First Blood

When Saga was a child, only barely in her teens, her father had finally allowed her to join the Keepers’ Academy. She’d been late to her first day of blade dance practice with Master Dorrin, and he’d scolded her harshly and ordered her to stay after class to make up for the missed training.

He was brutal, practically beating her with a wooden sword while she ineffectually swatted at it with her own. At first she thought he was just being cruel, but every so often she looked into his eyes, and he seemed…conflicted? Sad? She almost got the feeling he didn’t want to be doing this, but that just made the situation worse. Why was he doing something neither of them wanted him to do?

The old man stopped after what felt like hours. She laid on the ground, her body sore and exhausted from the ‘training’. Some water from him helped ease some of the ache, and eventually she was able to sit up. She knew when she looked at him that there was fire in her eyes, anger. He just stared at her for a while, his eyes blank, and eventually turned away.

“Your grandfather tells me you want to be a Bard, but more than that, you want to be a hero.”

She said nothing, still glaring at him.

“You need to learn something, Saga, and the earlier you learn it, the better.” He looked down at her again. “What do you think heroes do?”

She frowned at the question, trying to remain angry but now more confused than anything. This old man was weird. “They…make people happy? They fight bad guys and rescue people. They do what they need to do.”

He closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “Yes. A good answer, if simple. They do what they must, no matter what happens. Saga,” he looked at her again, and this time he just looked tired, “sometimes, you’ll have to hurt someone to save someone else. If you insist on following this path, on being a hero, you’ll end up fighting some bad people some day, and you may have to kill them, either to save yourself, or someone else.”

She looked away, saying nothing. Her eye was beginning to itch, but she ignored it.

“I just want you to understand,” he continued. “When that time comes, you can’t hesitate. If you let them see you flinch, if they know you’re afraid to hurt them, you’ve already lost.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispered.

“I know, Saga. No good person wants to, but sometimes it’s necessary. Do you want my advice? What helps me when I need to do it?” She could feel his eyes on her, but she just shrugged.

“I remind myself…that killing another human being is a burden, but one I would rather shoulder myself than put off on someone else. When I kill,” his voice faltered, and even without looking, she realized he was trying not to cry, “I carry the burden so no one else has to.”

She considered his words, and the silent minutes dragged on. Eventually, she managed to speak again. “I can barely hold a sword. Why are you telling me this now?”

He chuckled bitterly. “I’ve found this lesson sticks better immediately after a fight. You’ll remember this conversation later, when you most need it. You’ll remember how helpless you felt during the fight, and you’ll remember that you don’t want to feel that way ever again.

“When the time comes, and you remember this, you’ll fight with everything you have.”

“I’ll write it down in my notebook under ‘Lesson Two’.”

He looked down at her, confused. “Two?”

“’Lesson One’ was ‘don’t be late to dance training’,” she grumbled, and her master laughed. It was the only time she’d ever hear him laugh in all the years she trained with him.

At the time, Saga had dismissed his words, and after being treated by a healer and getting a treat from her Master, she’d put them out of her mind almost entirely. Neither of them had ever discussed it again, though occasionally she’d remember that night and wonder what had brought it on.

Now, in this moment, with not only Master Dorrin’s life on the line, but also her own, Saga realized this was the exact moment he’d been trying to prepare her for. She lifted her head, staring evenly at the bandit before her, and slowly walked closer to him. Her voice was surprisingly calm when she spoke, and she had to force it to tremble slightly. “You’re right. I don’t want to kill you.”

The swordsman grinned, stepping closer to her but keeping his sword in hand. “I knew you’d come around, little kitten. Let’s start with the coat.” He reached out and grabbed a lapel with his free hand. “You’re not going to need it for a while.”

While he was focused on her, she shifted her gaze to the pair behind him, quickly gathered her Will, shaped it, and released it. The bandit leader cried out, dropping the red hot knife to the packed earth at his feet and clutching his burnt hand. Master Dorrin expertly slipped out of the man’s grasp, keeping a hand on the shallow cut across his throat but otherwise unharmed. He looked at the man, then back at Saga, eyes wide.

The swordsman looked over his shoulder commotion behind him, and his body language told her when he realized what had happened. She gathered her Will one last time, cast Haste, and tackled the man just as he turned back around. Her Hasted momentum gave her enough force to knock him flat on his back. Without her dancing saber, and her head pounding from overusing her magic, she resorted to the only option she had left: She punched him.

Her hands screamed in pain as she struck him over and over again. Fire filled the vision of her right eye as fear and anger coursed through her, rendering her half-blind, but she didn’t let up. He continued to struggle beneath her, but she pinned his sword arm with her knee and kept punching, her Hasted fists moving almost faster than the eye could follow. The sound of screaming came to her ears, punctuated by each blow. Every fiber of her being wanted her to stop, but she knew that if she did, if she let the man recover, he’d hurt her and Master Dorrin and eventually others.

I can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop I’m so sorry.

She distantly heard someone calling her name, but that didn’t matter. She punched, and punched, and kept punching. Her fist was covered in blood, she wasn’t sure if it was hers or his, but she kept punching. She heard her name again, felt hands on her shoulders, and suddenly she was being pulled away from the downed man.

She struggled against the hands, kicking uselessly at whoever had grabbed her from behind. Her attacker eventually threw her to the ground, and she rolled to her feet, the fire in her scarred eye blazing…

Reality snapped back into place in an instant. She had her back pressed against a tree, and Master Dorrin stood before her, hands on her cheeks and forcing her to look at him. She only then realized he was the one who’d been calling her name, and now he was repeating it softly, soothingly.

When he saw that she was starting to come back to herself, his relief was visible on his face. He sagged to the ground wordlessly, catching his breath, and she joined him. He'd sheathed one of his swords, though she still didn't see the other one. Or maybe this was the other one? After a few minutes, her breathing had returned to normal, and she was able to survey the surrounding scene.

Master Dorrin’s other sword was missing, and the band who’d had the knife lay still on the ground. Angels’ mercy, where is his head? The rest of the dead men were scattered across the road or in the bushes. A bloody lump had come to rest against the base of a tree nearby. Oh, there it is.

She turned her gaze, finally, to the man she’d faced at the end. His face was an unrecognizable lump of bloody flesh. She noted absently that his head was misshapen, and that his sword arm was visibly broken. Had she done that?

She didn’t know how long she stared at the body before she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, startled, but was quicker to recover this time. Master Dorrin was kneeling next to her, looking into her eyes, searching for something. “Are you alright, Saga?”

“He wouldn’t stop screaming.”

He blinked, then looked at the body. “Saga…he wasn’t screaming.”

“Oh.” Saga looked down at her hands. They were red with blood, though it was already beginning to darken and dry. “I think I broke something..” She felt detached, like she was watching someone else. “It doesn’t hurt, but I think that’s just adrenaline. I imagine the pain will set in soon.”

Her voice had a dreamlike quality to her ears, and Master Dorrin’s face showed concern. He looked around at the results of their battle, sighing. “I’m sorry, Saga. I knew this would happen eventually, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t have been so…” he paused, searching for the right word, “...messy.”

“Nonsense, Master. They would hardly have lined up to let me practice one at a time like in the practice ring. It’s best that this is over.”

He blinked, staring at her. “Are you alright, Saga?” he repeated.

She realized she was staring at the body again and averted her gaze. “There’s a creek nearby, if I remember the map correctly. Just north of us. I need to wash these wound, and my hands. Should use Heal so I can still use them.” She stood and walked in that direction.

It didn’t take her long to reach the river she mentioned, and she stripped her coat off before kneeling on the banks. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the unbroken water’s surface.

Blood. Fire and blood.

Just as she registered that the fire in her eye hadn’t gone away, she vomited. The tightness in her stomach she hadn’t realized was there was finally making its presence known, and she continued to empty it for what felt like ages.

When nothing else came, all she could do was scream out her fear and anger and anxiety, letting the raw emotion of the fight drain out of her until her throat burned. She was crying, and the tears running down her face had mingled with the blood, making her look like something out of a nightmare. It was the last thing she saw before everything, including the fire, faded to black.

I’m so sorry.