9 years ago
Cyannis Village, Nojani
Ricewine Indigo thought winter was an unforgiving season.
Now, they’d heard adults say that winter was painful, or it was hard, but Indigo didn’t necessarily agree with that. Unforgiving is what she’d say. It didn’t seek out to hurt you, but if you didn’t respect it, the sharp air would snap your nose off, or you’d run out of food before the snow was over. Indigo thought they could respect it.
When snow rushes down, you stay inside. When it cakes the ground, you put on tall boots. When bears and hawks descended on your stores, you called an adult.
She was 9 and she could get that.
Indigo sat at the far wall of their family’s main building. A thatched roof shielded them overhead, with walls of stone outside, and logs on the inside. The fire-pit roared in the center, as their cousin prodded at it with a brass rod, currently Indigo’s only company.
“Indigo,” they said. They were tall, broad of shoulder, a mason by trade. Curls of black hair fell around a hawkish, clay-coloured face, both darker than Indigo’s own deep blue and olive. “Come closer to the fire, you’ll get a runny nose.”
“I’m not 8, Aspen,” she replied, “I want to look at the sword.”
“Ah, ofcourse.” Aspen put down the prod, and stepped towards Indigo. Rough earth gave way to a bamboo mat as they arrived in the main section of the building. It was just a common area, but that meant it held one thing: the sword.
The sword was held in two wooded arms atop the curve of the wall, where the oval-shaped building was narrowest. It was easily taller than Indigo, its hilt enough to grab 5 times over. A white metal, the blade was raised in the center, before sloping down to razor points, like a knife, or a bronze sword. It almost looked like bronze, with the firelight glittering off the blade, colouring it in shades of umber and sunset, but it was something far greater. Something ancient.
“You know what it means, right?” Aspen dropped to the floor with Indigo, one arm atop their knee, expression soft. They smelled like charred wood and cinnamon. Wasn’t cinnamon also wood?
“The sword? Do you think I’m stupid, big cousin?” She huffed indignantly, turning her nose up and clenching her eyes, as Aspen laughed softly
“Well, if you’re so smart, I don’t need to tell you about it, then.”
She cracked one eye open.
“This sword represents our family, the Ricewine family. It’s been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years, from back when they knew how to make them.”
“We just forgot?”
“Well, if we knew how we lost it, we’d learn it again, right?”
Indigo nodded, “but we don’t?”
“But we don’t.” Aspen echoed. “Every family has one, and every family has to make super sure we take care of it, alright?”
“I wasn’t even touching it! I was just looking!”
“Well, one day you’ll need to touch it.”
Indigo must have had the funniest expression on her face.
“Since you’re a member of the family, you need to help in keeping it in tip-top shape, Indigo. They’ll probably make you do it before you turn 18 at least.”
“3 six-years… I have to leave then, right?”
Aspen raised an eyebrow at her, “What do you mean?”
“Well, when Rowan or Burgundy reached their 3rd six-year, they had to leave… And I miss them…”
“Ah..” they sighed and put a hand on Indigo’s shoulder, “You don’t have to. But, some people, when they reach 18, leave to go to another village. It’s normal, but you don’t have too.”
“I want to stay here.”
“What’s this about, Indigo?”
“I don’t know…”
They switched the subject, turning fully towards Indigo, “you and your parents keep the woolhounds, right?”
She nodded, “Mhm!”
“Did you know… hounds are just small bears! Look at their little ears, just like a bear!”
“No!”
“It’s true!”
“Can’t be, all the hounds are nice, and listen! Bears? Scary, evil.”
“An animal can’t be evil.”
“What about drakes?”
“Well, we don’t get drakes around here.”
“So, no animals here are evil.”
“I didn’t say that-“
The evening was pierced with a scream. Human. Aspen’s face went cold, as they reached for Indigo, covering them with a broad reach, tackling them to the side.
A second one came.
Then a third.
The fourth one came even before Indigo was brave enough to open her eyes.
But she did.
As a body fell into the door.
The dark planks of the door fell aside as a red figure stumbled in, reaching for something, losing their balan- No. No no no. They hadn’t been stumbling. The head fell away from the body, and blood rushed into the room in concert with that biting, cold, air.
The head came close, too close, Aspen screamed and Indigo went still. Frozen.
It was her parent.
Screams halted, as a sound even worse filled their ears.
Laughter.
A tall figure came through the door, and picked up the headless cadaver. Lifting it high in an outstretched arm, they opened a wide mouth and drowned their throat in warm, crimson blood, before tossing it aside, inhumanly fast, the impact shattering logs and doing the body far worse.
Aspen roared, pushing Indigo aside, as they leaped, and snatched the bronze fire prod.
“MURDERER!” They raged.
Indigo couldn’t even tell what happened as Aspen fell to their knees.
Their shouts surviving only in her ears.
Their blood staining her.
Their corpse fallen into the fire pit.
The murderer turned their gaze to Indigo. She chocked back a scream, unable to move. Paralyzed. She was the third corpse in the room.
Their skin was dull, as if it had been drained of all its luster, and pure, black, scars wormed around their chest. Uncovered. Rippling with muscle, but holding a power far beyond what it should. Carried as if nothing, uncovered as if invincible, slaughtering as if untouchable. The red across their hands told Indigo that Aspen had not been the first. She feared not the last.
And their eyes…
Black. The golden ring of their iris the only colour to them outside of the deep, red, blood dripping from their mouth.
Slowly, they walked forwards, a sickening smile growing with every step. A cold hand finally reached towards Indigo’s face, before a black scar on the palm burst forth.
Pain screamed at every sense she had, blinding her, deafening, contorting her mind into its image.
She had the sense she’d done something. Dodged out of the way, brought something up to guard her. Something. She had to. Why was she alive. Was she alive? How was she alive.
Agony gave way to discomfort, as she adjusted, and felt blood trickling into her mouth. Her own blood. It was only then she was brave enough to open her eyes.
The murder had been cut in half. Cleanly. Down the center. Vertically.
What?
Blood poured out, a torrent, far too much for the size of the body, and Indigo realised she was already sitting it.
Finally -finally- moving, she scrambled to her feet and slipped and clawed her way out the door. Through the blood and viscera and awful, awful stench of Death.
She had the sense to grab the fire prod, and held it in shaking hands as she left the house.
Blood ebbed and flowed through every crevice of the cobbled floor, and stained the walls of houses, stone or wood or clay alike. Viscera and guts caked in corners, bodies piled or ruined.
Indigo’s stomach churned. Worse when she realized she recognized every single one. They looked so much like her. Her family.
The attackers had come into the village from the forest, the Ricewine buildings at its very edge, and killed their way through.
What had happened to survive her?
The blood stopped soon after the building she’d been in, and she looked up to see why.
4 people swarmed around 1. All of them as drained and manic as the one who’d attacked her. All of them riddled with inky scars and swarming with floating red. All of them struggling with the 1 person.
They were massive, atleast 2 meters, more definitely, and broad to match. Dressed in white, no, in steel. Chains and highlights of bronze fell at joints and from their mask, but steel covered everything else. Nothing the murderers did even scratched at them.
And, that was when they hit. The steel person moved with such precession, such speed, Indigo did not think them human. Fighting them off with bare hands, weaving between their rabid attacks, blasts of red -blood?-, and shrugging off the stray hits they couldn’t- no, didn’t care to dodge.
Like a flash, they ducked to the floor, and returned with a Sword.
Almost twice as long as Ricewine, the steel of the blade curved and wormed like a flame, unblemished by smudge or scar, it had two smaller blades shoot out the first third of it. The hilt was wrapped in bronze wire from what Indigo could tell, and only as she came out of her head did she realize she’d come closer. No, that sword was long enough she would not want to be anywhere but a distance away.
There were only 2 left by the time Indigo had backed up one step.
A Sword that big? What kind of family held one like that? What kind of family would actually use their Sword to kill? What kind of family had saved her life?
The steel-clad figure swung their blade, making the blood fly away, as they grabbed the largest corpse and hauled it away with them, trudging through the main promenade, towards the end of town.
Indigo moved to shout, but choked on blood. Tried again.
“STEEL!” They didn’t look back, and she felt stupid. What could she say? “THANK YOU!”
…
The other families found her sitting, slumped, outside of the common house she’d started in. The blood had melted away all the snow, and she didn’t care about staining or wetting her clothes. Who’d clean them, her parents?
People she only vaguely knew tended to her wound, her face wrapped in white cotton, as people she knew even less ran around, rooted through the houses, and discussed.
“Noone left.”
“Empty.”
“Dead”
All echoed through, said in the same breath as a final one. One that renewed the taste of blood on Indigo’s lips