Warrior

Chapter One:: Golden Eyed Stranger

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My fingers slid along the hilt of my last dagger. My thumb rubbed the blood red jewel on top, careful not to press too hard lest I cut the pad of the digit on the raised point in the center. My father had had it cut that way specifically for my purposes. The tool was as beautiful as it was deadly. It was also the only thing I refused to lose, to leave behind.

“Aza, left!” With the agility of a cat, I whipped my body to the right. A darkly painted arrow whooshed past my head, the fletchings of the stick grazed my cheek in a slightly unsettling manner. My right hand met the ground as I lost my balance and pushed me around so I landed in a well-placed crouch. A low whistle travelled across the area, “I must say, you got some serious reflexes, girl.” I rolled my eyes at Flynn’s ridiculous accent, it was thick and hard to decifer as per usual of the southern countrymen in the kingdom. Girl sounded like garl, wash sounded like warsh, daughter sounded like dawghter...it was all a mess.

Another arrow flew towards my head and I ducked out of the way. Looks like bandits actually knew where I was. Probably Flynn too by now. Suddenly, a thick, meaty hand closed over my mouth and a blade was pressed to my jugular. “Make one move and I’ll carve out your vocal cord,” A gruff voice whispered in my ear, wafting a breath of hot, oniony air over my face. I gagged. The knife dug into my throat and blood trickled down my neck. Damn thugs.

A dagger whistled past my head and planted itself in the bandit’s beefy shoulder. He cried out in pain and slackened his grip in surprise. The knife fell away from my throat and I made my move. Quickly, my hand darted up and grabbed his knife-hand, from there I twisted out of his other arm and behind the man, pulling his hand with me. As his dominant arm was rotated around his arm, the bandit grunted in surprise. I kicked his lower back and he fell to the ground with a muffled oof! I planted my left foot between his shoulder blades and pushed him down roughly, his face grinding into the roots and dirt of the forest floor. My fingers that had remained wrapped around the wrist of his knife hand felt for a pressure point and dug into it, causing the man to drop the weapon with a cry. “Whoopsie.” I muttered and I tucked my dagger into its sheath before bending down to retrieve the weapon.

“Please...” The bandit groaned as I flipped the knife around in my hand, the weak moonlight glinted on the silver blade, briefly illuminating the man’s terrified face. His eyes widened as he saw my face, “you’re a gi---” He never got to finish that sentence, for I plunged the long knife into his back, driving it down to his heart. I didn’t lift my foot from the body until I could no longer feel the movement of air in his body. Slowly I drew the knife out of the corpse and wiped the bloodied blade on the thin tree next to me. 

“Clean.” A voice grunted to my right. My body whirled around and pushed the blade in the voice’s direction until my mind caught up with it and registered who the voice belonged to.

“Would it kill you to make some noise, Sef?” I hissed, and dropped the knife from where it had formerly been pressed into the skin above his heart. “Just snap a stick or something!” I complained and lightly shoved my friend.

“There are more bandits.” He informed me and spun around, plowing through the undergrowth in a way that was especially Sefu.

“That’s fine, just ignore everything that I had just said. ‘Oh gee, Aza, I see you almost met death there, are you okay?’ ‘Oh I’m fine, Sef, don’t worry about me. Why should you?’ ‘Okay, I’ll carry on being a stupid male.’ ‘Sounds good, Sef! Wouldn’t want you to change that or anything.’” I grumbled to myself, stomping through the bushes and leaved a few steps behind Garth’s imposing form.