He was staring at rocks.

  He was staring at the pavement.

  Realizing that he had just came to and was on his hands and knees on the street, Kenos looked up, only to see a visage of chaos and blazing destruction.

  People were fighting in the streets, a decent enough distance away from him, guards in leather armour against unknown warriors wearing black plate armour, fires made uncanny shadows dance across the city scape and in the distance, he saw some strange man-bull creature charging against a man with a strange outfit and a strange light shining from the tip of the man’s blade.

  Kenos got up and looked behind him. He was in front of the back of the town jail. He had had the misfortune of seeing this building from this side more than once.

  The last thing he recalled was having seen the chaos outside of his cell and the quill that he had borrowed having broken when he had tried to pick open his cell’s lock. He couldn’t imagine would he would be here, on this side of the building of all things.

  He quickly glanced at where he remembered the window of his cell would have been.

  Shockingly, his window and his window alone had been turned into what looked like sand and the bars had disappeared.

  Was it an explosion?, Kenos wondered.

  He checked himself again and saw no signs of harm on himself, nor any burns on his clothing. He didn’t even feel any pain.

  I got to move. The fighting will get here soon.

  Before he turned around to flee, Kenos held his gaze for a moment longer. He wondered if he had heard someone yelling inside the cells, loud enough to make out despite the cacophony outside.

  He didn’t care.

  He got out and he wasn’t going to go back now.

  As he gave the building, one last look, he noticed some strange pieces of black gravel on the floor, almost as if they were some sort of trail or had dropped to the ground as someone was carrying them.

  He didn’t think much of it and took off running, ducking down a alleyway.

  He needed to go to either the nearest gate or to find some pocket of resistance that he could join, since there would be people there intent on making a run for it and would have already done some work to secure an escape route.

  The jail that he was in was in the center-west area of the town, which meant that the nearest gate was bound to be the one to the west.

  Resolute, Kenos looked up, using the moon’s position and his own sense of time to verify which way was west and kept on running, but not too quickly, as he was always making sure to choose paths with the most amount of debris, crates, statues and even open doors, so that he could hide himself in the spur of the moment if needed.

  Suddenly, despite the screams and the occasional loud sound that reminded him of thunder, he heard the sound of several metal boots making their way towards him from somewhere to his right.

  Well, I knew that that good luck wouldn’t last forever, he thought.

  There was no time to turn back down the alleyway that he had made his way through, at the rate that the sound was approaching him, nor was there any obstacle large enough to conceal him from their sight.

  The only thing there was in this corridor was a single small tap that had a small stone basin beneath it and both were attached to the wall.

  I am only going to get one shot at this. If I mess up, then that is the end.

  Picking up even greater speed, Kenos ran up to the stone basin and without losing momentum, used it as a platform to kick off from and threw himself at the window in front of it.

  Guarding his head, he broke through the glass and landed back first on the wooden floor inside.

  Ugh!, he groaned. The landing had been harsh enough, leaving his back sore and hurting, but the glass had also pierced though his clothes and slashed him in his lower abdomen.

  Not now, got to move away from here, Kenos told himself, with urgency.

  He rolled away from the window, deeper into the house’s shadows.

  He heard the heavy footsteps pass him by. He could have guessed that there were at least eight people in that group.

  He was thankful that they either hadn’t heard the glass shatter or that they didn’t care about it. All the screaming, fighting, clanking armor and muffled hearing due to those thick helmets ended up giving him this one small reprieve.

  Ugh!, he groaned again. He crawled towards the light coming in from a different window and took off his cloak and pulled his shirt up, hoping to examine his wounds.

  The glass had cut him in his lower right flank and upper left ribs. The ribs he was fine with, since those bones were thick enough to stop most cutting objects trying to pierce him at random, but the other slash was in a worse spot. It was just around the area of the liver. Still, the cut could have been much worse than what it was. It hadn’t cut him too deep. It probably had hit his lowest ribs first and the point of the shard might have been broken then, or perhaps his two layers of clothes had served as a bit of a buffer.

  Still, the cuts weren’t particularly deep.

  He looked around, to the dining table, furniture and stands inside the home. He tried to see if there was anything around that he could use to gain any advantage going forward. Running away without a plan is good in the heat of the moment, but this endeavour was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

  The light from the outside finally flickered towards an area that was in darkness up to a moment prior and he saw the shine of something metallic in the split second when the brightness had reached it.

  While keeping a crouching position, he made his way to a what he could now perceive was a tool rack. On the wall, caught between three wooden poles was a single sickle. The steel was a bright gray, its edge curved like the moon and the grip was made of firm steel. It was, to his surprise, not the cheap sort of edge that was grafted unto wood and which you could feel the blade move inside the handle with every movement.

  He ran his hands through its edge.

  Still plenty sharp.

  Thank you God, the boy said, in a silent prayer.

  He looked around the house for a bit. To his left there was the window that he had used as a makeshift entrance and to his right, there were a couple of windows, as well as a door with some light shining through.

  Tsk! He clicked his tongue at realizing that the door of the house wasn’t even locked.

  He suddenly noticed the flickering shadows projected by the windows next to the door had become more erratic and abnormal than when he was beneath them checking his cuts.

  He kept crouching and found a spot next to the window where the flickering light wasn’t reaching. He carefully glanced out of the window and to the open street outside.

  He saw town guards clashing with the black and red armoured knights. There was screaming, there was blood, there were flames and there was sooth. Fortunately for the town guard, the number of knights with those strange sticks that made thunder ring out were in short supply and they were barely being used.

  There were also those strange and terrifying creatures that he had seen before. Some just looked like large wolves walking on two legs with red and black fur, but there was one with four arms and the body and head of a snake and a couple of others whose features resembled a cross between those of a fish and bird, with large webbed wings with hooks sprouting from the tips, two legs, the tail of a fish, scales for skin, the dead eyes of one and a beak that opened unnaturally wide with rows of sharp teeth alike those of deep water marine life.

  It seemed that these being were being fought exclusively by a different sort of soldier. Their uniforms were closer in shape to those of the regular army, not the town guard. They were form fitting, fully protected everywhere from the neck down by leather and each of them also carried something akin to a cape. Their helmets had some sort of strange wings on them. Their coordination was breath-taking, their footwork a thing of beauty and as they cut into the flesh, bones and sinew of the creatures, a quick flash of radiance, as if moonlight, would flash, as if to tell every possible onlooker that a deadly blow had been struck.

  Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh…

  The jade eyed boy stood there, entrance and delighted by their performance. They were like torches, lighting up the dim darkness around them with their existence. Nothing else before his eyes compared to them. Not the guards, not the knights and not even the creatures whose disgusting figures would give a grown man nightmares and whose very presence made Kenos’ nostrils flare up.

  Only them. Only these knights could make this boy’s heart flutter.

  He snapped out of it and a flash of light hit him straight in the eyes and he cursed as he reeled back.

  The lighting had shifted and the spot that had been in shade up to now had been exposed.

  He crouched and noticed the saliva flowing from his mouth, so he quickly wiped his chin and lips clean.

  This abrupt loss of focus was suddenly replaced by an important realization, one that Kenos had been pushing to the back of his mind until now.

  “The soldiers bearing black and red bring with them beasts most foul, neither animal, nor natural”.

  That was the rumor that he had heard over the years.

  Putting two and two together, the boy cursed underneath his breath and reprimanded himself for his stupidity.

  These invaders were from Sodom.

  Sodom was to the west of the Kingdom of Limani.

  And this town of Lígo Pouthená was in the western part of Limani.

  Going to the western gate would just mean running into a larger contingency of the enemy forces and getting himself captured and killed. Probably killed.

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  And yet, he had observed that the fires were coming from the eastern part of the town, maybe even from the north-east.

  So east and west were duds. Death by combat or death by fire. None of those were a winning option.

  So north or south?

  Going north was definitely not a good idea in isolation. You would have to be running up hills and similar elevated terrain. You would tire yourself out if you wanted to make a sprint and you would be slow on top of everything. And if any enemies ran down towards you with swords or spears in hand, the odds wouldn’t be in your favor.

  South it was.

  Even though it bothered him that there was fire in the east, implying that this invasion had more than one front, south still felt like the better option.

  He thought about his “friends” for a moment. Leo, Georgious and Seth.

  What had they been doing? Were they alive? Had they been captured? Had they found some measure of safety somewhere?

  If they hadn’t escaped and if their hearts still beat, they may have either found refuge either with Lady Ionna’s group or in the temple. But in such a situation, being held up inside a building was a bad idea. If it wasn’t made of stone, like most of the temple was, then they risked being burned inside of their refuge. Even if the structure was hard to burn, against an invasion like this, staying inside would eventually result in being captured after the conquest or slaughtered in its duration.

  I will give them a single chance, the raven-haired boy decided. He would make a small detour while on his way to the south gate and check up on one of those locations. If it was easy to meet up with them, he would do it. If the place turns out to be too dangerous to approach, then he will go around it. He couldn’t afford to let himself be killed after getting this chance. He wouldn’t do it for anyone in the world, not even those that had kept him company these last few years.

  The time is now. If I must lose everything that came before to grab hold of the future that I have clung to, I shall!

  Suddenly the earth shook once more.

  The lighting shifted again, hitting his long cloak and Kenos hissed in frustration

  He took off the long garment and tossed it aside. If he had to hide, this large thing risked being left unhidden and him being discovered. If he needed to fight, his movements would be restricted.

  Sickle in hand, he looked out of the window next to the shattered one to make sure that the coast was clear. Kenos opened it and jumped out of the house, took a moment to hear the sounds of what was going around him, chose a path and took off running once more.

  It had only been a few minutes, but he could tell that the fires had gotten closer. The area stank even more now of fire and smoke.

  He stuck to the passageways that he knew, avoiding the main roads where most of the fighting was seemingly going on. He stuck close to the walls, because he had already glimpsed some of those creatures on top of roofs in the distance. Whenever he heard the sounds of armored footsteps coming towards him, he ducked and hid behind something or played possum and pretended to be dead.

  It was more reliable to pretend to be just another corpse during such a brutal invasion, so he had cut into a dead citizen’s corpse and smeared his blood over himself so as to make it look like he had been severely wounded in his flank and left shoulder. The only annoying part was having to hide his sickle and blades whenever he had to play up the deception.

  Eventually he came to a recognizable plaza. Up until yesterday it had been a lively spot, filled with hustling and bustling as people came and gone in their mercantile pursuits. Now the stalls had been shattered and the cloths covering them had been shredded. He observed from behind a cart’s wheel, one that was made of pure solid wood, almost as large as a soldier’s shield. The fighting had been fierce. He could see several dead guards on the floor, as well as creatures and black knights, even some of those captivating soldiers from before were on the ground.

  Much of the fighting that he could still observe was going on in the streets at the opposite side of the plaza.

  He gazed at a familiar, yet strange looking building.

  From the outside, it looked like someone had flipped a ship upside down and placed it on top of a wooden house with a single floor. It even had various ship-related decorative features, like anchors, sails and all sorts of ropes adorning it.

  Yet the front seemed to have been cut deep into by several large claws and the once heavy door now laid on the floor in pieces and splinters.

  He wondered if anyone could possibly be in the cellars or maybe even in the secret basement. Lady Ionna’s refuge had always had many doors, defenses and safeguards. Simply getting into the front wouldn’t mean that they penetrated the entire structure.

  He considered the possibility of sneaking in, trying to see if anyone was still there, alive in the depths of the refuge, as he didn’t see any soldiers coming out after several minutes of waiting.

  His considerations came to a halt when he finally saw a soldier run from the battle lines back towards the large wooden building. His attire was definitely sporting the colors of Sodom, but unlike the knights up to now, he was not armored. His attire was slick, built for ease of movement and he had no helmet. Instead of a blade at his hip, he carried a whip and his right arm was covered in a heavy leather glove that covered his entire forearm. The man jogged up to the middle of the plaza and held out his hand and barked a command.

  His hand started blazing with crimson light. The strong red glow emanated all across the clearing.

  The man barked out another set of commands in his strange language. Soon after, three creatures came out of the building. They were just the type that looked like large wolves walking on two legs, but one of them had the corpse of a woman its jaws. Despite the distance and the lighting, Kenos’ eyes zoomed in to her features, as if his capacity for sight had expanded in just one moment and he managed to make out her features even in this situation.

  It was Lady Ionna.

  The blonde hair had already narrowed down the possibilities, but although uncommon, it wasn’t impossible to find someone else with such hair here.

  But he would never mistake that face.

  Well, this idea was a bust, the boy thought.

  The man holding the source of the crimson light barked yet another command to the creatures and all three took off running and crashed into the battleline where their master had come from.

  Now fully aware that he could do nothing to help, the boy once more decided to focus on himself and his fortunes and waited to get out of his hiding spot before darting into yet another passageway, now making up for the previous detour and making as much as a straight beeline for the southern gate as he could.

  That guy reeked. He positively stank, the boy thought, as he kept jogging through the stone alleyways.

  He wondered if either the fight was dying down and the invasion was close to ending or this was simply not just a very active battlefront, as he didn’t hear as many screams as before here and hadn’t come upon a situation where he needed to play dead yet again.

  Eventually, as he was turning a corner, he heard someone bark something in that strange Sodom language.

  He grabbed the wall, crouched and carefully peeked to see why he didn’t hear any hurried footsteps like all the other times.

  There were just two men in this alleyway. Both had no helmets and one was sitting on a crate with his back leaning against the wall, while the other was seemingly doing something to help compose his comrade.

  The already unnatural streak of crimson on the sitting man’s face got even worse as the man seemed to cough, almost vomit a decent amount of blood.

  His friend forced him to lie backwards and drink something from a container, but the man kept having difficulties drinking it, as he kept spitting out blood and ranting.

  He kept saying a word that Kenos recognized, “Aregamann” over and over again, in between sentences and with extreme anger and contempt to boot.

  That word meant “crimson”. He could guess as to what had happened. Probably got his ribs caved in by a Vermillion.

  That was good. If these two had just come back from fighting someone like that, it means that he was close to converging with forces from his side. They may even be civilian defenders, since there weren’t many Vermillions that were part of the town guard.

  While he was thinking this, he had stopped looking at those two men and had rested his back against the wall.

  That had been a mistake.

  The healthy soldier had said something to his comrade and started running towards Kenos and as the man turned he corner, their eyes met.

  With the couple seconds of heads up from having heard his metallic footsteps, sickle in hand, the boy took advantage of the knight’s hesitation and momentary confusion and swung at his unprotected neck.

  However, he hadn’t been fast enough. The rest of the knight’s body was still covered in armor, so he deflected the strike to his neck with the back of his left gauntlet.

  Kenos saw the emotions in the man’s eyes turn to surprise, then outrage and then finally anger, all in a single moment. The knight immediately went to unsheathe the blade on the left side of his body with his right hand, but before the motion was even halfway, Kenos had grabbed the man’s right shoulder and pulled himself towards him and jumped, hitting the knight in the center of his chest with a powerful knee strike, which sent him staggering backwards and looking like the wind had been at least partially knocked out of him.

  The youth immediately turned around and started running, the knight in hot pursuit, no doubt with his sword in hand already.

  He was dressed much more lightly than the knight, so he expected to be continuously gaining distance, but as he glanced over his shoulder, he confirmed that the distance had barely shrunk.

  He clicked his tongue in frustration.

  Those Sodom army drills must be quite something to produce a soldier like this.

  He hoped to simply run into someone from his side to help him fight off the attacker, but he didn’t know where anyone was and he was starting to lose his bearings from all the adrenaline flowing through him right now. He was just as likely to stumble into enemy forces at this rate.

  He wanted to finish this fast and saw a chance to do so. Looking over his shoulder once more to check that his enemy was still on his heels, he darted inside a narrower alleyway.

  He smiled when he saw that there even was a decently sized flower pot on a metal support annexed to a window. Adjusting his footwork to minimize the loss of momentum and grabbing the handle of his sickle with his teeth, he grabbed the pot as he passed and immediately sprung in the opposite direction, towards his pursuer. Seeing the surprise in the man’s face as the chased had abruptly turned to face the chaser, Kenos threw the flower pot to the man’s head, with both hands and with the full force of his acquired momentum behind him.

  The man reacted, but at the speed that everything and everyone was moving, he could barely put up his left gauntlet up to soften the blow, so most of the bottom part of the pot shattered right on the main’s face still.

  “Ghaaaa!!!”

  The black knight let out a scream of pain and fury like Kenos had never known.

  His sight impaired, with his face covered in dirt, blood and shards, he guarded his head by sticking his left forearm in front and started to swing wildly with the blade in his right.

  “Clang!”

  The man was stunned, surprised and shocked as he noticed that his arm couldn’t complete the wide swinging motion that he intended to use to split his enemy in two.

  Kenos smiled.

  Cramped alleyways like this weren’t made for swinging swords.

  If he had been in his right mind, he would have just tried to impale the boy, but the unexpected and debilitating attack had caused his animal instincts to kick in and caused him to start flailing.

  The knight instinctively looked at his right arm which didn’t obey his commands, for a split second, forgetting about the youth and his other arm.

  Kenos’s naturally alien smile grow even more vicious at this moment.

  Shifting from a two-handed grip on his own short blade, he left his left hand free and ducked under the man’s left arm and used his right hand and left forearm to twist his victim’s arm and posture. He made use of the downward momentum that he had just utilized to destabilize the knight and made his own left knee fall to the floor hard. The curved blade now in his left hand, Kenos held it in a reverse grip and using his firmly planted right foot as a centre of mass, he twisted his posture backwards and sideways as much as he could, using the torque to bring his left hand up with maximum force.

  “Ghaaaa!!!”

  Yet another blood-curdling scream.

  The jade eyed boy smiled viciously, congratulating himself as the tip of his curved steel had found its mark in the extremely soft and unguarded flesh in between the knight’s legs.

  He sprung to his feet as the man doubled over and measured his options. He couldn’t go for an easy shot because his enemy was covered up to his shoulders in steel.

  He would just keep his distance and let the man bleed out.

  Unexpectedly however, the man stood upright and turned to face him much faster than he had anticipated and immediately charged at him, swinging his sword down with both hands.

  Taken aback by the enemy’s ferocity and the amount of weight crashing down on him, Kenos’ block with his sickle was overwhelmed and the both of them went to the floor.

  The man viciously and desperately hammered down on Kenos with his two-handed swings, while the youth guarded by keeping each hand on each end of his curved blade. Each swing casting doubt on whether he could endure the next one or if a finger or two would be lost. He felt his bones creak and his skull protest, as each strike and reverberation made the back of his head bounce off the pavement, just enough to hurt like hell.

  The youth endured, looking for an opening to counterattack, hoping to time things just right. The knight however, filled with nothing but dark rage, had no patience for such a drawn-out effort. As Kenos blocked yet another swing, the man threw his sword aside and grabbed the youth’s left wrist, dragging it to the side and the sickle along with it, as he grabbed the boy’s head with his left and pulled, raising his skull from the hard floor, intent on smashing the back of the boy’s head against it with as much force as he could.

  Hisssss!!!!

  A strange noise rang out in the boy’s mind as his head was palmed.

  He was close to death. He understood it. He had almost won a definitive victory a few moments prior, yet the tables had turned on him.

  He knew this, yet, for some strange reason, he could not imagine himself dying here.

  As his skull was pushed downwards, the boy threw his hips rightwards, as hard as he could, and used the momentum and unexpectedness of the dodge to pull his left arm inwards and tuck his shoulders in. He avoided tragedy by landing sideways on his left shoulder as a cushion, preventing his skull from making contact with the stone pavement.

  His arm overextended and his balance now shaky, the knight couldn’t react in time as Kenos threw a kick from below with his right leg at the man’s newfound blind spot on the left side of his face. His heel connected with the man’s temple, dizzying him and causing the vitality to drain from his form.

  As if by sheer instinct, the jade eyed boy grabbed the man’s upper arm with both of his hands and embraced it fully, as if holding something precious, as he spun sideways upon himself and hooked a leg over and the other under the knight’s torso.

  Unaware of what was happening, the man made a reflexive attempt to slash Kenos by grabbing the shorter sickle and trying to slash at the youth with it. Once more, however, the fiendish curved blade would bring misfortune to the knight, as his target was in such a position and angle where he couldn’t hope to hit him, even with this oddly shaped blade. His face against the pavement and his left arm overextended, the knight was completely vulnerable to what was about to come next.

  Hisssss!!!!

  Again the strange noise rang out in his head as Kenos’ mind caught up with his bodily instincts. Keeping his legs, hips and arms firm, Kenos mercilessly raised his torso upwards as much as he could.

  Crack!

  “Aaaaah!!!”

  With a single snapping sound that reverberated across these lonely alleyways, the jade eyed boy had just broken the knight’s arm, perhaps irreparable so.

  He wanted to celebrate, but he knew that the job wasn’t finished and he awkwardly realized that he didn’t have a plan for his next move. His nemesis might be crying tears of pain right now, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t kill him still.

  The boy altered his posture once more, bringing himself closer to his enemy’s lower torso and legs without ever releasing the broken arm. He could clearly see the sizeable puddle of crimson forming in the ground beneath the man’s lower armour.

  Without a weapon, carelessly releasing his enemy now would just lead to losing this advantage and opening himself to a fatal counter from his enemy’s healthy sword arm. It was best to bide his time and let the fatal wound do its trick.

  After what seemed like a couple of minutes or more of struggling with his foe to keep his position, Kenos saw the crimson puddle grow larger and larger and felt his enemy’s vigour lessen more and more.

  The man seemed to have fainted, but trust would be a fool’s luxury in a deathmatch. Kenos used his sharp teeth to pierce deeply into the flesh of his adversary’s hand, but there was not so much as a whimper, a twitch or a sudden breath.

  He disengaged the hold and immediately kicked his foe hard in the side of the head before the knight could have done anything. This was just for insurance.

  Still, the man was knocked out as Kenos has expected and had even released the grip on the sickle.

  He preferred a proper sword, but as token of gratitude towards the weapon that had earned his victory in this fight, he used the curved blade to stab into his enemy’s neck. This too was just for insurance.

  He picked up the knight’s sword as well, before the red tide covered it and ruined it.

  As crimson flowed through the cobblestones and he stood tall over his enemy at last, Kenos allowed himself one moment of proper satisfaction, smiling inwardly at his prowess.

  Yet, as he could see his blurred reflection in the blood below, he couldn’t help but wonder at how he had performed the move that saved his life.

  “…felt natural…”, the words escaped his lips.

  To embrace his foe, to grab him and coil around his form, to break his bones and slowly snuff out his life, all of it had just felt natural, as if his body knew that this was the right way for him to perform combat.

  It was something that he would have to figure out in time.

  Cleaning the knight’s sword belt and fastening it on himself, while bemoaning that he wished he had such a convenient suit of armour himself, he put away the sword in its sheath and started half running back to where he had first ran into the two knights. Regaining his bearings was best done by first returning to the spot where you last had them.

  His mind shifted to the second knight, the one that had been injured.

  Part of him wanted to end him too, this time much more one-sidedly and spectacularly than he had his comrade.

  He smiled at the thought. After being weakened by something on the level of a Vermillion, any encounter wouldn’t even be a fight.

  He stopped. The thoughts that he had kept on the back of his mind finally catching up to him.

  What had that shade said again?

  “Make sure that you don’t let go of that hand too soon, will you?”

  The boy felt his insides turn to ice.

  No, no…, his eyes shot northwards, towards the hill where the temple was.

  It was just a dream, the boy thought. He was not far from the southern gate. With a new sword in hand and his current streak of luck, just a bit further and finding allied forces and escaping towards a new life were all but guarantees.

  Why would it be there? Why would it be there now still?, he denied it again, not finding any sense in his reasoning. It was illogical at best and unfoundedly idiotic at worse.

  Yet against all reason…

  As he often found himself doing…

  Despite his best attempts to conceal it…

  The jade eyed boy threw sound logic and caution aside and acted on what his strange instincts were telling him.

  He couldn’t afford to pass this up.

  Losing such a key piece was not an option.

  He ran towards the stone building that was his home.

  They just keep throwing burdens my way, don’t they?! Just because I want it doesn’t mean you should be thoughtless about it! It better be there!