Chapter 7

I felt a sharp pain in my stomach that spread through my whole body. It got really hard to breathe and tears began to form in my eyes. I looked down and saw that the boy stabbed his hand in my stomach. He pulled it out and grinned while taking a step back and licking his hand. Then pulled out a handkerchief and proceeded to wipe the blood off of his hand.

I put my hand on my stomach and stared at it. As expected, my blood had dyed my hand red. My body felt heavy and weak. My eyes started to close and I started to feel lightheaded. Although it was hard to stand, I managed to stay balanced.

“Bummer. I could kill you right now but I’m not in the mood to do so. You do seem to taste good. Mom would be proud if I bought you back for dinner. However, the crazy lady would kill me and frankly, I don’t want to die so I’ll pass.”

He started to walk back to the double doors. However, he stopped and turned around. He thought for a while before grinning again. He ran towards me and took my hand. His eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Will you play with me instead? It gets quite boring in there and I have nothing better to do. I promise I won’t kill you,” he insisted.

I looked over to the Watch-room and saw that everyone was patiently waiting for my response. The boy walked over to me again and put his hand on my wounded stomach.

“Don’t worry. I’ll patch this up for you but you’ll have to play with me, okay?” He grinned.

The wound was gone in a matter of seconds. How was that possible? I touched my stomach and it was as if I never got hurt. I stared at him in shock, he shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m a fair player, you know. Anyways, now you don’t have a choice. Let’s play,” he shouted.

I grabbed the crystal and tried to activate the ability but it didn’t work. That’s right. I didn’t really know how to activate it in the first place. I looked at the boy and he was patiently waiting for me to do something. To my dismay, the crystal was not glowing either.

“I’m getting impatient here. I guess I’ll start,” he sighed.

He ran towards me and punched me in my stomach continuously. I lost my balance from the impact and fell on my back. My whole body ached. I didn’t understand how this tiny boy had this much strength. However, I had no time to think about useless stuff like that. I needed to do something quickly. But there was nothing I could do. If the stupid crystal worked, I could’ve done something.

I tightened my grip on the crystal and took a deep breath. Well tried. It is hard to breathe when someone is beating my stomach. I cleared my mind and tried to keep calm. I needed to get away from this boy first.

“Oh come on. You’re slowly wasting my time. I even made the effort to heal you. You know when my mom finds out, she’ll be super mad. So I’ll give you one more chance or I’m gonna hurt you way more than that,” he complained and stopped hitting me.

He took a step back, folded his arms and started tapping his foot on the ground. With all my strength, I attempted to stand up. I prayed that the crystal would finally work. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe I’ll have to concentrate on the crystal?

A bright light engulfed the whole room. The familiar feeling washed through my body. My body felt light and it was as if my blood was boiling. In my hands, I held the sword. Blue electricity danced up the sword reaching my hands. The sword was heavier than I remember it to be. My arms started to ache and so I rested the sword on the floor, which made a huge hole in the ground. Before me, the boy was clapping his hands and laughing loudly. I looked and saw that the others were equally as astonished as me.

The sword was quite long and wide. The edge blade was a dark blue and the middle was black. The cross-guard of the sword was big and pointed at the edges. The metal swirled so perfectly, that it held the crystal in the middle of the cross-guard. Frankly, it looked very pretty. This was the first time I paid attention to how it looked like.

“Good! There we go. This power, that is radiating off of you. I want it. Maybe I should just eat it,” he thought.

“Sad times. I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, matey,” I replied.

I felt a little confident and the thought of potentially defeating this creature, made me feel excited. I swung the sword at the boy, but he dodged it easily. However, the electricity wrapped around his arm and his body shook. Screams could be heard from him. With his other shaky arm, he ripped his arm out and jumped back. Another arm grew in its place. The boy looked at me furiously and charged towards me. He placed his hands on my shoulders and kicked me in my stomach. The air was knocked out of my lungs and I tried to breathe but failed miserably. I dropped the sword and fell to the ground.

The boy claimed on top of me and repeatedly hit me on my face like he was hitting a piece of steak. I could feel blood dripping down my face. My eyes started to close and I could see him lick his lips. He took my arm and lowered his face to take a bite.

I had no strength within me. I felt so weak. Fear? I had not felt it once while looking at this boy. I felt rather useless. How could I be so weak while having such a powerful weapon? It didn’t make sense to me. Quite frankly, I felt like something had sucked all the energy out of me. I couldn’t process how I felt fine a second ago.

The boy looked at the sword and reached out for it. As he was about to touch it, his hand was cut off. He stared at it, while it fell on the ground. He looked at it surprised and then started to laugh.

“Good. Good,” he said amazed.

I didn’t comprehend what was so good about ones hand getting cut off. He did not seem fazed that it was missing. I understood after another one grew in its place. The sound of someone clapping their hands could be heard. The boy looked really happy.

“You’re weak. That’s a shame. You’ve got such a wonderful ability but look at you. I guess the past really seems to bother you, doesn’t it? I mean… what you did, created a powerful image in my head, which was the reason I wanted to play. Unfortunately, you did waste my time,” he looked disappointed.

With that, he swung his hand in the air and three cuts could be seen across my upper body. I fell onto my knees. Blood gushed from the wounds. My body slows sunk onto the floor. My eyes began to shut, it was hard to keep them open. The boy looked disgusted and wiped his clean hand with the handkerchief. He turned around and the last thing I saw before my eyes completely shut, was him walking back to the double doors.

I woke up and was laid on my bed. I was wrapped in bandages. My whole upper body was in pain and I felt lightheaded. I tried to get up but someone slapped me on the head. I looked and saw that Keres and Delmira looked at me furiously.

“Are you stupid? Your organs are nearly hanging out and you want to get up?” Keres argued.

An old man knocked on the door and nodded his head. He came up to me and put his hand on my stomach. He looked at the bandages and nodded his head. From his bag, he took out a silver glove and put it on.

“I apologise in advance,” he said quietly.

My eyes widened at the realisation of what he was about to do, but before I could do anything, he proceeded to slap my stomach with all of his strength. Tears ran down my eyes. I began to scream in agony. The wounds burned in pain. Fortunately, it did not take long for the pain to go away. I sat up and felt no pain. I pressed my hand on my stomach, still no pain. The wound was healed with a slap.

The old man wiped his forehead with his arm and let out a sigh. He nodded his head again and gave me a thumbs-up, before walking out of the door. Who was he?