Elemental - Chapter Three

The morning found the other boy under the bramble and brush, just waking from his paralysis. His entire body was covered in cuts and scratches and his face was bruised severely. His legs had long scrapes just scabbing over and his hands and feet were torn. He was splintered like a porcupine and beaten from his own ignorance. He stood slowly, swaying and shaking, and had to rest against the tree. He leaned against it, cursing its’ very existence, and hobbled down the trail, trying to ignore the pain.
He could recall the accident but not why he was there in the first place.
I remember looking for food, and climbing higher and higher. But then what? He walked slowly, not wanting to upset his wounds, and wracked his brain for thought. He remembered seeing something, something calling him to climb higher against his better judgment. He knew it was important, vitally so. But he could not remember.
He breathed deeply of the forest air to calm himself when his heart skipped a beat. It was not the fresh honey smell he had grown up with, but a smell he knew to fear.
Smoke. It was a fire! That’s what it was! He took off; racing through the trees at his maximum speed in spite of his scabs cracking, oozing blood. He willed himself not to stop, holding himself responsible if the forest was burned down to the south. He moved faster and faster, winding through trails and paths only he knew. He braced himself for a scolding but nothing could have prepared him for what he found.
He came to the main gate of Eyo, a large wooden doorway painted white and gold, carved vines embroidering it. But this day as he found it, was charred black. The vines were gone and the colors evaporated. Behind it, great pillars of smoke plumed into the sky as midnight clouds. The stained horizon was horrific and stunning at the same time. The boy dropped to his knees, empty, and prayed for those lost. But just as all his hope had vanished he heard screams.
Instantly he barreled in their direction, any attempt not made was unforgivable he decided and sped past the smoldering buildings and homes. The cottages were already destroyed and the stone shoppes were blackened and smoking. But as he went the structures were less destroyed and more recent, the last dozen still burning.
He found them. Two men wearing simple black garb stood around several women from the town. The men laughed and smiled deviously as they closed in on them. The men were not wakers and were simple bandits as they carried bags of loot on their backs and wore emblems to signify which clan they were from. Their simple swords and axes were tarnished and chipped and their clothing in as fair condition as his own.
The boy wondered why they were there but wasted no time asking questions and tackled the nearest man. They fell in a heap, struggling and kicking, the others swinging at them with their hands and feet. The boy ignored the strikes and continued to attack the men, punching and kicking as furiously as he could muster. The women ran, enraging the men who pulled the boy off their partner and tossed him aside.
“This un’s mine.” The man said as he wiped blood from his busted lip, the other holding the boys’ arms back. The man began punching him in his exposed stomach and face, cruelly beating him defenselessly. The boy dropped but was held up by the larger bandit as the smaller continued on him. The boy refused to cry and gritted his teeth in concentration, ignoring the pain and numbing his body. Twice he thought he had blacked out in doing so.
After several minutes of this the bandit dropped him.
“Let’s just kill ‘em already.”
“Why? And give him an easy way outta’ hittin’ me? I don’t think so.” He removed his dagger from its sheath and approached the boy sprawled out in the grass. He gripped the boy’s hair and leaned his head back, neck and face exposed. “No, I won’t kill ‘em yet.”
And with that, he drug the blade down the boy’s face from his left temple to his right jaw, across his nose and left eye. The boy fell in a heap as the waves of pain crashed against him, the current pounding him into the ground. He clawed at his face to make it stop but the blood continued pulsing across his face until he was drenched. The bandits left then and followed the women, continuing to burn the village.
“We’ll be back for you, punk!” The smaller one called over his shoulder as he tossed a torch behind him, landing just inches from the stained boy. His shoulder heaved as he gasped for ragged breaths that tore at his throat and burned his lungs. The fire caught his blood and smelled of death immediately. The boy recoiled from it and struggled to move away from it.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” He roared as he ripped his shirt off and tied it across his head, covering his wounded eye as well. He ran to the well and pulled up a bucket throwing it on the torch then the rest on himself. He looked down at his reflection, the massacre he was, and cursed himself for his brashness.
“How the hell am I going to fight them when I’m too busy getting thrown to the ground?” He asked aloud and kicked at the dirt. A sharp pain shot through his toe as it hit something solid. He cursed and looked at the object. It was a sword, the hilt pointing to him with the blade beneath a pile of burning rubble. He stooped down and pulled it out, dropping it as he did. The now freed sword was as hot as coals and the handle burned his palm to its design. He watched as the bright red serpent on his hand turned white and blistered. He removed the right glove off a body nearby and took the sword, inspecting it.
It was a long sword with a two handed hilt, the pommel silver and the hand guard white gold. It gleamed in the sunlight scintillatingly and faintly glowed orange from the fire’s heat. The boy took this advantage and rushed after the bandits, his body screaming in protest with every step. The weight of the sword slowed him but heartened him the same. He rounded the corner to the far side of town when he found them.
A single house was left, all the villagers crammed inside as the men stood around it, trying to fend off the bandits. Pitchforks, axes, and any tool they could find were brandished defiantly. The bandits were outnumbered but had the advantage of surrounding them with better weapons. The battle was just starting when the boy entered the fray, keeping away from all but his target. He watched in horror as blood was spilled and the cries of pain were silenced, his stomach twisting. He found the bandit who had beaten him just as he beheaded a farmer the boy once knew.
All time seemed to slow; the battle moving like sap. The boy hurtled past the oncoming attackers easily and advanced on the one man he saw clearly. He raised his sword, knowing it was still scalding, and drove it through the man’s back and out his chest in a spray of blood.
The boy left the sword impaled in the man at a crude angle and vomited into the grass. His heaving was met with both redemption and regret, a sour taste in his mouth from not only his last meal’s reappearance. He returned to the bandit, who sat on his knees, hands wrapped around the protruding blade in his chest, eyes wide and glazed and face as pale as salt. The boy stared at him a second longer before removing the sword with a sickening slurp.
The broken body toppled over and was left behind as the boy continued to fight. All around him were the only people he had ever known, the closest he ever had to a family. He would protect them to the best of his abilities, even in death. He heaved up his bloodied sword and watched the others, waiting for an opportunity before entering a fight. He felled two men with the farmers and another with a student. But despite their efforts the bandits continued to pile in, always one to take the last’s place.
Rumm appeared then, his gray hair and wrinkled skin seeming to age by the second. He parted his feet and bent his knees to a low crouch, then, swinging his right foot up to his head, brought it down to the ground and swung his arms away from each other like brushing away tall grass. Instantly, the ground shook and exploded beneath the men as the springs nearby were pulled through it. The water shone like crystals as it erupted through their ranks, shimmering and majestic as it spiraled and pulled into the sky. The geysers threw the men high into the air, Rumm freezing the water with a breath, petrifying the water as it formed and made a wide bowl connected to a slide facing a burning building. The men hit the ice with a crunch and were funneled into the flames they started.
Instantly Rumm threw the ice over the windows to muffle the agonizing screams.
“Gather the dead and bring the wounded into the schoolhouse. Quickly!” He called before rushing off. The boy stood there, motionless as he absorbed everything that had passed. The ice had already melted and the building had collapsed, smoldering like a thousand coals, and the town fared no better. In every direction lay fire and destruction, death at every turn and blood soaked into the grass and spongy dirt. The smell of burning flesh hung heavy in the air as the smoke stained the sky black and the clouds pulled together to rain around it.
The steady drizzle made it final, to the boy. It was the tell-tell sign of a new beginning, a rebirth. This was the town’s death, and now to begin anew after baptism. He surveyed the surroundings, all the old shops and homes steaming as they roasted, the dozens of bodies lying wasted and bloodied, soaked in the rain. He couldn’t shake from his mind the faces of all those around him, both dead and living. This was horror, he decided. This was hell and the fire its servant.
He stopped thinking of it all, too much to handle, and began working to keep himself busy. He helped pull a cart of the dead to the schoolhouse and carried the children inside. He watched the room fill cartful by cartful until it was packed to the brim of the crying and dying, sick and bloodied. Children and women alike were among the men and all wept for the lost. Over twenty had been declared dead with twelve more missing, twice those figures in wounded.
Rumm approached him then.
“You there, I saw you fight. I had expected you to run and hide as the others, but there you were. I know you are a close friend of Benj’s, so I bring it upon myself to tell you.” His voice strained and his face frowned, staring at the ground below. “He is of the missing. All his brothers are accounted for but he is gone. Do you know where he may have been?”
The boy cursed himself in his mind for not thinking of Benj sooner.
“He was in the woods sleeping. I was in the tree hunting when I saw them.” He stopped and fought with himself not to yell. “But I fell, and was lost in darkness while they came. It’s my fault this happened.”
“You knew? You saw them coming?”
“Yes.”
Rumm looked at the boy then, eyes hard and set. Their once liquid blue seemed frozen.
“Leave, orphan. You have brought us a curse and bring us no relief with your presence!” He swept his hand up to point to the wilderness past his shoulder. He leaned in close and stared into the boy’s eyes. “Leave and never return no-name.”
Without a word or look back the boy was gone, running faster than he thought possible. The remains of the town were a blur as his mind set on leaving only. He ran, longer and longer, through the trees and across the hills. He leaped over rivers and streams without hesitation and wound down valleys and plateaus stretching as far as the eye could see. The boy disappeared before anyone would realize he was gone, for no one would.