A Tale of Revenge Ch. 03

Anna stumbled away from the blood bath. All seven men had died at her hand. She still felt each and every vibration through her body, every sword cut that shuddered through her arm, every knife slice, every blow, every time a man's flesh resisted the movement of her weapon. They were all there in her body's memory, to carry with her. She fell to her knees, wrenching and bringing up the little food she had in her stomach. The bile burned her throat and a bone deep weariness warred with her convulsing muscles for dominance.

Movement caught her eye and she dragged her head up to see the man the others had dragged behind them as they came to join the fight. The one dragging him had unceremoniously thrown his bound captive to the ground in order to engage her and there he had stayed for the duration of the fight. Anna looked into the young man's terrified gaze. His hands were still bound behind his back, a rag shoved between his teeth. She tried to guess if he were a threat or not but her thoughts were cloudy. Her vision started to swim and his face fell out of focus. She pushed herself up and stumbled a little further from where she had knelt, just a little further from the smell of fresh death. Her vision blackened and blood roared in her ears. Something hit her side hard, sending flashes of white through the darkness. In the moment before she lost her senses completely she realized it had been the ground.

*

Anna stirred, she sensed being in motion. Something hard dug into her stomach and the rocking told her she was on a horse. Then it was dark again.

*

The next time she woke up she was stationary, wrapped up in a bedroll. Her throat burned and her muscles felt like lead. She groaned as she tried to force her eyes open. Someone was helping her sit, pressing something hard to her lip. She tried to swallow, forcing some of the cool water past her swollen throat. Her eyes still wouldn't open. Whoever held her lowered her back to the ground. She could hear them speak but couldn't make out the words. Sleep washed over her and dragged her back to the darkness.

There were men surrounding her. She twisted around, looking for a way out and finding none. One of the men came towards her. The weight of something in her hand drew her attention. The man opened his mouth to speak and she raised her sword and cut deeply into his throat. Before his body fell she moved to the next one, sinking her blade deep into his chest. Hot blood hit her skin but she continued hacking through the men around her. Her stomach rolled, her mind screamed at her to stop, but she kept moving, kept cutting. She sobbed as her arms continued to wield the blood soaked blade. The last man fell and she turned to see the wake of devastation she had left around her.

A voice came from behind her, calling her name. She turned, bringing up her weapon. The god's grip came down on her arm almost as quickly. The sword fell from her hand. Suddenly her body was wracked with sobs. But the comforting embrace didn't come. She didn't deserve it. He could stop her but not heal her. She was too broken. She let him hold her arm for a moment longer before pulling away.

Anna's eyes jerked open. Her vision was blurred and it took a moment to clear the cobwebs. Her body felt heavy, her head pounded and her stomach still rolled but she was alive. And what more, she was far from the field and the bodies. She was lying in her own bedroll in the middle of a clearing. By the dappled sunlight she guessed it was midday. The horses from the soldiers were standing nearby. She pushed herself up with shaky arms.

"You're up!" a male voice said with some surprise from behind her. She whipped her head around and instantly regretted it as the world tilted and her vision blackened at the edges. The man came into focus a moment later, he was the one they had caught and left on the ground during the fight. He was young, possibly younger than she. He stood stock still, fear in his face. Of course he'd seen what she could do to a man.

"Who are you?" she croaked. Her throat felt like sandpaper. Her companion moved around her, giving her a wide berth and went to get his water.

"I'm Dev," he said as he moved around her. "I was following the group you fought yesterday." He smiled politely, and a bit fearfully, as he handed her the water. Anna took in his light brown skin and dark chestnut hair. His family had been from this part of the country originally, like the others from her village. Anna's mother's family had always stood out in their village with their pale skin and dark black hair.

"Why were you following them?" Anna asked, her voice more recognizable now.

"They attacked my family, burned our farm," he said it in a distant way, almost cold. Anna could tell he had cut himself off from the words, not truly hearing the reality he spoke. "I wanted to avenge my family but I suppose you took care of that." He tried to smile at her and failed.

A strange silence fell between them. Anna's first instinct was to confess her own history with these men, to tell this other wounded soul that he was not alone but something held her back. She did not want to think about her family now nor did she particularly feel like explaining her own quest for revenge, or justice, or whatever this mess was. She could see in his face that he had questions for her but she had no answers she felt like supplying.

"You said that was yesterday?" Anna looked around the clearing. "Where are we now?"

"I took their horses to move you. We went east. There are more of them, the soldiers that is, and I'm still following them but I didn't want to stay too close to their trail in case you are going another way but I couldn't stay put. It seemed inconsiderate to leave you behind." His joke fell a bit flat. She could see he was still afraid of her.

"Thank you," Anna responded, it seemed like the right thing to say.

"So are you?" Dev asked her after a moment.

"Am I what?"

"Going another way?"

Anna shook her head. "It seems I am on the same path as you." She watched as his face went from confusion, to understanding and finally, heartbreakingly, to hope. She had felt that once as well, but that was before she had begun to enact her revenge, before she understood the cost.

"You are after these same men?" His voice sounded eager, hopeful, it left her feeling uncomfortable. She would not shoulder his desires for revenge along with her own.

"I am," she said shortly. She didn't want to discuss it further now. Her head had started pounding again. She couldn't move further today. She needed sleep and food, but first sleep.

"Will you—" he started.

"In the morning," she snapped, putting her hands to her throbbing head. "We can discuss more in the morning." With that, she turned her back and fell back into her bedroll, trying to sleep off the headache.

*

Anna woke up again, fully and completely, her eyes opening to the utter darkness of the forest around her. The moon had come and gone and the dawn had not begun. Only when she turned to face the camp did the red glow of the ember situate her in the dark.

From beyond the fire she heard the soft sounds of sleep. Dev had set himself as far from her as he dared. She shouldn't have snapped at him. Her head still hurt though.

She reached inside herself, to the alien energy inside her chest, which was fully restored after her rest. Drawing out a tiny bit of it she pushed it through her body, willing it to heal her. When she opened her eyes, the pain was gone. Smiling a bit at her newest manipulation of her powers, she moved to lie down again. Movement caught her eye before she had the chance.

The god's glow made him visible in this dark but didn't illuminate anything around him, as if he contained his fire internally, away from the rest of the world. Anna tried to suppress the swirl of emotions that ran through her. She knew he would read anything she thought of so she willed herself to quiet all the confusion, fear and even distant arousal. He wasn't going to stay away forever. She brought up her anger to the forefront, letting it cloud out all the other emotions.

"You've been busy." His cavernous voice seemed all the more threatening in the darkness of her camp.

Anna glared back at him. "Am I to receive punishment again? For defending myself?"

The god's lips twitched to the side in a smile she wished was less threatening than she perceived it. "You have taken lives, again. Despite the need for self-defense, you will still be punished as your soul is still marked by your actions." He extended his hand to her. "But don't worry, it won't last long."

Anna tried to suppress the anxiety knotting up her chest. She did not want to submit herself again to his treatment, mostly because she was terrified at how she might react. She pushed that aside, forcing a false calm and stood to take his hand. A jolt and they were standing in a vacant clearing. Dawn was slowly rising, turning the trees around her from black to grey. Bird calls were beginning. All of this seemed so surreal, while the glowing god in front of her somehow made more sense to her.

"Disrobe." The order came again, passionless and hard. Anna felt her insides squirm with shame. She divested herself of her bloody shirt and her only moderately better pants. She had ignored the mess when she had first woken up but the tinny smell of drying blood hit her full force as she pulled the shirt over her head. She was almost glad to be rid of it. When she finally stood there naked before him, he ran his eyes over her body.

"Eat more." Again his tone brokered no discussion, just another order from her owner. The thought twisted her gut again. He moved around behind her, pushing her hair over her shoulder, baring her back to him. She felt his fingers run down her skin, which erupted in tiny bumps at his light caress. The bits of blood that had dried on her skin disappeared, the dirt from the trail with it. The shiver that ran through her ran counter to the heat of the blush that was spreading across her face and down her chest. Her emotions were too confused to sort out and she prayed he would finish with her quickly.

He moved around to her front again. She kept her gaze down, avoiding his eyes, but it meant she was staring at the whip that had appeared in his hand. She jerked as if she'd been struck, her eyes flying to his. She knew what had been coming but to be confronted with it so blatantly was still shocking to her. Anna went to pull her gaze away from his face, which betrayed no reaction, but he stopped her with a hand under her chin.

"Look at me." She raised her eyes slowly, willing him to beat her and leave her. The discomfort she had been feeling seemed to amplify as soon as she met his gaze. Now it seemed like snakes were writhing in her chest, a sinking feeling appeared in her belly. The physical manifestations of her emotions were more accessible to her than trying to sort through what was going on in her head. He held her like that, staring into her eyes as the world brightened around them. She didn't know what he saw because his face never changed from the blank, perfect expression he had started with.

He stepped back and once again she found her wrists bound together and strung up a tree branch above her. She struggled, trying to get better purchase on the ground with just the balls of her feet.

"One for each man."

The sound of the whip alerted her a fraction of a second before a stripe of fire lit up across her back. She yelped at the sting. The second fell parallel, stealing her breath with the pain, but there was something else to it.

Anna felt something inside her click into place. All of the writhing shame and anxiety that had been brewing inside her focused itself like a jolt of energy directly between her legs as if it had simply been anticipating the opportunity. The pain in her back as his third stroke fell fueled it. She could feel herself getting wet, like she had in her dream, and in the inn when she had awoken after the first beating. She called out as the fourth blow crossed the others, sending bolts of fire through her back that seemed to wrap itself around her body, like a caress that drew the heat of the pain down her body directly into her core. The fifth and sixth blows were no better. The sting excited her, there was something more than just hurt, something she wanted more of. Her sex throbbed in response with a desperate need. She was slick with it. She begged her body to stop, to make it untrue that she could feel this way at his violence against her.

The god struck her the final time and the throbbing ache overwhelmed her thoughts. In some way it hurt more than the sharp, exact pain on her back. This was an overwhelming, terrifying desire that opened at her very center. What was worse, she could not think enough to try and hide it from him.

He came around to her front, taking her tear stained face in his hand again, forcing her gaze up to him once more.

"Well isn't this a surprise." His eyes bore into hers. Her brain screamed no while his other hand made its way down her flushed body. His soft touch after the beating only seemed to amplify her desire as she clenched around nothing. His lips betrayed the smallest hint of a smile as his fingers dipped into the evidence of her arousal between her legs.

"I do love to be surprised." His fingers dipped into her core, his thumb finding her hard nub. Her body arched into his touch, her entire skin felt like she was on fire. This was so different than the dream; every sensation was so brutally tangible as he played with her body. She writhed in her bonds, her body eagerly absorbing these new sensations. She felt the tension begin to climb, the peak she hadn't experienced looming close by. Shame crept in as her body edged towards that fever pitch. She was just a plaything on a string.

Her mind screamed at him to stop, hoping to avoid the humiliation of finding satisfaction with her owner without her consent. Her eyes slid to his face, his expression seemed almost bored as he watched her twist on the rope that held her. His other hand slid across her skin, finding her breast and twisting her painfully erect nipple. Something akin to panic ran through her as she realized he would not stop and she had no control. Her body's reactions were too far to be reined in. When the peak did come it hit her body like a blow. Her body tensed like a bowstring as waves of release ran through her, battering her reason into submission and silencing the continued denial of what he was doing to her.

When she slumped as the sensations abated, the rope disappeared causing her to fall gracelessly in a sprawl at his feet. He looked down at her with a blank face. Shame and disgust burned her cheeks.

"It can be difficult to punish someone who finds such pleasure in pain." She couldn't keep looking at him. Horrible confusion set in. She felt betrayed by her body. Something was terribly wrong with her if his beatings affected her so. She put her head in her hands only halfheartedly covering her ears, feeling like she, not he, was the enemy now. "Seems your shame may do the trick."

His words ignited her fury again. She glared up at him. "Why did you do that to me?"

The god crouched down so their eyes were level, giving her a small smirk. "I was punishing you, love. I had no idea you would like it so much." His mocking tone stoked her shame again. She had been violated and worse still, she had enjoyed it. His hand came to cup her cheek but she found she couldn't raise her eyes. With a jolt she found herself back in the camp, Dev's slow breathing indicating she hadn't been missed.

Though she couldn't see him the god's voice whispered in her ear. "There is a stream nearby. Next time try to wash yourself off before sleeping in the blood of those you've killed." And he was gone before she could retort. The cruelty of his words gripped her as she gathered her soiled clothes made her way to the stream. She was a butcher, meting out death wherever she went. Once she had thought it would make her feel proud, vindicated. Instead she felt numb. The frigid water made scrubbing the blood from her clothing almost painful. She scrubbed harder, her heart sinking despite the evidence of her deeds washing away.

She replaced her pants and breast band after only a few spots that had needed her attention and got to work on her shirt. The dark crust peeled away under her practiced fingers. Seven lines of fire stood out on her back. Anna reached behind her and let her cool fingers run over the raised welts. She whimpered as pain flared despite her attempts to be gentle. Her face burned with the memory of what he had done, how she had reacted. She wrang out the shirt and stood to lay it out on a sun-warmed stone. A noise behind her caused her to twist around, a motion her back made sure she instantly regretted.

Dev was awake and moving about the camp. His heavy footfall was coming towards her. Anna turned to face him, keeping the marks on her back out of sight. Of course it meant she was facing him in just a breast band, but still the lesser of two humiliations.

Dev emerged from the trees and his eyes immediately fell on her half-dressed form. "Sorry!" Dev blurted out. His eyes met hers for the briefest second. He stumbled back, disappearing between the trees. Anna stayed still a moment longer, making sure his footsteps faded. Her shoulders slumped as she turned back towards the water. She hadn't thought about her travel companion since the god had come to take her. What was she going to do about him now? Could she stand to travel with him? Could she convince him to leave? He seemed intent on the same suicidal mission of revenge she had been on. If she could keep him from the same fate shouldn't she try?

With a groan she reached for her soaked shirt. It would just have to dry on the road.

***

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