“Good thing I’m not for wanting her then,” Dexter said. “Undo this thing and we’ll be done with it.”
“There is no undoing it, you fool!” Ormitor snapped. “And now you’ve defaulted my agreement with Sir Drayful as well! You’ve no idea how much you have cost me!”
Dexter took a deep breath as Ormitor vented at him. He could practically feel Rosh tensing and fighting the urge to explode behind him. It only made him wonder how Jenna, who seemed especially incensed at the ‘pleasure golems’, was handling herself.
“No undoing it? Then what does she cost. I’ve no want of a slave, but I’ll accept the cost of ruining her for you,” he said, trying to mollify the wizard.
Ormitor laughed. “You fool, the cost is more than you will ever see in your life! She is worth hundreds of thousands of gold!”
Dexter cringed at the mere thought of that much money. While he hoped it would be otherwise, he could only silently agree with Ormitor that he would most likely never see that much wealth in his life.
“Why is she different from Jarnella,” Bekka asked abruptly, stepping out and throwing back the hood of her cloak.
Ormitor looked at her briefly, then dismissed her, turning his angry gaze back to Dexter. He opened his mouth buy again Bekka persisted.
“She is a brilliant creation, truly a work of art,” she said, praising her inventor. “Yet she does not have the personality that Jarnella does. Is each one designed for the owner?”
Pleased at having his work acknowledged and appreciated, Ormitor was taken aback. Grudgingly, he deigned to answer her question. “Each is unique, yes, tailored to the requirements of the purchaser. They learn quickly, Jarnella was not my first but she is my favorite. The personality of which you speak surfaces differently for each. Some are slow, some are fast. It has something to do with the strength of the soul used to animate them.”
“The soul used to… What type of monster are you?” Jenna asked, stepping out as well.
Dexter held out his hand, attempting to stall her and hold her back. Barely, she reigned in her anger and remained behind him.
“Monster? Hardly. I take a broken soul, shorn from its body and life, and give it a fresh chance at happiness in a new form. A form that is well nigh indestructible! These are not monstrosities, these are pieces of art!” Spittle flew from Ormitor’s mouth as he raved about his creations.
“These creations, they are bound to their owners forever? How do they survive when their owners die?” Bekka asked, desperately wanting to understand more of the mechanics behind the magic.
“Some persist, miserable and lonely,” he said, still proud of his creations, or rather, proud of his abilities in creating them. “A rare few find meaning to their existence, though they forever feel the longing for their master. Others perish, seeking out a means to their own destruction to end their misery.”
“So Keshira is stuck with me forever?” Dexter asked, feeling the room suddenly growing smaller around him.
“I trust you have no means of paying for her?”
Dexter shook his head and angrily said. “No means and no interest in purchasing such a thing!”
“I would have offered you a contract of service to pay off your debt, but I think you would find no appeal to that either?” Ormitor asked, walking a short distance away from them and putting Jarnella between them.
Dexter shook his head again. He heard Rosh inhale behind him and saw the man open his mouth to say something. The look Dexter gave him made the larger man close his mouth.
“Then I’m afraid her suffering will be short lived, for with your death I will have her destroyed as well,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your ship will be put to good use and repay some of your debt, I think. The rest I will accept in the service of your souls in my future creations!”
“Well now that just won’t do,” Dexter said, hearing the blades of his crew being drawn behind him.
Rosh charged forward, ignoring the unarmed Jarnella to his error. She lashed out at him, her arm crashing into his chest below the arms that brandished his great sword. Rosh flew backwards, his feet moving forward while his upper body was driven to the ground.
Jenna slipped past Jarnella, moving with a grace and speed that she had not displayed even when fighting Dexter in mock battles. She lunged forward with her rapier holding her short sword up in a guard position. Jenna grunted when the sword hit the wizard, for it barely plunged into his skin. She felt as though she had stabbed a tree trunk.
From behind her Jarnella landed a glancing blow to her shoulder with her fist, sending her stumbling to the side and making her trip over a plush chair.
Dexter intended to give Jarnella a fight, as she was closer, but he suspected that Ormitor was the key to success in the conflict. He slipped behind the beautiful construct’s back as she sent Jenna sprawling. He nearly abandoned his target to go after Jenna, but knew better than to lose what may end up being their only chance.
Ormitor was incanting a spell, his eyes rolled back in his head as he drew on magics powerful enough to cause the hair on Dexter’s skin to raise due to his proximity. Dexter swung his long sword as hard as he could; having seen how Jenna’s thrust had been thwarted, and was rewarded with three of Ormitor’s fingers falling to the ground, as well as half of his left hand. For Dexter’s part, his arm tingled with the vibrations running through it from the resistance to the strike.
Ormitor’s arcane uttering twisted into a howl of rage. His eyes focused on Dexter and the building magical energies surrounding him flared into electrical arcs the ran across his body and dissipated into the ground at his feet, though not without leaving him smoking and scorched from their passing.
It was Dexter’s turn to go crashing into a table, propelled there by a blow from behind that snapped his head back and made the air explode from his lungs. He lay stunned on the floor, blood running down his face from where his forehead had crashed into the solid wooden table.
Through blurred vision, he saw Jarnella moving towards him, her expression deadly serious. Dexter tried to move but found he had trouble focusing, he just knew that death stalked him in the form of a beautiful woman. Behind Jarnella Keshira sprung into action, rushing towards Jarnella and crashing into her.
Bekka, even further back, had rushed over to Rosh and was checking him to see how he faired. He was sitting back up and shaking his head, then spitting out something that had more than a hint of red to it.
Dexter turned his head, still wondering why everyone looked as fuzzy as they did, and beheld Jenna’s short sword slicing across Ormitor’s side. Instead of entrails and blood, only a tatter of cloth from his expensive clothing fell to the floor. She ducked under a swing from the arm that wielded the partially severed hand and tried stabbing into his leg, which proved to also be all but futile.
Dexter rose woodenly from the floor, feeling his sense of balance skewed and his body unnaturally limber. There was no pain in his back or neck, though he suspected there should be. Even more interesting was how muffled the noises sounded, from grunts of exertion and pain to the crashing of the two pleasure golems wrestling on the floor.
Rosh climbed to his feet and grimaced in pain. He shook it off and advanced on Ormitor, who saw him coming in spite of trying to squash Jenna like a bug. He accepted a hit from Jenna and stretched out his left hand, which possessed the shortened first three fingers. He spat out a sharp stream of words and a dark beam of magical energy that Rosh caught on the tip of his sword.
He held the blade up defensively, hoping to block the nefarious looking energy that swarmed up it. The blade grew heavier as he held it, making him curse and begin to lose the fight against holding it up. With a grunt of final exertion, he threw the sword to the side and dove to the other side.