That One Time I Went on a Quest

Ironclad (1/2)

Everything's...spinning. Turning upside down. Stuff coming out of my mouth. I need a napkin – how embarrassing, with all these people watching...

She's running towards me. Why? I'm quite alright. Just a little...stuffy...

So hot...also cold. Numb. Must be the poison. Kind of redundant, to be poisoned with a slit throat.

Talu has pushed me aside, and the world is turning upside down. Light. So much of it. That took no time at all. Light, heat, coming close. Closer.

Wait a minute. That's...

That's Kaishen.

It's flying at me hilt-first. Hilt-first. She threw it. Tossed it at me.

But wasn't she about to fight? Talukiel is two steps in front of her. Why did she throw her weapon at me?

Never mind that. Have to catch it first.

My arm rises all by itself...then falls back down. The muscles, can't feel them. No blood to drive them – obviously, since the blood is pooling on my chest. Oo...flashing pictures! What...?

In the King's gazebo, looking up with a smile.

Three travellers, galloping across the prairies under a fiery sunset.

Ashen rain, arms wrapped around me. No words.

Top of a broken carriage, dragons circling overhead. 'Come, my esquire, let us stand against the enemy together. And after our foes are no more, I shall tell you the tale of a stubborn little girl who wanted to save the world.'

...

Together, she said.

My arm is moving again. Rain slips through my fingers, cold, fleeting. Then a heavy impact, like the strike of a red-hot hammer.

The grip.

Hot. The fire has returned, but this time with an urgency driven by a foreign yet intimate rage. Kathanhiel's rage, must be: transplanted as the sword was torn from her grip in the middle of its surging. But it's only the surface, ocean waves in a storm. There is something underneath...

A dark room, lit by a single lantern in the corner, its sputtering light painting shadows upon the litter of corpses strewn across the floor. The walls, the curtains, the shattered mahogany bed by the steel-barred window, the white smock of the girl standing in the middle of the carnage, holding a jewel-encrusted sword – all painted red.

Footsteps are coming up the stairs, but the girl doesn't react. Looking out the window she sees the streets far below, choked full with content people going about their content lives. An alien world.

The door breaks open, the four locks upon it shattering to pieces. The glowing sword in the intruder's hand catches her eye, but only briefly. Her own sword, so heavy and covered in so many useless diamonds, rises easily. Never thought it would be this easy, this dispensing of death. Should have done it sooner.

She points her sword at the intruder, holding it steady with one arm.

'I'm not going back.'

The intruder, a young man with a sickly, wheezing voice, raises his own. 'Over there. Is that the Prince of Lucia?'

'You're all the same to me,' she says quietly.

'"You"? What do you think I am?'

'Dead, if you don't leave me alone.'

He strikes without warning, lightning fast. One blink and the glowing sword has severed a third of her blade. Undaunted, she spins around the next blow like a dancer, her broken hilt rearing towards his face. Hands move in a blur; the intruder catches her wrist just as the jagged edge scratches his chin, drawing blood.