Chapter 1
PRISON
In between Books 1 and 2 of NALA SAGA, Bakura is on his own adventure. Here’s how it begins…
There was no window.
Still…
Bakura could feel where the Sun was. Even down here, in the windowless dungeon of some minor lord’s castle, even here he…
Hhhh…
He felt the flame rising, resplendent, revengeful. Even without his dagger, even without the mask, part of the Sun stayed with him.
Years could do that.
Bakura the winged orc sat quietly in the corner of the room. His wings were wrapped around him, like some ragged leather blanket. Stone chilled his back, but at least his legs were covered.
The guard hummed, drunk and still drinking. Bakura hated the guard, and looked forward to that particular revenge. He would savor retribution when it came. At least, he hoped he would.
He doesn’t deserve my pity, thought Bakura.
Hhhh… hissed the Sun in him, approvingly.
Bakura hugged both his knees, and dragged his calloused fingers across both bony shins. He made the motion slowly, scraping his skin with his skin, feeling the texture of his fingernails.
They were split, every single fingernail. They were always cracking. Not enough nutrients, and too much fighting. Too much scratching. He thought of them less as part of him, and more as weapons. Tools you use to fight. Tools for survival.
Years could do that, too.
The orc was 15 now, and getting tall. His skin was the color of burnt sand, and there were red leopard spots all over the back of him, climbing up his neck, to the top of his bald head.
The spots speckled his wings, too.
His wings were frightening, like giant bat wings. At the wing’s knuckle, a claw jutted out of the flesh, like a tusk from orange gums. In the first year, way back when he was eleven, that claw had been more like a tooth, dull and useless. Back then, Bakura’s wings had only been good for flying.
But now, that tooth was a true tusk. A horn. A claw.
A tool for survival.
If Bakura’s wings had been spread out, he might’ve loked like a painting, or tapestry, of some pale Orcish demon.
But his wings were not spread out. They blanketed him.
“I want to sleep,” Bakura muttered, seemingly to no one.
Nnnn… hissed the voice in Bakura’s head. It sounded so distant without the dagger or the mask.
“Why not?” asked Bakura, testy.
“What’s that?” barked the guard.
The door was just bars, so when the drunk old human spoke, his spit flew so far that it nearly sprayed Bakura, all the way in the far corner of the jail cell.
The jailer got up, and hit the iron bars with his club.
“You keep it down in there!” he shouted. “Trying to sleep over here.”
Bakura glared. His face was mostly in darkness, but the guard saw Bakura’s eyes, slitted, flash out from the darkness.
“Oooh, you think you’re scary, do you?” said the guard. “We caught you easy, like the animal you are.” Then he spit into the cell.
Bakura didn’t even flinch as the spittle speckled his face. He just glared. Not blinking. Never blinking.
“What you looking at!” shouted the guard. Then he banged on the iron bars some more. The horrible sound echoed through the long hall of the dungeon. Bakura was pretty sure he was the only prisoner here, and that this guard was the only jailer.
He wasn’t surprised. The humans wanted to wipe out all orcs, so there was little reason to take prisoners. It made Bakura curious why he was spared.
“Probably a bounty,” Bakura thought aloud.
“I said, QUIET!” the guard shrieked. He sounded like a toddler, and tantrumed like one, too.
Bakura didn’t even glare at him this time.
Soon, thought Bakura.
Hhhh… the voice nodded.
The man was still shrieking when a door down the hall opened. There was a struggle, and the sound of metal scraping on metal.
“No, please!” shrieked some human, some man in a manic panic. “No! No, don’t do this, I won’t do it again! I promise, I won’t do it again, it’s just—!”
“Silence, Thadrig!” another man shouted. “Just be quiet and wait it out, man!”
“His own fault!” a third shouted back.
“No!”
“You should’ve kept your scaly little fingers in, Thad!”
“Stop struggling!”
Bakura’s guard stood, stumbled, and right himself with a, “Whoa.”
The men came into view. Bakura could see that two soldiers had a nearly naked man by both arms. They were dragging him down the hall, and he was not making it easy for them.
The soldiers made a funny pair: one of them was tall and rather fat, while the other was short, thin, and weak looking.
All three of them— captive and both captors— froze when they saw Bakura’s eyes. His eyes were pale as ash, with a slit down the middle. Like a cat’s eyes, they glowed when they caught a certain plane of light.
His eyes were unblinking moments of broken darkness, and they inspired an animal fear in all humans. For this was indeed a thing that preyed on humans, the way a pallid bat preys on a cricket.
“I’ll do anything!” screamed the prisoner. “I won’t steal again, I promise! Just don’t do this! Don’t put me in there; I promise! I promise!”
“Yeah, you promise, we know.”
“Just don’t put me in there with that thing!”
“Thadrig, stop it!”
“That monster! It’ll eat me! It’ll—! It’ll drink up all my blood, and—! And—! And I didn’t think you meant it; I just didn’t think that you—!”
The jailer started swinging his club at the prisoner, and hit him in the head, and then the mouth.
“That’ll shut you up!” yelled the jailer.
“Open the cell,” huffed the weak soldier. “Please.”
Bakura smiled. He let them see his smile, but stayed seated, wings draped and hugging him.
Soon, thought Bakura.
The guard pointed his club at Bakura, through the bars. Stupid, thought Bakura, but that was a good thing. Good for him.
“You got company!” yelled the guard. “Now you keep put, or I’ll slop you one. Slop you one ’til you’re dead, you freak, and I mean it! So don’t try nothing too funny, freak. Yes? Answer me!”
He struck the bars, tantruming. Letting his frustrations out, trying to get Bakura to be scared of him. Trying not to be scared of Bakura.
Bakura just watched.
Finally, the guard opened the door. It scraped. All the doors here did, with all the humidity and rust from disuse.
For a castle? Pathetic. Bakura was right to have let himself get captured.
Hurriedly, the soldiers threw their prisoner into the cell, and shut the barred door.
“Quick!” said the weak one. “Quick, l-l-lock it!”
“Shut up!” growled the jailer, drunkenly fumbling for the key.
The prisoner clung to the bars, pleading and shrieking and crying.
“Please! Please! Please, no! Please!”
“Oh, shut up,” said Bakura.
The man flinched, even though the winged orc hadn’t spoken very loudly. He turned so suddenly, he made himself dizzy.
Bakura finally got a good look at him. The man was old, in his fifties or sixties. He was small, with nervous eyes, nervous hands, and specs of food in his long, grey-blond beard. His skin was grimey, and grey, and all he was wearing was a loincloth and an old tunic. He had no shoes on.
“Y-y-y-y-y-you—” the man sputtered. “Uh… Uh… I…” Then he gulped.
Bakura couldn’t help but enjoy it a little.
“F-f-face of a lizard…” muttered the pale prisoner. “Wings of the devil! You’re ju-ju-just like they… said! I— No, please, no, not like this! Not like this!”
“Shut. Up. I said.”
“Not like this!”
Bakura stood. The man went silent.
Bakura’s wings dropped a little, one folded over the other in front of his body. His eyes still seemed to glow, no matter how dark the shadows around him became.
“And what do they say about me?” asked Bakura. His voice was low, menacing even as he smiled.
The man gulped again. “That you’re… That you drink people’s blood. That you’re a man killer. That you… never blink.”
Bakura liked the sound of that.
“Good,” he said in Orcish.
“What?” said the prisoner.
“I wanted it quiet in there!” yelled the guard. But he was back to drinking, and talking up the soldiers, trying to keep them there so he didn’t have to be alone.
“Sit,” commanded Bakura.
The prisoner obeyed the monster, and sat.
“Closer,” said Bakura.
The man shook his head. “You’re gonna—”
“Sit. Closer.”
The man felt a sudden headache, as if Bakura had put it there. The man obeyed, even though he saw where this was going.
“I have an offer for you,” growled Bakura. He was standing over the man caped in his own wings.
“…An offer?”
Bakura smiled. “A decision. Either live free and die, or agree to be my slave.”
The man began to cry. “Why? What kind of a choice is that?”
“Agree to cast off your name, and I will spare you. Or die free. Your choice.”
The man blubbered.
Bakura waited. Watched.
The man nodded.
“Good,” said Bakura.
The winged orc turned to the door, back to the prisoner, and spread out his leathery wings. He walked toward the iron bars of the cell.
The guard was laughing as he told some story, and the weak coward was the first to see Bakura coming. His eyes went wide, but he was so afraid that he froze.
“What? What is it?” said the guard. He turned to look, and—
Bakura’s hand came out like a viper, gripping the man’s neck. His grip was tight, and his thumbs pushed up under the guard’s jaw. There was blood.
The guard squirmed and groped, but when his hands started to reach for Bakura’s neck in return, Bakura used the spikes on his wings to stab the man’s arms.
His wings just kept stabbing, over and over and over and over and over and over again. Right left right left right left right.
That stopped the man from reaching. All Bakura had to do was keep gripping and wait.
The man was still moving, so Bakura pulled, slamming the man’s head into the bars as hard as he could, BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The guard was bloody and trembling. Spittle and blood speckled his lips and the bars and Bakura’s face. He was barely awake, dizzily staring at Bakura. His feeble hands tried to push away from the bars. It was a doomed gesture.
Both the scrawny soldier and the fat one turned and ran, yelling for help, and trying to get away from Bakura.
Cowards, thought Bakura.
“Bleed,” said Bakura.
The fat soldier tripped, yelped, and fell.
“My foot! My foot, I—! Agh!”
“What is it?”
BAM!
“My ankle!”
BAM!
“Something’s happened to my ankle!”
Bakura let go. The guard slid down, slow, to the floor, sliming the bars all the way down.
“Alive or dead?” the prisoner asked.
“Who cares,” said Bakura. Then he spat on him.
Ape.
The fat soldier’s pantleg was flush red with blood.