Chapter 17: Bandits (2)

I opened my eyes.

"What's happening . . . ?" I asked myself, trying to rub my eyes with my hands. Then, I felt my arms being detained by something from moving.

I turned my head to look behind and saw that I was tied to a tree. A rope was so tightly tied around my arms that they were starting to ache.

"Nothing's happening," a gruff voice answered in a mocking voice.

I turned my head toward the direction where the voice had come from and saw a familiar face.

"You're—!"

"The one who tried to kill you and take your friend a year ago blah blah," the burly man whom Ahri and I had met a year before answered while waving his hand nonchalantly as if the fact were nothing important. His smile was so sickening that I couldn't help but feel my stomach churn.

Then I remembered.

This was the same man who I'd seen outside the cave before I was knocked unconscious.

"Wh-What do you w-want?!" I yelled at him while panic started to seize control of me.

'How did he find me?!' I thought 'Ahri had scared them away back then . . .'

"Oh, nothing," the burly man said and yawned. "We just want your friend, that's all."

"Y-You can't have h-her!" I yelled back, trying to sound brave even though my stuttering was getting worse. "I-I-I won't let you!"

"Oh, really?" the man asked in a mock surprise. "But how're you going to do that?"

"I . . . uh . . . um . . ."

"Hey lads!" the man yelled. "This scrawny kid says that he won't let us take his precious friend."

All the bandits standing around the tree that I was tied to started laughing.

I hadn't noticed them before now; They were all hiding under bushes or behind other trees before crawling or walking out to stand around and laugh at me.

I slowly looked around as they kept on laughing . . . at me.

Suddenly, the world became dark around me, and the bandits started to grow taller and sickly morph into people that I recognized.

In front of my eyes, the bandits had changed into the kids back in my village; who made my life a living hell. Then, they were back to being bandits. But they kept on changing between being bandits or the kids in my village who bullied me while the world kept on being dark as if the misery of my past had devoured the skies.

Their laughter started changing back and forth from the gruff laughter of men to the gleeful laughter and cackles of kids and teenagers; becoming louder and louder by the second.

"Th-this can't be real . . ." I whispered to myself as my heart started to fill with the familiar sensation of animalistic fear that I hadn't felt for almost a year. "This m-must be a h-hallucination . . ."

I struggle to rise up and run—far away—as possible, but the rope held me in place, not letting me run away from this nightmare.

"Heh, this kid is scared as hell, lads!" the first man said before turning into a pudgy boy with black hair and small brown eyes. His mouth was contorted into an ugly sneer and his eyes were gleaming with madness.

And I recognized the boy.

"T-Terian . . ." I whispered so quietly that I almost didn't know that I'd whispered at all. "No . . . th-this can't be h-happening . . . Oh spirit of the F-First Lands, no . . . p-please . . ."

Terian looked around at the other bandits who were changing from being kids back in the village to bandits, again and again, their voices also changing back and forth. "Lads, let's prepare . . . to 'greet' the nine-tailed fox, shall we?"

Then, he sneered down at me, changing into Terian again, the familiar face making series of sweat trickle down my spine.

"Don't worry, boy." His voice was so sickening I felt my stomach churn around and around. "We're just going to sell your friend to some slavers from Noxus, that's all."

Then, he turned and walked away. "I'm sure she's going to have a 'pleasurable' life in that land."

I squeezed my eyes shut while tears of pure terror trickled down my cheeks.

"Ah-Ahri," I whimpered, "please h-help me . . ."

| | | | | |

Ahri was hiding behind one of the bushes while looking at the bandits who were trying to hide.

Jeffric was tied to a tree, in front of the lake that she'd looked down at to see her reflection just ten minutes ago.

And even from this distance, she could see tears trickling down his soft cheeks.

"Don't worry, Iminha," Ahri whispered, staring at the tied boy while slowly clenching her slender hands into a shaking fist. "I'll save you . . . Just hold on."