Chapter 8: Death of Her Childhood
As she got out of the house and spread out her arms to welcome the sun in, Aisling looked up. The clouds of the sky had cleared and the rain from yesterday was gone. Aisling had decided to go on for a walk today and see the woods and how they were doing without people there all the time.
It was honestly kind of amazing how she had never actually had the idea of just walking instead of going there to hunt and collect firewood. Even as a smaller child she had never truly gone out in the woods to just explore.
But recently she had a thought to just see what was out there in those old but sparce trees. But as she got ready to go out there on her own, she turned back to the house to see her sister with old man spirit floating behind her.
“Sister, I was wondering if I could come exploring too. It looked like you were going to have some fun without me,” she complained.
Aisling still thought of her little sister as a small little girl to be taken care of. But in all reality, she was just a year younger than herself. Her sister had a deep blue, almost black hair color.
It was a sign of her magic ability. Her green eyes matched her sister’s, and it was a source of secret pride for her to have the same eye color. She was actually taller than her older sister and looked older too.
It was quite a shock for Aisling to realize that her younger sister was going to be taller than her when she was growing up. But over the years, she grew to put up with it. the old guardian floated around the pair and he nodded at his two disciples.
He of course had taught Aisling all she knew about magic. But he had also taught Alise all she knew too. She didn’t soak up nearly as much knowledge as her older sister, but it was enough for personal defense. The two girls looked at each other. They could read the old man’s mind and knew that he was giving himself praise.
“Let’s go, I want to explore the woods seeing as we haven’t really done that,” explained Aisling.
As they both went down the road, Alise felt a headache come on. It was strange. It was very strange. Ever since her episode with Aisling all those years ago when Sarah and Kaelin had just gotten together, she had never seen another image like this again. Images started to creep up in her head, but she pushed them down.
At least she hoped she would never have to see visions like that or as powerful as that ever again. She shook her head from those flashes of death and the like. This day was to be the last day she ever saw those images again.
As Aisling walked through the woods with her little sister, she noticed something. The trees and the ground were quiet. That was quite strange. When she was with her little sister, hunting things in these woods, it was never like that.
It was usually quite loud if she was being honest. All, the noise usually got on her nerves if they stayed there for too long. Maybe if the ears she was born with were like human ears, then maybe she wouldn’t complain so much.
But with her cat ears, she could hear a large and loud margin of all the noises that the animals of the woods made. It was rather annoying as she could barely focus on what she actually came there to do most of the time.
But now, for some reason she couldn’t hear them. The noises, the author means. It was rather strange. Aisling looked over to her sister but found her clutching at her head in pain. She was crying, for what reason, well it was obvious. Visions had started to dance in her head once more.
Her own death, her mother’s death. Old gray-haired men laughing at the expense of her sister’s untimely demise. She could feel it, her own death was coming. She had heard from Aisling that death would be comforting, but in this case it wasn’t.
As soon as Aisling saw that her sister was on the ground, begging for something in a bumbling whisper she knew that something was desperately wrong. Shye finally heard something in the woods, that something was a man.
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He had on a uniform that Aisling didn’t recognize. It was blue with some grey accents. In all honesty, it was rather fashionable. But fashion wasn’t something that she needed right now. She looked at the man scanned him for any danger that he might pose.
He looked up from his walk and locked eyes with her. He stopped, as if he thought her sight was based on movement. He mumbled something in probably French. After all, Aisling recognized the uniform at last.
“you’re a Francian,” she said, and the man nodded, “what are you doing here? Our countries are at war, are they not?” she asked the man.
He nodded his head from side to side in a sort of bob. It seemed he could tell where she was coming from.
“Well, I am a scout. I was under the impression that there was going to be no one in these woods as the whole of the working men had been drafted. But it seems I was unlucky, or rather, you were.”
From his back he pulled out a flint lock pistol. It was rather small for a pistol of this age; the barrel was only like four inches long. Aisling pulled out her sword from its sheath.
The two of them were about ten yards apart. Ther was a very high chance that he missed. She looked at the man’s handgun. He was gripping it awfully tightly. It seemed like he knew that he might miss this distance. And if he took the time to aim down the sights, she would skewer him.
“Can I make my leave? It seems like we are at an impasse,” he said.
She saw where he was coming from, but he would probably tell his comrades about the landscape and other information he had gathered. It was unsafe to let him leave. He needed to die.
“I’m afraid we can’t have that,” Aisling said as she lowered herself and made for Alsie to hind behind a tree.
But as she did so the man fired his only shot. Aisling reacted by darting to the side, but even if she hadn’t moved it would have missed. The bullet missed by passing her lower right-hand side.
The Francian cursed in French and ran back the way he came. Aisling told Alise to get back to the town and she obliged. The young cat girl ran back the way they came. Aisling ran after that old soldier and soon caught up with him.
As she crested the small hill covered in trees, she saw the old man. He had just started to look exhausted, panting all the way up the hill. He looked back to see her. She ran up to where he stood and got her sword ready.
He screamed something in French and dove on the ground. It seemed like he was trying to dodge her attacks. But it was all for nought, she penetrated his back with her sword. She looked up from her handywork only to see what she could only imagine before.
It was a whole army. Well, more accurately it was simply a battalion. They looked up, only to see a young girl stabbing their scout through the back while he lay on the ground. Some of them seemed dumbfounded, as if they weren’t in the middle of the woods in which people regularly came and went.
They quickly got ready to mobilize. One of the men ran a bell that resonated all throughout the camp they had set up. Some of the men had pulled up their muskets and fired. The majority of them missed but one hit her stomach, sending a river of pain into her body.
She clenched her teeth to hide the pain. She retreated down the hill. She looked behind herself and noticed that she wasn’t being followed by the majority of them. Only a handful had chosen to follow her. She looked to her side to see Old Man Spirit there.
“Remember the magic I taught you, the one where the spirit enters the body of it’s contracted partner and gives them full magic power?” she nodded yes, “well, we should do that. It is risky but you will survive this encounter.”
He entered her body after they had gotten a decent distance away from the bullet hell that was behind her. As soon as he did Aisling felt a rush of power. It was like her whole body had filled with the textbook definition of might.
Her body grew powerful, the strength in her limbs felt like it had tripled, the speed of her thoughts had sped up as well. The bullets that were passing by her seemed to have slowed down a peg. She could now make them out as they passed. It felt like she could cut them in two if she wanted to.
Her senses had grown sharper, the sound of thew bullets hitting the ground made her ears go flat. These guns were flintlocks, the bullets they fired only had a muzzle velocity of about 340 feet a second. She could probably cut the bullet out of the air.
The soldiers had fired their shots and now they came running at her with swords drawn. It was like they hadn’t heard of bayonets yet. Then again, the first bayonets plugged into the barrel of the rifle so it would be rather inefficient if they used them.
The first man came to her and slashed from above. She dodged and cut him across the stomach, his guts spilling form his belly. The next man seemed to know even les about sword play as he rushed for her knees. She pulled back and parried the blow, resulting in him falling on his own blade, gutting himself.
It got easier after that. The stupid men who had nothing going on in their brains kept charging her. A pile of corpses soon started to form, and her body soon became used to the sight and smell of them. The was till she felt something on her back.
Then she remembered what old man spirit had told her. If you kept a spirit in your body for too long, you would take on attributes of that spirit energy. She had spent too long, she needed to finish this fight.
But as she thought that a thunk resounded in her skull. Her mind started to slip; and finally, the world went dark. and that was the end of the battle of Westport.