Washed by the green radiance of the girl's Mark, what stumbled out of the shroud before them was a boy. He had tanned skin smeared with greasy filth, and wore a sleeveless, dirty white frock with poorly-sewn patches of discolored fabric. Very similar to what the girl sitting frozen beside Frey wore, although hers didn't have as much patches.
To Frey's surprise, the girl reacted first--quite violently, at that. "Tack?" her face was a confused mixture of happiness and shock.
The boy, glass-eyed with fatigue, blinked out of his stupor. "Li-Liezel?" he weakly eeked. His scrawny frame was hunched over, shaking knees folded to a squat under his must-be-insubstantial weight.
"Tack!" she must've forgotten about her less-than-functional limb: the girl jolted up from her sprawl not far beside Frey. She moaned as soon as she planted the wrong, wounded foot on the ground, lurching forward. Frey barred his left arm in front of her in reflex, and instead of crashing down the leafy forest floor her chest slammed against his taut-muscled arm, and she wrapped her arms around his like a fledgling koala scared of falling from the Eucalyptus.
Liezel Magtala, was it? Her carelessness amused him yet again. He wondered how someone like her lived this far into the game, and he got the strangest feeling he would know soon enough. She looked up at him, confused. She casted her gaze down, to see how she was hugging his forearm like a body pillow across her chest. He could feel her heart rate triple as they stood there, locked in an awkward staring contest.
"You shouldn't be here." they heard the boy utter, his voice shaking. They both turned to see tears washing the boy's grimy cheeks. But he wasn't bawling. His face was gray, emotionless, broken.
"I told you to run, didn't I? I told you not to stop, until you get to Kazil. Why?"
"Tack I,"
"Why?!" Liezel Magtala was cut off by the boy named Tack.
Not sooner than Tack's outburst faded in the wind did the soil beneath them vibrated with the faint march of footsteps. Frey thought it his imagination, but when Liezel bit her lip and stared down her Mark with squinting eyes, and the boy turned around with a jerk, he knew it wasn't.
"We have to run," Tack said with a flat, croaking voice. He staggered toward Liezel, but before he got close Frey had pointed the tip of his black katana to his neck.
"Run from what?" Frey asked. Although he already had an idea what. It must be the guards Liezel warned him about: those who were tasked to kill Players. But the boy didn't have a Mark. Maybe something else were chasing them.
Tack stopped just before the blade punctured his neck. Still, his face was blank--unafraid, even with a sword-end under his chin. He looked at Frey, jaded eyes devoid of any emotion.
"Who are you, sir?" he asked, "Actually, that doesn't matter... You should get away as well. The guards will capture you too, when they see you aiding a Player. Aiding us."
So he wasn't wrong; the ones chasing them were guards from Redel. The rumbling was a lot closer now, and he could hear the clanking of steel accompany the heavy march of footsteps. By the frequency and the weight of the sounds, he estimated there to be at least a dozen pair of footsteps, belonging to full-grown men. That's a whole platoon.
But, that didn't have anything to do with him. The boy was right; their fight was not his. He's got no obligation at all to help them. He was a Player, but only Liezel Magtala knew that. He can masquerade as a normal inhabitant of this world as long as his gloves were intact. The guards wouldn't know, and he can get into Redel without a hitch as long as he's prudent. He didn't need to help the two, and possibly get himself killed trying to. There was no hope of escape for them. The boy was tired and weak. The girl can't run with her wounded leg. Both of them had no weapons. They will die tonight, and the girl holding onto his left arm knew that fact very well.
She hadn't squeaked a word in the past few moments. Her head was hung low, and he couldn't see the look on her face. But she was crying. He knew, without looking, and without hearing a sound, she was crying. Warmth fell in drops onto the sleeve of his woolen coat, conveyed to his sense by the wetness of the thick fabric.
He put down his katana and slid it into its black scabbard.
Tack, without his obstruction, gently pulled Liezel's hands off of his arm. The girl all but weakly draped her arm over the boy's shoulders, her left foot planted firmly and right foot tiptoeing. Tack's knees buckled under her weight suddenly resting on him.
Tack looked Frey in the eye. "You should run, while there's still time." The boy walked past him, one unsteady step at a time, supporting the girl by his side, in a speed that wouldn't beat a snail in a race.
"Worry about yourselves." Frey snorted. "With her weight dragging you down, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell outrunning them." Forget about hiding; the girl's glowing Mark made sure they couldn't. The marching should've been less than ten meters then, growing into a deafening tune beyond the shadow of trees and foliage. .
The girl flinched at his words. Stuttering she said. "He's right, Tack. You should leave me. At least one of us will live."
Tack simply shook his head, taking another strained step forward. Frey admired how brave and kind the boy was, but hated how foolish he could get.
"No, boss Barton told me to get you and the others to safety." he said.
Just then something in his head clicked, like a light switch flicked on, the second he heard the familiar name slip from the boy's mouth.
"Wait." Tack and Liezel looked at him over their backs.
"What do you know about Barton?" Frey didn't think twice to ask.
The boy opened his mouth to speak, but stopped and froze. Finally, his face betrayed emotion. And that emotion was fear. He was no longer looking at Frey anymore, but behind him, jaded eyes bulging in shock.
Frey understood why. He turned around to see some six middle-aged men, clad in steel armor and leather paddings, form a half circle in front of him and before his campfire. Two of them to his right wielded spears and bucklers, while the rest had their gleaming broadswords stare at him at arm's length. Frey stepped back and drew his dark blade. The soldiers encroached on him, their eyes menacing.
"Hold it." an orotund shout halted their advance. Cutting their formation from behind was a soldier taller than the rest, with shoulders broad as hills, covered in layers of steel plates. He was brown-skinned with a wrinkled face well past forty, but his strong, straight posture showed only a man in his prime. He was no shorter than seven feet, and in his right hand was a broadsword about thrice as broad as his katana and a tad longer than the other soldiers'.
On the left chest of his plate mail, shining scarlet in the light of the campfire, was a polygonal red crest with two etched blades crossed to an 'x'.
"Put down your sword and speak your name, vagrant." the imposing soldier demanded. "I am Captain Zalvik Slord of 48th Infantry Battalion of the Redel Imperial Force. What is your connection to these two criminals?"
Behind him was Liezel squeaking in fear. He didn't turn around to know that their route had been blocked, and they're surrounded by the rest of the squad.
"I didn't know they were criminals." Frey lowered his sword, but didn't put it back in its sheath. He turned at Liezel weeping behind him. She had been seized, a guard locking each of her arms. The boy was in the same predicament. They didn't bother struggling. Liezel shook her head at him in frantic manner, staring at him with brown, crying eyes that plead to be saved. Crying eyes that prickled his conscience with thorns the longer they took root on him. He turned away from her gaze, to spare him the unnecessary guilt.
"I'm from a hamlet down south," Frey continued, "sent by our Elder on an errand to deliver a strange material to a blacksmith named Barton in Redel. I was on my way to your city when I came across these two distressed souls. I thought they were beggars and pitied their helplessness so I thought as a good man I should help."
"... I see." the Captain furrowed his brows at his lies, skeptic, but didn't push on it further, as Tack and Liezel didn't say anything against his words.
"Where is the material?"
"Pardon?"
"You said you're to deliver a strange material to Barton, but he is in the custody of the King, so you will have to turn your parcel over to us."
Frey gasped, feigning shock. He wasn't really surprised that this Barton was in bars. The boy called him "boss" just then, and more importantly, he remembered, Barton himself was a Player. Not a Player in his game, but a Player nonetheless. And Players, for some reason unknown to him, was on the whole kingdom's shitlist.
"Do you mind if I ask a question, Captain Zalvik?"
Captain Zalvik growled. It was weak, but it was there. "Go on."
"I haven't been to Redel before, and I know not of the blacksmith Barton, which is why before I turn in to you the package, I must ask, what did the man do?"
"It was by the order of the King that the famous blacksmith be detained. He is a traitor and as much a criminal as these two. As an outsider, that is all you need to know. Now," Captain Zalvik held out a palm covered in leather. "the parcel."
"Right." he reached inside his coat.
A throwing dagger flew out of Frey's hand, straight into the chink between the shoulder guard and the steel armor of the Captain. His guttural grunt as he pulled the dagger from his shoulder sprung his lackeys into action. In the next second, swords were swinging Frey's way. He stepped back from their slashes. Spearheads were onto him; he sidestepped out of their thrust.
Tack and Liezel, and the four soldiers holding them, watched Frey jump around and over the enemies' strikes deftly with their mouths agape.
Frey couldn't believe how fast his reflexes acted. He could dodge the swift spike of a spear he only saw coming from the corner of his vision. The katana was suddenly light, but he attributed it to the hot adrenaline pushing the cold off his nerves. He deflected the smash of a broadsword and redirected its force to the side. The enemy soldier tumbled with off-balanced momentum propelling him past Frey harmlessly. Another swing came his way, and he didn't bother clashing sword with the enemy. He ducked below the swipe as he unholstered a dagger from his belt. When the enemy's blade had gone past his head he sprung up, pushed a dagger into the enemy's neck with his gloved palm. The soldier wandered off Frey's sight, scratching his itchy neck, or rather the gash he'd carved into it. One down.
Another rushed up at him; he was a soldier wielding a spear, ducked behind a round, steel-rimmed wooden shield. He'd been dodging the two spearmen for too long. It was time he took out one of them. Frey stood still and calmed his breath. The spearman took a phalanx position with the spear and buckler decked out in front of him. Then, the soldier charged his way like a bull aiming for the matador.
Frey sucked in air and, in the last second before the spearhead pierced his chest, he dodged out of the way. The spearman rammed past, exposing his open back to Frey. He brandished his sword, a black katana gleaming under the moonlight, and its edge collided with the steel plate covering the soldier's back. Then, something disturbing happened. The katana was supposed to clash with the enemy armor; he even half-expected the edge to chip, or the blade to snap in half. At the very least he would feel something, anything, an impact, a sound, friction. He felt nothing. The black blade did not clash with the steel plate--it cut through, but Frey felt no resistance. It's as if he slashed through thin air. As the blade rended through the soldier's armor and flesh like knife through butter, Frey felt energy get sucked out from his whole arm to his right hand, and flow straight into the blade. Dark, impalpable smoke drifted behind the curved black sword like fading afterimage.
The spearman dropped face-down on the floor, a deep, black cut across his back. Blood didn't flow out, as if the wound was cauterized. Frey couldn't afford to be stunned as more swords came his way.