Child of Peace

It took Jason a moment to realize how much trouble they were in. It was just a group of riders heading into the village. They were still a fair distance off, but they were close enough that he could make out their shiny looking armor. Perhaps they were soldiers of some kind.

And he was traveling with a demon. One of humanity's mortal enemies, and a creature of darkness that they had been at war with for who knew how long. If it had just been him and Nora then there shouldn't have been any issue. The riders would have, in all likelihood, seen them and assumed they were heading from their farm into the village. Vanya's massive form was much harder to conceal.

One of the riders spotted them immediately, and began riding towards them.

"I'm so stupid," Jason chided himself. "I wasn't paying attention to how close we were getting to civilization. We need to run for it right now."

"I saw them quite a ways back," Vanya replied unworried. "They won't present any difficulties."

"What do you mean no difficulties?" Jason asked incredulously. "Won't they try to kill you on the spot?"

The rider had closed most of the distance, and he suddenly pulled his horse to a grinding halt. He was near enough that Jason could see the look of terror in his eyes as he heeled his horse back to the other riders.

"They will try," Vanya said, her voice filled with concentration. Jason looked over just in time to see Vanya's sword fly from her hand like a javelin, piercing the fleeing man straight through his armor. He fell from the horse and was motionless. The horse stopped and turned around sniffing at its dead rider.

"We can't just kill them!" Jason said, hands on his head in shock. "They didn't do anything to us…"

"They would have if I hadn't acted first," Vanya said coldly.

Jason couldn't believe how quickly and effortlessly things had escalated, but it seemed he wouldn't get a chance to think about it as the rest of the riders were headed their way. The five additional men must have seen their comrade's fall.

Vanya's sword appeared back in her hand, and she prepared herself to release again. Before Jason could get a word out, she had launched the sword once again. It flew like a missile straight at the lead rider, killing him instantly.

The sword appeared in her hand again. Jason wanted to scream that they couldn't just kill people like that, as Vanya launched her sword a third time, felling a third man as the riders bore down on them. They were nearly upon the small group and there were still three left.

Jason forced himself to shove down his revulsion. However things had begun, he was now firmly within kill or be killed territory.

Vanya's sword appeared in her hand and she cleaved straight through the leading horse's head, sending the rider sprawling to the side as the beast fell. She ignored the first man, ducked the second man's sword, and swung her sword around striking his horse's rear leg. The bone cracked sending the horse tumbling, but the rider was able to leap, backflipping off the horse, and landing in front of Vanya sword in hand.

Jason tried to ignore the horse's screams as the third rider bore down on him. He needed some kind of weapon. Why hadn't he taken something from the bandits back at the farm?

He leapt back, barely avoiding the soldier's sword, but he lost his balance and Nora lost her grip falling to the ground behind him. "Nora don't move," he warned her. "I'll take care of this," he said without the faintest idea how he would manage that.

The rider of the third horse looked confused at Nora's presence. What was a little girl doing with a demon and an adult man? Were they captives? He seemed to make that assumption as he ignored Jason and Nora to attack Vanya who was still fighting the second man.

The man looked far more skilled than the others, deftly dodging Vanya's attacks and even managing to strike her once along her left thigh. She roared in fury, swinging at the man who leapt backwards just in time.

His movements were superhuman. He leapt at her, swinging his sword towards her exposed left side, and leaping clear over top of her as she lunged to block the first attack. Vanya managed to recover just in time to block his next strike, but by then, the third man was barreling towards her.

Jason couldn't do anything, but watch as Vanya blocked the second man once again. She wouldn't have time to dodge the rider!

The rider dropped his sword as he rode by her, and nearly lost his balance, veering off to the side. The second man was as surprised as Jason, and he froze just long enough for Vanya to bring her sword down on his head.

The final man swayed in his saddle, before falling to the ground not far from where Vanya was cleaning her blade on the dead man's clothing. She didn't give him a second glance.

Jason ran up with Nora, stopping behind Vanya, but Nora continued on to the fallen soldier and pulled a tiny knife from his neck. She copied Vanya's motions, cleaning the blood and replacing the knife somewhere in her trousers.

Jason was more stunned by the single man that Nora had killed than the five that Vanya had slain. He couldn't reconcile the image of her tiny face, excited over the prospect of naming a bird, with her cold eyes as she cleaned her knife. She might as well have killed a rabbit for all the emotion she showed.

He sank to his knees trying to process everything that had happened. Six men had just been killed in the blink of an eye, and it was all his fault. He might not have killed them, but he had caused their death all the same.

It wasn't that he didn't understand. Yes, they would have attacked Jason and the others as soon as the scout had reported back to the others. Yes, if Vanya hadn't taken the initiative then things would have been far more difficult. It all made sense in his head, but the mauled bodies of man and horse scattered around him…

Vanya silenced the dying horse using his rider's sword. The remaining four horses were already running across the plains towards the town in the distance. They would need to leave right away before more men came from the village to see what had happened.

Not that he was worried about being killed. He had a feeling that Vanya would be able to handle just about anything they could muster from a small town like this one. He was worried about having to watch more innocent men die.

Vanya apparently thought the same thing, if for different reasons. She turned to Nora. "Search the bodies for gold or anything valuable, but make it quick we need to be away from here soon." Jason did the same, unsure what else to do in a situation like this.

They found some small scraps and a few coins which Vanya ordered thrown in a sack before they could get a good look at any of it. "We don't have time. Get the girl on your back. She is rested enough to run, but we need to move faster than she can keep up with."

Nora looked like she was going to protest, but stopped at a glance from Vanya.

As they began running once again, Jason couldn't help wishing that this wasn't quite so effortless for him. With nothing else to do and the mere act of running not nearly enough to distract him, he kept watching those soldiers die. They probably had families that cared for them. Mothers and fathers praying for their safety. Wives and children waiting for them to return home.

He felt dirty to have been a part of their death, but he also felt shame for how useless he was. If they hadn't killed the men, then they would have killed Vanya without hesitation and likely him and Nora soon after. This was a world of war, and the people here dealt with that on a daily basis in one way or the other.

Jason though? He had read about the World Wars, sure. He had learned about wars from ancient to modern times in school. He could remember dates and he even remembered hearing about numbers of casualties and other statistics, but those statistics had never really felt real to him.

He knew that each one of those numbers was a living human, but he'd never seen it first hand. Jason had never even gotten into a fight as a kid. He was only now realizing that he had been born into a gentle, soft world. He was a child of peace thrown into a world at war.