Chapter 356: Witches
Laz couldn’t respond. This wasn’t what he was expecting after seeing her again. In fact, what he was expecting was a lot more pain.
Of course, what he didn’t know was that his value had gone up to A’ruya’s people drastically after finding out the source of his bloodline. Once they found him of value, that meant that she had added value. Combine that the fact that A’ruya herself had fully vested her future on him one might begin to understand her feelings at the moment.
Prior to him disappearing, she had never considered the possibility that something could happen to him. While her people were far more advanced than humans, she herself was still considered immature and therefore thought that the life link she had placed on him would be more than enough to keep him safe. So when the time came that he disappeared from the world and the spirit marking suddenly became inactive, she had no idea what to do.
And when here family inquired about him, she had even less of a clue as to what to do. In the end, she did the only thing that she could think of... she lied.
It’s important to note that for her people as a whole, lying does not exist. This might be hard to understand for many to whom lying is a type of storytelling or fabrication that comes easily, but for her people who have seen things far beyond this world and plane, they almost lacked the ability to answer something and hide the truth. Now it did happen, but as opposed to outright lying, they would instead just not say. So when her mom questioned her about the Asura’s descendant, she said that everything is fine and he’s growing nicely. Since she had answered, her mother accepted it as the truth.
This was one of the results of observing Laz for as long as she had been. She had been slightly corrupted by him. Of course neither she, Laz or anyone else knew that, but that was beside the point.
Due to all of this, when Laz had regained his strength and the energy flow within his body again allowed for the spiritual marking to connect, A’ruya had ended up crying for joy, relief and many other emotions. It was only now that she understood just how important Laz was to her. Not in a romantic way, but still a life changing way.
As such, once she regained herself, she started paying close attention to him, witnessing from start to finish his fight with the Raccoon god and also offering some advice about it’s corpse. She was also present for his escape and crazy attempt to evade his pursers. Seeing that he had escaped and passed out in the process, she wasted no time summoning him here. The bringing of the foreheads together was also something her people did as a greeting between close friends, although generally it was reserved for those of the same sex.
"Uh, is everything ok?" Laz finally asked as she pulled back. In that span of a few moments time, she had found her head again and was therefore back to her normal self after she stood up straight.
"Why wouldn’t I be?" She asked, no trace of a smile.
"Well..."
"Enough. Just tell me what happened after you fell in that battle with the third rate god husk." A’ruya shushed him and got to the point. Since she couldn’t exactly read his mind, the only thing she could do at this point was find out what went down after the connection was lost.
"Oh, Yes. Um. Thank you, by the way..." Laz stammered out.
"For what?" A’ruya asked, not completely sure what he was thanking her for.
"If it wasn’t for my link to you, I never would have survived that blast."
"Then maybe you should explain where you’ve been for the past time that we’ve been out of contact with each other?" A’ruya neither addressed that situation or it thanks, instead having him get to the point.
While the amount of energy she had lost in saving him was massive for Laz, for A’ruya, it was just enough to make her feel strangely faint when it happened. At first, she didn’t know what was going on. By the time she understood, there was nothing she could do. What was worse, based on the fact that her body even ended up a little drained just went to show how bad the situation had been for him. It also show A’ruya just how strong Laz had become.
As Laz sat down across from A’ruya at her table, he went on to describe everything that had happened, including the role the four sisters had played. He also mentioned something she didn’t know about, which was that each girl he had been with, a conversation that lead to a few uncomfortable minutes of Laz ’explaining’ himself, ended up with a blood moon marking on her body. Hearing this, A’ruya was confused, but kept it to herself.
After Laz finished his story, they sat in silence for a few moments before A’ruya let out a long sigh.
"So be it. I guess things are progressing faster now. Anyway, it’s about time for you to wake up. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I should warn you that you’re currently captured, but not by the ones who were hunting you. As for who these people are, well... I’m sure you won’t mind. But this entire experience will either be a blessing or a curse. I hope you can overcome it. I still need you after all!"
Before Laz could respond, he suddenly felt like he was being thrown away from A’ruya. As such, he didn’t notice the slight blush that had fallen on her face after she realized she told him she needed him.
’Well, I guess this is better than being killed,’ Laz thought, thinking that maybe he was earning some approval from his mysterious master after all.
’Still, I wish she would have explained about the raccoon meat.’
...
When Laz woke up, he felt a bit of a bump on his ass before his body hit the ground. Light was shinning down from underneath tree cover and he had no idea what was happening. Before he could even understand the situation, he heard a rough, female voice say,
"Fuck this guy is heavy."
"Well this isn’t exactly the clearest path either."
"Have Emily and Bre help as well. Double up on both ends."
"Ok. Up and over. Good. Let’s go."
Laz half opened his eyes but then closed them quick. Instead, he used his sense to check out the surrounding area. There were at least ten different people around him in a circle. Two of them moved into position, helping the other two who were closest to him. He also noticed by feeling that both his hand and feet were bound. More surprisingly, he was strung up on a rather thick rod and was being carried along.
After flexing his fingers and his toes and using his sense to check his own body, he noticed that it seemed like his normally super human strength was being restricted. While he had no idea how or even why, he somehow suspected it had to do with the weird collar around his neck. When his sense tried to probe it to find out what it was, it acted like a black hole that tried to suck him in. He quickly brought back his mind and decided he would just go along with things to see how they worked out.
"There’s one of the other ones. Holy shit, it only has half it’s body. Where the hell... oh fuck."
"What the hell? It’s melting like a god damn ice cream cone."
"Please don’t say that. I will never want to touch the stuff again."
"Gods that is so nasty."
Laz took the risk and opened his eyes just a bit to look around. Due to having to pretend he was still passed out, he couldn’t risk raising his head so there was no way to look at what his captors were looking at. But he was able to see two of their faces looking in a single direction. Without moving, he closed his eyes again and spread out his sense, going in the same direction.
It was here that he saw half a corpse, the top half, embedded in the dirt while the bottom half was rotting away before their very eyes.
As two of them snuck closer, the corpse’s eyes shot open and looked at those who had gathered around it and said, in a voice like the silent whisper of a gentle breeze,
"Kill me..."
The people gather around all screamed and dropped Laz to the ground before backing off. It was almost a full minute before the voice of one who seemed like a leader replied back,
"Ok."
That person then brought a hand to the corpse’s forehead, whispered something and then stepped back.
The head exploded a moment later with a smile on it’s face.
This was far more creepy than anyone was expecting, causing the captors to back up even more.
"Ewww. Why was it smiling?" One of the people asked.
"Because... they wanted to die, but they couldn’t. So to them, this is their final release. My sisters..."
"Yes!" They all replied at once, surprising Laz. It wasn’t until this moment that he finally noticed that all of his captors were female.
The women surrounded the corpse, who it seemed was also female, and raised there hands to the sky. They then brought them down and crossed them over their hearts before taking a step, then another in a clockwise pattern. When they had reached a quarter circle, they repeated the steps of raising their hands up and bringing them back down. They did this until they completed a full rotation and then stopped, looking to one woman in particular.
"I don’t know what happened, who she was or why this came to be. But a sister died here before us and as such, we shall witness her final departure from this world. Go into the arms of the All-Mother and rest until your soul returns to us."
"Until your soul returns, may you rest in the All-Mother’s bosom!" The women echoed, their voices twisted and strange, a far cry from the normal voice they normally used.
Laying on the ground ignored, Laz risked a quick look and noticed that all of the women were covered in black shadows, their faces twisted nightmares of black with red eyes. If Laz didn’t know any better, he would assume they were all demons from hell.
Instead, he recognized them as infected, it was just that the feeling he would normally get from his blood was being blocked along with his energy.
As Laz looked on, the woman all pointed their hands at the body and as one, spoke a single, obscure word. Flames then erupted from their hands, red crimson jets of fire when charred the body into nothingness in a single moment. Although he wasn’t sure, he could have sworn he had seen a white specter of light rise from the pile of ashes and ascend into the sky. Laz could only blink a few times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. But as the specter was barely there in the first place, it disappeared just as fast.
Laz couldn’t help but sigh a deep breath, thinking again and not for the first time, how little about everything he actually understood.
He also decided he would no longer hide his return to the waking world.
As the woman came back from their ritual, they noticed Laz’s open eyes, looking at them with a questioning face. There were all types of woman gathered, some as young as teens to those who looked like they were approaching middle age. While they weren’t all top class beauties, each and everyone of them seemed to have an innate charm that would make any one of them stand out in a crowd.
’Did they only recruit beautiful women into this club or something?’ Laz thought to himself while the women looked at him in surprise.
Finally, one stepped forward and bent down to look Laz in the face. She had brown eyes and auburn hair and while she wasn’t a world toppling beauty, she had a devilish charm that seemed to seep from her very soul, drawing one into her eyes while attempting to take over their minds. Laz almost felt himself lost for a quick moment, but he quickly recovered himself, a slight layer of gold covering his eyes.
She had failed to charm him, a fact that surprised her.
"Interesting. You are abnormal," was all she said before calling the others over.
"So can you let me go now?" Laz asked, wanting to get out of here. While he remembered A’ruya’s words about a challenge and an opportunity, he also wanted to see if he could get in contact with the sisters, Lyssa, and all of his friends back at Club Star. He wanted to let them know he was ok so that he could avoid the kind of fall out that happened the last time he disappeared.
Unfortunately for him, his captors weren’t having any of it.
"Not going to happen. I’m glad you’re awake though since now we don’t have to carry your fat ass," the auburn woman said, directing the others to cut him off of the stick. As they did so, they made sure that his hands were still tightly bound but freed his legs. Then, they placed a rope around the collar on his neck and indicated for him to follow them. Laz quickly understood that failure to do so would result in him getting choked by the leash or hit by the woman. Not that that caused him to listen. As such, they started kicking and punching him as though he was some beast that insulted their decency and owed them money.
The funniest part about this whole thing was that unless they used their energy to strike him, it didn’t exactly hurt. Of course they figured that out too after their attempts at beating him only resulting in them hurting themselves at first. After that, Laz saw them control the crimson flames to stretch them into whips before using these energy whips to strike him.
’Well that does actually hurt,’ Laz thought to himself as he finally started listening and stopped being so difficult.
The only reason these energy whips hurt though was because his power was being restricted. If not for that, he doubted that their foundation realm strength would even matter.
After a while of walking, they came into a wide open valley surrounded on all sides by high cliffs with many buildings scattered around, something that seemed like a town, but also not like a town.
On a sign post right before a massive steel and barbed wire covered fence, a note was posted.
"Welcome to the Avalon Witches Covenant. No free males allowed!"
"Well shit... Although if I was a masochist, this might be a doorway to heaven.."
Laz wasn’t quiet with his words and his comments ended up getting him beaten again.
