Part XIII

Dark Passions


In the depths of the night-cloaked northern forest, a woman stirred in her sleep and moaned.

The dreams tormented Conine as they always did. Her sisters screamed as they were dragged by the Romans to the whipping posts, to the torture chambers, to the flat, cum stained wooden frames in the soldiers barracks. Satyra screamed as she was carried away by Gracus men, who tied her to a tree and cut her with their swords til her body was covered head to toe in blood. And then Gracus came and she was lifted up onto the cross while her sisters that she had failed hurled abuse at her, coming up beside the laughing Roman and the ramming the iron nails into her flesh, leaving her die hideously.

She wept, in the dream and in the real world. She had failed them all. She was not clever enough, was not strong enough. All her fault.

When the ground in her dream opened beneath her, she did not question it. When she toppled into the yawing abyss, she did not struggle to escape. She deserved damnation, deserved to fall. And fall she did, for what seemed like an eternity, as the howls of the thrice damned rose up to meet her.

Satyra, she sobbed, Satyra forgive me my love. I failed you.

I failed you all.

***

Satyra stared at the unconscious form of Conine in wonder and fear.

Part of her surprise was how much her lover had changed. Even with her head lying on the stone floor, it was obvious the warrior woman’s hair was much longer, curling down around her breasts and broad back where it had once been cropped short about her shoulders. She still wore her leather boots and greaves, but in place of her armour she was now clad in two strips of buckskin; one as a loincloth, the other to cover the generous curves of her chest. She appeared leaner as well, her already toned figure now somewhat more muscular in appearance without having added any mass. The marks of the whip upon her bronzed skin had faded to dim stripes, faint reminders of the ugly wounds that had adorned her hanging on the cross.