Tearha: The Number 139

Chapter Eighteen: Braveheart

Adelaide strolled through the snow covered forest, her great-white fur coat blending her into the surroundings. From the corner of her eyes, she could see animals scampering in and out of the edges of her range of vision. Glistening icicles hung off the coniferous trees, while the cold dried branches of others held out like extended hands in greeting.

The snow covered forest was her sanctuary. The cool winter wind that carried the smell of frozen snow hanging on wood. The crunch of the rare threaded dirt beneath.

"Yes!" a man yelled from a far corner of the empty woods. "I've got one!"

Her ears picked up the direction of the noise and she turned to face the distance. From her waist, she pulled out her axes and disappeared in a puff of brown smoke.

"Please, Roget, let's get out of here before the Demon shows up!" A second voice, younger and more high pitched, sounded off.

Adelaide reappeared near them behind a tree and slowly lowered herself to a prone.

"Please, Kiril, there's no such thing as a Demon of Valendra Forest." The first man, Roget, told off his companion while holding up the arrow-pierced carcass of a wintersnow hare. "It's just a myth."

"If it's just the myth, why aren't there more hunters in Valent? Even more so since the forest is so near?"

Adelaide jumped out of her hiding place and rushed at Roget. The man turned immediately to the movement but she could see his eyes struggling to make out the form of her camouflage coat against the backdrop of snow. It was obvious the man had no training in battle for he struggled with panic while attempting to load his bow.

Her right axe raised and with a flick of her arm, she sent her weapon spinning through the air. With a crunch, the weapon embedded itself between Roget's eyes. With her offhand axe, she leapt and slammed the weapon into the man's skull for added assurance.

Slowly, she steadied her breaths before turning to look at the second man, Kiril.

Kiril stood, water forming on his pants. "I-I-I-I...!" he stammered incoherently.

"Go," Adelaide said to him. "And don't come back."

The man turned tail and ran, tracing their footsteps out.

With a bone cracking snap, she pulled her weapons out of the body and stood to height, blood dripping from her blades and pooling around the skull onto the white bed of snow. The carcass of the wintersnow hare at their side.

A deafening silence rang through the forest until she had calmed herself enough to regain composure. Birds tweeted and the nearby stream splashed and ran. The forest was her sanctuary.

***

"You know what?" The Watcher voiced out.

Adelaide was rung from her semi-consciousness from that sentence. Finding herself carried on the back of The Watcher, she felt a sense of embarrassment and defeatism, but was too tired to admit it. Even with the rudimentary bandaging and her fatigue from having been teleporting halfway across the continent in less than a day weighed on, her wounds from Light's onslaught still burned. If the human so much as made one of his wise cracking comments, she was going to shoot him.

The Watcher continued, "If she had not toyed around with me so much, that Nora chick would probably have won."

She was surprised to find that she had somewhat missed the man's strange line of thoughts. "It's quite common," she began explaining. "Even in stories, the villains often revels in the foreplay."

"Great," he replied. "I thought only bad guys in my world were that stupid."

As they neared the light of the town, figures of four jogged out to them. She instinctively tried to reach for her axe, but a shock of pain ran through her.