“Is he dead?” Sylora Salm asked, only half-jokingly. She looked at Jestry, splayed head down over the arm of a couch. His hand hung down and his fingers barely brushed the floor. His naked back showed bright lines of blood from many deep scratches.
“I’ve been known to kill a few,” Arunika replied with a laugh. She walked over and slapped Jestry hard on the side of his head, and he stirred and coughed. “But not this one. Not your pet. Not yet.”
“Not at all, I beg,” Sylora replied, reaching for her own clothes and wincing at a few of her own scratches. “When Jestry is of no use to me, I’ll take that pleasure as my own.”
“You believe he’ll live that long?”
“He’s a fine warrior.”
“You just told me that you intend to pit him against Lady Dahlia,” Arunika said, for indeed the two had shared much in conversation these last hours, their words punctuated by the heavy snoring of the exhausted Jestry. “How many times did you mention her prowess with that unusual weapon of hers?”
“Not enough times to do her justice, I admit,” said Sylora. “Kozah’s Needle is a mighty weapon indeed, and none have ever mastered it to compare with Dahlia’s proficiency.”
“And this one?” Arunika asked, and she grabbed a clump of Jestry’s hair and pulled his head up so that Sylora could see his face. The sight had both females smiling. Jestry’s lips were wet with spittle. Arunika let him go and his head dropped and bobbed. “Do you believe that he can stop her?”
“I hope it won’t come to that, but should it, I intend to offer him every advantage.”
Arunika smiled and headed for a dresser across the room. Sylora watched her, enjoying the view, her perfect humanoid form not blocked, but somehow enhanced, by those leathery devil wings.
Arunika reached into a drawer and fumbled with some ties. Then she reached in farther, up to her elbow, up to her shoulder, though there was no way the drawer could be nearly that deep. She felt around for a bit and retracted her hand from the obviously extra-dimensional bag, holding a small box. She moved back to stand in front of Sylora.
“A gesture of good will,” she said. “To seal our alliance.”
“I thought we’d just done that,” Sylora replied seductively, and Arunika laughed.
The succubus bent low in front of the sorceress and slowly opened the box, revealing a copper ring with an empty gemstone setting.
“A stormcatcher band,” the devil explained.
Sylora looked at it, and back at Arunika.
“It will catch the magic of Kozah’s Needle and turn it back on Dahlia,” Arunika explained.
Sylora’s smile widened. She gingerly reached for the band and pulled it from the box, holding it up in front of her eyes.
“I’m sure that my alliance with Brother Anthus will provide more to help you build your champion,” Arunika said.
The devil was right, Sylora knew. She wasn’t looking at Jestry as a man, a free-willed human being. He was her champion, or soon to be, and she would construct him as such, with armor, with a superior weapon, with this stormcatcher ring. He was an instrument, not a companion. Even in their sexual encounters, Jestry was no more to her than a means to an end, and woe to him if he failed in that role. He had purpose only in those goals Sylora determined.
Something stirred deep within the sorceress, some regret that she’d allowed herself to move to such a place of callousness. What forks in her road had she chosen? What decisions might she have made to alter this destination in her life?
Sylora let these questions fly away as she glanced back at the ring, reminding herself of how badly she wanted to see the corpse of Lady Dahlia. Perhaps she would raise the witch as a personal zombie servant. Perhaps, with Valindra’s help, she might even be able to allow Dahlia to retain enough of her former self so that her continuing torment at Sylora’s hand would wound her all the more profoundly.
Sylora peered through the ring at Jestry and considered the many tools she could bestow upon him to give him the edge he needed. What a fine beginning this ring would offer! Sylora grinned wickedly as she imagined Dahlia hurled backward by the lightning burst of Kozah’s Needle. She remembered the elf’s pretty face so very well, and in her mind, she twisted it into a look of sheer shock and stinging pain. That was how Dahlia would recognize the last moments of her life.
Delicious.