The blade came down hard, arcing through the air, giving off a faint whistle in its passing. The attacking Royal Black Guard was proficient, that much Orgeeg could tell, first to attack an immobile champion of the Goddess of Order, the man had courage as well as a solid tether to duty. The blade bit into Masutap's neck, a hit hard enough to decapitate any man. But with the Champion of a Goddess, all the blade did was break skin, expose a strip of flesh within and allow the swell of a drop of red blood. But the other Royal Black Guards were following through the first Guard's attack with thrusts and swings of their own blades. Masutap was guaranteed a gruesome death.
Orgeeg sat beside Dulab as mere observers to Masutap's demise. He found it odd that there wasn't much delight to the fulfillment of vengeance. Vengeance. He thought. You long for something for too long and when you get it, the satisfaction you thought worthy of the turmoil of patience, careful planning and the choice between action and inaction, yields nothing but the acknowledgement that a desire was met without even an epiphany for a reward.
Orgeeg watched the blades descend and rise as one would observe a bird flapping its wings in the bid for flight. A thought fought its way to the surface of his conscience, a thought regarding love. He wondered as he watched the Royal Black Guards hack at Masutap. Why is love the most powerful emotion? Vengeance didn't stir any joy from within him, yet, without a second thought, he was certain that if he caught the eye of the woman he loved, if he could but spend a span of moments meeting her eyes and seeing within them the same desire he held for her, then joy would not only rule his being but also pitch tent in his soul.
"Her eyes." Dulab noted. Drawing Orgeeg's focus. Masutap's eyes had been glowing red, the hallmark of one with the Jojoh Meena. But now they were completely black, dark orbs with not even a hint of the white sclera. Something was wrong, something was terribly wrong.
The wounds dealt on Masutap by the blades, they weren't bleeding neither was the skin breaking or flesh parting anymore. It was as if she'd been transformed to stone. She just sat there, staring right at him with those black eyes as if she was seeing him for the first time. A coy smile suddenly drew the edge of her lips, her neck where the first guard had drawn a wound suddenly mended, skin knitting of its own accord but not before the blood that had dripped free of the wound withdrew within, retreating back into her flesh. Something was terribly wrong.
The Royal Black Guards saw it too, or felt it rather. Their descending blades laxed in vigor. Some took hurried paces back, staring at their swords that had been dented from the effort of trying to draw blood from Masutap. Silence blanketed the tavern, every Royal Black Guard retreating two paces from Masutap who'd somehow regained full control of her body, shaking off the poison and leaning forward in her chair, elbows on the table between her and Orgeeg. Fully black eyes peering directly at him.
Orgeeg's short blade was strapped to his left side, he reached for the hilt, knowing full well it would be useless against Masutap.
"I have seen you before." The voice coming out of Masutap was hers and at the same time not hers. There was another layered voice beneath Masutap's, a male's voice whose intonation was an odd sound coming from Masutap's throat, a male voice that sounded familiar.
"Who are you?" Orgeeg inquired.
"Leba Vigon." Masutap answered.
"How—"
"Possession." Masutap said and smiled.
Orgeeg struggled to contain his fright, beside him Dulab raised the cup in hand to his lips, thinking of draining it of ale and finding it already empty. He gave a puzzled look and lowered the cup. It was as if Dulab was incapable of fear. Or he hid it too well. "Masutap is a traitor, and she is condemned to die." Orgeeg said.
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Masutap nodded. "I have promised her life in exchange for a service she has already provided."
"Where is she?" Orgeeg asked. Trying to appear calm even though thousands of things warred in his mind, forming a conflagration of emotions that had fear burning as the brightest. What powers does Leba possess? Possession isn't an attribute of Meena, and the eyes, they do not glow, they leach off color, a dark abyss where the soul should be. Dahli had warned of his coming. Orgeeg tightened his grip on his short blade, ready to unsheathe it with a Form of Pride, he saw it in his mind's eye, a direct lunge, muscles aligned for a single purpose. I'll go for the eye.
Masutap raised a hand and a terrible cold suddenly engulfed the tavern. Breath plumed before them in a white mist, Orgeeg shivered. Masutap straightened her arm before her, spread her fingers, then drew the hand towards her chest, slowly while curling her fingers into a fist. Orgeeg suddenly felt the urge to draw his sword but a direct lunge for Masutap's eye wasn't what fueled the motive. He started to unsheath the sword strapped to his left and four inches of the blade emerged from the scabbard before Dulab reached out and stayed his hand with a hard grip to his wrist. Three Royal Black Guards reversed the grip on their blades and plunged them into their own necks. One, wielding a long sword positioned the sharp tip to his chest and fell on his sword, the tip broke through his back and he gurgled as he drowned in a pool of his own blood. Those who had stabbed themselves in the neck remained standing, blood dripping down their necks, staining their once elegant bright silks a crimson red.
"Masutap is at the same place these weak ones among your henchmen will currently reside until I grow weary of them." Masutap —under the control of Leba — unclenched her fist and Orgeeg felt a shift in the room's atmosphere. "Their souls are yet to depart their bodies, they are about to, though. But I won't let them." Orgeeg turned his head to the man who'd impaled himself, lying on the ground, his mouth moved, opening and closing like a drowning fish. He had been the first to attack Masutap. The other three remained standing, an endless flow of blood leaving their bodies from the gaping wounds in their necks yet they did not fall. "The soul is tethered to life, through life does one have free will, through life does one have a chance at metamorphosis. The soul is tethered to life, and in so doing with the absence of life so too does the soul depart the flesh." The man on the ground, sword point still sticking out of his back, stood up from the ground and moved to stand beside the three who'd slit their throats. His mouth opening and closing as if trying to breathe under water. He is drowning in his own blood! Orgeeg surmised as he observed the four who stood at the brink of death, their eyes were the same shade as Masutap's, all black without the whites. "As they near death, I grip their souls and bind them to the memory of life their bodies still inhibit." Leba continued as Masutap. "I take the last moment of their life, that they so willingly abandoned with a simple nudge from me, and force their souls to conform to it, I prevent them from entering *Tabrimas* and I prevent them from achieving the full state of death by ensuring they live forever at the brink of death. And when their flesh rots to bone and finally they can no longer mimic life to a degree where their soul believes the flesh to be alive, their souls will depart and belong to me. For they worship the bringer of endless night, now, just as you will, just as the whole realm will. United under darkness. Forever at the brink of death."
Terror gripped Orgeeg in a way nothing ever had, and he feared, nothing ever will. Tabrimas had been what drove him, a guarantee that upon death, after having achieved a life the Gods may acknowledge as one of valor, he would be admitted within the realm of heroes. But here, before him, was something he never thought existed. A being, a God, who could twist the very fabric of fate and render a life of valor obsolete, robbing said life of a chance at eternal paradise and offering damnation instead.
"Why?" Orgeeg whispered. He didn't know why the question came of him, there was much he longed to ask. Much he wanted to bargain for and to understand. But all he could master was a flimsy question that bordered on the vague.
Masutap — Leba — titled her head at him and smiled once more. That smile so void of humor, riddled with what Orgeeg could only surmise as pleasure wrapped in a cocoon of pure evil. "Why? Why does the Yendw wolf stalk its prey? Or the grass grow in clusters upon the Talisi hills? Why does the setting sun turn the world red and the depths of the sea turn a blind eye to the light from the sky? Well, not everything requires a reason to be, nature in itself is a product of relationships, everything exists in relation to each other and my actions, and the actions of my God, come about as a necessity to continue that which lacks definition." She sighed then, turning her head to the side and squeezing her eyes shut. Now is your chance! Strike! A voice within Orgeeg urged him but he found himself incapable of action. "The only reason possession was possible with Masutap is because she retreated within her Goddess in order to gain knowledge valuable to me, now she struggles to return to her body using the power of Meena to do so." She sighed once more. "I am not long for this body." She turned to the four who were at the brink of death. "Take them all to the brink of death but leave this body unharmed."
And the four whose complexion had turned paler than was common for Binorians, attacked. At the same time the black of Masutap's eyes retreated behind a glowing red light and the woman whom Orgeeg had been sent to capture regained her body only to fall off her chair and lay insensate on the tavern floor.
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