I stumbled into my bedroom, the massive bed, larger than anything I had ever owned before, calling out towards his beaten, bruised, exhausted body.  Exhausted from the inside out.  Exhausted from the exhilaration of winning the running battle against the Rats and the Kabukis.  Worn from terror because I had nearly failed to protect my herd from the dirty Rat Shaman, worn from the massive lightning spells, even the healing spells.

I’d been dumb as…..well, as a rat…. to waste energy to prove a point with Donager, even if it sparked an extreme interest in jamming from Ms. Temperance.  Even dumber to force the bullet wounds in my back to heal just to prove yet another point, even if the reward had been several hours of exquisite and needed docking.  They still didn’t understand how much I needed that, even after all this time, and all my attempts to break those chains made me feel jittery.  But I didn’t want cured, not from that, even if I understood it looped a chain around my legs, a soft and pleasurable chain, wrapped in feathers, but a chain no less.  The question I couldn’t answer was whether or not it hindered my journey or just marked the path I had taken.

I stumbled even further into the room, slapping the controls on the shower to high, before stripping off the soiled leather and silk…..fucking pain in the ass to clean, especially of blood.

Then I began to soak, letting the shower pulse over my battered shoulders, absently watching some of the blood flow in pink swirls down the drain.  Ms. Fanny had been right,  shamans can fool most people, even those looking for it, but in truth they only saw, and fixed, the bullet wounds in my back, not the old knife wound that had re-opened with the force of the second lightning spell I threw at our pursuers.  I don’t think I had ever cast so hard before, and combined with the mundane wounds, I was in trouble.  Which is why, as much as I’d not wanted to, I’d insisted we jam it and retreat an hour ago against the toxic spirit.  Where their shaman had been, I couldn’t sense.  I supposed it could have been a mage, but they didn’t really go for the toxicity usually, at least from what I’d learned from Talon.  Offended their sense of order, the prickly arrogant fucks.

I slumped down to the floor of the shower, half dreaming, half trance, as the water turned into the thunder of hooves and the flash of flame.

 

---

 

I watched him burn……the troll last night maybe? Fire bathed him, wrapped in the grasp of a flaming tail as a horse of blue flame squatted over the top of the troll as she screeched into the night.

She?  Then I heard the screams behind me, and I turned watching the flames consume the walls…

---

 

I shuddered awake as Tora shook me.  “Stallion, Stallion, wake up…..we gotta go.”

“Ugh…..what is it? What time is it? Why?”  Least that’s what I think I said.

“Its only been a couple hours……but Rennie’s at that store….with the kids.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,,,,,tell her to wait.  There’s a god damn toxic spirit protecting them.   Did you get me a new comlink?”

I tried to struggle out of the bed, pulling on a silk shirt, leaving it unbuttoned before sliding the soft leather over my legs and grabbing my boots.   The wound in my side began to drip as I pulled it open, it probably needed stitched again, and there wasn’t time, but the sticky blood in the bed promised hell to pay for later.

Then I grabbed my shoulder holster, and the mono blade.  Pointless gestures really, but as battered as I felt, I didn’t know how long my magic would hold out, before crawling gracelessly into the passenger seat, with good, tough, reliable Donager in the weapons mount.  “Tell me where to shoot when we get there.”

“I’ll try, for the fuck all good it will do.   Just get us there fast, Tora.  Sateen’s far outmatched.  There’s got to be a caster nearby….has to be.  I don’t think its just a guardian, too much sentience…..” How much of that I mumbled or actually said, I never could remember later.

As Tora screeched down the street, I pulled my fogged mine together, exhaustion and pain buffeting my focus, but this was important, the most important thing I had ever done maybe, with the soul exception of banishing the storm god almost a year ago.

I thrust my mind into the aetheric realm, pushing all of my battered energy into the clarion call towards the multifaceted images of my totem spirit, the glorious Horse, wishing for a powerful spirit of Fire to cleanse the space of toxicity.

Rage, fear, excitement, all drove my plea, “Please, please, I ask for your help to rescue the colts and foals that these demons have tortured. Like those who tortured me as a child, from whom you helped me flee, rescuing a damaged child, help me rescue them. If you choose not to help me, then so be it.  I will make the attempt anyway, whatever it costs.  I must.”

I felt the power gathering in the as the winds of aether began to whip, and the being who appeared to me, only to me, changed.  Similar to other fire spirits who had assisted me, but different, multiple colors of flames flickered down its mane and tail, cold blue, bright red, the burning orange, green, more.  Turning its massive head to look at me, I saw the wise eyes and features of my Andalusian guide, and tears filled my eyes, tears of relief and thankfulness that he had not abandoned me yet.  My astral hand reached up to touch his face, “Thank you for believing in me.”

With a snuffle, he responded, but I’ll never forget the look in his eyes.

“My friend, there is a sickening, twisted spirit of toxicity guarding the men who keep these children in slavery, and watching over the children as well, caged though they are in cramped shipping crates of bars.  Please deal with that nasty creature.”

As we roared down the street, I began a countdown over the comm.

Donager attempted to fire initially, but the spirit of waste and toxins had not actually manifested and the heavy rounds flew over the store.   After that, the battle became a blur of motion, bullets flying everywhere, but I barely noticed as Andalusian and I battled the embodiment of everything I hated in this world.

I could feel the toxic blast enter my body, nauseatingly painful, and I could see that Donager and Sateen were in big trouble.  Doubt began to enter my mind as I channeled more and more energy through my battered body and mind, throwing mana bolt after mana bolt at the green and black plague, while Andalusian hit it with fiery streams of breath repeatedly, scorching the miasma away.  But when Andalusian took the massive ripping infected talons slicing through his flank, I quailed.  I scrambled in my pocket, slapping the most powerful I had stim patch above my heart.

Adrenaline flowed through me, near enough to cram to shatter the fog, and I cast again, just as my spirit unleashed another powerful, if weakened, fiery elemental blast, and with a squeal of rage, the incarnation of toxin, flashed away, destroyed, and banished at least for the day back to its home of putrid carnage.

I took a deep breath, before I slowly crawled out of the gunship, walking towards the children.  “Can all you kiddos understand me?” Most nodded yes, and tears rolled down my eyes as I saw the youngest around three, while the oldest may have been twelve, near the age when I finally escaped.

“We’ll get you out in just a chrono.  You’re safe now.  I’ll help you.  Once, I was like you.  Tortured, trained to behave no matter what vial action we were forced to do.”  Memory shook me for a powerful moment.

“Tora, I need your help, Donager and Sateen are still ….. retching,” and it drove anger deeper into me that I couldn’t heal my friends, not of this.  “Plus their caster escaped, he could be back with reinforcements.”

“I can go get him, we should go get him.”

“Later.  It needs to wait.  I need your help here. I’m about toast. Please, chummer.  Please help me get the kids.  Then I can make that bastard talk.”

I could feel the war inside Tora as he wished to track down the monsters and end them forever, but in the end, he gave in to my pleas.  Maybe it was the exhaustion that underlay the pain in my voice.

Thrusting out with my mind, I moved back to the brightness of the astral plane, staggering momentarily as the exhaustion spun my mind in circles, before my shadowed body solidified.  My mind quailed away from the blackened and toxic holes emanating from my friends bodies as they struggled to fight off the poisons that spirit had infected them with, much worse than the patches of wounds and psychic exhaustion covering my body.  Had their damaged auras been more easily attacked because of the holes they had already given themselves with metal and plastic?  Yet another mystery to add to the growing list of things I did NOT know, and another wave of doubt crashed through me.

Worse, far worse, though was the pain I felt when I saw him standing there, where the beautiful multi-hued fiery aura had once stood just a little while ago, now a green and black pox marked spray of toxins covered at least half of the surface of his body, and while he still “stood” proudly, when he walked towards me, the limps were severe.

I reached up with my hand, touching his face, the auras flashing in linked power for a moment, before whispering, “Thank you, my friend.  Thank you for helping me with your power, and your own suffering today.  I can’t heal this damage, I don’t know how.”  Tears of pain flowed down my face to disappear into the aether.

Exhausted, “I…will you watch over the children for me for the rest of the day?”  My image flickered into one of a young horse, white patches and lines of sweat covering his coat, trembling in fatigue.

“I’m about done, but I need to finish the job, and find the trail to the rest.”

Then I returned to my body, and I turned towards the only enemy left alive as Tora and Castle moved most of the children from the cages to the van.

Slapping his face until he awoke, I thrust my will into his mind, not caring about any pain he may suffer, ordering him to release the child tethered to the unholy machine.

When he had, I dropped the spell, before once again forcing myself into his filthy depraved mind, binding him to my will, compelling him to answer only truthfully, “Now, start with your name……..”