Page 45 of The Warrior's Oath
“Shh,” Korvin quietly chided.
“My tattoos itch,” she replied in a hush.
“As they do. Now stop scratching them. They take time to heal.”
She dropped her hands and carried on. They walked in renewed silence, but now that she was actively thinking aboutnotscratching her new tattoos, the tingly, itchy sensation seemed so much worse. Like telling someone not to think about an elephant, directing her to ignore her itching had much the same effect.
Nyota used her open palm to rub rather than itch, the desire to devolve into full-fledged fingernail scratching glory rising inside her. “How can you stand it?” she asked. “Don’t yours itch too?”
“Of course. But I had far less work done than you. Also, I have experienced this sensation before.”
“But it tingles.”
“Yes.”
“And there’s that tugging feeling, if that’s the right word for it. It feels weird.”
Korvin shrugged, not slowing his pace. But now that she mentioned it, he realized that his own tattoos felt a bit different this time. Almost a tugging sensation, as she had described. He pushed the thought aside, attributing it to the Admani Pigment they had received. He’d never had so powerful a pigment blended into his runes before. That was likely the cause of the sensation.
Little did he realize, something more was at play. Something that would change both of their worlds forever.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
By mid-morning Korvin had led them a good distance into the hostile territory. As they walked, Nyota found that, as he had predicted, her senses were indeed sharpening even more as her new runes healed, and as the sun rose, it only improved. The pigment was bonding with her body perfectly, it seemed, and as a result she was discovering each of her new enhancements as they unobtrusively did their thing.
Her hearing could now fine tune and focus on distant sounds, for one. The initial realization came when she jumped back fearing the crashing she heard drawing near.
As it turned out, it was merely an animal reacting to their presence and running away. The interesting part, Korvin pointed out, was it was still a fair distance ahead.
“You heard that?” he asked.
“Yeah. It sounded like it was right in front of us.”
He gave a satisfied grunt. “Hm. You are adapting faster than most.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“It is. But I will need to instruct you in some basic control techniques so you are not caught off guard like this in the future.”
“Okay. What sort of things were you thinking?”
“When we stop for the day, I will walk you through them. For now, we need to focus on our progress. The map of the landing sites the magistrate provided us shows our best options for reaching segments of the downed Raxxian ship.”
“Right, I saw. But there were a bunch of them, and they seemed pretty spread out from what I saw.”
“Yes, they are. And we are going to have to make a thorough survey of the ones that came down intact.” A look of determination and concern spread across his face. “It has been days, and anything could have happened in that time, but one of these locations will be where my general is. I know it.”
“Sure, I get your sense of urgency. But remember, he’s not the only one who may have survived. There could be other humans out there.”
“Yes, as you have already said,” he replied almost dismissively.
“Yes, as I said,” she shot back. “Hey, just because they’re not some military big wigs doesn’t mean their lives are any less important.”
“I was not saying that.”
“Not in so many words, but you sure don’t seem to care about finding them.”
“As you know, my general is my priority.”
