The Blood Witch

The Knight

I jolt back against the cell wall as he enters the cell, hands still pinned by the short chain that binds them to the floor. The muscles in my legs tense for a brawl. There's nowhere to move, no way I can fight off an attack. I keep my eye on the blade. "Keep that the fuck away from me."

On the war front that is the Pyrthian coast, conscripted foot soldiers are little more than fodder to the enemy, human shields for dark wyrkers, the real weapons of the war. So useless and vulnerable that their desertion should damn near be considered well earned by the chain of command. But that's not how the Pyrthian monarchy rule.

Three dozen times in my memory have men, mostly the filth of Pyrthia's prisons, attempted escape. Three  dozen men tracked down and captured by the Blood Tracker. Three dozen men paraded before the rest of the cohort - and how they loved to make us blood witches watch- and made to kneel as they sliced open their hamstrings. Three dozen cripples mockingly told to run if they were set on desertion. Three dozen crippled butchered and fed to the war hounds.

It's with this memory in mind that I attempt to summon my power, the flaking blood on my arms quivering even as I feel the magic-numbing iron sear into the flesh of my hands. Useless. The thought of those men makes my hamstrings ache with phantom pain, as though this stranger had already cut me. My voice cracks as growl. "Don't you fucking dare!"

"I shall be gentle, I promise!" His eyes are wide as he pauses, hands out to pacify me, like his words count for anything. "I just need a few drops of blood."

The commotion is waking the other prisoners, rallied by the sight on an unlocked cell door. A dozen pale hands stretch through their bars towards us. The guard stirs. A full blown sweat has broken out along the stranger's brow, dripping into those sad brown eyes that look beseechingly at me.

I understand what he wants now, but that doesn't mean I like it. Blood tracking, unless under royal exemption, is one of the Forbidden Arts under the Doctrine of the Sacred Flame. A sufficiently trained blood witch- and the holy cullings had ensured these were in short supply- could trace an individual's location if gifted the taste of that same person's blood. It's the same rite performed upon all new conscripts to the Pyrthian army, dark wyrkers or not. The same act that somehow still got me caught, ten years later.

My legs are no longer shaking with the terror of being mangled, but there's a weight in my chest nonetheless. Giving up my blood means a lifetime of slavery, when I still haven't even escaped the last one. I don't know who this boy answers to, how strict they'll be to let me go from service. I do however know that it's my only choice.

"May the Wickede Dread take you. Alright then..." I sigh as he slips closer, the smell of a honeyed cologne filling the air around him. His lips tighten at my curse, as though unused to hearing the Wickede One's name spoken lightly. 

The knife flashes, a slow, dark trickle of red rolls down my forearm. The freshly spilled blood sings to me, a humming in my bones, but the tune is muffled by the iron encasing my wrists. I don't even feel the pain as he presses a small glass vial against the wound. It's almost identical to the one the fat old Blood Tracker had used to take mine as a fresh recruit ten years ago. Just nine years old and freshly kidnapped from my home.

He steps back, his breaths sharp and quick with panic or excitement, I can't tell. The more I watch him, the younger, more naive he seems. Once again, I feel there's just something not quite right about him. As I watch him tuck the vial away in the folds of his clothes, I realize what it is. He's not actually-

"I'll be back soon-"

"What?!" I strain towards him, tripping over my chains and with another cry falling to the floor. My legs scrape on the rough stone, straw gets in my mouth, but I'm too angry to notice. Fists clench inside my iron gloves. "You said you're getting me out now!"