So to fill the void, one of my coworkers and I started this crazy story idea. Enjoy.
Fantasy
Story
By Alyssia
and Spencer
Cora
followed a large man into the tavern, keeping close behind him so as not to
attract attention to herself upon entering. The man yelled at some men he knew
as he burst through the door, drawing the majority of the room’s attention to
him, and giving her the perfect opportunity to slip into the shadows unnoticed.
She normally made it a point to avoid taverns. They were loud and full of big,
burly, drunk, stupid men, and they tended to smell. Whenever she ventured into
one, trouble always found her. She was wanted in at least four different
provinces, and the fact that she was easily distinguishable by the large scar
that ran across her eye and down her cheek to the back of her neck didn’t help
to keep her hidden. After a few drunk guards had recognized her defining mark
in the midst of a tavern and she had barely made her escape with her life, she
did all she could to stay away from them.
But
today she was here for a bounty of her own. There was a man—or so she had
heard—who was wanted for the murder of a high-ranking palace guard. The bounty
on his head was 800 gold coins, a reward unlike any she had ever heard of.
According to the rumors, he liked to have drinks here, and occasionally some of
the women, too. Her plan was to lie low until he inevitably arrived, wait until
he was very drunk, then lure him up to an empty room and cap him before he knew
he’d been duped. She had befriended a local salesman who had agreed to turn in
the body for her, and then the two of them would split the reward 50/50.
There
was just one problem. When he entered the tavern, he was not alone. And he and
his friends were already drunk. And they were too busy kicking and punching and
throwing a thin man to the ground to bother sitting back and thinking about
other pleasures.
At
first Cora just ignored the fighting. It would settle down, eventually. But
when a chair was thrown straight at her face, forcing her to move quickly to
avoid being hit, which knocked back the hood of her cloak and revealed her face
to the whole tavern, she decided to keep moving. One of the men not involved in
the fighting recognized her immediately and smirked. She didn’t like his smug
look. So now it was fight or flight.
She
moved for the door. But something—a bottle she supposed, from the sound of
glass smashing into pieces—slammed into the back of her head. Very well. A
fight it was.
She
pressed her fingers to the clasp at her throat, shedding her cloak completely,
while bending to retrieve the dagger from her high boot. She rose and half
spun, half launched herself into the nearest brawler. The blade was only four
inches long, but it took down the man three times her size when she jammed it
into his leg. Still dripping blood, the blade sliced the arm of the
second-closest man, then vanished into his side. Only four more men to go.
The
next closest man saw her coming and knocked the blade from her hand, but it
didn’t matter. She took advantage of his lack of speed and her small frame,
slipping under his wide stance and taking his own blade from his belt and
sticking it into his back.
She
was turning to the next brawler when large arms clasped around her middle. The
man who had recognized her had not given up on the idea of turning her in,
apparently. His grip was tight, and she couldn’t even slip out of it. In the
midst of her flailing, her fingers grasped the handle of a mug, and she used it
to first smack her captor in the face, and when his grip loosened just enough
she pulled her hips away and kicked backward, hoping to hit just below the
belt.
Her
aim must have been true, for the man’s arms immediately released her and a
string of curses boomed from the man’s mouth. She whirled on him and smacked
him generously against the back of the head with the mug until she knew he
would be out of the fight for good.
The
remaining three brawlers still had not noticed her, but the rest of the tavern
had. She threw hot, penetrating stares at anyone who dared to glance her way,
her witchy blue eyes piercing into their souls. They shuddered and looked away.
Once
her knife was back in her hands, she threw her rage on the remaining three
troublemakers. The one closest to her went down with a puncture to the knee.
The second went down with a mug to the groin. And the third—he was the one with
the 800 gold coin bounty on his head—he stared at her with wide eyes and
stepped back the moment he realized his friends were no longer part of the
fight.
Cora
thought about knocking him out too, but there was no point. He had backed down
from the fight. And the local salesman who was supposed to come pick up his
unconscious form from one of the empty upstairs rooms would never know to find
him here in the main room, nor would he know how to distinguish him from the
other six men who either lay silent or groaning on the floor.
The
thin man the brawlers had been picking on moaned and held his hand to his
profusely bleeding nose. “What’d you do that for?” he asked, his voice muffled
by his hand.
Cora
paused. What had she done that for? She hadn’t planned on saving the weakling.
She had been thrown into the fight. But now that she was standing here, she
felt almost like she had continued fighting to get to him, to stop the men who
inflicted his pain. It felt good to be a hero for once, instead of a thief, a
liar, a threat, a villain.
But
then the strange phrasing of his reflection of gratitude hit her like a sack of
bricks. “What do you mean, ‘what’d I do that for’?” she snapped, kicking the
underside of his worn-down boot mockingly. “I just saved your life. Show some
more respect.”
The
man with the 800 gold coin bounty on his head twitched. Cora noticed it out of
the corner of her eye, and spent no time hesitating to find out why. Just as he
lifted a blade above his head to strike her, she spun hers into his stomach. He
doubled over and fell backward onto one of his companions.
The
thin man on the floor struggled to his feet. Holding his nose didn’t help,
much. It was bleeding right through his fingers. Sighing, Cora pulled a small
strip of cloth from her bosom and handed it to him. He gratefully pushed the
fabric to his face.
Sometime
between the time Cora had defeated the man who wanted to turn her in and the
time she had rescued the weakling, the rest of the room had gone silent, but
she only noticed it now that she was pondering what to do next. The stares
bored heavy on her now, and she longed more than anything to rid herself of
their criticism. Turning suddenly, she fetched her cloak from the floor, then
her blade from the bulging stomach of the man whom she decided not to turn in
after all, grabbed the arm of the nose-bleeder before she really thought about
what she was doing, then turned for the door and ran.
“Where
are we going?” the nose-bleeder asked, stumbling from the bruises and fractured
bones he no likely had suffered during his beating.
She
didn’t know, so she didn’t reply. She only knew it was time to escape, time to
flee. She slipped between carts and stands, around buildings, past God knew how
many people. Despite having only been in the city a day, she knew how to
navigate it well. Before long they were hidden in shadows, beside a slow
flowing stream of sewage, safe from anyone who may want her.
The
nose-bleeder panted heavily, unused to running, and collapsed on the ground,
but slunk away from the fowl water. “It stinks here,” he muttered through the
now red cloth he still held to his face.
Cora
looked down at him and smiled. At least he was funny. “How is your nose?” she
asked, bending down to him. “Is it still bleeding?”
He
pulled the cloth away from his face, and a stream of red fell to his shirt.
“Here.”
She reached under her skirts and ripped off a new strip of cloth from her under
dress. “Lay back against this rock and try to breathe slowly. You’ll need to
slow down your heart rate if you want the blood flow to slow and your nose to
stop bleeding.”
He
leaned back and let her switch the fully soaked cloth for the clean one, then
watched as she dropped it into the water and let it travel slowly along with
the rest of the trash. “I’m John,” he spoke suddenly, although with the cloth
smashed to his face it sounded like “I’mb Jobn.”
“Cora,”
she replied, looking him quickly over for any twisted limbs. “How are you
feeling?”
“Bmy
stombach ‘urts.”
She
lifted his shirt and frowned at the number of bruises left on his skin. But
when she pressed her fingers gently to his chest, she found no broken bones.
That was good. With any luck, after his nose stopped bleeding she could lead
him back to a main part of town and then vanish back into the forest in search
of new wanted posters. “You’ll be sore for a few days, but you’re okay.”
“Your
fingbers tickle.”
Cora
smiled. She was beginning to like this pathetic, beat up man’s company. Maybe
she wouldn’t leave him behind, after all.
