2. Aegir
Chapter two
Aegir
IN WHICH AN ORCA IS IN NEED OF A SNACK
R aucous laughter and claps on the back followed Aegir as he emerged from the makeshift tavern. His pockets hung heavy with Empire gold, but even so, he’d managed to avoid the Sentinels’ ire. He had what he needed, names and locations of their shipping contacts and a good deal of their money besides.
Humming to himself, he sauntered away, twitching his head to the side. The skin he wore didn’t actually itch. It wasn’t actually uncomfortable, but something about wearing their form made him feel like his skin was crawling. Until he could shift back and doff his elven disguise, he’d feel trapped.
On his way out of the camp, he ducked between the rows of Pathian tents, scanning until he saw a familiarly hunched figure. Removing his cap, he sat it atop the fellow’s head, giving it a pat.
“Thanks for the face, mate,” he whispered, smacking the man’s head a little harder than necessary. For the briefest moment, he felt guilty about knocking him out earlier, and how they’d eventually trace the leaks back and conclude the man at his feet was to blame. So, Aegir slipped a few coins into the man’s breast pocket. He could have a little fun before he was caught.
Stepping lightly, he made for the edge of their line, twitching his head again to assuage the itch. Really, it didn’t matter if the man was found out. He was a high elf, which meant he was an officer, he knew well what he was doing. The rank and file of the Empire’s Watch were orcs, and Aegir knew from experience that they were just as shackled as most in the Pathian Empire.
Sentinels though? They’d chosen their life, the cause. They could just as easily be at home in the capital lounging around and eating sweets or whatever it was rich people did. 1
Aegir strode through the edge of camp with confidence, indicating to the guards that he needed to take a piss. They didn’t question him—he did appear to be an elf after all, only nodded their assent with a warning to keep an eye out.
“Something strange on the air tonight, keep your wits about you,” the taller orc called after him.
Facing away, Aegir curled his lip in disgust. He hated how sincere that had sounded. They couldn’t actually want an elf to take care, did they? Surely not.
Once he was through the trees he stripped off the uniform and tucked it into his travel bag. Clinching it around his waist, he fled toward the cliff, the call of a clean getaway spurring him to a run. Willing his bones to stretch and grow, he began his shift. Rubbery skin grew over his body, his arm and back fins sprouting as he ran. Mid-shift, Aegir launched himself off the cliff, the freezing water at the bottom a familiar balm to his discomfort. 2
He was only under the water for a second when he felt the concussive force of a massive explosion. He squeezed his eyes shut and cursed. It had all been going so well, but now, he’d bet everything he’d won that Jokith was not going to be on The Lady’s Revenge when he returned.
A egir didn’t even make it back to his ship before he was joined by a smug shark in the water. Now fully shifted into his orca form, Aegir bashed the shark on the head with his flipper. Next to him, his partner, Jokith, opened his mouth in a decidedly human laugh.
Aegir refused to meet his eyes. Anger held him taut, and he couldn’t be trusted if he had to look at Jokith’s smug fucking face for one more second. They sliced through the water, the adrenaline of an improvised race doing little to cool his temper.
How fucking dare he? He seethed. I could have still been in there!
Once they’d arrived at the boat, he launched himself into the air, shifting back into his human form as he did so. His tail split into legs and he shook his head as it shrunk down to human size. Well, large human size. He landed on the deck with a splash, and rounded on Jokith as he landed beside him.
Aegir waited until Jokith’s ears were fully formed before starting in on him. As the most talented shifter in their hometown of Sanctuary, Aegir was used to needing to wait.
“What the flying fuck was that?” he yelled, waving his arms back toward the pillar of smoke that dominated the horizon.
Jokith laughed. His too-large mouth opening wide as he threw his head back. “It was just a bit of fun. Lighten up, Cap,” Jokith threw over his shoulder, making to walk away.
“A bit of fun? Fun ? That camp is filled with orcs and non-combatants, for Lady’s sake!” Aegir grabbed the shark-shifter’s shoulder, refusing to let him walk out on their conversation.
“I only blew up their munitions store, not any people,” Jokith groused. “And anyhow, there are no non-combatants in an Empire camp—far as I’m concerned.”
“And prisoners? They don’t count as non-combatants?” Aegir could feel the vein in his temple pulsing. He stepped up and poked his dumfounded friend in the chest. “What part of covert reconnaissance is confusing to you?”
“Probably the part where we have to do it at all.”
They were back to this. Aegir was technically in charge of their mission, but Jokith fundamentally disagreed with their purpose. 3
Anger settled into a hard lump of disappointment in his belly. Aegir rubbed his forehead, willing the inevitable headache to pass him by. He was tired. Jokith had a brilliant mind, especially when it came to explosives, but he had a reckless streak that Aegir hadn’t yet managed to control. They’d only been out a few times together, and had been good friends growing up, but working together was proving more difficult than Aegir expected.
“I need to go see how much damage there is. Do me a favor and make some food?”
His friend furrowed his brow in confusion, but Aegir didn’t have it in him to explain. When they got back into town, he’d tell Hanne, their commander, that she needed to reassign him. There was no way she’d part Aegir from The Lady’s Revenge , so Jokith would need another assignment.
Their mission, and any mission they sent Aegir on, required stealth and discretion. He prided himself on his ability to blend in in any environment. For the past ten years, he’d built up a steady catalog of cell samples from the individuals he’d met in the Empire and a bevy of aliases to go along with them. Having gleefully fucked his way through as many types of people as he could, he was now able to shift into any form he’d encountered. Years spent building relationships among the people subjugated by the Empire were being torn to shreds by Jokith’s lust for destruction.
He didn’t even seem to have a clear aim with it—it was as if the anger bubbled out of him and exploded whatever was nearest when it happened.
With a shake of his head, Aegir dove beneath the waves, allowing the salt to soothe his skin. A moment’s thought and he tapped his internal store of lunula, the magical algae that allowed him to shape his body however he liked. 4 Intense pressure closed in on him as he forced his body to lengthen and expand to the full size of an orca.
For a good while, he just swam, drifting away from the boat aimlessly. He’d told Jokith to make food, but the shark shifter knew not to wait for him, and he was starting to get peckish.
It was early morning, the first rays of light barely glinting through the water. Aegir was debating his hunting options when the distinct scent of blood hit his nostrils, lighting him up. By rights, he shouldn’t have smelled anything at all, as his shifted form didn’t have any sense of smell. Instead, however, he’d made his own adaptations to the form long ago, including highly specialized olfactory senses .
Immediately alert, Aegir shot through the water, tracking the blood to locate its source. The scent was definitely of a seal, and he loved seal.
After a few minutes of swimming, Aegir located the source. A mid-sized female whose markings reminded him of a ringed seal—which made little sense. They were hundreds of leagues from waters cold enough for the layer of fat she carried.
As Aegir tasted her blood on the water, Aegir noticed… abnormalities. Those deviations from what he expected of a seal’s blood confirmed his theory. She was too far from her waters, and alone. This seal was extremely unwell.
He’d wanted a snack, and it was nearly impossible for him to get sick if it was catching, but now, his mind had shifted from breakfast. This was no longer a meal, it was a mercy killing.
The seal whipped her head around, eyes focusing for a brief moment before she shot forward in the water. She should not have noticed him this far away. Aegir was getting sloppy in his haste.
As could probably be expected for someone with the instincts of a predator and logic of a human, Aegir tended to have significantly better luck hunting than his orca brethren.
Slicing through the water, she moved differently than he expected, as if she were actively trying to confuse him. She didn’t dodge from side to side, or head for land, like normal. Instead, she plunged straight ahead, away from the shoreline, faster than any seal he'd chased in the past.
The inescapable pull of his instincts raced in his veins, the knowledge that he was doing her a kindness fleeing from his brain in the face of the hunt. Despite her erratic nature, with any other orca, she might have been successful in her escape. She pushed him to the edge of his natural ability and Aegir had needed to tap additional lunula to enhance his speed. Aegir zipped forward in the water, closing the distance.
The seal glanced behind her, recoiling at his proximity. As Aegir neared, she did a loop in the water, a fast maneuver which had them face to face in seconds. She rammed into his eye socket, slamming the crown of her skull into it and raking her claws along his side as she fled past him. There was something very wrong with this seal. He'd heard of other, larger breeds turning to aggression when cornered, but every instinct he had said that this was unusual behavior. His body spun around and he chased after her, blood pounding in his ears.
Aegir surged through the water, vibrating with adrenaline by the time he caught up to her. He chomped down on her rear flipper, rejoicing in catching such astute prey. A gush of her blood filled his mouth and a scream rang out through the water.
A far too human scream.
Which, now that Aegir could taste it, matched the taste of the blood filling his mouth.
Aegir spat her out. The taste of her blood pulled to him in ways that made him feel sick. Aegir should not be aroused at the taste of human blood. He'd come to relish the taste of high elf as a delicacy, but to enjoy the blood of a human, like that? Abhorrent.
Before his eyes, her very skin seemed to slough off, and she grew in size, a human woman replacing the seal in seconds, a pelt hanging limply off her shoulders.
A selkie.
He’d only learned of them recently, and his research had left many questions in his mind.
She blinked lazily at him, her eyes rolling back into her head as she went limp in the water.
Aegir shifted partially to have arms. He wrapped them around her limp body and rocketed to the surface, doubting the woman could breathe underwater. He clutched her pelt against her body, remembering she needed it to shift. Every second that passed where she didn’t wake worried him more. Her skin didn’t feel any warmer than his, and her human body left a much larger trail of blood than her flipper would have.
Had she breathed in water? Was she drowning in his arms even as he raced to get her to safety? Aegir was here to save people, or at least disrupt what he could in the Empire. Instead, he'd terrorized one of the people he should have been protecting.
A egir hoisted her up onto the deck, shifting his tail into legs before climbing up after her. He rushed to his stash of first aid supplies, frustrated with how meager they were. Aegir could heal most of his own injuries, so long as he had lunula in his system.
Before doing anything else, Aegir opened her mouth and smeared some lunula paste on her tongue. She wasn’t actually human, so it likely wouldn’t be bioavailable to her like it was to him, but Aegir couldn’t see how a bit of the Lady’s magic could possibly hurt. She swallowed instinctively, so he scooped more and smeared it again.
When her eyes fluttered open the cheeky woman chomped down on his finger. Fuck, her teeth hurt. Despite her humanoid appearance, she had a slew of sharply pointed teeth at the front that speared into the flesh of his two fingers. Roaring, Aegir ripped them from her mouth, shaking his hand and flinging blood in a spray.
She snarled at him, absolutely feral despite her vulnerability. Aegir hadn’t paid much mind to her nakedness before, but her ferocious reaction drew his attention to just how exposed she was.
He snapped his gaze back to her face, he wasn’t going to calm her down by leering at her, but her attention had entirely shifted. She was transfixed by her pelt it seemed, eyes locked to where it sat draped on her thigh, a few drops of his blood marring its surface.
The fierceness he'd seen only seconds before melted as her face and shoulders fell. Looking at her, he realized that even without her pelt, there were certain aspects of her that marked her as a selkie, rather than a human shifter like himself. She had adorable floppy ears and long whiskers that sprouted from her eyebrows. Freckles and spots that echoed the rings of her pelt decorated her face and body.
She stared at her pelt for an eerily long time, breath coming in gasps that progressed to sobs. Aegir kneeled next to her, frozen in his confusion. What could he do? He hadn’t the faintest idea what might be wrong, other than that perhaps she was in shock and scared.
“You’re safe,” Aegir assured in the language of the Empire, keeping his voice quiet and even. “I mistook you for a sick seal. I’m sorry for biting you, but once you’re fixed up you can be on your way. I assume you’re fleeing those Pathian bastards, so I can help you if you need anything.”
Her sobs slowed as she looked at him, lip curled in disgust. “Safe? Do you think I am an idiot?”
“No! I truly am sorry I bit you, and you gave me your fair share of trouble too,” Aegir said, holding up his injured hand. “But I suppose turnabout is fair play.”
“Safe? I’m sure. And I am meant to think this was just an accident?” Her voice dripped with venom as her eyes flicked to her pelt.
“Oh! Lady, I am so, so sorry! We’ll get that cleaned up, too.” Aegir held his hands up in front of his face. “Look, I am terribly sorry about all of this, and I think I might have made some sort of horrible cultural error. I’m assuming you’ve been through a lot, and I just want to help.”
The woman just blinked at him, scowling.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to offend you, but I swear it was unintentional.”
“Offend?” she said. “You’ve done far more than offend. But if you’re really so daft as to not see that, I’m not about to enlighten you.”
1. Not all elves are rich, of course, but generally, even the poorest elves are often better off than other races.
practices an art called lunology, which allows him to alter his body at the basest level. It should be noted that Aegir is an exceptionally talented lunologist; most of his people maintain only their human form and one shifted form.
3. Jokith would have been much happier slaughtering elves wholesale, likely dying himself in the process.
4. As lunula does not appear naturally on the continent of Caihalaith, it’s imperative that any operatives there bring a supply with them. Stored in a powdered form, it still glows, however it is mixed with charcoal to dim the light as much as is possible.