Page 10 of Bonded By Savages

Obsidian puts his hand against the mirror surface. It ripples like he’s touching a flat pond. For a second it opens to the palace that I saw in the vision when the Bond thrummed, then it almost blinks, then I see darkness, then a city.

I don’t hesitate. I dive forward, hearing screams, and run in with Tarak.

My feet hit the ground and the portal closes behind me. I check my smartwatch for a blink, noting the time, and look for the palace.

It stands before us, on a hill. It has walls twenty feet tall, but the gate is open, with two huge Bullfrog guards protecting it. They hear the screams and turn to us, and the yells come out.

We have no time. We sprint, knowing we’re up against bad odds, not caring.

We will save her.

3

Athena

The ornate wooden banquet hall doors burst open, shouldered hard by two Bullfrogs with their Orb-Axes activated in their meaty grips. They croak in the Toad language. When I first worked here, it sounded like incompressible animal grunts and warbles. Being immersed in a language made me learn it quick. I can make out two words of three, though I wish I could unhear the crude jokes.

“Go through … gate!” yells the first Bullfrog who doesn’t halt his advance, stomping in, his huge wet feet slapping against the stone flour. Lord Bladdard makes a sound I once heard when a Toad got in the way of a Bullfrog in the halls, moments before he got his arm ripped off by the huge maw of the monster. His four personal guards shove in closer to him, and I’m pushed aside by one of them. He doesn’t know his strength, or he doesn’t care, because I tumble to the side, skinning my legs as I hit the ground hard. My head swims with dizziness. I crawl away until I’m at the wall, trying to disappear when I see the naked fear on the Toad Lord’s eyes.

“How!” He yells out the word, terrified, mucus dripping down his forehead. He moves his smartwatch to his hand and speaks too quickly for me to understand, his voice echoing through the loudspeakers of the mansion. His body is distended and bulging, but his wrists are so thin, his fingers too long, held together by a translucent web of green flesh. He always looked so solid and menacing. Now, seeing the ridges of his bony knuckles makes him look like he could be snapped in half by a hard breeze. His left hand darts under the table, and from my position on the ground, I see a small button on the bottom of the wooden banquet table. He presses it.

Lord Bladdard had his banquet room set up with a raised table near the back of his room, where different minor lords and rich merchants who fall under his favor are invited to sit. It forms a T shape with the longer, thinner table, which runs down the middle of the room almost to the huge banquet doors—towering things made of real wood and flecked with gold leaf. The doors are propped open now, the outside of them black and ugly, while the inside is painted light brown.

The Toads who thought themselves lucky to be invited to such a prominent lord’s feast sit petrified at the table. It’s the first time in over a year and a half I’ve seen Toads at the table not reaching out and stuffing themselves. They warble in high-pitched squeals as the six Bullfrogs position themselves along the long table, gripping the wood in their powerful hands. Some of the Toads realize what is about to happen, jumping back, but another is slammed to the side as the Bullfrogs lift the table up with a ferocious grunt and drag it against the front doors. The doors slam closed behind it, and they step back, Orb-Axes activated.

Toads are five or six feet tall, wide as they are tall, with bloated bellies. They can jump over ten feet when they want to, and swim with powerful strokes, but the ones who succeeded in materializing their greed into their lives prefer to sit around, sometimes too lazy to even dart their tongue out to grab a fat fly.

Bullfrogs tower over them. Their flesh is a darker green than Toads, covered in thick, warty skin. They have muscled guts covered in layers of fat and hide. You can’t put a knife through them. Their faces are broad and wide, and when they open their mouths, you can glimpse row after row of razor-sharp teeth, like looking into the mouth of a shark. Most stand well over eight feet tall, with the hugest of the species topping in at around ten. I feared Lord Bladdard. But the four shadows that towered behind him terrified me. I caught them looking at me the same way they looked at the banquet meal. They’re always hungry, and when the last Toad clears out, and the tables are covered in leftovers, they muscle their way forward. They devour the mounds of leftovers in minutes, chomping down with wet, greedy sounds. I’ve watched porcelain plates crack under their teeth like eggshells, gulped down their throats as they lose themselves in ravenous hunger.

Now they stand, huge, webbed feet planted against the slick wet floor. Condensation drips from the ceiling. A fat drop slides down my back from the wall, and I push myself to my feet, looking left and right for an escape route I know doesn’t exist. The Toads have stopped their whimpering, and now the only sound in the silence is the hum of the Bullfrog Orb-Axes, like the sound of hornets descending in a cloud.

Only an Aurelian can truly tame an Orb. I don’t know if the Bullfrogs sourced their weapons from black market Aurelian smiths, who face the Kill List for selling their secrets, or if they forged them themselves. Orbs thirst for blood. As long as their purposes align with their wielder, they’ll let themselves activate into weapons. Each battle-axe is similar. A long, black handle, and from the edges come the metal and energy that merge. I can only look at them for a moment before my eyes hurt. They’re both bright like staring at the sun and dark as if they are pulling in the light of the room. Sparks of blue lightning spit from the weapons.

Lord Bladdard is gasping in huge breaths, his throat bulging out obscenely, his hand on his steak knife as if it could protect him when the twin doors glow with heat. They smoke as two Orb-Blades rip through them, and the Toads that were petrified in fear rush to the back wall, cowering as far as they can from the battle.

A boom rings out in the room like a gunshot. The doors crack as they’re kicked open. They slam against the banquet table, opening just enough that I catch a glimpse of the warriors.

My heart floods with hope. I recognize them. In the brief instant before the doors slammed back shut, I saw their faces.

They are the two from my dreams. The nobility of the leader, with hard, commanding features, fills me with certainty. They’re up against six Bullfrogs, but I know they can win. The other spins, his blade arcing out, hacking off more of the thick doors, and my heart pounds as I see his refined, perfect features, though even from here they look more strained.

Where is the third?

He was the one who scared me the most. The barbaric savage. Long black hair in a braid like a steppe warrior from the histories of Old-Earth, a fierce, masculine, yet handsome face.

There’s a thunder as the doors are kicked open again, and the two Aurelians jump forward, leaping over the banquet table. I watch in horror as they land on the slippery ground, but they adjust their bodies, sliding as if they’re on ice and moving like dancers, twisting and rolling under the sweeps of battle-axes and gutting Bullfrogs as they spin.

There’s a yelp from the middle of the room, where a Toad who was crushed by the table is picking himself up. He reaches into his belt, drawing a pistol, and fires six shots without aiming. His bullet lodges into the back of a Bullfrog’s neck, who reaches up with his hand to feel it before his head is taken off by the Orb-Blade of the fine-featured Aurelian. A jet of hot reddish blood spurts upwards, marred by the acidic green of the Bullfrog’s blood.

The six guards are twitching, dying messes as the Aurelians stride forward.

My knees shake. I press my hand against the back wall, wishing my eyes deceived me.

These aren’t the Aurelians of my dreams. Their features match. The cold, imperial lines of the leader’s face, the perfection a born commander. The other is haughty and aloof, with high cheekbones and gleaming marble skin, and he walks like a jaguar towards me.

Their eyes are harder, colder, the lines of their cheeks more taut, as if the last year and a half they didn’t sleep.

It’s not their faces that shock me.

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