Chapter 72

The Life to Take (I)

“Kiss the Earth, Child, for it alone sustains you.”

Fragments

Noah snapped awake, a cold glint flashing through his eyes. Just a second later, Asandra heaved up from her sleep as well, her expression distorting as she suddenly jumped to the side, startling Olivia awake and blurring out of the carriage, using her back to crash through the wooden frame and fall out. In the meantime, Noah rapidly applied the Dark to his hand and grabbed the outer frame of the carriage, flexing his muscles as he pulled with all his strength, causing the carriage to start careening sideways and flip over.

A mere moment later, a flash of blazing light in a form of an array burned past conically, touching the carriage’s wheels and burning them off in a flash. In the two seconds that passed since Asandra heaved out of the carriage with Olivia, Sash, Myrell, Lo’kret, and Ludwig came to with a cry as they found themselves confused and flying about the carriage.

Noah had hidden himself in the shadows and rocked out in the meantime, racing over to the other end of the carriage and seeing Asandra hand Olivia over to the shocked Siyor who was still trying to process what had just transpired. As soon as she felt Olivia was in the safe hands, Asandra withdrew her blade and bolted forward.

They were passing a small-time forest, Obuyn Forest, a rather thick and dark wooded area, but she had no qualms about jumping straight into it. Noah, in the midst of the chaos as the army came to a grinding halt and tried to understand what happened, followed right after her, catching up almost immediately and following her by speeding through the branches.

In the distance, he saw several shadows speeding away, though not quickly enough; even on foot, she was running remarkably fast, Noah mused. It appeared as though she was running on the flat ground rather than through the thick forest full of vines and sprouting roots. She evaded them all effortlessly, as though seeing ten seconds into the future and knowing just where to step. The control she had over her body rivaled and even surpassed some of the guys from the special forces back on Earth, causing Noah once again to ponder just what exactly was her background.

The chase continued for another thirty seconds before she caught up to the two figures, both hooded and cloaked, staring anxiously at her as she came to a halt in a small opening. Noah remained standing behind her, on the tree, watching how she will go about this with a curious glint in his eyes.

She had a frosty expression, her red eyes lacking the burn, and instead shining in the splendor of frigidity, as though she were staring at the pair of hollow corpses. Judging by their frames, both were men, Noah estimated, but were not exactly good. Neither seemed capable of using Light, so it must mean that their attack came from either an expendable talisman or an artefact. Either way, the chances of them either managing to escape or defeating Asandra were almost zero. They had some basic training, judging by their stance, so it either meant that they were soldiers-turned-guards or personally-trained guards of the Royals or the Nobles.

“Who sent you?” Asandra asked coolly, whipping her sword around as though to warm her wrist up.

“…” the two men remained silent, pacing some distance between one another. It appeared as though they were about to split and force her to chase one of them. There was about fifteen feet of distance between them, and Noah already assumed if they did, in fact, try that, she would simply throw her sword at one of them and then chase after the other.

“Have it your way, then,” she grinned strangely, even psychotically, crouching slightly as to prepare for her sprint. Just as the two men were about to burst into the sprint, she did as Noah predicted – she threw a sword at the one left of her, and the blade jostled through the air like the wind, speeding almost like a bullet, shocking even Noah. Holy shit… just how ripped are your muscles, woman?! He had to admit that even he, bar using the Dark, couldn’t even approach that velocity, especially considering that the sword probably weighed around three to four pounds, definitely above average.

The blade skittled over and pierced the man on the left, right through his shoulder, causing him to cry out and fall onto the ground in agony. The other man reeled from shock, momentarily stopping and dooming himself as she leaped at him like a tigress at her prey, grabbing him in a chokehold and pulling him down, suffocating him till he passed out. She, then, dragged his unconscious body through the dregs of the roots and vines over to the other man who was entering a shock and was likely to die any moment now.

“…” Noah jumped off the tree and started applauding, startling Asandra who immediately entered a battle stance, only relaxing once she recognized it was him. This, however, only spurred more questions inside of her, though she was not in the mood for asking them just yet.

“You could have helped,” she said.

“You looked to have it under the control,” Noah replied with a smile.

“… can you save him?” she asked, pointing at the now spasming man.

“… unless ‘saving him’ suddenly means ‘watching him die’, then yeah, I most certainly can save him.”

“I can do without sarcasm, you know?”

“I can’t, however,” he said, walking over to the dying man and crouching, pulling back the hood. He looked as inconspicuous as any other soul he’d ever seen; white, black-haired and eyed, average-looking… there was virtually nothing noteworthy about his appearance. Digging through his pockets, also, yielded nothing. Despite being sub-par assassins, at least they took the proper precautions. “You recognize him?”

“No,” she shook her head, uncloaking the other one who just about looked like the first man’s twin, save for a single mole by the right side of his upper lip. “Not this one either.” She dug into the man’s pocket and pulled out an ornament doused in soot; it was crescent, as thin as the feather, and looked to be made of some bronze-like metal. There was a set of patterns running across the surface, though Noah had no clue what they meant. “As I thought, they used Chyi.”

“Chyi?” Noah quizzed.

“It’s a fairly cheap, but powerful, one-time-use artefact of sorts,” she sighed, tossing it to Noah.

“Does it tell you anything?” he asked further.

“I wish,” she shrugged. “Virtually everyone of note probably has dozens of them lying around their house. They are cheap to make, and anyone of the Lightborn rank in the Principality can make them. Though, officially, they are forbidden from selling it… well, as you can see…”

“… interesting,” Noah mused aloud, stroking his chin. “You should kill him so we can go back.”

“Kill him? Shouldn’t we question him first?” she asked, surprised at his proposal.

“He won’t tell you anything,” Noah said. “And if he does, it will be lies to mislead you.”

“How do you know?” she asked, frowning. “Despite the somewhat flamboyant attempt, they don’t seem the experienced type.”

“Just before you were about to put him in a chokehold,” Noah said. “He was readying to stab himself.”

“…”

"Besides, bringing him back would be more trouble than it's worth," he added, sighing. "Who knows? Perhaps he has some form of identification that would allow others to locate our carriage, or at least approximate the location, so they can attack from a longer range. And I very much doubt that whoever sent him was also who these men were guarding."

“… fine,” she said simply, taking a dagger out of her belt and slicing the man’s neck in one, fell swoop. Crimson blood reached out and dyed her hands as she tossed the corpse to the ground, putting back the dagger. “You’ve realized it before me, didn’t you?”

“… might have.” He grinned sheepishly as he got up and as the two began retracing their steps back to the army.

“… nobody ever has.”

“Ah, I very much doubt that,” Noah said. “Considering, however, that you relied entirely on your base senses… that was quite remarkable.”

“You didn’t?” she arched her brow, realizing he just gave her a bread crumb.

“More of them will come,” he said instead of answering her question. “In larger numbers, and better prepared. You will need to be quicker.”

“… how much quicker?” she asked.

“So quick you’ll know it is happening before they even try,” he said, smiling at her. “Though, that also applies to me; I’ve relaxed too much, and failed to even notice them until they attacked. To be fair to me, though, I didn’t think they’d try and attack us from Obuyn Forest, as there is a much better place just four miles down the road.”

“The canyon?” she asked after momentarily sifting through the map of the peninsula in her mind.

"Aye," Noah nodded. "A lot of blind corners, plenty of places with the height advantage, and it's much easier for a small group to move around in it rather than a whole army."

“Do you think they will?” she asked.

“No,” he shook his head. “This attack tells me that they suspect that we suspect she might be attacked, so they’ll most likely resort to the unorthodox attempts rather than the obvious ones. Nothing too special, but quite tiring nonetheless.”

“… haah,” Asandra sighed, kicking away a bundle of trees with her leg. “This actually makes me look forward to reaching the frontline. As I thought, head-on fighting is the best.”

“They escaped, by the way,” he said. “If they ask. We need to keep everyone at their toes.”

“Won’t that exhaust them mentally?” Asandra asked, confused.

“That’s the point.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it,” Ah, she thought, there’s that damn smile. The one he sports every time he finds a new way to screw over everyone… and benefit himself. “When they ask us… why did so many of you die? Instead of saying that it’s because we were incompetent, we’ll just say that someone secretly wanted us to fail and sent assassins after us time and again. By the time we’ve reached the front, we were mentally exhausted, and yet still gave it our all. Quite romantic and poetic, no?”

“… you’re a sick, sick man.”

“Hey, they’ll die either way,” Noah shrugged. “Might as well turn their deaths more meaningful.”

“As I said,” she sighed. “A sick, sick man…”