To draw first blood

I did not figure out what was going on until it was too late.

First Caspio started banging the door while screaming blabbery in their language. Whatever he said worked, as the guard did come to shut him the hell up.

After what must have been some very disrespectful words between them, the guard opened the door, with his weapon ready to punish the blabbering fool.

Or at least, he would have, if Lasan hadn’t then taken the chance to cut his neck wide open with the green knife.

Needless to say I was horrified. If I hadn’t been starving, I would have puked my guts out right there and then.

That leads us to now, where I got paralyzed from seeing all that blood coming out from someone’s neck, just now grappling with my own mortality. I was so shellshocked that I did not even notice that Swerans was shaking me, trying to get me out of that trance.

In the end she gave up on waking me up from it. Instead, she took a deep breath, and started carrying me under her arm while her entire body glowed with a dim brightness. She followed the other two, leaving the body of the guard behind, doing a quite bloody escape.

Soon after, we heard a rumbling. It was like a very short earthquake which finally managed to make me react to things again.

Just in time for Swerans to let me fall into the ground as she looked at the other two in complete shock. Their hands started to tremble, they looked terrified.

This time, I woke them up from their trance, screaming at them to hurry as I heard the steps of what were probably more guards coming up from behind us. As soon as they heard the steps, they started running, with me behind them, running while carrying my backpack.

Soon enough the steps reached us. Caspio turned around when he heard they were too close and stopped, letting me run by his side.

I turned around and saw what he was doing. He had stopped right where I was before, while the guards were lunging at him, he put his hand in the ground. Soon, a veil emerged from the ground, covering the entire hallway and separating it in two, with all the guards on the other side.

“What the hell did you just do.” I managed to say, before Caspio rose up and started running again. It took me a moment to notice that I should be running too. Before I followed them.

We soon enough reached the entrance, but there we only found another three guards, waiting for us. Swerans was the closest one to them, swinging the knife around, not letting any of them get too close.

I was stunlocked in place, Lasan spread his arm as if to keep me back, while the four of them were in a standstill, waiting for someone to do the first strike.

I saw their eyes start to faintly glow, barely perceptible. The guards severely outnumbered her, but they still refused to start the fight. They started screaming at each other something in their language, but no matter how heated the discussion got, none moved.

It was like a keg of powder, ready to blow up.

As I was thinking that, a spark came in, in the shape of a very familiar girl breaking the main door apart with a jump kick, landing in the middle of the room, right between Swerans and the guards.

All hell broke loose in a moment. Swerans shot forward to try and protect Lyra, while two of the guards tried to use the opportunity to attack the intruder from the back. The third guard launching himself to kill Swerans during the scuffle.

Caspio and Lasan also shot forward, their eyes shining just as much as Swerans’s as they very quickly inserted themselves into the fight.

The six of them lunged at each other, all of them moving faster than a normal person, attacking with spears, knives, or their bare hands. I was stunned in place, fearing that I was going to watch another bloodbath, but a light blinded me.

From the center of the room a flash of light shone and everyone had to interrupt their attacks to try and cover their eyes. They all were quick, but I caught on a little later than them, feeling my eyes burn as I fell to the ground, groaning.

I opened my eyes, everything was blurry. I felt as if my head was spinning.

I heard things someone hitting the ground, I heard screams, weapons clashing, but as much as I tried to see, I simply could not. My eyes were tearing up, through my tears I could only see silhouettes moving towards each other.

“There you are, you piece of shit!”

I heard a terrifyingly familiar voice. The one of the scarred man, screaming his lungs out.

The sounds of weapons colliding intensified, and everytime, they were hitting faster than the last.

Someone grabbed me by the arm.

“Hurry!” Screamed a familiar accent heavy voice as the arm grabbed me and tried to make me run towards the exit. I almost tripped, my sight slowly returning, but still too blurry to run by myself.

A heavy sound in front of us. A brown line appeared at eye level just in front of me.

When I recovered my sight, I could see that it was a spear sticking in the wall, mere centimeters apart from my head. Swerans had pulled me back just in the nick of time, we both falling into the ground from the suddenness of it all.

I could see my life going in front of my eyes, my life was almost forfeit, and I did not even know it. My breathing quickened, I was panicking.

I looked back into the center of the room. I could see Lyra and the scarred man in a close quarters fight. Lyra’s skin was glowing bright as she moved quickly, trying to hit the man with a decisive blow, but he kept dodging everything by mere milimeters. The man was fully concentrated, making Lyra pull back, trying to corner her against the wall.

Swerans shot forward to grab the man from the back, trying to choke him out, but she got quickly thrown over his shoulder right into Lyra. She had no time to react, mid attack, she had to catch the woman who had been thrown into her while both of them fell with a heavy thud into the ground.

While they were falling the scarred man turned around and looked at me with his shiny eyes and an horrible smile. He was enjoying the fight, and he looked like he just had a great idea.

I tried to pull back but I was already agaisnt the wall. The scarred man quickly grabbed ahold of me from my shirt, and before Lyra could rise back into her fighting stance, he had his arm across my neck, using me as an human shield.

Lyra looked at me and stopped right on her tracks. I noticed that she was bleeding, her whole chest was covered in dry blood, her face had a couple of cuts and bruises, her dress had a gaping whole with the size of a fist in its left.

Overall, she looked absolutely wrecked, but nothing impacted me as much as the fear she looked at me with, before looking back up at the scarred man again.

“Now, finally you calm down, you little bitch.” He said. Holding me even tighter.

It was becoming hard to breathe. I tried to grasp his arm away, but I could not make him budge an inch.

Was this it for me? Was I going to die now just like this?

Think you idiot, think! I did not go through all of this only to let this asshole kill me. First he cuts my chest, and now this?

I can’t be beaten by everyone. I can’t be strung along by everyone. They all are blooding their own hands, fighting tooth and nail for their lives, and I’m just going to fizzle out without even trying?

I won’t. I have been strung along by everyone ever since I came here. But this scarred asshole?

He’s mine.

Before losing my breath, as the scarred man started dictating orders while holding me hostage, I acted by instinct. I left my hands fall limp to the sides, and after that, I moved my right hand into my pocket.

Where I had previously hidden my swiss army knife.

I took it out and didn’t think it twice. Got the blade out with a click and immediately stabbed the leg of the man behind me. His knee buckled, having to let me go and letting me breathe again. I was coughing, trying to get my breath but I kept slashing blindly before me, hoping to get the man again.

Then, a sharp feeling of pain. With a heavy hit, the man hit my arm, stole my knife and pulled back to try and stab my eye, all in a single movement. I could only see the blade going towards me when a crack marked the end of the fight.

As the man fell into the ground and tried to stab me in retaliation, Lyra shot forward in a burst of light and hit his head with a fist that sent him barreling all the way into the wall. There was no need to look at him, from the sound of the hit, I knew that he was now dead.

I tried to rise up, finally recovering my breath, as I saw Lyra with a bloody fist looking at me with shocked eyes. Neither of us knew what to say, both of us were surprised by seeing the other covered in blood like that.

“Hurry up!”

Swerans had rose back up and was holding Caspio, who seemed to have received a blunt hit in the head and could barely walk.

Lasan was dead on the ground.

We could not waste any more time. We shot away to the exit, running away through the alleyways following Lyra before any more people could go and see the commotion and capture us.

In a single night, two veils had blossomed in the middle of the city and shot to the sky right in the middle of Nochightdad.

And for everyone’s increasing horror, neither of them dissipated, no matter how many hours passed afterwards.