“I don’t understand. You want me to kill all warriors that has a cut on their palm?”
“Cuts with black weird writing on it,” I added and pulled the dagger out of the traitor’s neck. My hands roamed around Malfoy’s cold lifeless body and rashly pulled away his sleeves covering the mark on his wrist. “When acting alliance in a vampire territory, a pact is needed. A blood from one’s palms should flow down a bowl sealed by a sorcerer. Then automatically, an ancient writing would appear on their palms as a sign of allegiance and loyalty. In Malfoy’s case, I guess he had pledged something, a reason on siding Pinansey-angan that is still unclear.”
Until now, the meaning and even the message that this mark conveys is still a mystery to me. A baybayin code of five symbols, something that is read first of ‘kata’. ᜃᜆᜉᜆᜈᜃᜆᜉᜆ
ᜃᜆᜉᜆᜈ᜔
“But you order me to kill? They’re still wolves,” Kymil again blurted.
“Did I say they’re not? Still they are wolves, but they were no longer the comrade you had seen them. Who do you think they work for?”
“And you think I could do that?” Kymil stiffened his face and turn his back on me.
I stood up and hastily grabbed his collar before he could even make his way off the exit. “It is only you that I can entrust this kind of task. Kymil, please.”
“Why?” his voice started to rumble and he suddenly tremble like he’s fearing something. “Why me? I haven’t killed even one life, General. I never had—”
“Where do you think you are?” Slamming his body on the table erected in the center of the tent, I leaped over him as I gritted my teeth. Irritated on his unreasonable answer, “Do you know what kind of place you have entered? Do you know we are on a war?”
“This is not my ch-choice, General,” he hardly replied when I squeezed his throat tighter.
“Then today it will be. Or else I will be the one killing y—”
“Why don’t you go?”
Both of our eyes landed on the opened door to the woman in armor snatching our attention. It was Edith, and on her hands were bottles of different colored liquids. She was staring at me, commanding through her eyes to let this warrior below me go.
I smiled and jumped away from him, pacing my way to Edith. “What are those?”
“It is none of your concern, Adira. The sun will sink just a few minutes, stop playing around.”
A deep sigh let out of me, “Alright. But I have a request.”
“What is it?” Edith asked gloomily, thumping footsteps right through the disheveled table.
“I want to drag Kymil along.”
“I don’t want to!” Kymil’s voice quickly responded.
The sorcerer tilted her head and coldly darted a stare to Kymil next to the table. My lips formed a straight horizontal line and paced a few steps right away, an easy access to the exit door. I was about to part the heavy curtains when I heard Kymil groaned.
“Stop fooling around, Ky.”
“I won’t. I swear, Ma. I’ll be good—arghh please stop,” Kymil protested with his eyes almost burst out tears as Edith grilled and pinch his ears that she almost ripped it off his skin.
But what’s more interesting was the thing Kymil called Edith ‘Ma’.
“You didn’t told you had a son,” I spoke, alternating my eyes from Edith to Kymil, and from Kymil to Edith.
Edith raised one brow as she face me, “You didn’t ask.”
Right. I had not asked her. I shrugged my shoulders and shifted my gaze at her son hiding behind her. “Tell him I will be waiting outside.”
My legs waddled softly and jumped on a tree. Too tall that I can see the entire camp. Edith told me the army has a total of only a hundred amateur cadets. And the experienced warriors were stationed at the borders of the third line of defense.
If that is the case, and we still have no clue on how many traitors are out there. There is great possibility we’ll be ambushed if one of them senses this move. I have to kill them as fast as it should be. The case clicked and my hand deliberately draw out the sword.
“Aww. It’s burning,” whines a voice that popped on my side. “I don’t see any reason why you have to drag me along, General.”
My eyes rolled in annoyance and clashes the sword onto the metal plate on his shoulder. “I don’t expect you to be Edith’s son. Prove to me you are worth more than her.”
It is true, I thought he’ll be of good help the second I saw him. Kymil got the intimidating aura of a fighter in a battlefield. I saw him as a leader, someone that possess great warrior inside. But seems like he don’t want to have it.
“Why should I?” he grinned in response making my brow raise. “You all think of me that way. I will never be as good as her. I didn’t want to be like this. I didn’t want to be the high-priest’s son. I didn’t want those great expectations you have for me.”
I remained staring at him for a few more seconds until the sun totally sank. His eyes couldn’t stop moving, if it wasn’t motioned left, it turned right. If it wasn’t at my foot, it shifted up the branches. Clearly escaping my gaze.
“Is it?” I dared, lifting one side of my lips and moved the blade of the sword closer to his throat. “Then prove me my expectations were wrong.”
His fore furrowed, “How?”
“I don’t know.” Withdrawing the blade away from him, I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe by helping me finish the task this night?” With that, his face instantly falls down and was about to leap down but stopped when a sudden struck of dagger flew across just a few centimeters away from his face. “Because if you don’t, you will be my first kill this night.”
“You’re practically giving me no choice, did you know that?” Kymil replied like a kid having tantrums, his lips poked out and pouted. He leaned on the tree’s body and looked at me like I was the most awful dangerous being in the entire Claveria.
“Exactly,” I nodded constantly and pointed the dagger on his side, requesting him to throw it back which he did. “Now get your things. We should waste no time eh.”
Still pouting, he scratches his head before leaping down the tree and snatches the long rapier still on its case. He brushed his neck-long charcoal hair and tied it up. Wouldn’t deny, it is only this time that I noticed he’s almost the guy version of Edith except for his dark hair. From the eyes to his nose and stance.
I again shrugged and waited for him to lead the way to the cadet’s tents. He fixed his foot on a branch parallel to the left corner of the two rows of tent. The center aisle was lighted with igniting flames on torch.
“Oh, I guess they’re asleep. How would you pick which is which, General?” Kymil asked, putting stress on every syllable he spouted.
A signal smirk formed on my lips as I landed beside him and pull up the fabric covering half of my face. I flipped a metal to his face and secured it quickly before he could protest. It covered all of his right face’s right part.
“It is better to be safe and unknown when we become a nightmare. Agree with me, my sweet Niece,” I whispered and winked at him before moving, and heading straight to the first tent.
“I am not your niece,” was what he mouthed at me and dashed off to the right side of the lane.
ᜃᜆᜉᜆᜈ᜔ Wearing the same frigid look, I gasp for a deep breath before I carefully split the heavy curtains of the first tent. My forehead creased the moment I stepped in and noticed eight mats placed for sleeping were all unoccupied. I kept myself standing at the entrance, guessing possible answers when a cold thing suddenly was grazed across my neck.
“Don’t think highly of yourself. Not all of us were as stupid as Malfoy and Kehli.”
“How many of you are here?” I asked, not moving even an inch. I heard the guy behind me laugh and brush the rapier’s blade on my neck roughly, incising my skin and letting the blood drip.
“Since you’ll be dead. It’s no use if I tell how many recruits are here under Prince Vander’s order.” He leaned closer and the blade tighter that it nearly reached my breath, “There is none left devoted to Abberant. Nothing left.”
Making a rapid stroke, I clutched my hands onto this guy’s shoulder and flip him over me. He crashed onto the stack of armors but the blades didn’t spare me, leaving a long wound on my neck. As well as it is, five more cadets emerged from the shadows, and all of them were armed with sharp swords. And the aim is me.
Damn! This is out of my expectation. They’re all under Vander’s command, they’re all traitors surrounding the entire camp!
“Charge!”