Heroes to Hunted

At that moment, the air stagnated as everyone reeled in shock.

Mizuno, who had already eliminated her two combatants, stood atop the stairway with widened eyes of surprise. Her gaze was locked on Joseph.

Likewise, my attention was ensnared by the scene before me. Joseph's body was covered in splattered crimson as he fell to the ground.

The woman, too, stood agape at the scene, clenching her teeth in rage.

However, there was one amongst us who moved. He was the one who took action and defied fate. He changed the course of this fight with a single move.

"You all right, kid?" a grizzled voice asked as he turned back to Joseph. But Joseph didn't reply; he was unresponsively in shock at what happened.

That's right. Precisely when everything could've gone wrong, Barik intervened as if sent by a heavenly deity. At that moment, he swung his flail, wrapping the chain around the old man's handaxe mid-air, and tore it from his hand.

Then, winding up another strike, Barik had thrown the spinning spiked ball of his weapon into the old man's face, leaving it a gory, blood-stained mess as it shattered the front of his skull.

Now the old man was nothing more than a twitchy, bloody mess as he lay on the floor.

"DAAAAAAAAAAADDDD!" the woman cried with a face twisted in anguish. She dropped her weapon and staggered to the old man's side, frantically grasping at the crimson-stained hands of her apparent father while crying. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.... No, no, no, no, no.... Please, don't leave me... You're all I have!"

Though she begged, he was already gone. His soul had already ascended, leaving a pile of flesh it once used as its vessel to rot and yield to rigor mortise.

There were no last moments for goodbyes, no heartfelt smiles while holding back tears, no dramatic falling of the hand as he took his final breath. No, his was an instant death as his brain was destroyed.

"D-Da-Daaad!" she bawled, her tears mixing with the blood coating his body. She leaned over him and buried her face into his bloodied chest, begging for celestial forces to exempt him from death and return his soul to the living. "P-Please, Lifra, I beg you... Bring him back... Bring him back to me!"

However, there'd be no answer to her call. No, his body continued to leak crimson as his fingers ceased twitching. Finally, the last lingering remnants of life faded entirely from his body when it succumbed to motionlessness.

Several moments passed while she sobbed.

I was accustomed to death, used to ripping the spark of life from others when necessary. However, I was no monster; a distinct empathic regret still left a hole in my heart as I internally wept with her.

Because of that, I couldn't bring myself to reunite this woman with her father. Not so soon. Seeing her cry like a lost child stayed my hand, leaving me paralyzed. It reminded me of a fact I learned a long time ago.

'There are no heroes in war,' I clenched my jaw tight and squeezed my fists, sending pangs of ache up my muscles. We try to justify it, but every man we killed was someone's son, father, or brother. Every woman we killed was someone's daughter, mother, or sister.

As much as we tried to convince ourselves otherwise, these weren't just copy/paste villains in some video game. They wouldn't respawn endlessly as we cut them down. No, these were people with lives...memories. People that loved others and were loved by others.

"I'm sorry," Barik apologized with a grimace. His eyes faded as if he were witnessing a different but similar scene play out. Like the past repeated itself before his very eyes. "I did it again... I'm... I'm sorry."

Even so, despite being distraught, Barik didn't expose himself. Befitting a seasoned veteran, he maintained his guard in case the woman decided to launch a retaliation attack.

Mizuno ventured down to us, her black cloak splattered with a few streaks of blood. "We need to go. We can't waste time here," she affirmed with a pained expression. Though she was stoic, even she couldn't hold back the emotions this scene stirred.

"Aye, I understand," Barik took a breath and mournfully replied. Though he clearly didn't want to, he started winding up his flail to finish the woman off. "Forgive me," he whispered.

However, he was stopped when Joseph blocked the path. "NO! What are you doing?! Why are you trying to kill her?! Can't you see she's lost the will to fight?!" Again, his eyes burned with reckless determination, and his teeth were ferociously bared. His expression told the story of a naive kid not yet ready for the harshness of war.

"Get out of the way, Joseph," Mizuno harshly ordered. "We don't have the luxury for prisoners."

"Just knock her out! Please! We're not murderers!" he desperately pleaded with outstretched arms. "She doesn't deserve to die!"

With his words, I couldn't help but let out a bitter chuckle. "Joseph, you and your naive ideals. 'We're not murderers,' you say? Wake up! This is war. What about the previous guards we've killed? We're no better than the ones we're fighting against. It's all just death and destruction, and there's no end in sight. What you're doing... It's just self-gratifying hypocrisy!"

Barik's piercing gaze felt like a physical blow, one that left me reeling with a mix of emotions. It was as if he thought my outlook was a disease I'd been afflicted with. Like the hundreds of dead I encountered in my campaigns left me with a horrible infection, one that ailed me so deep it affected my very mind.

Mizuno's eyes dimmed and a small crease appeared between her eyebrows at my words, betraying the control she typically maintained over her emotions. She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling with the effort of regaining her composure.

Finally, Joseph reacted as I expected. His downcast expression sank even further with my words. But his fists remained balled up in defiance as he blocked the path. "I don't care! Just please, let her be!" he begged, throwing away any semblance of pride for the sake of a stranger, an enemy. "She's not evil! We don't have to kill her!"

"I know that, kid," Barik said with a solemn nod. "I know she doesn't deserve death. None of them did. But that's war. In war, there's no such thing as purely good or purely evil, only those who survive and those who don't. Unless we kill them first, we'll soon find the situation reversed. Now step aside, please."

"NO!" Joseph stood his ground with an unbreakable will. "I WON'T LET YOU!"

That's when everyone aside from Joseph noticed the shuffling behind him. The woman he desperately protected had taken hold of her father's dagger. She lunged upward for Joseph, angling the blade's tip straight for his heart.

"DIEEE!" she screamed with swollen cheeks and eyes reddened from crying.

"Get out of the way, kid!" Barik shouted, shoving Joseph aside.

Barik's face twisted in agony as the dagger sank into his flesh. It squelched and a burst of blood jetted out from being stabbed. "FUCK!" he grunted, dropping his flail and staggering.

"Barik!" Joseph shouted with a look of desperation. As he fell, he reached toward the blacksmith, but tumbled to the ground instead.

Then, like lightning, Mizuno dashed to Barik's side. I quickly followed to help, and we tore the woman from Barik. She viciously twisted the blade in his shoulder before being thrown back, forcing Barik to curse numerous profanities.

The woman stumbled to the floor but returned to her feet with a single-minded rage. "I'll kill you all!" she ground her teeth together and again leaped to attack. Only this time, her body was met with one of Mizuno's longswords as it pierced her chest.

The woman's eyes and mouth widened to their limits as every breath of air left her body. She made eye contact with Mizuno to see hers were devoid of hesitation. Though Mizuno had clearly felt empathy earlier, she must've sealed those emotions away when a comrade's life was endangered.

"Forgive us. Now join your father," Mizuno eased, then ripped the sword from the woman's chest. A trail of blood followed the sword's removal, and the woman crashed to the floor.  Her limbs twitched, and bloodied drool leaked from her mouth. Though she wasn't yet dead, she would be soon.

Watching the woman's blood pooling on the floor, Joseph looked on in disbelief. "Is this... Is this really what we're doing? Is this what Freehaven does?!" his voice was staggered and he shook his head as if he believed this were just a fever dream. A nightmare he couldn't wake from.

Mizuno paced over to the guard Barik had initially fought, her expression attempting to convey indifference. However, it was clear to all of us that she was struggling with conflicted feelings about our actions, and perhaps even lying to herself about them.

Meanwhile, I watched the crying woman writhing in agony on the floor. "D... Da..." her head slumped to the ground as she twitched from the blood loss.

'I should end her suffering; we owe her that much,' I sighed, then gripped the hilt of my blade. But, before I could approach her to deal the finishing blow, I was distracted by incoherent mumbling from my left. It was the other guard, and Mizuno hovered above him with a raised sword. Its blade shimmered with the small bit of sunlight penetrating the room.

"Pleathe... Pleathe ohhnt 'ill ee... Pleathe... Er 'ere 'or eh girl, wight? There'th a dungtheon... under the main 'armhouthe. She'th 'ere, tho, pleathe... Dohhnt 'ill ee." His eyes were scrunched together, swollen from the crying, and his jaw hung loosely from his mouth, seemingly broken beyond repair.

Though it was difficult to tell, given his speech, I could tell he'd been giving us the location of the captive girl. It sounded like there was a dungeon beneath the farmhouse.

Mizuno's eyes flickered with a mix of pity and regret as she spoke. "Thank you," she said, her lips forming a fictitious, slight grin. Though she tried to remain detached from the emotions of battle, her twitching lips betrayed her, and her eyes narrowed to form a pained expression. "I'll be sure you don't suffer anymore."

The guard's eyes widened as he realized his efforts to live were in vain. "'o! Pleathe! 'o-" But his words were cut off when Mizuno dropped her sword on his heart, sinking it deep and nailing his body to the dirt ground below.

Though steadied and resolved, Mizuno's eyes faltered and twitched as she realized that she had executed a begging man. Her emotions were trying to break free and lament the crime she just committed. It was extra taboo, given her history as a peace officer.

Through her twitching face, I heard her mumble a single phrase. It was one that resonated with the core of my being. "What're we becoming..." she sighed, angling her head upward to the ceiling.

I took another glance at the woman after Mizuno finished the other guard; she was deathly still, without a hint of movement. 'I'm sorry, I couldn't even spare you from the suffering,' I inhaled loudly as I held back from cursing myself.

Seeing this gore-filled scene, one that I'd already seen numerous times on multiple battlefields, I echoed Mizuno's question within myself. 'What have I become?'