"If there aren't any bandits, then we have nothing to worry about," I said. "But if there are, then we'll deal with them when we get there." Vaze let out a defeated sigh.
"Fine, have it your way," he said. After a short walk a giant split in the mountains appeared before us. Amazingly, it was hidden from sight entirely until we got close enough to it.
No one spoke as we entered, but by the bewildered looks on my brothers’ faces, I knew they thought it was breath taking. The two halves of the mountains shot up to the sky like stairways to heaven, but the dark rocky soil of the mountain made it seem more like archways to hell. All it was missing were hellhounds and the grim reaper.
The farther we went, the less light there was and the colder it got, even though the snow of the mountains was far above us. Hardly anything grew besides stubby bushes and scattered clumps of grass. The distant sounds of goat hooves dancing on the rocky terrain echoed every so often. Light at the other end was always visible, but even when the night fell and grew old it seemed as if we were still as far away as when we started. Eventually we had to stop from exhaustion, but I knew we weren't going to actually stop to sleep until we made it to the other end. My brothers gathered a few of the stubby bushes, and I struggled to start a fire. I only made a small spark, but the pain came over me like a crashing wave. Thank goodness the bushes were extremely flammable and dry, because I wouldn't have been able to conceal the pain if I had to try a second time.
Soon enough we were all sitting around a pathetic fire huddling as close as possible without getting burned, except for me of course. I got so fed up with the cold I literally shoved my hands in the flames, letting it's warm tongues lick my hands as if the flames were a bunch of happy dogs. I found, to my delight, my ability to not be burned by flames had not left me. Darren scoffed.
"Lucky," he said like a jealous five year old. I rolled my eyes at him and went back to enjoying the heat. Seth's eyes darted back and forth frequently, and I found that Jake and Vaze both harbored the same amount of restlessness. I looked around, trying to find the reason why they were so uptight, but only found the light of the fire casting shadows that danced on the craggy walls of the pass. Just when I was about to give up, something caught my eye. A dark wooden post that was almost impossible to see against the rock jutted up like a tree with no branches or leaves. More and more of these posts began to reveal themselves to me, and more and more detail began to show itself. Each and every post was rotted and covered in black moss. Similar posts were stuck in the rocks, and seemed like they had broken off from the larger posts.
"You notice them too?" Vaze asked beside me. He spoke in hardly more than a whisper yet it shattered the silence like glass. I nodded, still observing the strange posts and discovering more and more every second.
"They really did just pack up and leave, didn't they?" Seth asked knowing right away what we were talking about.
"It really looks like that, doesn't it?" Jake piped in.
"What are they?" I asked Vaze.
"The posts are the remains of the bandits’ kingdom," he replied. "Even if it is in ruins now, we can't be certain they have all left."
The sobering reality sank into our minds that we could very well not be alone.
"So how do we know if they're still here?" I asked.
"We don't," was Vaze’s straightforward answer. "They are like rats: sneaky and conniving." Jake stood up and stomped out the flames.
"Then let's not sit here waiting for them to come and find us!" he said. "We can't be too far away from the end right?"
"No, just a few hours more," Vaze replied, while getting up as well. "But the night would hide them."
"Light works both ways: if there isn't enough to see them, then there won't be enough to see us," Jake argued, leaving no room for argument.
We all agreed with Jake's wisdom, and once again we were trudging through the supposedly abandoned pass. Now that I knew what to look for, signs of the bandits past haven were everywhere. It was the same sight most of the walk, but the remnants began to be more and more frequent, and started to look newer. Right when I was about to point it out, the exit greeted us, allowing us to see the dark, early morning sky.
"Well, that was anti-climactic," Al mumbled. His statement was true, and I couldn’t be happier. I was relieved we had finally gotten through something without having another near death experience.
“Well, I guess they are gone after all,” I said while turning back to Jake and Vaze. The second my eyes reached them, I wished I had never looked back. He may have been just a small speck among the rocks, but the movement against something so still made my eyes catch him instantly. A dirty archer stood aiming an arrow at my oldest brother. He drew his arm back and released it. Time slowed down before my eyes as the arrow raced through the air towards my brother. I screamed his name and ran to him, but I knew I would never make it. With one feeble attempt to save the boy who saved me so long ago, I set the arrow in a blazing fire, and incinerating it to dust just inches from Jake’s head.
As relief flooded my mind, pain flooded my body, but this time it was worse than ever before. I collapsed and let my body crumble. I had my midsection in a death grip. The pain didn’t leave with the fire this time. With every passing second, it got worse and worse, as if someone was shoving pound after pound of broken glass into my skin. Screams and shouts exploded from the silence all around. I forced myself to look up, and found a horrifying sight.
Scruffy but plentiful bandits were overpowering my brothers. I heard Jake scream at Vaze to get me out of there, but Vaze refused to leave my brothers. An extremely beefy bandit attacked Al, and knocked him out with ease. The rest of my brothers were subdued, Jake being last of them. Vaze continued to fight, but was eventually knocked out by a bandit who snuck up behind him. I cursed at myself for not being able to help. The pain made it so I could hardly move at all.
My sight grew fuzzy and the sky started to fade. A small pool of blood began to form on the ground below me as it started to stain my hands. I could only stare in horror and disbelief as I bled. Soon enough, my hands began to blur and the edges of my sight went dark. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and the last thing I managed to see was a massive hulking figure standing over me. Then it all went black.
Chapter Seven
I woke when I was thrown violently against a stiff wooden board. My eyes flew open and my head whipped around in confusion. I tried to rub my head where the impact had hit, but found that my hands were bound, and as my senses returned, I realized my mouth was poorly gagged and my legs were bound as well. My brothers were all unconscious around me and tied up. Vaze sat across from me, fully awake. As I looked around, I remembered what had happened the night before, mostly because I was in a hay cart driven by the bandit I recognized as the archer. We were traveling along a rough dirt road cutting through a pleasant wood. Not an ideal place to imagine a kidnapping, huh?
At first I thought the archer was the only bandit around, but fleeting figures hidden in the trees showed me the rest of the bandits were still there. A wheel hit bump and I was thrown against another wall of the cart.
Vaze chuckled, and I shot him a menacing glare that told him what I’d do if I wasn’t tied up. I struggled to sit up, and was thrown into Vaze as a back wheel caught another bump. As I tried to get off him another wheel hit a bump and we were both tossed into another wall, and I unfortunately hit the wall first, making Vaze’s impact less, but mine more. We tried to get up, and were tossed forward and Vaze landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me, but also made my gag slip off my mouth.
“Stop falling on top of me!” I hissed, quiet enough so the bandit wouldn’t hear me.
“Mphmph!” Vaze mumbled behind his gag in protest.
“I can’t understand you, come here!” Vaze moved his face closer to mine and I bit the part of the gag on his cheek. Vaze yelped, and I released the gag, and a bit of his reddish pink cheek that I accidentally bit as well. I felt a bit of g
uilt from biting his cheek by mistake.
“Sorry,” I said before trying again. As carefully as I could, I bit the cloth softly to make sure I didn’t get his cheek again. Confident I didn’t get any of his cheek, I clamped down on the cloth and slowly pulled back my neck. Slowly but surely, the knots loosened, and Vaze’s gag slipped off his face and I spit the gag out of my mouth. We struggled to get away from each other again, but were thrown against another wall, but this time Vaze broke my fall (served him right).
“If we keep trying to get up, this ridiculous process is going to continue!” Vaze hissed.
“That won’t stop me from trying!” I said as I wriggled away, and was immediately thrown back at him. I continued this process about fifty more times until I gave up, but that was mostly because this time Vaze had tried to move a little, and ended up landing on top of me. I let out a sigh of defeat and tried not to inhale Vaze’s hair.
“Well,” Vaze said with his head next to my ear, but not sounding nearly as disappointed as he should have. “I guess we’re going to have to stay like this until we stop.”
The cart lurched to a stop as soon as Vaze finished his sentence. We held our breaths as the bandit got out of the cart. The sound of more bandits coming out of the cover of the trees came to my ears. I looked up at the sky, and realized we had come to a break in to woods, and that it had also just broke into morning from the pinkish sky. The bandits all let out a blood curdling battle cry and the sound of pounding feet told me they were leaving the cart behind. I nudged Vaze and he rolled off of me. I wriggled my way up to my knees to see what was happening.
None of the bandits had stayed with the cart. Instead they were all charging with swords and bows drawn towards a small village, if you could call it that at all. It was more like a dozen huts and a barn tossed together. Men and boys not much older than me ran out of the huts with tools used for tending fields to meet the bandits. Their faces were full of fear, but I saw determination in all their eyes—even if it meant death, they were not going to leave their families.
I sat with wide eyed horror as I watched. Blood splattered everywhere, staining the ground red. None of the villagers fled, not even the young boy I spotted in the crowd tending a fallen villager that must have been his father. He tried desperately to cover his father’s gaping wounds to stop the bleeding. Tears streamed down his face as his father’s gaze began to grow distant and glassy. The father’s eyes closed, but still the boy refused to leave him. A bandit came up to him with a bloodthirsty grin as he raised his sword above his head. He brought it down on the boy, and he died screaming.
Soon after, the battle ended, and bodies littered the ground like leaves. None of the bandits joined the body count—all were alive and laughing. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. I didn’t know how wrong I was.
The bandits went into the huts and dragged out screaming women, children, and even babies. The women were put into a group and a couple of bandits guarded them with devilish grins. The screaming, crying children and infants were corralled into the barn like cattle. A woman in the group screamed and tried to break free, but was tossed aside by a guard. A bandit lit a torch, and threw it onto the hay around the barn. It burst into flames, and began to lick the barn full of children.
Anger, hatred, and pure horror began to build up inside me. I would never forgive the evil I had seen, or the evil they were about to commit. Scum like them didn’t deserve to live. All I wanted to do was make them suffer. They deserved it. They were going to get it.
Black fire ate away at my binds, and I broke through the ropes, freeing myself. Vaze stared at me with wide eyes, but I didn’t take notice in him. I only wanted to make them suffer. A deep inhuman growl came from deep within my chest, and my eyesight took on a slightly reddish tint like that of blood fogging water.
With incredible speed and strength, I launched myself off the cart, and directly at the nearest bandit. Before I even touched the ground, I shot one hand at the back of his throat. The claws on my powerful hands tore through his neck, and he was dead before he even felt pain. I tossed him off my stony skin and launched myself at the next bandit. I grabbed his head in my hands and snapped his neck with a sickening wet crack. The other bandits began to realize what was happening, and archers let loose a flurry of arrows as the bandit, who I assumed was the leader, barked orders.
The arrows hissed through the air towards me, and I waited until the last second to dash out of the shadow of the mist of arrows. I reached one of the archers and snatched away an arrow he was hurriedly trying to aim. I stabbed him with it and shot towards the two bandits near the barn. I used my hands like daggers and stabbed both in the chest with my claws. I kicked off the barricade on the door of the barn and children came streaming out. I didn’t hesitate to attack the bandits guarding the women. They were dead within a minute, and I searched around for the leader. The hulking figure of the leader disappeared into a hut. I walked towards it slowly.
Grass crunched under my boots with each step I took, until finally I came upon the poorly made hut. I knocked down a wooden wall with one mighty swipe of my leg and the rest of the home caved in. Broken shards of a mirror were scattered among the mess reflecting everything from every angle. The huge bandit tried to scramble out of the rubble and run, but I caught him by his neck. I lifted him off his feet above my head, with one stone grey hand around his neck.
“Please!” he pleaded. “Please don’t kill me! I’ll give you anything!”
“Give your life for those you’ve taken!” I hissed with an inhuman voice.
He struggled and cried as I tightened my grip around his throat. I smiled. I wanted him to suffer. His contorted expression of agony and fear pleased me.
“Scarlet, don’t!” a woman’s voice called from my right. I turned my head to find a woman with golden curly hair and purple eyes. “This isn’t who you are! You have to fight it! Look what this madness has made you!”
She held up a mirror fragment and I saw the reflection of a monster, about to kill a terrified, pitiful man. The monster had stone grey skin and reddish eyes. Its hands had long sharp claws covered in blood. Tiny horns had begun to poke from its forehead. It was a demon no matter what angle it was viewed from, a herald of death, an abomination. And then I realized that monster was me.
I dropped the man and looked at my hands in horror. They were covered in blood. I hadn’t realized what I had done until it was too late. I had taken numerous lives of humans. It didn’t matter that they were horrible evil scum—they were human.
I dropped to my knees and let out a cry of horror and disbelief. The terrified man ran away into the woods. Tears began to stream down my face, and I begged myself to let this all be a dream. I didn’t want to be a monster. I didn’t want to kill people, no matter how evil they were.
“Scarlet!” Vaze yelled as he ran to me. I searched for the woman, but she was gone. I looked up at Vaze through blurry, tear filled eyes. He stopped short, almost in amazement, but his eyes softened and he walked over to me. He took me in his arms and cradled me in a comforting way. I didn’t pull away. I began to cry harder, because I was shocked and frightened. I was scared of the monster I had become.
“How did this happen to me?” I managed to say between sobs. Vaze hushed me.
“It’s gone,” he said in a soothing tone. “You’re the same. Velkire can’t control you, look.” He held a shard of the mirror to my face, and I was the same old me. No red eyes, no horns, no grey skin.
“He did that to me?” I sobbed out. My worst fear had been realized. The dream had been real, and suddenly I could feel the design slashed into my body, underneath my skin.
“It’s alright,” Vaze cooed. “I’m not going to let him do that to you anymore. I won’t let him hurt you, or your family.”
I didn’t respond. I just kept crying. I clutched handfuls of Vaze shirt in my hands as I sobbed, staining his garbs with the blood of the bandits. He didn’t seem to care. Vaze stroked my hair and hus
hed me softly, as if trying to put a baby to sleep. Soon enough my sobs turned to sniffling and I pulled away.
“How did you know about it?” I asked while wiping the last tear from my eye.
“You didn’t use your fire against the vampire queen when she had Al,” Vaze said. “You wouldn’t take chances like that unless you were forced to. It was only suspicion then, but after you collapsed when the bandits attacked, my suspicions were confirmed.”
“We should leave,” Vaze said as we walked back to the cart to free my brothers. “We’ll use the horse and cart. After all, the bandits won’t need it.”
We found that all of my brothers were still unconscious, but this time I didn’t wake them. I cut their bindings, removed their gags, and let them sleep. They didn’t have to know about the horror that had happened yet.
We left the village, unable to do anything for the widows that now inhabited the once pleasant farming village. I finally noticed that my silk shirt and over coat had both been stained brown with dried blood, though I still didn’t know why. I wasn’t going to fix it, not while Vaze and my brothers were around, that was for sure. The smoke of the fire could still be seen hours later in the sky, when we were miles away. I sat on the seat of the cart while Vaze rode the horse that carried it. My brothers didn’t wake up until near night fall, and by then I was drifting off into sleep. Vaze told my brothers what had happened, and they decided not to stop until we arrived at the camp. After switching from Vaze riding the horse to Jake riding it, I finally dozed off.
~
“Scarlet,” a voice whispered in my ear. I ignored it and turned onto my side. “Scarlet,” the voice said a little louder impatiently. I opened my eyes a tad, but drifted back off just the same.
“Scarlet!” yelled the voice as someone pushed me over. I jolted awake scrambling. I was still in the cart and my brothers were sleeping along with Vaze. I assumed we had stopped for the night. I was about to go back to sleep when something caught my eye. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, because it was staring right at me with curious purple eyes. And it wasn’t an ‘it’. It was the woman from before at the village. I jumped back in surprise and shock.
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