Feldare Tales: A Lesson Learned

Upon opening the gate, the door of the house opened as well, and two large, heavily built men in armor approached her. "Miss Sharesh." The larger of the two said. "Welcome back, we will show you right in, the master will be with you shortly."

She smiled at the guards. She generally approved of warrior men, finding them good lovers and aggressive, both admirable traits in her bedroom. They escorted her into the house, both smiling as she took their arms and intentionally bumped their hips as she walked with them. Her tail flitted between them, seeking out chinks in their armor and exploring any it found. As they brought her to the small sitting room, she found a good one on the smaller guard which caused him to gasp and his eyes to widen. She grabbed her tail and smiled at the man. "I'll chastise my errant limb later, sir." She said, licking the tail and gripping it with both hands while blinking quickly at the man.

The two guards left and bowed before they turned back to the hall. She offered them a courtesy and sat upon the edge of one chair, looking about the expensively decorated room with wide eyes. A few minutes later a middle-aged man came to the door.

"Autoro." She said. "I have your wand." She reached to her waist and lifted the leather tube from her belt.

The man looked at her and nodded. "Very good, Sharesh." He said. "You are as advertised, I see. And an unstoppable force, I reckon, as well." He walked past her into the room and stood at a little bar and poured himself a drink. "Coglandish Rum?" He asked.

She nodded. "Please." She said. With one hand she slid the wand from its protective sheath. "We agreed five thousand once I was done, along with the five thousand you've already given me."

He nodded. "Yes, we did." He walked up to her and handed her one of the fine leaded crystal glasses, two fingers of rum in it. He took the wand with his now free hand and looked at it. "I have to be sure this is the right one, though." He said.

She felt hands grab her upper arms, causing her to drop her drink, looking back over her shoulders she saw the guards, wearing expressions that combined resignation with embarrassment. One glanced at her in a way that said 'sorry.'

Sharesh glared at the magician. "What the hell is this?" She demanded.

"It's just that I can't trust you to not tell my enemy now that I have it back." He said, his eyes cold and his voice even colder. "I'm sorry, Sharesh, you are a lovely creature."

He turned about and brought the wand around and leveled it at her chest. "I hope you realize it's nothing personal."

With a snarl, she folded herself double her rear feet raked upward, aimed at both men's faces. She connected with one and his face turned into a pulp of shredded meat instantly as her powerful thigh muscles drove the claws deep into his flesh and scraped along the bones of his skull. Blood flew everywhere as the man began to scream, releasing her arm and grabbing for his face with both hands.

The other man managed to get his armored shoulder into the way and Sharesh winced as one toe claw was nearly wrenched from her toe by catching on the armor plate. The wizard began to speak as the injured man released her arm. She brought her freed arm around, extending her claws as they formed a deadly arc of four three inch razor-sharp talons. The man tried to shield his face, but she was aiming for the weak point she had just discovered in his armor. She felt flesh part to her claw and the man screamed as she quite literally ripped his testicles from his body. With incredible agility, she flipped over the man and twisted him between herself and the magician as a lance of white-hot energy shot from the wand and flayed the armor and skin from the guard's bones. His smouldering chest collapsed in a heap of charred bones and the meat remaining folded in on itself as the guard slumped to the floor.

She was out the sitting room door, and making for the front door of the house when she saw another two guards enter the far end of the hall, swords drawn. Her claws dug carpet, shredding expensive weavework as she stopped and changed course a hundred and eighty degrees. With a curse, the magician was emerging from the sitting room. A lance missed her barely by a hand's width. The fur on her armpit and left side of her ribs smouldered and singed with a strong, acrid smell of burning hair.

It had been a mistake on his part to come after her, though, and she plowed into him with fangs bared and claws out. Before the guards could arrive, the magician's face was completely gone, lost in a heap of shredded facial tissue and blood. He was screaming from his lipless mouth as one guard grabbed her arm and she brought her hind foot up to the magician's lower abdomen as they pulled her off of him, her leg lashed out tearing his gut open and spraying shredded intestines over the floor.

One guard gagged at the sight of the disemboweling right before his eyes, vomit slid down Sharesh's back as he lost control of his own gut and heaved double. She drove her elbow into his neck even as the other guard pulled on her again. The soldier with the weak stomach went down with a moan as his head smashed into the stone wall then collapsed back onto the floor. The guard pulling on her arm aimed a huge, gauntleted fist down on top of the cat's head and she saw stars swim before her eyes as the color faded from her view.

The magician was sitting up now, his one remaining eye regarding her with hatred and madness as he brought the want up again. He tried to speak the words of activation for the powerful wand, but his ruined lips and mangled cheeks made that impossible. Sharesh spit blood at the guard's face causing him to flinch and loosen his grip on her arm. When he opened his eyes all he saw was a maw that seemed impossibly large for a figure of human size, then his vision went dark as she tore his eyes from his skull with her teeth, ripping them open with her long, sharp fangs. He screamed, his voice joining the cacophony of wails that filled the hallway.

Turning toward the magician, Sharesh gave him her best predator's grin, baring her bloody teeth behind her black muzzle. "Magician, you have cast your last enchantment." She said, lowering her head.

Fear dawned in the one blurry eye remaining to the magician. He turned and tried to crawl away from her, but his guts thwarted his hands, and the pooling blood on the floor made his grip treacherous. She leapt upon his back and sank her fangs into his neck. She drove them deep into the knot of muscle and tendon just under his ear and forced her jaws to close. With a epic shove of her arms and yank of her neck, she tore the large veins in his neck that fed his brain, ripping them from his throat. Blood sprayed around the room in a crimson geyser.

The magician collapsed in under three seconds, burbling through his destroyed mouth and whimpering. She stooped and picked up the wand. "No payment, no wand, asshole." She said. She walked to the coat closet, pausing to shove the screaming soldier with the blinded eyes out of her way. In the closet she found a cloak that would work well enough, and shed hers, throwing the bloody garment over the yelling man nearest her. The first guard she had wounded seemed to have regained control of himself and was staring at her stupidly from his rent face. "I advise you gentlemen to forget what happened here today." She said loudly. "Your employer won't be around to reward your loyalty." She cast the fresh cloak about her shoulders and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

She moved with a purpose, but astutely avoided running. She arrived home a half-hour later and padded through the house. She shed the cloak as she went into the bathing room, hoping it would be empty. Theresa gasped as she saw her. The human was lying in the tub, soaking.

"By the One, Sharesh." She said, eyeing the near total coating of blood her lover wore. Then she noted that the blood was from other people. "New lovers?" She asked, with a sparkle in her eyes.

Sharesh fell into the massive tub and caused a miniature tsunami to flow over Theresa before coming up for air. The water turned pink almost instantly. "No." She said, her fur matted with water and blood, and her expression that of someone who just had their lunch turn out to be fecal matter. "Someone tried to stiff me on a bill."

Theresa whistled as if impressed, earning her a choice glare from the cat. "Remind me not to try to gyp you." She said, her eyes wide.

"Shut up and wash me." Sharesh said, impatiently.

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Epilogue -

Sharesh sat upon the chair at the same inn she had been to earlier, the Rabid Wolf, it was called. She had already said hello to Alan – Twice. The representative of Pallus, the mage of the tower she had burgled three weeks ago sat before her.

"And why should we pay five thousand to ransom back that which we owned in the first place?" He asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

She shrugged. "That's what I'm out from Autoro trying to renege on his end of the deal." She said evenly. "I hope you understand it's just business."

Nodding the man held out a large sack, it jingled a little as he sat it upon the table. "Okay." He said. "I hope you learned a lesson in this, ma'am." His eyes were hard and unsympathetic.

"I did, for certain, Antonio." She said. "Next time a magician tries to hire me, I just kill him right then and there, and save myself trouble later." She grumbled.

Antonio laughed. "Well, that's one way to look at it." He said. "But I was thinking you should dig a little deeper before deciding who SHOULD have something like this wand, rather than who had legal possession last."

She nodded sourly. "Yeah." she said. Her pack was heavy with the added weight of the pouch of silver, but she bore it gladly. "Don't worry, I won't be taking any jobs like that for a while."