Art Of Control

Damian, not for the first time, was horrified.

He could maybe take on one such fox himself, maybe two if he was really desperate.

But, hundred?

Seven soldiers wouldn't be of much help, either.

One of them wounded, others wouldn't be able to hold the line against such a horde.

Run?

They are surrounded from every direction. If they tried to run, they would just jump straight into the beast's maw.

A thought crossed Damian's mind.

"I will die today"

The mangled corpse, hidden to some extent by the foxes, seemed to smile a little.

As if saying,

"We're not so different anymore, huh?"

Or maybe that was just his imagination, he didn't know.

The despair started to slowly crawl into his skull.

His eyes bulging, his hands trembling, his legs shaking.

His body refused to work properly.

What for? The danger is too severe now.

Although it was a shiny day outside, for Damian….

Everything was really, really dark now.

The abyss was right before him, and he stared there long enough.

But suddenly, something deep inside his body, something deep inside his mind….

Something deep inside his soul started to rebel.

He has done this so many times.

Control. Your. Impulses.

Be a warrior.

Unexpectedly, he felt something rising from the insides of his body, mind, and soul.

Control.

This feeling spread throughout the body, covering every nerve, every muscle, every bone.

The fear was no longer. The despair was no more.

Before, he tried to regain at least a little bit of control from his instincts, from his impulses.

Now, it wasn't even a question. 

He and only he was in control of every move, of every thought.

This state seemed so beautifully irregular.

Now, thoughts started to flood inside his mind.

There was so much to think about.

"We are surrounded, our best chance to escape is to somehow flee. Wait, we? No, I need to flee alone, how can I use them to escape? I need to break a hole in this encirclement. Sacrifice them? No, there are too many foxes, it won't be effective. Form a circle with guards and try to advance in this formation? Again, too many of them, the formation will be too slow and weak"

Damian looked in every direction for the slightest opportunity to flee, anything.

"Use the foxes to jump across them? Won't work, their slightest movement will ruin my balance and therefore doom me. Can I somehow use their numbers against them? I don't have the means to do it, even one beast is a near grave danger to me in a straight confrontation"

He frantically continued to suck in every bit of information he could, but it seemed that there simply wasn't enough.

"I have no use for my bow here, if anything, it will only slow me down. My dagger is the only thing I can count on, but what can it do, there are still too many of them"

Even the possible options seemed to thin out hastily.

"Everything is meaningless because of their numbers. How can I diminish them?"

Damian searched for an answer with all his mental prowess.

Immediately, he found an answer.

"I can't, there is nothing I can do" 

And then, came another thought.

"I will die today"

He wasn't feeling any fear or despair.

It was just a fact, undeniable.

He hasn't given up, he still searches for anything that could possibly help him

But he knew there was nothing.

It was strange, to look in the face of his own death and be so…. calm. 

Slightly inhuman, even.

Then, a small dot appeared in the sky.

"What is…."

Another dot, and another one.

Quickly, the number of such dots looming in the sky reached increased to at least twenty.

"This is… HUH"

These dots turned out to be arrows. 

Lots of arrows.

They rained on the foxes right in front of them, immediately killing many of the beasts. 

And then, it happened. 

A blurry silhouette with a blade covered in flames plunged into the herd.

It severed the heads of many abominations in one quick strike. 

"Alrick!?"

Damian immediately recognized who it was.

Alrick was butchering his way through the horde without a single thought of mercy.

He danced like a grim reaper with a fiery blade. He tossed the bodies and severed the limbs. 

And he was doing it so fast, that the beasts simply didn't have enough time to react.

His body, despite muscular look, was light as a feather. Every move, every action he took seemed to spill an unimaginable amount of beast's blood. 

It seemed like a hot knife cutting through a butter with inhuman speed.

It was hard to even follow him, he could pop out in every place at any moment.

Now, Damian was happy.

Happy because Alrick was on his side.

The previous situation was inescapable with his own prowess, true. It was a death sentence.

But going against Alrick seemed like a doom. He was so fierce, so calculated, so powerful. It seemed that no force in the world could have stopped him.

Finally, the giant foxes understood what happened.

At least half of them were chopped down in these few seconds.

So, the beasts ran.

Ran for their lives.

Damian immediately shifted his focus, he saw it. A fox with an arrow protruding from her body.

"Here you are"

He craved for the bloody revenge.

His body moved with an unimaginable before level of flexibility.

Every training he did before, every time he practiced was engraved in his bones with his newfound control of his body. It was like he forced the content of his mind into his muscles, nerves, and bones.

He saw a target, he held a bow with an arrow in his hands.

What else could you possibly need in this life?

Just like that, he calculated.

He wasn't trying to solve a question where you need to predict the trajectory of an arrow, no, his body could do it better and faster than his mind ever would, and he already accepted that.

He looked at the battlefield.

His every sense, everything inside him focused on only one goal.

Kill that beast.

His world has shrunken to that little chunk of land.

Where would that damned fox evade to?

How her impulses will guide her?

What will she do?

And now, he saw it. 

All he needed was three arrows.

No more, no less.

He took them almost immediately, he didn't waste a second on aiming.

He trusted himself, he trusted his body. He knew he would hit the exact spot

The first arrow was shot.

It flew across the sky with a deadly whistle, going straight to the fox.

But it was cunning, when she heard the sound, she evaded immediately.

But the fox in front of it wasn't so cunning.

The beast's wide back was pierced, and therefore, she lost her balance and fell.

Damian's prey panicked and with all her force evaded, trying not to lose speed too much.

Then, a second arrow was shot, slightly to the right.

Another beast heard it and tried to evade it.

And stumbled right into the fox that only started to gain speed again.

The hunter's prey was immobilized, if even for a second.

But that was enough.

The third arrow was already looming in the sky.

The beast's life was doomed from the very moment Damian shot his arrows.

His cold, calculative nature just didn't let the fox have any space or time to escape.

And then, just like that. Arrow has penetrated the hide of a monster, crushed the skull, and ravaged the brain.

Life has left that body, now it is no more than an intricate contraption of flesh and bones.

When he saw it, Damian's world suddenly expanded.

He felt it again.

The air, the road, the astonished guards that were still affected by Alrick's actions.

The rod-robed messenger who seemed to forget how to speak.

Everything suddenly starts existing again.

That state of his seemed like venturing into an abyss now.

How deep could he afford to go?

The thought gave him chills.

It really wasn't something that a human being should be able to do.

Nevertheless, there were more pressing things to think about right now.

Alrick, covered in blood, with his dagger that emanated a large amount of steam, was slowly walking towards them.

In this form, he really looked more like a grim reaper than an aloof man who picked Damian as a child back at that cave.

Middle-aged man slowly came close to the carriage, then stopped, and looked at the boy in front of him.

The boy was….. confused, to say the least, this gaze didn't seem to contain such pressure as before, but still,

It carried something emotionally deep, something Damian wasn't able to decipher yet.

-You disobeyed me.

It sounded a lot more imposing due to the fact that his face almost completely covered in blood.

-I'm….. I'm sorry, I have acted on my impulses….

After all that happened, Damian really understood what a reckless move he had made.

Alrick didn't show any reaction whatsoever, he just calmly continued to walk toward the carriage,

Or to the messenger, to be exact.

He was slowly walking, his every step was like a hammer hitting the red-robed man's nerves.

A step.

A second one.

Alrick was standing right before the man, face to face.

The messenger seemed like he had seen a ghost, he couldn't muster any force inside him to speak.

-What is the message?

Alrick's question was short.

Aksel gulped, somehow relaxed and even more pressured at the same time.

-Sir… Sir, the large horde of beasts is approaching the fire empire from the south….millions of beasts are going to be here in a week...

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