Skylar stared into the young woman's deep black eyes, eldritch and secretive, and felt the imp of the perverse taking the reins as his followers goaded him on; and so when she leaned in, smirking, he couldn't resist the temptation to drotz everything up. Half-closing his eyes, he shifted forward with a cat's striking speed, planting a full kiss directly on Amara's mouth.
He expected shouting and violence, but what happened amused him; her own eyes went wide, and she froze, stock-still, and trembled ever so slightly. Has she never been kissed before? Why would she react this way? A tiny, gasping exhale puffed from her nostrils and tickled his nose, but he simply held his position, feeling her lips against his, for a long moment, waiting to see how she would --
OH, GROSS. AUGH
Involuntarily, he flinched back, an expression of disgust deforming his face as his tongue protruded from between his teeth at the vile thought that he might be kissing his sister or daughter; and so, when Amara's face in turn contorted with murderous rage, he wasn't quite paying as much attention as he probably should have been and was thus caught completely off guard by the massive, crippling explosion of pain which subsequently erupted from his groin as she kicked him violently in the worps.
"You sorbnek sakpa," she panted through gritted teeth. "You absolute mishkot zorknop. Oh, I would kill you if I could." Skylar, lying on the ground with both hands cupped around his throbbing tingtongs, could only gurgle in assent. Death is, in fact, preferable to being kicked in the zopnop this hard. Can confirm.
No korskak way. If she's really a time traveler, I don't want her to tell me anything I shouldn't know at a given point in causality, and if she's not, almost anything she would tell me against her own objectives would probably be a lie. At least when she's kicking my grak, she's being honest.
Exactly. Getting the drotz kicked out of me repeatedly might hurt, but at least I know I'm not being manipulated when she does it. "Guess... you don't... know me... as well as you think," Skylar gasped around his agony. "Maybe if... you played straight... we wouldn't have... misunderstandings." He collapsed entirely with the effort of his little speech, gagging and trying not to throw up.
"You know what the worst part is?" Amara asked savagely, giving him another kick for no reason he could discern. "I do know you. I know you better than probably anyone else, and I know exactly why you keep pulling this kind of corfsmot, but it doesn't make me less angry at you." She kneeled down, her boot inches from his face, and spat on the floor directly in front of his eyes. "If anything, it just makes me hate you more."
"So we're... enemies?" Skylar panted.
Amara punched the ground next to his face, causing him to flinch back involuntarily. "No, you krepnak. I'm trying to help you, but you keep getting in both of our way and being a zopnop all the time, because that's just what you do and I don't know why I expect anything different."
Painfully, Skylar struggled to a sitting position up against the wall, spitting out a little bile as he did so. "Right. And I guess I'm going to hit you a bunch, in the future, just like you hit me?"
"What? No, you don't..." she trailed off and narrowed her eyes at him, but then something unexpected happened; she lowered her gaze to her own clenched fist, and her eyes became thoughtful for a moment. After a long pause, she took a deep breath, then slowly let it out and uncurled her fingers as she sat down opposite him. "Okay. Point taken, I guess."
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Skek. That didn't exactly go how I planned. Skylar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and concentrated, trying to get things back on track.
Absolutely not. Either that information is going to be useless to me, or worse, or it'll be a lie. If I want to know that, I'll have to figure it out on my own. He sighed. "If I promise to do what you say, will you stop hurting me?"
"You stop..." she choked off a shout, then trailed off, looking down at her hands again. Shakily, she inhaled another breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hit you. I was just..." She started to say something else, bit her lip, and trailed off. "You scared me really badly a little bit ago -- well, a little bit ago for me, somewhere in the future for you. And then you did that, and..."
"Oh. Uh, about that." Skylar's eyes flicked to one side, then back to Amara's face. "I'm sorry too. I'm... still trying to figure everything out, here. And I'm pretty defenseless, so I have to use... less than savory methods, sometimes." He scowled at the ground, doing his best to project a self-loathing that wasn't entirely feigned. Gee, thanks, autonarrator, want to tell all my followers about my sexual kinks too?
"You're not as defenseless as you pretend," Amara retorted, but she held herself back from another attack. After a moment, she swallowed and continued. "But you're right. I might not have given you a lot of reasons to trust me yet, from your viewpoint in all this, and..." She sighed again. "I'll be honest. I don't completely know where each of us is in our relative continuity to each other. I know this isn't our first meeting, but..."
"But you don't know how long I've known you, or whether you've been cruel or kind to me in my past, because my past could be your future," Skylar guessed. "Wow. This is pretty korsked up."
"Tell me about it." Amara sagged back, leaning her own back against the opposite cell wall, then slid down to sit on the cell floor; the two of them faced each other across the cell's claustrophobic expanse, two mirror images opposed. "I didn't ask for any of this, but... I guess I can't blame you for what you're going to do, at least not until you know you're going to do it."
So I might do something really bad to her. Maybe I fratz up her time stream with the disk in the future? But what happens if I try to avoid that? Skylar gulped, abruptly uneasy. "I know this might sound kind of insensitive, but you have to remember I still only have your word for any of this. For all I know, you could be a crazy person, or somebody trying to trick me, or even a figment of my mishkot imagination. If you think I'm at all less confused than you are, lady, you should think again."
Amara shook her head sadly. "I know. And it's not going to get easier in the future. Well, your future." Abruptly, she stiffened and looked upwards, then cocked her head to one side, like a dog trying to understand statistics. "Skek. My next shift is starting. I only have a few more seconds, and..."
"It's okay," Skylar said, doing his best to put a reassuring expression on his face through the residual torment of his throbbing klepnorps. "Hopefully past and/or future me will be less of a tremp to you."
"Wait, this is important." She leaned forward, her whole body abruptly taut with urgency. "In the interrogation, be literal. You told me that --"
But Skylar never got to find out what he had, or possibly would, tell her; a split second later, she was gone, with no trace that she had ever existed. Skylar let his head sag back against the filthy cell wall and sighed. Great. All that time travel, all I have to show for it are bruised brops. He closed his eyes. And the best part is, even if she had delivered the message, I couldn't have trusted it. Best reincarnation ever.
Eventually, he dozed, thinking wistfully of Corsica; he didn't know for how long. But when the sound of a clanging cell door awakened him, he started violently awake, gasping and choking from the depths of some much less pleasant dream, and the strength of his headache informed him that it hadn't been long enough. "Wuzzat?" he mumbled, struggling to open grainy and gummy eyes.
"Trial time, cultist." The guard who had come to fetch him waved a flaming torch in his general direction, then gagged at the pile of feculent stench where his abortive attempt at a decoy body adhered to the floor. "Lucia's homboks! What did you do, vark your pants everywhere?"
"Must have been something I ate," Skylar demurred, doing his best to rise and walk normally while his klepnorps ached. "Is this the part where I get falsely executed, in addition to being falsely accused and falsely imprisoned?"
The guard snorted. "If you're innocent, the Interrogator will prove it. If you're guilty, they'll prove that too. So get moving." He gestured with the torch, bringing it uncomfortably close to Skylar's eyebrows; Skylar did his best medium-terrified cringe and shuffled in the indicated direction.
The guard marched him out of the cells and through a few long stone hallways lit by strange, multicolored lights; Skylar sniffed, noticing the scents of various salts and other acrid substances as they passed. Alchemical, at least some of them. Makes sense. Not everything can run on magic, even in a fantasy world. Eventually, they made their way through a higher-security area where nearly a half-dozen guards all scowled at Skylar, then into a large and majestic room which was clearly where the trial would take place; without even being asked, Skylar strode forward and hopped into the large, ominous chair adorned with manacles which occupied the center of the room. "Guessing this is my spot?"
Abruptly, a light flared in front of him where before the back half of the room had been in darkness; Skylar jumped a little as a theatrical spotlight illuminated a towering elf, nearly seven feet tall, clad in bulky platemail and wearing a flowing, resplendent cloak. "The prisoner will speak only when directed," he thundered, in a voice like a wrathful god; Skylar squeaked involuntarily. Uh oh. Maybe I should have been more scared.
Meekly, he held still while two guards secured the manacles around his hands and feet; unable to help himself, he wiggled his extremities experimentally, trying to gauge how much give there was in case he needed to extricate himself in a hurry. Not good. These things are pro-grade, and maybe even magical. No chance of weaseling out of these physically. He set his jaw. Guess I'll just have to do it socially.
Before him, the massive elf shuffled a few papers with an expression of distaste; his golden hair was pulled back severely from his brows, and the muscles of his face and neck were thick and taut like a bodybuilder's. Another swole elf. Maybe he works out with Aymon. After a moment, the imposing figure looked up at someone behind Skylar he couldn't see and nodded. "All is in readiness. Admit the witnesses."
There was the boom of a large door opening somewhere behind his field of vision -- in a direction slightly different from the one where he'd entered, Skylar noticed with interest -- and the sound of footfalls filled the cavernous space as some new arrivals filed in to sit in chairs on either side of him. Skylar noted that Reine and Aymon were on his left, and Levan was on his right, accompanied by a man he'd never seen before with thick black hair and a well-groomed matching beard. Who's this guy?
"Prisoner," the big elf commanded -- the Interrogator, maybe? -- "you will recite your name."
Skylar tried to speak, failed, swallowed, and tried again. "I'm Skylar Kass," he responded around a tight knot of terror in his throat. Not good. I can't control my emotions. Maybe it's the chair, or the manacles? Or maybe I'm just so scared that I'm about to vark myself?
The armored elf looked up at something Skylar couldn't see, nodded, and glanced back down; maybe the Lie Detector readout is above my head, or something. Heh. "Very well. Let us cut to the chase of this matter." He leaned forward intently. "You stand accused of being a cultist of Gram -- an accusation corroborated by another self-proclaimed cultist and attested to by a sworn Justiciar of Maivat. You have presented no evidence to refute this claim, nor has anyone brought evidence forth on your behalf; the judgment of Lucia is upon you. Speak truly, or perish; are you, or are you not, a worshipper of the Night King?"
HOW DO WE PLEAD?
