Blood Hands II

There are about ten people standing in a rough semicircle around us, all of them with weapons, and one standing right in front of us, seemingly the leader. He's tall, with thick arms and the beginnings of stubble on his chin, but nowhere near as chiselled as Luc.

"What do you want?" Krim demands, taking the lead.

"Not much," the other guy says in his gruff voice. "Just leave the loot behind."

"Loot?" Jora asks.

The other guy unhooks a stone hatchet from his belt, and Krim backs up, eyes narrowing.

"Nothing personal," he says. "But while you're at it, leave behind your heads too. We all need to live right? So we'll decrease the headcount and… end this shitty game!"

His voice is rising dangerously, and my heart leaps into my throat when I realize that we're about to fight. The people around us all have bloodthirst oozing in their eyes, but some of them look afraid, others look apprehensive. I can see myself in their eyes. They're just innocent people pulled into this game.

"DIE!" the first guy yells hoarsely, desperation in his voice, and lunges for Krim with the hatchet.

"Krim!" I yell, going forwards, but Elemental holds me back. "What're you…"

"There's no need," he says.

"What?"

"That guy, Krim," he tells me. "From the beginning I… from the beginning, you can tell. That he's strong."

The hatchet guy lunges with frightening speed, another elixir-boosted bastard. Krim doesn't even flinch. Instead, he draws backwards and shifts his balance onto his back leg. The hatchet brings the weapon down towards his head. At the last second, Krim pivots against the stone on his toes, whirls around and in a flash of movement slams his foot into the underside of the enemy's jaw. His feet leave the ground and suddenly he's airborne, arcs through the air and crashes to the ground, blood pouring from his nose and lips. Krim lowers his leg.

"Come on then," he says. "We're fighting."

The ten others close in on us.

I don't actually remember who moves first. One moment, everything's still, then the world explodes.

Screams, footsteps pounding on the rock, metal scraping. Someone yells something but its drowned in the cacophony. My eyes dart wildly in their sockets. I'm panicking. Someone's coming for me. He makes a wild swing, but I duck it and ram my shoulder into his chest. He stumbles backwards, and I pull out my chosen weapons - two 1.5 feet wooden shortswords and ram their hilts into his ribs.

"Ugh!" he grunts.

He grabs my arm with his hand, trying to wrench me close, his breath stinking of blood and fear.

"Go away!" I shriek, and shove him backwards just in time for Leon to jump past and split his head open with a hatchet.

My eyes widen as his head opens and blood splatters on my face. He's dead. He's really dead.

"Sword, snap out of it!" Neo yells, voice quavering. "You already saw Kino and all the other die to the bat guy! LOCK IN!!!!!"

Right. As I said before, this. Is. Nothing. Compared to that shit.

"Thanks Leon," I say, and keep going.

Krim's moving like lightning, a flurry of kicks and elbows, beating back two people at once, and drops one with a side-kick to the temple. Elemental slashes another apart with his dual-wield of hatchet and shortsword, and the guy falls in a puddle of blood. Luc's laughing again, and punches a guy once in the head. His whole body jerks back, and he crumples, unmoving.

"WEAK!" Luc bellows, still laughing his head off.

To my left, Jora dances circles around another guy, knives flashing in out and drawing a spurt of blood every time. Cinder's nearby, trading heavy punches with a guy a head taller than him, both their knuckles bleeding.

"Don't back off, Cinder!" Jora calls.

"Wasn't planning to!"

He rolls in and lands a heavy hit to the nose, and follows in. Kite lunges past them, flint knife gleaming, followed by Neo, and the two of them tear a man apart. I watch Neo's desperate eyes harden as he sinks the blade into a human's neck, and he collapses, blood gurgling.

Dread grabs someone around the waist and slams them to the ground, pounces on the them and hits at their head. Cinder is struck in the forehead with a brutal, cracking elbow, and falls. Jora finishes up with hers and moves in to help him.

And then someone comes for me.

He's older than me, eyes hollow, carrying a wooden sword. He's shouting something - word's I can't hear - and he lunges and swings. I parry him, and it jars my arm. For a second, I see it. He's just a person, his hands are shaking, he is scared. So am I.

Then he brings his weapon down again and my instincts take over. I twist aside and bring my left sword up in an arc, slashing a gash in his shoulder, and his blood flicks against my face. He yells and I hit again. Neck, chest, arm - I don't even know, There's splashes of blood everywhere and suddenly his blade falls, arm still attached. He's screaming, and his eyes are full of fear and pain, bloodshot and terrified, begging me, crying. I hesitate.

"SWORD!" Elemental yells. "KILL HIM, KILL HIM NOW!"

His hand is in his belt, drawing a knife. It rushes towards me. I find my arm moving before I can stop it and suddenly the tip of one of my sword enters his throat.

He staggers backward, eyes wide and eyeballs trembling, gurgling and coughing. His hands claw at his throat then reach out towards me.

"Ple-ase," he rasps, staring at me in fear.

Then he drops to the ground and stops moving.

I stare at him. My hands are trembling and my chest's heaving. I've just killed a man. I've ju-

Someone slams into me from the side and I always get bowled over, but I just stumble a little and regain balance. It jars me back to my senses. We're still fighting!

Elemental wrenches him off my with a kick that sends him sprawling, and Luc pounces on him, bashing his head with a brutal crunching and wet splat.

"You good?" 004 asks.

"Yes," I breathe, even though I'm not.

Krim finishes off the last one, and then it's over. Silence falls again, except for the sound of dripping water in the background.

The enemy is gone, all of them.

Cinder's limping slightly, clutching his bleeding head, and Leon's got a gash in his cheek. Jora's cleaning her knives. Luc stretches his shoulders and grins.

"Well, that was easy."

Elemental looks at me.

"Sword."

I look down. The dead man at my feet hasn't moved. The cave smells like iron and mud. For a second, it doesn't feel real. My hands hurt, and my throat's closing.

"I…" I can't finish the sentence.

I don't feel anything. Suddenly I don't feel afraid, or disgusted, or regretful. I feel like I've just lost a part of myself.

"Hey," Neo says. "You did what you have to do."

"Are you alright?" Elemental asks, concerned. "You-"

"No, no," I say. "I'm fine. I'm… I'm fine."

"Well, that's that," Kite says, laying a hand on my shoulder. "We've all gone somewhere that we can't come back from now… so…"

"Let's keep moving," Krim says, nodding to me.

"Right."

We leave behind the corpses in the tunnel. From now on… things will start to change. People are arming themselves, people are forming factions. People are killing each other. People will try to kill me. And I'm gonna kill people.