Kali

The wall of sludge had slowed to a halt some metres back, but Kali continued to run blind through the darkness, tracing the tunnel with her fingertips until she knew she was not about to be eaten whole by the mud monster, until the rumble of its approach had softened to silence.

Only then they skidded to a sloppy stop.

“You saved my life,” Blaire gasped.

Kali ran her hands along the damp walls higher and more thoroughly than she had done as she ran, now searching instead of orienting. She found a slightly rusted brazier and tugged the dead torch free from it. It took a couple of attempts to light it with her old flint set, but once the flame took it filled the cramped space with stuttering light.

“I gave your hair a tug,” she laughed in reply to Blaire’s breathless words. “It wasn’t exactly a dashing rescue. I simply noticed you were not moving.” She barely managed to restrain herself from adding a comment about wanting to pull on Blaire’s plaits again, preferably with her face between Kali’s legs. Gods, she loved women with curves.

“And I don’t know if I would have if you hadn’t grabbed me, so thank you,” Blaire said sincerely.

With another light laugh Kali made a second attempt to brush away the gratitude. “It was genuinely nothing.”

Before Blaire could disagree, Kali threw her arm out reflexively, smacking Blaire’s breasts but managing to still her all the same. She kept her arm up as she listened. She was sure she had heard something further into the dim tunnel and her nose was dragging in a distant odour of sweat and pork. Blaire held deadly still, watching Kali carefully.

“I smell troll,” she whispered with exaggerated mouth movements.

Blaire nodded. “I hear grunts.”

“You think Matilde is nearby?” Kali snorted at her own joke and Blaire pursed her lips with a look of disapproval.

“I think we should proceed cautiously.”

Kali nodded with her most obedient smile. Blaire was not convinced.

The pair eased further down the tunnel, bodies pressed against the walls and their steps in perfect synchronisation. Kali held the torch as far behind her as she could reach in order to keep the flame from travelling too far ahead of them.

The grunting and snuffling noises grew in volume and the path twisted sharply. The women paused before sharing a look of affirmation. They would take the beasts by surprise.

After sliding the still-lit torch into an empty brazier bolted loosely to the wall, Kali pulled Selenia over her shoulder from its place precariously strapped to her back, and Blaire took her sword and shield into her hands, adjusting her grip with a roll of her wrist.

They breached the corner in unison and launched themselves at the three trolls lurking in the dark.

Blaire took a head-on assault tactic, engaging with the closest beast and hacking and slicing at it with controlled and concise swings of her arm.

Kali flung herself past the pair without pause and twirled Selenia between her hands in warning at the two trolls charging her, swinging it in wide arcs to keep them back. One knew better than to get too close; the less intelligent of the two had his throat, arm and both legs slashed.

Kali took down the third troll with a precise throw, impaling Selenia between its beady eyes. There was no reason to draw out a fight against animals. Kali had zero respect for those that baited and toyed with creatures. If you shall hunt them then do so with mercy.

Humans she could play with, though.

The newest human of interest stepped to her side as she wrenched Selenia free of the troll’s face with a harsh jerk. The sound it made was highly unpleasant.

“Clean work,” Blaire said appreciatively. “Let us see if you are as deft with a smaller blade.”

“A smaller blade?” Kali asked curiously, raising a single brow and stalking back to the brazier to collect her sputtering torch.

“We will skin them; take the meat and tusks.”

“Delicious,” Kali mumbled unenthusiastically and plunked the torch back in the brazier. She would much prefer goat or salmon…

“Troll meat is near identical to pork,” Blaire consoled her, sounding far too much like Kali’s mother for her liking.

“Yes, I am sure it is,” Kali huffed and took a squatted seat beside the troll with skin already ripped open in multiple places. “Only tougher and hairier, hm?” She had a palm-sized blade tucked into the hidden pocket at her left breast, beneath her underarm. It easily peeled the animal’s skin back.

A quiet laugh was all she got in return. Blaire slotted herself in against a wall, bracing a troll between her feet, and produced a short knife. They worked in silence for a few minutes until they had fallen into the rhythm of their work.

Surprisingly, Blaire was first to attempt casual conversation as they stripped the carcasses. “I have never met anyone-”

“With eyes like mine?” Kali interrupted with a vicious grin, well aware from the brief time she had known her that Blaire was far above making such comments. She was a woman gifted with a tactful nature. Kali, however, had the nature of a mischievous child, therefore she could not allow an opportunity to make Blaire uncomfortable pass without incident.

“I was going to say that fights as you do with a spear,” Blaire corrected her quietly. Her cheeks tinged pink except for the white scar on her right side which stood out all the more for its newly flushed backdrop. “You have a very unusual technique.”

Kali leant back a little to peer at Blaire over her shoulder, eyes half-lidded and a single brow raised. “Unusual?” she repeated.

“Beautiful, very smooth, like a dancer,” Blaire listed off in the rhythm of her knife’s sliding strokes through wet troll skin.

“How kind of you to say. Do you give such sweet compliments to all the women you fight with?” Kali asked coyly, batting her lashes just a little.

Was it her fault she had become deprived of female attention? Well, perhaps it was partly her own fault for falling into the trap that was poised between Matilde’s muscular thighs. She knew the woman well enough to have known that becoming her lover did not mean being pandered to and doted on. But sometimes you were out in the wilderness with only two women for company and you needed to get laid, and sometimes that became a habit that became harder and harder to break. Kali was well aware that this break was long overdue and that it needed to happen soon. However, her mother had taught her that the intelligent monkey always had his hand around the next vine before releasing the previous one.

“Those that fight well,” Blaire answered softly. She did not take her eyes off the carcass in front of her to appreciate Kali’s flirtatious half-smile.

Kali sighed quietly on an out-breath and returned her gaze to her own pile of quickly congealing blood and troll meat. “What about the group you are working with currently: Eudora and her girls?” she asked slowly, separating the unwanted organs from the muscle and fat.

“They fight well.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What are they like?” Kali questioned impatiently. She pulled out a stray bone carelessly and was very lucky that it did not splinter into a morbid confetti over what would likely be her dinner. “Which ones have sour attitudes? Which ones are lazy? Tell me everything!”

The slick slicing sounds of Blaire’s endlessly moving knife halted. “Why would you care?” she asked, her voice half-suspicion, half-amusement.

“Because neither Dani nor Matilde are the talkative type and I don’t often get to have interesting or pointless conversations with people.”

“You enjoy pointless conversations?”

“They are my favourite!” Kali admitted with a laugh. “Pointless conversations often include far more truth than an intentional conversation. If there is nothing to be gained from it you have no incentive to lie.”

“Fine.” Blaire thought for a moment before continuing. “I suppose if I had to find a way to describe them simply, I would say that Lowri is the least experienced member; Magali is the most intelligent, and Dora is… well, she is our leader.”

“How boring,” Kali drawled. “I would describe Dani as rudely quiet and Matilde as the world’s most powerful joy mosquito.”

“Joy mosquito?”

“She drains the joy out of everything,” Kali explained, assuming that Blaire knew what a mosquito was and therefore did not need further clarification… She sure they only inhabited the warmest regions of Elatior’s dagger. It was very possible Blaire had never been subjected to the wrath of a little bloodsucker.

“Interesting.”

“Oh?” Kali grinned.

Blaire was smiling down at her troll. “Nice to know that not much has changed. Soothing, even.”

So Matilde had always been this way, then.

They finished their work as neatly as was possible given the lack of steady light and the constrictions of a single knife each and no specialist tools. Each slung the carefully portioned meat into leather sacks with a sprinkle of salt. Not that they needed to preserve it for long as their stomachs had already been protesting loudly as they chopped.

The pair cleaned their knives, slung their packs onto their backs, and continued to follow the deep tunnel, assisted only by their torch which could barely cling to its flame. It would not be long until it succumbed to a cold death.

They walked side-by-side, Kali occasionally humming a few bars of what she could remember of the songs of the market square she raced about as a child.

Blaire pulled a strange expression.“You ask a lot of questions. Would you answer one too?” she asked carefully.

“Of course,” Kali answered happily, glad to not have the responsibility of carrying the conversation on her slim shoulders. “I have few secrets and little shame. Ask what you wish.”

“You and Matilde… Are you, um-”

“We have sex. We are not in love,” Kali stated calmly. She was not ashamed of her relationship with Matilde. In fact, she was rather glad to be asked about her romantic status by such a pretty lady.

“Ah.”

Blaire’s response pulled a frown onto Kali’s face against her will as she wondered what it meant. Just how well did Blaire know Matilde? What did ‘ah’ mean?

She could not linger in her thoughts. Kali was anti-silence and had to continue the conversation as long as she could. “What about you and Eudora?” she asked as lightly as possible.

“Pardon?”

“Are you two…” Kali dragged her eyes over Blaire’s sumptuous silhouette in a deliberate act of insinuation.

“Oh, no,” Blaire stammered. A quiet and awkward laugh bubbled out of her. “She is a dear friend, but I have never considered her-”

“Who are you considering?” Kali interrupted with a wild grin. She knew there was someone. There always was.

“Ah, I- Well…”

Kali nodded slowly to encourage her. “There is someone you have an interest in?” she probed, grin still front and present. It was the way of the wise warrior to know one’s opponent well. Who was she to face in a battle for Blaire’s bed?

“Magali,” Blaire mumbled.

“The mage?”

“That’s her,” she confirmed with a sigh.

“How fascinating,” Kali drawled, her mind already galloping ten miles ahead of her mouth. “I would not have chosen her as your type. And what does she think of you?”

Blaire shrugged. “I doubt she knows of my attraction to her, or that she has ever thought of me as anything other than a fellow adventurer. We are not exactly an expected fit. I have not made any particular effort to gain her attention either.”

“Why not?”

“I… do not know,” Blaire admitted, her face scrunched in confused surprise. “I suppose it seems such an unlikely match. I have not considered it coming to fruition.”

“I assume confessing will be the first thing you shall do if you make it out of here alive, then?” Kali inquired almost innocently.

With a squashed expression Blaire replied, “What a horrifying thought.”

“You are welcome.”

“I do not know if it is indeed that kind of passionate, desperate feeling of love, the kind in which you make a grand confession. It feels much… warmer, softer, a budding feeling of affection still.”

That sounded ideal to Kali: soft affection… and, of course, a filthy nightly routine of animalistic sex. Deep, painful love, the kind with attachment and commitment, that was completely outside of Kali’s scope. “Are you looking for that kind of love?” she asked, managing to sound convincingly uninterested.

“I do not know,” Blaire said softly. “But you ask an awful lot of personal questions for someone I have known barely a day.”

“Matilde speaks of you often, so I feel as though I have known you all my life!”

“Truly?”

“No,” Kali snorted. She had not so much as heard Eudora or Blaire’s names prior to meeting them in that imp-ridden field. Matilde was not the type to disclose and even Kali had trouble cracking her vault-like interior.

Blaire pulled an exasperated expression and Kali snorted herself into another wave of laughter at the sight, staggering a little as she walked.

The snuffling sound of trolls picking up their scent halted them. They prepared once again for battle. Kali with a grin. Blaire with a steady stance.