Chapter 7: 7- The Domi

There were actually four Domi of the village. All of them were ‘elders’ and I put quotes on that because the sylph air lady didn’t look to have an age, let alone look old. None of the women here appeared older than their thirties, although maybe a couple of them could’ve been forty. I certainly didn’t see any gray hair, but a lot of them didn’t have hair. Last but not least, if there were real elves here, it meant that they could be hundreds of years old. I didn’t have enough information to know, so I just put them on the human scale… all in their prime or slightly after.

The sylph just asked me to call her First Domi.

She gestured, and three other individuals came forward.

The first to emerge from the crowd of villagers was a tiny person (a halfling) dressed almost identically to Auralla, but with jet black skin. Her forest green hair was swept back into a ponytail, revealing a very inhumanly shaped head. The contrast of her size, her hair against her skin, and the imperious air all made her seem… something. More potent. More dangerous maybe.

I tried looking for a mark of magic power, but couldn’t find any… but I didn’t look too hard, in case she thought I was sizing her up like a snack.

The third Domi was one of the orc women, with green gray skin and a peculiar hairstyle: her thick black hair was shaved on the sides but long over the top and back. This was braided together into a thick plait she played with throughout our parley. The end was also tied together with a magic stone similar to the one Auralla wore around her neck.

The tiny black-skinned Domi also had one, worn as a necklace.

The last of them was one I hadn’t noticed before, a tall being with red brown dragon scales and a reptilian appearance. Her protection stone was actually sunk directly into the soft, beige belly scales near the center of her chest… I couldn’t see any other way it was attached.

The dragonite spoke before I’d had a chance to motion them to sit. “It is our habit to kill weak males and free up their harems from your tyranny.” She turned to the others. “We ought to kill him now.”

Panic flashed through my mind and I realized I’d left the shotgun back in the truck. I had the pistol, stuck in the back of my waistband, but definitely didn’t want to use it.

“But, you agreed.” I said, and earned another bit of experience for my Charming attribute. I hoped it was enough. I could use another star.

“What trickery did you use to manipulate Auralla?” the First Domi demanded.

I spread my hands wide. “Look, I have gifts. If we could slow down a little—“

“If we kill him,” the dragonite said, “we can take all his gifts and more. We would be entitled to it by right of conquest.”

I was starting to get angry. “If we try and kill him,” I shot back, “his striped jiddara might be able to take one of you with him, which means no gifts for the one who falls.”

One tier of Intimidation skill for me, and some corresponding experience in Sly.

They stared at me.

“Great, let’s start over. No deception, Auralla convinced me not to do the domination thing. I didn’t even know the magic thing would happen.

“I’m new here. I know literally nothing except how to kill brood swarms and jiddaras. And get scratched and poisoned… and I guess see magic. I can give you free gifts and fuck right off on my merry way if you could just listen for a minute and stop discussing my murder like it’s a course on a menu.”

“A threat was issued,” the dragonite said. “You heard it, clear as the sun shines through the ring.”

Oh for Pete’s sake. Diplomacy wouldn’t work and neither would intimidation? Did I literally have to fight one of them in order to stop them from ganging up on me?

The orc Domi stood. “Perhaps it would be best if we erased this male from our presence here in Sunspire. No male has set foot here in several years, and I would like to keep it such.”

“I concur,” the dragonite said.

I turned wide eyes on the little one with the green hair and the black skin. “And you? Are we all in the kill-first-and-ask-questions-never camp?”

The tiny Domi chuckled. “Oh! Haha, I was going to suggest killing you outright as well. However, the fourth Domi beat me to it.”

There was a bizarre sound, unlike every teleportation sound from any video game or TV show I’d ever seen, but suddenly Auralla was next to me. She’d just done so. So was Truffy, who sat up on his haunches again and looked way more human than he should’ve. Drifter’s Mark gave her the ability to teleport, eh? If I hadn’t been in a fight for my life I would’ve been envious.

Auralla snarled around at them, and placed a hand on my arm, a clear signal for me to get behind her. “You will have to kill me first.”

Instead I pushed forward, toward the orc woman, while I mentally hoped Jerry was in striking distance.

“You didn’t establish dominance, and yet here is your slave, ready to give her life for you,” the orc Domi said.

“No I didn’t, and I would really appreciate it if she would not interfere like she said she wouldn’t.”

Auralla turned to look at me, confused. “They’re going to kill you.”

“And you’ll lose your Drifter power. Now step back, or teleport away, or whatever.”

“But—“

I took her face in my hands. “You have to listen to me right now. Please.” Enjoy that Drifter power while it lasts, I thought. “Theoretically I know what I’m doing.”

She bit her lip pensively and cast another glance at the four Domi, then nodded and disappeared in a flash of black and purple smoke. It was even cooler when I could see her do it. Truffy vanished as well, and reappeared over near the rest of the villagers, who were watching.

I turned to the First Domi. “And you? Are all four of you bloodthirsty man-haters?”

The fog-colored woman smiled at me, but it was a hard smile. “We have many reasons to hate the males of our world. Those reasons run deep in our blood. But you are not of our world.”

The other three turned to regard her.

“This one is no threat to us… yet.”

Tiny Domi spread out her hands in supplication. “They’ve taken so many of us.”

“Not this Drifter,” the First Domi responded evenly. “He brought Auralla back to us.”

“It could be a ploy, to gain our trust. He could become a threat in time,” dragonite Domi urged. I could almost taste the bitterness in her voice. I wondered how many of her friends, or lovers, had been taken or killed by the men of this world. “We could find him at our doorstep in a month’s time with an army of slaves and hands glowing with power.”

I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in the dark with only a flashlight, and having the pieces just thrown into the room.

“I could become an ally?” I ventured, if for no other reason than to remind them that I was still right here in front of them and that the third person was rude.

The orc woman spat at my feet. “Don’t make me laugh, male.”

“I heard his request of sister Auralla, the same as you,” First Domi said. “You’ve seen Auralla’s mark. The power was shared. Her will and power remain.”

“I used the magic word,” I added, very helpfully.

The tiny woman chewed this over, then nodded. “We can treat with him, then.”

“Dia? Not you too,” the dragonite exclaimed.

“The First Domi is older and wiser than any of us,” tiny Domi Dia said. “And considering… this one is a Drifter. None of us have met a Drifter. We have only the stories of the ancestors.” She turned her attention to the fog-colored woman.

The orc grunted unhappily, then plopped down criss-cross applesauce and played with her braid. The dragonite followed suit after a few more glaring moments, hands on her knees, but kept drilling into my face with her dragon eyes from her seated position.

I flashed Auralla a pair of thumbs up with a wink. She surveyed the scene for several moments before nodding sagely and turning back to her friends.

I tried to think Jerry into laying down. It worked! He lay on his front paws and regarded the group with his wrong sided face. This was very gratifying news.

Grabbing the gifts while Jerry sat nearby, I returned a few minutes later. The Domi all regarded me with their preconceptions and their judgements and such. I returned with a hefty box in one hand, and a smaller box under my arm.

“Okay,” I said, and slid the folding table out of the long, thin box. Then I unfolded the table, set the legs up, and locked it into place.

“What manner of thing is that?” tiny Dia asked.

“This? Oh, it’s a folding table. In my world we have picnics and outdoor events, so these can be used outside easily, they clean off really well, and then you fold them up. Gotta be careful not to pinch anything though.” I was thinking of one horrific web video I’d seen of a guy getting his junk pinched, and hard, when setting up a folding table by himself. I had to keep myself from wincing.

“We will accept it,” the orc woman said.

“Oh!” I’d intended to lay out the gifts on the table, not for the table to be a gift, but that was fine. “Of course. I have an assortment of plushies as well.” I took a stuffed animal out of the smaller box, a green dinosaur.

The four Domi recoiled in horror.

“Oh, it’s not… it’s not alive.”

They kept glaring at me as if I was a monster.

“It’s all… it’s all artificial. A fake creature. It’s meant to be a child’s toy.” I squished it down and let it spring back to life. “I had thought the younger ones might like one… I guess, possibly difficult to keep clean though.”

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“We can use them for spear throwing practice,” the dragonite said, and the orc nodded. “Small, brightly colored target. It will be useful for the beginners.”

“Great.” Not what I’d had in mind, but I’d take what I could get.

“Your gifts are acceptable,” the First Domi said.

“So you will answer my questions then?”

She nodded.

“I haven’t encountered another male, really you’re the second people I’ve encountered at all outside of Auralla. She wouldn’t explain to me what would happen if I attempted to just take of her power, fine, no problem there… but I am going to encounter those males, and I need to know why you find it so repulsive. I’ve never…” I waved my hands around frantically at literally everything. “All of it. I need to know why it is I’m not going to be turning women into slaves.”

The First Domi leaned forward.

“The power is for sharing, Drifter. It has ever been, since the Goddess Rea birthed the world. Males and females danced the sharing of essences, and they grew powerful together. Our bodies were made for the sharing, and for the collection and use of the mana that flows throughout the world.

“But this was perverted ages ago. It was an ancient pact that sealed away a female’s power, between a monster of a man and the dark gods who would see chaos ascendent.”

Oh geez. It was time for the tutorial to end and for the video game’s main storyline to start.

The ladies believed there was a time before time, when the power wasn’t even shared via bumping uglies. Once upon a great age ago, people were more. One mighty person could slay an entire army if they had the right blood or the right powers. The story was sounding familiar. These people just gathered powers like they were trinkets, and maybe traded them like trading cards. But as all the mythical stories go, somebody got greedy and wanted them all.

They explained that it was one of the foul gods, Grullig, who cursed all the races of the world to keep their powers, and only share them with an individual they met and… got down and dirty with. People didn’t like this new arrangement, according to the first Domi.

I found that notion hard to swallow. If they suddenly had to spend a night of x-rated passion in order to gain new magic powers, I guessed maybe they’d get upset if they wanted to go monogamous.

Okay, I could see it.

Grullig was then dogpiled by all the non-asshole gods, chained up, and tortured for all eternity, while he wailed and gnashed his teeth.

Thousands of years passed, with wars and sex and power gathering, kingdoms rising and falling. It was your average fantasy epic, although I couldn’t say how much brother sister stuff went on. The first Domi was painting with a very broad brush.

So somewhere in the thousands of years ago a wizard got involved. You know, like wizards always end up doing.

Rovven was the name of the wizard, a guy who collected the powers of the ladies he ‘shared essence’ with, but the whole time, it was leading to him summoning dark powers. He’d tricked the ladies into believing he was collecting up this magical library to seal it away from where people could not learn of it.

Because alone, someone can learn power (the Drifter power I had), and it could be collected and harnessed naturally. But it could also be shared and cultivated between willing participants.

Anyway this guy just shut his lady friends into a tower, learned a bunch of magical spells, and did some rituals that put him in contact with that Grullig fellow. Grullig liked this wizard’s ideas, and just needed to be free so he could grant the wizard this power… so according to our first Domi, who I wasn’t sure had reliable intel, the wizard freed the god.

The god, as dark gods tend to do, started a reign of terror and destruction for a thousand years, while the wizard went off in search of ways to take down Grullig and get the power he wanted.

He eventually learned that he needed to search out the five McGuffins, they would come together and give him the means to alter the world completely.

First Domi was unclear on what exactly the five McGuffins were: relics, rings of power, scrolls, tomes, people (demigods sent to Ethetria to challenge this guy to a duel to the death for the right to gain the power like Highlanders), five things we happened to have in our pockets that day, magical glimmering triangles… no idea. So anyway, Hetrennian went and collected up the Penta-Force or what-have-you, made the wish with all the maybe dragon spheres, and boom now males were able to do the domination thing.

First Domi finished explaining and stared at me.

I tried to nod as politely as I could. “Thank you. I still do want to know what it is I’m avoiding. These males… the ones you’re afraid of, who take your people… what happens when they take of essence instead of sharing?”

A lot of dark looks got passed between the four of them.

“I want to know in case I have to fight these guys… are the slave girls going to try and kill me too? Do I have to kill all of them, if it comes to that? This is something I’m going to have to face eventually.”

“The question is not an unfair one,” First Domi said.

“It has been some time since we came across a dominator,” Dia said. Sitting down she was like a foot and a half tall, and it was both cute and unnerving. “We know that the power is stripped from the dominated. They are no more than children, unable to touch the mana of the world or control it.”

“Some of them become slaves of will,” First Domi said. “They take up weapons and defend the males who have crushed them magically. They fight and die in the defense of their cruel masters.”

I also knew people always handed out information with an agenda, so I had to take this version of reality with a grain of salt.

“As for the males, they gain a power with the shimmer of bronze,” the dragonite offered. Interesting… “Some gain powers with the shimmer of silver. Very powerful, once they begin to gain the silver shimmer.”

“I’ve heard they can take the gold shimmer,” the First Domi said.

“We have never seen it… and how would our village even survive sighting someone with so much power?” the orc asked. “We’ve barely survived attacks from the silver marked.”

“It is rare,” the First Domi admitted, “but I heard the rumor of the males harnessing and dominating enough females to gain the simmer of gold. They require a high mana capacity.”

Okay, so the tiering went Normal, Bronze, Silver, a theoretical Gold…

The game UI popped up.

 

Clarification!

Powers come in nine levels, or tiers, with Normal being the lowest, and each one progressing to a high degree above the last: Normal, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Legendary, Mythical and Ascendent.

The number of stars needed to advance in tier increases as tier increases.

 

Now we were getting somewhere. Usually when domination happened, it meant a single Bronze power for the male, and that stripped power away from his mate. I get stronger you get weaker, of course I can overpower you. Simple enough.

Maybe I’d just gotten lucky by being around Auralla, who was… ahem… totally okay with taking our relationship to the next level. Or if not eager, at least ready to indulge me in being a horn dog.

“And you say all males are engaged in this behavior? This dominance?”

The First Domi shook her head, while I took in the reactions of the three others. This fog woman had knowledge these others didn’t, from age, but their reactions would tell me more of the state of affairs of today’s world. It seemed like the First Domi was a bit removed from what we’d call The Real World.

The faces of Dia, the dragonite, and the orc all grew dark with this question. Meaning every male they’d ever encountered had been a real taker.

“I have heard tell that in the cities, even the men are forced to slave away for other men.”

“Like essence joining? Man to man?” I asked. The notion of gay dominance hadn’t even occurred to me, or these ladies sharing essence between one another. I wondered if it was possible, and they didn’t know it.

“No,” the First Domi rushed to explain. “The females of the city would be taken by a small number of the most dominant of males, leaving other males to be killed, or take up trade positions: making works of leather, or metal, or clay, or infusing them with enchantments.”

A class struggle. Interesting. The haves would put the have nots to work, and all the profits flowed up hill. This felt very Middle Ages Europe, with warlords forcing the peasantry to produce grain and livestock so they could run around in suits of armor to make war for an ultimate sovereign: usually a king, sometimes a queen. Or I guess if you went further back, it was loose coalitions of willing warlords, or even farther back, to just a warlord per city.

Sunspire hinted at a world that was way back in the cultural and technological timeline from earth, possibly back further than the Roman Empire.

Okay, at least if this was true I was operating in a paradigm I could more easily understand. And that meant I had at least some base knowledge. Of course, a lot was different… magic for one, monsters for another.

“I’d like to ask about beasts and monsters next,” I said.

“The cup of our goodwill has been drunk dry,” the dragonite said, standing. “You will take your leave of us and not return.”

“And if I hope to meet Auralla again?”

That was met with confusion. Why the hell would I want to meet her again? We’d already done the essence sharing. Power was gained. The end.

“I enjoy her company.”

“You may make arrangements to meet with Auralla again, but not within sight of Sunspire, and this is important: only if she wishes it.”

“Naturally.” Not naturally, I guess. What I thought of as natural needed to shift in this place.

“You will not return to Sunspire,” the First Domi said. “Or we will ensure that you regret taking advantage of our beneficence to the end of your days.”

 

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