Numb. Ben couldn’t discern whether the numbness he felt was a result of the chill wind that periodically gusted through the clearing in the secluded woods —flickering torches caused shadows to dance and mock ominously in his periphery—or what he suspected to have been poison on the barbed dart he had removed from his gambeson. All he could feel was the thrum of his heart, his throat pulsing with each beat. The Bounty Hunter slashed downward with his worn poleaxe, threatening to split his skull. Ben sidestepped the attack only to feel a boot impact his sternum, which caused him to stumble awkwardly as he tried to maintain balance.

He circled outwards in an effort to create distance between them, taking care not to move too close to the onlookers, as he trusted them only as long as he had them in sight. The armored man continued his slow forward stalk, cutting off any reasonable space Ben could carve out in the temporary arena. He grit his teeth, took a few light steps forward, and thrust at the man’s armored chest to test his opponent's range and his reaction. The Honey Badger casually tilted his elbow and deflected the probing attack with his steel-covered forearm, causing Ben to withdraw his sleek halberd ungracefully.

He hopped on the balls of his feet before confirming that something was indeed terribly wrong. “You poisoned me. Is this how you fight an ‘honorable’ duel?” Ben spat at the man. His words had already begun to slur, yet surprisingly, his vision remained sharp.

The Honey Badger shrugged, his steady approach unaffected, before speaking in a deep, tinny voice. “These are the tools of my trade, lad. No one has interfered with the bout, have they?” The reply came as a rhetorical taunt, punctuated by chuckles, snorts, and outright laughter from the company of Bounty Hunters in the clearing.

The mockery caused a roiling anger to swell in the pit of his stomach. His cheeks flushed with heat, and his nostrils flared. He kept circling away from the man, eliciting jeers and curses from the assembled audience. His companions had remained quiet, yet he felt distress emanate through his Keeper’s bond. Ben attempted a horizontal slash, which was promptly deflected toward the ground, the black crescent blade digging into the loamy forest floor. He panicked as his arms grew leaden. Heavy enough that he couldn’t free his weapon from the dirt without considerable effort.

He leaned back as he pulled at the haft of his exquisite halberd as a gasp from June drew his attention to the hammerhead of his opponent’s poleaxe on a rising trajectory to meet his chin. He desperately thrust the smooth haft of his weapon forward to parry the attack. The dull sound of heavy steel rang out in the air before being silenced with a sickening crunch. The axehead of Ben’s weapon broke free from the soil, and Ben half-skipped and half-stumbled away from the Bounty Hunter. He glanced at his hand to find that two of his fingers were a bloody mush dangling from his hand. Despite the injury, he held his weapon tightly and glared at the man.

Ainsle had offered no comments during the exchanges, and as he stole a glance at the old woman, he noticed a dangerously mocking grin on her face. She stood lazily leaning against the shaft of her ridiculous weapon. Ben wasn’t sure if his mouth mirrored the grin or not after seeing the Berserker’s posture suggesting casual confidence in his abilities. His face had gone completely numb.

“Ish now a good taim?” Ben called out to his mentor, eyes fixed on his opponent. His bumbling words only fueled the small crowd’s mockery and taunts.

“Draw a little to flush the shit out of your system, but don’t call on it,” Ainsle said in an even tone.

Ben spat out saliva that had begun pooling in the crevice between his lower lip and teeth before he willed his thoughts to the entity.

Can you give me enough to be able to move, at least?

The beast conveyed an emotion that seemed like annoyance, yet the low rumble within his being and the subsequent feeling of his veins being set on fire told him that his Avatar had complied. Immediately, the feeling in his limbs returned. A brief ache of his crushed fingers threatened to distract him from his opponent, who paused his advance and adopted a defensive stance. The Bounty Hunter stood sideways with one foot behind his stocky frame —no longer casually approaching with squared shoulders— his poleaxe raised in front of him.

Ben flexed his muscles and rolled his shoulders before settling into the familiar stance his mentor had taught him a few months prior, yet the time since then had, in fact, been closer to a year as he considered the days spent training in his domain. His body vibrated with adrenaline; each shudder accompanied the pulses of searing power through his veins. The jeering and banter quieted down, and all Ben could hear was the wail of the cold wind through the trees and the clinking of his opponent’s armor.

“So, the rumors were tru-” the Bounty Hunter began.

Ben advanced with a light step and battered at the man’s guard, ignoring his words. The Honey Badger deflected the blow with deft ease before delivering a precise thrust as a counter. The War Dancer slipped off center to avoid the worn spearhead before pivoting his hips, sending his halberd in a low slash that whistled through the air yet found no purchase on his target. Ben flowed with the momentum of his twist and feinted an overhead slash that hid his true intention of a butt strike to the side of his head. His opponent didn’t fall for the feint and lifted a gauntleted fist to block the blunt strike that would have potentially sent him sprawling to the ground.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

For several moments or minutes, he couldn’t tell which, the War Dancer spun and delivered off-rhythm feints and attacks that were either blocked, deflected, or evaded by the seasoned fighter. He disengaged after the man had caught the beard of the young man’s axe head with his own, disrupting the fluid, relentless assault he had begun to weave. He circled the Bounty Hunter, yet Ben had stolen the role of the cat stalking the mouse from him.

He considered the infamous Bounty Hunter known as the Honey Badger for a beat and concluded that the experienced man was neither fast nor possessed overwhelming strength. There was an efficiency to his movement. All reactions, counters, and attacks had been made with minimal expenditure of effort, and his stationary stance was a nearly impenetrable defense. He stared at the grated visor that hid his facial features, and Ben grinned. The man’s shoulders had begun to rise and fall more so than before, suggesting that he couldn’t maintain the pace at which he fought.

“You move just like her,” said the man between breaths. His voice had grown ragged from what he guessed to be the beginning stages of exhaustion. “Looks like I’m going to have to earn my coin this time.”

The Bounty Hunter reached into the satchel attached to his belt, and Ben instinctively launched himself, spearhead fully extended, to pierce his breastplate. The seasoned fighter abandoned his attempt to retrieve something from the bag and jerked to the side as he swung the poleaxe in a wide, rising arc intended to deter any follow-up attacks.

“Can’t an old man have a drink of water?” the Honey Badger said.

Ben nodded, and the man warily reached into his satchel once more. The young man saw the moment as an opportunity, and he’d long ago expelled the notion of a fair fight from his vocabulary. The Bounty Hunter swore, yet was too late to deflect an upward slice that bit into his lightly armored armpit. The man’s arm went slack, and Ben noticed the glint of a small glass vial drop to the loamy ground. He attempted to repel the War Dancer with another wild swing, but the young man had anticipated the reaction. Ben ducked under the arc of the poleaxe and spun low to the ground. The beak of his beautiful halberd, propelled by the centrifugal force of the fluid motion, dug deep into the stocky man’s armored abdomen with a loud thump accompanied by a brief punctuating screech of steel against steel.

“Paia!” cried the man’s son as Ben yanked the beak out of the puncture in the dirty armor.

The stocky man fell to his knees and dropped his weapon to the ground before him. He reached up and removed the grated helmet to reveal a bald head with criss-crossing scars. His pure white beard was messy and damp, and he met Ben’s gaze with dark brown eyes framed by tired, wrinkled eyelids and a bushy brow.

“I yield,” said the man. His voice was deep and pleasant to the ear despite the fatigue of the battle.

“Fuck this, Jerry,” interrupted a tall, dirty man who stood amidst the group of Bounty Hunters. “I’m not passing up on this payday ‘cause of some bloody tradition.” He stepped into the clearing and cast his gaze at his colleagues of circumstance. “You gonna let this old fucker take away your chance at an early retirement?”

The words of the tall man, garbed in mail over leather, longsword held in one hand, seemed to rouse the majority of the Bounty Hunters. Ben turned, eyes wide, ready for any movement he’d interpret as an attack. He heard Ainsle chuckle and felt a cold wind begin to caress his form from the direction in which his Keeper stood.

The dark-skinned woman who stood behind the kneeling form of the Apprentice Necromancer let out a shrill whistle. “Don’t you bloody dare,” she warned the man.

“Or bloody what? I’ll spill your guts all over this fucking forest if I have to. I don’t work for you, bitch!”

The sentiment among the group seemed to sway in favor of the dirty man, and the woman bit her tongue as she scowled at him. Ben glanced toward his companions. His attention was drawn to Ainsle, who grinned manically as she held a knife to the throat of the Honey Badger’s son.

“Calm, Demetrius,” said the old man before coughing blood that stained his white beard. “It was a fair-”

“Shut the fuck up!” the dirty man said as he approached Ben.

Suddenly, the clearing went silent. Ben heard the distant sound of a chime on the wind. The sound was beautiful, yet terrifying at the same time. Demetrius, the angry Bounty Hunter, froze in his tracks. His body stiffened, and he turned to impale the nearest person through the neck with his longsword. What followed was a scene unfit for even the most horrifying of nightmares. Carnage. Nails dug into flesh and gouged out eyes as weapons were discarded for more primal violence. Colleagues, or even possibly friends, fell upon each other with teeth ripping chunks out of flesh and skin. The wails, screams, and gurgles of the dying rendered Ben immobile as he watched on in abject terror. He was by no means squeamish, yet the sheer violence gnawed at the limits of his sanity.

Excluding the Honey Badger and his son, after what felt like too long, there was but one remaining. A large, well-built man, bloodied from the orgy of murder and violence, stumbled over to a thick tree and repeatedly smashed his head into the trunk. The third blow saw him crumble into a bloody heap on the trunk's roots.

Ben turned as he beheld the mangled corpses strewn about the clearing before his gaze settled on his Keeper. Ann was breathing heavily. Her alabaster skin was pale as if drained of all blood, and her brows were contorted into an expression of rage he hadn’t thought the diminutive woman capable of. She collapsed, and Ben dropped his weapon to rush to her side. He held the spent woman in his arms as her eyes closed, yet the pure, undiluted anger was still plastered to her face.

He said nothing as he held his Keeper, smothering her with affection through their bond in an attempt to quell the raging emotions she billowed. Ainsle, June, and Kieran, who had rejoined the group during the slaughter, stood beside Ben and Ann. Their ‘captive,’ unmolested, scrambled over to the prone form of his father as he retrieved the vial from the forest floor and pressed it to the old Bounty Hunter’s lips. The Honey Badger sputtered and coughed before murmuring something to his son.

Ainsle sniffed. “Bring your old man inside,” she said to the armored pair in the middle of the clearing, tone flat before gesturing for Ben and the others to do the same. “You two racked up quite the debt.” She paused to nod at Ben. “I believe a blood oath is owed.”