Green Eyes

Selene stood there in shock, her green eyes wide in terror as just fewer than 200 Blood Guards began running towards her.

As she and Mara snuck through the supply carts, they saw a sentry pacing through the carts, left there just in case the attack that everyone else was defending was a diversion. He had been too far away for Mara to kill him so Selene had tried to silence him using her telekinesis. Selene had been practicing the last month and had gotten pretty good. But that had been practice and now that Selene was using it for real, her nerves got in the way.

Instead of mentally grabbing the sentry as was her intent, she accidentally grabbed one of the carts. Selene didn’t realize this and so she was mildly surprised when the man didn’t move when she tried to jerk him back. So naturally she poured more of her power into the move and pulled as hard as she could. The sudden rush of power yanked the cart like it was a toy, pulling it a half dozen feet over their heads and slamming it into the road with a thunderous crash.

For a horrendous moment, time seemed to stand still.

Mara was the first to recover as she shot forward to strike down the astonished sentry but not before he had managed shout the warning. Turning around, they saw the Blood Guards charging for them.

“Don’t just stand there!” Mara barked at Selene who was still in shock. “Smoke them or freeze them or stab them or something!”

That seemed to jar Selene into action. She decided not use her powers; after what she had just done to cart, she didn’t trust herself not to turn Mara into an icicle or toss the former slave into the oncoming enemies. So she drew her sword and prayed to the Creator that Jared and Mara’s training would be enough.

Less than a minute later, the first group of Blood Guards attacked. Mara went berserk, deflecting one spear with one blade and finishing off the offender with the other sword. A few seconds later she took down another twin blade user and then after that decapitated a Form III user.

Selene found herself getting surrounded by almost an entire Eleph. She deflected a sword slash only to find a spear grazing her side. Pain flamed up for a moment before her healing powers kicked in, numbing the wound and quickly closing it up.

The fact that Selene hadn’t been killed by the attack seemed to catch the Bloodies off-guard. Selene used the momentary lapse in concentration to whip around and slash open the spear-wielder’s throat.

While she didn’t have Jared or Mara’s natural affinity for tactics, she was a Kalashonian and therefore could intuitively see patterns in attacks. They weren’t attacking her directly; instead distracting her with one person so that someone else could finish her off. Brilliant teamwork, she ruefully admitted, which was all the more unfortunate for her.

She had been taught to deflect and redirect incoming attacks, but that wasn’t going to work now. Selene needed to figure out a way to stand her ground. An idea popped into her head. Concentrating on her blade, Selene poured her battle rage into it, wrapping it in a sheath of flame.

The ploy worked. As soon as the blade lit up, the Kalashonians instinctively took a step back. Selene took advantage of this, striking at the nearest Blood Guard. The heated metal had the added advantage of being able to shear through the man’s shield as if it were paper. A moment later she struck down the bearer.

A Form IV man tried attacking Selene from the side but the Navi turned around with a flourishing sweep, slicing through the soldier’s blades, reducing them to hissing stubs. Another quick stab dropped him. Taking a step back, Selene swept the flaming blade back and forth, almost challenging any of them to attack.

Supremely trained as the Blood Guards were, this was something that they were unsure how to handle. How do you fight an enemy who has a weapon that can slice literally through anything and can toss heavy wooden carts around like rag dolls? So instead of charging in down on her, they stood their ground, sharp weapon points sticking out from behind a shield wall.

Selene knew that she was outmatched and surrounded and wondered how long she could hold out before either being overwhelmed or forced to use her unreliable albeit significant powers. She also wondered how Mara was doing. Probably slaughtering Blood Guards like they were sheep at a slaughterhouse, she grimly concluded, glad she couldn’t see the massacre.

Suddenly behind her, one of the Bloodies screamed as he was dropped. Whirling around Selene saw to her astonishment Jared standing there, deflecting a spear thrust before finishing off the opponent with a thrust up through woman’s jaw through the soft palette into her brain.

A solid thwack followed by an alarmed cry forced Selene to turn around again. There was Mara, cutting through another couple of Blood Guards, her twin blades barely blurs in the dim light. In the course of 90 seconds, the twins had sliced through the entire two Elephs, creating a nice ring of dead or dying bodies.

“Time to go,” Jared told the two women.

“What about—” Selene started.

“Micaela has her,” Jared informed sharply. “They’re already in the woods on the south side. We’ll meet up with them in a few minutes. I came back to save your butts.”

“We’ll have to deal with them,” Mara gestured to the half dozen Elephs closing in on them fast.

“Selene?” Jared requested.

“What do you want me to do?” Selene demanded as the Kalashonians came closer.

“Do that exploding thing you did in Beth Haven,” Jared suggested as they retreated a couple of steps.

“I can’t,” Selene protested.

“Do something big,” Mara ordered. “We can’t hold them all off.”

Well Jared and Mara could defeat them but they couldn’t occupy all of the Blood Guard simultaneously, which would leave Selene and Micaela exposed. They needed something big to literally knock the Kalashonians back to give them so breathing room and that meant it was on Selene.

She couldn’t recreate the fireball that flattened a quarter of Beth Haven but she did have her TK powers. They had tossed around a wooden cart like it was a child’s toy. The power was unrefined, sure, but she didn’t need a delicate touch. She just needed a push.

Selene tapped into her will, the part of her that Micaela had taught her fueled the Navi’s telekinesis, and poured almost everything she had into it. The Kalashonians were less than 15 feet from them when she raised her hands and released the pent-up energy.

There was a muffled boom as a wave of energy expanded out from her, visibly warping the air. It slammed into the Blood Guards, lifting the front line off their feet and tossing them forty feet back. The rest of them were knocked flat on their backs. Many of them were dead and the rest of them stunned.

For the umpteenth time, Mara and Jared stared at Selene, gaping.

“Have I ever told you I’m glad we’re on the same side?” Jared wryly commented.

*******