The Great Pandemonium: The Direction of the Dawning Sun

Act IV: Small Revenge, Part II

Act IV. Small Revenge (cont.)

Akkali turned back to Lady Fyrinheld and motioned for Alariel to remove the gag, which she did—making sure to also rip free a bit of the woman's hair in the knot. The Lady shrieked like a cat that just had its tail run over by a trolley, then dissolved into a shrill tirade about filthy heathen vine-skinned creatures and how they would all burn when Junan invited their betters back into heaven. Akkali let her rant until she was well out of things to say and had resorted to indignant mutterings about the slaves' filthy clothes touching her polished wood decking and how many of them she would have to whip to scrub it clean. It took the better part of an hour for her to shut up entirely and they were already well away from the Imperial capital and just about to sail past the first coastal lighthouse not run by the city guard.

“Just what do you plan to do with my ship, heathen?” the Lady hissed finally, looking her up and down like one might examine a chicken hanging in a butcher's window. “My husband will send out a search party for me when I am not present at the coronation!”

With an exhausted sigh she watched the lighthouse shrink away. “You really don't recognize me, do you.” Shaking her head at her own foolishness she flung her hand out the window in the direction of Harenholl. “I shouldn't be so surprised. Your skirts were always up over your head, anyway. You liked it best when Galenfyr ravaged your ass.”

The Lady bristled and snarled back in a shrill voice, “Fork-tongued vine-skinned git! How dare you speak of such things before me! I'll have your tongue cut out and make your master thank me for finally making you mute!”

Akkali felt the years of hatred for the woman and the rest like her boil up from the pit of her stomach and seep into her veins, burning away the exhaustion and the pain and replacing it with a powerful, blind rage that refused to subside. “...Vapid bitch.”

She turned and walked back towards the woman, deliberately making the heels of her boots click against the wood like the spurs of an executioner approaching the damned. Hauling the woman to her feet by the front of her corset, she drug her to the windowsill with little regard as to whether or not she could walk there under her own power. Only when her head was shoved out into the ocean air and her falsely colored hair was flapping in the ship's wake did Fyrinheld truly comprehend what was about to happen to her.

Staring up at her with wide, unblinking blue eyes, the woman started to beg for her life and offered up everything she thought she was worth. “No! No! Please! I'll give you anything—anything! The ship? Money? You can have it—all of it! I swear—I swear it to Junan! Just let me go!”

“You cannot parlay with me,” Akkali snarled through clenched teeth. “You've nothing I want that I've not already taken.”

“No!” Fyrinheld pressed the heels of her palms against the windowsill to try and leverage herself back inside the ship and failed. “There must be something! What boon would you ask of me? What do you wish?!”

“You,” replied the Enkiri in a cold, unfeeling tone, “dead.”

She shoved the Lady against the windowsill and sneered at her with wicked eyes, knowing full well that in that single moment she had summoned to life every single nightmare the woman had ever had of her slaves turning upon her. Locking her fingers about the woman's throat, she shoved her halfway out the window and clamped down so there was no air left for her screams of help.

Fyrinheld struggled and scratched at her arms and face but Akkali felt absolutely nothing as the woman's nails dug into her flesh and peeled it away as she thrashed violently in attempts to save her own life. All she could see in her was Galenfyr's putrid countenance, and it was sneering at her, telling her that he had won. She would never get to him. He may have lost her, but he kept what she held precious and mocked her as he dangled it like a mouse before a starving cat in a cage.