The girl from behind the teen quickly moved over to be in front of the group, a heavy frown on her face as she fiercely glared at Natalia. And right as she was about to shout at her, one huge hand appeared in between both the little girl and Natalia, who suddenly stopped in her tracks and turned to look back at Jenna.

Jenna had one hand raised to keep the bandits stuck on the tree and the other one in Natalia’s direction with the palm of her hand facing in, making it so the palm that was summoned would appear to be telling Natalia to stop.

“You are the bad, evil woman that almost killed my big brother!” the girl shouted from the other side of the hand, making Natalia ignore Jenna as she turned to look at the little girl with surprise.

“What are you—”

“You are! My big brother said that you were going to kill him when he took some coins from a spoiled girl and that—”

The teenage boy—the girl’s big brother—quickly approached her and placed his hands on the girl’s mouth, shutting her up in the process. “Shhh! Emi! She could kill us at any time if we provoke her like that!”

Marcus laughed out loud from behind everyone else, looking down on Natalia as he did. “Gonna kill the kids? I won’t stop you if you want to, but man, that’s cold blooded.”

“Lady Natalia?” Jenna followed up with a questioning tone of voice.

“What? I…” Natalia trailed off, looking beyond the half transparent giant hand standing in her way.

She looked at the younger boy who had been staying behind, fearfully walking next to the teenage boy and holding on to him, his hands and legs shaking as he stood looking up at Natalia with fear. She then turned to the teenage boy, who looked up just as fearfully as the other boy, firmly holding tight the younger girl. And finally she turned to look at the young girl.

This little girl—Emi—had a head full of bright blond hair, which stood out compared to the brown one from her brothers. She was wearing a light pink dress—apparently new since only the hem of the dress had a bit of dirt. But what stood out the most, were the fiercely glaring eyes of the girl, who fearlessly looked up at Natalia with big light blue eyes, which almost seemed gray.

“Lady Natalia, it is clear that these children are innocent, and as an Inquisitor I cannot allow you to harm them,” Jenna said from her spot with a firm tone of voice.

“I… you are right,” Natalia finally answered, shaking her head as she did. The young boy and the teenager sighed in relief, while the girl kept her glare on Natalia, so Natalia continued, looking back at the young girl as she did. “But that boy is a criminal.”

“No!” Emi quickly shouted back, “my brother is not a criminal!”

“He stole from me,” Natalia continued, a calm tone of voice as she spoke.

“N-no… he… um…” the girl responded with a low tone of voice and looked to the side.

“I-I’ll give you everything I have with me!” the teenager quickly followed up, pulling a small bag of coins out of his pocket. “I don’t know how much I took that day, but this is everything I made working with the smith!”

“But that was for food…” the young boy next to him mumbled in a low and dejected voice.

“Sorry Ben… but we’ll figure something out as long as we’re alive,” the teenager said as he looked to the grass below him.

“Lady Natalia, this is—”

“Urg,” the man laying on the floor finally woke up, causing Jenna to keep quiet. He was holding his head with one hand as he tried to stand up, but a second later, he remembered the situation he had been in, so he quickly stood up, sword in hand and faced the large hand in front. “What is this?! What happened to the kids?!”

“We’re here Dom, we’re okay,” the teenager said to the man, who turned with a surprised expression.

Dom turned to look down, and sighed. “It’s good to see that you’re okay, Liam,” he then turned to the half transparent large hand standing in his way, sword in hand, “but what is going on here? What happened to the bandits?”

Emi raised a hand and pointed at Jenna standing some distance away. “That scary lady came over and beat them all up,” she then pointed to Marcus, “and then that scary man came over and wanted to kill them,” and finally pointed to Natalia, “and then this bad woman wanted to kill big brother.”

“Huh?!” Dom exclaimed as he looked with wide eyes at Natalia, “Why would you do such a thing?!”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t planning to do that,” Natalia responded, her expression turning slightly awkward. Marcus laughed again when he noticed how flustered Natalia had gotten.

“Emi is very honest girl,” Dom said, turning to look down at the fiercely glaring girl who hadn’t taken her eyes off from Natalia, “sometimes to a fault I’d think…” he continued with an awkward tone of voice, turning to look up at Natalia again, “so if she says that you wanted to kill Liam, then there must be a reason, Lady…”

“Natalia,” she responded, “and I think that it is just a misunderstanding. That kid is a criminal that once stole from me and didn’t face justice from his actions. I just wanted to make sure that he did.”

“And killing him is justice for stealing?” Dom asked, his eyebrows furrowed and his sword pointing even higher at Natalia.

“I wasn’t going to kill him…” Natalia insisted, looking down at both the glaring girl and the scared boys standing with her. She turned to look back at Jenna after a moment. “Perhaps we could also turn him in with the other bandits.”

“What?!” screamed Liam, quickly standing up as he did.

“I won’t let you have my brother!” Emi followed up, a slight white glint appearing in her eyes, something that Jenna noticed as her mouth turned into an ‘o’ shape for a second.

Jenna chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll do that,” she responded with a shake of her head.

Natalia was taken aback. “Why not?”

“The Gods have forgiven his sins, and as such, we shall forgive him as well,” Jenna said with a soft smile.

“The Gods?” Natalia said with a confused expression on her face. “That is not—there must be something—”

“Come on Natty,” Marcus interrupted with a shake of his head, “Are you really that desperate to ‘bring justice’ to that kid that you’ll even ignore these people’s laws and shit?”

Natalia paused for a moment, looking down at the grass before nodding in response. “You… are right, I’ll let you handle it how you see fit, Sister Jenna.”

Jenna chuckled and smiled, and as she was doing so, a group of guards from the caravan finally came back with ropes and chains in their hands. She didn’t turn to look at them and simply lowered the hand that she was using to keep up the large hand between the kids and Natalia.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Once the guards had gathered around the other large hand holding the group of bandits up to a tree, Jenna lowered the other hand, letting the men fall on the ground. The guards quickly went in and grabbed the bandits, binding them with chains and connecting them with a rope to ensure none of them ran away.

Dom noticed the guards and Jenna’s attitude, so he lowered the weapon and looked at her for a moment. He then looked down at the few kids with him and looked back up to Jenna. “Excuse me sister!”

Jenna turned to look back at him as well with the usual soft smile she would carry. “What is it?”

“Mind if I ask where you are headed?”

“We are headed to the capital,” she answered, rolling down the sleeves and hiding the tattoos.

“Ah! Fantastic!” he exclaimed, putting away his sword is a scabbard. “We’re also headed to the capital. Would it be okay for us to join you? The roads are quite dangerous and as you can see… I’m not well equipped to protect these kids.”

“I ain’t gonna carry no shitty kids with me! We already have more than enough bullshit on our plate to be worrying about them as well!” Marcus responded before anyone else could.

Natalia furrowed her eyebrows and looked at the kids without saying anything. Dom on the other hand was taken aback, but quickly changed his expression to one of disappointment as he nodded. “I understand…”

“See? If they were with the evil lady then they couldn’t be good either!” Emi followed up with a pout as she looked away.

“I think we should take them,” Jenna said to Natalia’s back. “It wouldn’t be right in the eyes of the Gods to leave a group of defenseless children in the middle of the road.”

“Yes, we’ll take them,” Natalia agreed as well.

“What!? We’ll I ain’t going to do shit about them, so if they get in trouble, they die,” Marcus responded with a shrug, leaving the place to go back to the carriages right after that.

Natalia watched as Marcus left, her frown had lessened slightly before turning to look back at the children. Emi had an apprehensive look on her face as she looked back up to Natalia.

“We shouldn’t go with the evil lady,” she insisted, taking a step backwards.

This response made Natalia raise her eyebrows slightly for a moment. “I won’t do anything to you. I’ll abide by what Sister Jenna said.”

Emi hummed in protest and was about to keep arguing with her, but Dom lowered himself and looked at her with a smile. “Come on, you saw that that Sister is very strong, so I’m sure you’ll be okay.”

Both Ben and Liam seemed to be in a similar state like that of Emi, as they also didn’t seem too keen on the idea of going with Natalia, but Emi eventually nodded when she turned to look at the smile on Jenna’s face.

Dom stood back up with a smile at Jenna as well. “Then we’ll walk with you.”

Jenna chuckled and shook her head. “I don’t think so.” The group was taken aback by that answer, with even Natalia looking back at Jenna with a confused expression. But Jenna just returned a soft smile. “We can’t have the children walk after all.”

* * *

There was a new setup for the caravan on the road now that they had picked up a few more people, starting with the bandits, who were all walking in chains behind the carriages with a couple of guards. These bandits weren’t afraid of the guards, they could easily break their restraints if they put the effort into it, beat them up and run away if they wished for it. The only thing stopping them was the fierce looking Natalia moving on the black horse behind them.

She knew that she was the best option to watch over the criminals, so she chose to be at the very back, where she could see them at all times. And as such, the bandits were all carefully walking on the road, going as fast as the rest of the people were going, be it the ones on horses, the ones on carriages or the ones walking as well.

Marcus didn’t change position from where he had been before, which was usually somewhere random depending on how he was feeling, and right now, he was feeling annoyed, for two reasons. One was that their pace had slowed down to keep up with the ones walking and the second was the girl sitting in front of him on the same horse.

He had wanted to throw her away and force her to walk, but after a long time of insisting that he let her ride the horse with him, he gave in and allowed her to go with him, on the back at first. But even that wasn’t good enough for her, since she couldn’t read or write on his back, so she again insisted on being on the front where she could more easily handle her papers and books.

The reason for this new setup was because the carriage she had been riding for a few days was now being used by the kids they picked up along the way. Eden, Kent and Thomas had given their spots to give room to the kids on the carriage, where they now shared their space with Jenna and Dom. Thomas took again a horse, making the guard riding it walk as he kept an eye on the bandits. Kent was walking with Thomas at the front, purposefully avoiding the middle carriage where the kids were riding.

Kent turned to look back at the carriage for a moment. “It can’t be…” he said in a low voice to himself.

“What’s the matter Sir Kent?” Thomas asked once he heard the low murmur.

Kent turned to look at Thomas, who was tensely holding on to the horse’s reins and keeping his eyes focused on the front, so Kent shook his head. “It’s nothing. Those children just seem familiar.”

“Ah yes, from what I heard, they seemed to have had an issue with Lady Natalia, but everything is fine now,” Thomas responded, his body tense.

“Is that so? Then that must be it,” Kent said, ignoring the stiff posture of Thomas as he kept on walking.

But he knew those were the kids he had helped back at the city, so he couldn’t help but turn to look back at the carriage from time to time, wondering why they were on the middle of the road and going to the capital as well when he had just hoped that the Master Smith would just keep them out of harm’s way for a while. He shook his head and tried not to think about it, since it was too late and too far away now to go back and ask questions. He’ll know when he needs to know.

“You seem to know your shit,” Marcus said to Eden while riding the horse.

Eden didn’t respond immediately, just turning her head slightly without removing her eyes from the papers. “I still have a lot of things to learn.”

“But you’re always reading papers and writing shit and shit,” Marcus continued, his eyes drifting down to the papers full of drawings and words that he couldn’t understand.

“I have to keep track of everything somehow…” she responded tilting her head to the side as she focused on the papers on her hand.

There was a moment of silence as Marcus looked down at both the papers and Eden. “Do you know anything about those skeletons things we fought?”

“Hm? Almarians? I know some things about them,” she responded, passing one paper over another. “Why?”

“What are they?”

Eden put down her papers for a moment and placed a finger on her chin as she tilted her head and looked far away while thinking and humming. “As far as research from Chaeria and the information we have from Drokan, this is what I know: Almarians are souls who take hold of their dead bodies, consuming the flesh for power and sustaining themselves with the power of their soul so they can keep on living. They are usually souls who have strong lingering desires for this world, so they’ll keep on going until they get what they want, or until their souls are consumed.”

“Could there have been a soul in the skull that we picked from that asshole we killed in the forest?”

“No, those were Deranged Almarians, their souls were already on the verge of disappearing, so after that fight and that much power, his soul was gone,” Eden responded, looking back down at her papers.

“Are you sure the soul was gone? Why would those weirdos at the church use their bones if the power of the soul is already gone,” Marcus continued, looking down at Eden with a frown.

“Yes, there was no doubt about the soul being gone by then,” Eden said, nodding as she did, “but as for what they used the skull, well I'm not sure, since I don’t know much about the church’s rituals, but it’s likely just as a vessel to transmit power, since the bones of such a powerful Almarian soul would’ve been refined after years of fighting and holding that soul.”

There was a pause from Marcus as he looked to the side of the road for a moment before looking back down to Eden. “Are you sure there really was no soul?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she responded without looking away from her papers.

Marcus hummed for a moment as he also looked at her papers, shaking his head afterwards. “Here’s the thing, Eden…”

“Eden?” she exclaimed to herself in a low voice, putting the papers asside as she tried to look up and back to Marcus. “Is something wrong?”

Marcus paused for a moment, looking at the yellow eyes of Eden before he quickly turned to look at the forest. “Ever since I did that ritual with the weirdos at that church, I’ve been seeing some shit.”

“Huh? Like what kind of… ‘shit’?”

Marcus’ eyes moved from one side to another in the shadows of the forest. “It’s like shadows moving, as if someone’s watching us, but it’s only been since that stupid ritual. I still feel just as fine as ever, but that shit’s annoying me to no end.”

“Huh?” Eden said, her ears shaking slightly. “That’s strange. Almarian bones have been used for a lot of things, and I’ve never heard anyone say something like that, even after carrying them for years…”

Marcus sighed and shook his head, closing his eyes as he did. “Maybe it’s nothing, maybe I’m just crazy.”

“Hey! I know! When we get to Chaeria, we can ask my mentors! They know way, way more than me! They’ll tell you!” she exclaimed, trying to cheer Marcus with a shake of her fists.

“Right, there was that,” Marcus said, looking back again at the shadows in the forest. “If they don’t know either, then I guess I’m just crazy, which wouldn’t really be that weird either.”

“No need to give up just yet!” she said, giving a soft slap to Marcus’ leg, “Have some hope!”

Marcus frowned and looked down at her, but she was just smiling, so he sighed and looked back at the forest, refraining from saying anything as she picked up her papers and continued reading.