Flames crackled loudly in the silence that we endured in that shack, while the man who held us captive stood in the doorway with his arms crossed as if he were a locked door, and he may as well have been; his size alone would make anyone stop, let alone the scars along every piece of exposed skin, his arms having lines of scars ranging from deep to very deep, his face unrecognizable from the day he was born, his full black beard doing a poor job of hiding the lines on his rough visage, the beard even making his lips look as if they were a thick, red scar beneath his nose. He tapped the ax he held—which had to weigh as much as the home we were in—against the door siding in a bored rhythm as he analyzed us. There was no way he was sizing us up; none of us looked worth a damn, and certainly none of us were ready to die. Still, his dark eyes were thoughtful, intelligent.
Rose shuffled next to me, absolutely anxious. I placed a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “Are you alright? He didn’t do anything to you guys, did he?”
She shook her head but didn’t answer.
Parsley was next to Conifer, breathing heavily from the stress and her sickness. None of this could be good for her health. Conifer had a look of desperation in his face, and I could see his mind working out every possible way he could get this guy to leave so we could escape with the girls.
I just wanted to know why the big man hadn’t done anything. He had us cornered, and there wasn’t exactly a lot to sift through in this town, nor this home. Kiyomi was a shanty town of bell peppers, not a city of wealth. An island of farmers, not warriors.
He locked eyes with me, and he stopped. I froze. My thoughts moved with lightning quickness, and everything made sense.
They were here for me.
He licked his lips and smiled, his teeth bright from the shadow cast by the flames outside. I felt myself shaking, and Rose pulled me tighter.
“I see three mice,” the man drawled, his voice such a full baritone it shook the home more than the destruction outside. He counted with his index finger one, two, three. Then he pointed at me. “And one doe-eyed fawn.”
Gulping, I tried to get up but Rose had me pressed against her with more strength than I knew she had. Remaining on the ground, I asked, “What do you want with me?”
“It’s not what I want from you,” he said, his smile turning hungry. “To me personally, you’re nothing. It’s what I gain from returning you home that has brought me here.”
“You can’t take him!” Conifer shouted, his voice breaking. “He’s just a kid, you bastard! He needs to be here, with his family.”
Conifer was trying to keep me here with what he had hoped was savvy misdirection. He had no clue that I was a prince, and if he kept pushing it, I’d be indirectly responsible for his life being stolen.
“I don’t think you understand,” the large man said, sauntering in towards us. Our group collectively backed up, our bodies pressed so tightly against the wall I’m surprised the home didn’t collapse backwards. “I’m not here to take young Peppermint from his family. I’m here to return him to his home.”
Everyone tensed up when he said my name. Everyone but me.
“That is your name, is it not?” he chuckled, cocking a knowing eyebrow. His information was good, but it didn’t need to be. In all the time I had been in Kiyomi, I had seen only a handful of people with green hair. None of them were around my age.
“Well? Is it?” he asked again, choosing to rest his axe blade in front of me for effect instead of raising his voice.
I nodded, mumbling, “Yes.”
“Good,” he smirked, leaning his massive body down so that we were face to face. Being so close to him made his size so apparent that it felt more like being in the presence of a predator. “Well, why don’t you come along with me then? I’m sure you realize what will happen if you don’t.”
I knew. But even if I wanted to leave, Rose was holding me so tightly and my legs were shaking so badly that I’d need to be carried out of there if he wanted me. Telling him that wasn’t easy, though, so instead I just stared at him blankly, unsure of what to do and intensely trying not to cry in front of everyone.
After a time of no movement on my part, the large man sighed and hoisted me onto his shoulder like game he’d hunted, yanking poor Rose’s little hands off of me and tossing her to the ground as gently as a man his size can do. My body went limp, and I accepted my fate as it was, ready to be taken off to my death at the hands of Cashew, when Conifer exploded from his sitting position and launched a flurry of ill-aimed, poorly executed punches that couldn’t have hurt me, let alone the moving mountain I was draped over.
“Let—Mint—go!” he screeched with a voice so broken it barely resembled the dulcet tones of his singing.
The big man didn’t even flinch, he just kept trudging forward despite Conifer’s strikes. Just as we were about to exit the doorway and get out of there, Conifer leapt onto his back and tried choking his tree trunk of a neck. I didn’t want him to do any of this. I just wanted to submit to this, these unavoidable consequences. There was physically no way for any of us to get out of this situation.
So why was he trying so hard?
In an instant, the man launched Conifer into the back wall of the house, breaking through the slim timber and sending debris splintering everywhere, Rose and Parsley balling themselves up to shield their faces from it all. The man chuckled heartily, shaking me on his shoulder.
“You’ve got moxie,” he said to Conifer, who was bent over and coughing onto the floor, favoring his right side heavily. “Perhaps if strength were measured in spirit, you might be able to send me away. Unfortunately for you,” he lamented, almost serious as he pointed his axe at Conifer, “Strength is measured in a more physical fashion.”
“Just stop,” I groaned from my position on his shoulder, too weak and unwilling to look Conifer in the eye as I said so.
“Don’t worry about me,” Conifer said, coughing up enough blood to cause worry. “I’m going to save us all, and we’ll have our lives back.”
“It’s not worth it!” I cried, digging my hands into the man’s shoulder.
“He’s right, you know,” he agreed. “There is little point in you sacrificing yourself for all of this. You’d be better off joining us as allies than facing me as an enemy.”
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“Ally?” Conifer whispered, a blood-soaked grin on his face. “You’re more foolish than you look, you oafish bastard.”
The man didn’t say anything, just took a step forward and sighed.
“I’ll give you one last warning,” he said. “I’d prefer not murdering you in front of these two women.”
“Don’t give me that faux-chivalrous poison,” Conifer said, then grabbed the man’s axe handle with both hands.
“Let go—!” the man swung his weapon back and forth, trying to remove Conifer forcibly but unsuccessfully.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Conifer. “Just let go and let me leave peacefully!”
Still hanging on for dear life, Conifer glared at me with enough dudgeon to make everyone and everything stop for a moment and stare in awe at this man. “Are you so willing to give what we had up?” he bellowed, voice giving out here and there. “I refuse to let this happen again.”
Then, switching to the man, who still waved his axe, “I can’t let you hurt people!”
And with a yank that probably took all that he had, he removed the axe from the man's grip and sent it through the wall next to where he had landed moments prior.
His breath was ragged, but Conifer wasn’t finished. He ran at the man and leapt through the air, winding a small fist up behind him tight enough to draw blood in his calloused palm. For a moment, I thought Conifer might actually do it. He might actually knock this behemoth of a man out.
Instead, well, I witnessed a hero fall.
The man turned his body so that the shoulder I was hoisted over was facing away from Conifer, and I remember feeling him press my body down tighter with his free hand so I couldn’t get away. Then, twisting his entire body, he spun a kick into Conifer’s torso with enough force that I almost didn’t hear his ribs breaking. Conifer’s body went limp almost immediately, and he sprawled out in the street behind the home. Rose and Parsley cried silently, too frightened to make any noise.
“I warned you,” the man said, retrieving his axe from where it had fallen. “You leave me little choice. Forgive me for killing you this way, it isn’t in my nature to be so violent.”
He loosened his grip on me and kept walking down the street, no reason to return to their home. He stepped over Conifer’s body, and that’s when I got a good look at him.
His body was torn up. It wasn’t completely broken, but it may as well have been. Where there was skin, there were cuts and bruises, his blood on display like an exhibit, his hair stringy and mussed, his limbs still quivering from all they’d been through. Until that point, I was resigned to my new life as a prisoner, almost at peace really. I was content with where I was at.
That wasn’t the case when I saw him, though.
Something broke in me in that moment, a dam fractured, shattered under the pressure of whatever was in me. It was like someone lit me up, and in a few seconds my fuse would dwindle and I’d explode.
And it’d feel good.
My mouth opened, I might have screamed. Lifting my arm, I slammed it down onto his shoulder and watched as his body pulsed into the ground, cratering deeper and deeper until the houses to our left and right tilted inward. There was a searing in my eyes, a thrumming in my knuckles, but I grit my teeth and bared it. Falling from my new position, now airborne, I flipped in the air like a windmill and sent my foot into his chest, deepening the crater further and squeezing the blood from his stomach like the last bit of water in the flask. His shriek of agony was melodious, and I wanted to keep hitting him until he was absolutely broken, but when I hit him the next time my fist bruised and hurt like hell, my weakness returning and my speed slowing back down to a familiar, delayed crawl.
Despite my desires not being fulfilled, he was down and out for good, and I was safe to get up and check on Conifer. My body was throbbing, and it felt like I may have sprained my ankle or tore something in my leg with that kick, but my head wasn’t letting me feel the full extent of my pain just yet.
“Get up,” I breathed, collapsing on top of his body. He was breathing, which was a relief, but we weren’t back to shore just yet and I knew I couldn’t lift him. Plus Parsley wasn’t feeling great and would need to be carried if we got her out.
“Quit being so selfish, you stupid old man,” I groaned, attempting to get up and shake him. Instead I just fell back down, my face in his chest.
“Would you get off my ribs?” he coughed, voice sounding very far away.
“If you can say shit like that, then you should be okay, old man,” I said between heavy breaths, laughing lightly.
“What’d I say about the language?” he laughed painfully, trying to get up.
On my feet, I tried to pull him up and help but nearly ended up back on the ground. My body was throbbing constantly, as if my pulse were radiating heat off of my body and into the air, rising away from me and into invisible clouds above me. It was uncomfortable, and my body wasn’t built to handle that sort of output. The energy used was obviously from Vastmire, which gave me some hope that I could use it like Sage, that my training wasn’t all so I could hit someone sort of hard and kind of fast. If I wasn’t in a life threatening situation, I may have felt a lot happier about my newfound talent.
At what cost, though? If each strike felt like I was ending my life with the power of the planet between my knuckles, I wouldn’t survive long enough to use it. How the hell was Sage able to withstand this?
Conifer leaned on me, and we began trudging our way back toward Rose and Parsley, who were poking their heads tentatively out of the hole in their home, when he whispered to me, “So, you’re a prince?”
In all the commotion, I’d almost forgotten he heard that. I nodded, too tired and unwilling to talk.
He laughed weakly. “I suppose you are rather handsome like one ought to be. I should have guessed.”
“Because of my looks?” I scoffed. “Isn’t that a bit stereotypical?”
“No, I didn’t finish,” he said, his breathing staggered and heavy. I adjusted him so that he sat better on my shoulder, and he continued, “I meant the rumors. People had been talking about the young boy our king brought back from his trip. And there were talks of some sort of invasion happening in Avocado. If I had thought for even a moment—!” He was cut off by a fit of coughing, scarlet droplets of blood spattering the ground.
“We have to get you fixed up,” I said, trying to move faster despite his injuries.
We were still twenty steps away from the shack when two warriors popped out from around the corner, the ones that were guarding the main circle in Kiyomi. Backing away, I glanced behind me. One more was closing in slowly on me, but that wasn’t what made me gasp.
The man I’d knocked into the ground with a strike that nearly demolished the surrounding homes was standing up, grinning with a wolfish smile bordering on demonic, accentuated more by the flames in the background.
“Shit,” I cursed, panicking and turning in a circle in a feeble search for an escape route.
“Just put me down,” Conifer whispered. He sounded far away, which wasn’t good. “You can escape if you leave me.”
I shook my head. “Honestly, I don’t think I could even if I got rid of you.” My eyes met the large man’s, and his grin grew wider, saliva and blood glistening from the fire light. “He doesn’t look like he wants me as a prisoner anymore.”
In the time we spent speaking, the man had closed in on us. He cracked his massive knuckles and said, “I haven’t been hit that hard in years. Let’s see if you can do that again now that I’m ready.”
Humoring the thought, I balled my free hand into a fist. The moment my fingernails met my palm, a sharp pain shot through my arm and made me immediately open my fist, my arm going numb and prickly.
He didn’t notice the pain on my face, however, and kept coming toward me. He was so focused on me that he didn’t notice the massive shadow that hung over us, growing bigger, darker, bigger, darker, then slamming us all into the ground with a splash. An enormous amount of water swept over everyone there, hitting all that was in Kiyomi like a tsunami.
No one saw it coming. I felt my lungs fill with water, and saw everyone floating away from me, including Conifer, whose face was filled with surprise as much as fear, the instinct to run and survive hitting us all like a tidal wave.
The water subsided rather fast, and steam billowed into the sky, creating a massive fog and clouds. Fish were flopping all over the ground everywhere, and all of us were choking, sputtering on the ground, coughing up water—blood in the case of Conifer.
Only two men stood on that street, and when I saw them I nearly teared up.