Book III
Chapter Eight
DARTS, and DEFEATS
“Are you okay?” Na’la asked.
She held Ba’ku’ra’s shoulders, helping him stay upright.
His flesh cycled between flesh and flame. He panted. Had he not burned away all his tears, he would still’ve been crying.
She held him up, and their fleshes hummed at the contact. She felt every desire, every frustration, every sorrow and shame that plagued his myriad body.
She felt it all.
She wondered if he felt it, too, or if he just—
“GET OFF ME!”
Na’la flinched, recoiling away.
Ba’ku’ra started breathing loudly, heavily, amping himself up, trying to get back into that state of pure, mindless, destructive rage. With every cry, his body went to the flame, but he was tired. The well of anger could run dry, if drunk too quick.
Na’la heard a crash, and felt the shadows of the potionkeep’s bottles as they crashed. She heard Brun’s shouting. She felt the shadow of the breath of the Death Knight’s still-alive-vessel.
“Brun,” she said.
Ba’ku’ra kept screaming, and screaming, just standing there and trying to turn his grief back into rage.
Na’la finally grew tired of the screaming, and grabbed Ba’ku’ra’s face.
“HERE!” Na’la said, and she shared her rage with him.
Unlike his rage, hers felt like a well without a bottom. As she fed him with it, she fed herself with it, and the shadows of the night grew horrible dangerous.
She warped them to where Brun slipped, beneath the swinging nooses.
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She put herself in front of Brun, who stood with his sword in both hands.
“Na’la!” he said. “Na’la, you’ve got to get out of here! I don’t know if he’s going to—!”
Na’la simply shouted, and rushed forward, skipping the shadow to close the distance between her and the Death Knight.
Her moonblade sliced at his belly, once, twice, three times, and the flesh opened up immediately.
But the Death Knight was smiling.
She hated the look of it.
As if in slow motion, the Death Knight pulled a needle-dart from his sash, and stabbed Na’la right in the forearm with it.
Na’la scowled, not so much at the pain, but at the shock of it.
Numbing spike! she thought.
It was true enough. Whatever variation this had been from what she’d seen in the jungles of Mag’la and Nur, this needle got a wretched job done.
It was mere breaths before Na’la felt herself slipping out of her own emotions.
The Death Knight did not even bother with her after that. He just smiled. Lightning coursed out of his body, stitching the belly wounds.
Ba’ku’ra screamed as Na’la fell down on the street. Her whole body felt like a… felt like…
Dead weight.
It felt like her whole being was being pulled backward, and up. Stretched out.
Her flesh was nearly flesh again, but she could still feel (dimly) the scream of Brun, before Ul’druk knocked him out.
She could feel Ul’druk and Nal’kuth’ra and Pa’ka, fleeing into Goblintown, skirting the south side of the Lake of Ropes.
She could feel Ba’ku’ra as he, too, got hit with a numbness spike, and then another.
Then, as her weary flesh returned to her, Na’la lost consciousness, and fell into a dreamless trance.
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Link to Orcish-English Dictionary
Wanna hear the music of NALA SAGA?
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