Chapter 10

Double-Edged

I open my eyes, but I see the same darkness that I saw in the back of my eyelids. I breathe in and smell the dust from the itchy sack thrown over my head. A taut rope binds my hands to a pole, and rough cloth suffocates my mouth. I sense others around me shuffling their shoes against the hard ground and clacking their mouths in clipped fragments.

The side of my head pounds with the pain it has repetitively accepted. I want to find the Night who thought that making me unconscious was a good idea and do the same to him. He should know that a Night such as I would already know how to get back to the base, anyway.

“How many are there?”

A voice, distant and commanding.

“Five dead, forty-one wounded, thirty-five escaped, and the fifty-four you see here.”

“Where are the wounded?”

“We are tending to them.”

“You allowed thirty-five to escape?”

The other man is silent.

“I should demote you for being inept.”

“They were strong. We were unused to their fighting style.”

“I didn’t train you to fight with people you recognized. I trained you to fight, and win, no matter what.”

“I understand. It won’t happen again.”

A snort. “I won’t let you lead a raid again. What of the town?”

“We burned it as you requested. There should be no survivors.”

Ada. There was no way Ada could have escaped with the terror that handicapped her.

“Good. Tend to the wounded until they are ready to fight. As of now, we’ll see how good Shin’s training camp really is. Use the second and third division. Do as I ordered.”

Footsteps, minutes, and then the sack is lifted from my face. I blink as my eyes adjust to the light. I see what I presume are the fifty-four healthy survivors from Shin’s training camp arranged in a circle. Their mouths and hands are trapped like mine. I scan the faces and recognize the boy who was Ada’s tormenter as well as a few faces from group four and three. One Night stands beside each captured boy. Their eyes are fixated on the tall dark man in the middle – the man who had struck my head.

“All of you here today are survivors of Shin,” he begins loudly. He turns and looks at each trainee in the eyes. “Do not think to escape. There is no camp to go back to. No home. Whatever it is you desire, it is no longer there.” He smiles frigidly. “We are the Nights. You are nothing. And as nothing, you will never defeat us.” He nods to a Night standing beside one of the captives. This Night frees the trainee, who immediately lashes out at the Night. In a swift, clean motion, the captain of the raid slides his knife from his belt and throws it at the trainee.

The Nights are crueler than I remember.

“We are all visual learners, are we not? Visualize that. Visualize what will happen when you do not listen.” Two Nights come to take the body away. The man watches glumly. “Now hear me. You will fight. And if we are pleased with your skill, we will accept you as a Night under strict watch. If you fail, if you attempt to escape, if you try to kill one of our own, we will kill you. There is no ‘way out’. You win the battle, you stay alive. You lose, and you will die. Do you understand?” The trainees do not respond. With an irritated groan, he repeats, “Do you understand?” Slowly, they nod. “Know that we are not here to torture you. We will fight fair. We simply need to see how hungry you are for survival. Desperation. Desperation is what we seek.” He walks outside of the circle and picks up a rod. “This is what you fight with. You can fight with what you know.” He hands the rod to a Night, who frees the trainee’s hands and mouth and gives him the rod. “We fight with what we know.” The Night pulls two knives from his belt. “Relax. Everyone will have their turn.” The captain steps out of the circle. “Do as you were trained.”

The Night and the trainee crouch into their positions, and then they fight. I have never seen a battle so spectacular. Before, I would have thought the knife superior to all weapons, but as I watch the trainee calmly block the piercing jabs of the Night I find myself questioning how I could have ever been so close-minded.

The wushu trainee is graceful and poetic in his despondency in a way the Night could never compare. He fights with poise; the Night fights with passion. He fights with litheness; the Night fights in staccatos. Back and forth like the pull of a tide, the two men combat each other to the end of their wits. Each attack exceeds the ferocity of the previous lunge. For minutes, there is no weakness – and then there it is, a misstep, and the Night has fallen to the ground, his knives whisked out of his hands, the trainee’s rod digging into his chest.

The trainee pants heavily. He did not win easily.

“Congratulations,” the captain says. He alone claps for the victory of the winner. “Don’t think you’re dishonoring Shin, my friend. You’ve claimed a partner.” The Night on the floor raises his hand. The trainee lifts him to his feet. “Do you see? There is no need for difficulty,” he says. “Only skill. Show me your gift, Shin. Show me you are not as filthy as you were born to be.”

He has made them angry, and he knows it. The trainees are aching to fight now. If only to prove their dignity, they pull against the ropes and yearn to feel the rod disarm a man to failure. The captain just eerily smiles. He knows that pride is always the fall.

One by one, the trainees are freed to fight for their life. Most are so hungry to live that they fight with all their strength. Those who are too loyal to Shin simply fall to their knees and offer themselves up to be executed. There are others who try, but it is evident in their crumbling steps and weak wills that they will not survive.

The next Night releases the next trainee. They walk to the center of the circle, and then they receive their respective weapons. The trainee is so blackened with soot that the whites of his eyes are the only things I see. When he lifts the rod and his arm shivers underneath the weight, my eyes widen in dread.

It’s Chen, and he is afraid to die.

The Night tosses his knives in the air like a circus man. He toys with the weapons as if they were blunt pencils between his fingers. Chen stares, bewildered and of hope.

I have to help him. He holds an injury the Nights can’t see. If they knew, they would let him wait, perhaps help him improve, perhaps even save him from his two dismal options. I have to say something. I have to save him.

I shout, but of course, my mouth is muffled. The Night beside me jabs me lightly with the handle of the knife, warning me to keep quiet, but I shout louder against the cloth. The noise I cause attracts the attention of Chen. His eyes light up when he recognizes me, but he has no time to save himself from the unfair strike of the Night.

Chen falls to the floor.

I scream. The pain I feel in my head and in my heart sets fire to the tears that well in the edges of my eyes. It’s unbearable to watch him fall because of me. I caused that broken arm. It was through him that I made a friend, through him that I was promoted, through him that I fight so recklessly to free myself from the of my sin. And it is through what I have done that he is so utterly incompetent to fight as a whole man.

Today, I will watch the culmination of my consequences come to an end.

“This one won’t shut up,” the Night next to me says.

“Let him be,” the captain orders. Chen stands up, but he falls again as soon as he is on his feet.

“Should I kill him?” The Night asks. He returns one of his knives to his belt. He doesn’t even consider Chen competition. “He was a little too easy.”

“Don’t sap him of his hope,” The captain says. “That’s the only thing keeping him alive.”

“He isn’t worth keeping if he can’t stand up.”

“Ah,” the captain smiles. “But he’s standing now.”

Chen is on his feet with the most determined scowl I have ever seen. “I’ll fight you to the death,” he claims, “you twit.” He charges with a howl. Although reckless, he hits the Night across the chest, but his movements, as they always have been, are too slow. The Night buries the knife in his chest.

“Unfortunate,” the captain murmurs as the rod falls from Chen’s grip and clatters to the ground. “He had so much life in him.”

I scream once more, my neck stretching with the wild effort to be heard. The captain turns to me. “Do you want your turn that badly? Let him have his go,” he says. The Night carefully unties my restraints.

As soon as I am free, I gripe, “You’ve all gone mad. Do you know who I am?”

The Night scoffs, and the captain shrugs. “Enlighten me.”

I know these are the Nights, and yet their barbarity irks me. How can they not see their ignorance? “I’m a Night. I’m – “

“What’s going on?”

We all turn. Out of the shield of a tree’s low boughs, Han emerges. His eyes are darker, and his face more scarred. When he sees me, he freezes, as if he were seeing a ghost, and then he laughs. “So you’re alive.”

“Was I supposed to be dead?” I spit.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t supposed to see you again. I guess I’m going to have to question Cain later.” His careless demeanor is the same, but it’s all a font. Beneath it, I know he’s a cunning brute.

“You know him?” The captain asks.

“Sure. My little brother,” he grins. “Trained him when his father died. Always was the worst in his division.”

“That’s him? The dead leader’s son?”

“That’s him. Tao. Runt of the guild.” Han steps toward me. His eyes narrow into crescent slits. “And how are you, little runt?”

“Not a runt anymore, Han.”

“I applaud you.” He doesn’t believe me. “You must have come so far since you’ve trained with Shin.”

“I have information about Shin, Han. Information you’d want.”

“You have nothing I want,” he hisses. “That mission? A fake. I sent you away because I didn’t need you. Yet here you are, making life so trivial. You always had a penchant for complications. You didn’t know how to keep things simple. Didn’t you learn? This isn’t how you keep things simple, Tao,” he says, pointing to Chen. “Friends, or whatever they are, do not make things simple.”

“Things are simple,” I say as I stare at Chen’s lifeless body. “They’re simple now. Let me fight. Let me fight like the rest of them, and I’ll prove I’m not a runt.”

Silence, and then a nod. “Go on.” The Night near me steps forward.

“Not with him,” I say. “With you.”

His gaze is frighteningly lifeless. I fear his rejection, but then he answers, “All right.” He presents me with a knife, hilt first. I shake my head. “You’ll fight unarmed?”

“I’ll fight,” I say, kicking Chen’s disposed rod into my hands, “with this.”

For Chen. For Ada.

For me.

Dubious, he pulls another knife from his waist. “Are you sure? You won’t regret it when I kill you?”

I smirk. “I’m sure.”

I’ve been afraid to fight Han since he taught me how to hold a knife. He was the best – the teacher – the person we all looked up to, not just as a Night, but as a human being as well. He was smart. He was good-looking. He was tactical. He knew what to do and when to do it. He lived in places we had never been and told stories of people we had never seen. He was as fascinating as he was terrifying. He was our leader. He was our brother.

But today, I understood that he was more than that. He was an enemy.

I’ve never fought rod to knives before. The difference in weapons is unbalanced. My reach is far, his farther; my hands occupied, his open. For many minutes we test each other, trying to gain control of the other, trying to intimidate and injure. When I start to feel tired with the monotony, Han aims a knife for my arm. I dodge, but I feel the hiss of the metal as it scrapes my skin.

“You’ve gotten faster,” Han says. I slam the rod over his head. He rolls away from it, but the impact leaves a tremor in the ground. “Stronger, too.”

I don’t speak for fear of breaking my concentration. He knows my infirmities all too well, but those were the traits of an undedicated boy. I am not that child. I can beat him.

“Come on, Tao,” he taunts. “Beat me.”

“Beat me,” he gasps.

I twist the rod around my shoulders.

“That’s it,” Chen wheezes. “I’m done.”

Han cuts my side with a knife. I push him away with a twist of the rod.

“That wasn’t wushu,” he whispers. “That was inhuman.”

I’ll beat him, Chen. And I’ll still be human by the end of it.

I slam, I , I evade. I’m panting, but I feel strong. I’ve hit Han on his legs and arms, but he has protected his chest and face valiantly. My sides are bleeding, and my legs have been cut. He hasn’t sheared me, but I know he will.

We’ve been going for a long time now. He’s tired. He wasn’t expecting that I would be able to hold off so well with a rod instead of a knife in my hands.

“Do you like that rod, Tao?” He puffs. “Is it better than a knife?”

I allow myself to break out of my destructive reverie to say, “Watch out, Han. Don’t lose your breath.” I swing for his head. He ducks and hurls another knife to my face. I my head to the side, turn the rod around, and beat his legs. As he falls, he pitches yet another knife, this time to my throat. He’s too tired to play with me any longer. He’s ready to kill me, even in the most unceremonious way possible.

“I should be the one,” he laughs, “saying that to you.” He throws his last knife, which I whack away with my rod. In that half second I see an opening. I flip forward, rod securely in my arms, and then push it directly to his chest. He collapses backwards. He throws his legs in the air to stand, but I keep him down with the rod and pull out the knife that I know would be hiding in his boot.

I angle the knife at his neck. It greedily cuts his skin. As soon as the blade touches him, the ring of metal echoes throughout the air. I look around me. Every single Night is bearing his arms against me.

Relax,” I say, mimicking the captain. “I’ve had my turn.” I stand, and the Nights hide their knives and hasten to help Han. He overlooks their eagerness to assist him and regains footing on his own.

“Well,” Han says, wiping the line of blood on his neck, his mouth as flat as the blade of the knife that I stole, “I guess I’m going to have to take you in.”

I plant the knife in the ground. “I guess so.”

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Osekop12 #1
Congrats on the feature!!
Galaxyboo_
#2
Chapter 32: This so GOOD! I CAN'T BELIVE I READ THIS IN ONE DAY?!
Galaxyboo_
#3
Chapter 22: shieeeeettttttt IM SCREAMING
Maddy_the_Lion
#4
Chapter 32: I like how this didn't follow the stereotypical fanfic storyline. I truly enjoyed it. Thank you.
sgrfhm #5
congrats
liquorandice #6
I don't read x OC fics that often but this is sooo nicee
I REALLY love that the storyline is focused on Tao himself and his growth rather than turning romance into the main thing. Officially one if my favs ❤ thank you for writing this! ^^
LocaLina
#7
Chapter 32: Chapter 32: Lemme just say that I LOVED IT!!!! So long since I’ve found a good Tao fic thank you!!!
sweet23d
#8
Congrats
rpforall_
#9
Congrats