One Word Prompts

Muddy - A Child's Game

The children ran through the rain, mud splattering around them with every slopping stride, their laughter ringing through the empty forest.

Rose, eleven and ready to face the world, raised her wooden sword, a grin on her lips.

"Hurry on, my lord," she said, glancing over her shoulder to the boy at her side.

Rihan shook his head, gripping his own practice sword. "I'm not just going to leave you to face them alone."

"We lose if they get you," she argued. "Let me do my job, Ri."

He scowled but nodded. "Fine. But don't die either."

She nodded. "Never."

Still frowning, he sheathed his sword and continued running down the path. Rose watched him disappear into the rain filled mist before turning back the way they'd come. She took a position in the center of the muddy path, her sword ready. As she stood there, the empty woods behind the palace became the dark, haunted forests of the distant border. The wood training blade in her hand took on a metallic sheen, its edge taking on a deadly sharpness. Her cotton clothing hardened to armor, not of the child she was but of the knight she would one day be.

She did not wait there on that dark muddy path long.

A bull of a man came rushing down the path, his armor glistening with condensed moisture. He wasted no words, his blade flying forward with his charge, directly at her.

She side stepped his rush and his blade, slamming her sword against his back plate as he ran by with the clang of metal meeting metal. He countered, spinning to meet her, his blade outstretched.

She blocked, catching his blade on her own.

"Where did Rihan go?" the man, Daud, asked. He was straining against her blade, foolishly trying to push past her guard. They sparred often, but he still made this mistake, thinking that her lighter frame would fold under brute force.

"And where is Kat?" she asked back, releasing the pressure on her sword, rolling to the side, letting Daud fall past her. He stumbled past her, falling into the mud face first.

A heavy blow to the back, answered Rose's question. She landed in the mud beside Daud. Kat stood over both of them, a club in her slender shaking hands.

Kat's nervous expression broke the illusion. She bit her lip, looking over her two mud covered friends anxiously. "Are you guys okay?"

Rose shook her head, again a girl of eleven, "You hit me and then ask that?"

Kat looked at her feet with a shrug. "You're on the other team—Ah!"

She interrupted her own sentence with a shout of alarm, caused by a dagger ramming into her back.

Into her ear, a tall man in a dark cape whispered, "As are you."

Kat fell to the ground of that haunted forest, dead.

"You lose too, Daud," Aaryn said, spinning his knife in his hand. As he spun it, gloating over his victory, he returned to the spindly boy he was, the dagger in his hand to the plain stick he'd found earlier.

"How'd you do that?" Kat asked, sitting up from the mud. "I didn't hear you coming at all."

Aaryn grinned. He nodded his head over his shoulder, where a girl in purple stood in the shadow of a tree. "Kerrie made me invisible. And between those two and the rain it's not surprising you didn't hear me."

Kat sighed, pushing herself to her feet.

"So, it's the two of you versus Rihan now?" Rose asked.

Aaryn nodded. "Any idea where he ran off to?"

Rose shook her head. "I told him to go on without me."

Aaryn nodded, pulling his cape close around his shoulders. He would get little else from the ghosts of the defeated.

"Kerrie," he said to his companion, the demon mage. "You sense him nearby?"

She nodded.

"Make us invisible again then, and then lead the way."

She whispered a few words and took his hand, pulling him through the haunted forest.

They found Rihan in a clearing, staring out into the misty rain. He held a bow in one hand, a handful of arrows at his side.

Aaryn readied his dagger, releasing Keres's hand and stepping forward. As he approached, Rihan drew back his bow and released an arrow. It hit Aaryn straight in the chest. He yelped in surprise, stopping in place.

Rihan didn't let up, in as many seconds four more projectiles were in the air, hitting Aaryn and Keres. Their invisibility went down with the hits.

Before Aaryn could stop it, Rihan had run past him, placing his sword at Keres's throat.

"I yield," she said. Immediately the image of the demon mage shattered, leaving a girl at the tip of a wooden practice sword. The bow and arrows Rihan had wielded returned again to a collection of stones, thrown through the rainy air.

Aaryn sighed. "How did you know we were there?"

"I saw you take out Kat of course." Rihan shrugged like this was the most obvious answer. "And I could see your silhouette where the rain hits your bodies."

"I see." Aaryn shook his head, his body slouching in disappointment. He knew they should have saved their disappearing act for Rihan and Rose. "I thought we could count you out when Rose got got."

Rose snorted. "That was a stupid thing to think."

The others all nodded in agreement, even Keres.

He shot Keres a glare. "Hey, don't agree with her. You didn't suggest any other plans."

"We can't beat Rihan," Keres said. She said it as such a matter of fact manner, Aaryn just deflated. There was no arguing with her, whether it was truth of not.

Kat laughed. "Shall we head back? We should clean up before dinner."

Rose looked down at her clothes, sighing. She was mud covered from head to toe. Her mother, if she could see her, would have probably disowned her then and there. A lady so covered in mud as this, even if that lady was accompanied by the younger princess likewise mud covered, was no lady.

"Or we could go for another round," Daud suggested.

Rose grinned. "That sounds like much more fun."