THE RED BANDS AND LADY HOSHO: II
If you missed Part 1:
The edge of the door hit her knee and she fell forward. A white tentacle swirled through the doorway. Jekren raised her hand and a red smoke rose from it. Flames flickered then they grew brighter. She made a fist and punched the tentacle. The heat burned the flesh and the tentacle went back through the doorway. The smell of burning flesh filled the room and was no more different than the scent of fried octopus. Lady Hosho leaned on her table and tried to stand. She tried to weave a wolverine into existence. All her mind gave her was a fog of a red scruffy puppy with feet as small as a mouse. Green Eyes jumped across the room and commanded water with her hand to shield the doorway and she landed near her sister. The sisters walked over to Lady Hosho and held her up.
“Make a hole here and we can run for the hills through the forest,” Lady Hosho said.
So optimistic for an old woman with a limp, Jekren thought.
She extended her hand and a fire shot forth, shaped like a pipe. When it impacted the wall, a blast formed a small hole. They saw men through it. They had no shirts, their legs had scales and each wore a red armband, a sign of the late King Drocias’ following.
One of the mermen peeked and remarked, “Where do you go, Lady Jekren and Lady Vobos? And who is that old wo-”
A force like a wind hurled them away and neither knew where it had come from. Vobos took the chance and commanded water with her free hand. It formed from thin air and she directed it to the hole. The water then circled along the jagged edges of the hole as Vobos moved her right hand in round motions. The bricks chipped away more and more until the hole was big enough for the three of them. They rushed through it. Lady Hosho looked to her left. There stood Cobalt, working an axe with a blackhead as if it were a shepherd’s staff. It glowed green each time it spilled blood.
“Shepherd boy! What is this!” Lady Hosho screamed. There was no time for her to get a reply as the sisters dragged her. She just looked on and noticed a long, thin creature like a dragon which stuck out of Cobalt’s bag. The bag he never took off, Lady Hosho remembered. The creature had wings, leathery and black; the rest of the body had brown scales and instead of fire, it blew wind from its mouth. It fought beside Cobalt as if they were one entity and they were one deadly combination. No merman or woman got near the three as they limped on; all fell by the axe of Cobalt.
They reached the edge of forest and kept going. Lady Hosho felt webs build in her head. The tonic was working now. She started to feel all the life around her, the threads they held, and how each life was dependent on the next. She felt the creatures of the forest: goblins, tritans, mothmen, snake-gazelles.
“Stop!” Lady Hosho spoke.
“What! No! They will catch up, we can’t. Even your shepherd boy won’t hold them for long,” Jekren spoke.
“And, do you think we can outrun them too? Stop I say!”
They stopped and they were all panting, Lady Hosho the worst of them.
“For powerful creatures, you tire easily!” Lady Hosho laughed.
Now I see why mother liked her. Her humour doesn’t care for the situation. ‘Always be positive,’ Mother used to say, Vobos thought.
“This is land, not water,” Jekren retorted.
“They won’t find us. My weaving has returned, at least partly. I can form a net and hide us. I can feed off your mother’s powers.”
Vobos spoke, “What of your shepherd boy?”
“If what I know is true, Cobalt is a keiber. An ancient creature from the sea of Dobris, given to protect, and most importantly for an epic battle. Once their purpose is fulfilled, they die even if they survive the ordeal or they die as they carry out their duty. That gives us some time to strategize, we must fight them.”
Jerkin laughed at the top of her voice. “Do you know who the Red Army is? A squad is enough for us to say the least.”
“And poor Cobalt is probably dead now.” Jekren let out a suppressed sigh.
“You forget your mother’s stories. And a keiber is more powerful than a hundred of you combined, Cobalt will stand a good number of hours.”
“But you’re now old, you couldn’t even protect us back there.”
“We shall see young one.”
Lady Hosho knelt and brought her hands together in a steeple.
She concentrated and opened her mind to feel the weaves and threads around her in much more detail. She drew some magic energy from Jerkin and Vobos. A blanket of invisibility formed over them. When it had completely surrounded them, Lady Hosho finally breathed. “We are safe for now.” The tonic’s power leaked into her blood and skin in rushes. Each time she felt as if she was about to have a seizure, then the feeling left. Five times in a row. After the episodes, she breathed in deeply then out and a yellow smoke rose from her nostrils.
Jerkin and Vobos observed in silence. Lady Hosho switched her sitting position and crossed her legs. She placed her hands on her knees for a fair amount of time. Not a muscle twitched. The sisters shook her, unsure what to make of it. Lady Hosho opened her eyes, stared at them, and closed them again. For another uncertain amount of time, she was in the same position and state. At the end of it, the tonic was steaming off the top of her head.
“Forgive me, I must.” Lady Hosho said suddenly.
“Do what?” Jekren asked.
“Do you trust me?” she responded. The sisters looked at each other.
Jekren hesitated, Vobos spoke, “Yess…..Yes, I…” Jekren nudged her. “We do, Lady Hosho.”
“Good, again, forgive me.”
The old lady proceeded to hold Jekren’s and Vobos’ forearms. She pressed her thumbs on each of them.
She weaved, creating a web that connected her to them, forearm to forearm, mind to mind.
Life drained out of Jekren and in seconds she was ghost-white, lines of age all over her body. Vobos’ skin became flaky, much darker, and had fewer wrinkles compared to Jekren’s. Their eyes were deep in the hollows of their sockets, they even grew jittery. Lady Hosho however lost her age. Her back straightened, the flakes on her skin disappeared. It became as smooth as olive oil, her hips were more pronounced, her belly flatter, her breasts more upright and pointed, her shoulders leaner and muscular, her face as radiant as the sun. She weaved a whirlwind and it gently carried the now old sisters atop a hill. They just looked at each other the whole trip, words were stuck in their throats.
Lady Hosho rose from the ground and headed towards her homestead. She put one hand forward and her hand suddenly grappled a rein. It went round the neck of a beast with the head of a buffalo. Its legs were reptilian, like a komodo dragon’s but larger along with a massive tail. The body was coarse and scaly with bumps which looked like thorns. A saddle was strapped to its abdomen and it crawled at an amazing speed, moving never straight but in a curved manner which looked like a shifting C from above. She screamed a battle cry and it was as if a thousand bulls had bellowed, a hundred lions had roared and a thousand whales had blown their water holes. The ground shook and the birds in the forest flew away. Her hands were glowing a faint yellow. She went on and soon she was on the sand beach. She pulled at the rein and the beast stopped.
Mermen lined the shore, along with beasts too ugly to be described, and at the helm, a man with a neck lined by 3 round red bands. He was the spitting image of his father, the last King of the Red Band line.
“Lady Hosho, huh? So this is where you hid. The keiber fought well. We were just about to come and hunt you three down. Your keiber killed a third of my army and injured a third.” He grimaced and pointed at a man impaled on the handle of an axe handle with a fish-like dragon curled around him.
“Where are the daughters of the traitors?” he continued.
Lady Hosho spat forward, towards the young man and remembered how Jekren had spat in her house.
“You look really young for an old woman. I bet they have fallen prey to a mountain lion in those woods after you sucked all their life. How noble of you to leave them there.”
“Clyde and Padin, search for them!” he barked. They advanced toward the forest but two gilded arrows whizzed and struck them in their heads simultaneously and upon impact, their heads exploded.
“I drunk a tonic, little Randal. It’s a shame most of your men are either dead or injured or full of dread.”
“Do not push me to anger woman.”
“The tonic was drained from the heart of a King who ruled before Lavender.”
“Don’t speak of my father you damned woman!” Scales appeared on Randal’s face in a wave then disappeared. He growled deeply.
“You might fight him today,” she said as she alighted the beast and the wind took away its form as if it had been a mist.
“Your whole army can’t defeat me, yield and leave Mer-Kingdom forever this time, to the Lomabdians or wherever. A chance to life.”
Randal laughed, “One woman against….” and he looked at his remaining army. “You think too much of yourself.” She remembered getting the same remark from Jekren.
“I’m not alone,” she spoke.
“Ooh, if you speak of the mermen and women of Discretion, they are taken care of. We found you, not the sisters. Apparently, they spilled all their secrets when we tortured them enough and threatened their kin. But we killed their kin anyway, that is the punishment for treason.”
Lady Hosho gasped for air, as if her windpipe had been blocked.
“Now I offer you the same offer. Yield and give up those bitches. I promise a quick death for you and two good woman slaves of them.”
“They shall be avenged today, the women of Discretion”
She raised her hand and weaved, breaking the intangible barriers that stopped tides from fully sweeping a beach. A wave came from the sea and by the time Randal and his army realized it, the water had reached their abdomens, swept them off their feet, and was still advancing. All the mercenaries who were not of the waters were either washed away or bashed against tree trunks and exposed roots, or slapped against stones exposing flesh and bone and tendon. The wave of water returned to sea with a kaleidoscope of blood. Red blood from Suthuman mercenaries, blue and black blood from the elves, green from the infamous Mbama mercenaries. The wave took with it every creature that had been standing on the seaside including Lady Hosho. By the time she’d been swept off, her head and neck were a shimmering yellow. The mermen and mermaids shifted into a comfortable form, graced with scales and tails for lower limbs and upper limbs with webbed fingers. Gills upon their necks and eyes of deep colours, a blue of the sea or a black of the depths of it or a green of the moss.
They dove into the water and rose, trying to locate Lady Hosho. They made no effort to save the terrestrial mercenaries who hadn’t been killed by the initial force of the wave. They would be of on help at sea. Chekah, the General of Randal’s army, floated on the water and looked at the heavens. His eyes went grey and so did the sky; a wind swept past them, signalling a storm. It came in bouts, beating against merman, mermaid, and wave. Weather wasn’t something Lady Hosho could control, but she’d been known to be ridiculously good at adapting to it in her time and prime.
The two sisters sat by a rock outcrop engulfed by a wind that never stopped to whirl. Regardless, they felt vulnerable, no control over elements. The speed, agility and eyesight of their youth had escaped them.
“She’s raising hell,” Vobos spoke.
“This feels like mom telling us a story again. I miss her.” And Jekren sobbed.
“Has age got to you now? Softened?” Vobos snorted.
“I am thinking thoughts I think aren’t mine. I thought I would just be me in an old body but now I see things differently. Maybe it’s part of Hosho in me.”
“It’s LADY Hosho for you. Mother did have problems teaching you manners. And no, she isn’t in your head, you are. I am glad your head isn’t in your ass anymore and you can think straight with none of your ridiculous arrogance.” Vobos waited because she knew something else was coming, the confession wasn’t over.
Jekren looked at her sister and said, “I shouted at her and she’s raising hell for us, I should apologize. I feel bad.”
“If she lives you should,” Vobos said. She didn’t think she would doubt the Lady but from where she sat, all she saw were mer-people and beasts too numerous for Lady Hosho who was used to land. Vobos smacked her sister on the thigh. Jekren saw her hand going there but she was too tired and bored to stop it. She responded by hitting Vobos in the head with a cane she wasn’t so sure she’d had before the hill. They both laughed and Vobos was happy that Jekren was happy for the first time in five days.
