Shaman Bab

The Orcs guided us to a hut near the outskirts of the village, close to the wall, but within its protective embrace. It appeared to be an unused resting house for the guards. Raúl told me this was where he had stayed the last time he trained here and that they would require us to attend a banquet of welcome before training would continue the following morning. Regarding my healing, he said a Shaman would come around sometime soon to attend to me. In the meantime, I should clean up and refresh myself with a bucket using the aqueduct channel out in the yard behind the hut.

I did as he suggested and bathed my wounds as best I could. There were over thirty cuts extending all across my body. One of the worse ones was a stab into my thigh. I suspected it had nicked my femoral artery, but lucky for me it had not torn nor ruptured further. It was still seeping blood though, and hurt like the dickens. It was while I was standing naked in the gloom of late evening, rinsing off the dirt and grime with the small bucket filling with bloody water as I rinsed using the small aqueduct tapping off the main stream.

Dried blood and sweat from my battle combined with the flickering firelight from a torch on the patio were casting ghostly shadows around me. I was lost in a moment of nothingness. What I mean by nothingness is the kind of trance that men go into when in a shower or doing something methodical that doesn’t require active engagement of the mind. It’s the kind of trance that women seldom understand. They always believe we should be thinking something or planning, scheming, but never ever could we be doing anything that could be called “nothing”. I was an expert in this form of trance. It often accompanied a day of fishing or came about while staring out over a beautiful landscape.

Lost in this nothingness and soaking in the quiet noises around the village, I didn’t notice the additional shadow that appeared next to me until it was almost upon me. When I did notice it, I whirled around startled and before me stood a tall and sleek silhouette. The torchlight behind obscuring what could only be the Shaman. The figure was slimmer than I expected and seemed to have somewhat pronounced hips, a strange sort of curvaceousness in the typical pear shape. Come to think of it were those breasts? I squeaked indignantly as I covered up my nether region realizing too late that this was a woman and an exquisite full-bodied one at that, standing not a few paces from me and she was half naked too, with only a platted skirt and bedecked in a plethora of beads, tattoos and piercings. Some piercings looked painful to say the least, but immediately struck a chord of possibility deep in my adolescent psyche, especially glinting and dangling as they did.

“Umm, …Hi.” I said awkwardly, my posture one of mixed consternation. The phase where you have too many conflicting ideas and just melt down when none of them spring to the fore. She was still a rough silhouette, but the few glimpses I got of her were decidedly lovely. It appeared as if she was certainly topless with a chest as proud and packed as a peacock. Ok, probably not the best choice of words, but her long raven hair fanned out around her face, making it hard for me to see in the shadow she cast.

Her arms suddenly folded protectively across her chest and I realized I had been staring.

“Pardon me.” I mumbled as I focused and conjured my robe to cover myself to hide my flush of embarrassment and give myself some semblance of dignity.

“When they told me a human needed mending, they did not tell me I would find him prancing around naked and fouling our drinking water!” came her dry sultry voice that almost seemed to whisper in intensity.

I turned around seeing that the bucket I had been using had spilled over back into the aqueduct’s main channel. Catching it up, I tried to make amends, but the damage had been done and the dirty water was already in the system. I could hear snickering coming from Raúl, who had disappeared back into the hut.

“It’s not that funny!” I snarled at him, only to hear his snickering increase to laughter. The Shaman tis tsked at me and then spat a glob of phlegm onto the ground beside her in disgust at my antics. It must have been a cultural thing, but for me, that shattered the dreamy sexy appearance immediately.

“Thank you for coming to my aid so quickly, my name is Petros” This time I bowed slightly trying to follow the Orcs traditional form of meeting. She harrumphed and beckoned for me to come towards the patio in front of the wooden hut. In the light I saw her clearly for the first time, and the web of tattoos upon her body made her look fully clothed. The additional studs, piercings and beads dangling around her neck and from other places, left one realizing why she didn’t wear a top. That must chafe something awful.

I again realized I was staring and tried to make direct eye contact instead. Her face was fair, not as dark as her fellow Orcs and she had pretty, almost delicate features. It made me reflect on what Prince Horatio had told me in that all five races were related by a common ancestor. The Orc men I had seen were not nearly this pretty however and their hippo frog faces didn’t seem to afflict their finer sex. Unless she was an anomaly. (Try saying that fast five times in a row).

“What should I do?” I enquired politely, wanting the healing to be done quickly. It was annoying having a flashing icon in my vision showing my depleting health and stamina, and the sting of the cuts had not yet abated, sometimes intensifying when I moved.

“Just stand still” she said and then with a frown and a guttural utterance she suddenly started to emanate a dark red fire which seemed to glow and distribute across her many tattoos, the dark lines became brighter and brighter outlining each picture on her torso, the patterns seeming to swirl with the contours of her body, then along down her arms and up her neck to engulf her face. The piercings which were everywhere seemed to glow brighter too, and I noticed a bright white gem shine as the stream of red light seemed to flow towards it and then within it and then as it reached an almost unbearable intensity, the light reversed out along those same lines except this time the white gem seemed to bleed off the white light into the tattoo patterns, having absorbed the red light entirely.

The white gem was in her earlobe and as the stream contoured out, she grabbed my hand and I felt the stab of magical influence upon my body. The white light streamed from her along her tattoos and then into me. It seeped into my core and suffused my being. Streaming into me. It was warm and cool, dry and wet and all together intoxicating. It filled my being with an energy and sense of fulfillment that I had seldom felt before. It reverberated through my soul and I reveled in it. I felt like I had had my Christmas dinner, and Thanksgiving turkey all in one meal. I was satiated and intoxicated. I was… ALIVE!

As suddenly as it had started, the complete absence of it left me reeling. In its aftermath, I noticed my health bar had hit 100% and my stamina bar was replenished too. It wasn’t the same kind of healing spell that I could do but wow, it had some kick to it.

“That there is some awesome Juju,” I said, and the Shaman smiled weakly and then sat upon the patio edge. It had been an effort and not easily done.

“Thank you kindly,” I stated. “May I know your name?”

“You may know what I tell you youngling, do not try to flatter me with kind words. I do my duty, no more, no less.”

“Very well, ..um Shaman…ess?” I replied with an enquiring lilt.

“You may call me Bab. Shaman Bab. Now if you are all healed, I have other duties to attend. A word of warning, however, if you choose to drink tonight at the banquet, do not expect sympathy or healing. You will have to endure THAT on your own. On the morrow you will meet with one of my acolytes to begin your training in the Dark elements of magic and it would be wise to have a clear head.”

With that she accessed another glob of offending phlegm from somewhere deep in her sinuous neck and cast it into the dark shadows where it hit something solidly, and I swear I could feel the shudder of its impact reverberate through my feet. I wisely kept silent, wondering how such a young, fair looking vixen could be both the Shaman of this village as well as the world’s best spitting champion.

Deciding at last that the jobs probably came hand-in-hand or is that tongue-in-cheek and that it would be best to get on with things, I excused myself from her presence, although she barely deigned to nod in dismissal as I went into the hut to grill Raúl on what else I didn’t know about this place and these Orcs.