Young Writers Society

This particular piece is both for a writing competion and as a fun little short story that occurs before the events of a series I've got going. For the competition it needs to be at most 4,000 words and is currently at 3,479. Have at it!

High on a thick tree branch, Damian balanced in a crouch, his left hand resting against the trunk balancing him, watching the sunset. It was still two finger widths above the horizon setting into the ocean just beyond, but already the sky was fading into warm orange with a shade of pink. Perched in the mighty oak, Damian relaxed in contentment. No matter how many times he saw it, he was ever awed by nature’s beauty.

Damian had been living in this forest for the past six years. The woods, so close to his childhood home, lay in the middle of the kingdom of Telaris. He had never seen the world beyond his home, only heard of what his father told him. Somewhere far off to the west laid the ocean with no name. It was simply the ocean. Off to the east was the Yemlen Plains, slowly dissolving into the Eastern Desert beyond the horizon. Far to the south and the north were mountain ranges, the Dragonwall and the Barliac, said to create supposedly impassable barriers. To the north east of the forest was the capital city of Talcen, where the king ruled over the land.

In his years of living in the wild, Damian felt he had done only three things; train, think, and stop criminals who sought refuge in the forest. Those criminals never got far. They would always be found by their pursuers; wounded, occasionally bandaged, with no trace of who stopped them. These occurrences were thankfully infrequent however, and he spent much of his time as he was now doing, resting in quiet contemplation. In times like these, he would often reflect on the past.

What he thought of most was his father. Damian had been raised by his father for most of his life, his mother having died of a fever when he was young. He had loved her for what time he had spent with her, and was heartbroken when she passed away. Only his father missed her more.

Before he had met his mother, Damian’s father Victer had been a bounty hunter. He made a small fortune tracking down criminals and traitors, capturing them and collecting the price placed on their heads. He never gloated and actually spoke little about anything to anyone. Because of this, he became something of a legend. Those who knew him were awed by his skill, but many had not heard of him or would not believe the stories they were told. One facet of the stories that most found peculiar was that he always brought his bounties back alive, even if the bounty asked for their head. He never gave his name, and so he was given a name, one which he never spoke of to Damian. Because of this, he became more a myth than man. This view spread when he seemed to disappear. What nobody knew was that he married.

His wife Maria was a very strong woman, in both strength and in will. Damian couldn’t help but grin as he remembered the story of how his parents had met. A bounty his father had tracked down took Maria hostage, thinking he could use her as a shield by putting a dagger against her throat. Maria had other ideas. Before Victer could formulate a plan to free her, she knocked her head against her captor’s, slammed her heal into his groin, and took the man’s dagger from his weakened grip. With the man curled up in pain on the ground, Maria finished subduing him herself. Victer had been impressed, and thought of her even after he received his reward for the man. They began seeing each other when he stopped by the town, Maria always glad to be with him again. Their relationship bloomed, and he gave up his livelihood for something more meaningful.

Damian had been born only a year after that disappearance in a secluded log cabin at the edge of the very forest he now called home. The only time he had ever seen other people was when he went to town with his father to buy supplies. What he had seen there made him prefer the woods by his home. The stone buildings were all spaced close together and seemed to press down on those walking through. The cobblestone roads were uneven and often cluttered with horse and mule manure. The town was crowded, the air seemed hard to breath, and the almost sinister nature of everyone there unnerved him.

At home, his parents raised him with love and respect. Maria died when he was only five, and both he and his father grieved for some time. When Damian was twelve years old, his father began to teach him how to fight with a sword, giving him a small wooden sword and telling him how the world could be a dangerous place. These stories are what he most vividly remembered about his father. Before and after training, he would hear the tales of his father’s journeys. His father would never speak of the bounties, but of the places he had been, the people he had met and the friends he had made. It seemed to Damian as though his father had seen the entire known world, and maybe more.

Damian let out a heavy sigh, slowly moving his right hand up to grasp the hilt of one of the two double edged swords in their scabbards on his back. His father wielded two swords as well, a rarity among swordsman. Damian himself had learned to use a single sword quickly, and his father then taught him to use two. Damian recalled the sparring bouts he had had with his father. He smiled, remembering how he would always lose. Even though he knew he would lose, he always gave it his all, never giving up until his father subdued him. His father had said he was a natural fighter. This praise meant the world to Damian, even to this day.

Damian’s childhood had ended abruptly, and this memory returned to Damian as inevitably as the seasons changed. One day, Damian had stayed behind when his father went to the market in town early in the morning. He had not returned by evening, which Damian had found unusual. The next morning, Damian awoke to see a hawk perched on the windowsill nearest his bed with a paper clutched in its talons. This confused Damian, because no bird of prey would deliver a message in such a manner, or any kind of bird for that matter. Still off balanced, he took the paper and the hawk immediately took flight. He found the paper was a note and he read it.

“Damian, son, take what you can and enter the woods. Something foul is occurring and I can not explain now. You must flee. I will see you again, I promise.” The note appeared to have been written hastily and not on a smooth surface.

Damian did not hesitate. He grabbed his sturdy pack and put in food, a canteen of water, a knife, flint and steel, clothes and a hatchet. Then he grabbed his bow and quiver of arrows, and the twin swords his father had had made for him barely a year before. These were his most precious possessions. Quickly, not knowing how much time he had, he strapped on his swords and the quiver to his back, slung his pack over his shoulder, held the bow in is left hand, and ran out the door. With all he needed, he had run into the forest without once looking back.

Since then he had abandoned everything but clothes and his swords. He needed nothing else to survive. Every day, he had wondered just what had happened to his father. He would not believe his father was dead. Where was he now? What was the something foul his father had mentioned? These questions hadn’t exactly haunted him, but had caused a few restless nights when he could not get his mind to calm. And because of these questions, he would not return to the civilized world. Or so called civilized world as he saw it.

He looked below him into a gently flowing river running next to the oak in which he rested. His reflection stared back at him. Damian hadn’t examined himself except to cut his hair in quite some time, and so he continued to stare at his wavy reflection. His skin was much darker then it had been when he first made the forest his home, likely from all the time spent in the sun. Hair and beard were cut with the beard short and scruffy and his straight dark brown hair hanging down to the bottom of his ears. He used his swords to maintain both. Seeing that a few strands were starting to get long in the front, he took out his right blade and trimmed them down so they wouldn’t get in his eyes. Nodding at the improvement, he put the blade back into its scabbard.

He then examined the rest of himself. His face was just a bit narrow, much like his father, with a moderately pointed chin and chiseled features. His eyebrows were thick but not bushy, and lay over his deep blue eyes. His mother had told him often when he was just a child that looking into his eyes was like looking into the ocean or a tranquil pool of water.

His clothes were all leather, tanned from the animals he had killed for his meals. Damian had had to abandon his other clothes, being no longer able to fit them. He actually preferred his leather knee breeches and shirt; they gave him more protection for his skin then cloth, and he was still quite comfortable. He thanked his mother silently for teaching him to sew, and his father for how to tan animal hides.

Tired of the memories his inspection and thoughts were bringing up, he turned his attention back to the setting sun, now just a bit lower on the horizon.

“Hurry men, hurry!” he heard a man in the distance. Curious, Damian reluctantly turned his eyes away from the fast sinking sun to peer into the forest. Though the light was dimming, he had little trouble seeing. He could not yet see the intruders through the branches even with sufficient light; intruders who were likely thieves or bandits.

“Slow up Arth!” another voice called, “They’re well behind us by now.”

“Quiet, you idiot!” the first man said in a lower but forceful voice. “Do you want to get caught? We keep going until night falls.”

Well, Damian thought, the man is not a complete fool. Their footsteps were becoming quite distinct and he could even smell them approach. There were five, or perhaps six. He wasn’t sure; the men were still not visible through the foliage. The thieves were still some distance off.

His senses were a new mystery for Damian, one that had only recently developed in his life. Since early in the spring, he had noticed that his senses seemed unusually sharp. All of his senses, including taste, were far beyond what he could remember them being not a year before. Living in the wild had honed his senses over the years gradually, and he understood that. Now they seemed sharper than they should be, beyond what he believed a human was capable of. He did not dislike his new abilities, but they did make him wonder. The fact that it did not seem natural to him unnerved him a little.

As the bandits approached, he began to catch glimpses through the branches that were now nearly to their summer display. The men were heading past his perch to the north, about six trees away and across the river. He would not allow these thieves to pass him and get away with their crime. Standing up from his comfortable position, he began to cross the branches near silently to intercept the group. With the moderately dense covering of branches that made the forest canopy and his own agility, he could walk almost as easily through the trees as he could on the ground.

He positioned himself around fifteen feet up a sturdy oak, high enough not to be seen and low enough to see the ground. Damian soon saw the men as they made their way towards him. There were six of them, each with a bag slung over their shoulder and a short sword sheathed at all their waists. A few even had daggers sheathed on their thighs.

The men’s pace had visibly slowed since he had glimpsed their progress through the branches, being exhausted by fleeing and the added weight of their loot. Damian smiled. He could not recall the last time he had truly felt fatigued.

“Come on, keep walking” came the leader’s voice again, “distance and darkness are our allies.”

Damian’s grin broadened. Darkness would prove no friend of theirs soon. The light was dimming quickly as day turned to night. The suns final rays still lit the world and the forest. Damian’s eyes adjusted to the darkness as though it was lighter than it truly was. Colors though, were not as distinct.

He waited patiently as the men approached. They were only walking by now. When the lead man came under the tree’s branches, Damian jumped down silently and landed on the mossy ground in front of the bandit, crouching to absorb the impact and prepare to strike.

“What-” the man began to say, but Damian’s blade slicing through his shin turned the query into a startled howl of pain. He went down hard clutching his left leg, his pants slowly darkening around the wound.

“What the!?”, “Demon!” the others cried. Every man dropped their bags, and all but one drew their swords. The man at the back of the pack drew out a dagger and sent it spinning at Damian.

The aim was perfect, but Damian brought his left blade up and across swatting the knife away, embedding it into a nearby tree. With both blades now to his right side, Damian leapt with his left shoulder, launching himself through the air towards his nearest opponent. The man tried to get his sword up, as if he would bring the sword down on Damien’s head, but Damian struck before the blade was fully raised.

His left hand blade struck first, slicing the man’s calf. The right hand blade sliced three fingers off the man’s left hand. The man fell on his crumpling leg screaming, clutching his bleeding stubs as he dropped the sword. Damian rolled in the air to land on his feet, sliding a few feet across the late spring grass. Two men would no longer oppose him.

Four men remained, and all charged at him with their swords ready to strike. Damian stood his ground. Sparks flew as he parried the first blow with his left blade, again when he parried with the right blade. He dodged the third man’s blade easily, quickly sidestepping to the right, and blocked the fourth with his own blade in a cross.

Damian parried, blocked, and evaded the men with ease. The group made their way through the forest, moving around trees, maneuvering through protruding roots, and even around the already fallen thieves. Three were nearly incompetent, but the fourth, who had thrown the dagger, knew how to fight. Self taught or trained, Damian wasn’t sure. He kept the battle going, constantly moving around, unnerving and tiring his foes. He could have already defeated them, but he wanted to practice on real opponents, to see how sharp his skills really were. The thieves were not a reasonable test for him however, for three could hardly even be considered swordsmen.

After a few minutes in the growing darkness, the three thieves who were hopeless could barely hold their blades. Damian disarmed them with three quick strikes, knocking their swords out of their hands and embedding them into the ground with effortlessly fluid movements. They went to the ground and surrendered instantly, whimpering to spare their lives. The fourth man was still armed, and Damian could see madness in his eyes.

The man charged as though he were possessed and struck with a ferocity that startled Damian, sending sparks flashing through the darkening forest. How could any man be so wild?, he thought. With his twin blades, he parried and blocked each blow, which came at him faster than he expected though not faster than he could handle.

Damian kept backing up around the clearing, waiting for the man to tire. The man was only a thief, and Damian had no desire to kill him. However, the man did not tire, but kept up his ferocious assault. Adrenaline seemed to push him on when fatigue should have overcome him. Then the man took a swing at Damian’s neck in an effort to chop off his head. Damian quickly brought his sword around to block and deflect the strike. The swords clashed in the air, sparks flew, metal screamed, but Damian’s sword did not stop. It went right through his opponent’s sword. The sword had broken in half.

Both men were startled, Damian surprised and his opponent shocked. Damian recovered first and brought both swords to the man. He struck four times, twice to remove all of the man’s fingers, and twice on the man’s calves. The man would never hurt anyone, or steal again.

The thieves subdued, Damian knocked out the now fingerless man with the hilt of his sword to stop his screaming and thrashing. Ripping the man’s shirt, he bandaged the man’s bleeding fingers. His work done, he headed back into the heart of the forest. The three he had disarmed cringed as he passed and he could hear their whimpering about demons. He paid them no heed, not wanting to dissuade them. The two others he had wounded were bleeding, but neither was hurt severely enough to require immediate mending. Those chasing the men would do that when they arrived. Damian kept walking, and soon disappeared among the shadows of the towering oaks.

* * *

Some time later, he was in the higher reaches of another oak, watching the pale full moon. His mind now was not on the past or the future, as it often was when he rested, but on the present. The battle kept playing before his eyes as though he was still there.

His mind was filled with questions as it raced. Questions he had no answers to. He moved too quickly and was far stronger than his training could account for. There was no explanation for how he broke the blade. At least none that made sense to him or put his mind at ease.

What is happening to me?, he thought as he clenched his right hand tightly into a fist. What am I becoming? Damian had no answer.

After staring at the moon for what seemed like hours, he finally got his mind to calm. The mystery of his past he had dealt with, confident it would reveal itself in time. The unexpected and seemingly unexplainable change in his body was something he was not prepared for. Whatever it was, it was out of his control. A chill ran down his spine. Feeling powerless was something that struck at his very soul.

Damian felt as though he was a mystery to himself. The question of ‘who am I?’ was one he could honestly ask himself, and a question which he could barely begin to answer. Could it be that the thieves were more right than they knew? Was he truly becoming some sort of demon?

He shut his eyes and shook his head violently at the thought. He could not allow himself to think such nonsense. There was no way he could possibly be becoming a demon. But what he was becoming, he could not guess. Again he stared at the moon, as if it held the answers. It did not, and he knew that.

Then he smiled, as everything seemed to become all too clear and obvious. He had survived this long, and he was the master of himself. Nothing and no one could change him, and whatever was happening to him, he would control and use to his advantage. He felt that time would reveal the answers to him. All he needed to do was stay alive. In time he knew he would learn what had happened to his father, what was happening to the world, and what was happening to himself. With his mind finally truly at rest, he settled his back against the trunk of the oak and closed his eyes. Tomorrow was another day, and he soon fell asleep as he had trained himself to do so long ago.