Lamia

Strix

When the trail from the cove veered into the foothills of the Dragon’s Tail, it began to climb so steeply and unevenly that Strix’s breath caught in her throat. Pebbles crunched underfoot, while larger gray boulders, thorny brush, and gnarled roots seemed to reach for the soles of her boots with every step. It was clear at once that this path saw little use as a proper trade route. With every step, the shoreline dropped away below, and ahead of her rose the peaks of the ridge, their summits lazily wrapped in cloud. From here, on the southern slope, the sea was still visible—a murky blue ribbon, where along the shore at dawn one could make out the smoke of orcish watch-fires. But she wasn’t walking toward them. She was walking away. Away from everything that lay behind.

The contract with the Bloody Fangs was closed. Three years—blood, rust, howling. The gold at her belt pulled heavy enough—more than enough to rent a room in the capital of Aezar and not think of battle for a year, maybe two. She’d fought her share. And let the most stubborn captain at Outpost Koreh try to talk her out of it—he wouldn’t succeed.

She was twenty-five. To look at her, just another common mercenary, one of dozens along the southern marches: wiry, lean, shoulders accustomed to the weight of a blade, palms calloused. The other two in her squad weren’t warriors at all, but soldiers’ whores, accustomed to gripping cocks rather than swords. She wasn’t tall, and not exactly pretty. Her muscles were worn lean by marches, patrols, and skirmishes. Her hair was dark, almost black, cropped short—hedgehog-short—so no orc could grab her by the scalp if she found herself without a helm in a fight. Though she planned, once she reached the capital, to find a mage and ask for a spell to speed up its growth. In the Empire, it wasn’t proper for a woman to wear her hair that short. Even a mercenary. Her eyes were gray, and in them had settled a cold squint. It stayed with her even when she smiled. People said her gaze was like death. Or like the tip of an arrow. Already drawn, already trembling to fly. To her, it was just a habit of keeping her distance. And fatigue.

Her body was covered in scars. On her side—a ragged gash from an orcish hook. On her left forearm—a scattering of burns, from a magical flare she hadn’t dodged in time. Nothing fatal, nothing crippling. The healers at the outpost had always been competent. Sometimes they dragged people back from the grave. And they could tuck your guts back in so neatly that afterward you could eat and digest rocks. As for scars, they could heal those so cleanly that not a trace remained. But a few of the ones she’d earned, she’d asked them to leave. As reminders. And as a warning—that in battle, every small thing mattered. From your kit to whether you were bleeding during your monthly cycle and whether your belly ached. On her right cheek ran a thin white line from cheekbone to jaw: her first real fight, when she’d just joined the company and been too slow to evade a strike. An orcish scimitar had left her smile crooked. And just a little unsettling. On her left wrist was a narrow scar, almost like a bracelet. An arrow, last year. She’d been covering the retreat of her squad. The broadhead had torn through veins and tendons alike—she’d thought they’d have to take the hand. But the healers had pulled it through. She owed them everything. Sure, there were one-armed mercenaries, but they didn’t last long in this life unless they retired.

Scars weren’t ugliness. They were the price. Every coin in her purse, every night in the saddle, every moment when control had slipped. They reminded her that she was alive. And she had no intention of removing them for the sake of smooth skin, like some court whore. She hadn’t roasted in the orcish deserts and bled dry just to end up polished.

But all that was behind her now. She had enough gold now that she didn’t just have to rent a room and lie idle. If she wanted, she could raise her own company. A dozen, even two. Young cutthroats, buy them steel, name the band after herself, and lead them on contracts. She had a name in the guild, she had experience, she had instinct. Everything a commander needed.

She’d seen it before—former captains moving up in the world, settling in garrisons, hiring out to merchants. Or buying a house, setting up a tavern by the road, and growing old in peace. But she and peace—they didn’t mix. “The Wildling,” they’d called her in the company. And that wasn’t about a quiet old age. She just needed rest.

Besides, command—whether of a squad or a tavern—wore a person out more than any battle. Other people’s lives. Other people’s mistakes. Arguments over loot. Tears over the dead. No thank you, she’d had her fill. Right now, she wanted to be alone. To let her muscles loosen, to let her body stop flinching at every bird’s cry, stop scanning every bush. That was why she was going to the capital. Somewhere where no one knew her face. She’d rent a corner from some old woman, drink sour wine, and watch the clouds drift over the rooftops. And then—maybe. When she’d rested—she’d decide.

But the rest hadn’t come. For half a day now, she’d felt a gaze on her back. At first, she’d thought it was just the usual wariness—after orcs, that didn’t fade quickly. But whoever was shadowing her was smart. No noise, no approach, no giveaway crack or scent. Just that dragging sensation—someone watching you between the shoulder blades. She never did figure out who it was. Maybe a desert scout, eyeing a lone traveler to rob. Maybe a wild beast, deciding she was easy prey. Or maybe something worse. She didn’t know. But having someone on your tail all the way to the pass was sheer stupidity. And setting a trap out in the open was even worse.

As the sun began to sink toward the teeth of the ridge, she spotted old ruins off to the right of the road and decided to stop there. It was better than stumbling on in the dark. What the ruins had once been—a watchtower or a wayfarers’ shelter—wasn’t clear at first glance. All that remained was the western wall with a gap for an entrance, and behind it a clearing overgrown with moss but with a space cleared for a fire. It gave her few advantages, but as a place to sleep, it was ideal. For an ambush, too.

Stepping through the gap and scanning the area, she dropped her pack and looked around once more. Silence. No sound, no movement. Only the wind keening in the cracks, and somewhere in the sky a bird crying. Yet the gaze at her back, the one that had been tracking her, hadn’t gone anywhere. So her observer had seen where she’d turned, where she’d stopped. Good. For her. And bad—for whoever had decided to follow.

Before full dark settled in, she busied herself making camp. She built a small fire—just enough for a couple of hours, to warm herself and boil water. She shrugged off her cloak, spread it against the wall, sheltering from the wind and covering one flank against a sudden attack, then ate a quiet meal from her pack: an egg, some dried meat, washed down with water from her flask. Then she settled in for the night, using her pack as a pillow.

Her rapier, still in its scabbard, lay within reach. She’d left it there deliberately. Let the observer see: the weapon was at hand, but she wasn’t expecting trouble. And while pretending to adjust the lacing on her boot and shirt, she’d fished a narrow stiletto from her boot—thin as a needle, its grip wrapped in black mountain-goat leather—and tucked it between her breasts, under her shirt, point aimed at her solar plexus. Ready, at any moment, to be drawn in one fluid motion.

Prepared for the attack she was almost certain would come, she lay down on her cloak, closed her eyes, relaxed, and let her breathing even out, mimicking deep sleep. The fingers of her right hand rested on the scabbard—just for show, not gripping. Her left hand, hidden beneath the edge of her cloak, hovered near the neckline of her shirt, a palm’s breadth from her real defense.

The coals glowed. The wind howled. She waited.

Lamia

She crouched frozen, trembling in the shadow of the rocks. Whether from cold or hunger—or more likely both. Her scaled body, scaled up to her waist, pressed so hard against the stones that their sharp edges scraped the skin of her chest. Down below, in the ruins, a fire burned. Small, smoldering, but to her it was a beacon. That, and the scent—the scent that tormented her nostrils. Father Dragon, what a smell! Warm, pulsing, living blood. The wind carried it from where the lone traveler had made camp, the woman she’d spotted several quads (a unit of measure equal to about an hour) ago.

The lamia didn’t know the woman’s name. She knew little of humans, really. Or of any of the other races that inhabited Eldrakkar. Only that all of them were dangerous, in equal measure. Her father had always said: “Never approach a human, an orc, or an elf unless you’re certain you can escape. They carry steel, and they prefer to act first and think later.” But her father was gone. And her mother. And her younger sisters—those whose tails had rattled so merrily as they played in the sun. Their voices still echoed in her ears, but their faces were beginning to fade.

It happened three summers ago. Hunters—not orcs, but humans from the southern outposts—found their lair in the crevice by the bay. They came as if to hunt mere beasts. The hunters cared nothing for the lamias’ intelligence; they wanted only their bodies, their skins as they called them, and their fangs. As she fled into the mountains, she still heard in her sleep the cries of her father, the weeping of her mother and sisters who hadn’t escaped. She ran. She fled, her father shouting “Run, daughter! Run!” She just ran, not looking where, up the slope, into the mountains. Where no human foot had trod. And from that day, she was alone.

Two and a half years had passed since then. She survived as best she could, eating whatever she could find. Goats, birds, sometimes carrion. She’d learned to hide from orc patrols—freezing on the cliffs so perfectly she blended with the gray stone. But the last winter had been cruel. Game had moved lower, toward the bay, and she dared not descend below the pass. Not that way—the scent of her family’s blood still lingered there. Nor the other side, where the orcs came from. Now the snow had melted, but the animals hadn’t returned, and her stomach had been twisting with emptiness for four days straight.

She was young. To human eyes, she might have looked twenty—but for a lamia, that was already adult age. In truth, she’d only just reached her seventeenth spring. Her body was thin, flexible, but it had known no satiety for many months. Ribs showed beneath her pale skin. Her breasts had sagged, her face sharpened so cheekbones jutted out, her eyes had dimmed. Her long fair hair, which she once tried to tend as best she could, now hung in tangled strands. The scales on her tail had dulled, flaking and peeling in places. She lacked the fat to keep her wounds oiled. Even the rattle at her tail’s tip barely sounded now. Only when she was angry or afraid. Like now. From fear. Or impatience.

She wasn’t angry. She was afraid. Every movement, every breath—hunger betrayed her. Her body trembled, her forked tongue flickered out unbidden to wet her cracked lips.

She didn’t want to attack. If she could have, she’d have curled into a crevice and waited until the traveler moved on. But she had no strength left to wait. Inside, a fire burned—demanding blood. Hot, salty blood. The kind that would give her back the strength to think and move. She remembered what her father had told her: “You can sip a little from a sleeping one. He won’t wake if you don’t drink much. Or if you let a little venom in. He’ll think he’s fallen ill, that he had a nightmare, and won’t think about the fact that someone used him as food. The important thing is that he’s alone. Two at most. But you must drink from only one, and do it as inconspicuously as possible. For example, through a kiss.” The lamia clung to that thought like a straw. She didn’t want to kill. Just take a little blood. A drop, a mouthful—two at most. Just enough to survive. Just enough to make the hunger recede.

She’d been watching the woman since she’d first spotted her climbing into the hills. From afar at first—behind rocks and bushes. The traveler walked confidently, with a sword at her belt and dark, short-cropped hair that stood up like hedgehog spines. That was strange. Travelers rarely came this way across the pass. Especially alone. The lamia had watched her stop at the ruins, build a fire, spread her cloak. Then she lay down. Her breathing grew even—asleep. The lamia waited another hour. Listening to the wind, the rustles of the night. Silence. The woman slept.

Then she made her move.

Silent as only lamias can be, she slithered from her hiding place and glided toward the stone wall. Her clawed fingers—capable of tearing a throat in one strike—found holds. She pulled herself up, swung over the edge, and froze. Her heart pounded so loudly she was sure it could be heard ten paces away. She caught her breath, then edged forward a few more lengths, undulating her whole body, trying not to scrape her scales against the rock; every sound seemed like thunder. She circled the fire. She glanced at the embers—they still radiated warmth. Too close to the flames. She feared them, like all snake-kin. But the woman lay three meters away, and the scent of her blood overwhelmed any fear.

The lamia crept closer. Inch by inch. She could see the weapon—a long, curved rapier—lying in its sheath within hand’s reach. But the sleeping woman didn’t move. Her right-hand fingers lay loosely on the lacquered wood, relaxed. Her left hand was hidden beneath the edge of her cloak. The lamia concluded—the woman really was asleep.

She paused at the woman’s face. Looked at it. The eyes were closed, lids still, breathing steady. A scar on her right cheek—old, white. The lamia couldn’t tell if this woman was beautiful or not; now that didn’t matter. Only the neck mattered. And the thin vein pulsing there. Pulsing with life. And salvation.

The snake-girl licked her lips with her forked tongue. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Hunger screamed—Bite! She lowered herself slowly, tilted her head, opened her mouth. Her fangs were bared. All that remained was to touch them to the warm skin, to puncture it, to feel that first sweet gulp...

The rattle at the tip of her tail gave a faint tremor. From excitement. From hunger. From fear—for she was about to do what she’d never done before. She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned in...

Strix

I lay still, counting the beats of my own heart. The dying coals cast reddish glimmers against the walls of the ruins—I could see them even through my closed lids, that warm, living flicker. But the fire wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was what was approaching me.

I heard it—her, him, whatever—approaching. At first, the faint scuff of pebbles and sand shifting under weight. Then, quick, ragged breathing. Someone was coming, trying to be silent, and doing a spectacularly lousy job of it. Whoever it was, it wasn’t a wild beast or a scout. And the stomach of whoever had decided to attack me was growling so loudly I could hear it from three paces off. I almost smirked. A hungry predator is usually dangerous and cautious. My opponent didn’t fit that description at all.