The Sacrifice of Aeva

Avea had been tending to her business all day. Her most important duty was to gather her healing materials, vials, ointments, herbs, bandages as well as scribe down her most important remedies for her apprentice Erik. He would visit later in the day and take everything away. He was still a novice and had a lot to learn, but he was a bright and capable lad. Aeva had great faith in him and was confident he would eventually succeed in taking her place, even with his formation coming to an abrupt, unanticipated end.

While her hands were keeping busy, her mind had been racing, unleashed by the irreversible decision she had made the previous day. She had gone to bed still stunned by her choice, and had expected to wake up crushed by a primal fear. But it had been the opposite. In the morning she had come out of bed feeling for lack of a better word, renewed. Like she was stepping out of an oppressing, thick fog.

For the first time in many years, she could feel the moist air damping the farthest depth of her lungs. The smell of old wood and rot in her hut overwhelmed her nose. Faint drafts of cold air felt like a blizzard and raised goosebumps on her skin. The contact of her heavy wet robe had chilled her to her bones. Even the dim light of the overcast morning had been blindingly bright to her eyes. Every small sensation was amplified tenfold.

In comparison, the last six years had felt like a numb dream, where all her senses had been muted. Now that she felt alive again, as hard as she tried, she could not remember feeling, tasting, enjoying anything at all ever since she had fallen on her knees, screaming her heart out, at the sight of her husband Sigur’s lifeless corpse. Something had died inside her on that day, and her life had become an endless repetition of habits, duties and mindless motions.

Only now at the dusk of her very existence, was she starting to wake up again. And it was not a smooth awakening, it was chaos unleashed inside of her. In part, she still felt like a shadow of her former, younger self. However, a side of her mind had lit up with blinding intensity. And in that light she could feel everything would be multiplied. Every minor joy would be a feast, every little noise a thunder, every little fear a terror, and every little pain an excruciating torture. And behind it all, feeding that fire, was a growing all consuming lust. An arousal so twisted and profound that it made the flesh between her legs swell and radiate with heat everytime an image of her impending, barbaric fate crossed her mind.

She jumped when a commotion outside pulled her from her lewd thoughts. Orders were shouted, screams under the torrential rain. Her door swung open and King Silas himself entered her hut. He spoke in a loud voice.

- “It is decided, I will not let you ruin yourself. It matters not what Persinus says. I will bend the will of the gods if it is the last thing I do!”

There was anger and resolve in his voice, he was determined. She was unmoved. She gave him a long look, carefully considering how to respond. It dawned onto her that the most powerful way would be to show him. Without a word, she opened her robe, pushed it off her pale shoulders. The top of the heavy garment fell down like a skirt on her legs, only held up by the belt around her waist. She crossed her band-covered arms onto her chest in an attempt to cover her ample breasts, and turned around to present him with her back.

King Silas’ jaw dropped. The smooth, sculptural and beautiful back he remembered stroking with his hands in his youth was no more. Instead, in front of his bewildered eyes, was a ravage of scars many times criss-crossed and overlaid. She looked like a pale battlefield, as if all the wars of the world had been fought on this ground. 

- “What is this abomination?” He shouted. “How can this be?” 

He paused for a moment, speechless.

- “Did Sigur…? Did Sigur do this…? The man you chose over ME! Cursed be the name of this monster…”

SLAP!

Her hand had temporarily left the embrace of her generous bosom to hit the King across the face, hard. He recoiled in shock. It had been years since anybody had dared raise a hand on him. His old reflexes were still alive, and his powerful hand instinctively closed on the handle of the ax at his side. Her eyes were locked into his, full of anger.

- “You do not get to curse my late Sigur! He loved me like you never could have!”

King Silas was fuming, he would have been within his right to take his weapon out and strike her. Assaulting the King constituted a capital offense, death by beheading. But his anger waned quickly, powerless against his deep affection for Aeva. Whatever she had become, whatever shock he was in, she had been, and would be forever his first love. A woman he had secretly longed for all of his life. 

The view of her mangled back was hard for him to bear. Already ridden with sorrow and guilt, was he now learning that he had already betrayed her and abandoned her to a horrific fate in their youth? How could this have been? He recalled Sigur and himself competing for her hand. Overdoing each other in feats of bravery, appealing to her heart. And Sigur had been an honorable man, always fair, always direct, incredibly brave and selfless.

And in the end, when she chose his rival, she held him, comforted him. Even though she had said Sigur held the true keys to her heart, she had been kind, patient and loving to him. Her choice and her words were not that of a broken, frightened creature. None of this made sense. 

- “Why didn’t you say anything? You could have come to me! A word would have been enough! I would have saved you and slaughtered that man!”

She stepped back, closer to him, as if to force him to accept the reality in front of him. 

- “This! This was our love, my King! Sigur never forced me!”

- “It… it cannot be…” 

The horror she must have endured sunk into him. In his mind, she did not know what she was saying. Only one thing was certain, he had to save her. The need was even higher than when he stepped in her home a moment earlier.

She turned her head over her shoulder.

- "My King, please listen to my words. This is who I am. This is what I have always longed for.”

The sincerity in her eyes and the determination in her words finally broke through.

- “It cannot be… I have seen from my eyes hardened outlaws broken by much lesser punishments than what you must have endured. How…”

He was so stunned even words had difficulty coming out of his mouth. But the iron will in her gaze didn’t waver. Everything in her voice, in her stance was only screaming of truth. His mind was desperate for an explanation, any semblance of reason he could have held onto.

- “Was it… Was it a way for you to understand the suffering of the ones you healed?” 

- “It was not…” she simply replied. 

He was at a loss, he could not understand. 

After a moment of silence, she sighed and let her arms fall to her side, exposing her abdomen, her chest and her pale heavy breasts. Silas, attempting to escape the truth of her words, turned his eyes away. But she did not let him.

- “Look at me, King Silas! See who I am instead of who you dream me to be!”

The skin of her chest was not as mangled as her back, but it was nevertheless almost entirely covered by scars. Instead of the beautiful pristine silk of a woman’s skin she was wrapped in a canvas that had been repeatedly damaged and stitched. From afar she would appear a sculptural beauty, her tall perfect shapes would inspire desire to any man lucky enough to witness her disrobed forms. 

But an up close examination would reveal a very different story. There were small indents all over her skin. Most were bumps that appeared to be from small incisions, long of an inch or less, by themselves or in groups. There were a few prominent, deep long running marks that gave the impression of severe cuts into her flesh. The area that appeared to have suffered the most were her breasts. Her nipples especially, looked more like fuzzy patches blurred by repetition of mistreatment, rather than the firm and perfect dark circles Silas remembered from her youth. Her left areola in particular, appeared like it had been slashed so much that barely any trace of a nipple remained. 

With a hand she lifted her right breast, and attracted his attention to a group of five prominent vertical scars on her softest, most sensitive skin. It looked like a prisoner had carved his days of captivity directly on her skin.

- “Look here and see, my King. This is how Sigur loved me! This is how I wanted to be loved!”

The images of the night she had acquired those scars flashed in front of her eyes. In her newly awakened mind, what had been a distant memory now felt vivid and intense. And with it the craving and the lust she had felt at the time. Staring Silas straight in his mystified eyes, and she continued.

- “We were in this room when I suffered these scars, I recall it like it happened yesterday. I was full of desire for Sigur. I presented myself fully unclothed, I fell on my knees and asked him if he would tie me onto the very table you see here. And he did. He laid me on my back, secured each of my wrists in leather straps, and bound them to the legs of the table. He was inside of me, loving me, when I asked him to stop. And I begged him… I begged him to unsheath his hunting knife, to lift my breast and to press the point of the blade into my skin…”

She was blushing and becoming visibly flustered as she told the tale, her emotions running very high.

- “And he did. His manhood was inside of me when he cut my skin. I saw the fire in his eyes, I felt him jerking inside my sex as he pushed the blade into my breast. I cried with pain and moaned with pleasure… and I implored him to do it again, and then again. Until I couldn’t contain my lust and exploded in one of the most powerful ecstasy I had ever known…“

Silas was in a state of shock both from the tale, and from the intensity of the bare-chested, unashamed storyteller right in front of him.

- “I had barely recovered when he made me lick the bloody blade, and then he…”

Aeva herself was having difficulty with the intensity of her emotions. Inside she was living again through the intense experience. She caught her breath, barely.

- “...and then he smeared salt and liquor into my wounds. I still remember the spark in his eyes as he did. I screamed, and he resumed taking me as I suffered… It didn't take long until both him and I were rocked by a joint ecstasy, the second one for me. There were two of us but we were one… and then we had the most passionate kiss.”

Her hands were gripped tight around her thighs. Her heavy chest was waving up and down under the power of her emotions. There was a long moment of silence. 

- “My King, I am recounting this so you could understand who I am, who we were. I felt alive with Sigur. With him I knew true love. He embraced my nature and I embraced his own. I do not require saving, my King. I did not do then, and I do not do now”

Aeva felt liberated, the brightness inside her was gaining ground. A life of hiding and secrecy was coming to an end. It was an incredible feeling to finally be known for who she truly was. A huge weight was lifted. With her fate being sealed, there were no more reasons to hide. She continued.

- “My King, I do not wish to sow trouble in your heart. You are good and you are kind. And I value your friendship and your love. Maybe we could wish that the Gods had given us a different fate… but in the end I am glad you know the truth of my life.”

This was too much for the King to stomach. He had entered her house only moments earlier, with the purpose to save her life. He had been ready to throw everything away for her, his throne, his kingdom, his legacy. And instead she had turned out to be…beyond anything he could understand? He spoke.

- “My attempt here is hopeless…” the King answered, resigned. “You are not the girl I knew, the girl I loved…”

- “That girl never existed but in your eyes, my King. I tried to tell you when we were young, but you were blinded by your own love… I did love you… But Sigur, he was the only one to  understand me, to accept me, and to love me for who I was.”

- “Then I will leave you to your fate. I cannot fathom what this is, what you are. They can carry you to the Otherworld, the realm of the dead… as it seems this is where you are determined to go.”

The King turned his back on the topless, scarred healer, and walked towards the door. She followed him promptly and placed her hand on his shoulder. He stopped.

- “You know our customs as well as I do my King…”

There was sadness in his eyes. He knew exactly what she meant, but he let her say the words.

- “The ancient texts are clear. In a ritual Sacrifice, the King plays a most cruel role in the demise of the offering.” 

She paused. 

- “When the time comes, will you do your part?”

Without turning to face her, the King replied with a renewed resolve, and a commanding voice.

- “Do not mistake my friendship for weakness, woman. I will do what I must for the Gods and for my clan.”

With these words he resumed his pace and walked out, pulling his shoulder from under her hand.

- “I know you will… You will live on to make a great King.”  She added in a soft voice, unsure if he heard her.