Prakfura Raiders: Chapter Two: Pecking Order: Part Three {Redacted}

Word count:1250+ still aley's POV with some memories from. Fate.

A daze flooded me. My mind crawled through my memory, sifting for any recollection of my captor. It hurt my head, but I kept searching. I felt myself transported into memories. Memories not my own.

A hammer descended, showering sparks in a dark room, lit only by the furnace. Somewhere, somehow, I remembered that this was where I began. I was being forged. My smith emanated terror sufficient for a city. He wanted to stop. To leave the sword. Let it founder out of existence, misshapen. I coiled a thought at him, primal in its addiction. He struck again.

The memory faded. Black silhouettes filled my unfocused vision. An acrid taste stuck to my tongue as I heaved the contents of my stomach. "How do you know me?" I asked, my voice weak with exhaustion.

"Know you?" His voice was ripe with sarcasm as he bowed an apology. "Oh, I forgot. Knowing your name actually means knowing you. Forgive us country lads. We are ignorant of your city customs."

I cough up bile. My vision returns. Thick piles of white thistle adorned his chin. I felt my teeth mesh together.

"Oh, gritting teeth! That's a Trant trait." He gnawed at his own.

"Why capture me? Your leader will be dead by now."

"I wouldn't think of it." I shrank, recognizing the voice. It came from behind me.

"How? What? You're not possible!" I stammered in my surprise.

"Possible? I suppose not. Shut up." He retorted. I felt his hands on my waist as he reclaimed his scabbard. His hands lingered as he turned silent for a moment. "Now where was I? Oh, right, talking to you."

"Creep!" I tried to turn, my checks scraping bark. "There's nothing you could want from me, so why hold me captive?"

"Huh? What? I wanted something from you? Oh yes, I, of course, I wanted something from you." He rounded the tree from my left to stand beside Thistle Chin. "I already have it."

"Have what?" I growled.

"This. My friend." He hefted up his magic sword and gave it a light kiss.

"Don't call me your fri-"

"I wasn't talking to you." He reprimanded. He was speaking of his sword.

"Then there's nothing else you could want from me."

"Three patches of skin? I'm not sure. Why would I hurt my own daughter anyway?"

"Your daughter?"

"So my friend tells me." He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't believe him, naturally. But he never is wrong, I'll bet my life on that."

"If you are going to stand there and regale me with tall stories, make it worth my while!" I shouted. To insinuate that he was my father infuriated me. My anger constricted in my throat. Never! I have no father!

"Well, feisty!" He choked a laugh away. "He can do it better than I, but," he sighed, "he's been trying to teach you for days. Even after I came back, he still wanted you to learn, but your thick skull just wouldn't absorb his lessons."

"Days?"

"Well, weeks, actually. When Jale decided to turn outlaw the day of my execution, let's just say I'm a lucky man." He smiled a crooked grin.

"Jale? I don't believe a word of it. I won't!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Oh, of course. Neither did I. I had him thrown to the unicorn." He waved his arms with an unconcerned laugh.

"The unicorn?" Hope welled up in me. This fool had actually taken a unicorn from the Emperor.

"That." He spat. "We covered it in a prakfura's pelt and sent it to the Emperor. It's blood we drank, of course. Well, I mean, he did. I pity the man who stood before his majesty with that carcass!" He roared with laughter.

I set my teeth, remembered what Chins had told me, and parted them slightly. "Oh, so now you think you are mighty smart eh? Breaking out of a dungeon, killing a unicorn, capturing officers of the Calvary? Very smart indeed. You just stirred a hornet's nest for yourself, old man."

"Huh?" He looked confused. He shook his eyes to clear it. "Well, yeah maybe. That's what I intend to do!"

The fire I had observed earlier in his eyes came back. His cheeks rose along with the light. I bit my lips and followed his grin. “Well, if you like what you’re doing, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, is there?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“So, you’re just going to keep me tied to a tree until the world burns?”

“Ah!” He waved his arms in derision. “We didn’t tie you to the tree. It merely cooperated with our efforts to place you in a restricted posture.”

“What?” I let disbelief flood my face.

“What what? You never head of the Blackwoods? What a sheltered life your mother must have given you!”

“You don’t even know my mother!” I almost screamed the words. His jabbering was getting to me.

“I can’t say I do, and I never did.” He lowered his voice to a rumble. “What I can say is, I can’t let you go. The Blackwood is an evil place. I have no say in its doings.”

“You speak of it like you know-” My mouth ceased to work. A blackness took hold of my mind. No! Not again! I screamed. I felt myself swimming in emptiness. The darkness swirled, and funnels me to slam hard against a ground strewn with roots.

Hands strangle me in a tight embrace. I fell in a swoop, my edges cleaving away another tendril. The fight seemed endless. I felt the sweaty palms of my wielder as he fought the tree. Its leaves whistled in derision. In soft whispers, it mocked our efforts. Little man, it seemed to say, it has been such a long time since I have had meat!

I snarled at it. You will never get the master. Scum!

Your master? Ha! Why swear yourself to a mortal, my fellow immortal? Why make yourself the slave when you can be the master?

I was forged by the master!

And that makes you his slave? How dull.

You are the slave of the ground.

No! He struck hard with a tendril, I felt as though I would snap. No! The ground is me. We are all the same. My master’s feet sank into the earth like it was water. Like I said. All the same.

I could feel his terror, as great as when he had forged me, as he slowly slipped beneath the ground. His breath choked away.

I faded back to where I was bound. I gasped in a lungful of air. My body shook with the transferred memory. A chill ran through my spine as I turned to glance at my captor.

"Please don't eat me." I did not fear death. At least, not the regular types. To be eaten alive by a plant, I could not bear to think. Shivers raced along my spine.

Don't call me a plant. I am the Blackwood. A small wispy voice rode the wind to my ears. More evil than many another forests.

"You know you can't eat me, Blackwood."

"Oh don't be silly, child. He can. My grandfather, your great-grandfather, died in this very woods." I threw up at those words. "But you see, now, us and the Blackwood, we have, shall we say, a deal. He keeps us safe, we give him meat."

"So that's what you made me? A sacrifice?" Emotions burned in me. I felt confusion, terror, anger, and admiration for his ruthlessness, all together.

The vines tightened around me.

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So far my worst chapter! I just can't do dialogue properly!