***
James was unaware of Chloe’s conversation with Achan. All he could see was the Langoran slowly making his way toward his victims, enjoying their fear, seeing that physically, they were weak. James grew desperate. Unable to catch up, he threw the sheath of his sword at the Langoran’s head. The Langoran laughed when it hit him and turned toward James.
“What do you want? I’m doing you a favor.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going to kill you, James. I’m not evil, but your teammates have to go. They don’t care for my life. They were going to kill me from the beginning. Either that, or take me to Allay to be executed. I wasn’t going to accept that.”
“What difference does it make if you leave just me alive, or the three of us? We’re a bunch of recruits. We mean nothing.”
“You can barely move from that hit I gave you. Even if you make it back to Allay, it will take forever for you to do so. I’ll be long gone before then. These others won’t rest until I’m dead.”
“Then hit them also, but spare their lives!”
“No, the less witnesses the better. Be grateful I spared you.”
“How can I live with that? How can I live with the fact I get to live while everyone else dies?!”
“That’s for you to deal with.”
“No…”
James reached for his cellmate but fell to his face instead. It was his own fault. His own fault for trusting him. If he had let Achan take him out in the beginning, they would all be alive.
As he went to push himself up again, he heard a gurgle erupt from the Langoran’s throat. James snapped his head up in shock to see his cellmate bending back, as if someone had stabbed him in the spine. And that’s when he saw it.
An invisible pen was making a diagonal line across his front. A line of blood slowly appeared, reaching from the side of one hip, to the opposite shoulder blade, clean and neat. James marveled as he saw the line extend from the shoulder blade up to the trees in the distance, not red with blood, but still visible. The Langoran fell hard into the dirt, and didn’t move again. The trees in the distance began toppling over, and continued toppling all around the area James and the others were standing in, as if a giant had made one amazing cut across the entire forest. James turned around to see Achan, on his knees and struggling to see through one sweat-filled eye. He laughed for a moment at his handiwork and fell to the ground.
James only saw a glimpse of it.
A fiery red blade, a gigantic sword, so big that the blade itself looked dull. A Zanbato. It was almost the size of Achan himself, yet as soon as Achan fell to the ground, the sword disappeared, as if it had never been there. James stood there motionless as the cool breeze lapped at their wounds. Elder stepped forward to attend to Achan’s wounds.
No one said a word except Achan, who muttered only one sentence with disdain.
“I hate Sages…”
The Last of the Sages (Sage Saga, Book 1) Page 20
