Present-day...
A cape fire in the middle of the sand. The black desert of the night around us. We sat around its flickering flame as the dark cold winds blasted at chilling speeds.
"Where we heading to?" asked Ceauli as she laid back on her cloak, the moon dangling across the sky as she slowly drifted in and out of sleep.
Tusk sat up from the fire, his face glowing in the shadows as he told us where we were heading to, "The Kingdom of Rend. It's a distance away, but our first stop will be the fishing village of Morigan."
Ceauli relaxed her head against a soft balled-up piece of cloth.
She stared at me while mellowing in her past, "Kingdom of Rend... Brings back memories... I hated it there..."
I sat down next to her, my cloak spread out over the same area as hers.
"You've been to The Kingdom of Rend before?" I asked as she sat up slightly to get a better look at my face.
Tusk turned away from our conversation. He sat on the opposite end of the fire while sharping a dagger with a piece of thick iron.
The breeze was strong and sand was flying everywhere, so Ceauli and I couldn't really have our eyes open for that long, but we still tried to keep eye contact.
Ceauli explained, "I lived in Rend for a couple of years with my brother and uncle. Then we left for Forr about two years ago. It's a nice place in the Outerlands. They got good food and the cities are nice. I was never able to go to the capital, but the neighboring towns on the Outerlands were enjoyable to visit. But there was one problem, that Kingdom is filled with monsters. I think it averaged about two Monster Gates a week, actually, sometimes there was one every day. It was depressing having to always be in fear. I don't know why my uncle decided to stay there."
I fell back to my cloaked bed. So did Ceauli. We stared up at the stars together, side by side.
"Is it really that bad? Worse than Forr?" I asked.
"My uncle was very rough and... I guess I didn't have any friends, I was always so focused on Lin that I never had any time to do anything on my own. I wasn't able to make friends or have fun... It's the same kinda story with Forr, with Lin again... You could say you saved me from that, but I still feel sorta bad for him, Chinin, and Mirda. I left them all behind..."
I turned my head as she turned her head along with mine.
"No, I think... It's better to work for yourself than to work for others. Having your own dream can make life better. I think what you did was the right choice. Lin seems like he needs to go off on his own a bit, he needs someone to push him forward, instead of looking back."
"Looking back..."
Ceauli looked at me, I looked at her. She leaned in closer- I turned away as she reached out. My face staring up at the stars as her hand hovered above my head.
I explained, "I can't look back anymore. That medium lady told me that my path is my choice. That fate and destiny are just the points and not the story. It's probably the same thing for you Ceauli. You should look forward and try to pave your own path."
Ceauli held her hand close to her chest.
She closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep, "my own path..." She started mumbling, "maybe my path is your path..."
"Huh?"
"Nothing..."
She fell asleep...
"GRRRRRRRRREEEEAAAAAARRRRRR!"
I sat up to the sounds of a loud growling roar. I looked at the fire as its flickering flame slowly turned sour. I looked at the shadowed Tusk, his hand holding a dagger. He tossed it across the sand to me. I picked it up from the ground.
The dagger was golden, with a floral design...
"Wait, this is my..."
"I sharpened it for you. Use it to protect the girl. I'll deal with the monsters."
Tusk stood up as I looked down at my golden knife. It was a sharp as a piece of paper, so thin that it could cut me like butter. Tusk grabbed his black and gold Sword of Thunder and pulled it from its pitch-black sheath. He shined his black blade across the campfire, the short golden edge reflecting into the darkness ahead.
Black on black. The darkness around the sky. The eyes of red in the distance. One eye, two eyes, three eyes, five eyes, ten eyes. They were dogs.
"Devil Dogs?! Hellhounds?!" I questioned in shock as I looked at the red-eyed Hellhounds.
"No... They're not Hellhounds. They're different... Look..."
He pointed to more red eyes in the distance. They stood higher than the dogs, with long limbs and bodies. Are those humans? Why are there humans this far out in the Badlands? We haven't seen anyone for days.
"Their Ghosts. Angered spirits that possess living creatures. Don't expect them to falter when fighting, they don't feel pain... It is best to break them down until sunrise when they turn to ash."
Tusk swung his sword horizontally across the air, a single yellow line appeared from the tip of his sword. Like a lag in the air, the line followed like a whip. He then jumped up from the sand, the particles floating across his feet as he placed the sword behind his shoulder and readied himself to swing.
"Thunderblade!"
It was so fast. Like small strokes of light across a field of black. The yellow line from the tip of his sword weaved in and out of the monster parade as Tusk danced with it. His sword skills pulling up from one monster to the next, slice after slice, in an instant he had already chopped off ten monsters' heads.
He then stood on the other end of the battlefield, his body moving at lighting speeds as his blade was covered in blood. He turned back. The heads of ten monsters flopped off as their bodies fell to the ground.
Twenty monsters remained.
"There are way too many tonight..."
He placed his sword by his left hip and pushed his right foot forward and his left foot back. He closed his eyes and focused on the distance of his strike. He focused on not hitting Ceauli or me. He focused on the power of his attack and the strength of his speed. He then released it all in an instant-
Slice!
A large wave of thunder and lightning struck across the battlefield horizontally. All the monsters were instantly chopped in half, their bodies flying apart, legs, arms, heads, bodies. A line of light shot out from the darkness as the possessed fell over into clumps of blood and limbs.
"That was... Amazing... Unreal..." I gasped as Ceauli woke up next to me from the thunderclap.
"What did I miss?" She looked at all the still-moving body parts around her, "what the! Zombies!"
"They're not zombies, they're possessed," said tusk as he walked through the field of wiggling chopped-up bodies, their screeching cries and roaring howls echoing into the duned distance as they wiggled and flopped about ruthlessly.
Tusk sat back down on the cold sandy floor in front of his warm fire. He started to breathe heavily as the toll from that last attack weighed on him.
"This sword still takes too much..."
I looked across the battlefield. Over thirty possessed monsters killed within half of a minute, all done in by one man. This guy was insane. It took over one hundred mercenaries to just take out one hundred monsters. But this... He was stronger than any army. He was a one-man army.