His hands are surprisingly warm. Around him, I've always felt a cold aura. His grip is tight, yet I manage to kick him in the shins before I whirl around and see it is not Maven at all. One of the new bloods Maven had recruited back when I was at Whitefire. His power, to create fire without a flame maker bracelet.
I grab his hand before he has he chance to send a fireball my way. His form is sloppy, Ibcould knock him out any second. Instead I keep my grip on him.
"Join us. We can help you." His eyes tell me he wants to, but he shakes his head.
"It's to late for that now." He struggles to free himself. But I manage to send a bolt to him, his body seizing up before hitting the round. I don't have time to check his pulse before more soldiers come to attack me. No, they are trying to knock me out to imprison me once again. I bet their king has ordered to catch me, alive.
It's getting harder to attack. Half of these soldiers must be lakelanders. And not all the SG is here at the rift. We are vastly outnumbered before I hear Farley call out to retreat.
I obey after sending one last web of lightning to the soldiers, giving my last bit of energy away before I feel a sharp jab in my chest. I turn to see a red, his eyes wide in fear of me. His hands tremble as he holds a sword that had been plunged into my body.
Red blood, my blood coats the blade. I don't have energy to send lighting his way, so I punch him square in the face before he takes of, fleeing from me.
I sigh, as I make my way back to Kilorn. He has taken out the knife in his body and is patched up with his shirt. He takes one look at me before panicking, quickly grabbing me in his arms.
"I can walk on my own." I groan. He shakes his head pointing his chin at my side. I remove my hands from the wound where the sword is still sticking out. Blood is dropping like a waterfall from the wound. At this rate, I will die from blood lose.
Reluctantly, I grab the handle of the sword before attempting to pull it out. I quickly let go, moaning in pain. Kilorn takes it this time, yanking it out. I give a loud scream before he hushed me.
Quickly, Kilorn grabs a shirt from a corpse and wraps it around my chest. I feel horrible for wearing a dead mans shirt, yet I have no choice. We rush to the retreating Scarlet guard, fleeing with them.
We enter the estate, going downstairs to a secret tunnel and train. There are no less than 100 of us, so boarding a massive train is easy. Me and Kilorn find a seat and sit as I moan in pain.
Farley soon finds us, obviously upset.
"Most of the guard is up south, only 200 members of the guard stayed here." I can tell she is great fly that she left Clara with my family up south. All the same, the rift fled when Maven and his soldiers first came, leaving us to fight alone. This is where Farley gets angry.
"All they want is to protect their precision rebellion, yet they don't honour the treaty we signed!" I calm her down by giving her a seat next to me. I've never seen her so angry.
She looks over at me, realizing the large gash in my side. "I'll be fine" I tell her. She's seen worse and nods yet I feel like I'm being set ablaze. The wound is deep but others lying around us who have deeper cuts are doing just well. Already better than how I feel.
My vision is slowly beginning to blur in and out as into black spots cloud my vision. I hear Kilrons faint voice.
"Are you ok? Mare! You are pouring blood!" As I am about to tell him it is fine, I cough. Blood spurts out of my mouth.
The last thing I see before I go out cold, is my red blood splattered across the trains floor.
My eyes adjust to the lighting that pours in through the window. The room is painted a faded pink with stains covering the wall. I sit up from the bed I lay against, my chest throbbing as I do so. To my side is a couch. It's ripped up and faded like the drapes that barely keep the light out the room. Kilorns sitting on it. As well as Cal. I forgot he too must have retreated on the train. Kilorn notices me waking up first and rushes to my side. He touches my forehead, checking my temperature.
"How you feeling?" I groan in reply and he chuckles softly. But it's an empty laugh, so fake that it worries me.
"What happened?" Now Cal has joined me at my bedside, but I only keep my eyes on Kilorn.
"You were stabbed." Kilorn starts.
"I know that you dimwit," I say light heartedly, trying to keep this conversation away from being morbid and dark. It works, getting a small laugh out of Kilorn and a smile from Cal. "I mean how'd we get here. And where exactly is here?"
"Apparently Maven knew about the train. We were raised before we even got halfway to our destination. On the run since. The guard that was at the rift split into several smaller groups so it would be harder to track us. About 15 of us found this abandoned village and are seeking refuge in it. Since most of the guard was up south and not at the rift, we don't have as many resources. Or healers. And we are lost too without the train or maps. It's going to be a lot harder going up south now." Cal tells me. It's a lot to take in, but I do. I slowly get up from the bed, with Cal and Kilorn hovering over me like I might shatter any second.
"Give it a break," I say, annoyed, "I'm fine. I just need a walk." Before either of them can protest, I leave the small hut and close the door behind me. I take small strides towards the forest that surrounds the village. I hold my head up high, trying to look as though I'm not in pain .
Once I reach the thick woods, I give up the act. I clench my chest in pain and grunt as I keep walking. My vision is cloudy yet I keep going. I don't know where to but away from everything else so I can think.
I hear little trickles of water and go as fast as my body will let me towards a small stream. I follow the sounds of water and it leads me to a tiny stream where I quickly strip of my clothes and plung into the water. It's lukewarm, and I swim around a bit before trying to clean out my wound. It hurts with ever touch, but if I dont clean it out, it will get infected. I can tell someone already attempted to clean it out but did a horrible job at it.
The wound is at the side of my chest, and is a bright red as I wash out the dry blood. I even take my shirt to rub the access blood off my body, then proceed to wash my clothes in the water before laying it across the rocks around the stream to dry off. I let myself relax now that my injury is somewhat cleaned. I can't guarantee it's fully sanitized: After all, I didn't even use soap. I sit myself on the rocks. My legs are in the water yet my wound is above. It stings far too much to put in the water.
As I began to finally relax, the sting in my chest calming down, I hear a rustle in the forest. My natural instinct is hiding under the water. It was a stupid choice because I come up for air and see who was in the forest. At the rocks near the edge of the lake stands Cameron. Her hair is loose and messy as she examines my chest as I get up from the water.
"Sorry, I didn't clean it out so well." I nod at her, not minding. Others shouldn't have to take care of me. I suddenly feel bare when a cool wind hits me. Cameron notices and grabs my half dried clothes.
"Cal sent me to look for you." She says calmly. She knows what happened between us. Practically everyone does. But the fact doesn't stop me from jumping a bit when I relieve she knows.
"Cal she grow up and get me himself. Or I don't know, leave me alone?" She laughs quietly at my anger.
"I'll be sure to tell him that. Your wound though is too bad for you to be walking around. And your clothes are still soggy. Wait for me, I'll fetch some we found at the village." I only nod as I watch her go back into the forest.
Once she is out of sight, I slip on my damp clothes and walk further away from the village until I realize I'm lost. Just like when I took that hike outside the estate at the rift. I smile emptily at the thought and continue my walk.
The forest becomes denser and denser before it opens up to a footpath. Curiously gets the best of me when I decide to follow it. My chest hurts more now. No, now my entire upper body throbs with pain. I attempt to brush it off, never stopping my walk on the path. The my legs go stiff and I'm unable to move them. Slowly I lose control of my body as I fall to the ground and start coughing up some blood. The wound itself shouldn't have been to bad, but it feels as though something else is infecting me. Like poison. My eyes widen in fear.
The boy who stabbed me. I remember him. A recruit from the scarlet guard. A new blood with the gift of potion making. And poisons. He must have coated the sword with his poisons, the traitor. I panic, clutching at my chest before I pass out.
As you can all tell I am absolutely horrid at writing fight scenes and so forth. But please bear with me and my writing.
I will try and write every second day, so I will publish a new chapter at least 3 times a week. At the same time though, it takes a while to publish a story so it may be late sometimes, sorry about that.
I'm still new to everything so I'm trying to figure out how to reply to comments and other stuff. I'm also trying to write 1k words for each chapter. I'm also thinking about getting an editor. Someone who can just check over grammatical stuff before I publish since im quite busy this month. Please do PM if you are interrelated for this!
Also I'm really grateful when I see review and feedback from you guys so that I can improve more! I saw a recent review asking about the scene where Maven is holding Mare in chapter one. The reader asked for more details and I'm definitely looking into that! I will also try to ensure more details into the story for future chapters!
Thank you all for reading!
