The alert reached her too late. Her sudden movement startled the man behind her, and he broke from his cover to dive towards her. He grabbed her by the shoulder and wrenched her backwards as she struggled to gain her footing. I watched her hand grab the sword on her belt, but it froze in place as his dagger pressed against her neck. He whispered something in her ear that caused her face to harden in anger, but her hand fell back to her side, empty. Val jumped up from her spot by the fire to help, but fell back when the men flanking the camp arrived. Two stood across the fire from her, while one circled slowly to her rear.
With a final burst of energy, I closed the last hundred feet between myself and the camp in just over a second, launching towards the closest man with my sword drawn. The blade cut through his neck with no resistance and sent his head spinning to the ground before he had a chance to react. I skidded to a stop a few feet to Val’s left and pointed my sword at the man holding Lia hostage. “Let her go, now,” I growled through gritted teeth.
There was a brief look of shock on the man’s face as he watched his compatriot’s body topple lifelessly to the ground, but he quickly snapped back to a malicious glare. “I don’t think I will,” he snarled in a deep, gravelly voice. “You two are going to turn around and walk your way back to Yoria, while this one here keeps us company. If we don’t see you in these parts again, we’ll let her go in a few days. If she behaves herself.”
“How do you know where we came from?” Val asked, her expressionless face and voice returned to her.
“Do you think we’re stupid?” he asked coldly. “You’re the fucking King’s Shield. We know where you’re coming from, and we know where you’re going.” The man shared a look with his companions. “We’re here to...change your mind.”
“Lux!” Lia called out, her voice thick with worry. “I’m fine, okay? You don’t have to worry about me.” I hadn’t realized it until she spoke, but my chest was heaving with rasping breaths.
“She’s a smart one!” the man laughed. “You should listen to your little lady. If you turn around now, everybody can still get out of this alive.”
I moved my sword in a slow arc to point at the remaining three men before me. “You all died the moment you walked into my camp. If you let her go now, your deaths will at least be painless.”
The man holding Lia looked at me with a mixture of amusement and contempt. “If you move so much as an inch, this pretty little neck gets cut wide open.” As he spoke, he pushed the edge of his blade harder into her skin, and a small crimson bead formed at the tip. Lia sucked in a quick breath, but her eyes never left my face. Her lips moved as she called out to me again, but I didn’t hear the words.
I felt a small snap at the base of my skull as my mind disassociated from my body. My vision narrowed with dark clouds, and the three men before me began to glow with a faint red aura. The edge of my sword began to shimmer as the blood along its face hissed and bubbled away, leaving an ominous black energy behind that shone like dark fire. Deep within my body I felt a dark desire to not only kill the men before me, but to make them suffer.
My mind agreed. Though I felt like a passenger as my body moved on its own, I fully supported the decisions it wanted to make. I knew what the dark energy around my blade would do to them, and I wanted to see it happen. Jack’s face, streaked with black lines and distorted in agony, flashed before me, and I hungered to see it again. I heard a growl rumble out from my chest, and my legs crouched as I prepared to lunge forward.
Before I could move, I felt a heavy pressure surround me on all sides. It pushed against every inch of my body with a warm, comforting force that settled my mind. My body wanted to resist, to strike death upon the intruders, but I fought the urge and focused on the new sensation. Lia. My vision cleared enough that I could see her staring at me intently as I stood frozen in place. A rushing sense of compassion filled me up as I let her mana past my defenses, and my muscles slowly began to relax.
“It’s okay, Elden.” I finally registered the words she had said. With a deep, shaky breath I nodded to her and lowered my sword.
“Listen to the little lady, that’s a good lad,” the man holding Lia hostage jeered at me. “Go back home now, and take the shield bitch with you.”
They’re worth more to us alive. With my mind back in control, I quickly assessed the situation. The other men had spread out in an attempt to surround us, but they had moved too far apart to support each other. Val eyed me cautiously from her position at my right, her shield held up in a ready position. My Detection magic showed me that although Lia looked complicit in her captivity, her combat enhancements had flared to life in preparation for combat. I gave her a small nod, and she responded by tapping her middle finger lightly on the pommel of her sword.
The man’s face grew hard. “Are you deaf, or just stupid? Fuck off out of here, or I swear to the Primes I’ll—” With a swift push, I crushed through his unconscious mana barrier and suffused his sword arm with energy. The rune on the inside of my ring activated, and I watched the bones in his forearm splinter into jagged shards. He let out a blood curdling scream as the limb fell to his side, limp and twitching.
Lia sprang to life as soon as the dagger left her throat. She kicked backwards into her captor’s knee as she drew her sword, which knocked him away into the dirt where he continued to writhe in agony over his ruined arm. Before the next closest enemy could react to the chaos, Lia was already on him. Her sword whipped up to his chest, but the point hesitated a moment against his fur armor. When he reached for his ax in a panic, the hesitation passed, and her sword drove straight through his chest and emerged from his back, gleaming a dark red in the light of the flickering campfire.
I held out an arm to catch Val as she stormed forward to assist in the fight. I knew the last man would be dead before either of us could reach them, and there was no doubt in my mind that Lia could protect herself from a single thug. My concerns were focused on a different thought. That’s her first kill. The weight of the idea was heavy on my heart as I watched her move gracefully across the camp.
With a hard push from her shoulder she sent the man impaled on her sword stumbling back towards his partner. Using her smaller frame to her advantage, she approached the last combatant completely hidden behind the dead man on his feet. When the final man dodged out of the way of the toppling body, she was there to meet him with a rising slash. It cut through his leather cuirass with ease and splashed a gout of red from his hip to his opposite shoulder. He fell to his knees and screamed, but the sound was cut short as she skewered him through the center of his torso in one clean thrust.
“Take care of that one, would you?” I said quietly to Val as I nodded towards the man whimpering over his arm. “He’ll have more information about what we’re walking into than your scouts did. I’m sure he’ll tell you if you ask nicely.” I moved forward to cross the camp, but paused to call out over my shoulder. “His right arm is shattered from his elbow to his wrist. Do with that information what you will.”
Lia was panting heavily and staring out into the darkness beyond our camp when I approached. At the sound of my footsteps growing near she whirled around with her sword held at the ready. Her face was expressionless apart from her eyes, which darted around wildly in search of another opponent. The right side of her face was smeared with blood, as was a large section of her dark braided hair which curled over her shoulder.
I knew what she was feeling all too well, and stood patiently as I watched her come down from the battle trance. She scanned the camp over and over as her breathing began to slow. The impassive mask of her face broke all at once, and emotions flashed across it in rapid succession: anger, confusion, sadness, and finally, fear. Her shoulders fell as the strained muscles in her body relaxed, and her hands shook hard enough that she dropped her sword. Her mouth opened as she tried to speak, but nothing came out aside from a hoarse squeak.
“It’s okay, Lia,” I called out to her softly. I walked over to her a
nd cupped her face in my hand, doing my best to wipe away a large splotch of blood with my thumb. “Come with me.” With one arm around her shoulders, I carefully led her to sit on a log next to the fire. I sat down next to her and took her hand in mine as I waited for her next reaction.
She stared into the fire in quiet contemplation for a few minutes, then turned abruptly to look at the two men she had killed. “Did I...kill them?” Her voice was flat aside from a small tremor of uncertainty.
I squeezed her hand as I followed her gaze to the two dead men. “Yes.”
“I don’t...I-I don’t remember...doing that.” Her eyes blinked rapidly as she stared over the scene before us. “I can’t remember.”
“You will. Your brain wasn’t focused on remembering, it was trying to make sure you stayed alive. When the adrenaline wears off, it’ll come back to you.” I turned and rested my forehead against the top of her head. And the shock will set in, too.
The night grew quiet around us as we sat together in silence. I could still hear the cries of the man with the broken arm somewhere off in the distance; Val had dragged him away from camp to spare us from the uncomfortable sound. The fire continued to crackle beside us, boiling away the stew that was to be our dinner. Apart from the smell of blood and the two dead bodies across from us, it was a beautiful evening.
I saw the moment of recognition clearly on Lia’s face when her mind finally caught up with the events of the night. Tears ran freely down her face, but her features revealed no emotion. “I didn’t want to do it.” Her voice was small and shaky as she spoke, nearly too weak to break the silence.
“I know.”
“He could have run away.” Her eyes were unfocused, and I knew she was watching the scene over and over again in her mind. “There was a moment before I...killed him. He didn’t have to die.”
“I saw. You gave him a chance.”
“So why didn’t he take it?!” She shouted suddenly, her voice cracking. “Why didn’t he run?” Twisting away from me, she reached down to grab a small rock by her foot and hurled it across the camp at the corpse. The projectile flew wide of its intended target and impacted into the dirt before bouncing away into the darkness. “WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST RUN?” She pounded the log beneath us with clenched fists and shook her head wildly, flinging teardrops out to sparkle briefly in the firelight.
I stayed motionless as she raged beside me. “He made his decision, Lia. You didn’t have a choice.”
She turned on me in a fury. “But I did have a choice! I could’ve run away, I could’ve wounded him so he couldn’t fight anymore, I could’ve done anything else, but I didn’t. I just KILLED him!” Her tears ran down through the dried blood on her cheek and drew red lines down the side of her face. “I didn’t...why did he...I just—” She scrunched up her face and screamed out in wordless frustration.
My vision blurred with tears as Lia slid forward off of the log and landed in the dirt, where she curled forward into a ball and let out another anguished wail. I shifted to the ground gently and sidled up next to her to place a comforting hand on her back. The contact seemed to startle her, and she broke into a full sobbing fit. I rubbed her back in small circles and rested my chin on her shoulder, determined to give her as long as she needed to process her emotions.
“Lia, I’m so sorry,” I said softly into her ear once her cries had weakened into whimpers. “There’s nothing I want more in this world than to make you feel okay, but I can’t help you. There’s nothing I can do that will make your world right.” A tear ran down the side of my nose and dripped onto her neck as I spoke. “But I promise, I absolutely promise you, you’re going to be okay. It might not be tomorrow, or the next day, but this will pass.”
Her body shuddered as she took a deep breath. “I-I don’t know how...how to be me, anymore. Nothing feels—” A sniffle interrupted her thought. “Everything’s wrong, in my head.”
“You’re still you, Lia. Nothing could ever change that. Even though you’ve gone through so many terrible things, you’re still kind, and passionate, and amazing. No matter what happens, you’ll still be you, and I’ll still love you.” There was a moment of extreme tightness in my chest, and then I felt my whole body flush with a tingling warmth. “I love you so much, and I’ll do anything you need to make things right.”
She looked up at me with bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks as a smile fought its way to her face. A half laugh, half sob burst from her lips, and her head fell back down to her knees as she started crying again. I kissed the side of her head gently and resumed rubbing her back, whispering to her the whole time. “I love you, Lia. You’re going to be okay. I love you. Take as much time as you need. I love you. I love you.”
***
9. THREE WORDS
I spun a strand of Lia’s hair around my finger absentmindedly as I listened to Val’s report. Unsurprisingly, the thug with the shattered arm had become much more amicable after his injury, and answered all of Val’s questions readily. When she returned to the wagon successful in her interrogation, she took up my watch over Lia to allow me the chance to ask my own questions. It had been a brief session.
“Do you serve the Dominion?”
“No. I told the Shield before, I work for Wendt.”
“Do you follow the path of Kalateth?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I work for Wendt. He might know whoever those people are that you’re looking for.”
“For all our sakes, I hope not.”
“Listen, I told her everything already. I swear I’ll leave and never go back, if you just let me—”
I noticed a speck of the man’s blood on my boot and rubbed at it with my other foot. Val finished her initial briefing, then paused to allow me a moment to process the information. “So Attetsia has fallen already.”
She nodded gravely. “So it would seem. Based on his recounting, the coup only lasted a day at most. Hired swords raided the city via the docks while a local faction staged a riot as a diversion. It was a well-coordinated attack.”
“Are you familiar with the mercenary group? The, uh…” I scrunched up my brow and silently cursed myself for not paying close enough attention. “The Albadan Company?”
“The Elta’sahn Company, yes,” Val corrected flatly. While I found her general lack of emotions in our day to day conversations off-putting at times, I currently appreciated the lack of sarcasm. If Lia were awake, I had no doubt that our conversation would have been derailed by her incessant teasing of my lack of regional knowledge. Instead, she slept soundly on the bench beside me with her head rested on my lap.
“They are a mercenary group based out of Lybesa,” Val continued, “and they are by far the largest and most well-known company in the world. I have dealt with isolated arms of their organization in the past, but if this new information is to be believed, I fear that the full force of the Elta’sahn Company is waiting for us in Attetsia.” A single crease wrinkled her forehead as she considered her own assessment.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, curious. “I take it by your expression that this is somehow worse than regular bad news.”
“I do not believe that the situation is as simple as a coup d’état. The Golden Throne could not afford to hire the entire Elta’sahn Company at once, so I find it difficult to believe that a rebel faction could raise the capital needed to enlist such a large force. Current reports suggest the company could number over fifteen thousand men.” She traced a finger around a single scale of her armor vacantly as she spoke. “They must have something beyond gold to gain. Our prisoner said his group was sent out to ensure nobody interrupted the ‘Grand Scheme’, which he failed to elaborate upon further.”
My gut feeling echoed the sense of dread that had been building over the course of our entire trip south: There were darker forces at play in Attetsia than simple politics and coups. “Maybe our informant was lying,” I said hopefully, though I didn’t believe the words.
“No, I do not think
so,” she replied, shaking her head. “His description of the Company’s actions match what I have observed of them myself; he has seen them operate in person.”
“Oh.” I studied her face closely as she mulled over the situation in her head. There was an almost imperceptible flare to her nostrils, and her jawline was more pronounced than usual. I realized with some delight that Val did indeed emote during conversation, though extremely suppressed, and it was possible to spot if you knew what to look for. “What do you think the Company is looking to achieve?”
“I do not know.” She paused for a moment in what I surmised was frustration. “Politics is not my strong suit, and I lack the knowledge to make an informed assessment of the Company’s aims.” Turning back to the road for a moment, she adjusted the reins to keep the horse on our intended path.
With a sigh, I leaned back against the canvas cover of the wagon. “That’s alright. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what they want.”
She looked back at me with a raised eyebrow. “I believe understanding the aims of the enemy is essential to creating an effective plan against them.”
“Well, yeah, sure it is. But whether the rebels were fighting to free themselves of oppressive tyranny or to raid the city’s treasury doesn’t change the fact that we have to find a way through the walls. It would be nice to know how the Company got paid, or what they’re getting out of the deal, but either way we want them gone.” I held my last thought to myself: It doesn’t matter which dark power wants to ruin your world, because I still have to stop them.
Restart Again: Volume 2 Page 15
