The sun peaked its head over the horizon and lit up the sky in colors of pink, yellow and orange. Its rays of light shone over the destruction of the village where carnage and bloodshed beyond imagination took place last night. Now, the bloodshed was over as the beasts fled into the darkness and a haunting and chilling silence took their place.
Far, far, far away from the village where Arya was born and grew up, Arya was fighting against the river and the river had threw her around like a toy, bashing her body into rocks, dunking her underneath the water until she almost passed out, she was left gasping for air as she was pushing and carried by the river further and further into the unknown. She clawed at the air and tried to stop the river from toying with her but she was too weak and powerless to fight back against the current.
The rushing and roaring river continued to carry her away from her home and it was relentless. The river continued to carry her along its currents until she floated into a calmer and shallower area of the river that was located close to the river bank. She coughed and sputtered out what must have been half of the river out of her lungs as she weakly crawled on all fours to dry lands.
Her brown hair was an absolute rat's nest with leaves and twigs decorating her hair and it stuck to her face from the water. Her green dress was all ripped up and in rags. Small cuts and bruises covered her body from being battered and tossed around in the harsh and brutal river waters.
A guard who was patrolling the river spotted the floating figure of a young girl in the water. He raced over to the edge of the river. He was a fat and pudgy man with more fat than muscle on him with a fat belly; He looked like someone who didn't exercise a lot but ate and drank too much and too often. His dirty blonde hair was cropped short in royal guard dress code standards and his icy blue eyes were small and ugly-looking. His white and gold royal guard uniform looked more tacky and gaudy on him rather than impressive and authoritative as it was supposed to be. His huge feet looked like roasted potatoes stuffed into the knee-high brown leather boots that were part of his royal guard uniform. A longsword hung by his left side.
He saw a young girl in a tattered green dress crawling her way out of the river. But what caught his eyes was the red blood that was pooling out of all the tiny cuts she had all over her body.
She was a Red. A person born without any powers. A mere commoner without a single trace of power flowing through her veins.
He snorted. A Red like her was nothing more than a tiny ant or cockroach in his eyes. He had golden blood flowing through his veins and he was gifted with powers that made him more superior and better than those with lowly red blood.
As he approached the girl, he noticed that she had brown hair. He frowned as he recalled his commander giving him orders to arrest and bring the escaped assassin to justice.
It was the hottest and juiciest gossip in the royal capital since the scandal that broke out twenty-five years ago when the king married some low-ranking lady who wasn't from a very powerful or well-known household. It was all anyone-from the richest noble to the lowest servant to the ambitious merchant to the dirty street beggar-could talk about for weeks once word broke out that the Crown Prince was almost killed by a red-blooded woman. The would-be assassin failed as she was stopped before she could succeed when the royal guards burst into the Crown Prince's bedroom. Unfortunately, the would-be assassin managed to kill six guards and leave four more badly wounded when she escaped from the royal prison on the day of her execution.
All that they knew about her was that she had brown hair and green eyes. She was a palace maid and she caught everyone off guard. Perhaps that was the intention. Use a lowly, weak and pathetic servant girl to do the killing since no one would ever suspect that a weak and pathetic red blood would be able to overpower a powerful gold blood and almost kill him.
Now she escaped and the entire royal guard felt the king's rage for hours on end as they stood there at attention in the training courtyard, listening to the king yell at them for being so weak and soft as to let a commoner "red" girl get the best of them.
The Crown Prince survived but he was unfortunately poisoned and was left in a very sorry state. The stab wound she had left on the Crown Prince wasn't the problem-It was the fact that the knife that the assassin was using had been coated with some sort of powerful and deadly poison that was unknown to medical knowledge. The Crown Prince barely hung onto life and he was left in great pain and crippled and forced to disappear from the public eye.
The unknown poison was still eating away at the now disabled Crown Prince and poisoning him. It seemed less and less likely as the days passed by that he would ever recover now.
It had been almost three months since that failed assassination attempt.
It was a huge embarrassment and insult to the pride and reputation of the royal household and the king was out for revenge on the lowly red-blooded woman who dared to do such a thing to his eldest son and heir. Guards were sent to every corner of the kingdom to every town and village to search for the female assassin but nobody could find even a single trace of that brown haired she-assassin even when they spent months searching and questioning many people with so much time and effort spent into the search.
It was as if that she-assassin disappeared into thin air and never existed in the first place. The assassin was never caught but the king refused to give up and ordered the search for the brown haired female assassin to continue.
Putting aside the embarrassing matter of a mere red-blood woman almost killing the Crown Prince, there was the nagging and persistent question of who would succeed the throne with the Crown Prince, the chosen heir, now crippled and weak; The position for successor was now left open as the Crown Prince was stripped of his title of Crown Prince and disappeared from the public eye. Anyone with half a brain could tell that a civil war would break out sooner or later between the children of the royal family for the throne even if the king were to choose a new successor from his numerous children.
The guard mentally slapped himself and told himself to get back to work; He didn't have the time and luxury to sit around and indulge in gossip unlike some of the more powerful and richer nobles did. He was from a small and lesser known noble household and he was able to get a position as a royal guard in the royal palace after so much blood, tears and sweat. He and his family sacrificed so much in order for him to get a position in the royal courts. But all that effort, all the tuition fees for the training academy, the sacrifices ... .they'll all go to waste if he didn't move up in the royal court hierarchy. He was desperate to move up the ladder and hoped at being able to gain favor from the royal family for bringing the assassin to justice.
The girl was now stumbling onto her feet, clearly dazed and unfocused, as she tried to balance herself as if the very ground beneath her was shaking and tossing under her. She stumbled and nearly fell down.
The guard marched over and grabbed the girl by her hair, yanking it hard.
The girl let out a pained scream and her green eyes locked onto him-they were filled with fear and terror as she soon realized her current situation. Her eyes widened and she tried to fight back, clawing at the guard's arms to get him to let go of her hair, she stomped his feet hard enough that he let go of her-only to give her a hard slap across the face that left her reeling in shock for a few seconds.
Then she froze solid. Her muscles in her body froze and refused to move. She couldn't move a single inch of her body as he maneuvered her hands behind her back and tied them with ropes and put leg irons on her. Only her eyes could move and they were focused on the guard as he slipped rope around her neck that hung loose around her like a leash.
He snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, she felt her muscles come back to life and she could move once more. She nearly stumbled and fell down when the guard yanked too hard at the rope leash. Arya only glared at him but his back was turned to her.
"Follow me. Don't try to fight back or else…"
Arya cursed him inside her head and followed him like a well trained pet dog. It was hard to walk with the leg irons on her and her hands tied behind her back but she managed to not fall down or trip as he took her to who-knows-here.
Arya didn't need a warning from him to know what would happen if she refused to obey. He was a golden blood and it appeared that his power was being able to induce a full body paralysis on someone-or maybe he could choose to target certain areas of the body such as the leg or arm or choose to target her entire body? Whether he needed to physically touch her to do so or he could simply will it to happen with his mind was also unknown.
Arya didn't want to find out. The feeling of being imprisoned inside her own body and unable to move a single muscle was terrifying and scary. She didn't want a repeat of that experience. And what if he could induce a permanent state of full body paralysis? Arya didn't want to find out if that was possible either.
While his powers may not be outright flashy and deadly such as being able to summon and control fire or being able to crush someone's head open like an egg with their bare hands and or shooting streams of fire from one's hands, his paralysis powers would allow him to render her powerless and unable to fight back if he decided to kill her. She would be unable to move a muscle or even scream as he killed her.
There was also the fact that even if he was a low-ranking and not very powerful gold blood, he was still much stronger than that of a regular red blood. He could crush open her skull or break her arm without even trying if he wanted to. That nasty-looking sword hanging by his side was also another worry because something in his eyes told her that he wouldn't hesitate to use it on her if he needed to-or wanted-to.
Arya wanted to escape. She wanted to flee. She had a bad feeling that wherever this golden blood was taking her, it wouldn't end well for her. But she was a red blood: weak, powerless and inferior. She could fight back and try to run all she wanted but he was stronger, faster and he was armed with a deadly weapon on top of all that.
But all she could do was hang her head low and follow behind him as he took her to who-knows-where.