Chapter 3 The Boy From the Foothold Trap

A sudden blunt pain came to Shia's side as one of the guards nudged her from behind. "Get up!" he yelled.

Shia immediately sat up while patting the side where the guard has nudged her with the heel of his sword. It was a glorious morning. A few birds cawed from overhead. They must be travelling somewhere around Ylann by now as the forest had gotten more luscious around these parts. One by one, Shia can see the other bandits wake up and began preparing for breakfast. The air was beginning to be filled with the smell of smoke and roasted bird meat from the hunt a night before.

In this group, there were about twelve bandits – all grown men who were muscular, gruff, and dirty. Ever since the new king has been put to the throne, many low class criminals had put themselves in business by capturing cursed ones, and either holding them for ransom for their families (if they were rich) or collecting the rewards the Imperial Palace of Gascone has put forth. It was a lucrative business, as far as these bandits were concerned. They just have to receive a short training from the Palace and if they passed, they received a guiding stone that will help them know if a cursed one is nearby and will temporarily help disable any cursed one's power within a few miles.

The guard who nudged her side earlier tossed her a piece of flat bread. It fell into the ground beside Shia.

"Eat up!" he said in a rough voice.

Shia picked up the bread and began munching on a mouthful. It was so hard to chew, but she kept on doing it anyway.

After her family was wiped out from the face of the earth, Shia found herself walking through the Soccoran desert listlessly. Not a day passed by that she had wished she died with them. She attempted to stab her heart (or any part of her body for that matter), but every time she did, she remembered her mother's last words, and immediately vines would shoot up from the ground to protect her body and immobilize her hands. After several attempts of stabbing herself, she gave up. It was useless fighting the plants that she had unconsciously taught to protect her whenever she was in danger.

Next, she tried killing herself through hunger. She stopped eating and drinking altogether and kept walking barefoot through the desert. On the third day, she had fainted. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the vines had grown enough to put a thick canopy above her and flowers heavy with dew and nectars had grown just above her lips feeding her sweet water until she was well enough to sit still.

Perhaps, she thought, the only way to die now is to surrender herself to the Imperial Palace. The Capitol's fortress was surrounded by guiding stones, so cursed ones won't be able to use their powers within its walls. Every month, in the plaza, the king would order the execution of cursed ones in front of the Capitol's crowd. Such barbarism kept the fright on the Imperial Family alive, even from the towns' people and their enemy states.

Shia was still frolicking with the idea of surrendering to the Capitol when suddenly, she felt her body weaken and the vines around her began to die. Before she could stand up, three men appeared and a metal net descended upon her head, trapping her firmly to the ground with its weight. Shia could have resisted if she wanted to. She could fight with her bare hands, but she didn't. One of the men held a rod with a big pearl on its helm – definitely a guiding stone. If she wanted to go to the Capitol swiftly, this is her chance then. These mercenaries will surely take her to the place she wanted to be now.

She thought they would immediately take her to the Capitol, but it has been three months already and they were all still looking for more cursed ones to capture. At first, Shia thought it was a tiresome task – looking around for prey that they would not normally be able to capture. But she was grateful for the delay too. Before, she just wanted to die with the rest of her family; now, her plan has changed.

'Why would I die just to satisfy a mad king's thirst for blood?' she thought. No, she would never die like that. Certainly, dying in such a way would defeat the very reason why Shia's whole family left Tightwater and became nomads. She would at least take revenge for their sake. The king's hunt for cursed ones left her family with no permanent home and mostly empty stomachs. She would take revenge by tearing down the Capitol and ending the king's reign, helping other cursed ones, and finding out whoever is responsible for her family's demise.

Shia was about to take another bite from her breakfast, when she sensed a sudden change in the atmosphere. The birds and animals tensed up, and the wind felt somewhat heavy. She knew from instinct that there was danger up ahead, and her eyes darted to and fro her surroundings.

Seeing her tense up, the bandits became overwhelmingly alarmed too. In a heartbeat, they heard a yell from the bushes, and one of the bandits emerged.

"We caught one! An A-grade!" he shouted

Shia's ears cannot believe it. She had been observing this group, and she knew the calibre of these bandits. They had poor fighting skills, and half of them could not even catch a deer even if their lives depended on it, so it was understandable that she would not believe that they caught a cursed one, especially an A-grade (their term for a really strong or highly skilled cursed one, who probably belonged to wealthy families since only those from wealthy families can receive proper physical training).

The leader, who was probably having similar thoughts like Shia, had his mouth caught open. He stammered a bit. "Wh-where is it?"

"There! It was caught in the foothold trap!"

Everybody got up to run and see the sight, including Shia who even outran her captors and got to the site a second ahead of them.

In a pile of bushes, Shia saw a bloodied man's leg caught in the trap. The unconscious victim's back was turned away from her, but she could tell by the quality of his coat and garments that the person probably belonged to an extremely rich family. Shia tried to turn the victim's body towards her, but the leader of the bandits shoved her away from the prey.

He turned his face towards them. Shia saw that it was indeed a man – a boy, perhaps the same age as her – with dark jet-black hair that covered his pallid face. Shia quickly scanned his body. He was unconscious, and except for his leg, he did not seem too hurt with just some scrapes here and there.

The leader of the bandits slapped the boy's face. He did not budge. The leader raised his hand to slap the victim's face for the second time, but he moaned a little.

Openly excited, the leader exclaimed, "What have we got here?!"

The boy sat up and covered his face with his palm. "Where's my mask?" he mumbled slightly.

"No need to be shy, my boy," the leader said as he tried to ferociously lift the boy's face for everyone to see, but the boy gave a violent yelp, and they struggled for a bit in the bushes.

The other bandits tried to subdue their prey. They leapt upon him and landed on a heap, but in a heartbeat, the boy was able to release himself in the foothold and threw all the bodies hurled at him while he tried to cover half of his face with his left hand.

Shia backed up in a safe corner and observed the scene. Something was drawing Shia to the boy in the foothold trap. There was something very familiar about him. 'What was it? Who is this person?' Shia thought while her heart beat very fast.

Before Shia could find the answer, the leader attacked the boy from his left side using his guiding stone staff. As the boy tried to fend off the attack, he lifted his hands away from his face, and before anyone knew it, the whole forest was engulfed in a red, bright light.

Shia could not believe it. The boy's left eye glowed fiercely with a light as red as blood itself. As the light from the boy's eye and his gaze fell upon the bandit's leader, the leader's body turned into sand starting from his face down to the soles of his feet. The boy quickly turned his face away as if trying to shield the crowd, but it was too late. All five bandits who locked eyes with him immediately turned into dust and were taken away by the wind... A scenario that was all too familiar to Shia... At that moment, all the memories of her family's death came gushing back to her at the realization of who this boy is...

Feeling all the mixed emotions of rage, fear, and despair that she had kept bottled inside her for three months, Shia immediately unsheathed the dagger she kept in her boots and attacked the boy – the same red-eyed monster who killed her family.