His Captive Sorceress

Chapter 62: The Beginning

Author's Note: This is a bonus chapter, taking place well before Jade's time. This chapter contains nasty deaths. If you do decide to stop at some point, let me know in the comments so I can tone down the descriptions.

* * A thousand years earlier, experienced in the old tongue * *

A bowl of cereal barley was placed before young Nomy. She smiled. Of the twelve summer harvests she'd tasted through her life, this one was the best yet. Her mother had toasted the grain in the oven, making it especially sweet and crunchy.

A shout outside startled her, and she dropped her spoon. Nomy and her mother froze, a tense silence falling over their small cottage. Her father was out working the fields, but the shout was far too gruff to be his.

Something was wrong. There was someone else here.

The door burst open, its hinges splintering free from the frame. Three large, armored men invaded their little cottage, each brandishing an axe bigger than Nomy's head.

Nomy sunk into her shoulders, not leaving her seat as her wide eyes jumped between the men. They looked nothing like her father's friends, sporting iron helmets and thick armored tunics. Each of them carried an axe, but none held any wood. The axe of the man in front was coated in blood like a butchering knife. Their little island had never seen war. She didn't know why these terrifying men had invaded her home, but she was certain they meant her harm.

Nomy's mother leaped up in front of her frightened daughter, shielding the young girl with her frame. "Get out!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. Never had her mother shouted like that. Nothing before had ever warranted such panic.

The men scanned the small single-room cottage, their eyes tracing over their food baskets, dining table and messy beds. Nomy was still in her pajamas. Strangers weren't meant to see them like this. Their privacy had been stripped away.

The men bared their jagged teeth through crooked smiles. They weren't leaving. To make it worse, they moved closer, boxing in Nomy and her mother.

Nomy's mother stepped back, tugging Nomy off the chair and keeping the girl behind her body.

The men pounced, latching onto Nomy's mother and yanking her away. Cold stiff hands wrapped around Nomy's thin arms, jerking her forward with such force she feared being pulled apart. Her mother screamed again, this time the words unintelligible.

One man pinned her mother to the wall, and the other raised his huge axe. Nomy was dragged out into the sunlight by the third man, losing sight of her mother and her assailants, and then panic truly overtook her. She wailed and cried, her own voice making her lungs hurt.

"Shut up. I am doing you a favor," the man dragging her said.

She writhed and fought against his grip with all her strength, but he moved so fast she couldn't even get on her feet.

Nomy stilled at the sight of a figure laying face-down in the field. He wore her father's brown leather jacket, and he wasn't moving. Blood was stained up and down his arms, oozing through his hair. He was dead.

Seconds after losing sight of her mother, the screaming from the cottage suddenly went silent.

"I spared your eyes," the huge man said. He continued to drag Nomy down the path towards the shore. Her gaze stayed fixed to their shattered front door.

Eventually the other two invaders emerged from the little cottage, axes in hand with a bag of their family's possessions over shoulder. Her mother was nowhere to be seen.

Waves of nausea overtook Nomy, and much to the disgust of the man dragging her, Nomy's cereal breakfast came back up and coated his shoes.

He struck her hard, harder than she'd ever been struck before. It was nothing like fights with the neighbor kids. Her body shuddered from the pain, and she groaned.