A Bloody Way Out

---Katherine---

'No. I will not be defeated like this.'

Gritting my teeth, I stabbed the people on my sides, then retracted my bloody swords and went for those in front of me. The soldiers tried to move out of the way of my swords, but I had already left a deep gash on one person's calf and stabbed another in the stomach. I felt the whoosh of wind as a soldier went for my unprotected back. Twisting around, I just barely blocked his sword with mine and shoved him back into his swarming comrades.

A gust of wind swept down and pushed the soldiers back. I took this chance to fight a bloody way out of the circle they were making around me, making sure that every blow was fatal. I need to live. My life was more important than theirs.

Somehow, I stumbled my way to Aaron, who lent me his arm to steady myself. "Kath, you're bleeding all over!" he exclaimed in shock. I glanced down at myself and noticed the blood spilling from my various cuts, staining my clothes red. The pain reached me as the adrenaline began to fade, and I had to blink away dark spots from my vision.

I steadied myself by stabbing my sword into the dirt and leaning on it for a brief moment. "It's fine.We need to run before those soldiers regain their footing." Trying to ignore the blinding pain, I pulled on Aaron's arm. Together, we ran down the rocky mountain path, praying that we'll be able to find a place to hide soon. Arrows flew by us, just narrowly missing their targets.

Aaron pushed me ahead, turning around to blow away the incoming arrows. But in the split second that he turned, two other arrows hit him and punctured through his left bicep. Still, he used the energy he had left to create another gust of wind and push some of the archers off the mountain path.

"Should we pull those arrows out? They probably hurt like hell." I commented as we kept running, though at a much slower pace compared with before. Aaron shook his head.

"Leave them there. If we pull them out, there's nothing to stop the blood flow. I'll bleed to death."

Nodding, I turned my attention to the road before us. It had started to slope upwards again, and we half-limped, half-ran up the incline. Behind us, the soldiers were an ever-present threat. As we reached the top, my knees suddenly gave out and I toppled forward. Aaron caught me as I fell, blood trickling down his arms as his muscles strained to hold me up.

"I can't …I don't think I can go much further." I shook my head and willed the black fuzzy spots to go away. Perhaps it was from the pain, or maybe it was from fatigue, but my body simply could not function on adrenaline alone anymore. I didn't want to admit it, but my legs were so sore and my abdomen hurt so much that I didn't think I could push myself any further. My wounds still dripped blood, even though the magic within me should have began to heal myself. I guess I had pushed my body over its limits, and my innate magic simply wasn't enough to heal me anymore.

"Yes you can, Kath, yes you can." Aaron propped me up so that I was leaning on his right side. He tugged the swords from my hands and returned them to the scabbards. "Lean on me. We're going to keep going, okay? We'll find some place to hide soon. Then we can rest."

Aaron checked over his shoulder on the progress of the soldiers. They were slower than us, only half way up the incline. Maybe they thought that given our conditions, we couldn't get very far.

Together, Aaron and I proceeded forward, passing under the drooping branches of a single gnarled tree. The path widened, with more green shrubs popping up on either side of the trail. On the mountains in the distance in front of us, I saw trees growing on their slopes and down into the unseen valleys, covering the landscape with green. Far away to the north, the peaks of the Northern Mountains were barely visible and sprinkled with white. I forced my legs to move and to carry myself forward. Aaron was breathing hard now, his brow tight with pain. He was leaning on me as much as I was leaning on him. We were both so tired.

Aaron tripped over a knobby root hidden in the dirt, and I almost fell down with him. I helped him to his feet, trying not to strain his arm too much. His left sleeve already had a growing patch of red, similar to that on his chest. The blood loss was becoming a problem for both of us. We kept moving, following wherever the path took us, until—

"There's nowhere to go." Aaron's voice wasn't one of shock, but one of tired realization. "Kath, there's nowhere for us to run."

Blinking away the spots in my vision, I focused on the absence of a path in front of us. We were standing only a few meters away from the edge of the mountain we were on. Between this mountain and the next was a wide chasm, much too wide for us to leap over—not that we were in any shape to do that anyway.

Aaron and I limped to edge and looked down. Wisps of fog drifted in the valley beneath our feet, revealing nothing except the tops of pine trees. The abyss could be thousands of feet deep, or just twenty feet. It was impossible to tell from where we stood.

We turned around. The voices of our pursuers drifted towards us as they advanced slowly, knowing as well as we did that there was nowhere for us to run. A pebble detached from the dirt cliff and fell down into the misty chasm. I didn't hear it hit bottom.