6Fires consumed broken homes, the flames reaching up and into the sky. Pillars of black smoke rose above the tragedy, marking the passing of more than two hundred lives. An entire town razed to the ground.
The mercenaries had come without warning in the dead of night, a shifting band of hired thugs. This town hadn't even been a target, something they were paid to destroy. It was just some passing fun. Mindless devastation for their own entertainment. Men and women lay on the blood-soaked ground, hacked apart and slain while only trying to escape the massacre. Not even the children were left, their small bodies laying under their parents who had given their last moments to protect their young. Farm animals kept in the outlaying barns, fields of crops growing for the coming harvest, and even the occasional housepet of a dog lay on the same ground with their owners.
By the dawn, the town was nothing more than a black skeleton of what it was.
Yet at the end of the farthest field, where the now-burned wheat stalks gave way to a rocky cliffside overlooking the ocean waves, one resident of the extinct town still breathed.
April had grabbed her younger brother and hauled him away from the town the moment she'd awoken to the sounds of screams. Two children had somehow warranted the attention of two archers among the mercenary group, and thus she and her brother were struck in the back with arrows. She had taken three before she could no longer run, falling face down at the edge of the cliff.
Twelve years into this world, and now everything was gone. She lay with her right arm dangling over the sea, three arrows jutting up from her back, their fletch like flags. Her breath slipped back and forth between ragged and pained to faint just as consciousness came and went. Hanging on a razors edge, she felt life ebbing from her with every second. It was midday, with the burning Summer sun beating down on her prone form, when she finally heard someone approach. Heavy footsteps beat the ground and a shadow soon fell over her. She slipped away again.
When April woke again, it all seemed so much like a dream. She shot up in bed, looking around her feverishly for something to confirm it had all been just a really bad dream. Her home was gone, replaced by cave walls of stone. A fire burned low in the corner, far from the wild rage of the last fire she'd seen. The cave, the close sound of waves crashing just outside, the warm blanket that had covered her, all coupled with the lingering pain in her back told her that it was not a dream. It had been real.
Taking a slower, more careful look around the cave, she found something that froze her. Sitting across from her, hidden in the shroud of darkness, a large imposing form gazed unflinchingly at her. Whoever it was, they were massive and wearing armor that made the mercenary group look like feeble chaff. Nearby the shape of a sword leaning up against the rocky wall became clear, its size matching its owner. Sheer power emanated from both the figure and its sword, the likes of which made her short life of farming and cooking and sewing disappear.
She found herself staring at the sword, drawn to it. If such a person as this had been in her home town to defend it, surely the mercenaries would have all died. They may not have even attacked. Her mind quickly changed direction and she began to wonder if this person was worse than them. Whoever they were, they had not just let her die or killed her, but had brought her into shelter and even seemingly tended to her wounds. None of that, however, was an answer in and of itself. She couldn't even guess what future awaited her now.
All other thought flew from her mind the moment an old man stepped into the cave carrying a small bundle of wood in his arms. He spotted her immediately and smiled. "Awake. Good. Don't be afraid to get up and stretch yourself." Turning away, he went about putting the wood on the fire. When he had finished, he turned back to her. "You haven't moved... you are afraid, aren't you?"
April could barely bring herself to nod, but she eventually managed it. The heavy gaze of the other inhabitant of the cave was weighing down on her more now.
The old man sat cross-legged and placed his hands on his knees. He glanced over at where the shadowy figure sat. "That armor scares you? And the sword?" She nodded again. He smiled knowingly. "There is nothing to be afraid of here except falling in the fire. Even then, scars are lessons. You have some interesting lessons yourself... but that is for another time. Fear not, the armor is empty. In fact, it has never had anyone in it. Do you want to know why?"
Suddenly, knowing that there wasn't any large ominous presence in the cave with them freed up her tongue. She could speak. "Why?"
He shrugged. "Because I finished making it, and the sword, just a week or so ago. The sword is too heavy for me to use and the armor would crush me to death. It has never left this cave, and the only people who have ever seen it, that's you and me, can't even lift it."
Aside from some dark thought dancing around in the back of her mind now, all she had were questions. Once again, those questions were summed up with one word. "Why?"
"Why did I make them?" She nodded. He seemed to think about it for a moment, more like he wasn't sure if he should tell her than just simply sorting out his words. Eventually, he answered the question regardless. "Well, why did I make the armor and sword if no one can use it? You are, uh... young. And small. Weak. As such, I have to take care of you until you are able to care for yourself. You may leave when you can prove you can take care of yourself, and in order to do that you will have to... carry that armor and sword out of here. When you do that, then you will be ready to go home."
The dark thought came to the front, paralyzing her in an instant. Memory of what had happened stole her attention. Her home was gone, everyone she ever knew and loved taken away with it. Tears formed, quickly tracing lines down her face. "...Why..."
Sadly, the old man shook his head. "Without a doubt, that time is far into the future for you. You needn't worry, though. I did bury them all. They are at rest now. You need to focus on other things... and... remember more words than just the one."
April swallowed her tears and wiped her face with her sleeve. She stopped and took a moment to inspect her clothes. She was wearing a simple dark grey tunic, a far cry from her pajamas she had been wearing when the town was attacked. She looked back up at the man, who was watching her carefully. "What do I do now?"
He smiled. "You come with me."
Salty waves rose from the ocean, rushing towards the jagged coastline in their race to crash on the rocks. Monstrous waves, reaching more than fifty feet high by the time they reached their destination, roared deafeningly over every other sound. Yet, breaking through the waves, a solitary form moved with a violent grace. Breaching the top of one wave and flying through the air, it quickly angled downwards again and shot into the next wave, swimming down below the visible swells and under the troughs until it arched back up for the next wave and repeated the process. Alone, the small shadowy figure fought against the mighty currents and pushed itself farther from the shore in spite of the fearsome storm beginning to brew.
It was only once they were so far from the shore and the towering cliffs that they fell behind the horizon that the figure turned back. In the middle of one leap into the air, the figure twisted around and dove into the water facing back to the shore. Moving even faster now, the cliffs came back into sight still only after several minutes. Swimming up one wave in a straight vertical line, they burst through the crest and shot into the air.
April came to a stop in the air, a split second before falling back into the water. In that quick moment, her keen eyes scanned the shore in the distance. Shapes of familiar rocks lined up with each other, their sizes matching her memory. She was in the right spot. Her long wet hair stuck to her all the way down to her knees, a sleeveless grey tunic running the length of her body. Ten years had transformed tiny arms and legs into powerful limbs that, once she struck the water again, propelled her straight down toward the ocean floor.
This far out, she was not at risk of swimming so far down that the pressure would kill her. She reached the bottom after only counting ninety-six meters. With the storm growing in power above her, no light was reaching even these depths. It was blacker than a starless night here, where strange worm-like creatures and things with toxic spines hid in the sediment. It was here she found what she was looking for. A faint glow turned into a bright light, illuminating the murky water around her as the creature approached. Having sensed something with a sizable body, it came for her.
Body stretching fifteen meters, more than a foot thick down most of its length, the eel snaked its way toward the source of the disturbance. April sat on the ocean floor, counting the seconds of air she had left. What the giant glowing eel saw, by the light of its own body, was a large unfamiliar stalk with a myriad of tiny tendrils floating about it. No doubt, in the eels mind, these tendrils were dangerous to touch. Such things always were, especially when unfamiliar.
What April saw, by the light of the eel's body, was everything in her surroundings. If the eel chose to attack her, it could coil around her and crush her at lightning speed, but it wasn't going to. She knew, by the way it slowed and watched her, that it was wary. Her hair gave the illusion of stinging tendrils certain monstrous yet stationary creatures possessed. A sudden movement would likely frighten it away, and with it would go her ability to see the area around her. With that all in mind, she waved her arms around slowly, imitating larger tentacles on creatures like octopuses.
Her eyes were not on the eel at all, however. They darted around her at the seabed, picking out all manner of bottom-dwellers. The eel watched, curious, as the invading species' largest two tentacles snapped all around and snatched up various urchins. All toxic, deadly creatures. The eel would not miss them. Even the slightest prick from one would cause severe pain in something as large as a shark. Any more serious contact would possibly be lethal. How this creature managed to grab them so carelessly was something the eel considered borderline amazing.
Of course, April knew better than to just grab a spiny urchin. The giant glowing eels only came out when the surface was rough, feeding on things that came down to hide from the torrential waves. Only then was the black seabed ever illuminated. That was when she could see the urchins she was looking for and take them, catching a single spine between her thumb and index finger before stuffing them down the front of her tunic. All she really needed was two or three, and even in so small an area this was not a challenge once she could see.
The eel got the shock of its life when April kicked of, pushing herself upward with more force than the eel had ever seen from something that size. It would have followed to see where she was going, but it knew better. You don't follow things you don't understand.
The silhouette of a shark drifted overhead, barely visible in the murky shadows. The apex predator of the sea had less than a second to react, far less than it needed, once it realized something was speeding toward it. April had waited until it was directly above her before launching herself at it. She would have collided head first if she hadn't, at the last instant, bent backwards at the waist. As it was, she slammed her chest into the beast's underbelly. The spines of the urchins poked through her tunic and dug into the shark's rubbery skin, injecting multiple lethal doses into its bloodstream.
Hooking her arms behind the large pectoral fins, before the toxins even had time to finish the creature off, she began hauling it up to the surface. She shot out of the water on the back of a wave, quickly angling herself and her prey to land together on the front of the next. She splashed down, pushing the shark under her and keeping her arms hooked, and let the wave push them toward the shore.
It was several minutes before the wave finally started to break over her head, adding a salty spray to the already abundant rain assaulting her. The cliff shore was dominating her view for the last second before the wave finally hit. Her aim, through the entire ordeal, had been perfect. The wave deposited her and the shark into the mouth of a cave, washing them both into a flooded pool at the bottom of the cave.
April released the shark, grabbing onto a tall rock sticking out of the pool and pulling herself out of the water. She climbed to the top of the rock and hopped over to a neighboring rock with a more flat top, a stable place to stand. Another wave crashed into the cave as she undid the cord around her waist. She watched the shark, making sure it didn't get washed out to sea again, then pulled her tunic up and let the urchins fall out and into the pool. She quickly picked a few spines that had broken off out of the cloth and tossed them in as well before tying the cord back up, jumping back to the pointed rock and lowering herself back into the water. Digging her fingers into the shark's gills, she pulled it through the water toward the back of the pool where she had to drag it up a set of old stairs carved into the wall of the cave.
At the top of the stairs, a tunnel branched off from the pool and further into the cliff. Now only dragging her prey with one hand, April trudged through the black cave for another sixteen meters before finally arriving at what had been her home for the past ten years. A low fire burned in the center of the small cavern, casting a reddish glow on the rock walls. Two blankets, old and worn thin, lay at the back. Most of a set of heavy armor lay on the ground near the blankets, and a large sword rested next to it.
She dropped the shark beside the fire. "All your work paid off. I think I'm strong enough now." Untying the cord again, she reached into her tunic and pulled the breastplate out. She had taken it to protect herself from the urchins she would be using, knowing full well that they were just as deadly to her as they had been to the shark. She dropped the breastplate on the ground beside the rest of the armor and turned to a pile of small stones sitting in the shadows where she had first seen the armor. "I'm going to leave tomorrow morning. I'll pay my respects to my family, and then I'm leaving. We both know there's nothing left for me here."
Picking up the sword, April sat down next to the fire and began to work away at the shark. First, she needed to eat. Then she would sleep, and then she would go. This was her last night in the cave. Tomorrow, she would scale the cliff, wearing the armor and sword, and she would never return here.