“Record,” Ariaska uttered in horror as the crowd surged over the line of town guards and became a violent mob in truth. She forced her eyes to stay on the action. This was important to the chronicle she was going to write. She would be able to review what she captured over the next hour or so in her memories. She would be able to re-live the memories as she experienced it the first time.

Her best Skill, was also her worst one.

“Well… at least I’m getting rid of the bandit attack,” she said. “Not that this is much better.”

The memory of a bandit’s guts sloughing out of his sliced stomach right in front of her flashed through her mind.

“Nope, this is better. At least I’m not in the middle of it this time.”

Ariaska had found a three story building a few blocks away with an external staircase that allowed her to get up on the roof.

The torches carried by the mob lit up the dark night and made observing the melee possible.

She cringed, but forced herself to watch as town guards were swarmed and beaten by the thousand plus strong mob. She saw normal people take spears in the gut or iron-capped batons to the skull.

The surge carried the mob to the council hall.

Torches flew.

The wooden structure began to burn.

“Oh no… if the lord dies…” she shook her head.

The army would be sent for immediately.

She had a crushing realization that Justiciar Strella was already too late.

The unrest would either grow into open rebellion or be brutally crushed.

In both cases there would be plenty of suffering and death for everyone, even those not involved.

She heard a distinct pop in the distance, audible over the the screams of the dying and their killers. Frantically, she scanned the chaotic mass and found the justiciar battling her way through the thick press on the street and into an alley.

Ariaska cursed.

She ran for the stairs.

It looked like Strella was after someone.

“Follow The Story,” Ariaska huffed.

Activating the Skill gave her a sixth sense that allowed her to know the direction the story she was working on lay.

Several minutes of frantic running through dark streets and alleys guided by her ability led her to Strella and several dozen townsfolk squaring off beneath the torchlight.

Ariaska hid behind the corner of the building, peaking out so that she could capture the action to come. She saw one of the crowd flee into an alley. She couldn’t make out any features from the distance, but the small size of the figure suggested a woman. Was that the justiciar’s suspect? Jocuvel?

There was nothing she could do about that. It wasn’t her responsibility. She was here to write a chronicle. To do that she had to watch and consign everything she observed to memory.

Thus, she watched as Strella stabbed and cut her way through an enraged mob of bakers, cooks, cleaners and servers. Just normal people, who should’ve been at home or working and not fighting and dying in the streets.

Strella thrust the tip of her rapier into the middle-aged man’s throat as she slid back.

The matronly woman raised a rolling pin over her head and gave an inarticulate cry of rage as she charged from Strella’s right side.

Strella knew exactly what the woman was going to do. The tip of her rapier lashed out and carved through the woman’s throat. The woman’s heavy body sent a cloud of dust into the air as she hit the street.

Strella kept her reading of the mob quick and short. Just enough of a touch on their thoughts to know what they were about to do in the moment. Too much and she risked being overwhelmed by their combined thoughts.

She continued to backpedal as dozens of enraged townsfolk sought to swarm her.

Quick thrusts and cuts with the flick of her wrist kept them at the end of her 4 foot long blade.

A bull-necked man reached out.

A Blacksmith.

She knew that he was stronger than he looked, which was saying much considering the size of his broad chest and thick arms.

Still, Strella let him grab the blade. His thick leather gloves wouldn’t be enough protection.

Threnium metal was sharper and stronger than common steel.

She withdrew her blade and sliced the man to the bone.

The blade returned like lighting, lancing into the man’s throat.

Blood quickly wet his bushy, green beard.

A dark thought struck Strella. The combination of colors was pleasing to the eye.

Strella stepped to the left to avoid the three-pronged pitchfork thrust from a young Farmer. She grabbed the wood behind the tines and pulled.

No movement.

Farmers tended to have physical strength enhancing Skills, just like Blacksmiths.

She brought her blade down on the wood haft with a flick of her wrist. It happened so quickly that the young man suddenly stumbled back. Half of his pitchfork’s wooden half still in his hands.

Strella stepped toward the young man.

An axe blade whistled past the side of her helmet.

She thrust the tip of her rapier into the young man’s chest while stabbing the iron tines of the pitchfork into the axe-wielding old man’s gut.

Young and old. The two men couldn’t have been more different except for their place in society. One had lived a long, happy, if hard life. While the other had the same to look forward to.

No longer.

The red that painted their simple clothing marked them, bound them together as people, as human beings.

Strella shut their books. She couldn’t afford sentimentality.

These people didn’t truly deserve to die, but it was her life or theirs.

She knew that there was no reasoning with them. Not while Jocuvel’s Skills had thrown kindling and oil on the smoldering embers of resentment that the lords and council had cultivated for generations.

The blaze would burn in the people until there was nothing left to consume in anyone.

Strella stumbled as a heavy blow struck her back.

The perils of not wearing steel plate armor.

She had always relied on her ability to be a step ahead of her opponents. She knew what they intended to do before they consciously did.

The tough, padded fabric of her coat and clothing blunted the strength of the blow.

Bruised, but not broken.

Strella let the momentum carry her forward.

Her rapier found a home in yet another throat, while the pitchfork found one in the thigh of another. She pulled both weapons back quickly. Blocking and trapping the downward slash of a long knife between the pitchfork tines with her left, while painting a red line across a set of eyes with her right.

Strella ignored the sounds assaulting her ears. Screams of the dying and the enraged.

The shadows cast by the torchlight danced furiously in the chaos.

Even her vision became less important as she fully invested herself in her gift.

She let her blade dip to the ground since she read a young Barmaid’s intent to knock it aside with a broomstick. The young woman stumbled forward from the unexpected lack of resistance.

Strella hammered the pommel down on the back of the young woman’s head. She left the young woman face down on the street amidst the broken pieces of the broomstick.

From that Strella immediately spun and swept her blade in a wide, horizontal arc in front of her to keep the townsfolk at bay. She shuffled back while the people sought to encircle her.

Several pushed through the mob and rushed her.

Strella knew their movements.

She stepped her lead leg at an angle to her right while thrusting her rapier.

A man dropped and tried to clutch the blade in his stomach.

Strella was horrified by what she read.

The man owned a food stall. A kindly sort that let those he knew lacked coin eat on the promise of future repayment. He believed that no human should go hungry and he willingly earned less profit to stick to that creed. Many would go hungry in the future because of what she had just done.

The man’s life, everything he had been and might’ve been flashed through his mind before it became nothing.

All of this shot through Strella’s thoughts in the instant that she pivoted her back leg around her front in order to thrust her blade into the eye of a mother of four young children. The knife in the woman’s hand clattered to the ground. Her body followed.

Strella spun the halved pitchfork in her hand to hold it like a chisel. She stabbed behind her.

A heavy weight settled on her back. She withdrew the pitchfork and stepped forward to let the body fall.

She kept moving.

A step, a shuffle, a lunge, a twist.

Makeshift weapons and everyday tools struck at her from all directions.

Most missed by the barest of margins.

But not all of them did.

A Butcher hacked a cleaver into her left arm. She moved away from the blow, but couldn’t avoid it entirely.

Red soaked the sleeve of her coat.

The Butcher roared as he dug a meat hook into her side. The sharp point pierced right through the thick fabric and padding of her coat.

The fires of pain burned in her side as the strong man pulled her.

She parried a pair of short choppers with the rapier in her right while striking the Butcher’s wrist with wood haft of her pitchfork.

The eyes of the chopper-wielding brothers were red with unnatural rage as they tried to get past Strella’s darting blade.

“Kill you!” the Butcher roared as he raised the cleaver in his right.

Because of the hook in her side and the man’s position behind her, she couldn’t reach him with the pitchfork without turning.

So, she did what she had to.

She spun, the hook tore her flesh, but she was now free to stab the pitchfork up into the bottom of the man’s jaw.

The man slashed down with the cleaver.

She released the pitchfork to block the man’s arm.

The impact jarred, but she deflected the blow enough to send it wide.

The man went down gurgling blood.

Strella turned her attention to the two brothers.

She parried a chopper strike, then smoothly slid the tip of her rapier into the one on the left’s throat. She snatched the chopper from the falling man’s hand as she stepped into a second thrust, this time into the one on the right’s stomach.

She buried the chopper into the side of a screeching woman’s neck. The woman’s stabbing knife missed as Strella took a small step to her right.

A flick of her right wrist cut the life from yet another man.

Strella withdrew the chopper from the woman’s neck. The red spray painted the nose and cheek guards of Strella’s helm.

A thrust spear tore a hole through Strella’s coat, but missed her body completely as she shifted to one side.

She threw the chopper at the spear-wielding man.

The weapon spun in the air once and clubbed the man in the face with the end of its handle.

The chopper wasn’t balanced for throwing, but she couldn’t put all the blame on it.

Nevertheless, the man lost his hold on the spear, which let her grab it, spin it and thrust it into another man.

Strella continued to give ground in exchange for keeping the mob from completely surrounding her. She shifted from defense to attack smoothly. Knowing exactly what the townsfolk were about to do made it possible.

A parry led to a thrust.

To a cutting flick of the wrist.

Her body swayed to one side to avoid a sharpened stick, which plunged into a man charging from behind her.

She spun the spear over her head in a wide circle buying her space and a brief opening to back out of the encirclement.

She thrust the spear into a charging man, who’s death grip wrenched it out of her hand as he fell.

Others rushed her again. She continued to cut and thrust while desperately retreating.

She knew that she was being backed against the side of a building as the mob spread out.

She was plotting her way out of that trap when a rock flew out of the darkness and clanged against her helm. She hadn’t seen that one coming.

A moments distraction was all it took.

She blocked a stick strike with her arm. The padded sleeve did little to blunt the pain, even if it saved her from a broken arm.

Hands grasped her sword arm even as she cut two men down in quick succession.

Fingers pulled at her own.

Too many and too strong.

They dislocated several of her fingers as they disarmed her.

She trapped the stick-wielder’s arm against her side, hooking her left arm underneath his, she pressed up bending his elbow in an unnatural direction.

The man screamed as she took the stick from him and proceeded to hammer at the hands and arms pulling on her.

Pain inflicted on those in an altered state of mind was ignored.

She absorbed blows all over her body.

Fists, sticks and stones struck her helm, causing bright lights to dance in her vision. She tasted blood in her mouth. She hadn’t noticed that she had bitten the inside of her cheek.

Her body absorbed painful blows that rattled her bones and drove the wind out of her lungs.

A blow to the side of her knee caused it to buckle.

Strella fought to stay on her feet.

It was certain death if she fell here.

Desperation kept her from going down that dark corridor.

She elbowed a man in the throat. He went away choking for air, but two more replaced him.

She slammed her helmeted head into an old woman’s face. Blood and broken bits of teeth went flying as the woman gurgled.

A thick arm wrapped itself around her neck.

A knife-wielding young woman stabbed at Strella’s stomach.

She covered herself with her right arm.

The blade stabbed through the tough fabric of her sleeve and into her arm, stopping when it hit bone.

Strella couldn’t feel pain now. Her life was in the balance. Her body was doing all it could to let her fight for it.

She stomped her heel on the foot of the man choking her.

It bought her the space to slam the back of her steel helm into his face.

One last option was left.

She drew her metal shooter and through hazy vision aimed it at the closest person.

The loud bang shook the night air.

Blood, brains, bones, flesh and hair painted a handful of people.

The mob was stunned for a moment.

However, Strella could still see the rage in their eyes.

Her respite was temporary.