Chapter 7.1: Blood on the Road part 2
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 413 – Claude, Age 8
Thwip.
Mira's arrow took the guard through the throat before anyone knew we were there.
The man collapsed without a sound. His torch tumbled to the ground, casting wild shadows across the scene.
Crack.
Tobias burst from the underbrush like a boulder rolling downhill, his massive fists slamming into the nearest slaver.
The man flew backward, his face a ruin of blood and broken bone.
Then everything became chaos.
I moved without conscious thought, emerging from my hiding spot with sword already drawn.
A guard saw me and sneered, raising his blade to cut down the child who dared challenge him.
The contempt in his eyes was clear. What threat could a boy pose to an armed man?
And then something shifted inside my head.
I saw the guard's attack coming as though it was moving through water. Saw the openings in his stance, the weaknesses in his form.
Saw exactly where to strike to end him quickly.
The knowledge surfaced from somewhere deep, plain as certainty.
'Three inches below the breastbone. Angle upward.'
My body moved before I could question it.
The blade slid past the guard's clumsy swing and punched into his gut at exactly the angle something inside me demanded.
I felt the resistance of flesh, then the sudden give as the steel found the space between organs.
Gurgle.
He died with a sound of surprise, collapsing around my sword as I twisted it free.
A chill of warning shot down my spine. Behind me.
I stepped right without thinking.
The second guard's attack whistled through the space where I had been standing a heartbeat before.
His blade bit into empty air, his momentum carrying him forward into a stumble.
Slash.
My sword opened his throat on the return stroke. Blood sprayed hot across my face.
I didn't flinch. The cold inside me wouldn't allow it, wouldn't allow a reaction that slowed me down or created an opening.
Two more. The one on the left moved faster.
The faster guard came at me with a roar, his sword sweeping in a horizontal arc that would have cut me in half if it connected.
But I was already moving, ducking beneath the strike and driving my blade up into his armpit where the armor didn't cover.
The slower guard tried to flee.
Tried to run back the way he had come, abandoning his companions and his cargo in a desperate bid for survival.
Thwip.
Mira's second arrow took him in the back of the knee.
He fell screaming and Charles was on him before he hit the ground.
Through the whole fight, my arms that should have tired stayed strong. A sword that should have felt heavy in my child's grip moved like an extension of my will, and a warmth that wasn't adrenaline ran through my muscles.
It wasn't until the last slaver fell that I realized what was happening.
'That's not my thought. That's... someone else.'
I staggered, suddenly aware of the blood coating my hands, the bodies cooling on the forest floor, the weight of the sword that had felt so natural just moments ago.
My grip on the hilt was wrong. Tighter than my normal hold.
My stance had shifted into something I hadn't learned from Paul, something lower, more aggressive, built for killing rather than training.
Someone else had been using my body.
"Claude?" Charles's voice pulled me back to the present.
He was staring at me with an expression caught between awe and concern. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," I managed, though my head was pounding now. "The prisoners?"
"We're freeing them now."
I forced myself to move, to help with the locks and chains, to offer comfort to children who stared at me with fear-filled eyes.
But part of my mind was still grappling with what had happened.
The little girl with the empty eyes flinched when I approached her cage.
She clutched her doll tighter, pressing herself against the back of the enclosure.
"It's okay," I said, keeping my voice soft. "We're here to help. We're going to take you somewhere safe."
She didn't respond. Didn't even try to move.
Just stared at me with those hollow eyes, scarred by horrors I could only imagine.
Mira handled the children better than I could.
She spoke to them in gentle tones, her movements slow and non-threatening.
She had been a slave once too and she understood the terror that filled their minds.
I stepped back and let her work.
◇ ◇ ◇
Later, after the freed prisoners had been dispersed to safe houses and the slaver bodies hidden where they wouldn't be found, I sat alone in the forest clearing where I did my private training.
The blood had dried on my clothes. The copper scent clung to my skin, impossible to ignore.
I should have felt something. Guilt, horror.
The normal responses of a child who had just killed three men in less than a minute.
Instead, I felt hollow. Distant, as though the emotions were happening to someone else.
"Who are you?" I whispered into the darkness.
No answer came. Whatever had guided me had retreated, leaving me alone with the aftermath.
But I knew now that there was a presence inside me.
Distinct from the fragmentary memories and instincts that had plagued me since the morning the water hit me.
A presence that could take control when violence required precision beyond my natural abilities.
The thought should have terrified me. Perhaps it did, somewhere beneath the numbness.
But it also gave me hope. If that presence could guide me through a fight against six armed slavers, maybe it could guide me through what was coming in four years.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ AUTHOR'S NOTE ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
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