She stayed in his grasp for ten minutes or so before patting his arms to let him know she was ready to get moving. They continued southward for a few hours and seemed to Dominit that they hadn’t made any real progress. It was around midday when she began to slow. She found a small clearing with some fallen trees on its outskirts and sat down on one breathing hard.

Which had surprised him since he hadn’t even broken a sweat yet. He sat down next to her and realized he hadn’t asked her what her name was yet nor had he introduced himself to her. Actually it’s probably best he hadn’t what with Nyx changing his name on a whim. “Can’t even think of myself as a Logan anymore. How’d she even do that to me?”

He sighed inwardly and sat on the same log she was but gave her enough space to not feel threatened. “So I guess we still don’t even know each other’s names yet. I’m Dominit.” She looked over at him and frowned. “Such a weird name” she muttered “My parents named me Cassandra.” Dominit nods appreciatively “Nice name mind if I call you Cassi?” She thinks about it for a moment and barely nods. “Yeah sure why not. It’s probably best if people don’t hear my real name and figure out who I am any way.” This took Dominit by surprise. “What exactly do you mean by that? Are you some one important around here?”

She scowls at him because she thinks he’s making a joke about their current situation. But seeing his honest expression she realized he was being serious. “My family is close to the King and queen of Blazen to the south. That is why we are heading in that direction. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find a caravan traveling towards it that we could join.” Dominit smiles at her glad to know at least one of them had a plan. After a few more minutes resting she jumps from the log and continues walking south. It took them three more hours after their first rest to come to the edge of the forest.

Just after leaving the tree line Cassy collapses. Dominit runs to her side. “Cassy!” She’s breathing heavily and has a slight fever. “Shit she probably hasn’t eaten for at least a day or so let alone drink anything.” He quickly picked her up and carried her back to the treeline. He began to look for a place to hide her so he could find her some food and water. Finding a tree whose roots were above the soil giving him enough room to gentle place her inside. He grabbed nearby leaves and branches to block of the entrance from prying eyes.

Dominit is about to leave when he hears a woman scream to the west. Carefully making his way towards the scream he finds a group of men surrounding a lone woman in chain mail armor with a long sword and a buckler. She had an arrow sticking out of her left shoulder making her left arm useless.

The men were laughing and taunting her. “Hey sweet heart how’s about you drop your weapon and we’ll be gentle with ya” said the dirty man in the middle of the other three men. They all proceeded to laugh at her. Dominit not caring for what they were doing to her chose to circle around and make sure there weren’t any others hiding in the shadows like him. After being confident that they were alone he pulled the bow from his back and strung an arrow holding another in between his fingers while holding the bow.

He pulled back waiting for the perfect time to strike steadying his breathing to make sure he was as accurate as possible. The lead man shrugged when she had made no indication she would lower her weapon. He playfully lunged at her with his sword causing her to panic with his sudden move and ended up falling on her rear. This of course caused the men to laugh again as if this was the funniest routine they’d seen in a while.

Dominit not one to pass up the opportunity that had just presented itself to him shot at the man closest to him hoping no one would notice one less laugh. The arrow flew silently through the air and went into the back of the man’s chest piercing his heart and he fell to the floor. Before a second had passed Dominit had strung and pulled back his second arrow aiming for the next man’s chest. He fired as the man noticed his fellow brigand laying on the ground and buckled over in laughter thinking he’d fallen either mocking the woman or from laughing to hard.

Dominit not expecting this movement had originally meant to pierce his heart as well but instead put the arrow through his eye until only half of the shaft was visible. He stopped laughing and fell. The other two men were confused as to why the other two stopped laughing as it was still pretty funny to them. Seeing their comrades’ corpses they retreated a step as Dominit stepped out of the shadows towards them. “I sincerely hope that this” he motions towards them all “was worth the indignation and pain you caused that poor woman. Because now you are going to join your friends in death.”

Both men looked angered by what he said then turned to one another and laughed again. “And how exactly are you going to accomplish that hmm? You should have stuck to the shadows like a good little bitch. Now’s there’s nothing to protect you from me or my mate Boras here.” The man next to him smiled and brought out a great sword.

Dominit sighed and in one solid motion the two men couldn’t even see it happened so fast he threw both his daggers from behind his back into the shoulders of the leader. He dropped his sword as the daggers sunk fully into his meaty flesh severing a few tendons. Then he screamed like an animal that had been mauled. Boras looked confused and looked to see what had happened. “Haha good one there pal.” Dominit laughs dryly “Now I’m going to kill you friend Boras here rather quickly and then when I’m done I’ll let her”

Dominit nods in the woman’s direction “finish you off” He then begins to walk toward a nervous Boras. It only lasted a second as Boras thought he had just disarmed himself by throwing his only weapons at his friend. Charging at the black clad figure Boras goes for a monstrous overhead slash. While he wound up Dominit pretended to trip and as he rose pulled the dagger from his boot and wrist hiding them against his forearms.

Boras closed the distance and began to unleash his full swing when it was caught about half way through by the cloaked stranger. Dominit had made a V with his daggers and caught the great sword near the hilt as it was about chest level for Boras. As soon as the weapon was stopped Dominit spun around Boras' left side to get behind him then grabbed his head with one hand and slit his throat with the other. Boras still unsure of what had happened began gurgling in protest to the unfairness of the fight. Slumping forward with hands to his throat Boras quickly bleed to death as Dominit had made sure to sever both the arteries in his neck feeding blood to the brain.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Wiping his daggers off on Bora’s back and hiding them back in their sheath he slowly walked towards the now kneeling bandit. “Hmm I guess I didn’t need the shadows did I” He smiles and pulls both his other daggers from his shoulders. The man screamed again in pain. “Shhhhh it’s almost over” Dominit whispered. Walking to the woman on the ground he offered her a hand up. She stared at him in fear and disbelief. Taking a moment to steel herself she took his hand and was pulled to her feet.

She walked over to the man who’d belittled her and put her sword to his throat. “As I was asking before where is she?” He looked up at her not understanding where it had all gone wrong. She had first approached him trying to find out where some woman was taken after her and a small group of people were attacked on the road a night ago. Taking a liking to what he could see from her figure in armor and her voice he had decided to make her his group’s “pet”.

Someone to take care of their urges whenever they left their main base farther to the north. Signaling for his men to come out of hiding they’d played cat and mouse with her until they’d grown bored shooting her in the arm with an arrow to slow her and make her surrender without too much damage to her body.

Then some bastard came slinking from the shadows after killing the other two in his group. With him out of the shadows he believed Boras would be more than enough to take care of the man until he had shown just how efficient and deadly he truly was. Now realizing he was either going to die without giving this woman the answers she wanted or maybe just maybe she’d let him go after answering as there was no honor in killing an unarmed man. So he did the only thing he was good at he tried to survive. “All the women who weren’t killed were taken to the main base twelve miles north of here. I don’t know if the one you’re looking for survived the initial ambush but if she did then that’s where she’ll be I swear.”

The woman took a moment to process this information before nodding sheathing her sword and walking to the man who’d saved her. “Thank you very much. If it wasn’t for you I shudder to think about what would have happened to me” she bowed to him to express her gratitude. Dominit just waved her thank you away “Are you just going to leave that one alive then?”

She turned around to see the man still bleeding from his shoulders and shrugged. “If he doesn’t die from the wounds you gave him then a beast will show up.” Dominit frowned at what she had said “Really how can you be so naïve. You don’t know if there are more people from his group who could come across him and gain a large amount of information or even warn the rest that you were going to be coming”

Walking back to the only surviving member of the group he leaned over him from behind. “Did you hear that? This benevolent woman is going to let you live you’d better thank her.” The man turned his head towards her and began to say thank you when Dominit drove his dagger into his ear with enough force that the point was sticking out the other ear. This made the woman gasp and draw her sword albeit with a great deal of swinging her one good arm since she couldn’t grasp the sheath with her other hand to help guide it out. She pointed it at him “Why did you do that? There was no need even if he had survived you could have just killed him after he was able to fight back.”

Dominit shook his head at how little she thought this through. “If he had survived he could have alerted every one of the pieces of trash that work with him that you would be making your way to them. They’d either ambush you again or just overwhelm you with more people.” He went to the first two of the group he’d killed to retrieve his arrows so long as the head hadn’t chipped or shafts bent. Finding both were alright he put them back in the quiver after cleaning them.

He wasn’t sure what types of metals his weapons were but if he left blood on it long enough it would rust and dull the blade. He continued to check the bodies on the ground for anything he thought might be valuable. He found two small red vials and another green one. He’d also found fifteen more arrows and took the shirt off one of their backs. Finally he took any and all food he could find in their bags including waterskins. That was all anything was worth on this measly group.

After looting their corpses he began walking toward the woman he’d save who still had her sword pointed at him. “I suggest you put the sword down. If you don’t I won’t help you with the arrow still sticking out of your left shoulder.” She looks over at the arrow just in time for Dominit to close the distance between them and knock the sword from her hand. She began to retreat from him afraid he was just like the last group. He held up his hands in a sign of surrender and stayed still.

She then looked down at his feet wondering if she could get to her sword before he could draw his daggers. She knew it was a fool’s hope but she still had to try. While still in a daze Dominit had disappeared from her vision. She was about to rush for her sword when a strong hand grabbed her right shoulder and then she felt an intense burning pain from her other shoulder.

She screamed again falling to her knees as the pain had almost forced her to fall unconscious. Dominit began to rip pieces of cloth from the shirt he’d taken to bandage her wound. She laughed “you took two healing potions from them and yet you’re going to treat my wound with one of their sweaty and dirty shirts you heartless bastard.” Dominit pulled out one of the red vials guessing it was what she meant and handed it to her. She was surprised but took it uncorked it poured half of it on the wound and drank the rest.

The wound healed in a matter of moments. Dominit sprang up and walked over to her sword as she swung her arm to make sure it was to full fighting potential. He picked it up and noticed a crest of some kind. What looked to be a chimera with a lion’s head breathing fire, goats feet with thunder coming from the hooves, A snake for a tail with poison spewing from its mouth and a large pair of dragon wings.

He walked back to her and handed her the sword. She accepted it and put it away. “You know I could use your help trying to rescue my um friend.” She said a little shyly. Dominit looked over and smiled slightly. “I wish could but I already have someone who needs my help I was just about to go hunting and foraging when I’d heard you scream. She had collapsed and I must be getting back to her now.”

The woman nodded and as Dominit walked off she began to follow him. He looked back at her while walking “Why exactly are you following me?” She shrugged and said “I’m not exactly safe in these woods so there shouldn’t be any harm in following you to your companion. You know strength in numbers I guess.” He nodded and kept walking. Finally getting to the tree he’d hidden Cassy under. He started moving the makeshift camouflage until he could pull her from underneath. As he did he heard the woman behind him gasp and the tell-tale sound of a sword coming clear of its sheath. He felt the cold steel press against the back of his neck as she asked “Why do you have the princess?”