Page 37 of The Warrior's Oath
“As you wish, Skrizzit,” Korvin said with no trace of his earlier arousal in his calm, steady voice.
The artist dipped the needles in the bottle. “I will highlight your human first. Her tiny Infala will be the perfect place to start and will act as a powerful conduit for it to flow through the rest of her body.”
“A sound choice,” he noted.
“And then I will apply it to your Infala as well.”
“But mine is complete. Grown to maturity,” he said, hoping his erection would fully subside by the time he had to roll over to receive the new ink.
“Yes, but it is also the most powerful rune on your body, and we want to make the most of the Admani, do we not?”
“Your reasoning is sound.”
“Of course it is,” Dahrag said with a happy grin. “Now, let us continue.”
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
The Skrizzit’s work finally done, the night passed swiftly for the weary travelers, both of them sleeping soundly in their separate chambers. Not only had the efforts of their adventures caught up with Nyota’s overtaxed muscles, but the ordeal of having her entire body marked with special pigment had left her utterly wiped out and in need of self-repair.
A solid night’s sleep was precisely what the doctor ordered.
As for Korvin, he was in fine shape, and the touch-ups on the damaged parts of his tattoos were minor enough that he felt no ill effects. He was also a soldier and had learned long ago to sleep wherever, whenever, because there was no telling when he might be able to rest again.
In this case, however, he was safely ensconced in luxurious surroundings with no chance of a Raxxian reclamation team disturbing his sleep. As a result, he had his first truly restful night’s sleep in longer than he cared to remember, and when he woke, he felt wonderfully refreshed.
In Nyota’s case, when she roused she wondered if she had moved at all in her sleep, so sound had it been.
“Oh, this is going to suck, isn’t it?” she wondered as she carefully pulled the thin sheet from her body and rose to her feet.
Amazingly, the crusting tattoos did not stick to the delicate yet warm material. What’s more, there was no flaking or peeling of note.
“Huh. Maybe not,” she said with a relieved chuckle.
Her next stop was the bathing area. Nowthatshe was sure would not be pleasant. But cleanliness was important when you were the guest of the ruler of an entire city, so she put on her proverbial big girl panties and stepped into the alien shower.
“Here we go,” she murmured, tensing as she activated the water flow.
Incredibly, the water, while warm and cleansing, seemed to somehow detect the delicate skin and fresh ink where she had been so recently marked, redirecting on what appeared to be a molecular level as she was sprayed, avoiding any direct contact with those areas.
How the water was being directed like that and what mechanism was keeping it not only from hitting the new ink but also from running down her body across the fine lines the Skrizzit had marked her with was beyond her. Alien tech, obviously, but more than spaceships and blasters, which she understood on a basic level from old sci-fi movies, this felttrulyalien. Like, something she couldn’t even begin to fathom.
She shut the water off with the wave of her hand, the system immediately shifting to gently blowing her with warm air, the invisible force again aiming the flow everywhere but directly on her new ink. In less than a minute she was completely dry.
“Damn. Now that was impressive,” she mused just as something new happened.
A gentle spray of fine mist coated her body, but this time it was layered upon the healing skin rather than around it. Immediately, the itching she had begun to notice faded and the heat of her tender flesh diminished.
“Aloe vera?” she wondered. “Or, some kind of healing ointment?” She carefully touched one of the fine lines on her flank with a finger.
Not oily. Not greasy. It felt perfectly dry, protecting the pigment embedded in her skin from irritation. Nyota gave an impressed nod to the invisible alien machinery. “Not bad, guys. Not bad at all.”
She carefully dressed in her new attire, no longer having to focus on keeping every bit of her body covered, checking herself out in the mirror she had discovered when curiosity had gotten the better of her and she started touching random things in her room.
The image of herself was projected in space in front of her, not reversed like an Earth mirror, but as others would see her. A true and correct representation of her appearance, and something she wondered why Earth hadn’t come up with. They had the technology after all. Or they could at least achieve a similar result using the tech they did happen to have.
Regardless, she looked herself over, admiring the healthy glow she seemed to exude. She looked good. Better than good, truth be told.
“Maybe thereissomething to these runes after all,” she admitted.
