Calliope's Wings Read online

  Calliope’s Wings

  Guin Archer

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 Guin Archer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author except in the brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by the copyright laws. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the Author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Contents

  Summary

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Summary

  I think I’m God.

  Okay, okay…maybe not the God, but a god. Lowercase ‘g’.

  Once upon a time, I used to be a tattoo artist. A damn good one, too, if I do say so myself. Then, one night, a drug deal gone wrong in the alleyway behind my shop and a couple bullets later…poof. I ended up here. Reawakened from death into a new world, with new people – very orc-ish people – and the shittiest hand ever drawn in existence.

  You see, I can’t die. Well, I can die, but I come back. Every time some flat-nosed, tusk-faced, ugly brute does me in – take your pick how…burning, hanging, drowning, rape – I open my eyes back up somewhere else on this forsaken world. I wake up with a body changing into something that’s distrusted and feared by everyone. Each resurrection, I know only pain and misery. I’ve run into death on my own, hoping to end the cruel cycle, but it never works.

  Whoever’s cheerios I shit on in a previous life? Yeah, sorry about that.

  When I wake up in the Southlands, I think I’m facing more of the same. And I do…for a while. Up until my frustration leads me to pick the wrong mark to do the deed and end my current life. He doesn’t kill me. Instead, he calls in the cavalry. The Horde heeds the Horn, descending on me like a swarm of locusts.

  I don’t get the end I’m seeking. Instead, I’m ushered into a new life with new rules to play by. Rules that say I’m the one with all the power. Rules that say I’m the one in charge. Rules that say no one will ever hurt me again, if only I can let go of my home – my Earth – and accept the life I was always destined to have. I need to accept what fate has in store for me and all its little intricacies.

  And him…them. I need to accept them.

  I am Calliope Warren and this is my story.

  A note of caution; beware of content mentioning rape, graphic violence against the heroine (as well as other characters far more deserving of foul play), and dubious consent. The story ends with a happily-ever-after, but it’s one hell of a bumpy ride to get there. Brace for impact.

  Dedication

  To all them kooky witches I work with? Get yo minds out the gutter, ladies, and get back to work. We know what yer doin’.

  Wait like the rest of us heathens for until you get home.

  Chapter One

  Is decapitation really such a bad way to go?

  The morbid thought had been floating around in my head for the last half an hour as I watched the Lubrei male stalk through the vendor stalls. His left hand loosely palmed the hilt of his battleax at his hip, his big fingers rapping the binding methodically.

  I supposed that I could suffer more if the lethal edge of that ax didn’t strike cleanly. If it imbedded into my ribcage instead, I’d have to struggle through my lungs pooling with blood and hacking it up through my burning throat again. That’d been one of the worst deaths I suffered. Right up there with burning at a stake, the fires licking welts and charring all skin from my body, and the other of drowning in an otherwise calm lake.

  Then again, being raped by the Mercenaries of Gahl until I was nothing but a lump of dying flesh and blood on the frozen earth of Brudahli would far supersede everything else.

  Seeing the male’s head turn minutely in my direction, I slipped back behind the hanging tapestry of the merchant’s stall I was nearest. A foreign, free female perusing the wares of a soaps table tossed a glower my way, obviously sensing my intention of causing a scene. She wouldn’t say anything, though. None of them ever did.

  In this land, it was best to keep your nose out of the business of the Lubrei. Even if it was to call attention to the pickpocket lingering in the shadows.

  I wasn’t an idiot. Not by far. I knew what I was doing. I’d picked this particular mark because I knew what my end would be. Literally.

  I dropped my head to allow the cowl of my hood to conceal my face more. It was beyond abnormal for anyone in this region to be so entirely covered by clothing, but I couldn’t manage without it. Not after each resurrection I’d been forced through. Not with how my body kept changing into something I wanted nothing to do with.

  Every time I woke up, I was farther displaced from who I used to be in my first life. Most days, as I looked down at my hands, I lamented over the fact that I would likely never be returning home.

  The Lubrei barked and grunted at the vendor manning the stall he stood before, gesturing towards a bolt of gauzy, violet fabric. The vendor bobbed his head furtively, anxious to do business with the male of the warrior caste. The ruling caste. In this arid, desert region, the Lubrei were the supreme overlords of all that they surveyed. None contested their will and power unless they wished to be decimated.

  It was the same in other regions, from the far North to the Dark Sea and beyond. I’d seen most of it, if even for a very short time. Pragmatic rulers to vile ones. Most of the kingdoms were ruled by a king and an army of loyal soldiers. In the case of the higher reaches of Haedon and the valleys of Paelra, warrior tribes under the command of a single figure maintained peace and order throughout their lands. This place, Blackburhn, was the same. One of many cities owing fealty to the nomadic warriors.

  This was the first I’d been here, though not the first I’d heard of Luintak. It was hard not to hear about the vast land of wastes – there were too many fucking versions of that – which, somehow, supported the largest and most fearsome force of beings on this forsaken planet. The land was rich with ores and minerals which were traded for great sums and bounty to the other regions. The black sands yielded ruby glass that was incredibly durable and outlandishly beautiful. Every nobleman and woman the world over demanded the finery as a way of showcasing their wealth to others.

  Jus
t as diamonds had been on Earth, the red glass of Blackburhn was the height of power and prestige for those who owned it.

  I missed Earth. Missed my quiet life in the suburbs. I missed Rachel, Spike, and Bomber from my tattoo shop on the fringes of Denver. I missed late-night dinners of pizza, garlic knots, and beer as we hooted and hollered over whatever game happened to be playing on the Sports Channel. I missed going to see my Mac on one of our marked, special days and telling him about everything that had happened since our last ‘chat’.

  I really missed indoor plumbing. My ass itched in forlorn remembrance of toilet paper and a porcelain throne that flushed.

  Scratching an errant finger along the rough cloth of my gunmetal cloak, I grumbled not for the first time over the shitty lot I’d been dealt on my first death at the hands of drug dealers outside of my very own parlor. A wild shot, too. One that had skimmed the dumpster in the alley where the employees of my business and the neighboring Thai restaurant went to puff a smoke and sunk into my stomach. When I’d cried out from it, the quarreling druggies had come running and the coked-out brunette, in a fit of mania, popped one right between my eyes.

  When I blinked again, I was in the first of my resurrections. Buried in the waist-deep snow outside of a tavern in Meryl. Whatever assimilating I’d done had been done strictly by the seat of my pants. Culture shock became my middle name as I fought for a way to communicate in a language I’d never heard before and amongst people that were not human. Not in the way that I knew them, at any rate.

  Most of them were a fair bit larger than those of my first – and true – home. My first couple of lives I thought it might be because of the harshness of their environments, but the luxury the rich wallowed in disabused me of that notion right quick. The males tended towards being built more sturdily and on titanic frames. I’d never, not once, stumbled across a male shorter than seven and a half feet tall. The females were statuesque themselves, standing no less than seven foot. Mostly, I passed off as a middling female on the cusp of womanhood due to my smaller stature…at least until my period struck.

  After that? It was open season on the vag-bleeding shortstack with jiggling titties.

  These people were feral. It was as close as a summation as I could come to them. They were honed with knots upon knots of muscle and had keen, black-as-pitch eyes. Not a one of them showcased the rounded black pupils and colored irises surrounded by white sclera I had always known. No, these people had no color variants whatsoever. They were as dark and forbidden as a well of ink consuming parchment. Those eyes stood out even amidst their darker complexions ranging from copper to dark chocolate.

  They also had predominant canines, long, angular ears that swooped back at the tips near their crowns, and no eyebrows to speak of. The women tended towards slender browbones while the men boasted heavy cowls over unfathomable eyes. Their hands were topped by five fingers and a thumb, the digits long and clawed. The women were all bald but for a singular braid at their right temples while the men had dreadlocked mohawks that touched their waists. The color varied from shaded indigo to black and more than one man had had dyed dreads accompanying the natural hues of the other, natural shades. The quality of the dreads were inhuman. They were more like fine rubber or silicone threads woven into tight, thick braids.

  The men had large tusks on their archaic underbite. The women, more fortunate, had barely-there nubs.

  I shuddered in revulsion, remembering the first time a set of them had burrowed into my flesh as a wandering, thieving male had plundered my body mercilessly. I didn’t die that night, but the snow he’d thrown me out into the following morning when he saw me lying limp in my puddle of blood had done the trick.

  Hypothermia wasn’t a bad way to go. Things were cold and uncomfortable for a while, but then my mind just turned off and it felt like I went to sleep. When I woke back up, I was re-arisen and in a slightly warmer climate.

  Each life I came back for, I seemed to draw closer and closer to Blackburhn. I’d ruefully wondered if, maybe, I was supposed to drop dead and then pop back up from pole-to-pole like a fucked-up version of whack-a-mole. I had no idea why I was slotted to be the ever-reemerging apparition of this non-Earth, but I suspected I’d really pissed a cosmic deity off in my first life and this was my punishment.

  A bit overkill, really.

  Who deserved to keep coming back from the dead, only to be tortured in some way, shape, or form for an undisclosed length of time before being struck down once more?

  I’d tried killing myself a couple times. Cutting. Poisons. Jumping off a cliff. I felt like that guy from that dark comedy who kept repeating the same day over and over again. I just wanted it all to stop and hoped that me terminating myself might end the cycle.

  It hadn’t. I just ended up waking again for another leg of my unwanted tour across Intau. Intau, my new Earth.

  The Lubrei male, easily eight-feet tall, growled an expletive as he surveyed his surroundings. He knew I was here, following him. He knew he was being watched. He just hadn’t pinned me down quite yet. His inability to track me is what prompted his fondling of his ax. I was banking on him being twitchy enough by the time I sprung on him to deliver an instantaneously fatal blow.

  I’d had enough of this go-around.

  Mathai, the grubby bastard who I’d had the misfortune of waking to some months ago, had seen me unveiled. Uncovered and vulnerable in this hated new body of mine. He’d smiled his rancid, yellow-fanged smile down at me and instantly scraped me up to shackle for his uses. His greed was boundless for riches. He saw my slight frame and small, deft hands and knew he had a surefire meal ticket.

  So, life number I-got-sick-of-counting-after-ten, I became Shura. It was the Lubrei’s word for Spirit or Ghost. My small size, made smaller by my lack of nutrition, lent to my nimbleness. I could sneak most anywhere undetected. Despite my heavy garments, I tended to disappear into my environs. I learned early with Mathai to pick and pick well or else I would be besieged by his whip. Or his blade.

  Flexing my right hand, I lamented the loss of my pinky to middle fingers. The littering of scars all across my body from my prior abuses, ones taken before reoccurring death, told me that I would never see them again.

  Mirthless chuckles bubbled in my gullet. Of all the cosmic injustices, I thought it particularly cruel that any life-threatening injuries were repaired, but the cosmetic leftovers were retained as parting mementos.

  Fucked up, Karma. Real fucked up.

  As the male sauntered off towards another stall, his tall ear cocked as though listening for me, I peered away for a moment. I caught my own reflection in the shining metal coating of a serving platter. My image was distorted and though I was buried under the hooded cloak, I could still see the glimmering pools of my eyes.

  Calliope Warren, I lamented, had probably died when my first body did. When she died, pieces of her began to flutter away with her memory as I came back to life far too many times to count. Once upon a time, I’d had golden tan skin and blackish hair. Slowly and painfully – to my heart – I’d seen my skin become startlingly white. So white that my veins stood out in stark relief under the skin. My hair had faded into silvery starlight; not white-blonde or white, but a glittering silver as unnatural as my skin. Certainly not fitting for a thirty-five year old woman. My ears had elongated some, though they were nowhere near the size of Intau’s ruling people, and the whites of my eyes disappeared. Where everyone else’s was black, however, mine shown like a computer-rendered image of a galaxy far away. Purples, blues, and pinks amidst a black backdrop with silver stars winking everywhere.

  Whatever I’d been turning into, it was neither human nor Tauren. I was something other and anything different, no matter where I woke up, seemed to instill either fear or awe in people. Mostly fear. My deaths came quicker with each rising, someone inevitably out to do me harm for a body I had no control over.

  I don’t know why Mathai didn’t kill me outright. The two before him had. Instead,
he’d placed me into a barred cell, gagged me, and began to liberally dye my skin with a temporary pigment of dingy gold. I’d used it before on myself and had intended to do just that without his ‘help’, but he was determined to see his stock well settled to be able to serve its duties to him.

  I used to try to run. To flee. Then I was rounded up by his flunkies and dragged back in for punishment. I eventually gave up in my escape attempts.

  …but back to the present.

  I’d already picked from more than a few Gishtak, the freemen of the Lubrei outside of the warrior caste, when I caught sight of him. The Zikta. The warrior male. From his purchases thus far, I could tell he was outfitting his chosen mate. Spoiling her, rather. I’d seen a lot of harsh realities in this world and unspeakable horrors, suffered them, but the pure mating between two Tauren was a wonder.

  A miracle.

  When a male took a female as his Pasha, there were celebrations across the continent, it seemed. The higher the rank of the male, too, the more the Tauren reveled. The regions were all the same even if their customs changed. I’d seen more than one formal binding ceremony and had nearly wept at each. Quite literally, I could feel their love from wherever I hid myself as many onlookers cheered exuberantly. That sense of feeling only amplified the longer I remained on Intau.

  The males were besotted with their females. The fabric of their beings seemed woven into her very existence and I’d wager that one wouldn’t survive long without the other.

  Shaking my head to bring myself back to the present, I peered around. I’d given the male enough of a head start that he wouldn’t feel my lingering presence so much. I would follow him at a greater distance until he reached his Mahzri.

  Padding out onto the street, I ducked away from passersby and rambunctious children. The Port City of Blackburhn was bustling, as it always was, with innumerable people. Beasts of burden quite unlike those of Earth – such as the Lorun, a lumbering mole-aardvark-lizard hybrid – were intermixed with the Tauren. More familiar-looking birds, cats, and dogs also milled about. One couldn’t step anywhere without crashing into another body of some sort.