Mortal Magic: Broken
Protector

The next day we said nothing as we kept on the path to Starkhaven. Neither Yuto nor Maia tried to speak to me about what I said the night before and I didn’t bring the subject up again. We just kept acting like all this never happened at all.

This time around though I was not alone in the front leading them through the forest, but rather we were all close and marched together. I didn’t feel like advancing on my own and having them follow me anymore. It didn’t feel right to me.

Midway through the day the forest started feeling strange, like something was about to happen. The birds were either quiet or left in search of another home, the trees didn’t move their leaves to the wind, and the wind in turn was relentlessly silent. All this absence of noise was making me nervous and jumpy, and I wasn’t the only one affected by it. Yuto was also checking his surroundings like me and was keeping her hands on her chest and was glancing between us for reassurance we couldn’t give.

The unease feeling was getting stronger and stronger as we got deeper into the woods, or closer to the exit I could not be sure until we made it out. We were on the road for three days and if what Yuto said is true then we are already half way to our destination, so the forest was bound to end soon enough.

Merely an hour after the forest fell silent I heard a twig break behind us close to the tree line but I acted like I didn’t notice. I was sure everyone heard the sound in this silence and Maia was sure to be scared out of her mind, but we kept our expressions neutral to be sure that whoever was there didn’t know they had been made. We kept acting for half an hour still until we reached a fairly open part of the path and that was when all hell broke loose.

Men and women clad in leather armor and armed with daggers and small swords came from behind the trees. The five men were ready to attack us and the two women were vigilant and ready to cover them with magic if needed. I was sure they were weary of the possibilities of our magic affinities, and that prevented them from attacking straight away. They saw Maia squealing and getting behind me and that made all seven of them smile mischievously.

The men were all in their prime and big in size while the women were both young and looked more than just alike. So they were twins and at least one of the men was bound to be their relative. But I could not replace any other resemblance with them. The women had scarlet long hair and they were curvy and their leather clothes left too little to the imagination. Their faces adorned golden brown eyes and both had a golden earing on one brow and on the other side than the other. Their smiles were the most unnerving as they seemed to be the ones who were having fun by killing us with their eyes.

The men on the other hand were all dark haired and most of them were genuinely not handsome but not ugly either. All of them had faces filled with facial hair and they had their hair cut close almost short. They wore the most armor and I could see they were partially skilled with their weapons but not enough to swirl them around.

Maia grabbed my arm and tried only to peek from behind me and the bandits started laughing out loud. One of the men closer to me with an ink branding on his face came closer and lowered his weapon mocking our weakness. “Look at how they tremble in fear. His girlfriend is close to watering her panties”. They all laughed at his comment and Yuto was almost snarling at them, while Maia hid behind me completely. I on the other hand kept on staring at them blankly, mostly because I didn’t catch the joke.

They kept laughing and making jokes for their company as we stayed silent, waiting for them to make the mistake of underestimating us. After a few moments they returned to their composed old selves and started their threats. “Now that the fun is over let’s get down to business boys. You there, give us all your money and any valuable trinket you have, and we may just decide to let you keep your lives”. One of the women was giving the orders here, and she was the only one with a somewhat relaxed stance among them.

I looked at Yuto from the corner of my eyes and he was almost fuming. He met my eyes and soon he relaxed a bit and his face lost the bright red color it had before. Focusing my eyes on the bandits again I spoke directly to the women as they seemed to be the leaders. “And if we don’t”? All of them cracked a smile and then came my answer. “If you don’t we kill ye all and then take your belongings mate. That simple. But we may let our pets toy with your girl over there too”. Toy with her? What is that supposed to mean? Why do I always get stuck with the weird people?

All the men were eyeing Maia behind me even though she was completely hidden from view and that was making me angry. “Over my cold, rotting dead body”. All of them fixed their gaze on me and their smiles got lost then. “You think yourself capable to fend us off mate? Very well, kill them lads; the missy is yours to take”.

While they were all about to charge I grabbed Maia’s hand and gently pushed it off my arm. Without warning I projected my crimson spear and whirled it around my body before facing one tip to the floor in a downward angle with my left leg in the same angle. They all froze at the sight of my movements, even my companions and then the bandits started attacking. “Make sure they don’t get to her but stay out of this”. This was directed to Yuto before I started attacking the bandits with my spear. I made sure to attack with the blunt side of the spear and not the edge to spare them the cuts, and I never made a move to pierce them either. The days that I killed for my life are over; the only person I will kill from now on is Lars. Everyone else will live. I was hitting one man after the other in what seemed like a complicated dance with my spear and they couldn’t even figure out my next move. It wasn’t long before one of them pulled back to use magic and then I started hitting faster and harder.

Shoving the other men aside I made my way to the one ready to conjure magic and I bashed his head with the round part of the spear and he fell to the ground unconscious. After that I turned around where another man was coming at me and swung the spear between his legs with all the strength that was needed for him to fall to the ground and then I hit him in the head too.

After that the women came to the fight and charged with the men using their daggers. They were faster than them but I was faster than them. But I had to admit that handling seven weapons with just the spear was challenging, so I let it disappear and projected small swords instead. The flow of the battle changed dramatically as I was skilled in many weapons but small and long swords and spears came more naturally to me. I made sure to disarm the men and then bash their heads with the handles while making sure that the women were not about to use artes and soon it was just me and them. They tried to circle me but I wasn’t about to let them. “Mana Burst”. Before they could even realize what I said I was already behind one of the almost identical women and struck her head making her fall to the ground too. The remaining woman was now visibly shaking and dropped her daggers.

I was sure that with such skills and that speed and how I handled them like it was nothing; I seemed frightening; terrifying even. I let the swords fade into nothingness and then stopped fueling my body with mana before moving closer to her. She fell to the floor shaking and her head was facing the dirt as she started crying. “Please… Please don’t kill us”. She was begging for her life; begging for all of their lives. And she was begging me. I remember many people that cried wanting to live and I remember many who begged me to spare them. And it was making me sick.

The sound of the people crying and sobbing, kneeling on the floor with their heads bowed in front of me, before I killed them. I still have nightmares sometimes about them. Every single one of them still haunts me, even if I don’t remember their faces, their voce or what they looked like. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to stop using these powers, as soon as I was done. If I lived, I would live the rest of my life like the rest of the people out here, without using magic to fight and kill.

I kneeled in front of her and raised her head with my right hand so that she could see into my eyes. I saw in her bright golden eyes the fear and she must have seen the sadness in my dark brown ones. “I’m not going to kill you; but you all need to stop doing this. It’s just a matter of time before you come across someone more powerful than you that does not wish to spare you”. Her eyes dropped to the ground and she kept sobbing like before but didn’t say a thing.

I got up and then passed by her going back to my companions but I stopped a step later and turned my head back to her. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking there are not people more powerful than you just because you have the numbers. Numbers alone can’t win against power so it’s best if you stop stealing from others. It’s for your own sake”. It was true, quantity alone can’t overcome quality; I learned this the hard way.

I made my way to Yuto and Maia and I saw that the latter was more than just surprised from what she saw; even I would be if I saw someone moving this fast and doing this. And this was just the beginning of what I could do. Stopping in front of her and placing my hands on her shoulders I wanted to make sure she was fine. “Are you unharmed”? Her face grew slightly red and she averted her eyes from me but she still answered with a small smile. “Yeah. I’m fine”. Her reaction was strange and many questions formed in my mind but I was sure that I was overthinking things. She must have been in shock because of the attack so she must not be thinking clearly.

Turning my focus to Yuto I asked the same question. “And you”? He just nodded his head with the same neutral expression but I was sure that in his eyes a different flame was burning. He was angry. I was sure that he wanted to kill those people but he was restraining himself so I tried to help him. “Think of your family. Your wife and daughter waiting for you back home. They wouldn’t want you to kill people. And I’m sure they will understand what you had to do to escape and go back to them”. With that his eyes darted to mine and after a moment of his anger burning even brighter, the flame in his eyes calmed down and he lowered his head taking a deep breath.

Now that I was sure that they were both well it was time for us all to go. As we were about to continue I heard large feet stomping the ground and coming towards us. From the forest I could hear the heavy breaths and the angry cries of a beast but it wasn’t until the creature came into view from behind the trees on the left where the ground was elevated that I saw what it was. Charging towards us with incredible speed was a humongous wild boar; easily more than my own and Yuto’s size combined and it was already too late for us to stop it. The only thing I could do was to shove Maia and Yuto out of the way as the boar was stomping its way to me and then rammed me with its head to one of the huge trees near.

The moment my body made contact with the animal I felt pain like I had never felt before and when I was crushed between it and the tree that pain multiplied. I couldn’t even scream from the pain but I knew that I hadn’t broken my bones. But I wasn’t unscathed either. I felt the sting of an open would and something that wasn’t supposed to be inside my body. Then I was raised into the air by the beast as one of its tusks had pierced my stomach and was stuck inside me. The boar rammed me to the tree once more to get rid of me and again I broke nothing; but I was about to pass out from the pain, and then I heard a crack and I was free.

The boar whimpered but didn’t falter and tried to stomp me. I was sure I was about to die here from this boar like the hunter died from the lion. But as I waited for the beast’s leg to crush my body, the act itself never happened. I looked up through tired eyes and saw something piercing the boar’s head from above and the blade of light as I recognized later stopped mere inches from my head. I felt blood dripping to my face, both from the blade and from the beast that was already dead and then the beast fell sideways.

I heard Maia calling my name and I tried to get up but the pain was too much for me to move on my own and I was tired. The tusk logged inside my stomach was still killing me from the pain, and I felt the burning from inside me presumably from what must have spilled from my stomach to the rest of my insides. I was going to die here there was no question about it.

I felt a hand on my stomach where I was already holding the wound and I felt mine move for the other pair. “In the name of Ea, this is bad. Very bad. The boar’s tusk is stuck inside him and I’m sure that his stomach opened”. I was right about my hypothesis then. The hands pressed more on my wound to stop the wound from bleeding me out and the pain increased but I was so tired that I didn’t mind that much. “I need you to grab the tusk and pull it slowly when I tell you”.

Another pair of hands grabbed the tusk and then I felt warmth seeping into my body. It was the same as back then, only this time it was more urgent and intrusive. When I was unconscious from mana sickness the warmth was gentle but now it was relentless and needy. And it hurt. I arched my body and my mouth opened as I saw white from the pain and then I heard something and the other pair of hands started pulling on the tusk. The warmth kept burning me and as the tusk got out of my body it was getting even worse.

It reminded me of the time Yuto burned the cut on my back and this wasn’t all that different. The pain was excruciating and I wanted to scream but I took so much air in my lungs and I was trying to take even more, that I couldn’t make a sound. Finally the tusk was out of my body and the warmth started to fade along with the pain on my stomach but the rest of my body was hurting from the ramming too. I felt the ground returning under my back and my eyes started seeing normal again.

An almost crying Maia and Yuto were standing over me and they were wearing worried expressions. It took me a minute to figure out that the warmth was actually Maia’s magic that healed me and prevented my death but when the realization hit me she was already crushing me with her body and making me release all the air inside me. I felt her squeeze me hard and heard her crying before everything got dark and I was happy that lost consciousness now. If it was mere moments before then I was sure that I would have died even with the healing.