face. He shouldn't have leaned in. And I shouldn't have spat. His face turned crimson, and in a fit of rage, jangling his keys, he opened the door to our cell and hit me in the face. Blood flowed from my split lip, the man was about to swing again when a shadow shielded me from his fists. I heard a dull sound of a blow but felt no pain. He didn't hit me, but the owner of the shadow. Her back shielded me.

— Get out of my way! I wasn't going to hit you.

— No! — The girl's voice was high, clear, and steely. Like the ring of tempered sword steel and unbending, like the will of a brave knight.

I looked at her in silent amazement. They were defending me? Me, the one who always helped fend off the arbitrariness of mercenary forces that ravaged villages. The man muttered something and left the cell, giving us a slightly contemptuous look. The bolt clanged on the door, and the jailer departed. The girl waited until his footsteps faded around the corner and turned to me. She sat down next to me. A fresh bruise adorned her left cheekbone; I averted my eyes. I didn't ask her to defend me.

— I won't thank you. — The embarrassment in my voice gave me away. Even the accent from the foreign language I learned didn't help me.

— And you don't need to.

She studied me intently.

— They say you came from the northern mountains, but you don't look like a Nordin.

— Not only Nordins live beyond the northern mountains. Beyond Nordica lies the kingdom of Saaman, rich in gold, you've probably heard.

She thoughtfully pressed her hand to her chin.

— Maybe I have... — she finally said. — Or maybe not. I wasn't interested in geography. Or economics either. Although none of that matters now.

— Why is that? The world is beautiful; personally, I don't intend to stay another day in this stinking hole.

— And you won't. You'll see this beautiful world at dawn from a hemp noose.

The new details of my fate did not please me. Although dying on the gallows is not as painful as burning alive. At least that's what they said. I exhaled and, tilting my head back, closed my eyes. In the corner of the cell, rat pups squeaked, water from the drainage ditches flowed from the window under the ceiling onto the already damp stone floor.

— And that's it?!

My cellmate's challenging voice did not arouse enthusiasm or even interest in me to glance in her direction.

— What do you suggest? Should I dance in front of the gallows?

— Get out of here!

I looked at her. She once wore expensive attire. Her skin was white, not tanned like mine or the peasants'. Her hands were neat, though her elegant nails were broken and dirt was packed under them.

— They'll pay money, lands, or something else for you, unlike me; you have something to offer.

— I'm a bastard. They won't pay for me. I'm Ladena.

— Astrid.

— A star, yes... — she pondered. — Listen, if I get us out of here, will you be my guiding star, show me the kingdom of Saaman?!

— Go ahead. I'll show you if you get me out of here.

She shook herself and started rummaging in her hair. Soon she pulled a hairpin from her hair. Or rather, a broken piece of a silver diadem.

— Nothing will come of it, — I began when she reached for the bolt. — The metal is too soft. It will just ben... — I got stuck mid-word because the mechanism clicked and the bolt opened.

The open door instantly healed my dull rib pain, and my blades found a little further down the corridor increased my chances of a successful escape. Ladena, meanwhile, eyed a sword lying there. But picking up our iron from the floor made a lot of noise, to which the jailer immediately appeared from around the corner. He drew his sword from its scabbard and came at us. We didn't hesitate.

Ladena ran up to him and deftly knocked him off his feet. I, jumping on him, pinned his hands to the stone floor of the corridor with my knees. The sword flew from his hands a couple of meters, and Ladena immediately swapped her iron.

— Now I'll fix your face! — I loomed over his face with a manic expression, and the tip of my blade touched the tip of his nose. — Too bad the last time I got weak poison. You won't be able to die...

— Enough, leave him, not now! — Ladena pulled me at the moment when I was about to gouge out the eye of this sack of shit, but because of her, I only split his eyebrow. — Faster! — she dragged me along.

Emaciated, but with the strength of Hercules. I observed as we walked through the torch-lit corridors. Muscle bulges larger than mine, stronger and more defined. Seeing this was unusual, but it didn't spoil her at all. And she held the sword easily and naturally. The sword was a bit heavy for me.

It was precisely because of this that a couple of years ago, robbing a merchant, I grabbed daggers, not a sword. You could say that this overfed merchant bought his way out. Dwarven steel, alf magic enhancing the sharpness of the blades and their lightness. Not blades, but a dream for an assassin. The hilt made of manticore bones... A real rarity.

— No elegance or grace. You make a lot of noise. — I remarked to Ladena, to which she snorted.

— I don't kill innocents! — she declared.

— Goody-goody... — I rolled my eyes theatrically.

We quickly ran out into the passage and literally immediately came upon a square with a scaffold for the upcoming execution. A guillotine and a beam with nooses for the hanged. Traders with various junk crowded around. While I looked around, Ladena traded her earrings for a couple of cloaks, and we, throwing them on, disappeared into the faceless crowd.

And now, a couple of years later, we wander together. Me with my Cassil and her with her love, Hael. An alf she found wounded in the forest and nursed back to health. Cassil tossed a couple more logs into the fire. The sky had completely lightened. I glanced at Ladena. She was saddling her horse Vega and the horse Noir, which belonged to Hael. We decided to part ways after one of our arguments.

I played with her by the night fire. The embarrassed blonde, unfamiliar with simple life and even her own body, was shy. Long and lavishly, I shared my experience. Brought her to edges she didn't know. Palace repression and strict church laws didn't allow her to know the taste of simple human joys. Even though she was a bastard, she grew up at court, where talk of this was punished by law and stopped by the guillotine. And now Hael reaped the fruits of my efforts. This half-breed alf simply infuriated me. He found no place in either world and attached himself to our female company. And then Cassil. Also from the same category, only with completely incomprehensible admixtures. Red-brown irises and black sclera, a grayish skin tone betraying something darkly demonic in him. It was enough for him to remove his cloak and gloves from his hands to see something extra, not inherent to a human. Where on his lower back and hands appeared, though not so obvious, scales, but their outlines and rougher skin made themselves known. And if you put him and Hael together, the colossal difference was visible. The fair-haired half-alf with eyes the color of golden topaz, in whose milky skin the network of veins shows through, sharp ear tips remained as a side effect in his genetic code. Soft facial features smoothly transitioning into the flexible proportions of an alabaster body. Simply a model of purity and innocence.

And my Cassil. Rougher facial features, the body also has a different structure. And he rushes into battle like a tank, unlike the eternally jumping elf with his bow. But his inhuman eyes and corpse-like skin tone immediately discouraged any desire to deal with him. Only I fell for the smell. Apparently, it attracted me. The smell of fresh blood. The smell of a killer, but not a sneaky one like me. And also the smell of a man, a dangerous and intoxicating smell. And then it dawned on me what it was. The blood of lower demons. A few scales immediately stopped spoiling anything in this picture. Strong, rough, and firm hands, claws that can tear human flesh in an instant, digging into my skin in a fit of passion. I melted from his touch like ice in the sun, melted like the wax of a church candle. Ready to scream in orgasms until hoarse and losing my pulse, and rising from the ashes like a phoenix under a new wave of his caresses. Remembering how I cried at first, trying to give him pleasure. How the charcoal I used to line my eyes ran down my cheeks, my lips swelled, and my throat was sore without stopping. I understood how possibly bored he was with a simple earthly woman. But I tried, and he rewarded me a hundredfold. There was no point in feeling jealousy towards him; for him, such penny feelings as love meant absolutely nothing. But he liked spending time with me, reveling in mutual passion, for which I paid with my blood, and sometimes my life. An intoxicating incubus with his innate magic, gravitating towards blood, you'd have to search for another like him.

But sometimes I envied Ladena. A creature with admixtures from another world. Whose feelings are pure and untainted by the dirt of worlds. Where feelings are born in the very heart, not at the level of mere flesh.

But word by word... She prefers an honest sword fight, I am a secretive assassin with poisoned blades. She chose an innocent outcast from the light world, I clung to a man with admixtures of demonic blood. They love each other on forest moss or at the foot of a waterfall. We could calmly have animalistic sex on a horse blanket under the moon and stars by the fire, in the nearest alley behind the tavern, rubbing against wooden walls, leaving scratches and splinters on my back. My wrists, constantly going numb in his grip and raised above my head. Or their gaze eye to eye and soft kisses.

And in all this, I felt jealousy precisely towards Ladena. This spawn of light blood dragged itself from another world, was shot and left to die. Why the hell did Ladena interfere with the course of natural selection? All our hobbies went down the drain. To my gentle touches, she did not respond; to demanding advances, she even snapped. But before...

That was the limit. The limit of all our friendship, where it flowed into passion, or maybe even love. Where there was no place for that saccharine nonsense. Two girls, so different, with such a presence of contrast. Like fire and ice... From pleasant, fluttering touches to cruel and demanding ones, light kisses turning into bright hickeys and bite marks, fingers ruffling hair, pulling out moans. Traces of unusualness in one's body and purity in the other's. On the brownish nipples of one, a bit of metal; on the pink nipples of the other — pure innocence. And if to torment the body, then only like this, reveling in this vice, mixing it with animal passion... Torment the body until it bleeds, sprinkle salt on the wounds and again... Burn with fire and change to ice. And carve each other's name on the body with the tip of a dagger or sword. And know that this brand is forever, a reminder to us that nothing is forgotten.

The limit, and it's time for us to go our separate ways.