writing prompt: sticky fingers, fantasy, fight scene
prompted by a someone on LINE chat group.
first fic for our original works that we post here and it has to be dodgy material. Sigh.
[possible triggers: wounds, blood and innuendo]
He felt it where he had lost feeling since a long time ago. The pain jolted him awake. Aidan glanced over at the sleeping figure beside him. Soft snoring, chest rising and settling at a regular pace.
Didn't wake Sierra. Good.
Aidan rolled to his side to prop himself up. Still strength in his arms, though just barely. Clearly he was getting rusty and needed more exercise. He took a deep breath before peeking under the sheets, lifting up the waistband of his pants.
Nothing seems wrong.
--- --- --- --- ---
"We're taking the shortcut through the forested mountains, where there are at least a few hundred Shedim monsters, and you say the two of you - a girl and a cripple - can guard the goods through this?"
"A rogue and a mage," Sierra corrected the quartermaster. "I am strong, and this guy here looks frail, but once he opens his mouth you'll be fleeing with your pants wet in horror."
"Will you not give people such a disproportionate introduction of me," Aidan sighed in vain, knowing that his wife would speak as she liked regardless.
She grinned at him. Aidan pulled down his mask to reveal his scarred mouth, gnashing his teeth at her playfully. They laughed.
Like expected, the Shedim horde came out at night. Aidan felt it in the bramble wall he had built around camp.
He alerted Sierra, who was never asleep. She disappeared wordlessly into the darkness of the dense forest. He jumped onto his donkey which he was resting beside, readying his staff in his hand.
A choreography that the couple was too familiar with. Sierra, who was sneaky and fast, would extinguish the enemies one by one, each knowing none the better: stealth offense. Aidan, whose spells are flashy and movements confined by his paraplegic body: offensive defence.
So he roused the rest of the camp and had them gather in the middle where it was easier for him protect. As every creature of the shade approach, Aidan would finish them off with a ball of light from his staff.
Twenty minutes later, when the camp was surrounded by the carcasses of the slayed Shedim, he could hear sounds of Sierra fighting in the forest. If she was that near, it could mean the end of the horde. Or that the horde was simply that big.
Or strong. She was fighting just one of them. Mazikin class? The humanoid shade was keeping Sierra at a distance with spike projectiles. Sierra had switched weapons to using a crossbow instead of her favoured katar and dagger.
The sight of Sierra fighting a ranged battle makes Aidan want to laugh, but he stopped when he realised she was not fighting, but kiting. Okay, so she was basically luring the boss monster here for him. Thanks, wife, very sweet of you. (As if he hasn't gotten enough kills yet.)
Time for serious business. Aidan pulled down his mask. ”Sarefah…” he incanted. A large fireball formed above him.
"Watch out!" Sierra cried out. His spellcasting did not go unnoticed by the Mazikin, which had decided to go after the more dangerous target. Spiked spines grew out of its back and flew forward at him. Aidan urged the donkey backwards. Unfortunately, his steed panicked and tripped, throwing him onto the ground.
Aidan grimaced. The boss monster may have him faced down kissing grass, but his spell was already charged. "Ba'arah!”
The fireball barreled into the Mazikin.
The resulting flare lit up the night sky. What a big fireball, he thought. But slower than Sierra, he hoped.
"Aaahh!!" he heard her shout.
"Did I accidentally set you on fire?" Aidan pushed himself up with his hands, resisting the urge to tease her.
"Not me, dumbass! You!”
"Me...?" He quickly rolled over and gave his body a once over.
THOSE SPIKES IT THREW. One of them is piercing through his left thigh. It is also on fire.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhh…!!!"
He threw out a freezing spell instinctively.
(Later, Sierra would nag him about using ice on an open wound. Hey, he is a warlock kind of mage, not a healer kind of mage, what would he know about first aid.)
--- --- --- --- ---
Nothing seems wrong, but it is not like Aidan can see all that clearly. He flipped their shared blanket open and lit a light in his palm.
Being the hyperalert rogue she is, Sierra woke up.
"Ai? What's wrong?"
"Umm. I can feel a pain. In my leg."
She sat up. "How can you feel your legs even?"
”I don't know…?"
Without warning, she lifted up his back and pulled down his pants. She gave his non-punctured right thigh a pinch. Then a few more kneads.
"I don't know what you are trying to do there, I can't feel it, but anyway I might be getting aroused if you continue that."
"I'll touch you higher if I wanted to do that," Sierra chuckled. "Okay, so still no feeling here. How about this one?" She switched to touching his left bandaged thigh.
"It hurts. And I still am not feeling your hands. Feels like the pain is inside or somewhere else."
"Hmm," she undid his bandages, and took a closer look at his wound.
The bleeding had stopped, although the sight of raw flesh pulsing without the layer of skin made Aidan grateful – just a little – that he was paralysed hip down; no doubt it would hurt like hell if he could feel it.
"There's something inside," Sierra shifted so that she was in between his legs. Aidan would make a snipe about it, but he is in pain so he shuts up.
"You can't feel it, but when I touch your skin I can feel some unnatural movement." She swung his left calf over her shoulder so she could see his thigh at eye level. "And yea, I know your legs well enough to know what's not normal with it."
She is definitely doing this on purpose, he swears. Knelt in front of him, with his legs spread open and one swung over her shoulder. "C'mon, give me a light here," that grin on her face confirmed his suspicions.
He raised his fist, and opened his palm to give her a light.
"Okay. I think I can take it out," Sierra assessed, fingers circling his puncture wound lightly.
Before he could question "how", her thumb went in. He gasped at the sudden intrusion. "Wait, not. So… fast… I wasn't ready… for, t-that…”
The parasite in his thigh seems to sense its impending removal, so it had began squirming, with each movement sending an electric pulse through his supposedly defunct nerves to his brain. "Gu- hrrgh…!" a sound between a gasp and a grunt rang in his throat.
Sierra added her index finger to the hole, stretching the entry point. Tears welled up in his eyes, and Aidan bit into his perforated lips to hold back his voice from escaping. He had one hand clawing and grasping at what feels like Sierra's skin fiercely enough he thinks he drew blood (good, gotta give her a taste of the pain she is indirectly inflicting on him now), while the other struggled to hold up the light in his palm for her.
Her fingers went in deeper, probing inside of him. "Hurry up – find it quick!" He begged.
"I'm trying!" To her credit, Sierra did sound distressed about his pain. He saw blood spurting from his wound, her hand and face partially dyed dark red with the stench. The sensation in his left thigh is starting to be felt somewhere higher on his body, a little too close – he could feel the pounding of his pulse, in there, rising-
"– Got it!" Sierra forcefully pulled the parasite out. His breath hitched, and the light went out.
--- --- --- --- ---
Aidan would like to study the parasite to learn of its properties and how it worked, but the instant Sierra extracted it she ground it into minced meat with her dagger while telling it, "No one rapes my husband except me."
… He mentally rescinds any feelings of gratitude he had for her.
She turns to him and giggles, holding up two sticky fingers in a V shape for victory, covered with his rotten blood and the secretions of the parasite.
His own left hand was a little more sightly, fingertips covered with a fresh crimson. "Do me a favour, and clean us both up," he said.
"Okay," Sierra stood up to walk to where their towels hung. Blood trickled down her right thigh where he had scratched her earlier. A reflection of his own injury, he mused.
(pulled Aidan and Sierra for this fic, as one of the rare few ships that our subconscious hasn’t decided to sink yet.)
