The edge of an axe glinted in the sunlight as its head fell with force upon the mildly frowning face of a fifteen-year-old boy who was being held down by a man.
Anri, the boy, grimaced as he realised just what a dangerous situation he had been thrust into. He was on the dusty ground, arms pinned above his head by a man while another loomed above him with the sharp axe. His feet were tied together by ropes.
This wasn't the ideal scenario he had hoped to find himself in. Far, far from it.
The sun was behind the executioner's tall figure. Eyes squinting against the glare, Anri swung his bound feet upwards so that the handle of the axe came to a rest against his bare soles. A drop of sweat clung to his lashes as he breathed out harshly. The sharp edge of the axe was only a few inches away from his nose. Just a few seconds into gaining a new body and he was already in danger of death. Irritation reared its head and replaced the tension he had been feeling.
"This one has some fight in him," his executioner said with a chuckle.
"Not bad kid," the man holding him down added.
Anri felt the oppressive weight of the axe lift from his feet. The executioner bent down on his haunches to smile at the boy. Now that the immediate danger was dealt with, Anri finally got a look at his would-be killer. The axe handler was a skinny man whose clothes hung off his bony frame in rags. Hunger gleamed in his sunken eyes.
"You want to eat me," Anri said as realisation dawned upon him.
The axe handler began to laugh without humour. Had the heat gotten to the kid? Of course, they were trying to eat him. That's what happened to the men and women who weren't strong enough to defend themselves.
"I feel a little sorry. Maybe you won't die today, kid. How about we share a meal with him?" The executioner smiled up at his buddy as he spoke to the eerily calm boy.
Anri was in no mood for the man's games. Through his sweaty bangs, he looked up at the leering face, thinking about the choices he had before him.
"Hmmm," the man hummed happily as his skeletal hand with its dirty fingernails drew an invisible line across the boy's knee. Anri's dark eyes followed the path of the executioner's finger.
"We'll cut your leg here." The man's eyes were glowing with fervour. "And we can eat it together, the three of us. Lunch is on you, kid." Why kill the meal when you can make it last longer by keeping it wounded but alive?
Anri's lips twitched. Fucking lunatics.
He focused inwards and checked for power but found that he had very little left. The spell that sent him here had taken so much more than he had expected it to. Worse even, he couldn't sense any magic in the air. Just where the hell had he been brought to? At least he understood the language the attackers were speaking; an ability bestowed to him by the rune that was tattoed behind his ear lobe.
"Okay it's time-" just as the executioner spoke, he was cut off by a sudden explosion like the bursting of a watermelon. The man couldn't close his eyes in time because an abrupt onslaught of blood and brains had hit him on the face. Stunned, the man stared at the headless corpse of his friend whose torso slowly fell backwards.
"Hungry? There's lunch," Anri calmly told the man as he rubbed his sore but now free wrist. His dark gaze stared into the horrified eyes of the axe handler. It was a pity he had to waste a bit of his already depleted magic on the attacker.
Snapping out of his shock, the man began scrambling to put distance between him and the strange boy. He knew better than to stick around and question what had just happened. He hadn't lived this long on such a godforsaken planet by making stupid decisions.
Anri considered letting the man off but then changed his mind. The boy picked up the discarded axe and hefted it in his palm. Gracefully and with controlled force, he threw the axe at the escaping man. The weapon flipped in the air a few times before it buried itself in the man's skull with a sickening crack.
Anri spared a single glance at the twitching body on the ground before he began undoing the ropes that bound his feet. He had never seen such ropes before. They were smooth and flexible but also very strong.
The young man spent a few moments examining the bright red rope. In his years as a sorcerer, there had been many magical devices he had had the opportunity to handle. But this material in his hand was a first. To discard it or not? If even the likes of the axe handler had access to such material, it meant that they weren't very rare.
"Maybe I'll keep it," he murmured to himself. Anri then approached the man on the ground whose twitching had finally ceased. Not dead yet but soon. He pulled the axe out of the man's skull and wiped the blood down on the raggedy shirt of its previous owner. Its handle was made of some lightweight metal he didn't recognise.
Anri took one last look at the men he'd butchered. It occurred to him to ransack their sorry bodies but he refrained. Resorting to cannibalism meant they had no food on them. They weren't even carrying any bags on their person. At least he had the axe. Did he feel guilty about the two deaths that he'd racked up within minutes of his arrival? No. He had long ceased to harbour any guilt over the death of scum. The world would not feel the loss of two cannibals. Besides, they'd acted against him first. What was he to do? Let them eat him up?
Thinking that the worst of it was over, Anri began to trudge towards the direction of a thick pillar of smoke that was rising into the sky. There were probably more cannibals and murderous inhabitants but he was more concerned about the lack of nourishment he was facing if he didn't find vegetation, prey or other humans.
The boy passed by several burning garbage mounds that smelled unlike anything he had ever encountered. He would have taken a closer look at some of the burning items if he wasn't dissuaded by the unbearable heat that reached him in waves. More garbage mounds and a field of dried vegetation were put behind him when he began to hear the sounds of fighting and screaming. Anri immediately threw himself down to the ground where he was hidden within a patch of knee-high grass.
The desperate wails of a woman seemed to arrive closer and closer to his hiding spot. Something was chasing her, Anri could tell. More cannibals? The young man waited quietly amongst the grass when he heard a horrific scream and then nothing. It seemed that whoever had been chasing the woman had caught up to her.
In the sudden silence, he began to discern the sound of something clicking.
'Click click click click'
Heart beating like a drum, the young man raised his head towards the spot he last heard the screaming. Anri wished he hadn't looked.
A black scaled creature stood only a few metres away from him. It had six appendages and a long whip-like tail. The thing stood on four legs and had two arms with which it held the unfortunate woman it had caught. The flesh on her face had already been devoured by it. Dangling in the air like a doll in the hands of the grotesque monster, the woman's head was quickly turning into a red skull.
'Click click' he heard again when the creature swung its tail.