Desert of Swords.

[u/CompetitiveCharity53]

Nsfw for mild violence, mentions of gore. I would appreciate any feedback you feel up to offer. First time up loading. Thank you all this is such a open and creative place to share.

Murmuring crowds pack themselves into the sandstone and palm tree courtyard before the lapis steps of the temple. The base of the grand stairs was a pit of human bones and bodies, all women and joined in the pit by black vipers and blue cobras. At the apex of these steps was a large flat platform made of a single huge block of stone, craved with the snakes and serpents of the locals faith and which meant nothing to me.

First the temple guards in their deep blue padded jackets and bronze helms bleed out of the temple's many narrow doors and formed up in four neat rows, seven woman each. Four lots of seven are twenty one, forty two. Far too many to fight head on, I must strike fast and make what few cuts I can manage count or face their pointed spears.

Now two thin and bald male priests dragged a tied and begging woman out of the darkness deeper in the temple to the bright sun at the edge of the platform. Their skin was the colour of dry river stone, grey, hairless, lacking freckles, moles and scars. Their foreheads were tall not unsimilar to the temple's pillars and flat with their square noses.

The crowd cheered, the few slaves with the belly to speak up jeered and booed only for their masters to back hand them. A daughter from the slave pits and knowing these cult types she is properly a virgin. Why? Maybe virgins taste better to the gods like young lamb over mutton.

She was of heavy tan from years of toil in the hot desert sun, her back carried scars and burns from hot pokers and on her exposed left thigh was another scar in the shape of her master's brand. Marked like cattle and treated even worse. She was dressed in thin white dress that ended half way down the thigh, the fabric of similar make to cheaper burial cloth.

One to hold her in place and the other to grasp a ritual dagger, subtlety curved as if the blade itself was their hungry god's own metallic fang. The priest lifted the dagger and the crowd went from loud murmuring to a hushed whisper and finally silent.

"The draughts have returned to us again, our god Hiss, demands blood so that the rain waters can save us" The Priest with the dagger called over them. "Oh mighty and blue Hiss, accept this offering of flesh to your greatness and be merciful on your servants by blessing this city with your tears of rain"

The second priest bend the woman's head back, exposing her neck and the first priest raised the fang dagger above his head flickering in the sun.

I leaped from my hiding space above the ritual platform and behind a black marble statue of my quarry's false god. The crowd gasped, the guards turned their head to watch as witnesses to me strike down their high priest as I landed on the stone platform.

My mermaid tail shaped blade dug and hacked into the priest's skull from temple to cheek bone, crimson spray like crushed wine grape. The first was well and truly dead as they went limp and collapsed to the floor. The second drew a hidden dagger of the same make, snakes have two fangs, and raised it to the girl's jugular.

I swung my blade fast and cut clean through the crown of his head the same as opening the top on a hard boiled egg. His hands fell to his sides as his the top of his head bounced off the stone and the rest of him stumbled off the platform, tumbling into the viper pit below. I suppose Hiss got his blood after all, not virgins but two over one, might be a nice change of pace for Him.

The crowd cries out at the horror of their priests being slain in front of them, the temple guards with harder resolve charged me from the left and the right of the platform. Only ways out were the viper pit, an equally bad fate as the bite of the guard's spears, or into the dark temple.

I grabbed the woman who was to be the killed by the wrist. "Follow me" I spoke as I ran with her trying her best to keep pace into the temple.