Chapter Six: With Eyes Adjusted to Darkness (I1B0C6)

             Chapter Six: With Eyes Adjusted to Darkness

 

            “Where is this? What is this? I don’t want to be here,” asked the voice of a scared girl.

            Hatasuko answered, “You are locked in a tempest of lost souls. The voices you hear are the screams of those taken by the Interfecti.”

            “I don’t understand why I can hear them. I thought I was lost to the shadows. Death was supposed to end the pain,” she whispered.

            “You hear the screaming souls because you are a screaming soul. I don’t know how long you’ve been dead, but you must have somehow pieced yourself together inside the tempest. You reassembled your memories and your soul. That’s why you can speak to me now.”

            “But I don’t want to be here! I don’t want to be reassembled; I just want to fade away like I was always promised. I never meant to find you! I don’t even know who you are,” she said.

            “I’m Hatasuko, and I am the one cursed to carry the weight of this tempest.”

            The scared voice of the girl asked, “Are you alive? Are you a human? Are you even real? I know your name is in the style of the Collobos people.”

            “I am cursed, but I am alive. I am indeed a man from the Collobos Mountains.”

            “Does that mean you survived the attack from a few years ago? I knew when I saw the Interfectus that it would be my end. I knew it would take me from the life I never asked for in the first place,” she said.

            Hatasuko answered, “My body survived the Interfectus, but everything else was taken. I lost my mother, my home, my city, my people, my sanity, and the freedom to live without the urge to end all anguish. I never even bothered to search for my friends in the wreckage because my life as I knew it was over. I wonder if you and I once knew each other.”

            “I doubt it. My name was Adishina, and I rarely socialized or even left the house. I was born with deformed legs, so I never really had the chance to explore on my own. I was nothing more than a burden to my parents. He tried not to show it, but I knew my father was disappointed that his kid couldn’t help with the farm. I was just a drain on their lives, and they made it silently obvious. Everyone knew it. In a way, I’m happy that the Interfectus freed them from me so they could get on with their lives. I hated being deadweight, but I had no other choice,” Adishina explained with a breaking voice.

            “Your parents survived the Interfectus attack? That’s good. They must have been far away. Were they working on the farm?” Hatasuko asked.

            Adishina fell silent for several seconds. In this silence, Hatasuko felt the chorus of crying souls writhe in his head, but they were quieter than usual. Since Adishina had just reassembled herself, Hatasuko hypothesized that the tempest itself was low on energy.

            “My parents and I were walking to the market when the Interfectus appeared. Everyone started shouting and running; they were desperate to escape the shadow demon. Survival instinct kicked in. My father dropped me in the street, and then he and my mother ran away. I wasn’t happy that they left me, but I didn’t have another choice. I couldn’t run after them. I couldn’t even walk out of the middle of the street. They escaped, but I was killed by the big blade of shadows. I think they secretly wanted me gone anyway; I always knew I was a burden. I guess everything worked out for everyone,” whispered Adishina with a bittersweet voice.

            “I… don’t even know what to say to that.”

            “Now that I’m here, I just hope I’m not too heavy for you to carry in your head. I don’t know how to disassemble myself again,” Adishina said.

            A layer of starlight pulsed upon Hatasuko’s golden eyes as he slowly awoke. The sail-rana had finally rolled to a stop along the bumpy terrain of north Agrideī, but he did not want to stop sleeping. As he lost his connection to the threshold of the tempest, he said, “Adishina—the girl they left behind.”

            With a quiver in her quiet voice, Vaida asked, “Lazaro, why are we stopping here?”

            Hatasuko rubbed his tired eyes and glanced up from the backseat of his motionless sail-rana. He stared to the west and saw that the grassy flatland went on for a long way. A small glow shimmered in the far distance. It was the light of pulsing stars, shining on a massive river that flowed southward across the continent. He then turned his head and faced the silhouette of a city to the north. Lazaro stared at the city of Ore with a grimace.

            “I don’t like the looks of the city. The air feels tense, and I think I smell smoke. Something’s happening,” Lazaro groaned with a heavy sigh.

            Hatasuko glanced at the outline of the city. The white buildings reflected the light of the shining stars, but a thin layer of smoke ascended from the streets and partially shrouded the glow. No signs of movement pierced the shrouded light. A powerful wind gusted to the northwest, carrying sound in the opposite direction.

            “I don’t think there’s an Interfectus attacking,” Hatasuko said as he stared at the city.

            Lazaro retorted, “There’s obviously no Interfectus, boy. But that doesn’t mean they’re safe. There are times when a human can be just as murderous. There are some truly awful people in our world.”

            “It’s probably just a small fire, but we can never be too safe. Let’s go,” Vaida said.

            Lazaro nodded and grabbed his weapons from the boat. Vaida, Hatasuko, and Lazaro all wrapped up their whips and hooked them onto the lower back of their shirts, on the left side in about the same place. Lazaro held his warhammer just beneath its head, kept his rock sack hanging beneath his right shoulder, and hooked his shield into clamps on his back. Vaida sheathed her two short swords into the X-shaped holster on her back and then equipped her rock bag. Once Hatasuko had his whip hooked and his bag hanging from his shoulder, he grabbed his sword and stabbed it into the holster on his back.

            “Let’s go. There’s no telling how many lives we’ve forsaken just by standing here,” Lazaro muttered as he jumped into motion.

            Even though Lazaro wielded numerous weapons, he dashed toward the city of Ore at an incredible pace. Hatasuko and Vaida both ran after him as quickly as they could, but Lazaro proved that he could outrun them both. Hatasuko and Vaida ran together at about the same speed, though this surprised him since he could outrun most people. As they ran toward the quiet streets of the city, a person waited in the streets beneath the starlight. This silhouette yelled something at the nearest home, but the wind and the distance covered his words.

            “What the hell is he carrying?” Hatasuko asked when he noticed the person.

            Vaida quietly confessed, “I didn’t even know there was a person.”

            “It’s definitely a bow. I’ve got a feeling he isn’t holding that weapon for a righteous reason,” Lazaro muttered from up ahead, quietly so that the wind would not carry his voice to the bowman in the street.

            A sudden red glow shone from the bowman. The glow came from a flickering flame at the tip of his arrow; the flame illuminated the bow and the burly arms of its wielder. Before Lazaro could come close enough to interfere, the archer shot his flaming arrow at the window of the nearest house. The glass shattered, and the burning arrow flew inside the building.

            “You people must learn that we’re not bluffing! If you don’t give us everything that’s valuable, we’ll burn you to the ground and kill anyone trying to escape,” the man announced loudly so that everyone in the area heard his booming voice.

            When Lazaro reached the dirt street at the edge of the city, the archer heard the slam of his rushing feet. He swerved to see the source of the rapid footsteps, but as soon as he turned, Lazaro threw a rock with tremendous speed. The large rock struck the archer’s ribs with enough force to make him stumble; he let out a pained grunt of surprise.

Despite in pain, the archer stuck an arrow onto the bowstring, pulled it back, and fired it at Lazaro. While still running at full speed, Lazaro swerved and blocked the arrow with the shield on his back; the arrow snapped and fell onto the street. The archer dropped his bow and tried to run, but Lazaro outran him. He unleashed a high-speed whip strike that enwrapped the archer’s ankle and forced him to fall. Lazaro then pulled his whip off the archer, lunged forward, and slammed his right foot onto the man’s back. As Vaida and Hatasuko caught up to their friend, a loud snap sounded from the archer’s back.

            “Are you the leader of these bandits? How many bandits are there? If you tell me the truth, I won’t kill you,” Lazaro yelled to the helpless archer.

            “Enough that you won’t stand a chance to stop us,” said the archer with a sneer.

            “I don’t know if I’m comfortable fighting against humans,” Hatasuko whispered to Vaida as they watched from a short distance.

            Vaida whispered back, “But people will die if we don’t help them.”

            As Vaida spoke, her eyes turned toward the home that the bandit had attacked. Fire ravaged the bottom floor of the building, though no sound of movement came from inside. The glow illuminated her scars and a vivid dread in her dead right eye.

            “Don’t forget that I gave you the choice to save your own life,” Lazaro said to the bandit as he lifted his warhammer.

            “I’m just a grunt! I don’t even know how many are here! Please don’t kill me,” he stammered.

            A flaming arrow shot down from the rooftop of a nearby building and pierced the side of Lazaro’s back. The pain was so sudden and startling that he stumbled off the archer’s body. He reached around and ripped the arrow from his flesh with a grunt of pain, but then he dropped to his knees. As he fell, he pulled his shield out in front of him.

            “Hatasuko! That shot came from the corner of the block to the north. Tear him down and I’ll catch up!” Lazaro yelled, suppressing his pain.

            “Come on, Vaida, let’s go,” Hatasuko said.

            As they took off running toward the next block, Hatasuko unsheathed his sword and focused his eyes on the bandit standing on the rooftop. The bandit hooked his arrow and pulled back his bow to prepare another shot, so Hatasuko threw himself in front of Vaida. He and Vaida ran at about the same speed, and at this speed, they would reach the house in just three seconds. The bandit fired his arrow as Hatasuko tried to block with his sword, but they both missed; the arrow harmlessly struck the dirt street.

            Before Hatasuko steadied his sword, Vaida threw her hands onto his shoulders. She jumped up, landed on his shoulders with her feet, jumped a second time, and grabbed the rooftop edge with her hands. By using her powerful arms, she then jumped up and somersaulted across the rooftop. Before she climbed to her feet, the bandit pulled back his bow to attack again, but Vaida threw a rock that struck him in the face. The impact knocked him backward, so he dropped his bow and fell off the roof. He crash-landed in the street below on his hands and knees. She then jumped off the roof and landed on his back with both feet. The impact broke his wrists; the bandit fell flat onto the ground.

            Hatasuko ran over so that he could support her, but he was shocked to see Vaida attack another person. He knew that the bandit had threatened innocent people, but it still bewildered him. Despite his own insecurities, he knew that he had to be assertive; Vaida was too timid to extract information from the person she had captured.

“Are you the leader of these bandits? How many are there? If you tell me the truth, I won’t kill you,” Hatasuko yelled, mimicking Lazaro’s words.

“There’s ten more out there, and I’m not the leader! Trust me, you don’t want to stay and fight. You’ll just die if you try,” the man answered.

Vaida stepped off the bandit and pulled her two swords from the sheaths on her back. The bandit scrambled onto his feet and ran off without retrieving his bow. Hatasuko watched him leave with a glance of concern, but he chose instead to help Lazaro. With their swords in their hands, Hatasuko and Vaida walked quickly toward their crouching friend.

“That was really impressive! I can’t believe how fast you are. I can’t believe how strong you are!” Hatasuko raved as they walked.

“Thank you. That means a lot,” Vaida said with a shy smile and happy eyes.

Hatasuko glanced up and saw several people flee the home next to the burning house. Lazaro stood in the street and directed the people toward the south. Hatasuko watched the people flee, but Vaida stared again at the house engulfed in flames. The happy glint quickly faded from her eyes.

“I just wish my heart was as strong as my body,” she whispered.

As he jogged over to them, Lazaro said, “The arrow hurts like hell, but it isn’t gonna stop me. I can’t twist or run as fast, but that’s no big deal. What did you find out?”

Vaida answered, “I caught the bandit, and he told-”

“Hatasuko, what did you find out?” Lazaro interrupted.

Vaida’s eyes returned to her default stare of listless melancholy. She looked unsurprised by Lazaro’s behavior; it was like she had simply adjusted to this treatment.

Wasting no time, Hatasuko answered, “There are ten more bandits in the city. The one we caught dropped his weapon and ran off. I think he’s going to run away.”

“If he wanted to run, he would have gone right past me. He isn’t running. He’s telling the others exactly where we are and what weapons we’re carrying,” Lazaro hypothesized with an angry grimace.

“But we spared him! He didn’t even seem like a bad-”

“The two of you have been isolated from people for way too long. When it comes to the hearts of men, you must always expect the very worst because that is what you’ll get. Especially when someone has already proven their malice, that’s all you can ever expect. Don’t get yourself killed just because you want to have a little hope,” Lazaro retorted as he started marching.

“But I want to give people the benefit of the doubt! If I didn’t believe that people are good, then I probably wouldn’t try so hard to save them,” Hatasuko said.

Lazaro began jogging northward; Hatasuko and Vaida followed from a short distance. They turned when they reached the corner of the block, and then they ran toward the west. As they raced through the dirt street, Hatasuko and his friends consistently searched for signs of bandits roaming the street.

Lazaro muttered, “I do think that people are good; that’s the only way that we as a species even survived this long to begin with. But when I’m in a situation that could lead to my death, there’s no benefit of the doubt. I don’t roll dice with my survival for something as pointless as hope.”

            While Hatasuko and his friends ran through a starlit street with silent homes on both sides, two shapes emerged from the darkness up ahead. Lazaro stopped running, lifted his warhammer, and swerved around. Two bandits stood at the east end of this block, and another two waited at the western end. All four enemies wore dark clothes. All four held identical swords.

             “I’ll take the two up ahead; you two get the ones behind us. If one gets past me, I’ll yell to let you know. Yell if you need help,” Lazaro grunted.

Vaida nodded, and then the group of three ran in opposite directions. Lazaro charged eastward with only his warhammer; he pulled it back behind him as he ran. Both bandits jumped apart so that they did not stand close to each other. Lazaro lunged at the one on his right while swinging his mighty hammer; the right bandit jumped away from his weapon. Just as Lazaro expected, the second bandit tried to strike his back from behind, but Lazaro attacked even more quickly; he threw himself backward and crashed the shield on his back into the bandit’s sword. The bandit tried to run off to the right, but Lazaro heard his footsteps and struck him with a sudden right elbow strike.

Lazaro’s attack knocked the bandit to the ground and paralyzed him with pain; he even dropped his sword as he fell. Lazaro swerved to face the grounded bandit, and he finally unleashed the finishing blow. He swung his warhammer and crashed its spike through the bandit’s skull in a single bloody burst. The other bandit was shocked by Lazaro’s brutality, so he simply ran past the muscular man. He knew there was no point in even trying to attack Lazaro from behind.

“I never said you can go,” Lazaro yelled as he grabbed his whip and swiftly swung it.

The bandit saw the flying whip and tried to jump aside, but he was too slow; Lazaro enwrapped his feet in midair from a distance. The bandit came crashing down onto his forearms with a jarring smack, though he then rolled and tried to cut the whip with his sword. Before he could, Lazaro retracted the whip and tossed it behind him. He then placed both hands on his warhammer.

“No one gets away with resisting us,” the bandit yelled as he jumped up and charged Lazaro with a slash of his sword.

Lazaro jumped back and swung his mighty hammer with all his strength. His hammerhead struck his enemy’s sword in a metallic crash and a shower of sparks; the sword flew off and hit the ground. Lazaro then dropped his warhammer and grabbed the bandit’s face with his right hand. He flexed his powerful arms, pushed forward, and slammed their head into the nearest wall with enough force to knock them unconscious. Lazaro threw their body in the street and then walked back to his weapons.

            Meanwhile, Hatasuko and Vaida attacked the bandits on the other end of the street. At first, the two bandits split up in the same way as the ones who attacked Lazaro, but it did not work as they expected: Vaida and Hatasuko simply targeted the closer bandit. Hatasuko lunged and attacked with a diagonal slash; the bandit used his sword to block. Vaida then ran by his side and attempted a swift right lunge; the bandit threw himself backward to avoid the attack. The second bandit then ran up and tried to hit Vaida, but she blocked his slash with her left sword. When their blades clashed, a blue spark flew off into the starlit air.

Hatasuko suddenly swung his blade at the first bandit’s ankles, but this bandit stabbed his sword into the dirt and blocked the slash. Immediately after their swords clashed, the bandit retaliated with a quick spinning kick that struck Hatasuko in the chest and sent him stumbling backward. However, since this bandit had dropped his sword to do this, he left himself exposed; Vaida attacked him with a swift stab to the gut. When she ripped her sword out of the wound with a worried stare, the bandit let out a gasp and dropped his sword. He fell onto the dirt with his hands on his wound.

“You’re outnumbered three-to-one. Give yourself up,” Hatasuko yelled to the last standing bandit.

“You only have the illusion of the upper hand,” the bandit said with a dark grin.

“Hatasuko, watch out!” Vaida screamed.

In a state of fear and confusion, Hatasuko felt Vaida slam her right arm onto his stomach with enough force to throw him aside. Less than a second later, an arrow shot through the air in the same place where his chest had been; it harmlessly struck the side of a silent building.

“Thank you! Vaida, I’ll take out the archer,” Hatasuko shouted as he kicked off the nearest wall.

Hatasuko lunged past the bandit and then charged at the archer who stood halfway across the next block. Vaida prepared to fight the nearest enemy with her two swords, but then three more bandits arrived by running through a narrow alley. These three bandits stood between Lazaro and Vaida.

As Hatasuko ran toward the bandit with the bow, his target fired an arrow, missed, and then sprinted away. Despite his own exhaustion, Hatasuko knew he could outrun the bandit. While the bandit ran away, he did a swift half-turn and fired another arrow. It missed because he was running and facing the wrong direction.

Once Hatasuko ran within a few houses of his target, he reached into his sack and hurled a rock at his enemy. The rock missed and struck the dirt street, so the bandit suddenly stopped, spun, and shot his arrow as a last-ditch effort. The arrow narrowly whizzed by Hatasuko’s left ear, leaving the bandit defenseless. Hatasuko caught him and slammed him to the ground with so much force that his bow slid out of his hands.

“Get off of him!” yelled another bandit who hid in the dark space between two nearby buildings.

When Hatasuko saw the shimmer of starlight on the hidden bandit’s arrow, he flexed his strong arms and pulled the other bandit off the street. He held the injured fighter as a shield to protect himself from the archer.

“Drop your weapon if you want him to live,” Hatasuko said with a nervous voice. He spun his sword so that its blade pressed against the hostage bandit’s throat. He faked boldness in his golden eyes, but the bandit in the alley looked unconcerned.

            At the same time just a few blocks away, Vaida made short work of the nearest bandit by disarming him and cutting his ankles. This left just the group of three bandits in between her and Lazaro, though they did not seem to mind being surrounded. The bandits held their swords proudly.

“Humankind is struggling to survive, and yet you’re running around making things worse? How could you possibly live with yourself?” Lazaro asked the bandits with an incredulous grimace.

“Reason and justice mean nothing to me.”

Lazaro glanced up and saw the silhouette of a man standing atop a starlit house. This man looked taller and more muscular than the rest of the bandits. The two swords in his hands glistened from the lights in the sky. His golden eyes shimmered in the glow of starlight.

            The bandit on the rooftop declared, “The Interfecti have turned all things to misery. The Interfecti are more powerful than anything this world has ever known. This means the force of misery is untouchable; there is no point in trying to stop it. Happiness will invariably be swallowed by the void. Death will take us all whether we fight it or not! Morality is meaningless because all things are meaningless. I only want to delay my own misery for as long as I can, and forget everything else!”

“I take it that you’re the leader of this little pack, right? Your men are terrible fighters, by the way,” Lazaro retorted.

“Come on, men. Don’t let him insult you like that. Attack!”

The three bandits swerved and charged at Lazaro with their swords raised. They diverged as they ran so that they could attack from the right, left, and head-on simultaneously. Because of his injury and fatigue, Lazaro did not try to run. He simply pulled off his shield and clenched the handle in his left hand while readying his warhammer.

When the three bandits began to close in, Lazaro lunged toward the head-on attacker, spun, and swung his hammer. The bandit threw himself onto the ground and rolled out of the way, but the other two bandits attempted a sword lunge at the same time. Lazaro continued swinging his warhammer and struck the second bandit’s sword to block it; his black shield blocked the third bandit’s sword. Lazaro then jumped backward, swung his warhammer again, and slammed its spike through the upper back of the bandit on the ground—permanently paralyzing him with one strike.

The other two bandits then counterattacked with swift sword lunges. Lazaro blocked the left sword with his shield again, but he could not stop the right attacker’s sword; the tip of the blade pierced through his armpit and stabbed in through his shoulder. Lazaro counterattacked with a powerful kick to this attacker’s chest; the bandit flew back and slammed against the wall to a nearby home.

Lazaro dropped his warhammer from the excruciating pain, so the third bandit tried to strike his feet with a quick low slash. Lazaro jumped over the sword, jumped away from the bandit, and prepared to use his shield as a battering ram.

“Lazaro, look out!” Vaida screamed as she ran up from the other direction.

However, Vaida was too slow to save him. The leader of the bandits jumped off the roof and kicked Lazaro’s head from above; the strike knocked him out on impact. As the huge man slammed down in the street, Vaida realized that she stood alone against an ordinary bandit and the bandit leader.

“Girl, you’re way too pretty to waste your time fighting thugs like us. You don’t want to get hurt again, do you? That scar looks rough,” said the man with the golden eyes.

As soon as he mentioned her scar, Vaida felt the instinctive need to hide her face, though she could not because she held a sword in both hands. She masked her timidity with silence, but she showed a bold glare with her bright blue eye. When the leader of the bandits saw that her sea-green eye was blind, he walked over to stand in her blind spot, but she simply followed him with her face.

The golden-eyed leader said, “You look like you’ve known misery. Are you just searching for the end? I can give you death if that is what you want.”

Vaida stayed silent for several seconds, though the leader of the bandits saw fear in her eyes. He shook his head when he accepted her silence, and then he lunged at her with a swift right slash. Vaida clashed her right sword against his, but then he lunged at her with his left. She crossed swords a second time, and then she jumped back and charged at the other bandit. This bandit grinned because Vaida had essentially thrown herself between two enemies, though this did not slow her down. He stuck his sword forward so that he could block her if she tried to run past him.

But instead of running by his right side, Vaida lunged to his left, jumped up, did a flip in the air, and landed with her feet on the wall beside him. She then jumped again, flew over his head, twisted in midair, and landed safely on her feet behind him. She then slashed her swords before he could turn; her blades destroyed his legs in a split-second. When the bandit fell while screaming in pain, she jumped past him and approached the man with the golden eyes.

“I don’t really want to fight you. My mind has been poisoned with a chorus of agony and an endless anguish; I see it every time I gaze into your blind eye. It’s like a reflection of the cold world I’ve been trying to ignore,” said the leader of the bandits.

“You have to fight me. I won’t let you escape. I am much faster than you,” she retorted.

“That might be true, but you’re tired. Your movements are slow.”

The bandit leader charged forward while flicking both swords. Vaida’s swords had both been hanging at her sides, so she flexed her arms and tried to pull them in, but her enemy blocked this movement with his blades. The four swords collided and unleashed a small spark; the leader of the bandits then struck her in the stomach with a sudden heel kick. She slammed onto the street and could not break her fall. Her head bumped against the ground and nearly knocked her out.

“Hey! Get away from her!” Hatasuko shouted from the other end of the street.

The leader of the bandits swerved to face Hatasuko. As soon as they saw each other, their golden eyes locked. They cautiously approached each other with their swords drawn.

             “I didn’t want to hurt her, but it makes no difference to me. Even if I spared her, it would merely postpone the inevitable misery. We can’t escape it. Not a single one of us.”

Hatasuko asked, “You’ve been touched by the darkness, haven’t you? You’ve felt the touch of an Interfectus. Your mind’s been engulfed by an ocean of agony.”

“That’s right. I touched the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows. I remember feeling all that anguish surge into me! At first I thought it was a curse, but I came to understand that it’s just a window to the true nature of reality. All of us are meant to be miserable. All of us will be lost to emptiness. It doesn’t matter if it happens now or later because there is no escape. I think that on some level, we all know it; we just don’t accept it. But when you’ve been touched by the darkness like I have, then your conscious mind has no choice. I was forced to accept that happiness is evanescent. Misery is forever. Death is endless. Everything is nothing,” said the leader of the bandits.

“But I have been touched by the darkness, and I’m not a monster like you! Do you really think we were given this curse so we can fuel more misery? Absolutely not! We have this curse so that the misery can fuel us. So that we can make a world less hopeless than this! So that we can make a world where children aren’t afraid to smile. So that we can send an apology to those we couldn’t save,” Hatasuko retorted.

“Mindless pleasure is the only indulgence that makes any sense. It’s meaningless, but it’s still pleasure. There is no reason for your twisted sense of hope; there is no reason for anything at all.”

“I’m tired of listening to you. You’re misusing the tempest.”

When the two swordsmen came within striking distance, Hatasuko spun and threw a rock at a high speed. The rock distracted the leader of the bandits; he blocked it with a swift left slash. Hatasuko then lunged forward, dropped, and attempted a low swing, but the bandit blocked it with his right sword. When their weapons clashed, the bandit retaliated with a sudden left lunge; Hatasuko barely knocked it away with his blade. The bandit then attacked again with both swords at a lethal speed. Hatasuko only dodged because he threw himself backward.

The bandit lunged again, knowing he could run faster forward than his enemy could run backward, but Hatasuko suddenly stopped running. He quickly attacked with a diagonal slash, and since the bandit leader did not expect this, he had to pull up both swords just to block it. When the three swords collided, the impact brought the bandit to a stop. Hatasuko jumped several paces backward until he reached a safe distance.

“I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to kill anyone,” Hatasuko stammered.

“But what if they deserve it? We both know that some people deserve to die.”

Hatasuko remembered the last voice he had heard in the tempest. He remembered that Adishina died because her parents left her when the Interfectus attacked. He became furious as he recalled their actions, but he still couldn’t fathom killing them.

Hatasuko said sternly, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“But what if it’s the only way you can save your pretty friend?” the bandit asked with a vile glare in his golden eyes.

Vaida was still semi-conscious on the dirt street with her swords at her side. Her dark hair danced in the wind; the stars illuminated the scarred half of her face. The bandit leader glanced down at her, but before he could state his threat, a rock flew through the air and struck his face. The rock broke his nose on impact, and before his blood could hit the street, Hatasuko tore a massive incision through his stomach.

“What?! How fast are you?!” the bandit screamed as he flew backward.

The bandit leader dropped his swords, clenched the massive gash, and fell onto his back. His golden eyes slammed shut, and his teeth grinded against each other from the pain.

“You asked what I would do if it was the only way to save my friend. Well, you’ll be in so much pain that you’ll wish you were dead,” Hatasuko retorted.

The bandit glared at Hatasuko’s fearsome gold eyes. Though his body trembled with agony, the man opened his eyes with a sinister grin. He grabbed a dagger from his side pocket, though he did not point it at Hatasuko. Instead, he pressed the tip of his blade against his own throat.

            “We’re all monsters hidden in human form. There’s no way to fight the shadow that’s fallen on your heart. The Interfectus is inside us both. It will poison you,” the bandit said with a laugh that defied his blinding pain.

“Why do you think that’ll happen to me?” asked Hatasuko.

“Because I know you know that I deserve this, and that’s just the beginning.”

With that, the leader of the bandits slit his own throat to escape the pain. Hatasuko looked away, wincing as he sighed. He knew on some level that the bandit was right, but he dismissed the fear because he never sought to fight humans in the first place. He walked away from the dying villain and stumbled toward Vaida, still lying on her side in the street. When he reached her, he sat down and ran his fingers through her soft hair.

“Thank you for saving me. For the first time in a long while, I don’t think I want to die,” she whispered with a pained smile.

“You’re not allowed to die. As awful as that man was, he was right when he said that you’ve seen too much pain. I want you to see it when I create it. I want you to see the world without misery,” Hatasuko said quietly as he combed his fingers through her hair.

“I truly wish I could see something like that.”

“You will. But I guess we should probably get going, right? Lazaro made it sound like we’re on a tight schedule,” Hatasuko said to her.

“Yeah, but we can’t go anywhere until he wakes up. Though, until then, can you, um, keep playing with my hair? I really like the way it feels,” she murmured with a slight smile.

Hatasuko nodded and smiled. He gently slid his fingertips against her scalp. When he pulled her hair away from her face, he saw that her eyes were closed and her lips were smiling. The unscarred part of her face shimmered from the light of the stars in the sky. It was bright enough that he could see nothing other than her, drowning out the darkness.