A Stunning Performance

Evening. Nir has spent the day lying in bed drowning in thoughts. Rain returns.

Rain enters the bedroom.

“Rain…”

-”We already discussed it. I’m not mad. It’s just that I made up my mind”. - She clarifies.

-”I got your back, you know that right?” - Nir asks.

-”I know”. - Rain replies to him in a calm manner.

The next day, very early in the morning.

Nir and Rain wake up abruptly to battle cry sounds.

-”GLORY TO THE SPIRIT! GLORY TO THE SPIRIT!” - The repetitive shouts of the village-people are heard.

-”Are you ready Nir?” - Rain asks.

-”Not really…” - He answers.

-”Do we have any better choice?”

-”Not that I know of. I think if I, at least, avoid participating, those who remain will hunt me down. They may even blame you. Just remember… Today, we fight for a village that we don’t even know its name”.

His words hit her hard. She is somewhat surprised she didn’t notice that fact.

“Should we go to the school? Maybe they will embark from there”. - Nir suggests.

Rain mildly nods twice.

They leave the cabin and head to the military school. When they arrive - they see there is no one on the training grounds. They enter the building and head for the classroom. They get inside the classroom seeing no one inside.

-”Do they all just go randomly in the direction of the noise?” - Rain asks. “They are so disorganized”.

-”Does it surprise you? You saw how they behave. Sometimes normal, sometimes savagely… They don’t consider human lives at such a high value…”

-”Oh! They have books here! I didn’t notice until just this moment”.

Rain picks up a book. -”’The Monsters Behind The Forest‘”. - She reads the title. She opens it up only to remember she can’t read their language. “Oh yea… I forgot we can’t read this…”

-”Wait, Rain… How did you read the title?” - Nir asks in surprise.

-”Wha… I… Look! The title is in our language!”

-”You are right.” Nir acknowledges. “Here is another one… ‘Sacrifices For The Spirit’”.

-”’A Glorified Harvest’”... The picture on this one is rather… Disturbing…” - Rain shows Nir the picture on the cover.

-”A baby?” - He asks as he sees a picture of a baby lifted up. “I don’t see anything unusual”.

-”Yea but we just read ‘sacrifice’ and ‘harvest’, I just get a bad feeling about this…” - Rain explains.

-”Maybe there is more to this village than meets the eye…” - Nir gets aboard that same train of worries.

A sudden voice saying - “I was looking for you in your cabin” - scares them to their core. They are standing frozen solid, as Null appears behind them.

-”We were looking for everyone”. - Rain explains. “Is there no specific rendezvous point?”

-”Oh… I guess it’s a fair assumption that we will go together from here. Everyone is just following the voices of those who are already on the move. Let’s join them”. - Null says and starts walking out.

Nir and Rain look at each other. They realize having no better options - may be more real of a scenario than they even imagined.

Their participance is under surveillance. Null is moving forward quickly, not waiting for them.

-”You see that, Rain? They are not putting an obvious leash on us. He doesn’t even keep us in his sight. He makes sure we know we cannot run away from this, since they will just come for us after the fact. Instead, they let us belong and participate freely, but in a cage”.

-”I’m not sure I want to live in this village anymore. Do you think we should try to communicate with the empire?” - Rain asks.

-”I don’t know… It may be the very thing that kills us. Whether it is by the hands of the empire itself, or the village finding out about it”. - Nir answers.

-”What if we run away?” - She asks. “Couldn’t we settle somewhere?”

-”I don’t know if we have the means to get far away. While we are still in the area however, we will surely meet more empire soldiers, only now, if we run - we will also face villagers coming after us”.

-”I have an idea”. - Rain declares. ”We go to the battlefield. That way we’ll be seen. Then, we find an opportunity to shift our position to be slightly removed from the rest of the villagers. When that happens, we can get a chance to communicate with the soldiers”.

-”So basically… We try to defect to the empire, unless communications fail, in which case - we’ll have to fight anyway since they will be attacking”. - Nir summarizes.

-”Exactly. We just need to be careful not to get killed by them while attempting to go for that chance”.

-”Is there no way I can convince you to avoid the fight altogether?” - Nir tries again.

-”Enough with this”. - She answers, seemingly annoyed. “Why would you bring this up again?”

Nir drops the subject seeing her mood changed for the worse.

-”Let’s focus”. - He tries to recover.

They see some of the men marching forward and follow them.

They get to the outskirts of the village, somewhat close to the forest, yet quite in the open.

They look to the distance and see the gates to the empire’s territory, and in front of them many empire soldiers and barricades. The villagers standing on the front start yelling again.

-”GLORY TO THE SPIRIT!”

They then start attacking the soldiers. The fight has begun.

-”Rain, do you think those barricades were always here?”

-”I don’t know. Maybe they have prepared for this too? You think they knew the attack was coming?” - She asks.

-”Maybe some of them suspected as much? This could mean more forces will join soon”.

-”Nir! Careful!” - Rain yells to warn him. A soldier made his way past the front liners, defeating some of them. He attempts to attack Nir, who parries easily enough.

-”How there you wield our swords against us?!” - Says the soldier as his sword pushes against Nir’s.

Nir jumps back a small distance. The soldier starts coming closer to him, but then he sees another villager holding an empire-sword, and switches to fighting against him instead. The villager warrior focuses and attacks massively, breaking his armor at the point of impact, felling the soldier. He then swings at his head aggressively.

Nir and Rain look at this appalling sight, ironically metaphorizing the problems they have in communicating with each side.

-”Come, Nir!” - Rain yells.

They move quickly to the right of their current position, passing over some villagers and empire soldiers who are aggroing each other. They get closer to the forest.

They suddenly see a few large bushes next to two big trees. They notice an empire soldier hiding behind it.

-”Do you think he is hiding from combat?” - Nir asks.

-”I don’t know… Maybe we should ask him?” - Rain suggests.

-”Wait… Wouldn’t he be safer inside the walls? Could this be an ambush??”

They then notice another soldier hiding next to him.

-”Yes. Unless… They are forced to fight too. Although it CAN STILL BE AN AMBUSH!” - Rain gets louder as she notices there are many more soldiers behind the bushes than they originally saw.

-”It is an ambush!” - Nir yells to her. “Run, Rain! Now!”

-”I won’t run!” - She yells at him.

-”At least get some distance! You are an archer! Don’t be in a front line position!”

Rain’s teeth are closing harshly in anger. She then moves to get some distance.

The soldiers come out of the bushes, not completely in sync with one another.

“They are all melee-range combatants. The villagers are somewhat far away. We are completely out numbered. I can’t let them get me or target Rain”. - Nir thinks to himself. “But if Rain can shoot them quickly enough…. All I need to do is stay close enough to them so they wouldn’t prioritize Rain as a target, while outrunning them so they wouldn’t be able to swing at me. We have a chance! But… Let’s try talking to them”.

“Hey! Listen! We want to talk to you!” - He yells towards them.

-”You are out numbered! Of course you want to talk!” - A soldier yells back.

Nir looks closely at the soldiers. He suddenly notices, some of them are women.

-”Look, we are just like…” - He stops himself from completing that sentence. He wanted to explain they should trust him since he’s got a woman on the battlefield too, which is proof they aren’t with the village. However, although they already saw Rain, he prefers not to draw any kind of attention to her, since he can’t really trust them”.

“You prepared an ambush but you didn’t attack us yet. We know you don’t want to kill if there is another option”. - He tries again, although he doesn’t really know if he is even correct about that statement himself.

-”You fool! We didn’t charge yet since you are outnumbered. Our victory is guaranteed. Why would we rush in, giving you an opportunity to take one of us with you?”

-”Listen, do you see what I wear? Does that look like clothes from the village?”

-“How did you put your hands on our sword then?” - The soldier asks.

-”I bought it in the village but I’m not from there”.

-”Commander!” - One of the other soldiers calls out. “Those two are the ones from the report! Who’ve been seen in the forest killing our soldiers! They were reported to wear weird clothes!”

Nir realizes communication is doomed to fail now.

-”I guess we have been seen”. - He thinks to himself.

-”So you stole it from our soldier whom you have killed with your own hands!”

-”I didn’t!” - He tries to convince them, feeling how futile the attempt has become.

-”GET HIM!” - Their commander yells, and they all charge.

Nir immediately shifts to being on the run, but is trying to be as far away from Rain as possible.

He thinks to himself: “Rain will understand I’m trying to buy time…” - He then sees her hiding behind a rock while taking aim. “Here! She is about to do it!”

Nir keeps being defensive, parrying every now and then, running from them.

“Rain! Don’t worry, I’ll protect you!” - He yells towards her.

-”Shut up!” - She replies angrily.

He quickly realizes something is wrong. Not just because she is overly mad. A few seconds have already passed yet Rain isn’t shooting any arrows.

“Is she afraid of hitting me?” - He thinks to himself. “I should be far enough from most of them… No…” - He suddenly understands. “She is afraid to hit in general!” - He looks in her direction and sees her still aiming, looking traumatized. “She never shot anyone before! Let alone kill!” - He understands their scenario.

“There are about ten of them, but if she lowers their numbers, I get a real chance. I’ll try to inspire her”.

He stops his movement, and instead of just running - he charges in. He focuses, using a heart to deal a massive hit on the armor of one of them. He then steps away and does the same thing again, landing yet another big strike against another soldier. He has 16 hearts remaining.

He keeps parrying, but is now handling a lot of them at the same time, jumping around, attacking and running.

He knows he has to do something, since he doesn’t have enough hearts to beat them all.

“Rain! You never miss! Make me a path!”

Rain realizes he means to shoot close to them so they think she just missed by accident. She shoots on the ground next to them to limit their movements. Nir uses 4 more attacks, each costing a heart, dealing massive damage to the armor of 4 more soldiers. 12 hearts remaining.

“Make it rain!” - He yells to her.

She keeps shooting while Nir is running towards her. He positions himself to be half standing next to the rock she hides behind.

“Rain. Don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry I got us into all this trouble”.

The soldiers are tending to each other. It seems Nir and Rain bought themselves a few seconds.

“I don’t know why you think I only care about your figure”.

-”You let me walk in your shadow”. - She answers.

-”All the years I’ve known you, I have been walking in yours. And I was fine with that! When did I make you feel like you are nothing without your looks? Do you think I’m jealous of the baboons you were hanging with? I’m jealous of you! I was just wishing for you to not be so hard on yourself all the time. What is wrong with being pretty? Did you ever see yourself shooting an arrow? You look stunning!”

Rain’s eyes start shining in the red color of the hearts above their heads.

“Thank you for coming with me. I need you to win this. I need your help!”

Rain’s aura stabilizes as she focuses once more. She aims at a soldier’s chest and hits right in the middle. The soldier falls down. Her hearts count lowers to “17”.

The rest of the soldiers run to tend to the one who got hit. They aren't sure if they should continue chasing. One of them removes the arrow from him and is shocked by what he sees. There is not one drop of blood. No wound where the arrow hit. But the soldier is unable to get up, completely stunned.