Months of utter desperation and foolish conviction made me sloppy. Even with my pattern recognition, I should've known better that at least one person would be patrolling the halls no matter what. Though my mistake didn't matter in hindsight, I was already paying the price.
My opponent was a blur, without bothering with questions first, as they laid a swift push kick to my side. I barely managed to block its time, leaving me to slide across the damp floor pathetically. My brain could only translate bits and pieces of the man's language in my blindsided state.
"What doing, here?" the man said.
I couldn't answer him, though, still reeling so hard from his arrival that I seemingly froze.
"Crap and a half. Crap and a half. Crap and a half," I repeatedly thought, unsure what to do amidst seeping dread.
My lack of an answer was violently met with a swift kick in the torso, sending me spiraling toward the nearest wall. In agony, I clutched my stomach, my eyes watering while a geyser of bile spilled out the floor. I didn't need a translator anymore as the Caracal looked down on me angrily and disgusted.
Those eyes burrowed into my soul as he started stomping me out. Every blow cut into me more than any knife, making me feel smaller and smaller. Slowly but surely, my screams grew shriller, my vision clouded, and my breaths drew shorter. In a few minutes, They dehumanized me into nothing more than a whimpering wretch in a fetal position.
The sight was so pathetic that the Caracal stopped hitting me, knowing any further pain was necessary. My mind continued the suffering for him, flashing through every humiliation I suffered at the hands of these men in a painful panoramic. Each memory made my body tremble with emotions so powerful my blood boiled. I could only think of one thing before snapping among my storm of frayed thoughts.
"All I wanted to do was have control over a situation, to make an impact that could last a lifetime. And they took that away from me, snatched any freedom I could ever have. So if I can't have any agency through saving a life," I thought while reaching into my rags, "I'll just have to take it."
A deathly calm overtook me when that realization was made, elevating my senses to a razor edge. Years of medical knowledge found purpose again, seeing my opponent in a new light. His open stance revealed the arteries that screamed fragility, timid bones that could shatter with minimal force, and strained muscles called themselves to me. In the blink of an eye, I hardened my expression, pulling out my hidden shiv and stabbing straight into Caracal's right foot. Immediately my enemy painfully screamed out, a fact I relished while thinking.
"Dorsalis pedis," I thought coldly.
Without missing a beat, I followed up with a piece to his heel, instantly sending the man down.
"Achilles tendon," I added on.
The Caracal tried unfurling a pistol, but I didn't dare give him a chance, instead rolling and pinning his free hand down. I sliced into his wrist in one motion, rendering it useless.
"TFCC," I thought once again.
At that point, time we seemed to slow me down as I next leveled the crismon shiv straight toward the Caracal's face. We both looked each other in the eyes for a fleeting moment, realizing there was no turning back. So, in shared acceptance, we gave out one last shaking breath before I said out loud.
"Juglar."
After that, I tore out his neck in a final pierce. His life faded fast after that. Blood trickled down like a broken faucet, sapping away his life till his eyes became glassy. Before I knew it, I had completed my first kill, one of many. In retrospect, though, the worst part of the whole thing wasn't the act itself at the time but rather how little I let it register—somehow rationalized in a split second that I was returning a favor. As if that somehow made things better.
A numbing sensation took over from there as I mindlessly trudged into the trophy room with blood-stained hands. I took a second to bask in the ill-gotten gains from stitched together cloths, precious stones, and hundred-dollar wines. I ignored it as I quickly found the journal Jasmine had told me about near a chair.
All those items, though plagued in comparison to the most glimmering sight. Because to the end of the large room lay a peeking window, showing a sky in twilight. To my eyes, it was the first bit of sunlight I had tasted in over a hundred days. Yet, even that meant nothing to me, as I didn't dare stop. Following instructions Io the letter, I ripped open the cover, revealing the dread button. Mindlessly I entered the code.
"111111," I instinctively pressed, not bothering to muse over Jasmine's laziness.
Once done, I immediately broke the beacon, not wanting any lurking Caracal to take control of it, which left me with arguably the hardest part of the plan: escape. Immediately I started creating routes, gauging my chances of survival. With the key in hand, I could go anywhere and lie low. And without a witness, no one would kno-.
I stopped dead in my tracks after that. They wouldn't know who killed their comrade if I had escaped now. So instead, they would cover it up, ensuring it never spread among the prisoner and, eventually, chalking the deed to some coward too weak to own it up. And I refuse to be weak any longer. So in my last act of defiance, I threw all common sense to the wind and waited.
When my fallen opponent's brothers-in-arms finally came, they would get greeted with a hell of a sight. Because through the last dying beams of sunlight raining down their terrified faces, they saw a bloody being, propped up on a throne and cloaked in nightly shadow. However, it was the birth of something far greater to the rest of the world. That night, Sarah Walters died, with the Paladin nowhere to get seen. Instead, all that remained was a hunter who saw all the world as her prey.