Rain.

“I hate the rain”, Mitchell thought as he deflected yet another silvery blade. “The way it soaks your clothes, gluing them to your skin. The tickle as it’s beads slowly roll off your skin.”

He spared a quick glance up toward the sky. Not a cloud in sight.

“Then what was…?”

Blood.

Mitchell had lost track of how long he’d been fighting. “How many hours had passed? Or had it been days? When last had I slept?”

His bone bond urged him forward, his marrow burning, audibly sizzling in his ears each time he felt like giving up. Slowing down, turning back, meant certain death. So he pushed forward, thrusting through the side of a man, boy really, with his sword arm held high, then side stepping the fall of a halberd, dancing up its shaft and removing the arm that still clung to it.

The splattered blood on his face had begun to dry by this point, cracking in places. He felt the small islands they made pull and tear at his skin.

Blood. So much blood.

But such was the life of the Bonded. The enslaved. Hundreds of years ago, the Ossumpta were known for their religious beliefs, that excellence in swordsmanship demonstrated one’s reverence in, and willingness to, obey the Will of Exos, their god.

Now, they are thought of as property. Property that acted on command, following every order, for fear of burning alive from the inside, out. That had been Mitchell’s life. His inheritance. It’s all he knew.

And so, he pushed forward toward the bridgeway.

A few minutes and multiple dead bodies later, the bridge finally came into view. If he could just cut the rope supports, his task would be complete, and the depths of sleep could take him.

As he raised his blade across his body and over his left shoulder, preparing to cut both supports in a single slanted sweep, he watched as the opposing force fled back across the bridge in an attempt to escape the plummet that would mean certain death. For a moment, he forgot his surroundings, and wondered how peaceful that decent might be, knowing he’d never have to feel the heat again…

As quick as the thought entered his mind, he heard it. Crackles. Pops. As if he were stood next to a roaring blaze. Pain erupted throughout his body. He knew only one thing could stop the pain. He swung with all his might.

“Please…make it stop…” he plead as the tip of his blade whistled through the air.

As if Exos Himself answered Mitchell’s plea, the pain he felt vanished immediately, replaced by pressure on his right wrist. He saw a hand there where his Nexum, an iron band marking his Bond, was usually visable.

The strange hand guided his sword safely away from the bridge’s rope supports and into the ground. The momentum of his swing, having no where else to go, flipped him over on his back, expelling the majority of air from his lungs. The soldier, still covering his Nexum, looked down at him.

Their penetrating brown eyes met his. Her words floated down to him, soft and sincere. “Will you come with me?”, she asked. She asked.

“I can’t…” Mitchell began to respond, but stopped. The pain, he realized, hadn’t returned. He laid there, pondering again how freedom might feel, having been asked to leave with this soldier, this woman, and yet, he felt no heat course through his bones.

“Please, help me…” he choked as he coughed on his returning air, stumbling to his feet.

“Do not pull away from me, or you will die”, she warned, pulling him from the ground and toward the bridge. Together they ran, crossing the bridge just as the ropes were cut by his masters remaining forces.