My world was on fire. For the second time, I had to stand and watch it burn. Jukahn didn’t wait for me to answer him. He rushed Junoro again and his master barely got the chance to get her sword up and block a downward strike. He came at her again and again, from different angles, hacking at her. Junoro wasn’t putting up a fight. She parried, blocked, and dodged where she could but Jukahn was too relentless and every other attack would land, biting into her flesh and sending blood to the ground. She twisted her body and danced the dance but without her fighting back, it wouldn’t be enough.

Then the rain came. I could hear it hiss as thick droplets hit the fires that ate away at each roof it had attached itself to. Maybe it was a coincidence but it seemed like all the tragedies of my life came with rain. I didn’t have the time nor could I afford to express my sorrow, so the world did it for me.

I could hear bandits approaching behind me. I turned a blade and sheathed it behind me, then moved to face the approaching gang of thieves looking to finish clean up. I balled my fist and let anger rush through me like forceful river, coming to collect in the palm of my palm. As I uncurled my fingers, the night was lit by both the fires and the glowing orb in my hand. They wanted a piece of me, and I would give them the only peace I had left; wrath.

I pitched the ball of energy at them. They watched it without any certainty on how to react. All they could do is recoil and wait for it to hit the ground. When it did, all my anger burst forth and the blast echoed off the burning huts. Bandits were thrown here and there, and a few of them neither stirred nor attempted to get up.

I turned back to the two fighting in time to see Junoro arched forward, head against Jukahn’s shoulder and blade thrust through her stomach far enough to protrude like a violent obelisk out the other side of her body. I stood frozen. She reached up with a shakey hand and put it to the back of Jukahn’s head, drawing him intimately close. She used her remaining strength to tilt her head up and whisper in his ear. It might have been the rain, but I swore I saw tears flow from her remaining eye before Jukahn set a hand on her shoulder and shoved her off his blade, letting her collapse to the ground, still and gone.

I screamed, not knowing what else to do, and ran at Jukahn with blade raised like a ignorant child, fighting with emotion in place of strategy. I brought my sword down with all my strength and it was cast aside like an insect. Jukahn deflected me and then turned his blade fast enough to bring it back up and cut into my side. I stumbled but kept on my feet. I turned to face him and drew my second sword, holding both in an aggressive stance.

Jukahn tsked at me and held his sword in both hands, taking a more defensive position. “When has anger ever won the day, Juik?” Pain stung at my side but not as much as the realization of what was going on around me. Bandits had gathered to surround us but they only created a border. They weren’t attacking. They weren’t attacking me because I was distracted with Jukahn and they weren’t attacking Jukahn for another reason.

“You brought them here,” I accused him. I had moved my position to stand over Junoro’s body, protecting it as if anything worse could happen to her than what my master had done.

He lifted his mask and let it rest on top of his head. The look on his face gave nothing away. Everything he felt was locked up but his tone remained so condescending and pleased with himself, that if he was feeling anything other than contempt for what was once his home, he was hiding it well. “Do not stand over her like she was your mother or something. She trained me as I trained you. There is no affection between any of us. We are just weapons forging the next one to take our place.”

He began to pace a circle around me and I had to turn and walk around Junoro’s body so as to keep facing him. I repeated my accusation. “You brought them here, didn’t you? You lead the guild of thieves to our door step and let them slaughter our people. Why?” Then I noticed the satchel tied tightly to his hip, kept close and protected. “What’s in there?” I asked, motioning to it.

“The Dragon’s Tail,” he confessed immediately. “You are right. I did betray the village to the guild of thieves. I let them kill the Shinohari and take our coveted treasures. All except this,” he said as he reached to his side and drew out an emerald-looking statue segment, the size of a fire log and intricately designed to look like the tail of some great serpent. “The Dragon’s Tail, when combined with the other artifacts that make The Broken Dragon will grant the one to unite them the power of a god. Immortality, Juik; that’s why.”

He wanted to break the chains that bound him to this world. That was worth more than the collective lives of everyone who was willing to take me in and raise me. Then I had a thought. Some dark idea was born within me and I had to see it through, to know if it was true. “What were you doing in Lione Castle the night you took my sister and I away? What were you doing the night of the rebellion?”

A prideful smile pulled at his lips, making him look like a savage beast whose prey just did something entertaining. “Killing your parents, as I was paid to do.” I felt the grip on my swords start to loosen while the will to fight started to slowly drain out of me, all with the power of one sentence. “A man representing the rebellion sought out the Shinohari and hired me to assassinate the King and Queen in their sleep.” He went on, speaking casually as if it was just another mission for him. “I researched my targets and learned that your father had to go first. If there was the slightest chance he could survive, he would have joined the fight and it would have undone the rebellion. After that, I was able to kill your mother at my leisure. She was a considerably sound sleeper. She didn’t even wake when her husband was stabbed in the heart only a foot away.”

After each word he spoke and after each detail he shared, he took a step closer. I wanted him to shut up. I wanted him to never speak about my father or mother again. I wanted him to stop. Why was he still going? Why was he still talking? I didn’t want to fight anymore. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live. With that thought, I understood. He was trying to gain the advantage by exploiting my emotions so I wouldn’t put up a fight or what fight I would put up would be full of careless mistakes as I stumbled about blinded by anger or sorrow. He was the one who had made the mistake, though. He forgot my name. “I am the inane, empty as the void that I might fill myself with vengeance.”

I tightened the grip on my swords once more and rushed him. As I got within striking distance, I stopped and darted back a half a foot, making a feint with my sword. He took the bait and moved his blade to deflect an attack that never came. My other sword came around low and from the side, taking a nick out of his hip. He moved back slightly and hissed in pain. It wasn’t deep enough to hinder him, but he didn’t expect me to fight as well as I did.

I came at him again, making a sideways slash at his torso. He blocked and my blade ricocheted off his. I used the momentum to spin around and drop down at the same time, coming in low so that when I made a full circle, that same blade would come at his ankles. He lifted his foot so that I barely missed his heel, then made to step on my blade, hoping to trap it and me to the ground. I pulled the sword back and let him stomp the dirt. With my other sword, I made to stab at his stomach. He slashed his longer sword at mine, parrying the blade and turned his wrists so he could slash down at an angle. I tried to bring my first sword up to block it only to be a fraction too late.

I felt the vicious tear of flesh as his sword hit the bone of my cheek. It hit hard enough to knock my head back. A little lower and I’d have a second mouth. A little higher and I’d be missing an eye. I rolled backwards, out of the way of another slash coming at me. The words of my father came to mind, asking me why I tried to block the attack when I was fast enough to avoid getting hurt. Why take the pain when I can outrun it?

I got back into a standing position and tried to think of a strategy. I could keep hacking and jabbing at him until I found an opening but that would put me in harm’s way. I could already feel the blood steadily streaming from the gash in my cheek telling me that was a bad idea. I could lob an energy grenade and try to take him out in one attack but Jukahn was not the kind to fall for to something so obvious. I could try to lead him but with the bandits on all sides, there was nowhere to lead him to.

“You’re not going to kill me, Juik. You don’t have the power or capability to.” He was taunting me. He still thought he could throw me off my edge. “And what purpose would it serve? It’s too late to save the people of Shinohari. The bandits have put them all to the sword. It’s too late to save Junoro. She gave up with hardly a fight. It’s too late to save the people of Lione. That general gambled on their fates thinking they’d be better off and he lost that bet.”

He was closing in on me again. He was getting louder also. It wasn’t just because he was moving closer. He was intentionally raising his voice so that the wall of ears surrounding us could hear as well. “It’s too late to save your mother and father. They died without ever saying goodbye.” I was determined not to fall for it this time. “It’s too late to save your sister. The End War has long since ravaged that part of the world and the Coldsteel Army, who kill without prejudice, landed right on the coast of Sonata.” He was only a few feet from me; within sword distance. “You helped land that army there. You helped them kill your sister.”

I wound an arm back across my chest and then whipped it outwards, sword slashing at him. He swayed back and let the blade sail past. While he was dodging, I let go of the blade and let it impale into the ground next to me while my other arm was jabbing forward to try and pierce his heart. I lunged at him and with my now free hand, I shoved my anger into my palm, feeling heat ball in my fist. He twisted his body just enough to let the stab miss him and then grabbed the arm of my sword hand at the wrist, locking it in place.

He was trying to squeeze down on my wrist at the right point to make me let go of my sword but he was underestimating titanian durability. I brought my other hand around and opened my palm, trying to give his face a full burst of the energy I had stored there. He turned his body into my arm and tucked his shoulder under mine, lifting me off my feet and sending me flipping over to land on my back. The energy fizzled out into nothing and I lost my other sword in the fall.

Jukahn released my arm and put a foot to my chest, keeping me pinned to the ground while he turned his sword so the tip pointed down at my throat. “You had such promise,” he spoke with mock dismay. I put both my hands around his ankle but that only served to make him put more force into keeping me down. Using my grip on his leg to pull myself, I quickly brought up my lower half and curled to jam my knee into the back of his. I let go just in time to shift out of the way while he fell forward.

I scrambled to recover at least one of my swords. I heard him behind me moving back to his feet and fetching his longer blade. As soon as I spotted the thin metal sticking out of the ground where I threw it, I lunged for it. I made a half dive, half roll movement and pulled the sword from the ground in time to hear the sound of metal hitting hard-packed dirt behind me. I stood and pivoted, instinctively putting my blade up to clash against Jukahn’s as he made another downward slash at me.

Everything went slower and anything that didn’t matter was drowned out. I no longer noticed the rain pouring down or the fire reaching up. I forgot about the bandits standing still all around us and the hundreds of dead killed at the hands of those bandits. But, I remembered Master Junoro, lying on the cold, hard ground where she had been betrayed by her own. It was my turn to speak. It was my turn to throw him off.

I ducked and swayed, bobbed and weaved, shifting my position to give his sword-swings nothing but air to cut through. I teased him with words each time his ear was close enough. “She loved you. We don’t get the luxury of love but she felt it all the same.” I could see his face tighten and that smile fell away like raindrops, lost in the night. I wasn’t going to stop though, even as his swings became more reckless. “She took you in the same as you took in me but it was different after she started training you.”

“Shut up,” he growled through gritted teeth.

I began taking chances at hitting him again, slashing whenever I got an opening. “She couldn’t have son but she had you. Everything that she denied herself she put in you and you put a sword in her heart.”

“Shut up,” he repeated, getting a little louder this time. He winced as I connected the edge of my sword to his shoulder, making a shallow cut just deep enough to draw blood as I sliced through.

I wasn’t going to shut up. I danced backwards and dipped my hand into the pouch tied to my thigh, pulling a pair of throwing knives out and whipping them forward in the same gesture. “Is that what she said before she died?” I asked as the knives went sailing in his direction. He dodged one but the other stuck into his upper thigh. Quickly, he gripped the small handle of it and yanked the knife out. While he was doing that, I closed the distance and thrust my sword towards his stomach. He moved to the side a half second too late and the blade grazed the outside of his abdomen, cutting into his black clothing and pale flesh.

He staggered backwards, holding his side with his free hand. “I SAID SHUT UP!” he shouted over the chaos of the fire and rain and the maddening calls of the bandits all around us. Then he made the mistake of turning his back to me, shouting the same thing over and over to the thieves he let ravage the village in the first place. “SHUT UP!” he called again and again while they rabbled.

This is was the mistake I was waiting for. I held my sword in both hands with the end pointing towards the part of his back that would lead to his heart should I pierce it. I ran full tilt at my master and readied to shove that blade into his body.

Time lurched to a near stop. Every second became a painfully long eternity and I had the time to see every single detail play out in front of me. I felt the mud fight me for traction. I felt the tiny little pains in my cheek as rain water hit my open wound. I watched the grip Jukahn had on my throwing knife turn and work the instrument to face upside down in his palm, and then tighten around it once more. I watched his upper body torque and his legs change positon as he turned to face me. I watched his stance sink and move enough to avoid the blade coming at him and I with too much momentum to change my path. I felt the sharp metal force past flesh and muscle and tear a brutal passage into my midsection. All the strength I had in me abandoned my limbs and I went limp against the blade, just as Junoro had. He shoved his shoulder into me. With darkness creeping around the border of my vision, I watched the clouded night sky replace the scene I was watching and the cold, wet ground came pounding against me.

I was dancing completely unaware that the entire time my movements were being led by invisible strings. My words never reached Jukahn. I could see it now in the expression on his face as he stood over me, smiling while he watched the light escape my eyes from the other side. Pain became a background noise like everything else and the only thing that was clear was his voice. “’I forgive you,’” he said just soft enough that I could hear it. “Those are the last words she said.”