I choose Power

NINE

Dahlia growls, more than a little annoyed at the rotten luck that has had her surrounded twice more than she can endure in so few days. Cannot a princess travel through the woods in peace? Her brain whirrs and for an instant, she thinks that one of them had recognised her as a princess of Solaria like Berty had but they jeer at the crown of flowers she has won ever since the triplets had gifted it to her and their expression is screwed up into mocking sneers.

The raiders' hollering laughs taper down to quiet chuckles when they see that she is not cowering and begging for mercy like she should be. She yanks out her sword in one fluid motion, rotating her wrists and grins at them and they glance at each other warily.

"Shall we? Let's get this over with." She says in a sing-song voice and without waiting for their reaction she attacks.

The raiders are shocked into stillness for a moment and only when she hacks off the head of the closest raider to her do they realise that she means business and jerkily pull out their weapons. A small part of her mind wonders why it is so easy for her to end a life when she had spent seventeen years taking none, why she does not hesitate to swing at a man's neck and why she feels close to nothing at felling men that were breathing a second ago topple to the floor, gone. She would be more conservative, more reluctant to deal a fatal blow, more reluctant to have a first kill if she did not already have a first kill. If she had not killed her father with her own two hands just a few days ago. She feels that nothing can be worse. A part of her is dead and withered and like a wild thing finally let out of a cage, that part of her has ceased to care anymore.

Her eyes dance as she watches them approach, their ugly faces twisted in roars of outrage and she spins her sword in her hand and meets them. Steel clashes against steel and rings out for miles and full-grown men holler in pain and in death as they fall around her. She is a whirlwind, never still, never in one place as she spins around and between them, hacking at jabbing and slicing away at body parts.

When the raiders fall back to regroup, their eyes take note of half of their earlier number of men lying in different states of critical condition around them, the floor red with their blood and when they look back up at her in shock, she is barely even out of breath. She stands still, watching them with black bottomless eyes, her sword and her body painted red with their blood and not even a scratch on her person.

"I wouldn't blame you if you decided to run back to Mama.", She purrs to them with a wicked grin. Behind her, she hears the ringing of steel against steel and hopes Cain can hold his own until she can finish them off.

The man who seems to be the leader of this gang pants in front of her, face a bright red from her insult and eyes dripping with hate. She knows there will be no reasoning with these ones to choose the more sensible path and so, with a battle yell, she jumps back into the fray once again without giving them an indication.

The men are well trained, she has to give them that. She had expected them to be stupid and careless as her impression of raiders was but they are organised, brutal, using their superior strength and numbers to try to pin her in but she only laughs as she takes a swing, it is not enough to save them. She cuts down man after man, her entire body soaked in blood that is not hers and the end of the fight, all of the men including their leader are at her feet, dead or dying. The sounds of a fight still ring out from behind her and so she turns to go join Cain but is stopped by a fresh wave of raiders dropping from the trees.

"What? Just how many of you can one tree take?" She growls. She wants to raise her head and check if there are more surprises awaiting her from above but dares not in case it provides them an opening to do her in. They must have watched her fight because they do not underestimate her and they yell out a battle cry and rush at her all at once.

She grabs her dagger from her waist and leaning her weight into the motion, throws it and it twacks into the eye socket of one of the men with force. One man down.

She hacks away at them, making sure to never let them get too close, aiming low and high and making a back flip over a sword that was intended to slice her in half. By this time, she is beginning to sweat and the vigorous sword fight is beginning to get to her, making her hands drag and her reaction a tad slower but she pushes the exhaustion aside. Rest can wait, for to make a single mistake now is to die.

With a yell, she pushes her sword into the breast of the last man standing and finally, they all lay on the floor missing several body parts. Blood runs down her sword and her chest heaves with exhaustion when a fresh wave of raiders rappel down the trees without pause.

She is incredulous.

"What sort of raiders are this organised for Freya's sake!" She exclaims, falling back.

"We are the Southern raiders." One of the men says like the name should have any meaning to her.

"You owe us a blood debt and we are here to collect." A second man says. She cannot believe this.

"They attacked me first." She says, raising her sword and getting in her stance.

"We don't care!" The first man says, spittle flying from his mouth in his anger. "Attack!" He yells and the twenty-some brutes attack her at once.

She pauses for a second and reaches within herself, wondering if her powers are going to manifest themselves in her hour of need but of course, nothing happens and she feels nothing. Her pause costs her and she ducks as a large man swings an axe at her neck and she runs him through the back, uncaring about the lack of honour in the wound. Her sword arcs forward to meet another man's and he presses down, trying to dominate her with his superior strength. She lets his sword fall without resistance and he loses his balance as she sidesteps his swing and plunges her sword into his side.

She is suddenly immobile as a man grabs her from behind, holding her in place for his comrade to ram her through at the front. She kicks out at the one in front of her, catching him in the chest and he staggers back while the brute holding her shakes her, causing her teeth to rattle. She growls and elbows him in the liver and his breath rushes out of him as he doubles over, loosening his hold on her. In an impossible show of sportsmanship, she grabs hold of his thick trunk-like arms, breaks out of his hold and uses his arm to spin herself over him to land on his thick neck, gripping it with her thighs and giving it a vicious twist to break it. As the man falls over, she vaults over his body to meet the sword of another man. More men join him and drive her back with swift vicious swings and she notices the first man's eye dart behind her. She ducks at the last moment beneath the thrust coming from behind her and slices out the unknown man's legs, coming up behind the new man falling to his knees and putting him between herself and the rest to catch her breath.

"Surrender and we'll have mercy on you." One of the men sneers, one side of his mouth twisted down gruesomely.

She does not reply, just tries to take as much air into her body and takes note of the rest of her opponents. She has not made much of a dent in their numbers and they glare at her with anger and a good dose of fear. She looks up into the trees to find more men spread out into the trees, looking like they will join the melee any minute. They mean business. A quick glance behind her shows Cain cornered. He is holding it together but he does not have much time. If either of them is going to get out of this situation alive, she needs to get her head back in the game and find them an escape route. She grabs the sword off the man at her feet and steps over his body, grinning at them.

"Never." She says and jumps into their midst, hoping the men in the trees do not get too excited and join the fight prematurely. She is used to fighting with two short-swords but one of her swords is nearly as long as her legs and just as heavy and the balance is off but she has to make the most of it. She uses them to create a circle of death around her, whipping back whoever gets too close with the deadly edges and cutting down anyone who makes it past them. But she cannot keep it up for long. Even now, exhaustion makes her arm feel like leaden weights and her swings get slower and slower.

She brings up her broadsword to stop a blow from another large brute and the impact jars her arm up to her teeth, nearly numbing her arm. Holding the descending sword, she throws her other sword up in the air and catches it backwards, thrusting it into the body of the man that had been creeping up on her from behind. She spins behind another descending sword, brings up the broadsword to parry another strike and slides behind a tree which receives the carving strike of a sword meant for her, slowly losing ground. They put the pressure on her, trying to surround her but she keeps her back to them and tries to put them off. She spins to the side to meet a threat, dumping the broadsword which has become too cumbersome to use and flicking sweat out of her eyes. She does not see the man to her other side until too late and a line of fire opens from her shoulder to her arm. She grunts, barely acknowledging the pain, and with a complicated series of strikes, drives the man back. She is so focused she does not see the second man get behind her but her ears perk up and she hears the whistle through the air and she raises her sword in time to stop her head from being cleaved in two. She bows under the pressure, arms shaking with strain and with a yell, twists her hand and throws off the sword.

And then she is grabbed from behind, held immobile, her hand twisted to the back and before she can manouver herself out, whoever it is jabs his hand into her raw arm wound just beginning to heal thanks to the ointments and twists.

She screams, buckling to her knees, the pain sending her vision swimming. Grabbing the man's arm, she looks up at him through the sweat and is just about to break his fingers when Cain shouts her name from the other side of the forest.

She looks to find a sneering man behind him with his sword to his throat, and many others with their swords aimed at his chest.

"Shit." She mutters.

"Drop your weapon! Or he dies." Cain's captor yells. At this point, the men finally have her surrounded and have their weapons pointed at her. She looks at Cain to find him bleeding from several dozen cuts but there is thankfully nothing fatal. His expression is stubborn and pained. He does not want her to give up because of him but he also wants to live.

"Shit." She mutters again and slowly drops her weapon.

One of the men warily darts in and picks it up and another, the leader of this gang she assumes, moves in front of her with a smug smile.

"Nobody dare knock me out." She growls. If one more person hits her on the head, she is sure she will c***k open like an egg.

"You are in no condition to make demands, you little bitch." The leader says and kicks her in the face. Or tries to because she grabs his ankle a few inches and throws it off. A sword tip digs into the middle of her back while the leader tries to catch his balance and keep his reputation. When he faces her again, his face is red with anger and frustration.

"Stupid b***h. You are going to regret that. When we are done with you, you will wish we had given you a merciful death." He spits at her and it lands on her shoulder. Her head hums in anger as she glares at him, she will make him pay for that.

He points at two of his men and motion to her. "Hold her down." They approach her warily.

She has a good idea of his plans for her and nothing in the world will make her submit to such treatment. She would die first.

She is surrounded with no weapon by men that could easily overpower her and thus, her favourite option of muscling through is a waste on the situation. She will have to deter him some other way. She cast about for anything at all that she can use and realises she does have one Trump card. A trump card she will not be using because just as her identity had paved her way for her in Antony and Berty's camp, she suspects that it will only make matters worse for her here. No, better for them to think she is just a common woman good with a sword that they can easily let go of than to realise they are in possession of a former princess of Solaria. She has no idea what their greed will drive them to do to her otherwise. Without her Trump card, she is left with nothing, she will have to fight her way through this and probably die in the process, but she has looked death in the eye and won more times in the past few days than she has the entirety of her previous life. She feels no fear.

When the two men rush at her and grab each of her arms, she has a plan.

"Don't you dare!" Cain shouts from the other side, trying to get away from the two men restraining him. "Don't you dare touch a princess of Solaria with your filthy hands." He says. Her heart drops and just like that, her plans are scattered to the wind.

"If she is a princess of Solaria then I am a fish in the water." One of men holding him yells back and clouts him over the head with his pommel. Cain drops like a stone.

The two men holding her try to force her back to her knees and the leader holds up his hand.

"What did he say? A princess of Solaria?" He asks, cunning eyes scanning her.

"Not possible, Gouge. The Amazons are taller than titans with hair fairer than sun rays. Nothing like this shrew here." One of the men says. She picks offense at being called a shrew and shoots a glare in the man's direction.

"When I need a poet, Hoger, I'll ask you." The leader says to the second man.

"Well, I will bet my yesterday's earnings that she is no Amazon." A large toothed one says with a grin. "Witnessed one of them in action before. Picked up grown men and broke them like twigs and brought a whole castle crashing down with just a punch. None of us would have survived trysting with her."

The leader turns to her once again. "Why did your friend say such an obvious lie about you?" He asks her and she blinks slowly, lazily before yawning. His jaw tightens and the muscles on his bald head tick before he nods. "Okay then. You had it coming." He says and motions for the men to drag her down.

"Wait." A third man says and walks to her front. He is lean and wiry with thick dirty blond moustache and blond hair. He boldly comes over to her and grabs her face, tilting it sideways. She jerks her face out of his hands and would have bitten off his fingers if she did not mind doing such an undignified act. She settles for glaring death at him.

"I cannot believe it." The man says, staggering back. "It is she." He says, looking like he has seen a ghost.

The leader grabs him by the shoulder and turns him around angrily. "What is it?" He growls at him.

"Those ears." He scrubs a hand down his face. "She is an sss alright. The only powerless Amazon." He says.

"Didn't seem so powerless to me." Someone grumbles to her right, wincing at his bloody arm.

"I don't know which is worse." The blond man says, sounding extremely worried. "Having the royal family of Solaria hunting us for retribution or the wrath of the Dark King when he realises the mess we got ourselves into."

She recognises the name of the elusive Dark King. He had been one of the real worries of Queen Thalia, popping up every now and then to inspire fear and cause devastations and disappearing back into the mist. Not much is known about him but all of it is not good, borderline terrifying. If these men are his, then their unusual level of organization as raiders suddenly makes sense to her.

"None." Another man says and walks forward. He is a thick, barrel-chested man with dead emotionless eyes. "The King Consort was killed a few days ago, by one of his daughters. If she really is a princess of Solaria, and the only odd one of the bunch, then she is the killer and she is in exile." He says. "I reckon killing her might even earn us a great reward." He says, giving her a cursory glance.

"She killed the King Consort?!" The leader roars and stamps to her. He brings his face so close to hers that she can count the large pores on his face. "Did you, you stupid c*nt?"

Her face is a mask of detachment and she looks him straight in the eye and pointedly keeps her mouth shut. She does not owe common brutes any explanations. His palm descends on her face and even though she sees it coming, she is unable to do anything about it. For the first time in her life, Dahlia, former princess of Solaria is slapped, and so hard that she falls to the ground. She is definitely going to kill him.

The two men grab her back up and she looks into the sadistic eyes of their leader. They hold a sick contentment and anticipation as he glares at her.

"Take her, change of plans." He says and stands, nearly jittery with his excitement.

"Don't you think we should hold her till the Master comes? He will be interested in her." The blond one asks.

"The Master deals swift immediate judgement." The leader says dismissively. "He was quite fond of the King Consort too. Noone messes with the Master's interests and goes scot free. Take her." He motions to the two men and they grab her again.

She has no idea where they plan on taking her but she will not be going without a fight. She digs her feet into the ground and pulls on her arms.

"Where are you taking me?" She asks.

The men laugh.

"You might want to tell your lover over there good-bye. Pass your last messages while you are at it." The leader says with a smirk. Whatever it is he has planned, she seriously doubts that she will survive it.

While she still can, she wrenches her arm out of the first man's grip in an attempt to escape. She twists the second man's arm around and jerks it into him unnaturally, breaking it. The man howls and releases her and she would have made a run for it if she did not suddenly remember Cain still lying unconscious a few feet away. If she runs, then he surely dies. She curses and changes direction but before she can take another step, pain explodes in her head and she crumples to the ground.