AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Asshole,” she growled to herself.
She was angry. Beyond angry. She was furious at herself, and at all who had failed her. Which unfortunately, only amounted to her own self. She had been warned. Multiple times. Over a period of years, in fact, and then again before she left New Rahvin, and then yet again seconds before the dark had claimed her, and then once again after it had come for her when Bryn attempted to rescue her. If there had ever been such a spectacularly stupid person before in all of existence, she would have liked to have met them just so she could feel slightly less stupid herself.
She went to the old building where it had all begun, where the Dark had taken her from the world and turned her into a twisted, lonely, broken thing. It was still eerily complete, but that was no longer a surprise to her. There was an aura of dark power around the place, similar to the aura which surrounded her. She and the hut had something in common.
The supplies she had dropped when the Dark took her three years ago had rotted next to the door. They looked like Hail felt, covered in grimy green growth and falling apart.
She sat down by the hearth where she had lit her ill-fated fire, and she began to cry.
Once she’d started, she found that she could not stop. The tears flowed until she was sure that she was dry all the way through to the inside, and then they kept flowing even though she was dry. She had no idea where the water was coming from. The ground beneath her feet started to get soggy from it, but still she wept.
Eventually, some travelers came along the path, over the bridge she could not cross. Perhaps they simply spawned there, at the end of it. She did not know for she did not see them come. All she knew was that she could hear them, where before she could hear nothing at all.
“I heard cryin’!”
“That’s not crying. That’s an animal of some kind. Or a bird. Birds make odd sounds when they’re nesting.”
“No, that’s a woman crying. I should know. I’ve made many a woman sob in my days,” the stranger bragged.
Hail sniffed to herself and listened to the brigands discussing whether she was a person or an animal. They were all wrong, of course. She was a cursed soul. More than that, she was a monster waiting for a reason to unleash. She dug her fingers into the palm of her hand, gritted her teeth, and waited. She would not go out there and hurt them. She would not start a fight, or do anything cruel without provocation. But there were dark things inside her. Impulses. Ideas that had not been there before she was taken by the Dark. They frightened her more than the strangers did.
Three men entered the hut, their big bodies stinking of exertion and sour mead.
“There she is. It’s a girl! I told you it was a girl!”
One of the strangers was immediately concerned. He stayed a respectful distance, but leaned down to peer at her in a way she did not like. The kindness of strangers could not be trusted.
“What’s wrong, miss?”
“I was ravaged by a demon and now I can’t die.” Her blunt response was completely honest, and why not? What did she have to fear given she could not be killed?
“She’s lost her mind, poor thing.”
“I could make her sane with my cock.” One of the unkind strangers stepped up toward her. She let out a sob and scrambled back, a motion which only seemed to invite the brigand forward.
“Erthel, stop it.” The first man, the nice one, tried to stop him.
But Erthel did not stop it. Hail was pretty and young, and Erthel, being a male, had decided that he wanted to push his prick inside her and wriggle himself around until he experienced climax.
“You boys wait outside until I am done with ’er.”
“Erthel…”
Erthel was the biggest of them all, and therefore, apparently their leader. The other two left, abandoning her to the tender mercies of Erthel. He lumbered toward her, stinking of sweat and beer and blood and whatever else he had spilled on himself though months of journeying and carousing, and ravaging those who did not want to be taken. She could smell that on him too, the brutalizing of the innocent and the weak, pleasure taken from their pain and disgust. He was an ugly creature, the human equivalent of some legendary beast. A troll, perhaps. Something with hair in the wrong places, a body ruined by ill-discipline and lack of care.
He reached for her with a sweaty ham-hand. Big and strong, but not by merit of any effort on his part. He had the basic code of a brute and he had followed it without thought to this point. He had no idea when he laid that hand on her that he had reached a point of no return.
