Soul Alloy
5 — A Climax
Azonia á Bien strode proudly across the brushlands that bounded the Great Western Desert. It wasn’t misplaced pride; she was dressed in the flamboyant tunic of a Sūedlander merchant, and leading a camel trained and harnessed in the fashions of that region, but beneath her robes was the proper garb of a warrior. Well… almost proper. She had found some time ago that in order to accomplish her current quest, she would need mithril chaInmail.
Mithril was expensive. Very expensive, almost prohibitively so for a humble warrior. The only way she’d been able to afford it was by selling her body to science. The elf Dennery had wanted to experiment with the mystical metal’s effects on the human soul, and found that it resonated with her astral body in ways better than he could have hoped. The clink of one ring against another, or almost any vibration in the mithril, would cause her entire emotional state to change. The elven master-craftsman had at one point abused this to make her intensely aroused, and taken advantage of her in her confusion. But for the legendary artifact he was creating for her, she considered it a small price to pay.
In the journey back across the nine kingdoms, Azonia had discovered both good and bad qualities of her revolutionary armour. She made a note that she must send a message to Dennery after this quest was complete; because nobody in history had used armour just like this one. It was not the respectable warrior garb she had hoped for, because of the immense cost of the materials. Instead, she found that the interlinked silvery-metal rings covered less of her body than her hair did. This didn’t mean it protected her any less, because the spiritual resonance which made her soul respond to touches on the metal also imparted the strength of steel to her entire body.
Not her clothes, though. Chainmail underwear seemed to be the only description she could think of. The mithril rings had to be worn against her skin, and while they gave her protection against blades, teeth, forest fires, sandstorms, and acid lakes, her other attire had most certainly suffered from all of the above. Five times on the journey she’d walked through a danger rather than waste time going around, and ended up with her shirt shredded. The problem with a continent of loose alliances, city-states, and warring tribes was that news didn’t travel fast, and also that most rural areas were populated by macho men whose women were subservient.
They’d look at her in her ravaged clothes, or wearing nothing but a dozen square inches of glittering silver chain after swimming the acid lake, and they wouldn’t take her seriously. Someone would try to take advantage of what was obviously a weak woman—despite the well toned muscles that accentuated the curves of her well tanned skin—and she’d have to hurt someone. Then, half the time his friends in the local militia or guardians would take offence, and somebody would try to stab her. It grew tiresome after a while. She didn’t want to hurt anyone more than necessary, but even after the local soldiers’ swords had stripped away what remained of her clothes, and they’d struck her in the belly and face a dozen times to no effect, they just kept on trying. To get their attention she’d have to reach inside her mind for the incredible density and mass of the mithril, and swing a punch that put someone through the tavern wall. Oddly enough, that was enough to make them back away. So far, anyway.
This merchant’s outfit had served better than most. The silk was padded and lined with soft leather, and most bandits between here and the southern empire knew the roving bands of Imperial Swords well enough to know that attacking a merchant from those lands was a prospect only sanely undertaken after a very, very close study of the surroundings and a very good plan for how to disappear completely. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been attacked, but in most cases her own sword was fast enough to dispatch would-be robbers before they even got close to her expensive clothes.
Now, she was here. As she crested the hill, she tried to remind herself that what she saw was a castle coming into sight. It was the tower of the mad warlock Por’tak á Bien, not a giant bloom of blue-white flame rising from the desert floor. Though this region wasn’t completely arid, the few scrubby plants within a half mile of the dome of fire were scorched or burned away completely, and a good deal of the gravelly soil was slowly metamorphosing into sheets of impure glass.
She could feel the heat from this ridge, though there was at least an hour’s walk between here and the foot of the tower. She’d heard her tribe’s warriors and shamans discussing how to attack this elementally protected fortress, but this was the first time she’d seen it in person, and now she began to see why everyone was so daunted by the task. She recognised the knot of fear in her stomach, a familiar sensation from all the times Dennery had induced it in her as part of his experiments, but she couldn’t admit to herself that she couldn’t go on.
She waited, watching the conflagration. It never dimmed, never cooled. There was no sign of fuel, and her eyes would never adapt to the brightness. Eventually, she gathered her courage. She retrieved the chain cap from her pack, and fitted it tightly over her flowing hair. Next she put on a necklace, bracelets, and toe rings that had mithril coins on them to rest, cool and immutable against her skin. In moments she felt the nature of the armour flowing into her, the oppressive heat from the fire was gone. She was metal, she was mithril, and no heat less than the heart of a star would smelt her. She took her spear in one hand and her shield in the other, and strode forward with more confidence than she felt.
Four hundred yards from the start of the wall of fire, the brandy flask in her bag erupted in flame. She discarded it, tossing the whole burning pack onto the baking sand. Another hundred paces, and her tunic started to smoulder with thick, dark smoke forming a sickening pall around her. It burned for less than a minute before the hot updraft of that magical fire sucked the ashes away. She kept on walking. She began to feel the heat around her again at the same time the shaft of her spear charred and disintegrated. She gripped the base of the blade like a dagger, and moved forward. Then she was blind, nothing but white so brilliant it drowned out all detail, even dazzling her through her closed eyelids. Holding her spear blade was like gripping an iron straight out of the fire, but that was a pain she could bear. Once she was through the barrier, she assumed, the air would be cool again.
Flame, all around. Her legs moved sluggishly, fighting as if she were wading through thick mud. That would be the sand, a detached part of her mind realised, turned into molten glass by the fire that continued high overhead. She was terrified, the enormous power of this barrier getting through to her more with every new revelation. The glass against her skin felt like hot wax, dragging against her knees and then her thighs. With horror she realised that the dome of fire was a complete sphere, half beneath the tower, and that she was sinking into an underground moat of molten glass.
She had been told long ago, by her grandfather, that it is not the lack of fear that defines a warrior. He said that while fear makes a weak man freeze, it gives the hero an insurmountable need to go through whatever dares to worry him. The terror spurred Azonia on now, fighting against the molasses around her waist and kicking and groping forward in the blinding white until she felt solid stone under her fingertips. She pulled herself onto a floor tiled with slabs of grey rock that looked as if they had simply been split from the surface of the mountains, and realised that though it was still bright, she could see again. The air was cool enough that the white-hot glass clinging to her body—and she could see it just touched the bottom of her breasts—began to plink and shiver as it cooled.
For a moment she felt herself panic, and then she was overjoyed by the sheer knowledge that she’d survived, and then she almost started to cry as she realised that those merchants with their safe lives would never know this satisfaction. The carousel of emotions was moving so fast, she knew there was something wrong.
The mithril… it was encased in glass, and the vibrations as it cooled were being transmitted right into the centre of her soul. She had to stop it, before she found herself doing something self destructive. Fortunately, the next wave of vibrations to run through her heart was a red thrumming of hatred, pure rage that made her want to smash the world. She discarded the few drops of molten iron that remained of her spear, and pounded with her fists at the cloudy suit of glass. It shattered, filling her mind for one moment with such a conflicting well of emotion that she dropped to the ground and screamed.
“And you are?” the voice was rich and melodious, but also confrontational. And, she realised with her start, speaking the Bien Talorat, language of her people’s elders. She looked up and saw a well built man rapidly heading towards middle age. He wore golden armour around his shoulders, from which hung a long cape. She judged it was more a symbol of office than any real protection, something to inspire fear in those who challenged him. The same could be said of the crown, crafted from a minotaur skull, that sat on his head. The heat in here was obvious from the sheen of sweat on his bronze skin, and the thin silken kilt that was all he wore beneath his shoulders. It would have been a comical attire, seen through the eyes of an experienced warrior, were it not for the wrought iron staff in his hand.
The warlock’s staff commanded all the ancestral magics of their tribe, and she knew that in order to restore her people’s honour she must wrest it from Por’tak and return it to the village chief. However, it was also a formidable weapon, and she watched his casting hand with care as she responded.
“I am Azonia.” She stood and bumped her fists together, the salute for a respected adversary, but didn’t feel the need to state her full name. He was of the same tribe, they were practically family, so only one name was needed.
“And I, Por’tak.” He returned the gesture. “I salute you, noble maiden, for you have come further than any warrior or mage of any tribe, and dressed in far less than most would have dared.”
She glanced down for a moment, remembering her near nakedness. She realised with shock that her toe rings had broken away in the fire. She had come so close to death, and not even realised. While she was distracted he hurled a bolt of jagged lightning at her, but she easily caught it with one thick bracelet and channeled it through the armour into the ground at her feet.
“And now, I am doubly impressed,” his smile was open and honest, but she knew it had to be an act. The chuckle behind his kind words told her that he had something with which he hoped to surprise her. And in defiance of all odds, on the far side of the courtyard, the warlock rammed his staff—the staff—between two flagstones and instead pulled a bard’s horn from some hidden pocket of his robe. “You have found the solution that every tactical genius didn’t even guess at. You have incredible courage, and great reflexes too, fair Azonia. We should not be enemies. Should I play you a love song?”
She swore in the language of her people, promising that she would slay him before she stood at his side, and charged with fists ready to strike. She opened her soul and let the power of the mithril resonance fully fill her. The vibrations from her long strides reflected from the rings and became a symphony of certain doom for anyone who opposed her, as her body gained the weight of pure mithril. Her fist was unstoppable with the full force of the spiritually metallized woman behind it, barreling forward with all the speed of a stampeding bull over stone flags that splintered under her suddenly enhanced weight.
The sound from Por’tak’s horn was a plaintive wail that came straight from his heart, but the young warrior woman didn’t think about that. She didn’t think about the misfortune that must have occurred to drive him to such a life of malice, she didn’t stop to wonder why he didn’t just run. As she was half way there, he took the enchanted horn from his mouth and it continued to play. That was no surprise, such trinkets could be bought for a handful of gold or a single mithril coin in the elven cities.
“Amplify,” he muttered a single word of the Red Tongue, and touched his horn against the staff, where it stood in the ground. Suddenly, the music filled the whole courtyard, all the way up to the tower reaching over them. Every stone in the building and on the ground vibrated at the same pitch, and Azonia felt her will to fight die in an instant. “Resonate.”
She couldn’t fight him. She couldn’t move. She didn’t even want to, nothing mattered now. When Dennery had tested the armour, when he had experimented on her, he had touched his tuning fork to a dozen of the mithril rings. When the glass had filled her with so many different moods, they had been in conflict. But now, one hundred and twenty nine mithril coins vibrated with her should at the precise frequency of helpless arousal. She dropped to her knees, overcome by the pleasure, and desperately tried to touch herself through the metal. Nothing else mattered, as long as she could reach the bliss that she knew was so close.
She could plead with Por’tak, beg him to satisfy her. She knew that she was supposed to be an enemy, but if he knew how much she wanted him right now, she just hoped he would take her. No words came from her mouth, though, just a moan of carnal delight. The vibrations ran through her body as well as her mind, and she wouldn’t do anything to stop it as her body spasmed and she screamed out in ecstasy.
“Or maybe I should just play the song of obedience,” Por’tak mused, watching with obvious pleasure the proud woman spread-eagled before him. “I have to assume, to challenge a Sonics master clad in mithril, that this is what you hoped for. Right?”
She moaned, overcome by lust to the extent that she couldn’t think coherently, much less beg for release.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he smiled sadistically. But, for all his megalomaniacal tendencies, Por’tak was a generous master. He gave her three more mind-shattering orgasms before he broke her for real and took away her will.