Goddess Marked

Samara was used to waiting. After all, a patient assassin was a live assassin. The past millennium taught her that lesson well.

Hidden in her cloak of shadows, Samara observed the men on the dock from high on the warehouse roof. She preferred to be on solid ground where she was more connected to her elemental power, but up here, she had the sight advantage. She’d been observing this operation for days already, getting to know these men’s far-from-wholesome habits and schedules, and now settled in for an even longer wait.

Her skin crawled watching them, a combination of her disgust at these men and Nori’s restless slithering along her skin. Nori, her dragon-shield, responded to her emotions and stoked her desire for action. He desperately wanted off of her skin.

It had been days since he’d been able to stretch his wings, but she couldn’t risk even a sliver of his shadow to peek out. The boss man was already skittish enough—he had yet to show his face—and she didn’t need to make him even more cautious.

So, if she had to wait up here, Nori would just have to stay bound to her skin. She scratched her shoulder, where his head would be, and got her finger zapped in answer.

Tsk, behave, she thought.

He didn’t communicate with words. Instead, Nori tapped into her memories of endless skies and rolling clouds; recalled the sensations of plummeting dives, rushing winds, and sea spray. He knew how to sell his case.

I know, big guy. I want to be out there, too. Believe me. But this is part of the job.

He answered with a darkened cave, which was his version of sulking.

She sighed. He could sulk. He wasn’t the one in charge of keeping them both alive.

Samara noticed a shimmering then. Moon glyphs–a sphere nestled into a crescent–appeared over a black sedan driving up along the docks. Only one man would carry the mark of the goddess: the boss man.

She inched along the rooftop, refracting the moonlight and mimicking the play of shadows in the night. She roved her gaze over the men one by one. Most of these men weren’t hers to take, though a few could be in due time. Their outlines shimmered, singled out by the goddess. A few more wrong choices, and they, too, could carry the mark of the goddess. Until that time, they were not her concern, and so were untouchable.

All except one: the boss man. And he had finally shown his face.

Deftly, Samara rode the shadows, landing on the ground behind some crates. The boss man stood off to the side, protected by a ring of men whose attention was turned toward the heavy machinery offloading cargo containers from a ship. He looked way too bland to look like a big crime boss. In his trench coat and shiny shoes, he looked more like a bank manager or accountant. No matter. He carried the mark, and so he would answer to the goddess. Samara slipped behind him, and slid her knife across his throat.

He didn’t make a sound as he crumpled to the ground; his men were none the wiser.

Samara stepped back into the shadows, task finally finished. Nori echoed her triumph with savage zeal that rippled over her skin. She felt like she could fly into the clouds herself.

A summons slithered down the tattoo on her arm, and she was more than ready to leave this place and go back to the temple.

Nori, however, heard a different call. He shot an image of the cargo container to her, and she looked up at it. She didn’t see anything amiss, but she trusted Nori’s instincts and stepped toward it.

The summons on her arm burned more insistently. In answer, Nori wrapped his body tight around Samara’s ribcage, and pulsed. The shock of it made her gasp and drop to her knees.

She gritted her teeth against the pain. I wasn’t going to leave yet, so stop trying to kill me and just tell me what you want!

Nori settled over her heart as an apology, and quickly shuffled through her memories so she would understand. The cargo container. Babies they had rescued from a burning orphanage. Samara drenched in the blood of her enemies after a battle. Over and over, these images flickered between them.

As they did, Samara absorbed the movement around her, taking it all in at once. The cargo container being loaded onto a flatbed truck. The men around the dock, discovering the boss man dead in a pool of cooling blood. Dark figures, possibly trolls hired to protect this operation, emerging from the shadows. And then one faint sound desperate to be heard among the heavy machinery.

Crying. The heart-breaking wails of desperate people. Desperate…children?

Old memories unlocked a black vengeance within her, seeping onto her skin in patterned whorls. With a surge of anger, Samara called on the earth beneath her feet, and stomped, sending a shudder beneath the truck. Its wheels crumpled and sank into the ground. The cargo container door burst open. Inside were bedraggled women and children. Slaves. Their desire for justice sang to her, marking her skin, mingling with the vengeance still imprinted there.

The trolls, unaffected by the shifting earth beneath them, lumbered toward her. She formed the word that would release Nori from her flesh.

Noboru.

Nori tore from her back in his full battle form, spewing hellfire at the trolls before he was fully corporeal. Nearly as big as the warehouse, his sleek black armor of scales shone iridescent in the moonlight, he provided the perfect cover for Samara so she could do her job.

She ran to the cargo container where the women and children scrambled to get down. They didn’t run away from her as she expected. Instead, they swarmed her, speaking at once, their various languages discordant to her ears: What were they to do? Where would they go? Who could they trust?

She had no answer for them; she only knew they couldn’t stay here. Nori was finally getting the action he craved, but already more trolls had emerged from shadows away from his flame’s reach. He was nearly invulnerable, but he wasn’t immortal, and she longed to get back to him and protect him.

She opened a path in the shadows to the first safe haven that came to mind. Her sister, Zarya, was always close by, and she wouldn’t ignore a pack of frightened women and children stumbling along the street. Once the last of the group passed through the shadows, she sealed the path so a stray troll couldn’t follow.

Samara called her blade and joined the killing dance on the dock. She twirled and sliced and leaped. Wherever she landed, men lost their lives. Soon, scorched flesh and ash and gore were all that remained.

She walked the perimeter of the dead. Nori spewed more flames along the warehouse, making sure that there would be no sign of the bodies, only ash. Hopefully the mortals would accept that this was some sort of tragic electrical fire and move on.

Now that the vengeance of old memories had disappeared from her skin, all she was left with was the summons throbbing hot and fresh on her arm. Nori felt it, too, and did his best not to whine. She petted his neck.

“Why are you complaining?” she asked with a sly grin. “I thought you wanted to kiss the sky?”

Understanding dawned in him, and Nori trumpeted his joy in a sputter of green flames.

Samara sheathed her sword, and hopped onto Nori’s back a moment before he shot into the sky. The rush of the cool night kissed along their skin; the past and future melting away so they could revel in the present.

Eventually, they would go back to the temple and report to the high priestess about their finished assignment. For now, everyone else could wait.

Photo (Creative Commons license) by: Aditya Rakhman