The Tale of Daemonica

Caught Or Saved?

After some time they stopped. Daemonica couldn't understand at all how it was possible that she was still moving. It was as if her body was moving on its own, no matter what she thought of it. She fell to the ground and they just left her where she lay motionless. They certainly didn't have to worry about her running away. The two men kept walking until they stopped at what really looked like a huge well, at least from what she could see with her swollen eyes. Soon she heard the sounds of water. She thought she could hear them all too well for the distance between her and the men. She also heard them arguing or discussing something, but she didn't care. All she could think about at the moment was the water.

To her relief, after they had drunk enough, washed their faces, and rested a little, the tall man approached her with the bucket of water after another heated discussion with his companion. First he washed her face a little, muttering to himself. When he was done, he looked at her and seemed quite pleased. She shivered under his all-revealing gaze. Still, he seemed to be just checking to see if his catch was worth the effort.

When he finished, he gave her a bottle of water to drink. Every time she started drinking too fast, he would take the water away and mutter to himself in his quick tongue. Gradually he let her empty the entire bottle, but it seemed to Daemonica that there was too little inside to quench the thirst that continued to torment her. Even though she felt much better now, she knew her chances of survival were too low. But the reality of accepting it made her stronger. Or maybe she was just deluding herself, but she tried not to think about it anymore. It wouldn’t help anything anyway. The cold water in her stomach cooled pleasantly, and she quickly fell asleep. But the sleep brought her neither rest nor relief. The horror scenes of the last few days continued to haunt her even in her sleep. Yet there was more to it than that, something she did not understand.

Fortunately, the sleep didn't take more than a moment. Soon someone shook her painfully. She was forced to stand, and after getting some water, she followed the two again. She knew this was going to be the real fight for her life. She didn't need to understand her companions, she felt it. She had to follow them wherever they went, because without them her chances of survival were zero.

'She fell. We had a deal. She can't make it.' The fat man was standing next to the other, who was kneeling over her, taking out his bottle of water.

'Come on! The camp is less than an hour away. She can do it.'

'Only if you carry her there on your back.' The fat man grinned.

They want to leave me here, Daemonica thought as she watched them argue again.

'Damn! Why do you have to be so stupid and stubborn? You and your ideas have never done us any good. You come to Shuth’noa with nothing but a corpse, I’m telling you.'

'She’s coming to camp with us.'

'Stop thinking with your c**k, leave her here and let's go!'

'No!' The tall man gave her another water and tried to get her to her feet. She knew that whether she stood up might determine whether she lived or not. She gathered up all the strength she didn't even know she still had and forced herself to her feet.

'See?! She's coming with us. We're not giving up so close to the camp.'

Daemonica could never remember after that how she had managed to cross those last miles, but after a while she felt that they had stopped for good and that her tortured body had been tossed to the ground. She could only feel it, for her eyes were now so swollen that she could no longer open them. Immediately afterward, she fell into a deep sleep that almost bordered on unconsciousness.

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She was back in the swamps, speeding through the forest. Branches lashed her face, but she didn't care. After a while she stopped and saw a figure kneeling not far from her, crying and trembling. She couldn't see well in the dim moonlight, but she made an immediate decision. She raised her hands, there was something heavy in them, and charged forward. Just as she reached the figure and stretched to strike, for a split second before the axe fell, the unknown figure looked up, and Daemonica was finally able to look her in the face…

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Daemonica awoke. Her forehead was drenched with sweat and she was trembling. It took her a while to wake up completely. Suddenly she heard what seemed to her to be someone sneaking up on her. Fortunately, even though her eyes were still swollen, she could see better in the dark now than in the daylight that blinded her. She looked around quickly. She lay by a small rock, her hands still tied. But now she was sure that the sounds were indeed coming her way and she needed to act.

She concentrated hard on freeing her hands, but after a while it turned out that she was not tied as tightly as she had initially feared. Trying to be as quiet as possible, she managed to untie the rope just as she saw the man approaching. She quickly closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. She waited motionless to see what would happen next. The man knelt beside her.

'They say you will die tonight.' She heard him half-whisper. She didn't understand him, but guessed it was the voice of one of her 'saviors.'

'So all our efforts,' he continued, 'were nothing but a completely useless work and in addition we pissed him even more. Then you'll have to repay us differently now.' Even though she couldn’t understand his language except for a few words, she felt his words were full of hatred and lust. At the same moment, his sweaty hand was on her exposed thigh and slowly rose higher. She shuddered in disgust. She waited for him to bend lower and kicked her foot quickly into the man's face. But he was surprisingly fast, completely avoiding her intervention. And he was really angry.

Before she could do anything, he got up and grabbed her hair while he continued to swear. But as he pulled her up by the hair, she saw a brief flash of something strapped to his waist. That could have been her salvation. As soon as he pulled her closer, she quickly reached out to his waist and drew the dagger that hung loosely there. Before he could understand what was happening, she grabbed his right hand, which was under her throat, in his wrist, and in one quick movement cut off the hair which he held with his other hand. Then she turned under his left arm so that his right hand, still in her grip, ended up in a painful position behind his back. The man screamed in pain, but his screams were interrupted as she completed her movement by pressing her own body against his back and slitting his throat with his own dagger, which she still held in her right hand.

For a brief moment she froze in that position. She was breathing rapidly, but she felt... strangely good. Before she could think more about it, she saw someone else approaching quickly. She threw down the body of the fat man who was still clutching her hair and tried to take up a good fighting position. Her breath settled and she heard her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She was perfectly calm and focused.

Soon a tall man came into sight. He held a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. But as soon as he saw her, he stopped halfway through the next step. There, facing him in the moonlight, he saw a woman standing with a dagger in her right hand. Her severed hair fell into her face, blood trickled down her right cheek, and her dark eyes watched him in a way that made his knees tremble. Her face was dark, as if shrouded in shadow, even as the moonlight fell on her. But that wasn't the worst of it.. Even though it was dark and he couldn't be sure, he would have sworn he saw something dark standing behind her, like the shadow of a giant monster holding a huge axe ready to strike in its clutches overhead.

He didn't want to stay here a second longer, let alone even think about examining the scene more closely. With a cry he turned and began to run, but after a few steps he staggered and fell with the dagger in his back.