12. N #4
She had put on her fair share of epic tantrums.
Some had been real, others for show, and it was for her, and her alone, to know which and when.
She’d started this one as a contrivance, and had done a good job of keeping her head.
A paste paddle flew at her face, thrown by one of the hags on the far side of the room.
She had just enough time to raise her hand up to arrest it in midflight before it struck her.
Her contrived rage boiled into the real thing, a fury borne of anger, frustration, and mistreatment.
“How dare you,” she snarled, then made a quick gesture that flipped the paste paddle edge first, and launched it back in the direction it had come. She heard a scream as it struck, preferably striking the one who had thrown it, but in truth, she didn’t really care who she had hit.
She let her rage go then for real, lashing out at the women around her with her magic, launching table legs, paste paddles, broken crockery, paste buckets, and other oddments at the other workers. Alarm and chaos spread to panic as the ration producers tried to flee her wrath.
She called the storm around her, and the others fled before it.
She was pretty sure that one of the women who’d accosted and beaten her the night before lay motionless on the floor.
Women dodged around the tables that she sent careening and made for the exits.
She saw Aelford helping another woman, little more than a girl, who limped and dripped blood through the rag she held to her face.
The supervisor looked at her with an expression of utter shock.
Well, you kicked a worm and unleashed a dragon, she thought with grim satisfaction.
She saw the first guard enter the room, his truncheon held high.
She reached down, and pulled her magic into herself.
It came to her smoothly, in a way it hadn’t before, except when she did illusions.
The tiny part of her mind not bound up in her rage noted the change.
Perhaps the food-making had made her stronger.
The rest of her exulted in her power, that after the idleness, the locked doors, and being at others’ beck and call … she was doing something.
The guard came for her. She closed her fist, cocked it back, and punched it towards him, channeling her rage into a tight stream.
It wasn’t quite a levin-bolt … that might have killed him then and there …
but it wasn’t far off. The force knocked him backward and off his feet, and the loud crackle stood hair on end and took what had been a hasty retreat from the room and turned it into a full-blown panic.
Workers scrambled over each other, stepping on each other, and shoving others out of their way as they pushed and shoved towards the exit.
A second guard, pushing against the panic, forced his way into the room.
He saw his fellow crumpled on the floor, and had the presence of mind to fling a table into Triana’s path as she let go with another bolt.
It caught the table and blew it to flinders, but it bought him enough time to hurl his truncheon at her head.
She was a bit slow in getting her hand up, managing only to catch the edge of the thrown truncheon.
It grazed the side of her head instead of hitting her face-on.
The blow proved sufficient to knock her to her knees and momentarily disoriented her, enough for two more guards to rush into the room. The third, following them, pulled up sharply as he looked at the wreckage. Triana saw his shocked expression.
The closest guard was nearly on her, his face a mix of fear and anger.
He had enough size and weight on her to badly hurt her if he tackled her.
She got one hand up and sent a weak bolt towards him, not enough to stop or stun him, but sufficient to send him spinning off the wreckage of the tables.
She started to get to her feet, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs from where the truncheon had clipped her, when the third guard who entered caught her in a diving tackle.
He smashed her back into the fallen tables and wreckage strewn about in her rage-fueled magic attack.
She felt something crunch under her back, and a lance of pain over one kidney.
She tried to force herself up, tried to push him away as he tried to pin her arms.
She kicked and squirmed, trying to get a knee up between his legs.
The second guard was on her then, stepping on one hand as she gripped a table leg to try and strike the one that lay on top of her.
His weight drove the air from her lungs and she couldn’t draw breath.
She felt the fight draining out of her, pressed under his weight, and lying on debris that she had created.
The guard standing on her hand took the table leg, and holding the thicker end, forced the thinner end between her teeth.
“Move, and by all the gods, I will ram this through your throat and finish you.”
She stared up at his furious face, and went slack.
Fatigue washed over her. She felt drained and empty.
She heard a voice to one side, shaking and tremulous. “His lor’ships been sent for.”
She recognized the Overseer’s voice and tried to turn her head to see. The guard pressed the table leg against her jaw. “Move again. Try me.”
She held still.
She could see little, but could hear moaning, and weeping, and the soft murmur of shocked voices. The Overseer said something she could quite hear, then came into her view. His face was mottled with rage.
He took the table leg from the guard, and withdrew it, then used his shoe to turn her head away. He then placed the sole of his shoe on her cheek forcing her head to one side so she couldn’t speak or see, and her head was restrained.
She could hear moans and screams from the hall, and the fading sounds of the panic, and workers from the ration production room continued to flee.
“One may be dead. Don’t know yet. Two others with obvious broken bones, enough that they can’t run. Once we get the rest to stop running, then we’ll figure out what other injuries we might have.”
His voice might have been conversational, but his tone radiated pure fury.
He twisted her head around so she could see the wreckage, the blood, one still body, and another crawling away. “I really hope you are happy.”
“Do you have the collar?” he asked. “Put it on her.”
She felt the bespelled ring snap around her neck, then cried out as it burned her flesh for a moment as the control spells settled into place and “recognized” her as the object to be controlled.
She had snapped collars on so very many slaves in the past, but this was the first time she experienced the moment from the other side.
She tried to raise her head, then felt the waves of lassitude wash over her.
She remembered this, and what would come next.
The sleep. Followed by the nightmares.