Beyond the Darkness

Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

            Amaya arrived back at King Roland's palace. She gave her horse over to the stable boy. It had been a three day ride back and the sun was just rising.

She walked back out of the stables and headed over to the first guard she saw. She still wore her black cloak with the hood that covered her face.

"Get me some men to spar with," she snapped. The man looked like he was going to argue but he noticed the serpent pin on her cloak and his face turned chalky. He nodded and ran off.

She walked over to the courtyard the guards used to practice their fighting and waited. The nervous energy from her most recent kill still ran in her veins and she needed to expel it. Fighting was a perfect outlet. It also helped her forget her guilt, for a just a few moments.

The men she had asked for started to trickle in and began to put on safety gear. When they had all arrived, around twenty of them in total, she walked into the middle of the courtyard and pulled out her sword and a knife. The men began to circle around her, their own blades ready. Only Amaya was allowed to fight with real weapons, the soldiers had to use wooden ones. Amaya was skilled enough to not draw blood while fighting and while the soldiers were never able to touch her, though they sometimes harmed each other with their own blades. Not one soldier living at this castle was a match for her, twenty made it slightly challenging. She was too fast and strong for the normal humans. Whatever Amaya was, whatever the King did to her, she ended up with heightened senses and increased speed and strength. It made her an excellent fighter.

It was because of her fighting skill that made her the King's assassin and she knew she should hate it, because with it she was forced to kill all those people. But she loved to fight, she loved the thrill of it and after fighting for so long she couldn't imagine life without it. She only wished that she could use her skill to protect people instead of senselessly killing them. In a different life maybe she could, but not this one. Never this one.

Amaya looked around at the men surrounding her. They gazed warily back, a couple with outright fear. Dressed in her cloak like this they knew that she was the legendary Assassin. It was harder to fight in the cloak but having to wear it all the time made Amaya used to it. She didn't want anyone to know her true identity, or else she would never be able to show her face in public. Only the people extremely loyal to the king knew who she really was.

She got in her fighting position, crouching slightly, her blades out before her, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The first, and bravest, soldier leaped forward at her and the fight began.

She blocked his attack with the blunt edge of her sword, their two swords clashing before them. She thrust against him and he stumbled backwards. He fell to the ground, his wooden sword tumbling out of his hand and onto the packed dirt floor. Urged on by the first soldier the rest began to come after her.

She twirled around, hearing two running towards her. She had managed to turn just in time to block the two blades coming at her, one with her sword and the other with her knife. Her arms shook with the effort to hold each man back. She heard another person coming up on her right, so she ducked, releasing the men who tumbled forward, knocking into each other. Rising back up she parried the next person's attack and with a flick of her wrist the man dropped his sword. She kicked out her foot and knocked the man's legs out from under him and he fell flat on his back with a satisfying thud.