“What in the hell is going on here?” a voice yelled out.
Cobal and Mana were hiding in one of the tents, but with Grac being out of his cage and still nearby, they wouldn’t be able to hide for long. They held their breath, quietly waiting for a moment.
“I think there’s some rats hiding among us.” A sizzling sound appeared followed by a high pitched whine and then all of a sudden the tent they were hiding in was ablaze. Without missing a beat Cobal cut open the back and pushed Mana out, before going after her.
“There you are.” A wild grin was on the face of the man standing on the other side of the collapsing tent. He was a very strong looking man. Wearing an eyepatch that covered his left eye, his face was focused on our duo. “So you killed my men and stole my little pet, what do you want from me?”
Mana stood up next to Cobal. “Your pet?” She looked at him with anger in her eyes. “That kind soul is a person.”
The man laughed. “That’s a monster at best, little girl.” He slowly unsheathed his sword, “but it’s mine.”
Cobal did the same but before he knew it, one of the bandits was upon him and pinned him to the ground. “You’re not interfering in the boss’s fun.”
“Mana, get to safety, quickly.” Where was Eliana, where was Grac.
Cobal looked around, panic starting to take hold of him. He spotted Grac who was cowering behind his cage. He then spotted Eliana on the edge of camp. She seemed to be looking for an opening. She met his eyes and nodded. Good, there was still an option.
“I know who you are,” the man said. “You should feel honored that Jonus the great has heard of you, you’re that wizard that the kingdom has been parading around, aren’t you?”
“How do you know about that?” Cobal yelled.
Jonus grinned at him. “I’m a well-informed man, I know what’s going on in my country.”
“You’re just a third-rate bandit.”
“I may be just a bandit, but I’ve been chosen by the gods to be a powerful bandit.” He extended his hand and a ball of fire slammed into Cobal’s leg, exploding on impact. Cobal yelled out in pain. “Look at the gifts I’ve been given by the boss.”
Cobal was too focused on the pain in his leg to notice that Mana unsheathed her dagger, the one that Jerasi had personally made for her. A ripple of light went over the weapon as the anger on Mana’s face washed away. “Alright, let’s see if your god has forsaken you,” Cobal heard her say. Not expecting this intensity from her, he shifted his focus away from the wound to instead look at Mana. Even from seeing her back he could feel how intense her calmness was. As if she took all her emotions and pushed them elsewhere. The dagger started turning a bright white as she held it in front of her. “You know, there are a lot of things in my old world that I didn’t like, but I never had the power to change them. When I first came to this world I worried the same would be true here.”
“What are you talking about, lass? Come at me.”
Mana ignored the man, continuing, “but in the past few months I learned something. I may not be the legendary hero that people think I am, but I’m not powerless either.” She stepped forward and her blade almost sang as it cut through the air, leaving a vacuum behind. She took another step, the blade singing out once more before she suddenly let go of the blade. Instead of falling to the ground, it shot forward, slicing through the shoulder of the bandit.
“You’ll pay for that,” Jonus yelled, charging at her. Mana pushed out a gust of air to try and push him off balance. He faltered, but only for a moment, before continuing his charge. This did give Mana enough time to dive out of the way and roll into some stacked up boxes. As she did so, Cobal heard the sound of the blade singing through the air intensify before he saw the point of it sticking out of the neck of the bandit that had him pinned down. Blood started trickling down as Cobal pushed him off. Mana got up and watched as the bandit came charging at her, hurling fire at the crates around her. Unfazed, she stood there as fire missed her by a hair’s breadth. With incredible speed, the dagger shot back towards her, striking Jonus in his back and knocking him off balance. After stumbling and rolling into the pile of crates that Mana was standing in as well, he looked up at her. “Well I’ll be,” was all he could get out before the dagger impaled his good eye and went deep into his skull.
Silence filled the clearing before Cobal asked. “Are you alright?” at Mana.
Mana smiled at him. “No.” And she collapsed.
The next two hours were very stressful for Cobal. After making sure all of the bandits were dead and going through their stuff, he made sure that Grac was alright and wouldn’t suddenly turn on them. On top of that, Mana didn’t seem to wake up. Once they were finally done with everything in the camp, they had Grac carefully carry Mana over his shoulder as they traveled further back into the forest to find their own place to camp. They talked very little throughout everything. Eliana seemed to have other things on her mind and Cobal didn’t mind the quiet. He was still reeling from the violence. This was the second time since they left home that things had taken a violent turn and he was not nearly as prepared for it as he thought. It was a terrible feeling to take someone’s life and watching Mana – who he considered to be an incredibly kind soul – kill a man, a powerful man at that, was not a pleasant experience.
It took two more hours for Mana to wake up. Eliana had assured him that she was just asleep from the shock and she would be fine, and she luckily turned out to be correct. Grac watched over her as Cobal and Eliana set up the camp and when everything was set up, Cobal told Grac to get some rest. They didn’t have a bedroll or a tent his size, but he said that he would sleep against a nearby tree and that would be more comfortable than the cage he had been held in.
“At least take this extra blanket we have,” Cobal insisted. Grac happily accepted and went to sleep. Before he dozed off he looked at Cobal once more. “Thank you for helping me,” he said.
Cobal smiled. “That goes both ways.”
Grac had gone to sleep by the time Mana woke up again.
“Morning darling,” Eliana said when she noticed Mana sitting upright.
“Are you okay?” Cobal asked.
“I think so, what happened?”
“Well, you went and passed out,” Eliana said. “After you stabbed the crap out of that bandit.”
“Great, I was hoping that I didn’t actually stab a man to death.” She leaned forward and Cobal and Eliana watched as she threw up. Eliana rubbed her back. “Get it all out, that’s best for you.”
Mana nodded weakly. “Where are we right now?”
Cobal stood up. “We made a little ways away from the bandit camp, Grac is sleeping over there.” He pointed at the sleeping Irkan.
“Well, after being in such a bad place for a while, he needs the rest.” Mana sank back onto the bedroll. “So do I, apparently. Can we continue this conversation in the morning?”
Cobal nodded. “Get some rest, we’ll keep watch for now.”
Within minutes, Mana was asleep again.
Eliana took the first watch and after Cobal made sure that both Mana and Grac were fast asleep, he went to bed himself. He slept surprisingly well. He was worried he would not be able to sleep at all but the moment his head touched his bedroll the exhaustion that he’d shoved away all day washed over him all at once and he felt his body relax. It did only feel like a few minutes had passed when Eliana woke him up, but looking at the pitch black darkness it was definitely several hours later and deep into the night.
“You slept well I reckon?” She asked, handing him a cup of water.
Cobal nodded. “Surprisingly so, must have been the exhaustion catching up with me.”
Eliana chuckled. “I hope I can sleep well too.” She looked around. “Forests at night creep me out, I much prefer being on the open seas. No enemies in the treeline there and anyone that would approach us would be spotted long before they’re breathing down my neck.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” Cobal admitted. “Are you not scared of dangerous creatures coming from underneath the waves?”
There was a pause before Eliana answered. “Not that much. If a dweller of the deep were to set their eyes on our ship we would die in mere moments. Are you scared of a storm or getting hit by lightning? It’s the same. It’s so far beyond anything we can deal with that there’s no point in worrying about it.”
“So you’d consider dangerous sea creatures a natural disaster?”
Eliana nodded. “Anything small, we can deal with pretty easily, but dangerous creatures from legends might as well be a natural disaster.”
“But you won’t find any of those in a forest, right?”
Eliana’s face went so white that even in the dimly lit forest Cobal couldn’t miss the change in demeanor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Eliana replied. She stood up and stretched her arms. “Just some bad memories.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine, but Mana taught me that sometimes it helps to share these sorts of things with friends.”
Eliana paused. She had her back turned to him and was staring off in the distance. “It’s probably not a very interesting story, but if you’re willing to listen then I suppose I can share with you.”
“I’ve got time,” Cobal joked.
Eliana chuckled. She turned back around and sat down before reaching over to her satchel. She rummaged through it for a moment before taking out a beautiful golden necklace. The necklace had large golden beads with finely cut gemstones interspersed between the gold. Cobal saw diamonds, rubies, emeralds and even stones he didn’t recognize. “That’s a beautiful necklace. I have a friend who makes jewelry and she’s taught me a lot about the craft. I can tell from even a glance that whoever made that was extremely talented.”
Eliana blushed. “I appreciate you saying that. This necklace was made by my husband.”
Cobal was about to ask a question when they heard the sound of someone moving. In a flash, the necklace was gone, back into the satchel, and a weapon was where the necklace was a moment ago. “Who goes there?” Eliana called out.
“It’s just me,” a familiar voice spoke. Cobal looked up to see that Mana was awake and had gotten up from her bedroll. “Mind if I listen in on this story?” she asked.
Eliana let out a deep sigh of relief. “Don’t scare me like that.” She put her weapon away.
Cobal relaxed the tension in his muscles as well. “I might as well make some tea then.”
Opal Kaharis 