The smell of iron is so strong it woke Asura up from her slumber. Blearily blinking her eyes, she’s greeted with a dark and cold chamber. Just outside of her range of view, barely visible through the dim, a fireplace. Its unlit logs almost overflowing the grate.
Something is gripped in her hand, soft and trailing. She rubs her eyes with the other, shivering. The carpet under her feels foamy, as if there’s bubbly soap in it. It squelches as she steps forward, the smell of iron growing stronger.
Cold…
She drops the softness in her hand, with a muted thud, reaching for the matches above the mantle. Striking one, her eyes widen with horror, her fingers trembling. The fireplace is filled with limbs- arms and legs grotesquely piled on one another, broken or hacked off at the joints. Gray flesh sports a creamy joint on one, blood dried on the skin’s edges where it was severed.
Bile rising up her throat, she drops the match, stumbling backward in surprise. Tripping on something hard, she lands on her back and comes face to face with her mother’s head. The pale lilac eyes slightly open, tendrils of hair trailing over her face.
“
She shuts her eyes, and when she opens them, the spumous rug is replaced with prickly grass. But it still smells like iron. So much iron.
Cold…
Her mother’s face is now one of white waves, with steel eyes half lidded set in porcelain skin faded gray. A small mouth with lines of dried blood.
Asura reaches slowly for her, only to notice a dark lump behind Quinny’s head. The torso of her father, missing all the limbs, lay torn and mangled. His head was barely hanging on with sinew and muscle, as if someone was too lazy to cut all the way through.
Standing up abruptly, her hair matted to her face, she spins to see pieces of people… her loved ones, scattered about the field like some macabre cemetery. The daffodils are drenched, some trampled or smeared with the blood of her family, her friends, her army, the little girl she once bought flowers from. Everyone she ever cared about lay about her, limbless.
“No…” Her feet are sucked up into the gritty gore of the soil, sinking into the meadow.
“No! No no no nooo!!”
Asura’s eyes open to darkness in an unfamiliar room. She sits up, covered in her own sweat, in her nightclothes and bed provided by Chrystoph. Frantically looking around, she practically sprints to the lamp, her hand shaking with the controlled movements. Her breaths come ragged and uneven with panic, depriving her of oxygen. Striking the match, she takes a wheezy breath and lights the lamp.
No heads…
She sweeps the lamp, licking her salty upper lip, a sour taste in her mouth. She checks the corners, under her bed, the foot of the desk, everywhere there could be a perfect pocket for a head or a stray limb.
No limbs…
On the verge of hyperventilating, she slams her back against the wall, sliding down it. The lamp still in her hand, it groans from the contact with the floor and her tailbone smarts.
She rests her head on her knees, her hands slack at her side.
No Quinny…
Her shoulders quiver.
“
One hand behind her back, she follows the three stances of swordsmanship Chrystoph introduced to her.
One.
Bringing her sword down in a single slice from above her head.
Two.
Slicing her sword from left to right in a straight line.
Three.
Lunging forward in a steady line, and bringing her body back to repeat it all over again.
Her mind may remember, but her body does not. Groaning with the effort, her soft and small body struggles to keep up, quivering at the repetitive lunges it’s not used to. Breathing hard, she focuses on bringing the air in through her nose, and out through her mouth in controlled breaths.
When she completed the 200th cycle, Chrystoph stops her for a break.
“You have good form, but you’re slipping.” He pulls out a wooden stick and taps at her elbow and thigh.
“The arm drops too much, angling your sword and leaving you open to an easy parry or counter. Your legs are not dropping all the way and your movements look stiff.”
His tone is not cold, nor is it warm. He’s an instructor teaching a student to hone their abilities. Asura was begrudgingly grateful for that. She couldn’t stand it when people gave her slack just because she was a girl.
“Take a break. We’ll switch limbs and do another two hundred before we run a lap around the grounds.”
Asura gritted her teeth, her body was already aching. But she was no quitter.
“Sir, why are we switching?” She had assumed it was to strengthen both sides of her body, but that would only be if they swapped the lunging leg.
Chrystoph half turned back to her as if she had asked a very simple question. In his mind, maybe it was.
“Do you think you’ll always have the luxury of using the same arm in battle? If you injure one, but are unskilled with the other, you may as well be dead.” And with that, he turned to the approaching servant.
Ambidextrous?
Through her fatigue, a shiny new pearl of excitement coursed through her at the thought.
Papa never taught her how to use both hands to wield a sword, only to use her dominant hand. Since they were both enslaved to the Duke, she learned from others, and the little time that they were given together, she learned from him too. There was still so much knowledge she would never glean, time she would never earn back, and love she would never again recieve when the Duke struck him down. So much life left to live- just gone.
Sitting down to take in some water, she rubbed her wrists, avoiding the blisters that were growing on her hands. Once they calloused, she would be relieved.
“… captured. She’s been missing for several weeks now.”
Now that she was seated closer, Asura could hear the words being exchanged between the servant and Chrystoph.
“And the King wants to dispatch me to the Devil’s Fang?”
“Yes, sir. They found evidence of human trafficking. Count Goodman has placed a reward as well.” The servant handed him a piece of paper.
“Goddess, she’s just a child! Tsk.” Chrystoph clicks his tongue.
Goodman? Why does that sound so familiar?
“Get supplies ready for the Third Guard, and have everything….”
Asura can’t hear the rest of the conversation, because the paper that he’s holding has a portrait of a girl no more than ten, with wavy cream colored hair, and gray eyes like shining steel.
Quinny.
But why? Why has she been kidnapped now?
Asura tries to force herself to remember what Quinny looked like when she rescued her a few years after becoming an apprentice. She had looked about ten then too, but she was bone thin and her hair was muddled with grime.
If this timeline hadn’t skipped, then that means Quinny was a child slave for over a year before she was rescued.
But if it had skipped…
Asura thought back to when she ran into Duke Pontius at the temple, the way he had terrified her and asked her questions instead of beating her on site like she expected.
What if he was trying to lure her somewhere at that time?
She wouldn’t put it past him. He was an evil man with nothing but power in his brain. Power he had, and power he wanted. Asura wouldn’t let herself be his slave in this life, and neither would she let Quinny be his slave.
She turned to see Chrystoph already approaching her.
“Alright, dove. Swap the limbs. Remember to breathe.” He gently placed a hand on her shoulder, in comfort or encouragement, she wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
The servant was gone and she could see the paper with Quinny’s portrait sticking out of a pocket. She wanted to ask when he was going, if she could go with him. Asura was wary of changing the timelines again. But did that reason really outweigh Quinny’s life?
No. No it didn’t. Especially after that horrid dream.
“Sir.” She was in stance one, but paused to ask.
“Can you take me with you? On your raid.”
Chrystoph paused thoughtfully to consider he request, but promptly declined.
“Law dictates that I can only bring apprentices on official business if the apprentice is nine years of age or older.”
He picks up his wooden stick from the bench he laid it upon.
“Had you been nine, yes, I would have taken you. But I cannot cut corners, no matter how close you are. What kind of an instructor would I be if I taught you to cheat all the time?”
He laughed heartily at his own comment, his cerulean eyes dwarfed completely by the width of this smile.
“There will be times that cheating can be used to your advantage, dove, but not for this.”
He raised an eyebrow, hinting that he would cheat on certain things. Asura wondered what those things would be since Chrystoph’s demeanor didn’t portray the scoundrel behavior he hinted to.
Then appeared a glint in his eyes that Asura was getting familiar with. THe eyes of a craftsman, tempering a blade to perfection. Filled with resolve and what seemed like infinite patience, he raised his stick.
“Begin!”
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