Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

I felt a chill in my bones and was throwing my punch at a naked man I didn’t recognize who was holding a knife and had an erection. This guy wasn’t even faharni, he looked more quippa but not really right. A girl was screaming, there was a deep, rasping sound like a very strong wind and the walls were vibrating. All the light seemed to come from one electric lantern, casting shadows that didn’t seem to move the right way. I hit the man before I could stop myself and we collapsed against a wall of tight vibrating fabric, pushing it out a bit. I realized we were in a tent and it must have been very windy outside. There was more of that grating of conflicting magic and I realized he was stabbing me with his knife, or at least trying to. Then he punched me and sent me flying but it didn’t hurt much. I landed on the other side of the tent, it was only about three meters wide and long and about two meters high. The single electric lamp was hanging from the middle of the roof. I was also aware there were still ananah vibes nearby but the man was a hipsick.

The man snarled something in a language I didn’t know, presumably Quippa.

“Faharni!” I said.

Faharni was Midbar’s link language as well as being the main language of Pax so almost everybody knew at least enough to conduct a simple conversation.

“Foul mage, thou hath no power here for Ahmaza protecteth me!” He was now talking Faharni but like something from one of those movies from before the Cataclysm, but with an even stronger accent.

He strode towards me brandishing the knife. He wasn’t much taller than me but was very muscular.

“Sorry!” I said, with my teeth chattering. I was oddly cold on the inside although the air was warm. “I didn’t mean ...”

Then he jumped on me thrusting the knife at my chest. I tried to get out the way, miserable as I felt, I didn’t want to die! This brought the screaming girl into view. She was a teenager or perhaps in her early twenties, dressed in a skimpy, ripped dress. I realized she was the anavah who’s vibes I was feeling. She was a different race from the man, I think glildac. She had lighter skin than faharnis but darker than bennis or quippas. Her hair and eyes were dark and her nose was small and hooked. I’d seen pictures of glildacs and there were still some people who had some glildac ancestry. She looked pretty much pure bred, which didn’t make sense.

The man grabbed me by the hair and pulled me up.

“What magic doth protect you, mage?” he asked.

I guessed Dad must have put a protection spell on me.

“Sorry but ...”

“Prepareth to die!” he shouted and threw me to the floor in a different direction.

I aimed a kick at his contracted testicles but he jumped and seemed to be going to throw his full weight behind the knife. I rolled and hit what seemed to be a sleeping mat. There was more screeching of conflicting magic and he landed beside me. I grabbed his neck and we wrestled, casting shadows on the walls that didn’t seem to be moving how they should, but he was much stronger than me and soon got himself on top of me and pushed a pillow onto my face. I guess he realized his magic knife wasn’t up to defeating my protective magic.

“Canst thou liveth without ...” he started to ask.

I struggled with all my might and tried to scream, hopefully there was somebody more reasonable nearby who would help me. The pillow prevented me from making much noise. The woman stopped screaming for a few seconds and then resumed but with a louder, more blood curdling tone. There was a dull thud and the pillow stopped pressing onto me. I pulled the pillow off my face and flung it to one side. The man had turned towards the girl who was standing over him holding a mallet in both hands. She had nothing left to hold what was left of her dress and one of her breasts was exposed, revealing a large, dark nipple. She gave him another clout on the side of the head with all her might, just to remove all doubt about what had happened. The man said something in Quippa, that included the word “Ahmaza” and started to rise off me as the girl kept whacking his head with the mallet. He must have had protective magic. I knew no magic could make you completely indestructible because there was some problem with having the number of associates that would require. The girl either wasn’t thinking straight or reckoned if she whacked him enough times, she’d at least knock him out. I grabbed the man’s wrinkly, hairy testicles and he started screaming and turned back towards me. The girl continued hitting him on the head with the mallet. She was trying different angles so perhaps she had some idea what she was doing. The man grabbed my right hand, which was pulling his scrotum. I think he realized if he just pulled my hand away, it would pull his testicles more. I grabbed the pillow with my left hand and pushed it in his face. Then there was a crack as the mallet hit him again and he went limp. The mallet blows must have broken his skull or a neck vertebra. He fell backwards from the force of my pushing against his head with the cushion and the girl kept hitting him.

“You’ll kill him,” I said, not entirely sure if she understood Faharni or if this was her intention and I got out of her way anyway.

The quippa fell to one side and I shuffled away from him and the girl. She hit him a couple more times, picked up the knife and stabbed him in the side. Either the magic stopped working when he died or wasn’t as good as Dad’s. Then she rolled him onto his back and stabbed him in the chest. Then did it again and again, screaming all the time.

It was clear these two didn’t have a good relationship. This girl was seriously hot. She was smaller than Miandri, with a thinner build but she was still very curvaceous, but I found her actions horrific. I think this just must have been too much for my brain to really handle and I just sat there, breathing heavily feeling totally numb and nauseous and kind of like I was just seeing something I wasn’t really part of. I wondered if I should mention about strong emotions being bad for anavim. Then my logic kicked in and told me this probably wasn’t a safe place to be. I looked around trying to find the door. It wasn’t obvious. I guessed it was the side away from the bed. I shuffled around the side, as the girl continued to stab the man who must have been well and truly dead by now. I found one opening, which turned out to lead to a small room with an antique toilet in it. I continued and found the zip and started pulling the fastener up. Cold air and sand blasted in, stinging my hands, and the sides of the tent shook violently.

“Do not openeth the tent, imbecile!” screamed the girl. “There art a sandstorm!”

I’d only visited the desert once briefly but I’d seen enough shows and read enough books to understand the danger and closed the flap as fast as I could. As I did so, it occurred to me sandstorms didn’t come into the Great Basin because of the mountains around it. How had I got to the desert? Was I really in the desert? Were these really the most important questions to be worrying about?

I turned to look at the girl who’d stopped stabbing and screaming and was now just kneeling over the dead man and sobbing, still with a breast hanging out and heaving in a very sexy way.

“I thought Yoho had sent thou to saveth me,” she sobbed.

This probably wasn’t a good time to argue about gods being symbolic so I said, “Maybe. I was in a fight with three psychics but I think one or two of them were magi or at least had artifacts and suddenly I was punching him.”

Suddenly I wondered how I’d got here. This may well have been what happened if anavim got too emotional but I still didn’t know what exactly happened. The most likely theory was I’d been in some sort of fugue state for a while.