These men were younger than me. Not a lot younger, but I don’t think one of them was over thirty. They wore pelts, as all the villagers did, but these were rattier than most.

There were twelve of them, and as soon as they saw me, they stopped beating on the soda machine. The machine itself remained intact. It didn’t appear to me that they were successful in destroying it, assuming that’s what their goal had been.

Like pack animals, the men growled at one another as some kind of unspoken command. Time to focus on a new target.

Two men jumped off the top of the soda machine, and joined the ten others slowly shambling in my direction.

I didn’t know what to do. My feet weren’t stuck in the mud, but they may as well have been. Would running have done me any good? How far would you get? I asked myself. They’d catch you anyway.

The gang of young men were about a hundred meters off. They approached deliberately. There were two men ahead of the rest. All of them were slim, underfed. Deep eye sockets. Angular faces. They were dirty, and their hair was mud caked.

As they closed in I could’ve sworn I heard a wolf’s howl in the distance. The howl may as well have been my own visceral fear crying to get out. The giant wall behind the soda machine, towering over all of us and throwing its great shadow made me feel more alone than ever, and stuck dealing with these feral creatures.

I’d never been lonelier, and more afraid. Any friends I had in Moonlight who could help me in this situation might as well have been a hundred miles away. I was on my own.

But, then it hit me.

Realization.

“Stop!” I yelled at the prowlers. I had my hands out in front of me.

The two men leading the gang, with their bone rack slumped shoulders, and half shredded pelts hanging from them, did actually stop. They were about forty feet away. The others came up behind them, and then halted.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said.

My feet no longer felt frozen beneath me. I was confident I could take off and run without stumbling at any moment. But, I knew I wouldn’t have to.

“You witch,” uttered the one of the lead men. “You and your tea. You have brought us this.”

He motioned to the wall.

“Yes,” I said. Might as well lean into it. “I did. You’re right. I’ve made your village safer.”

“We don’t want your safer,” said the angry man.

All of the men standing around him wore sneers. They looked as though they might charge me the second they were given the go ahead.

“You didn’t have a choice,” I said. “It was my decision, and I made it. You might not like it, but I am in charge now.”

Not exactly the type of language you might use to deescalate a situation I’ll grant you, but I figured I knew what I was doing.

The man speaking for the group smiled, and showed off his greatly receding gums.

“No, no,” he growled. “You are not the power here. You come to Moonlight, but you are not Moonlight.”

“Wrong,” I said. “This has become my home. It’s my village too. I live in Moonlight.”

“And you die in Moonlight.”

He took a step forward, and I could see the surface tension of the gang was about burst.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Don’t you come near me,” I shouted. “I’m warning you.”

“Warning?” The lead man said, and his frown was genuine. “What is warning?”

“You’re in danger,” I said.

As soon as I said it the entire gang busted out into laughter. Had I just successfully deescalated this without even meaning to?

Uh, no.

Their laughter subsided in a few seconds, and they stampeded right at me.

I stood dead still holding my arms out by my sides like a gunfighter in a duel. The imagery flipping through my mind resembled a diagram from an anatomy book. I waited for the perfect moment until the men got within ten feet. I slammed the palm of my left hand onto my right bicep.

KABOOM!

Electric blue smashed the ground at my feet. The lightning bolt threw bodies flying. I crashed ten feet backward. The gang of young men tumbled in the opposite direction like toddlers in a wave pool.

When I regained my footing, I had a charge surging through my flesh. My whole body pulsed with electricity for a few seconds, and I felt energetic in a way I never had before.

One of the young men jumped back to his feet, and he ran straight at me. Far from being afraid, he, like the rest of them appeared angrier than ever.

He ran right up to me, and swung a furious fist at my face which I easily caught with my right hand. I bent his arm backward, and kicked his left leg out from under him. I overpowered him without breaking a sweat, and had him on his knees. I’d never felt so strong.

I let the man up, and he retreated a few feet, but two of his friends sprinted forward, and the three men all jumped on me at once. One of the men landed a solid punch on my cheek, and it stunned me.

“No!” I hollered.

Then I bent over to avoid another punch, and deliberately clutched my left thigh with both hands.

THWACK!

The lightning scattered bodies again.

This time when I stood up, my vision blurred, and even as it sharpened in a couple of seconds, dizziness overtook me. In my peripheral vision I could see the gang surging forward again. I lost my balance, and fell to the mud.

One of the men kicked me in my side. Normally, this likely would’ve broken ribs, but I barely felt it. I glanced up to see confusion on his face.

I grabbed his foot with both of my hands, and I twisted toward the right, and with a satisfying crunch I snapped his ankle. The man screamed and grasped at his lower leg that resembled a hockey stick.

Another man jumped on my back. I stood up with him hanging on me, while another young man punched me in the chest. I reached up behind me, and grabbed the man on my back. I threw him in a high arc, a good twenty feet from me where he landed awkwardly, and probably broke his arm or maybe his collarbone. He got up, and ran in the opposite direction.

The man who’d punched me in the chest? I yanked him in close to me, wrapped my right hand around the base of his neck, and raised him up off the ground.

He choked, and sputtered. His face turned purple as I glared up at him. Two men slapped and pulled on my arm as I held their friend helpless toward the sky.

“I told you to leave!” I screamed at the choking man. “You chose not to listen.”

“Stop!” Yelled one of the men hitting me.

Without letting go of the man’s throat, I kicked one of the men to my left, and sent him stumbling back. He grimaced, and held his knee before limping off.

“Consider yourself lucky,” I said to the choking man, and I threw him ten feet.

The man coughed, and shook his head, and he joined three others in their retreat. I dodge another man’s punch, and helpfully dislocated his jaw for him with my return punch.

Seven young men remained, but they were hesitant to come near me. It appeared as though they were about to try again, and again I lost my balance. It was as if I had to relearn the use of various muscles.

I was on all fours again, and two of the wild men soccer kicked me over and over, feverishly trying to do as much damage to me as possible before I could ever get back to my feet.

I wasn’t feeling a lot of pain from their kicks, but the force behind them did cause me to fall over onto my side. Before one of the men could stomp on me, I planted an elbow into his shin, and I felt his bone split into two. He wailed, fell onto his backside, and rolled around on the cold ground absolutely beside himself with agony.

“Go!” Shouted one of the men who kept trying to kick me. He was pointing at something. Perhaps the others? I couldn’t tell from my vantage point, laying on my back. I wanted to get to my feet, but for some reason I couldn’t shake my bout of vertigo.

WHAM!

A rock struck me straight in the forehead. Then I saw an ugly, muddy face hover above me. Searching the ground next to me with spider leg fingers, I clasped the rock that hit me with my right hand, and I swung it upward. The rock embedded into the temple of my assailant’s ugly face, and a clot of blood spurt from the wound I'd opened on him. He dropped beside me in a lump, unconscious. He might’ve even been dead for all I knew.

“Do it!” Screamed one of the men. A command to someone I couldn't see.

Before I could even attempt to stand, a man with a huge anvil sized stone held over his head, came into my view, and he brought the big rock crashing downward at my face. Everything for me went dark.