Author's Note: Not a very happy chapter. The next one will have some more lightness in it, I promise.
"Here," Rowen said. "Give me your hand. I'll show you."
Hazael obliged. He watched as the older soldier laid a needle in a flame for a couple minutes while he took out a bottle of black ink.
"How many?"
"What?"
"How many did you kill?"
"Three."
He closed his eyes, and their faces flashed before him. A Naja man with a snake head but a human face. He hadn't screamed as he died. He couldn't. Hazael had stabbed him straight through his throat. A tiger-headed Dashnag woman. She had cried out – half human scream, half animal roar – as he slashed her open from shoulder to belly. And a slender Kirin boy. A soldier, yes, but hardly old enough to be called a man. Their fight had taken place high above the battlefield. What the boy lacked in strength he more than made up for in speed and agility. Until Hazael had managed to sever one of his enormous wings. Then he had fallen to the ground in pieces, spinning and thrashing wilding, trying and failing to right himself with only one wing.
An involuntary shudder passed over his face. Hazael was seated around the campfire with other soldiers from his regiment. Akiva was a few paces to his left, staring deeply into the flames. Liraz was next to him, busy tattooing her own fingers. At least they had both survived the battle unharmed, Hazael thought quietly. Several other new recruits had not been so fortunate.
Rowen's armor marked him as Misbegotten, and his heavily blackened fingers marked him as a seasoned killer. But his expression was surprisingly gentle as he took Hazael's right index finger and began inking in the first tattoo.
"How old are you, soldier?" he asked.
"Fourteen."
Rowen nodded. "First battle's the worst. It gets easier after that."
Hazael said nothing. Instead he turned and stared at the other fires blazing in the darkness of the battlefield. Fires of the dead. The smoke rising from them was even blacker than the night sky. Black as the three new marks on his finger. It blotted out the stars. Which fires contained the remains of the Naja man and the Dashnag woman? Where was the Kirin boy?
Rowen followed his gaze. "They fought bravely."
Hazael turned back to him, surprised, thinking he meant the chimaera warriors.
Rowen continued, "We'll make sure we avenge them." He returned the needle and ink to his tattoo kit and rose to his feet. "Get some rest. We move forward at dawn."
The campfire dwindled as one by one soldiers began to retire to their tents. Hazael, exhausted yet afraid to try to sleep, stayed where he was.
"Hazael." He looked up to see his brother. "Are you all right?"
Hazael dropped his gaze. He stared at the three black bars on his right index finger and shrugged. "I'm alive."
Akiva dropped down beside him and took his tattooed hand. Akiva's fingers bore marks of their own now, he noticed. Four of them.
"You're alive, and so are we. That's what matters."
"I know." Hazael replied, still staring at the marks on his hands.
"They're beasts, Hazael. Just beasts." Akiva sounded as though he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Hazael.
Hazael nodded numbly. He knew the chimaera were beasts. More to the point, they were the enemy. But when they cried out in pain – or worse, when they cried out in grief – they sounded like seraphim.
"I'm glad you're okay," Akiva said. "Liraz told me you almost…"
"Yeah." He nodded. "Early in the battle. I froze. I knocked one of the them to the ground, and… I should have killed him, but I just…"
"It's okay."
"No. It's not. Akiva, I'm not… I'm not made for this. I'm not a soldier."
Akiva was at a loss for words. "Hazael…" Hazael was pretty sure that, despite preparing for this their entire lives, Akiva felt no more cut out for this lifestyle than he did.
"It will get easier," Akiva said at last. "Everyone says so."
"And that's supposed to make us feel better?"
Akiva shrugged. Poor Akiva. Usually Hazael was the one trying to cheer his siblings up, not the other way around. Akiva wasn't sure how to fill this role.
"Liraz was amazing, though," Akiva said at last, attempting to change the subject.
Hazael smiled. "She was the one who saved me. When I froze up, one of the chimaera almost skewered me. She came out of nowhere and blocked the blow."
Akiva and Hazael looked over to where their sister was crouched in the firelight, lovingly cleaning her blade. The sword was nearly half her height, but she handled it with terrifying ease. Not for the first time, Hazael found himself marveling over how someone so tiny could be so deadly.
Liraz seemed to feel their gaze on her, for as she finished polishing her blade, she lifted her head, met their eyes, and smiled. She stood up, sheathing the blade, and walked swiftly over to join her brothers.
"Talking about me behind my back again, were you?" She smiled playfully. Unlike her half-brothers, Liraz had been in an unusually good mood all evening. On her left hand, the ink of her self-made tattoo bars shone brightly in the firelight. Hazael counted seven of them.
"Gossip about you?" Akiva smiled half-heartedly. "No one who values their personal safety does that."
"I was only telling Akiva how you saved my life today," Hazael explained. Liraz's expression fell the slightest bit, as she thought of how close her brother had come to death that afternoon. But the gloom on her face didn't last long.
"You know what that means, right?" She grinned that vicious grin of hers. "One point for me."
Hazael felt sick to stomach, but he fought down the nausea and forced a smile. "Yeah. I guess we're even."
"For now," Liraz agreed.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! If you'd like to make a random stranger extremely happy, please leave feedback. I will be forever grateful.