Jared shook his head, every muscle drawn tight. “I don’t know. But nothing here feels right. We move carefully, every step.”
They pushed themselves upright, meaning to scout the wasteland, when a distant, keening scream ripped through the alien air. Their eyes locked for a heartbeat, then both sprang toward the cry, boots hammering the cracked stone.
The trail plunged into a narrow valley, and the sight waiting there punched the breath from their lungs.
A pack of bandits, eyes wild and blades flashing, hunted a family of three. The mother and father shielded their child while the marauders closed in, laughing with feral delight.
“Stop!” Jared’s roar cracked across the valley like thunder.
He tried to charge, yet an invisible grip clamped around him. His limbs turned to lead, each step slower than the last, as though time itself conspired to hold him back. Beside him, Sylvia fought the same strangling force, eyes wide with helpless terror while the family before them slid closer to doom.
“No!” Sylvia’s cry shattered against the stone walls.
The scream tore from her throat, raw and desperate, but the unseen shackles did not break.
The bandits overtook their prey. One raised a cleaver and brought it down on the father’s shoulder. Bone split, blood fountained across the dust.
The man staggered but kept himself between the blades and his child, teeth clenched against agony.
“Father!” the child shrieked, voice splintering on grief.
Another bandit’s sword punched through the mother’s ribs. She thrust herself forward, taking the steel so her child would not, then crumpled to the ground, eyes glazing with love and unfinished words.
“Mother!” The child threw tiny arms around her body, tears streaming unchecked.
The valley echoed with the child’s sobs, raw, jagged sounds that made the very rocks seem to bleed.
Rage detonated inside Jared. He strained against the invisible chains until his vision swam, desperate to reach the slaughter unfolding yards away.
Pain lanced through every nerve, and then, all at once, the unseen shackles snapped. Power flooded back into his limbs like a storm tide released.
“You animals!” Jared’s voice thundered, promised reckoning, and the valley itself seemed to tremble at the coming storm.
Jared roared, a raw, bestial sound that cracked across the ravine like thunder. He hurled himself at the bandits, the Dragonslayer Sword flashing in his fists.
Silver light erupted along the blade’s edge, each swing a hammer-blow of power that split the dusk.
Beside him, Sylvia, finally freed from the strange paralysis, too, snapped her own sword forward. She fell into flawless cadence with Jared, her footwork fluid, her strikes, a storm of razor arcs, sliding neatly into the spaces he left uncovered.
The brigands had expected victims, not executioners.
Panic flickered over scarred faces. Yet their leader barked curt orders, rallied them, and steel swept up like a closing hedge as they surged back toward Jared and Sylvia.
Jared’s eyes narrowed to frozen shards. He drew breath, flooded every vein with spiritual energy, and let his ultimate skill bloom.
Forks of gold sword light fanned from him, streaking into the mob. Wherever those rays touched, men screamed, armor burst, and bodies thudded lifeless to the mud.
Sylvia answered in kind, unleashing the Earth Fiend Sword Shadows. Jet-black silhouettes of blades rained down, so many they seemed a midnight hailstorm, tearing through flesh, scattering crimson droplets across the trampled grass. In heartbeats, the charge dissolved.
Steel rang out once, then silence swallowed the clearing.
When the last cry faded, only Jared, Sylvia, and a grisly carpet of corpses remained.
Gasping, swords still trembling in their grips, they walked to the lone survivor, the little girl. She knelt between the broken bodies of her parents, tears streaming unchecked down dirt-smeared cheeks.
“Why didn’t you act sooner?” she screamed, hatred sharp enough to cut. “If you’d moved faster, they’d still be alive!”
Jared’s heart lurched. “Child, an unseen force held me and slowed every muscle. I broke free only moments ago.”
She shook her head, sobbing. “Liar! You killed them. You killed them by waiting!”
Anger surged through Jared, hot and sudden.
“I understand your grief,” he answered, low and cold, “But do not pour blame on the first face you see. I was bound, and I fought the instant I could.”
