Three days passed. I found myself staring at the wagon as we walked. With how much we walked each day, one of my new pastimes became speculating about who might be in the wagon. Renna and I talked about it occasionally. It wasn’t anything exciting, and I felt like a kid when we speculated.

  Maybe there was a famous noble who has a horrible affliction or cursed and not wanting to be seen. When Renna brought up the curse theory, it made me realize I hadn’t considered whether curses were even real. But since she mentioned it, they must be.

  Another odd thing about whoever was inside was that I didn’t smell anything foul. I would have thought I’d smell bodily fluids or something, considering how cooped up the person must have been. It might be time to truly act like a child and sneak a peek inside. Arsted may have trusted Aeron, but I was getting too curious not to investigate.

  “Everyone, stop!” Arsted said.

  All of us stopped almost at once. The wagon took a few extra seconds. I saw the look on Arsted’s face as he scanned the area. He drew his sword. “A group of people is coming this way.”

  Soldiers? I found myself looking where Arsted was, which was directly in front of us. I couldn’t see anything. Renna took out her sword and stood by Arsted. I was ready to use magic the moment it looked like we were going to fight.

  A few seconds passed and I saw the people Arsted was talking about. I quickly counted twenty men. Twenty, heavily armored men. These did not look like bandits, nor did they look like amateurs. These looked like seasoned warriors, which made me gulp. Out of the twenty men, one stepped forward, his helmet covering his face as he looked at the wagon.

  “Listen to this warning carefully, you’re only going to get one chance. Surrender the wagon and leave or die,” the man said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aeron glaring at me, clearly blaming me for being found. The firebomb was three days ago, surely this was unrelated. Unless there was a scout nearby who heard, saw the wagon and it took him a few days to get his friends.

  “We won’t surrender,” Aeron said.

  “Works for me,” the enemy said.

  “Aeron, get inside the wagon, the three of us will handle this,” Arsted commanded. The noble didn’t need to be told twice, Aeron quickly ducked into the wagon.

  If Arsted thought we could handle twenty armed men, then they must not be as strong as they looked. Not that I was excited to fight either way. At least this would give me the chance to test my new spell, though I would have preferred to try it against monsters.

  The men charged. I created a firebomb and launched it at the enemy. A ball of water intercepted the firebomb, removing the fire and causing the earth inside to fall to the ground. I made a mental note that water was a simple counter to this spell.

  That’s when I noticed there were two men keeping their distance. So, the enemy had two mages. This was going to be my first time fighting magic users. I had sparred with Elias, though it wasn’t very often and only the basics. I hoped I could take the magic users out.

  “Arsted, Renna, I’m going to focus on the magic users. Make sure nobody gets close to me.”

  “Understood,” Renna said.

  Three stone bullets appeared in front of me. I launched them toward the mages. The stone bullets didn’t even make it halfway before they all exploded in mid-air. I saw what the enemy mages did, they increased the pressure on each stone bullet, causing them to explode.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  One of the mages unleashed a fireball, while the other attacked with lightning. I quickly created an ice wall, just in the nick of time as the lightning blasted against my defense, causing a mini explosion that took out a chunk of my ice wall. The fireball hit the other portion and melted a good chunk of my wall.

  I was about to counter, when I realized those weren’t the only spells coming my way. Small chunks of rocks were coming my way. I created a gust of wind, which stopped the rocks from hitting me, mostly. I gasped as a sharp pain exploded across my left side. I touched the spot with my hand and felt something wet. I looked at my hand to see blood.

  Shit. I thought and created another gust of wind as a ball of fire and water came at me. The wind was able to separate both attacks. The enemy mages weren’t letting up. They weren’t giving me a chance to heal, of which I needed at least fifteen seconds to heal a small wound like this. My side was throbbing.

  I intercepted fire with water and water with fire, keeping the enemy attacks from reaching me. That’s when I got an idea. I created three fireballs and launched them toward one of the mages. As I expected, he launched water to counter-act the attacks. Before the water hit, I launched the stone bullets I put into each fireball.

  The water did nothing but explode. Neither mage had time to react when a stone bullet blasted a hole into the chest of one. The other mage lost a leg and a chunk of his side and collapsed. Without thinking, I cast a healing spell. The pain in my side went away, along with the bleeding of which I noticed blood dripping down onto my robe and boots.

  It was a good thing I learned to hide earth inside fire. Not that I ever expected to use my stone bullet spell this way. I looked up and went to help Renna and Arsted. I quickly realized there was no need.

  Renna dodged a sword strike and lopped off the enemy’s hand. He let out a scream, which was quickly silenced when she thrust her blade into his mouth. She quickly yanked the blade out and split a soldier in half. I couldn’t believe what I saw, this twelve-year-old girl was able to cut someone in half. I knew she was strong, but this was something else.

  Arsted took care of the last three with a single strike. His sword looked invisible and next thing I knew, the last three were split into pieces. One of them lost their head, while another was split diagonally down from his shoulder toward his left side and the last one’s chest was split open.

  With relative ease, the twenty enemy troops had been annihilated. The ground was littered with body pieces and blood. The stench alone almost made me sick to my stomach. This brought back bad memories of my time in Vietnam. Thankfully, I was able to keep myself together.

  Though the fighting was done, Arsted walked to anyone who was still alive and finished them off. I didn’t feel bad for the attackers. In my eyes, they tried to kill us and kidnap someone. I had that belief in my old life. Murderers, kidnappers and so on deserved no mercy in my eyes.

  “I-I can’t believe what I just witnessed,” Aeron said, startling me as he was only a few feet away. His jaw was hanging open. “I thought these kids had potential, but this is something else…”

  “I’m assisting them with another matter. Your need of our help worked out nicely for all of us,” Arsted said. His blade was already sheathed.

  I looked over at Renna, who appeared to be in a state of shock. Not that I could blame her. This was her first time killing another human, let alone more than a few. With the fighting over, she was now realizing what she’d done.

  “Thorian, see to Renna,” Arsted said.

  “S-sure thing,” I said and ran over. She was holding her sword loosely in her hand.

  “Renna, are you all, right?” I asked. There was blood on her. None of it looked like hers.

  “I’m fine,” Renna said. She shook her head and quickly sheathed her blade. “I-I wasn’t expecting a battle to be like… this… Now I know how…” she stopped herself from saying anything more.

  “I hate to say it, but you’ll get used to this. I don’t think this is going to be our only battle like this,” I said.

  Saying those words made me realize that it was true. There were going to be more fights like this. Renna was taking this battle in, much like anyone who entered their first battle. I remember being in shock when I saw the bodies of friend and foe in Vietnam. I vomited when I saw the bodies. It didn’t take long for me to get used to that experience.

  “Thorian, why does this not seem to affect you? If I didn’t know you, I would think you’ve seen this before,” Renna said.

  I was spared from having to respond when I saw someone coming out of the wagon and it wasn’t Aeron. The man was wearing silver armor, with a sword at his side and he was looking over at us with a glint in his eye. His face was handsome, with blue eyes, blonde hair and perfect teeth. Was this a prince?