The Ambush Part 2
Silence.
For a few moments there is nothing. Nothing to see. Nothing to smell. Nothing to hear.
Not even the arrow flying through the air, straight towards me. No sound from the archer who must have drawn the bow.
There is not enough time to get away. Reflexively I start to take a step back. Due to the magic I used to enhance my senses time seems to stretch, and while my body can’t move faster I have the chance to watch the arrow coming towards me. Though there really is nothing remarkable about it.
Except for the fact that there is still no sound.
Out of the corner of my left eye I can see Black darting towards my position, creating one of her flaming daggers at the tip of the fingers on her right hand. She is extending her hand and putting more energy into her dagger to increase the size of the flame.
It’s a race. Will the arrow hit me or will Black’s flaming dagger build a wall that the arrow has to go through? Nothing can withstand her flames.
Then there is a sound. The arrow. I can hear it; at the midway point between where I first saw it and my current position it suddenly starts to make a sound. A few moments later the arrow hits Black’s flames and gets destroyed. I survive — for now.
I want to thank Black, but when I open my mouth to express my gratitude and ask her in our agreed upon code words what plan we want to execute there is no sound. Everything is okay with my body. I can feel it. Confused, I look towards Black who is staring at her hands. Her flames, those that saved me mere moments ago, aren’t there anymore.
I look around to my right to see what Pulchra is doing. I see here forming words with her mouth. It looks like she is screaming. She drew her daggers as she always does when preparing to fight one-on-one and she is gesturing in our general direction while running towards us. But what is she trying to say? And why can’t I hear her?
At that moment Black comes into my field of view again from the left side. With an arrow in her right shoulder.
What is happening here?
I am starting to panic. So many things are not right with this situation. And the fear and pain that is visible in Black’s face amplify the rising panic.
I look into the direction from which the arrow must have been fired. But there is nothing to see.
Suddenly someone grabs my shoulder and I turn around — not ready to fight whoever is there, as I haven’t drawn my dagger yet. Fortunately it’s Pulchra. She is pulling me into the direction of Black, her eyes darting around. I wonder why she hasn’t set the forest ablaze by now. We are basically immune to fire. That might be our only chance to escape whatever it is that we are fighting.
Though fight is probably the wrong word. If this continues massacre will be the correct word.
We are now standing besides Black who seems to have used her magic to dull the pain somewhat. She looks angry. Pulchra quickly positions us in a triangle — each one’s shoulders next to the one besides her.
Normally that would be a stupid idea. Fighting back to back and trying to maintain the contact means that you won’t be able to defend yourself as well as you normally could. Especially when remembering Pulchra’s preferred fighting style you really don’t want to be near her. But in this situation it makes sense. On my right side I can feel Black. Her breathing is a bit strained from her injury. On my left side I can feel Pulchra. This way we can focus on keeping an eye out for danger in front of us and know when something happens somewhere where we can’t see anything. Apparently there is only one enemy with a bow, trying to take us out one by one.
The only problem is that he can suppress sounds.
For a few moments nothing happens and I have a moment to think about our situation. Maybe I can find a way to start a forest fire. I am weak compared with Black and Pulchra, but maybe if they can distract our enemy I can do something. Then I remember that I had a similar thought before. Why hasn’t Pulchra set fire to the forest already?
I take a moment to focus on the magical energy in my tail and try to create a little flame in the palm of my hand — only to find that the energy is flowing the way it normally does, but disappears immediately once it leaves my palm. That’s why the forest is still intact. We can’t create flames in this area of silence. That’s probably why Black was looking at her hands in confusion shortly after she destroyed the arrow that was coming towards me.
The only conclusion is that whatever enemy we are facing, he is creating an area of silence that suppresses magic around himself. He was too far away when he first fired his arrow, but then he came closer after he shot the arrow. I wonder -
A movement to my right side is tearing me out of my thoughts. Black is ducking down. That means something must be coming directly towards her head. Otherwise ducking away wouldn’t make any sense. She would kill either herself if the arrow was aimed at her body or either me or Pulchra, if the arrow was aimed in a line that would hit still hit one of us. The assassin probably aimed at her the same way he aimed at me previously.
Hopefully I am correct with that analysis.
I feel the wind of the arrow passing right behind my head, which is increasing my heart rate further. Pulchra doesn’t move.
I was right. It seems like our enemy has a few very problematic abilities, but he is outnumbered and seems to be quite inexperienced. Maybe we have a chance to survive the situation.
What should we do now? Black stood up again, but it looks like neither Black nor Pulchra want to move. Someone has to do something or we are all dead. It’s only a matter of time until one of us can’t avoid an arrow.
In the corner of my right eye I can see something moving. This time he is positioning himself better. I quickly grab Pulchras hand and move her arm away from Blacks position, while giving Black a push in the other direction. A moment later I can see the arrow coming towards me in a line where it would hit Pulchra if I ducked away like Black did before. Luckily he is still aiming for our heads and Pulchra realized what I intended to do. She moves away with me and I can feel that she already starting to turn around to face in my direction. Black is distancing herself from us in the other direction.
Now I can see him. He is standing maybe two dozen meters away from us, the bow still in his hands. He is not wearing any hood, so I can take a look at his face. And I am starting to shiver once again.
I am starting to run towards him. This is our chance. If I don’t get him now we won’t get another chance.
His bald head is full of black and red tattoos. I can’t see what they are representing, from this distance and in the darkness. There are only lots of lines with sharp edges visible. They seem to originate from the base of his skull in all directions, over his face, down his throat and probably further, though that’s not visible through his dark clothes.
The tattoos are scary, but the real problem is the grimace he is making.
It looks like he is smiling in a distorted, sadistic fashion. Like an executioner finding joy in his profession.
I will tear that smile off his face. He hurt Black and now he will pay for this. I am faster and my magical energy allows me to think faster than any human being. No matter his abilities, he still looks distinctly human even with all those tattoos and his creepy expression. Turning fear into anger is something that Pulchra has taught me. She says it’s the best way to keep fighting when you are feeling that a situation is overwhelming you.
Then his pale blue eyes start to focus on me, looking into my eyes, and something in me shifts. It’s a weird feeling. It feels like when I am drawing energy to create a flame. But I am not concentrating on any flame. There shouldn’t be a flow of magical energy, especially not towards my head.
A heartbeat later I learn the meaning of this sudden flow. Like always the energy is going out of my body through some point. But where it would normally manifest itself in the form of a flame the energy is just disappearing. The smile of our enemy is widening. He is letting go of his bow.
He is doing all of this faster than any human should be able to.
He took my energy to enhance himself.
And he is taking more and more of my energy and becoming faster with every step I take in his direction.
Then he leaps forward, towards my current position. We are only a few meters away from each other and he is extending his right hand. I can see the tattoos on his arms. How all those black and red lines are coming together in the palm of this hand, forming something that looks like the mouth of a terrible beast, opened wide to swallow everything that comes near it, tearing it open with multiple rows of sharp teeth.
It doesn’t look like he wants to hit me as you would normally expect. His open palm is aimed at my forehead and I will probably soon find out what will happen when his hand meets my head. Though I’d rather not find out what will happen then.
In the last moment something pushes me to the right and unbalances me. The monster in front of me maintains eye contact for a moment longer and then quickly looks away, stopping the involuntary flow of magical energy in my body, to my left side where Pulchra awaits his hand. She pushed me away so that he wouldn’t get me.
The fear in her eyes is probably the worst thing I have seen in my life.
Until now. What happens next is far worse.
The moment his hand touches Pulchra’s head his smile widens, as do her eyes. Her features completely distort in what can only be immense pain. I can see her mouth, opened wide to scream — but there is no sound. The silence around us is making everything feel completely unreal and for the first time I start wishing that I will wake up every moment to find that everything was just a bad dream.
I hit the ground and try to climb to my feet, seeing Pulchra starting to weep because of the pain. She is unable to do anything and falls to her knees, looking up to the monster whose smile will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. If I make it out of here alive, that is. She tries to push his arm aside, but it looks like a child trying to test its strength against that of its father — completely unable to even comprehend how weak it is compared to the person in front of her, who can only smile at the childish effort.
From the left Black is entering the scene, holding her dagger in her left hand, trying to get past Pulchra to ram it into the monsters armpit so that he will bleed out.
The moment she is raising her hand though the monster is switching the target of his energy draining gaze to focus on her and his hand is letting go of Pulchra, who is falling to the ground completely exhausted. She doesn’t have the energy to even keep her eyes open now that the pain has stopped.
He is turning his hand, trying to hit Black’s cheek backhanded. Because of the shock that her opponent suddenly let go of Pulchra and started to drain her energy, Black is too slow to duck away from this attack.
He is hitting her and I can see the pain in her eyes. She manages not to get caught though and tries to roll away from him. But he jumps after her and I can see that every time his right hand touches her, pain is distorting her face. Even with the dagger she is not able to defend herself properly. The pain seems to be so immense that she is not able to fight like she normally does.
I look at Pulchra to see her staring up to me. Her lips are forming words and it looks like she is begging. There is no way to be sure what she is saying. The disturbing silence around us is still swallowing every attempt at communicating with each other. But it looks like she is repeating a single word.
Run…
I look towards Black who got caught by the arm in the meantime. Like Pulchra she is trying to claw at the arm holding her wrist, trying to get away, with tears streaming down her cheeks and her mouth opened wide in an attempt to voice her pain. Then she looks at me and seems to repeat what Pulchra said to me.
Without thinking my body starts to move.
But not in the direction Pulchra and Black wanted me to go.
I am running towards this monster.
I raise my dagger in an attempt to stab him in the kidney, but before I can actually attempt to hurt him he is turning around to face me. The involuntary flow of energy starts again and I feel the last bit of hope escaping me. I just pray that I can distract him long enough for the others to escape. They are far more important for the army. And they are far too important to me to let them die here at the hands of this creature.
His disturbing smile is directed at me once again and he throws himself at me, letting go of Black, who like Pulchra crumples to the ground.
For a moment we are intertwined, trying to get control of the situation. But then he lands on top and closes his right hand around my throat.
There is no way to escape this grasp. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and I can only stare into the eyes of this monster on top of me that is smiling as he is savoring the pain I will feel any moment, while I am clawing at his arms like my friends were doing before.
The pain will set in any moment.
Any moment.
…
For a few heartbeats we are staring at each other. His smile slowly fades and my face probably shows a confusion similar to his. I look into his pale blue eyes to find something like fear creeping into his expression as nothing happens.
No pain.
No additional energy that is lost. Just the involuntary flow that I’ve felt before.
His grasp is not very strong. He is not trying to choke me, just trying to pin me down with the pain that his hand is supposed to cause me.
This is my chance.
I ram my fist into his side. He bends over, this time his face showing signs of pain. I feel a slither of satisfaction at this sign of his vulnerability. I couldn’t hit him very hard from this position, but he obviously is not used to people fighting back. I quickly take another jab at him, this time at his face.
Now his expression switches to anger. The hate in his eyes is overwhelming and he starts punching me. I try to defend myself, but I am too exhausted to fight like I wish I could.
Suddenly the punches stop. I look up and see that he is looking to his left side where Pulchra is standing. I can’t say who of them looks angrier. Or more exhausted.
Pulchra tried to stab him, but he reacted fast enough and they are fighting for the dagger now. Which is a problem, as that means his hand is touching Pulchra once again. I can see the pain in her eyes, but the hate is stronger.
I try to punch the monster once again, but he sees my attempt coming and rolls away from me and Pulchra, where he is coming to his feet far quicker than I could.
I try to climb to my feet and see that Black is attempting something similar, though the pain is visibly interfering with her attempt.
Pulchra is breathing laboriously and fixating on the monster, who is staring back at her. It seems like neither of them wants to make a move when I notice something. Something very important.
Pulchra’s tails are moving constantly and when they are extended far enough there are little flames dancing at their tips for a short moment. The monster’s ability is weakened. Even though he is standing near us our powers can manifest themselves like they should.
I extend my right hand to grab Pulchra’s left shoulder, while holding out my left hand away from our opponent. I concentrate on the last remaining reserves of my energy and create a little flame in the palm of my hand.
When Pulchra sees the little flame she looks a bit confused at first. But then she understands and she starts to smile. This flame is the symbol of our hope in this situation.
There is a certain similarity between her smile and the smile of the monster before.
With this smile on her face she slowly steps back a bit until her tails are out of the silencing zone. Flames start dancing around her tails and she looks like she is just starting to fight. Now that she knows the radius of the monster’s power she can run around him and set everything on fire if she wants to.
She knows it. He knows it.
We will escape. Even with just a tiny bit of energy left we won’t be killed through fire, but the monster seems to not be safe from this, judging by the look in his eyes.
He slowly backs up and I am starting to feel like we might just survive this encounter. All of us. Black is coming towards us. Her normal cold expression has returned to her face, which is giving me hope just like the smile on Pulchra’s face. Black has far less energy than Pulchra so the time that she was held by this monster was probably far worse for her than for Pulchra.
Once all three of us are out of the monster’s zone of silence we all create little flames in case he starts to attack us again.
Finally. I can hear Pulchra and Black breathing again. And myself.
For some time both sides stare at each other. The monster in complete silence, although it’s obvious that he is breathing as heavily as the three of us are. He has wounds everywhere. From daggers, fingernails and punches. The same applies to the three on our side.
Then Pulchra lets her flames die out. Black follows in the same manner and so I cut off the voluntary flow of energy, too. The monster in front of us relaxes visibly and his expression shifts yet again. He is looking directly at me and this time he doesn’t look like a monster. This expression is even more terrifying than all of the other expressions I’ve had to see in the last couple of minutes.
Both sides back down and once he is out of range we are starting to run towards our camp, occasionally look behind to make sure he was not following us. We’ve got more information than we were hoping for and we even managed to survive. Barely, but we still survived. And that is all that counts in war.
We aren’t talking on our way back. All three of us are far too exhausted and we are all thinking about our encounter with the tattooed monster.
I am mainly caught up with the question of why he couldn’t cause me pain when he was touching me with his hand. And with his expression before we parted ways.
He looked like he finally found something he had been searching for a long time.
