Little Cubs

"You see? I told you." A loud and brash voice commented from behind the group.

"What do you mean? I was the one who heard them." Another replied.

Standing slowly, Thirteen gripped the greatsword that lay on the ground beside him, as he turned to face the newcomers.

Two men, each middle aged and quite tanned stood in the distance, only a few sparse trees between them and Thirteen's group, not enough to block line of sight. Both men donned chain mail armor over a gambeson, while each had a shortsword sheathed at their waist, one was currently holding a bow in one hand, the other resting on his quiver. The second man, slightly taller than the first and with a scarred face, held a handaxe loosely in each hand. Thirteen had seen these men in the woods yesterday.

"Can I help you with something?" Thirteen asked, trying to lower his voice to no avail.

"Haha, look at that will ya? So well spoken for a brat." The man with the axes laughed with his companion.

The rest of the group gradually gathered around Thirteen and Forty-five who was beside him.

Twelve stepped forward a pace, bow in hand as he spoke "We've got what we need. If you want the hide or meat, it's all yours, just step asi–!"

A whistling sound! The shorter man with the bow had knocked, drawn, and loosed an arrow in one swift, well-practiced motion.

Twelve had little time to react, caught wholly off guard, he made a costly mistake in jumping backwards. The arrow made horrible, piercing contact with his gut.

Before Twelve even had a chance to scream, everybody on the scene moved. Thirteen dashed forward, his eyes widening as he shouldered his greatsword. Forty-five was by his right side while Thirty-Nine, after a seconds delay, rushed to arms as well, backed up by Nine.

The scarred man grinned menacingly as he flourished his right axe before running into battle.

Before they clashed, a second whizzing caught the ears of Thirty-nine, but before he could react, Nine who ran beside him had already drawn a shortsword with which he deflected the arrow, well aware that the man would try to finish the wounded Twelve first.

Forty-five's smallsword vacated her left hand with startling speed as it shot toward the scarred man whose eyes went wide. Bending his upper body to the right, his legs spread wide, the scarred man deflected the smallsword with his left hand axe, before fixing his posture and welcoming Thirteens approach.

As soon as Thirteen was within reach, he opened with a heavy sideways swing of his greatsword, carrying with it a gust of wind as he attacked from the left. The scarred man proved himself incredibly agile as he ducked lower than Thirteen could have expected, and used the unique shape of his left axe head to latch onto the greatsword from behind, yanking down and driving its blade into the dirt.

Knowing he had no time to recover his greatsword, Thirteen released his grip on it, stepping back to avoid a swing of his opponents right axe as he positioned his left leg back a bit. Thirteen bent down, drawing his longsword from the left hip with great speed as he made to strike at the man's outstretched arm.

Unfortunately, Forty-five too had swung at the man with her sabre, and his axe swing that missed Thirteen perfectly latched onto her sabre blade, pulling it out to clash and interfere with Thirteen's longsword, protecting himself with his enemies weapon.

Just as the sabre and sword were tangled, and the man's right arm and axe was free, the scarred man stepped forward, striking not with the axe in his left hand, but with the fist wrapped around it's handle. A solid punch to Thirteen's nose left him dazed and bloodied.

As both Thirteen and Forty-five retreated a few paces to fix their posture and arms, they each seemed to have cooled down rapidly.

'These guys aren't normal.' Thirteen concluded. While he had no combat experience outside the estate, Instructor Piers had ensured that the children had no delusions as to the skills of common soldiers. It would be a bad idea to have them growing up thinking their instructors or themselves were the common example.

Just as Thirteen and Forty-five took a small pause, Thirty-nine was clashed in heated combat with his foe, the shorter man, who had ditched his bow in favor of a shortsword that he wielded very proficiently. While the two clashed, Thirty-nine began to sustain minor injuries, while Nine took a backfoot in the fight, ensuring no critical attacks succeeded against Thirty-nine, and helping create opportunities for the former to strike.

'The hell are with these kids?' The scarred man thought as his opponents broke away from him. 'They're definitely cultivators, and by the looks of it they're each well into the fundamental realm. This wont be as easy as I was told.'

Readying his longsword once more, Thirteen dashed in to close the distance with the scarred man. Opening with a downward slash, Thirteen feinted as soon as he saw the man's rushed reaction, and instead pushed forward to thrust at the chain mail.

'He has no helmet, but that makes him conscious of his head. It'll be easier to weaken him like this first.' Thirteen thought, as his powerful thrust made contact with the man's armor. He had aimed for the solar plexus, hoping to wind his target, but the man reacted enough to move slightly, recieving the blow at the ribs instead.

A horribly sharp noise announced the expansion and rupture of chain links as thirteen's sword stabbed through the mail slightly, continuing through the gambeson underneath to deliver a shallow flesh wound.

With a start, the scarred man moved back a bit, before using his left axe to latch onto Thirteen's blade and throw it aside as he closed in again to attack with his right. However, as he closed in on Thirteen, he was met with a sabre from his side.

Hastily defending against Forty-five's swing, The man then ducked as the devious smallsword flew straight through where the back of his head had been.

The fight continued to drag on, Thirteen and Forty-five using teamwork to make up for the gap in cultivation and experience, while Thirty-nine fought bravely with the shorter foe, supported by Nine. Twelve, who had been shot in the gut with an arrow earlier, was now leaning against a tree, doing everything he could to draw his bow, despite the incredible pain he felt when applying his core muscles.

With a shaky twang, Twelves arrow flew a bit too close too Thirty-nine, but thankfully also made contact with the shorter enemy his brother was battling.

As the arrow made contact with the mans armored collarbone, it managed to knock him off guard enough for Thirty-nine to deliver an upward sweep at the mans right arm, cleaving it from his body.

Unlike the scarred mans armor, the chain mail worn by the shorter man did not protect his arms which were protected only by gambeson which could not offer the same protection against a cultivator as it could a common man.

Now lacking his dominant arm and shortsword, the shorter man had little hope of besting his foes.

He drew a dagger with his left hand, but barely delayed the inevitable as he was cut down by Thirty-nine who's eyes still spewed wrath. Nine was more than willing to step back and let Thirty-nine avenge his brother's condition, rather than trying to take control of the fight and getting in each other's way.

On Thirteen's side, the man with the axes was gradually being overwhelmed. His left arm had sustained a deep cut from Forty-fives sabre, while Thirteen, after being disarmed of his longsword, resorted to unarmed combat.

With every hit the man sustained from Thirteen, a small part of his strength would leave him, as he gradually lost the ability to move his left arm, and even his legs began to fail him; a result of both Thirteen's abilities and the blood loss he had sustained.

When finally, the man could no longer keep up, Thirteen delivered a powerful leg kick to fracture the mans shin as he hit him once more on the head, knocking the man to the ground.

By this point, Thirteen had sustained a few cuts, the only deep one being on his left bicep. Luckily they had began to heal already, showing off the perks of Regeneration.

Thirty-nine was bleeding heavily, Nine was exhausted but mostly okay, while Forty-five, despite not sustaining too many wounds, had overexerted herself a lot in the battle, especially with her use of the flying blade. As the man seemed to be fading out of consciousness, the group all hastily made their way to Twelve, who still had an arrow embedded in him and seemed to also be losing his senses.

"Twelve! Twelve! Hey!" Thirty-nine called out as he gently slapped the cheek of his brother.

Crouching down by his teammate, Thirteen placed a palm on the boy's chest and began to focus his expendable lifeforce, transferring it to Twelve to bolster his vitality. What Thirteen could spare after two exhausting battles was little, but it could only help.

"We need to get him back to the estate, he'll bleed out if we try to cut out the arrow ourselves." Nine commented calmly.

Standing up to look back at the scarred man who was coming to, thirteen walked over to one of the backpacks and fetched the hemp rope they had brought. There wasn't a lot of it, just enough in case they were stuck out here for days and had need of it.

Tying the scarred mans arms with the rope, Thirteen removed his axes before slapping the man awake.

"Hey. Hey! Wake up." He started.

"Who are you? Why did you attack us?"

The scarred man gradually came to and took a few seconds as he realized his circumstances. A defeated, sad smile crept onto his face at first, before he hid it with what little bravado he could muster and responded.

"Common practice *cough* track monster hunters in the woods, kill em, after their done. Easy profit haha*coughcough*"

The man was coughing small amounts of blood, obviously having been wounded internally by Thirteen's unarmed assault.

Hearing the mans reason, Thirteen felt furious. He could feel his own eyes widening, and that strange sensation of blood pumping. He had felt this a few times over the past year, and confirmed it had nothing to do with his enriched blood.

Taking a step back from the scarred man, Thirteen took a deep breath as he looked to the others, a pause ensuing.

"What do we do now?" Forty-five asked in a tired voice.

"I suppose… we kill him." Nine said in a flat tone.

As silence descended, Thirteen turned to look at Nine, but saw that his brother had no intent or desire to follow his own advice, a look of consternation plastered over his immature face.

In fact not just him, but every member of their group, Thirteen concluded had some expression between disgust, disbelief, and hesitation.

"Oh… So that's it." The scarred man muttered, his head down.

"That's what?!" Thirteen lashed out, his expression again furious.

Breathing in deep, the man looked Thirteen in the eyes, his expression of bravado thicker than when he first appeared. "Can't do it aye? Little cubs can't do what's needed?"

Gritting his teeth, Thirteen unsheathed the dagger at his thigh, as if to threaten the man who had dared attack them, who tried to kill them for little more than greed.

"What a jo–"*quelch**gargle*

...

Looking at the mans wide eyes, Thirteen was confused.

He didn't recall attacking the man. He simply stared numbly, at the dagger lodged in the side of the man's neck, and the red hot blood that warmed his cold grip.

Releasing the dagger with a shaky hand, Thirteen took a few fumbling steps backwards, his eyes wide as he moved his mouth as if to mime an excuse.

The scarred man locked eyes with Thirteen. Seeing the boy's reaction, he gave a depressed smile, his shoulders moving as if to chuckle, until gradually, his eyes slacked, and his head sloped down.

Silence reigned, as they all realized what had happened.