Heroes to Hunted

Inch by inch, the spears slid through his barrier with decreasing velocity.

"They're coming through!" Agawa shouted with panicked eyes.

"Hey! Giant! Your barrier sucks!" Takagi sneered at the hammer wielder.

The quills almost passed the halfway point when the force behind them finally dissipated. The momentum was absorbed by the wind wall and dispersed within its churning currents.

"Ya were sayin'?" the archer snarked at Takagi, to which he responded with a growl.

Once the sound of flying spikes piercing anything and everything ceased, the man sighed and released his arms, ending the barrier in the process.

The quills fell flat, creating large imprints on the dirt below when they landed.

His hands and muscles now relaxed, the hammer-wielder stepped toward the beast and took up his weapon, but that sight wasn't what intrigued me. With the wind barrier gone, I had a full view of the cloaked woman.

"Amazing..." I stood with my eyes and mouth agape.

Though the man blocked numerous quills from reaching us, the amount was nowhere near what the woman redirected. There were dozens of embedded needles forming a perfect arc around her.

Despite having just survived what could've been a gruesome death, the woman's demeanor was calm and collected. No fear, no panic, no despair, she brushed off what would've killed anyone else here as if it came to her as naturally as breathing.

Twirling her swords, she began a cautious but confident stride toward the exhausted beast.

The grizzly's energy was spent, so it remained collapsed to the floor while raspily breathing. The eyes, the blank expression on its face, I could tell it was too worn out to panic or struggle anymore.

Despite the injuries it received from the two, nothing was as morbid as the self-inflicted wounds the bear incurred upon itself.

Its back was torn apart and bloody after ejecting the quills. Like a bee's stinger, each needle took a chunk of flesh from the beast as a price to launch.

'A gruesome last resort...' I thought, noticing how desperate the beast must've been to use such a self-harming attack. 'In the end, it's just trying to survive, like we are...'

"Is it... Is it dead?" Agawa stammered, arcing her head to get an angle.

"Nah," Suda replied. "Not yet."

The two fighters met once more, this time towering over the dying predator as it glared back at them with weary anger.

The woman raised her swords above the beast's head, preparing to deliver her last respects. With the force of a guillotine, she thrust her sword down.

Then, a mournful howl echoed throughout the woods, signifying the beast's "final words." After that...silence filled the forests. As if the trees themselves were shocked by the grizzly's defeat.

'Did they... Did they win?' I couldn't see since I was spectating prone on the ground, so I returned to my feet.

Following me was a series of grunting and sighs as Agawa, Takagi, and Hikari stood up from the ground.

Though Takagi winced and had to support his gashed leg with his arm, he seemed to ignore it. Maybe he was too shocked at the beast's death to notice his pain.

"Is it over?" I asked, unsure if what happened could really be true.

"I... I don't know. I think... I think it is! I think they won!" Agawa cheered and smiled.

"I can't believe it! We're alive! We're fucking ali- Ah!" Takagi tried matching Agawa's enthusiasm but stumbled over his wounded leg back to the ground.

"Sit still!" Hikari warned him with surprising boldness. "Y-You're injured! STAY!"

"B-But, it's over! It's dead!" I burst out into a laugh of nervous optimism.

Our enthusiasm grew greater as the victors started their victorious stride back to us. We were all ecstatic.

"We're alive!!!" Takagi shouted again.

"You're damn right we are!" Agawa cheered.

We laughed, we cheered, we praised, we celebrated... We did everything our aching bones and throbbing muscles would allow showing our joy at surviving.

Even Hikari, though not as outspoken as the rest of us, celebrated in her own small way. She heaved a sigh of relief and mumbled, "We're going to be okay," with a grin splayed across her face.

Though we had no clue who these three were, we couldn't care. We were too busy rejoicing in our survival to worry about anything else!

Our happiness was overflowing! That's why we all overlooked a crucial detail about the woman's expression when she arrived outside the shelter's entrance.

Though she won against an apex predator, though she was stoic, the woman's face showed a tinge of regret and sorrow when her eyes made contact with the archer's.

I followed their gazes, still wearing a buffoonish smile, only to realize Ayame wasn't cheering with us. Opposite to cheering, she silently and lightly bawled to herself while clutching her eyes with blood-covered hands.

I reached out in concern. "What's wr-" but stopped when I noticed Nakamura's head cradled in her lap.

Ayame removed her hands from her eyes, revealing cheeks stained red with bloody hand prints. Then she took a clean strip of gauze and gently wiped at Nakamura's dirt and crimson-covered face.

"I tried," she whispered through her tears, "I'm...sorry. I tried."

His once beating chest was still, without even the slightest twitch of movement. His fingers were bent slightly, constricted with rigidity. His complexion... It was as pale as a winter's first snowfall with blackened bags underneath his latched-shut eyes.

"I-Is he?" Agawa stammered with disbelief.

"He is, Ms. Agawa." I grit my teeth and turned away. Though I didn't know the man long, he was one I respected. His fate was one that filled my aching chest with regret.

When the archer silently nodded at me, I knew for sure. I knew that, sometime during the fight, Nakamura had passed away.

"I'm so sorry," Ayame's tears continued to flow as she gently rubbed Nakamura's forehead. "I'm so, so sorry."

We were all stuck in sorrow at the realization.

Agawa grimaced and turned away, Hikari looked on with wide eyes of shock, and I bit my lip in frustration. However, Takagi was the one out of us who acted the most concerning.

I expected him to shout out angrily, punch something, and do anything you'd expect from an anger-ridden punk. Only he did none of those things.

"It can't be… You can't be dead…" he mumbled with a body gone totally limp. He became silently, unmoving, and his once vibrantly passionate eyes were now as vacant as the voids of space.

I had no idea what the kid was thinking, but he was clearly reflecting deeply. Or maybe he just hadn't accepted the reality of the situation yet.

It was a cold, hard truth that we faced that day. A day where we were confronted by many of them. We were in a new world. A world where magic existed. A world where demons roamed free to devour us.

But, of all those truths, one stood as the most disturbing, frightening, and morbid. Unlike the guaranteed safety we'd enjoyed in our old world, this one afforded no such luxury.

Despite living through so many precarious situations over these last hours, only now did I realize the kind of place we were brought to. Only after experiencing the death of one I'd become acquainted with did I see our new world for what it was.

Here, wherever "here" was, was a place where any single one of us could die at a moment's notice. Our lives were...fragile.

"So this is our new world..." I turned away to hide myself from the others. 'The dragon's strength lies in courage," I repeated, trying my best not to lose hope.