“Perfect,” I said.
I took off towards the south side of the fence. I snuck through the hole I had charged through only a few hours earlier. I followed the wall around to where the knights were attacking.
Then suddenly, I couldn’t see my body or my sword. I was confused as to what was happening. I looked around to see if anyone had seen what had happened.
A little older lady was standing at the opening of the fence watching me. She made a shooing motion in my direction.
“Go on,” she shouted at me.
“It will only last for a minute or two.”
I didn’t need any more urging.
My ankles were protesting the whole time I was running. With every step, I felt a dull pain, but I kept going. I came to the first knight and quickly removed his helmet. This caught him off guard. Before he could turn around to swing at me, I was on his back and cutting off his air supply. No one around was paying attention. So no one would notice when this guy went down because he looked like he was choking on nothing. In reality, he was being strangled.
When he passed out, I silently went on to the next. I heard footsteps behind me and the sound of a grunt. I turned around, and one of the village men had plunged a sword into the back of the guy I had just knocked out.
It felt like a kick in the stomach.
I could have just as quickly done what he did, but I didn’t want the man to die. I didn’t want any of them to die. I couldn’t think of that now, and I couldn’t call out to the villager behind me without drawing attention to myself from the knights in front of me. I maybe had fifteen seconds left of invisibility left if I was lucky.
There were burning pieces of wood flying over the fence, and I had to make sure I was dodging them, while paying attention to our attackers.
Why did I tell Andraya to do that?
When I knocked out all of the knights standing on their own, my body became visible again. I now had to figure out how to take out the small groups. It might be a challenge.
I called on the wind to wrench the swords from their hands. I ducked out of the way of the swords as they tumbled through the air beside me. Once that was done, I tackled one of the knights. As he hit the ground, strong grasses formed out of the ground and wrapped themselves around the knight.
I looked up to see which villager had helped me, but I couldn’t see any. I might be on my own now, but I had an idea. I tackled the next knight and used my own magic to secure him in the grasses as well.
I saw something moving in front of me and looked up from my spot on the ground to see what it was. It was a villager advancing on a knight. He appeared in front of the knight and tipped his sword up underneath the helmet. I knew what was going to happen next, and I couldn’t stand to watch. I turned my head to get myself back into the battle.
I didn’t want to kill anyone.
With my sword in one hand, I started running into the battle to see what Axel needed me to do. Before I could reach him, a knight jumped in front of me with his sword pressing right against my stomach. He didn’t spear it through me, which was always good. I could feel the point on my skin, though, and I could see a small spot of red slowly grow on my dress. He had cut me, but it would heal.
“Try anything, and I will kill you. We are taking you back to the King,” he said.
He had a look of triumph on his face. He thought he had won. All he did was hold me at sword point. That didn’t mean victory, not by a long shot. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I thought about my next move very carefully. When I decided I had a solution, I set it into motion. It wasn’t complicated or complex, it just involved timing.
I called out to Andraya, pretending that she was almost right behind the knight. He turned to see if Andraya would be a threat to him. As he did, his attention was off of me for only a moment, but that is when I made my move. I knocked the sword from his hand and tackled him to the ground, and let the grasses swallow his body.
I looked to see how everyone else was doing. I was shocked to see all the men who were helping us fight start to retreat, injured badly. Axel and I were the only ones left out here fighting. There were maybe eight knights left, but they were all closing in on Axel.
He had body after body lying at his feet. He was covered in blood. I don’t know if it was his or the knights’. Axel was starting to struggle without much room to maneuver and duck out of the way of swinging swords.
As I was watching him I felt two sets of arms come behind me and grab my arms. I struggled to break free.
“No magic,” I heard whispered in my ear.
He was too close, and it creeped me out. It sent a violent shiver up my back. I continued to struggle anyways.
“Sir Axel the traitor,” the other guy holding me captive called out.
He ignored them and continued to fight. The knight who whispered into my ear pulled my arm back at a horrible angle. I let out a cry.
Now the two knights had Axel’s attention. He stared in horror as one of the knights brought his sword up to my neck.
Was this how I would die? This didn’t seem fair. I didn’t want to fail everyone. I didn’t want to fail fate and ruin the prophecy. I couldn’t let that happen.
A knight seized Axel by his arms, and he struggled to fight back just as I had done. His eyes never left mine. It was like he was staring into my soul, urging me to keep fighting, not to give up. I could sense it though, he was giving up.
Hold on Axel, you haven’t failed me yet.
Suddenly I wasn’t standing in the field with a sword to my neck. I was falling to the ground and reliving what had just happened.
I saw me being seized by the two men. I saw them taunting Axel. I saw me fall to the ground with my eyes open glowing purple.
So that’s what I looked like when that happened?
It was like I was outside of my own body, watching the scene unfold around me.
No wonder Axel had been scared.
The knights were leaning over me, trying to figure out what had happened to me. Then suddenly, I flashed back to my body.
I was looking up at the two men, and before they could react to me now being conscious, I threw them across the field with a massive blast of wind. I heard the impact of their armor smacking the ground. I watched their bodies lie still, motionless.
Axel brought the attention back to himself as he disarmed a knight and used that sword to kill him.
The battle was now back in full swing.
Without thinking, I knew there was no turning back now. I might have the death of two knights on my hands.
I was no longer an innocent.
I made another sword in my left hand. I jumped into the crowd and plunged the two blades into the openings in the armor of the knights. I heard groans of pain, and then pulled the swords out and kept going. The blades were covered in red. I looked to meet the eyes of another knight who was now paying me special attention.
I welcomed it. Seeing the red on my blades unlocked an emotion in me that I hadn’t ever let out before, rage. I challenged him.
“Come on, are you going to let a woman beat you? You might need one of your little buddies to help!” I shouted at him.
I was taunting him, and I didn’t care. At that moment, I didn’t care anymore about remaining innocent and keeping my hands clean. Someone was going to die today; it was either Axel and I or them.
I drew him and one of his friends away from Axel. He was looking worn out but now only had five more knights to fight. They were yelling things like ‘traitor’ at him.
He was screaming back at them. I could see the rage just bursting out of him. It was in his stance, his voice and his eyes. At that moment, he looked like the warrior I knew he was capable of being.
I would be utterly terrified to face him as an opponent.
Now with the two knights about to attack, I stomped on the ground, and a chasm in the earth opened right between the knights and I. A look of shock and surprise appear
ed on their face.
Yeah, this was just as big of a shock to me.
Once they looked back up at me, they looked scared but raised their swords. They were still challenging me. They were going to die with honor, and I could almost admire that.
I took a few steps back and sprinted to cross the new divide in the ground. As I landed, I took my one blade to the metal on one of the knights’ legs. It didn’t pierce his skin, I never meant for it to. However, it did have enough force to knock him over. That gave me a moment to take on the other knight, one on one.
When I heard his armor collapse against the ground, I turned my back to him. The grasses wrapped around his body. I knocked the sword out of his hands, and I moved out of the way of the swing of the sword from the other knight. I heard his armor clanking as he got up, and I knew he was about to attack me again.
I took him to the ground using a spinning kick I had learned. Once he was on the ground, the same grasses that held down his neighbor grabbed ahold of him too.
Now that those two were taken care of, I took off and covered the rest of the distance between Axel and I. He took out another knight. There was now only one knight remaining. I went to swing my sword, and the knight dropped to the ground. He pushed his sword away and raised his hands.
“I surrender!” he screamed.
I stopped the path of my blade. I stabbed it into the earth in front of me.
“I surrender,” he said again.
This time it sounded a little more desperate and wasn’t as loud.
“Get up!” Axel screamed at him.
The guy looked startled, but he had every right. Axel was covered in blood; it was even smeared on his face. He was heavily breathing, and there was still the rage in his eyes. It burned in his eyes like fire, and it wasn’t even close to smothering out. It mirrored my own anger and inner rage, but I was now trying to control mine.
“Start walking. See that man right there?” Axel pointed to an archer standing by the fence.
“Get on your knees in front of him.”
Axel looked from the knight to the archer by the fence.
“You! Get him in a secure location and post guards on him.”
The archer nodded once, and the knight looked to me and then started walking. His look had been piercing. It was a look of disgust and silent anger. He was fuming underneath that Axel, and I had taken down his whole little group.
I turned away from Axel. I don’t know why, but something in my gut told me to do so. We were both high strung and battling the emotions the fight brought out in us. I stepped away from him and started walking towards the bodies I left in my wake. I could feel the silent tears streaming down my face as I took in the scene around me.
There were the knights struggling to break free of the grasses I had tangled them in. One by one, the knights were cut loose by the villagers and escorted into the village by sword point. The knights that had faced off against Axel weren’t so lucky. You could smell the blood in the air.
It smelt like copper, and I wanted to gag.
This was my own doing. If I had paid attention to what was going on around me, maybe I would have spotted the knights sooner. Perhaps I wouldn’t have started using magic yet, and they would have never known what was about to happen. This whole thing could have been avoided, and I wouldn’t be a murder.
I quietly brought the bodies I cut down to the gap I made in the earth. I laid each one side by side at the edge of the drop. I looked down to see that it continued a long way down. It would be one hell of a free fall for them. I very quietly said a prayer for each of them. I don’t know much about the Goddess they worshiped, but I hoped the God I believed in could still hear me, even out here in this world.
I tried to tell myself it was okay, tried to stop crying. I felt like a monster, and I couldn’t help it. I no longer felt my rage as an inner damn broke. I felt like a horrible human being. I felt like I should be locked in a cage and never let out.
Tears started pouring out of my eyes like they were pouring from mini waterfalls. I began to shake as I sobbed, unable to control the guilt. The fight had only been over for five minutes tops, and the guilt was already eating away at me inside.
I felt hollow.
I heard footsteps behind me but didn’t turn to see Axel approach. I knew it was him; I could just sense him. No one else would approach me like this right now, and I didn’t blame any of them.
He sat down next to me. He didn’t try to tell me to stop crying or that everything was okay. He just sat with me in silence.
Was he feeling any of the things I was struggling with right now?
He had tried to prepare me for this moment. To his credit, he described how I would probably feel, but it wasn’t even close. This was a hundred times worse than anything he could ever describe.
He continued to sit there next to me as I continued to sob. He was showing me I wasn’t alone even though I felt like it.
Between sobs, I spoke. “Did you know any of them?” I asked.
“I knew three of them. I killed one. I knew this man here.” He pointed to the body closest to me.
“He was a real jerk to me, so by no means am I upset by his death.”
He tried to lighten the mood by telling me that he deserved it, but I didn’t think that this guy deserved death, even if he had held a sword to my throat. He was just following the orders given by the corrupt king he was forced to follow.
“And the last one?” I asked, trying to wipe away my tears.
“He is up there in the little village being guarded. He is the one I was screaming at,” he told me.
“You know him?” I asked.
“We used to be best friends,” he told me.
I wasn’t expecting that but didn’t push it any further. I sensed that he didn’t want to talk about it.
Eventually, Axel stirred and suggested that we give the men their burial. We dragged each of the knights that he killed to the gap.
One by one, we rolled each one into the bottomless grave.
Chapter Twenty Four
Axel
After we buried the bodies of those we killed today, things felt different between Violet and I. I wasn't sure how to go back to the easy, carefree couple we had been before.
There was an instant change I recognized in her.
She had been silent for the past thirty minutes, which was unusual for her. She appeared to just be going through the motions. She followed me while I spoke with the villagers and Andraya about the knights and how to properly guard them. Violet made a secure cell for them, again without speaking a word.
I left Violet to her own devices for a while. I needed to get clean, and so did she. I had a feeling she needed time to process what happened. Maybe she was in shock and lost in her own thoughts. Maybe after some time, the old Violet would make an appearance, instead of the silent one standing in front of me.
Andraya had guided me to the bathhouse for the village. She ordered everyone to stay away, except the Princess while I cleaned myself off. She told them that my bravery was to be honored.
While Violet was immune to any order from Andraya, I am positive she wouldn't intrude in here. She appeared to be so lost in her own head, she wouldn't know where to start looking to find me, even if she wanted to.
I had shut the door behind me and stoked the fire that kept a large pot of water boiling. I used another pot to transfer some of the boiling water to a large tub, and then I used the same pot to add cold water from the stream that trickled through the corner of the bathhouse.
I entered the tolerable bathwater and sat in it, closing my eyes. I could feel the dried blood leaving my skin, and if I were to open my eyes, I would see pink water. I didn't open them, though, I leaned back and sorted my own thoughts.
Sometimes it was hard to think of Violet as a reincarnation of the Goddess. Most of the time, I thought of her as my funny, intelligent, and beautiful girlfriend. It is hard to wrap my mind around that I am romant
ically involved with the reincarnation of the Goddess.
I tried not to think of it like that. It made me even more nervous than I already was around her. When I prayed to the Goddess at night to thank her for sending Violet to me, I'm really thanking Violet for putting herself in my path. It's very confusing and hurts my head when I spend too much time thinking about it.
It was even harder to think about her being a reincarnation now, after seeing her on the warpath. It was almost frightening to watch someone so strong yet fragile at the same time, lose herself with that gust of wind. She was fierce and disabled just enough people to give me a fighting chance, even though I didn't want her joining in the fight.
I wanted the villagers to help me finish off the knights. They could have if they weren't cowards. Instead, they let a woman jump in and fight their battles for them.
I was disgusted.
I would have to visibly try to keep from punching a coward out, but Violet, ever the peace-bringer, would step in and try to fix the situation, then I would feel bad for making the situation worse.
Today had been difficult, and we still had so much left of our journey before this was all over. I had hoped it would be easy going to get to the castle, but my hopes were being dashed.
When my mind came back to the battle between the knights and us, I thought of the man who I thought had been my best friend. I was wrong about that though, as he tried to kill me, and wanted to capture Violet. The longer I sat here, the more my brain focused on him, and I could no longer sit idly and do nothing.
I aggressively scrubbed my hair and my skin and then dressed and left the bathhouse.
I walked to the room that he was being kept in. Charles. I hadn't seen him in a few months. The last time I saw him was before I left for my last mission, to find the written prophecy.
He and I had gotten into a fight. He didn't think it was fair that I was the only one sent out on the critical task for the King. He could have the job, I didn't care. What had bothered me, though, was that he didn't support me as a friend would have. Instead, he turned to jealousy, and it began to consume him.
Emerald Dreams (The Dream Traveler Series) Page 22
