Day 7, 7:05 AM

“You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday.

You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

— Epicurus

I pounce, cleaving down diagonally with the curved sword.

Shit! Four!

I realize there’s four bandits in this group just before my stolen sword hits the neck belonging to the pair of legs I saw from the bush. I’ve put too much force into the blow. The blonde’s bearded head flies, and my blade continues, severing a ginger man’s arm, and sinking half way into his torso.

The ginger goes limp, and someone screams as steaming blood fountains in the chilly morning. I try to pull my hand back, but my sword is stuck. I grit my teeth and yank harder, when the corpse hanging from my sword opens his eyes. The ginger opens his mouth to scream, but a veritable flood of blood gushes out, spraying my face, and I feel like someone plunged me into a Torrentino movie.

I don’t even get a chance to blink before a dozen things unfold simultaneously. The two remaining bandits draw their weapons and scream curses. The men some thirty meters behind me also start shouting, but they don’t move yet, or I can’t hear them running from all the yelling. Probably the latter.

One of the bandits hesitates, but the other one rushes two steps towards me. I let go of my sword and spit the blood out of my mouth all the while clenching my fist and ducking into the bushes. The bandit hacks ahead of me, anticipating my move. I jerk my shoulders to the side, but his sword catches my upper arm just as I’m about to ram my fist into his sternum.

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I dismiss the distracting blue screen as soon as it flickers into existence, then I black out.

“Aang, are you all right?” A terrified, vaguely familiar voice calls to me from somewhere beyond the void of death.

As I regain consciousness, I realize I’m wet and hurting all over. I blink and my vision clears.

“What happened?” I mumble and realize Little Missy is staring at me from less than half a yard away.

She’s so close, I can’t see more than her face and the upper half of her torso. But what I see is enough to confirm she’s still indecent, and yet again I don’t get the chance to enjoy the sight. Little Missy’s soaked in red.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, dazed by all the blood covering her.

“No,” she says, flashing me a nervous smile. The flicker of white on her mostly crimson face looks eerie, but I don’t have the time to dwell on it.

“How’s your stomach?” she asks, and I look down to see her hand pressing my abdomen. My very, very bloody abdomen. It takes a moment for my brain to catch up with reality. I’m not standing, like I originally thought, I’m laying on my back, and Little Missy’s leaning over me.

She looks like someone splashed her with a bucket of blood. Mostly her head, arms, and upper body. I, on the other hand, look like someone dunked me into a vat of crimson paint, and then repeated the process two dozen times to make sure I’m red enough.

The moment drags into an eternity as my body briefs me on what I’ve somehow missed. My cheek and ear are burning. Both my shoulders, and my upper back have suffered at least one wound. I can see three gashes across my chest, and the one Little Missy’s pressing on my stomach looks really bad. Really. Bad.

Is she holding my guts in place? Will my entrails spill?

Time resumes. I’m about to piss myself from fear. Panicking, I squeeze my urethra, and try to smile, realizing too late I too may end up looking like a sanguine horror.

“I think I’m fine. You can let go.” I’m surprised my voice isn’t shaking. “I hope my intestines don’t spill.”

Way to go, Blunt.

She presses my stomach harder, and I grunt.

“Little Missy, shoving your hand into my stomach won’t help either of us.” I’m not really sure who to blame for that line, but the girl pales and seems ready to vomit.

“I’m joking. You can let go, and we see what happens.”

Her eyes turn as big as saucers, and her face goes even whiter. She shakes her head mortified.

Is she afraid for me, or does she fear winding up alone after I die? Maybe she doesn’t want to face the moral conundrum of whether she should leave me here if I’m immobile?

I try smiling once more. ‘If I’m dying, I’ll die anyway,’ I catch Blunt before it speaks through me, and adjust the sentence slightly.

“You have to let go. Otherwise, we can’t see how serious my wounds are.”

She nods and retracts her hand. The blood fountain I expected doesn’t spray out from me. In fact, I’m covered in so much blood I can’t even tell whether I’m bleeding. It hurts like a bitch, though.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I close my eyes and lay my head back on the ground for a moment when my lady chokes a sob.

“I’m alive. I’m just trying to think without staring at all the gore.”

She makes some gurgling sounds, and for some reason, I’m hoping she’s crying because of me. I try to focus on what I should be doing, but my head is swimming.

Maybe I could just sleep it off?

Fat chance. Based on what Abe told me, their mercenary company is quite big. Sooner or later someone will come searching for the sods I killed.

I’ve killed a bunch of them already.

“Did anyone escape?” I ask, my voice surprisingly weak when I’m not focusing on speaking.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “You killed nine of them.”

Nine? Holy shit! How?

My chest feels weird, and my breathing turns shallow.

Don’t hyperventilate! Don’t hyperventilate! It may kill you right now. Calm down.

“Little Missy, I’m sorry I have to ask this of you, but could you check if any of them had water. Canteen, bottle, waterskin, anything. I think I’ve lost some blood, and I need to drink a bit of water.”

I can hear a rustle as she nods. Or maybe my ears are fabricating susurrations because of the blood loss? I don’t know. I don’t even care that much. I’m tired, but I know I can’t sleep. Not yet.

“F1,” I say, lacking better options.

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A bunch of things went back to red again, and the last line changed. All in all, pretty useless.

I don’t know how much time I wasted looking at the imaginary letters dancing before my eyes before Little Missy brought back a wooden canteen.

“Drink up. There’s one more.”

I smile, looking at those shaking eyes.

“Help me,” I whisper, and she raises my head a bit. She has no idea what to do, and I do my best not to laugh as she fumbles around. She puts the wooden bottle down and places my head on her knees.

The sight which opens before my eyes is beautiful, almost worth having nine thugs take a stab at me.

If I survive this, I’m definitely getting laid.

A trickle of water enters my mouth, and her look of engrossed focus is just sublime. The scrunched brows and pursed lips make me want to grab and kiss her, if only she wasn’t covered in so much blood. If only I wasn’t riddled with so many holes.

I lose track of the world in my personal paradise, disconnected from the pain and fantasizing about getting up just a tiny bit and suckling on that perfect—

I choke on water and start coughing.

“Aang?” An actual tear slides down her cheek, followed by another and another.

“I’m alive,” I croak, but that doesn’t stop her from shaking.

“I need to get up and undress, to check my wounds.”

She helps me up, and I expected she would turn away or leave, but instead she helps me take my shirt off. The process is easier than when wolves bit me half dead. In part, that’s because the wounds are cleaner, but I think mostly it’s because my blood didn’t have enough time to clot and because another human being is actually helping me.

The cuts aren’t quite as bad as I expected. They are bad, though. Orangish-pink ichor glistens atop the strips of coagulating blood. I gingerly touch my tender face and ear only to find a chunk of my lobule, half the size of my thumb, missing.

That cut is deep, but it didn’t pierce my cheek. My mouth doesn’t have a vent, and my jaw seems to be working fine for now. Most other cuts are simple flesh wounds. They look scary, but other than infection and blood loss, they pose little danger.

The only deep wound is the one across my gut. Something’s amiss there, but I’m no doctor, and I don’t know what’s wrong. The cut on my back also hurts a ton, but I don’t know how big it is, and I can’t see…

Right!

“Pardon me, Little Missy, could you check my back?” I turn towards her only to see she’s been busy, cleaning herself and trying to cover her nudity.

“It can wait until you’re done making yourself presentable.” I spin right back with twice the speed, and my head keeps spinning.

I really want to lie down and go to sleep, but I can’t. I’ve got to watch over her. We gotta get away from here as soon as possible, before other bandits arrive.

I remind myself of that for the fifth time already, but my trash brain says I really, really ought to sleep.

“I’ll go search the bodies for food. They probably had some supplies on them.” I take a step, then another before the world pulls some strange maneuver on me. My eyes can’t keep up, so I close them.

When I reopen them, I realize I have blacked out again. I’m leaning against a tree with one hand, gasping for breath.

How did I end up here? I backhand the sweat off my forehead, and realize I’m slick all over, self cleaning in progress.

“Aang? Are you all right?” the little princess asks her stupid question, again.

No, I’m not all right. I was stabbed and cut multiple times. I lost half an ear and a bucket of blood. I have trouble walking. Hell, I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.

“I’m fine,” I say, drawing my lips into a smile. “I’m just admiring this fine tree. How are you doing?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, I hear a rustle as she approaches me from the back and moves my hair out of the way.

“It’s not bad,” I can hear the lie in her voice as she inspects my wound. “I’ll have to cut your hair.”

“Sure. Go ahead.” Aang’s hair was a long, ugly clump even when I first woke up in his body. With all this blood added into the mix, it’s probably a breeding pond for all illnesses known to mankind.

Her knife passes dangerously close to my nape, and I’m surprised just how much I trust this stranger I just met less than a week ago.

“Here. Eat this.” She passes me the rock-bread and jerky.

“Wait,” I call just as she’s about to leave. “Could you bring me a bit more water? I think this bread will finish me off from the inside, if I try to eat it dry.”