Marshall

Chapter Sixteen (Spring, 2037)

(5.5 k words, 20-30 min read)

After that strange fall with all the lights, that random guy who grabbed Langley, then losing grip of Pretty’s and Mariah’s hands, Marshall crashed out through a mirror by himself and his legs caught on the edge of a vanity which almost fell right next to him.

He sprawled out onto the floor, unhurt, but dazed, “Unng.” The gun fell from his pants, scattered onto the wood floor, and lay still.

He picked himself up and looked around. He was alone and breathing hard, probably from all that running from the novis.

“Mariah? Pretty? Myles!” Marshall called to the room. He looked back at the mirror which was now a shattered mess; there would be nobody else flying through that mirror.

He gasped for air and decided to lie on his back. “Whew,” he was safe.

Where was he? There was other furniture around him, old and unused. Definitely stored. It was stacked almost to the top of the tall ceilings around him. Bedsprings, shelves, collapsible chairs, and curtains. There was another vanity, but the mirror was already broken. Did the Astronomers already make it through that one? Were they anywhere near? There were leaves all over the floor, like someone had left a window open for a long time, but any windows in this room must have been obscured.

He heard footsteps approaching. “Mariah? Fellow Astronomers? Who’s there?”

“Sounds young, so be careful,” A gruff voice came from outside the room.

“Who is it?” Marshall asked.

There was no answer as the footsteps slowly approached. Marshall first saw the barrel of a musket and then a fully-fledged man wearing a feathered metal helm and a leather chestplate came into view.

“Wha…?” Marshall said from the floor. “Who are you?” In his panic, he didn’t think to grab his own weapon.

The man pointed his gun at Marshall, “Don’t you fucking move. I don’t need you alive, but it’s better if you are.”

“Whoa, what?” Marshall lifted his hands. “Don’t shoot, sir. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I have a lot of explanations for this. I’m sorry.” 

The man approached cautiously. “Retarded, hm? On your feet, now.”

Marshall obeyed the man’s every command until he was downstairs and around many other men dressed just like the one who had taken him prisoner.

“Wha…? What’s going on? I’m having trouble breathing here… anyone have water?”

“Think he was sneaking up on us?”

“Found him upstairs; looked like he just broke a mirror because it was that sound I was following. He was probably up there all along,” The man who had captured Marshall at gunpoint said.

“Well, we’ll harvest him tomorrow. I’m too tired to hang another today.”

Marshall heard and felt a dull 

thwump

When he woke up, there was water in a small bottle nearby. Marshall was in a metal cage. He forced himself to move and reached out of the cage for the water, but it was snatched away by a cloaked figure.

“Nope, not yet,” the boy said. Marshall guessed its age to be fourteen from the movement and the voice pitch. The deepness of the voice didn’t quite match the size of the kid.

“Please,” Marshall said. “I need it.”

“You’re a strange case, Marshall.”

“You know me?”

“I read your mind,” he said, like he was explaining how to add and subtract. “Have you met a prophet before?”

“The hell? What kind of cultish bullshit did Myles get us into? Why am I in here? Let me the fuck out, man!”

“No, but it was God who gave us our powers. Do you know what power you are?” Anda gave him the water.

He grabbed the water, thinking: This is what Myles telling us about. That we were all special in some way. Marshall was panting after a long drink of water, “No.”

“You’re telling the truth. You’ve arrived from somewhere else entirely and are now here, a severely-underdeveloped fraiser, yet you’re twelve years old. How?”

“Who are you? And are you going to let me out?”

“I’m Anda, like ‘Panda’ without the ‘p’. Nice to meet you. I work for the Cavaliers, and with you, we’ll have to wait a while for your fraise organ to develop, otherwise it’s a fraiser wasted.”

“I’m guessing a fraiser is whoever has powers? What is a fraiser exactly?” Marshall said.

Anda laughed, “Did you hear everything I say?”

Marshall nodded, “Yeah, I heard it, now answer my questions. Why am I in a cage? What’s a fraiser?”

“We’re fraisers. Children. With the fraise, we receive power. Do you know yours?”

“No, I don’t know my magical orientation. Why’d you lock me up?”

“You’re in a cage so the Cavs can use you and so you don’t escape. But since we’re waiting for your fraise to develop… well, I perceived you’re a hush; they’re pretty common. Which means we just have to wait and keep you from being able to do anything incredible.”

Anda walked away, thinking.

Marshall didn’t have the energy to move. He was thirsty again, like he’d eaten a handful of sand an hour ago.

He remembered his dad. He saw his dad die.

No, no, he didn’t. This was some strange, strange dream. He didn’t see anyone die, nobody died.

Marshall felt tears roll out of his eyes despite his mental disbelief. His father was dead, and his other friends didn’t make it through the mirror after all. He guessed they didn’t jump through all at the right time and were left in the mirror or wherever one goes in the infinite space of mirrors.

Marshall didn’t know how long he was in the cage and absently ate and drank the food they brought him. Every few hours, Anda would come into the room chewing his pointer knuckle and staring at Marshall. Then he would leave. Marshall hadn’t moved from his lying down state; he just wanted to die if they weren’t going to fill him in on all of the other missing pieces. Sometimes his eyes would cry automatically out of frustration and then stop for a few hours and then start again.

Days passed; Marshall changed positions to keep from cramping horribly in the cage, starting to become used to the routines of the Cavaliers. He heard them call themselves Cavaliers or Cavs in a neighboring room.

Eventually, Marshall started talking again when Anda would enter the room, but Anda wouldn’t answer any questions; he would just stare, frowning at Marshall and looking impatient.

One day, Marshall heard two Cavaliers marching up to the room with Anda. When they entered, Marshall noticed the red-hot piece of metal and he rose, his heart rate rising.

“It’s only going to hurt for a little,” Anda said, “we just don’t want you overpowering us once you’re out. I don’t know why you weren’t a fully developed fraiser, but this is just a precaution.”

“No, what the fuck are you doing to me? What the fuck is this?” Every last of Marshall’s senses were shot, all of them bracing for some life-changing, excruciating pain.

The cage was opened and Marshall fell to the back of his confinement. “No! What the fuck?!”

The Cavalier with both free hands leaned down and grabbed Marshall.

“No! No you fucking don’t!” Marshall was scrambling against the bars, putting up a struggle.

“Marshall, please don’t. You’ll only burn your face too,” Anda said as the cav pulled Marshall from his confinement.

“FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PSYCHOPATH!” Marshall screamed, fearful tears welling in his eyes.

The Cavalier was able to hold Marshall steady, “Hold still you little fucking twat,” as Marshall watched the two red-hot metal spikes float close to his face.

“NO! NO YOU FUCKING DON’T, LET ME GO! FUCK YOU!”

Once the metal, gently glowing with condensed heat, reached his eyes, Marshall screamed. He screamed louder than he’d ever screamed. The metal only party went into his eyes; too far and you reach the brain. The eyes are a delicate machine and only a short distance into them will ruin them permanently. Marshall’s eyesight, his twelve years of vision, was ended permanently. Even as the searing metal left him, pieces of flesh sticking to the hot metal and smelling nauseating, he put his hands to his eyes and screamed. It was more than pain they’d inflicted; he would never see daylight again, never see a human face, never see anything again. No scenery, no smiling friends,

He’d never see the stars ever again.

They locked him up again as he tried to cry. He found quickly that he had no tear-ducts to cry with, though his nose still ran. He whimpered into a ball. A part of him had died just now; he wished the rest of it would die too.

Marshall cried out in pain several more times as it continued to return in waves that slowly faded. Once the pain subsided, he passed out from exhaustion and sadness.

He woke again to a void of darkness and began to panic. He remembered what they did, but the new reality was now striking him. He would never be able to see. How would he live properly? How would he live? How? How would he eat? How would he read? He didn’t feel sad now; he just felt panicked.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Marshall just… didn’t know what to do now. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?! YOU TOOK MY FUCKING EYES!” He slammed his arm against the metal cage.

CLANG

“Fuck,” he said.

The clanging echoed through the room.

“I don’t understand you.” Anda’s voice surprised him.

“SHIT,” Marshall said, grabbing the bars of his cage. 

“Oh, did I scare you?”

“You fucking… psychotic…” In a rare occasion, Marshall couldn’t find the words in his fury. Then he found them.

“I’m going to kill you, Anda. Use your insight and let me know if I’m lying.”

Marshall heard a murmur and footsteps starting to leave, “Your face is disgusting. Please tie this around your eyes. I know you can’t see them, but it has some red and yellow chinese dragons on it.”

Marshall heard a piece of cloth fly down into the cage. He felt around for whatever was just thrown. It was a handkerchief.

Marshall felt like sobbing again, but before he did, “Fuck. You. I promise you, Anda. I will kill you. I’m a man of my word.”

He folded and put the handkerchief on a few minutes later. The handkerchief felt good; it felt like he finally had a reason to be blind. It explained why he wasn’t seeing anything. He felt calmer. He wondered what the dragons looked like on his hankerchief.

At first, he felt less depressed since now he had a reason to get out, and that reason was to kill Anda. But first, Anda would get his own eyes out with a red-hot poker, much slower than Marshall’s own operation.

After several days of stewing and fantasizing about Anda begging for his life, Marshall began to think of how he would escape. Marshall’s lungs had acclimated and his thinking was clearer. The cavs would have to open the cage at some point and he would kill them. If they did this a lot, they probably had some kind of knockout gas or sleep-potion. That’s how he would do it if it were his operation; kids were hard to deal with and could be slippery. Unless they just relied on their brute strength, which would work with nearly the same effect. Even after days of thinking, Marshall could only run through the same situations and damn near all of them wound up with him dying.

One morning Marshall was sitting thinking and listening to the conversation below between two Cavaliers and he could tell where they were in the room and roughly how big the room was. 

“Wait,” Marshall cocked his head. He could hear their surroundings if he tried hard enough: two of them had taken off their swords, one was asleep. Anda wasn’t here. It was when they spoke that he could hear where they were and many of the things around them, just from the sound bouncing around.

Incredible! He could smell what they were cooking and even what they hadn’t put into it yet; there was a small bowl of spices, fresh from what he could sense, sitting close to it.

Just from the sound and smell! He spent all day listening, watching with his ears, feeling around his cage. He whistled to make noise and could sense roughly how big the room around him was. It was like he was seeing the room again!

Days passed like this, Anda would walk into the room and consider the prisoner for a few minutes, not saying anything, murmuring, and then leaving.

Why are they waiting to kill me? Does it really take this long for the fraise to develop? The lack of knowing bothered Marshall, but in the few days he’d been listening to his world and seeing it in this new lens, he’d also found out how to smell and how to taste the air. If only Anda knew… maybe he already did; there was no way to tell.

Marshall found that his body was becoming incredibly flexible and though he was boxed up, he could still contort into complex forms that he’d never been able to achieve before.

Three weeks into Marshall’s captivity, he heard three sets of footsteps marching up the stairs; the last time he’d heard this many people heading up the steps, he lost his eyes. Marshall was ready for round two; instead of panic, he just felt a sickening thrill of hate.

Anda walked into the room. Marshall could sense him just by the sound, the vibrations, and two cavaliers, he could hear their metal chestplates and helmets simply rubbing along their cotton shirts. Marshall could smell a long rope in one of the cav’s hands.

“Three of you? For what? What’s the rope for?”

He could sense them looking at each other and then one cav waving a hand in front of him.

“He can’t see, but he can smell and hear well,” Anda said. “He’s still harmless.”

Marshall smiled knowingly. What did Anda know?

He sensed Anda beckoning them to open the cage and follow through with whatever they were about to do. He also sensed every weapon (steel had a stronger smell than he realized) that they carried. His interest was piqued by the six-inch knives in their boots.

As he was drawn from the cage, he slipped his hand into one of the boots.

“Wait!” Anda cried.

Marshall’s fingers had already drawn the knife and he already could sense where their necks were, locating the vital arteries. 

He flipped the knife into a stabbing position in his hand and he stabbed angrily into one of the cav’s neck. 

“Gakk,” the cavalier gurgled in surprise as the blood started, falling to his side.

Marshall rose to his feet and could feel the few drops of blood sliding off the tiny blade in his hand. The remaining cav and Anda backed up, the cav gripping for his sword.

“Kill him!” Anda shouted, backing up. Marshall imagined him remembering every word of Marshall’s earlier threat.

With a yell, the Guru flung his knife right between the cav’s eyes before the sword was halfway from the scabbard. The cav fell lifelessly to the floor; Marshall could sense his eyes were wide open as he died.

The first cav he’d stabbed was still twitching on the ground holding his neck. Marshall smelled the blood, like a roll of fresh pennies, ebbing from between the dying man’s fingers.

Anda had frozen and was at the complete mercy of Marshall who pulled the knife from the cavalier’s head like a fucked up version of the Sword in the Stone. The head lifted off the ground for a second, then released the knife and went thudding back without a bounce.

“Don’t kill me, please, Marshall don’t kill me.” Anda held his hands up near his face and his legs buckled from under him.

“A man of my word.” Marshall heard himself say this as he grabbed Anda by the cloak, pulled his neck near, and stabbed repeatedly into the young prophet’s chest. Once Anda was gurgling on his own blood for a few seconds, Marshall’s arm became tired and he released the prophet, who crumpled on the ground and writhed for a few more seconds. Then he died.

The Guru of the Astronomy Club stood around, the knife still in his hand, now dripping with two different types of blood. His head moved slightly as he picked up on the subtle smells and sounds that mapped out the surrounding. Three dead in this room, all by his will. They locked him up, and this is what they got. The air became strongly scented in blood. After two more minutes of simply standing around and realizing his freedom, Marshall left the room, tracking bloody footprints out of the room and down the staircase he had only gone down once before.

Then he started to realize what he had done and ran outside. Before he could make it out the door, he began throwing up whatever was in his stomach. It was as if someone stomped on his stomach and made the rest of his innards much lighter, like they also wanted to empty out.

“Ugh,” Marshall said, and then dry-heaved a few more times before standing upright. “Fuck… what did I do?” The other cavs must have left somewhere; they were always coming and going from the house. And if that were the case, when would they be back?

“I killed him,” Marshall said. He had his revenge. “I killed them. All three.” He had to clarify. Two of them were out of self-defense, but that last one… what would the Astronomers think of that? They’d think that was ‘pretty dark, man…’ And then? Marshall felt a beautiful (or was it frightening?) disconnect, like he lost his eyes again and couldn’t quite see. He was sensing the world in an entirely different way: he was sensing the world in nearly complete numbness.

He squatted, his legs feeling so free and his back finally stretching out, and unclasped the cutlass and took the knife from this cav’s boot. Before he left, Marshall searched the building which he guessed was a house, but found no sign of his backpack. No more gun. That gun felt like he had it a long time ago; how long was he in that cage? Now armed, Marshall walked out the front door and into freedom. He started crying.

He stepped around, smelling all the new smells, feeling all of the freedom again. He felt so light and happy, and his muscles… despite being caged for so long, they seemed stronger and healthier, stretchy and durable. Shockingly responsive and reflexive, like he didn’t have to think much to keep his balance or create movements.

I bet I could turn a flip right now, Marshall thought and simply threw a leg over his back, performing a beautiful, near-perfect backflip. He tried to smile or laugh, but the revenge he had taken just a minute or two ago was too fresh to allow it. He could still taste the bile simmering in his mouth like old electricity.

Marshall started to walk and kept walking, smelling, and listening for many hours. Eventually he could feel that he was on asphalt from the smell and sound of his feet, and that there were buildings, not houses, on either side of him, like a small town. Like Winton.

Though he could walk around and dodge everything in his way, it took effort, so he found himself a stick and walked along, tapping the stick in front of him like he’d seen in a School for the Blind up in Wilkes-Barre, back in Pennsylvania.

He headed down the street, tapping along, and stopped at a step. It was odd that there was an entire step in the middle of the road, but then he sniffed, listened, and tasted.

This wasn’t a step; it was a cliff.

“Hm?” This was the first sound he had made in several hours.

He was in a cloud, misty, wet. And the cloud wasn’t low, Marshall was high up. This cliff was overlooking a huge amount of sky.

“Hmm,” he dug his stick into the ground. He tapped it a few times. “Hmm.”

He could smell the expanse before him, feel the wind so beautifully brush against his face. He was on a precipice and one step forward would kill him. Make him as dead as Anda whose corpse he left to rot like an animal just a few hours’ walk behind him.

He turned around and started walking the other direction, tapping his stick along and enjoying the numbness, but mostly focusing on what he could feel and smell, what he could hear. He was in the small town again, considering where he could go now. He could see… but only points with high energy. If there was something stagnant, there would be a sort of blank spot in his 360 vision. He could sense the buildings around him; they smelled old. He could hear the leaves and rabbits running together.

He was hungry and suddenly didn’t see it as such a bad idea to kill a rabbit. He removed his knife from his belt and ran his fingers gently along the blade. He could smell the metal much better now, and visualize how he was going to throw the knife. The rabbit was around the corner of a building, sitting, eating something. Marshall took a few steps, keeping his stick off the ground. He found he could walk with footsteps as light as dust.

Once he came to a vantage where the rabbit wasn’t obscured by the building. He took a deep breath; his side was to the rabbit who sat calmly, chewing, watching him. He knew it was watching him, almost feeling the innocent eyes’ soft gaze. 

Hunting was like cliff-jumping; you just needed to take the shot. The hardest part of taking the shot was the moment before. He used his whole body and threw the knife beautifully, better than he knew he could.

He heard the blade thwip through the air and thhht with a nauseating swiftness into the rabbit’s fur. He heard it start scurrying, scuttling… limping and then flopping over for the last time.

Marshall kept his head facing away from the building and refused to face the rabbit. He didn’t need his eyes anymore. He was probably stronger than he was yesterday, and somehow he had even better reflexes, better muscle control, better… everything. They took his eyes, but he pivoted. He was better than this. What else could he do that he didn’t even know about yet?

Marshall used his newfound smell and hearing to search the buildings on the street and found materials to make a fire. He considered his sight; if he could see, he probably would never have found these items. Along with two sets of cigarette matches, Marshall had found a couple of carpets and took the one that was thicker as a blanket.

Marshall muttered nonsense to himself once he had a fire going on a rooftop. The Gargoyle Instinct was what Langley called that: the dumb feeling of wanting to get on top of buildings and shit. In his daze, he wondered if there was anything ridiculous printed on the carpet over his shoulders. He could be wearing a confederate flag for all he knew.

He discovered he could even sense when the rabbit was cooked. He didn’t know what constituted ‘cooked,’ but he could sense the temperature within the meat almost like an infrared sensor, but it was flighty and he could only determine it if he focused. To be safe, he waited until it was heavily cooked before taking it off the top of the fire.

It was burnt nearly to a crisp.

Marshall didn’t complain, chewing the tough, stringy meat. Probably an old rabbit.

Marshall finally finished the meat and felt slightly less hungry. He climbed down from the top of the building and kept walking, wrapped in the carpet.

He began walking in some direction and in several minutes arrived at the cliff’s ledge again. There was a drop so deep he couldn’t perceive the bottom, so he decided to keep his distance. Along the ridge he walked for several hours, his breaths coming in slow heaves. He was nearly acclimated.

Marshall stopped feeling the sun on his face and over time the air became colder. Wrapped in his carpet and warmed from his walk, he fell asleep.

He dreamed he could see himself around a campfire with his friends. Like most dreams, he didn’t find this situation unusual in the least. There he saw Myles talking, mostly with Mariah. Wait, he could see in this dream, but as a third-person; he was still wearing Anda’s bandana over his eyes, and there were dragons on it like he said.

In the dream, Myles was now asking about his mask.

“Facelights,” Marshall answered, happy that he’d figured out whatever was bugging him. Was something bugging Myles? The answer was: “Facelights.”

Marshall tuned out of the conversation and became enamored about seeing. Right now, just seeing was enough. He woke up before he could continue the fascinating and joyous reopening of his eyes.

There were birds overhead waking him. He could feel the sadness in his heart that he’d woken up with: the nostalgic feeling in your chest when you wake up with tears in your eyes. He put his hands on his face and rubbed them, stifling a couple of sobs. He missed his eyes and killing those three captors didn’t make it sting any less. Part of him was furious for that.

The Guru kept journeying, wondering what he’d find. At noon, the path dropped off a cliff again, but he could sense ground a few yards below. He rolled up the carpet, speared it down, and began scaling the cliff’s face. At the bottom he smelled houses close by. Wood and metal in organized piles, spaced apart quite nicely. He smelled charcoal too and walked toward it.

A house was partially burned down, some of it buried under the collapsed roof. Marshall stood listening, smelling, wondering if there was anything under the rubble worth salvaging. He only smelled pieces of the house and a lot of broken dishware when he picked up a scent of fine metal, purer than any he’d smelled.

“Hm?” 

He stuck his cutlass upright into the dirt and walked over the rubble, kicking over some of the charcoal and then moving aside larger pieces of wood. After several minutes of shoving debris aside, he pulled out a long duffle bag from the dirt. The smell of metal permeated the air as he unzipped the bag.

He put his hand on the contents and felt three swords of varying lengths. He ran his fingers along the handles: Japanese swords. The smaller ones had a belt for them, but the large one had a shoulder strap.

“Hm,” Marshall considered and then began carrying all three.

Then he felt underneath the swords once he realized the duffel bag wasn’t empty. There were clothes. There were shoes, too big for him, and there were pants, baggier than any he’d known. Like M.C. Hammer with a low, elastic crotch. And a poncho that would fit on his shoulders much better than any carpet. 

“It’s a ninja outfit,” Marshall said to himself, surprised at how growly his voice was. He hadn’t spoken a word in almost two days. He cleared his throat and said, “Never heard of a ninja with a poncho like this one.” It was little more than a large wool square with a hole in the middle. He put the pants, swords, and poncho on and jammed the cutlass into the charcoal, leaving it behind sticking upright out of the rubble.

Marshall started walking again in no particular direction, whistling a few notes he made up on his own. He could ‘see’ better when he made constant noise like clicking his tongue or whistling. I really am like a bat, aren’t I? He was using echolocation to get around.

The next day Marshall began practicing with his new swords. He figured he’d figure out how to use them properly as he went.

They swung through the air easily, but felt a little heavy. His muscle control was so excellent he had no fear of the huge blades. After an hour of practice, he felt that was enough for the day and decided to sit.

He listened to the forest, resting like a real ninja. He wondered what life would be like once he was watching television again and wondered when he’d meet someone else. Every good thought he had was swallowed by the thoughts of him killing those three back at the outpost and wondering if they were still there, rotting on the floor.

Then he thought about the town he first visited. Why was it parked on a cliff? Was there some kind of earthquake? He had to be on earth since there were humans and they spoke english, right? Did he travel through time? He wished Myles were here. The Sage and the Clairvoyant would know what’s going on. Why did the fraise exist now? They must be somewhere completely different, somewhere in a totally different time.

You killed three people because you wanted to.

He jumped when he heard a scream just under a half-mile away.

Marshall leapt to his feet and listened again. The scream was from a girl being chased by something.

“Cavs,” Marshall clenched his teeth and started walking first, letting his head and body catch up to the change of position, then jogging, then sprinting through the woods.

He smelled the trees, the grass underfoot, the fallen logs, the hills… he sensed everything and whisked past it toward the scream which he pinpointed. The screaming continued; he guessed under a quarter-mile away now. His breathing came in torrents as his feet barely touched the ground in his sprint.

Under three minutes later he slowed, sensing something lying on the ground up ahead. It was a corpse, but not a human. It had a humanoid shape, but its legs had an extra joint and was almost eight feet tall. It had a round head and all its teeth were sharpened to points. The only clothes on it were around its waist. There was a knife blade snapped in half sticking out the thing’s head. The hilt lay on the ground nearby.

“What the hell?” Marshall said, hearing more footsteps and some chuckling a few hundred feet away. Whatever was there hadn’t sensed him.

Marshall gingerly jogged along to the noise and sensed another human clinging for life up in a tree surrounded by five more of the strange humanoids. She was losing strength and Marshall sensed her grip slackening. She started climbing higher and trying to find a foothold that would keep her upright even if she lost her grip.

Marshall crept up on the things around the trees. They chuckled like old men around a grill of burgers, but they didn’t talk. He drew the two shorter swords, quiet as an hourglass.

Marshall made a few clicking sounds with his tongue and all the chucking stopped; he sensed all six heads looking toward the sound.

“Whoever’s there,” panted the girl, “run away. The gangs are hungry.”

“Are you hurt?” Marshall called out and four of the things rushed toward his voice.

He heard the girl’s body thump against the tree branch as she fell unconscious. Marshall stepped out from the tree brandishing his swords. The things made small shrieks

Like a novis Marshall thought, but this time, swords in hand, he had no fear.

He leaped at the first two and swished the swords straight through their necks. They fell past him to the ground and he slashed the third one down as it reached for him.

Long arms, got it, Marshall thought, twirling his swords. The last one was hesitant, but he could sense it was still smiling.

The one thing next to the tree was standing under the girl’s limp body waiting for it to fall.

“Fuck,” Marshall muttered and walked toward the last thing. It reached out and he cut through its arm, sinew and bone, and it shrieked in pain.

He sensed the girl’s body waking up, but not before it slid again, closer to the thing’s outstretched arms and gaping mouth. 

“Wake up!” Marshall called as he swung his second sword at the one he was fighting. It chopped through its thigh and the thing fell to the ground wailing and spurting blood across the ground.

Marshall ran to the tree with the girl. The thing was still waiting underneath the girl who was now dangling by one hand swinging her legs toward the tree, but not before the thing jumped and grabbed her foot.

She was too tired to scream, but Marshall could sense her panic.

Marshall stabbed both swords into the thing’s stomach and sliced outward, but he didn’t have enough strength to cut through all the way. The thing screamed and convulsed, pulling the girl down from her weak hold.

Marshall released both swords and stepped under the falling girl. He caught her flawlessly, bending his knees and leaning over to break her fall, but her momentum was too much and they both fell to the ground anyway.

She wheezed at the impact and he sensed her eyes slowly closing. They opened again once more and looked him in the face, though he was looking straight forward.

As her eyes closed she said, “Are you…blind?”

She had fainted from exhaustion and blood loss.