Jade walked casually through the snow, plowing a foot of the powder and ash with each step. She wasn’t excessively tall, but her body never lacked for strength.

Jade watched the distance with curiosity.

Vision was not a complete picture for the Risen, and she had enough broken memories from being a person to recall how sight had worked.

Instead, she could simply sense everything in a large radius around her. Only, she couldn’t see behind objects like trees, and she also couldn’t see everything at once. She had to choose things to focus on. And focusing was much easier if she turned her head in the direction of the thing she was focusing on.

At the end of her vision was simply a darkness that never went away. This was the reason for the Risen that chose to simply wander around: Risen were unable to deal with the fact that they could not see an end in open space. They tried to walk until they could find the end of their vision.

The Risen that stayed indoors were the same. They tried to hide somewhere that blocked their vision in, so that they could pretend that their vision was complete.

Madness.

Jade glanced to her right and her vision revealed a nearly endless wave of Risen all under her command. Their soul strings extended from their heads and into the earth.

When Jade glanced to her left, in the distance peeking out from a rock was a being with a soul string extending to the sky. Jade stopped walking and watched it.

All of the Risen were under her command, so they naturally all stopped walking at the same moment she did.

Jade had a strong urge to bind that soul string to the earth.

It was a human.

Jade smiled, and the human apparently realized he’d been spotted. His head and soul string disappeared behind the distant rock formation.

Time to hunt.

----------------------------------------

Vas jerked awake and instantly regretted doing so. His head had a dull ache, and his body was covered in bruises. His sword, the miaodao, was gone. Vas felt his head and found a sticky area that seemed tender. He sat up slowly with his eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths of air. After a minute of readjusting, Vas opened his eyes and looked around.

He was inside a dark room with bars covering an entire side. There was a window just across the hall outside his bars. The other three sides of the room were covered in slimy stone, and Vas thought he could see moss growing in multiple areas.

The ground was hard wood, but it was still softer than stone would have been.

Vas briefly wondered what kind of person designed this odd room, then decided that he didn’t care. He was trapped in some kind of cell, and that was all that mattered.

Vas sat there for a few minutes before he eventually felt well enough to stand. Leaning against one of the stone walls, he stood up slowly. Vas hobbled over to the bars and brought his head to them, trying to see as far in each direction as possible.

The sudden clanging sound of a heavy door opening and shutting startled Vas, and he glanced around.

A bruised burly man appeared from the left holding a tray. The man smiled at Vas, revealing several missing teeth. “You killed Barlin, you know.” Vas blinked twice. “Didn’t know any Barlins,” he said.

“You took his club and bashed his head in with it you scum!” The guard seemed to be a little dull, and quite prone to emotional outbursts. “Oh, THAT Barlin. Yes, I definitely killed him,” Vas said with a smile, doing his best Alex impersonation. “Are you the second one I hit? I knocked your teeth out with my next swing?”

The guard snarled at Vas and threw his tray at Vas’s bars, “Commander says you stay here alive for a few days. I wager after six or seven, she’ll forget you’re here. I’ll be back to gut you then.” With that, the guard simply turned and walked away.

“Too afraid to do it now,” Vas prodded. The man paused a moment, opened the large door and left.

Vas glanced down at the tray and saw the bits of food ration scattered all over the ground. He licked a little that had flown onto his arm and then sat down.

Reaching through the bars, Vas barely managed to grab hold of the small tray and pull it through the bars. Vas flipped it upside down and put it on the ground. He slid it around and found that it could slide a fair distance. Also, the bars did not go all the way to the floor, so the tray had just enough room to slide underneath them.

The loud door scraped open again after just a few more minutes. “That was quick,” Vas said cheerily. The same guard appeared in his field of vision, this time holding a spear.

Vas smiled at the guard, “I must be the luckiest man alive! You brought me a present.”

The guard growled and pointed his spear towards Vas. He stabbed forward with extreme precision and speed, almost skewering Vas with the first attempt. Vas narrowly escaped, only taking a scratch on his left arm. The guard drew back, watching Vas like a hunter eying his quarry.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Vas waited patiently, keeping the tray under his right foot and preparing to dodge at any moment. Even if he could get the spear out of the guard’s hands, it wouldn’t help him unless he could kill the guard here and now.

The guard lashed out like lighting, and Vas stepped into the strike. At the same time, Vas slid the tray forward under the bars and into the guard’s ankle.

The spear made a gash in Vas’s side, but he was able to grab hold of it this time because the guard lost his footing. Vas pulled the spear into his cell, flipped it around, and stuck the guard straight through his eye before the man could run. Vas pulled the spear back slowly, and the guard toppled over next to the bars of Vas’s cell. At the last moment, Vas yanked the spear quickly out of the man’s head, so that the shaft of the spear wouldn’t snap on the bars.

Vas immediately rolled on the ground parallel to the bars and stuck his arm under them. He found the guard’s keyring as soon as possible and unlocked his cell. The whole ordeal had only taken a matter of seconds, so the guard was just now starting to claw out his eyes.

Vas set about the task of slowly stabbing through each section of the guard’s neck piece by piece to decapitate the man before he completely turned. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab. After the job was done, Vas kicked the head off the rest of the way and pulled the slippery body into his old cell. Vas ripped off a piece of the guard’s clothing and used it to wipe the fresh blood off his own face.

Vas cleaned himself as much as possible with the cloth before throwing it back inside the cell. He closed the cell door, locked it, and then proceeded down the hall to his left until he saw the heavy door the guard had come through. Vas tried a few different keys before getting the right one.

The door swung open to reveal a set of stairs leading up. The air was getting cooler already. Vas felt a little dizzy and made some bandages out of strips of cloth he kept in a pocket.

Vas took the stairs slowly, and peeked over the top when he reached it. There was another long hallway, this time filled with multiple cells. At the end of the hallway was a large door that seemed to lead outside. Many of the cells appeared to be occupied. Vas prepared to make a run for it when he heard a familiar voice. “V? Yo!” Vas jumped in surprise, startled by the sudden noise. “Miiche? Am I hallucinating,” Vas wondered aloud dazedly. To the side, Miiche stood in a guard’s uniform. Instead of a spear, she had two sabers sheathed on each of her very well-shaped hips. “You look terrible. Why are you here? You disappeared years ago.” Miiche was all questions.

Vas held up a finger to his lips. “Long story. I need to get out,” Vas whispered. Miiche glanced at Vas’s finger and giggled, “You really trying to make me talk quieter? Come on, front door’s right here.”

Miiche walked towards the front door casually, and Vas followed behind her while glancing around every corner. “You’re more easily startled than a squirrel. Just relax. Want one of my swords? I’ll trade you for Gorsh’s spear. Is he dead, by the way?” Vas just stared at Miiche’s back with horror. How did she know? “Gorsh always had that spear with him. Also, he just came upstairs to grab the thing, looking all angry like. Then you show up holding it and there’s blood… Well, you can keep your secrets. Whatever. But the spear, you should give me the spear. Here.” Miiche unclipped one of her sabers, stopped walking, turned around and held it out to Vas.

The two of them were currently in the middle of around fifty cells full of detainees, and everyone seemed to be watching them. “Take the trade, man. She’s brutal strong when she’s angry.” The whisper came from a few cells down. There were dozens of murmurs of agreement.

Vas shook out of his daze and held the spear out. Miiche swapped it with the saber in an instant.

“Good. Now, there are two guards outside. What are the chances they recognize you?” Vas shrugged. “Alright, we’ll know soon enough.”

Miiche pushed open the double doors, “Hey boys, taken this guy out for a walk.” The two guards glanced over at Miiche casually, but upon seeing Vas one of the guards pointed. “Wait. Isn’t that—” Blood spattered over the snow and both men’s bodies hit the ground. Miiche’s spear stuck through one’s neck, and her saber had already decapitated the other. Miiche spun around and decapitated the man she had used the spear to stab. Two dead guards in a matter of seconds.

Vas hadn’t even fully drawn his blade yet.

“So, V, where we headed,” Miiche asked, chipper as usual.