The curtain of night fell upon the land like a suffocating shroud.
The chirping birds and the frolicking critters were downed in silence, only laboured breaths ushered into the darkness.
Caring for neither the ground she tread on, thorny and with undulating roots, nor the pursuers behind, with frothing mouths and glaring eyes, the dainty girl resolutely stepped into the unknown.
Her face was draped in a sheen of sweat and grime, sticky crimson stucking to her cheeks and a cut above her eyes relentlessly discharging spates of blood, but she didn't stop, not even once. For the fire of life burned strongly within her.
*Crack!*
But alas, through a series of misfortune, she toppled over an insidiously snaking root, as though it was placed there just to throw her into the fiery pits of despair.
With a mouth full of dirt and a joint swelling purple the girl could do naught but unsheath a fine blade from her girdle.
The shiv contained the same amount of hope as well as loss, as it would give her a last choice. To die with dignity.
So she took it into her hands and clasped the hilt strongly, the dagger faintly humming in cadence with her desire.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
"I won't give you this joy.", she mumbled to herself. "I -and I only- will decide my life!".
So as to not fall prey to the predators, to not concede the last laugh to them, the girl made an almost unbelievable decision, with the shuddering blade pointing at her own chest.
"STOP HER!", a dark voice hollered. "STOP HER AT ALL COSTS!", but it was to late.
Leaving a trail of starry argent the knife cut through the air, homing in on the girl's petite frame.
"NOOOO!", giving one, last and desperate cry the assailants could only watch the scene unfold.
The blade pierced through cloth, tearing each fiber apart, slowly as if to ridicule every single one of them; then it reached the skin, tasting the soft flesh and the first drop of blood, before...
At once all sound vanished, the linchpin of the world shattered, and with the muted ring of displaced air a hand appeared from the void.
It grasped the girl's thin wrists that held the dagger in a vice like grip, stopping the blade just an inch apart from her heart.
The hand, tanned and checkered in veins and weaving muscles, pulled onto her arms, the knife dislodging with a sickening squelch.
"Huh?", is all the presumed leader and bawler could voice, before his head kissed the ground, his eyes watching his disemboweled body slowly swaying to the side before it succumbed to gravity.
In just an instant a shadow swathed figure stood amongst the stunned bandits, dual-blades like living fire in his hands. The metal moved along his arms, sometimes tinted in a dull blue and then growing into a fiery red until it billowed out as a palpable grey smoke.
The figure blurred before the screeching of metal against metal sounded out, the call of a hungry reaper.
In but an instant everyone of the assailants was reduced into minced meat, some even into smoking ash, and it was then that Sylvia Wilkows regained her sanity.
"I-I Uhm- Uhh...-!", She fumbled to find the right words, the pain in her chest giving her just that tad-bit of clarity, though before she finished the unknown shade sprinkled a greenish powder into the air.
Fearing that it was deadly poison Sylvia tried to turn tail, but alas, the figure was quicker, much, much quicker and manhanded her by the collar.
"Sorry Miss...", she heard a dulled whisper, before a equally dull pain laced through her stomach. With a spasm she inhaled the copious amounts of the verdant dust, twinkling like emeralds in the wind, thereafter she fainted, the knife dropping to the ground.
"I really can't believe this...", the figure talked to itself, clenching its hands and cracking its joints. "But dang its awesome! Like, fuck me but this is actually badass!"
With a last joyous chuckle the unknown silhouette vanished once more.