I ran swiftly to the nearest most sturdy looking roof and perched myself on it with my bow and my prepared message arrow and drew back the bow string. I released the arrow and it flew straight into the Captain’s tent. This is what the message on the arrow said:

"Attention!

You have the honor, or dishonor as you may think, of being raided

by the EXILES! Please do not resist. Or we will be forced to use, well, FORCE.

Hahah. I crack myself up. Anyway, if you resist we cannot guarantee that

you will escape entirely unscathed.

With Pleasure,

The EXILES"

As usual the ones who received the warning arrow did not head the warning contained within it, in other words, they resisted. And so, as the warning stated we would, we used force. Many of the soldiers in the encampment had heard of us before and seemed very anxious, some of them even completely deserted leaving all of their armor behind and running to the nearest town. Only a minute or two after the Captain received the warning, the rest of the Exiles attacked. Our group made quick work of the disoriented army camp and left within the hour we had first begun our attack.

**********

Once we had returned from our raid we did as we always did, and rented a room out of a local tavern. We did this to celebrate a successful raid. The original members and I went into a smaller room in the tavern that was separate from where the new recruits were celebrating.

“I can’t believe how good at this we’ve gotten,” said one of the original members who were seated at the table around me.

“I know,” said another, “who would’ve thought that when Mizuki asked us to make a bandit group with her, we would do so well.”

“We sure showed them that orphans aren’t as powerless as they thought we were!” said a third. Everyone smiled and appeared to think back at the old days before the orphanage had ran out of government funding. Once that happened where were all thrown out on the street like useless garbage. That was why I had decided to form The Exiles in the first place. The town we had been in was a relatively poor one. Nobody had any extra to give to homeless kids. So I had decided that we would survive without own power and not rely on anyone else. At the time, the only way to do that was to become a group of bandits. I was 12 years old when I had decided that. I had been nearly seven years since then.

As we were all thinking about the past, there came a loud knocking sound at the door. One of the others went to answer and said it was one of the new members wanting to talk to me about something. I said to let him in and that he could speak.

“What’s up with such a small amount of pay boss,” he spoke with a low, gruff, tone and held up the bag of money that I had given when I distributed the pay that everyone would get from the raid, “I know we stole more than enough for this to be a lot heavier.”

“Calm down idiot,” I said, with a tone of annoyance in order to hide my unease, “I had to divide everything up so that everyone would get something. You got the same amount as all of your buddies.”

“That may be but there was a lot more money than what all of us got, where did the rest of it go?” he asked, more insistent that time. Everyone was looking at me then and so I had to say something.

“Look, I had to give some of the money to the villagers so they would keep quiet about us making this place our base. I also had to pay for all of this food,” I waved my hands around, indicating the food that was sprawled about the room.

“Fine…” the bandit stomped off and left.

After the bandit left everyone else was quiet. I got up and said that I was tired, so I could leave to think to myself in private. I went to my room in one of the local inns. I must have gone to sleep at some point because I woke with a start when I heard yelling from outside the window of the room and a loud banging sound at the door.

I grabbed my weapons from the corner of the room and since I already had my light armor on from earlier so I jumped out the window. The window left me in a back alley, so I hid in the shadows to see what was happening.

From my hiding place in the alley I saw something that I had dreaded for a long time. There were soldiers holding up wanted posters. Going door to door, asking people if they had seen the one in the picture. The picture on the poster was a sketch of my face, and my name, “Mizuki Elziles” underneath. Under my name were the words “Dead or Alive.” I crept a little farther out of my hiding spot and saw a wagon with a person inside it. Upon a closer look I found that the person tied up inside the wagon was Hisui.

I went over to the wagon while hiding in the shadows to make sure that the soldiers didn’t see me. I made it to the wagon and whispered to Hisui.

“Psst! Hisui!”

Hisui looked over in my direction and I saw he was blindfolded. I almost laughed at the idea because it wouldn’t make any difference if they blindfolded him or not. Hisui was blind. He could see things using something similar to a bat’s echolocation.

“Mizuki?” Hisui whispered in reply.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I replied, “What happened? How did the authorities find us?”

“It was Izuna, she...She betrayed you,” Hisui began, “Izuna told the authorities that you were the leader of the group and gave them a description of you. I tried to stop her but...She told them I was one of the bandits as well. I’m sorry…”

“No don’t worry about it, Hisui, I’ll get you untied…” I started but then heard one of the soldiers talk behind me.

“Hey, who is that over there? Someone is by the prisoner!”

“Yeah, you’re right! Look! She has long white hair like the description from the wanted poster!” said another.

“Get her!” yelled a third.

“Mizuki!” Hisui said, “you have to run! Now! Leave me here! I’ll be fine.”

“But, Hisui…” I began but was cut off.

“Mizuki! You’re the one they’re after. I can get out of this easily and say that I was never part of the group at all. But you can’t do that. You have to run. Go North, towards Wind Clan Territory. The soldiers will have a harder time chasing you through the desert,” Hisui stopped talking for a split second and placed his ear to the bed of the wagon, “Go now! There is a sandstorm coming soon. Even if they have horses they won’t follow you through it! Go hurry!”

I gave one last look at him then looked up at the sky. I judged which way was north and took off in that direction as fast as I could. Hisui was never wrong when he predicted sandstorms. Since he couldn’t see his other senses sharpened to make up for it. Specifically his hearing. Just before I left the village, one of the soldiers shot me with an arrow in the chink of my armor between my breast plate and my shoulder pad.

I ran into the desert as fast as I could, doing my best to ignore the pain in my shoulder, and soon left behind the soldiers shouts and the small village behind. When I looked back I could see the sandstorm rushing up and engulfing the village. It would reach me soon so I had tried to run faster. It would be bad to get caught in a sandstorm with no way to tell which direction you were going. So I ran faster, and faster, as fast as I could. I ran for what seemed like ages. I have to keep going, I have to keep going. I thought to myself. And so I kept running, and running, and running.

Even when my lungs felt like they were about to explode, I kept running. Even though my lungs felt like they were going to burst I ran faster, once I heard the sandstorm rushing up behind me. But I wasn’t fast enough. I felt the sand hit me in the back and in the same instant I was engulfed by the swirling sand. I kept running, I had to keep running. If I stopped there would be no way for me to tell where I was. I kept my eyes closed so that the sand wouldn’t get into my eyes so that I could keep running. I kept running with my eyes closed. Even after I no longer felt the sand pounding against me, I kept running. I opened my eyes when I felt a cool breeze that was different from the harsh, dry, violent wind, of the desert. As I opened my eyes I still kept running. When I opened my eyes I couldn’t see very well, my vision was still blurry from my eyes being closed for so long. But in my blurry vision I could see lights in the distance. I kept running and running. Until the light was so close I could almost touch it.

At that moment I stopped. Stopping is something that I should not have done, because as soon as I stopped, all of the pain that I had been ignoring up until that point came rushing to me and I felt my whole body ache. I felt myself fall to my knees and then collapse to the side, landing on my uninjured shoulder. I thought I remembered calling out in pain and hearing someone close by shouting in alarm in response. But anything after that was a blur and nearly nonexistent because my vision blacked out completely.