Karla stood on the city wall, her robes fluttering in the wind while she surveyed the approaching force, their numbers blossoming from the local forest, a thick canopy smothering the army from sight until they make their appearance.
Her carved wooden mage staff clattering against the enduring stone of the city wall walkway, while she waited for the armies full numbers to be known.
She stood quiet, the archers alongside her on the wall ready-ing their bows, making sure their quivers were secured and arrows gathered.
While her two fellow mages, one on her left and the right were doing their last checks on their magical tools, as the glyphs embedded in their mage uniforms sparkled in the sunlight.
Karla kept her gaze on the distant forest, watching the silhouettes of the approaching army getting closer, their long shadows cast by the rising morning sun. The sun's life giving rays now serving as a uncanny herald to the death and slaughter that would soon come to her home.
The sound of marching boots soon began to reach her ears, Karla refocusing her attention on the battle soon approaching shrugging off her pointless daydream. As she began to construct spell formula's in the air, brilliant blue color marks forming a circle with different symbols set in each band.
Once one formula was complete after another, she set it aside in the air as she began to set up a new formula, making one after another, exhausting her ether as the other mages got their opening salvos ready as well.
They held off the activation of their spells, waiting until the invading army reached the minimum distance to release them.
Once they did, she and her fellow mages let their formula's activate, firing off blades of water, saws of wind and conjured earthen spears at the invaders, trying to thin the invaders numbers as swiftly as they could.
Blood splattering against the earth in brilliant hues of scarlet, as soldiers continued marching on heedlessly.
Though the salvo initially did reduce the amount of attackers, rendering more than a few of the common soldiers dead, and maimed.
The elites easily responded in kind, each covered head to toe in runic armor were fully prepared for an opening assault.
Within moments of the Salvo colliding with the army, wide translucent blue barriers blossomed into existence, covering large swaths of the army like umbrellas, with the center of the shields being the elites, ensuring their most powerful soldiers could weather the storm.
Karla gritted her teeth, silently cussing in her mind, she knew immediately what the tools presence meant, understanding blossoming in her mind like a crash of an anvil.
Barrier tools such as those were only used by the armies of kingdoms, meaning that this wasn't just a large group of rabble lead by a few idiots, her city was being encroached upon by an invading country's army.
She didn't even know who it was, as the crest of their banners was not bearing one she was familiar with- but she would be a fool if she stood around aimlessly. she dashed back from the edge, dodging the opening spell salvo fired by the army at the last moment.
Maybe the adventurer's guild master might know who this was, but that can be saved for after the battle, she couldn't leave her post frivolously. Her thoughts a chaotic tapestry as she had no plans for surrender.
Even as these swirling thoughts crossed her mind, her spellcraft barely paused, her wand crafting more spell formulas, everytimr one completed they immediately fired off more water blades and rock spears.
The other mages continued to cast as well, firing off their spells as soon as they found openings, and dodging the incoming fire of the mages of the army the best they could, bobbing and weaving.
She wouldn't let them raze the town her mother grew up in, and the one her father continued to protect, that was the last thing she would ever allow.
Even now, her father was nearby, joining the rest of the city archers on the towers, pelting the army with their arrows, attempting to reduce the army's numbers further and targeting anyone holding a siege ladder.
Their arrows almost appeared like rain, as their arrow shafts blossomed onto soldiers like flowers, spreading pain and injury for the unfortunate.
A few of their army mages even tried to float up into the air to scale the wall but were focused fire to death, as the common soldiers that made up the bulk of the invaders fell in masse.
Though they could do nothing but push forward, acting as the vanguard of the invader's army, the elites were seemingly unconcerned about how many of their common soldiers were dying. Either a deeply unnerving sign of incompetence or the calm before a horrific storm.
Karla would have hoped it was the former, but her gut instinct felt it was the latter. Further exasperated as she could feel her ether falling to below halfway her full tank, her mental fatigue rising as well as the army were almost upon the walls and gates.
She grit her teeth as she took cover behind the stone fences from the arrows fired at her position, her part was coming to an end, she knew it with ease. She only had quarter of her ether left, a retreat having been planned for the exhausted mages, her next begrudging goal in this battle.
A proposition that deeppy frustrated her, aware the adventurers of the city and many of them that had helped her so much throughout the years, were getting ready to join the defenders in the next group, to offer themselves up for the safety of the city. She didn't want to let them down, she didn't want to just sit at home and hope they came back, hope that her father came back from the battle as well.
Orders were orders, but if she couldn't stay, them she'd bleed the enemy dry. To burn every drop of ether before taking a rest further into the city.
She stood back up once more to fire her last salvo og spells, but she could finish even another formula. The entire wall shook, a large cloud of dust rising from her left.
Completely stunned, she turned to look beside her and saw a nearby section of the wall was blown to smithereens, erasing the mage on her left and the archers that had been there as well.
Leaving a section of the wall cut out, like a giant had taken a bite of it, as more than a several of the city archers stopped for a split second to stare.
They never thought the wall could be destroyed as severely as it just had been, in such a single attack. Though the town was not particularly important, it still had remarkable defenses put in place.
Its walls were inlayed with intricate magical sigils all carved across its structure, improving the walls durability by at least a degree of magnitude.
Yet just like that, a section of the wall was gone, along with several archers and one of the few war mages they had for this side of the wall.
A well decorated mage in the invader's army smirked, his hands smoldering with the fireball he had thrown, as he hid once more amongst the army.
After the initial shock, she tried to refocus on constructing her spell formulas, creating a rain of water blades, seeking in vain to force back the army.
She pelted the last of her spells against the common soldiers as the invading army finally manages to have reached the walls, having used the shock and awe of their mage to give them time to approach quickly.
Once they began to climb up, her self preservation finally kicked into gear, she began to retreat along with the other living mage. Neither of them were trained to fight in close proximity without magic, so they would be just liabilities at this point.
The arriving soldiers from the staircases began to cover her and the other mage retreat, covered in iron plate and swords ready to begin their fight in close quarters.
But before the retreat could be completely protected, one of the enemy elites, who had joined the first team who scaled the wall, Pushed through the protection unit without pause. Evading the soldiers trying to stop their advance like slow moving boulders.
Karla could only catch a glimpse of a armored woman moving closer, and closer with superhuman speed. Her battered helmet revealing little of her features, charging forward at Karla.
Before she could even understand the situation, within seconds Karla could feel the torturous pain of a sword carving itself through her torso, her blood painting the stones around her crimson as several of her vital organs cut and crushed by the empowered sword swing, cleaving from shoulder to navel.
She didn't get a heroic battle, a last stand against an enemy, she was simply another piece of grass cut down before an invader.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Her body shuts down, blood loss too great to even grit out a curse at the monster called a Hero. The last memory afforded to her to take with her to the grave was of the armored elite. Who kicked aside her nearly cut in twain body, treated as a nuisance. The elite charged into the nearby wall tower, ready to cut up her friends and family, leaving her able to do nothing but weep, her eyes dim a moment later.
Mary unsteadily picks herself off the floor, hot fresh blood trickling down her face in ripples. Her long muddy brown hair framing her head, streaked with that same scarlet red.
She stared listlessly for a moment before her eyes focused, though unsteady. Her shock intensifying, while she examined herself, clenching and unclenching her hands rapidly, while she leaned against a white stone wall.
"Huh? How-Shouldn't I be dead-" Mary nearly collapses to the floor once more as a splitting headache begins blossoming from the side of her head. Vomiting onto the floor, her breathing shallow.
Countless unsaid questions gracing her lips, the room quietly spinning. She- they couldn't understand how they were alive, now where they were, standing on strange-looking stone. But suddenky memories of her current life began flooding back into her mind, squeezing themselves between her past life memories like a packed restaurant.
Her head throbbing with agony as the memories came in bits and pieces, each forcibly squeezing into new spaces to make room for others. Her hand gripping the brick wall to center herself, even as everything else felt shaky.
From her just starting her senior year in high school yesterday, to the funeral of her mother crying over her dad's grave, given the full honors as a veteran.
To finally about her mother herself, her current life's mother, who she was trying to protect earlier from a sudden home intruder, who had picked the living room's lock.
The intruder had looked like a man in completely dark blue clothing, from jeans to sweater and of course, his hockey mask, all to match the colors of the nighttime outside.
He carried with a large knife he held in his off-hand, and lockpicks and bag in the other.
At the time, she had charged at the intruder recklessly, having been in the hallway when he had entered the house, swinging a baseball bat at him as she shouted for her current parent-her mother to hide.
She certainty caught the man off-guard, he was turning the corner into the hallway when her bat smashed into his nose, breaking it with a sadistic crunch.
But before she could take another swing, he then grabbed her head in retaliation, and repeatedly slammed it against the nearest wall with brutal savagery, staining the wall with her blood as she fell unconscious against it. Screaming something about girls, or her hearing ringing too much to make out his curses.
This event appears to have caused her past life memories to return, or was she always her, just that she manifest in this body?... Her head hurt too much to understand the difference.
She stood shakily taking it all in, her memories as Mary for a split second trying to reject her past life, believing it to be a delusion caused by trauma.
But then her past life memories interfered, observing that their far too detailed to be a concussion induced fever dream alone.
Her headache blossoming across her head as her memories conflicted, her injury continuing to drip blood, as more of it landed onto her white dress.
But between all discord amongst her memories, she heard the dangerous familiar sound of the intruders boots in the back of the house. He's still inside!
Her eyes sharply focused, remembering her mother was still hiding in here!
She immediately tried to stand up straight and hold the bat but once she removes her second hand from the wall to wield the bat correctly she almost immediately faceplants.
She quickly used the bat instead for support as she leaned against the wall, coming to a bitter realization that she can't stand on her own with her severe head injury. But she still needed to save her mom, she can't-she won't be seperated from her family again!
If shes not fast enough, the intruder might give her mother the same treatment as she was given or far, far worse, but what-wait, if these memories are true, she knows...magic!
If she wants to prove to herself that she really was reincarnated, she needs this now, magic from her past life to save her mother.
Karla's memories came to the forefront, falling into familiar patterns as she grasped at the ether channels that should be in herself, but finding only traces of a strange energy.
Immediately disheartened, the existing traces still proved to herself that she wasn't mad, that it wasnt a delusion. But she still needed to get to the source of energy to do anything, so she mentally dug deeper and deeper into her existence, searching for the source of the energy.
She was aware that whatever this energy was, it wasn't the same as ether, but it was still better than having no supernatural energy at all to use.
Karla found a much, much smaller source of the energy resting in the center of herself than what she had a mage but it would have to do.
Though as she is about to start messing with the energy she momentarily hesitates, concerned that she could be imagining everything, that she had genuinely is insane now. But she satisfies herself with a single simple thought.
She's already gone this far, and this deep, if this is a delusion at least it's so thorough she wouldn't be able to help her mom anyway. Without further thought she tries to force the strange energy out of her body like she'd do with ether, the energy beginning to exit her body in audible puffs, trying to force a spell formula from it. Blue smoke appearing and fading around her.
But her combined life experiences didn't seem to aid her at all, the energy spooling out aimlessly, even as she could feel her body began to be covered in it.
Despair was growing, she had proven with the blue smoke that she isn't delusional, but this energy wouldn't follow her commands like ether, and she doesn't have time to figure out what the differences are!
"Fucking damn it!" Mary cussed the word choice being influenced by her past life experiences as she decided to hope her next action at least worked.
In a last ditch effort for some kind of aid, she forced all of the energy to the surface of her body, hoping that it could at least enhance her muscles like old ether enhancement did, for a reckless gamble on hitting the intruder with another bat swing.
Instead she could feel something finally click in the deepest reaches of her being, followed by a burning in her head, as the energy covered her body from head to toe.
She began to hear a faint alien laughter that radiated from all around her, as she could now feel the energy that flows slowly across her body being burned in droves. She almost instinctively wanted to stop it, her past life memories as a mage warning her against rogue either explosions. But something about the laughter felt...safe.
Immediately the blood on her forehead began turning into smoke, followed by the nearby blood on the walls.
The smoke coalesced into a reddish mist that started congealing infront of her, filling the hallway with its presence.
From within the mist came a man head-sized ceramic doll hand, webbed with several cracks as the fingers gripping a weapon it had spawned with.
A large sharpened butchers knife that was easily as large as half a man. Though interlaced with cracks as well, it didnt appear particularly fragile, as its deftly handled by the doll hand it formed within.
Almost as soon as it finishes forming, the hand levitated quickly forward in the direction of the footsteps, floating on its red smoke while it swiftly vanished out of sight.
". . . . . ."
". . .Huh? Huuuuh?!" Karla/Mary stared shocked, her conflicting memories coming to a single conclusion as they stood there stupefied.
Whatever she had just done, was not intentional in the slightest. The event rattling her Mary identity with the thought she had created a horror movie monster, while Karla knew for certain she was no summoner, she lacked the skills to call forth a spirit to serve her, if had been, she would have used it for her retreat. So what was-?
She stood there stupefied, as merely ten seconds later, she starts to hear the footsteps change direction, now instead seemingly getting closer, and more than that, come running.
"Is the freaky hand chasing him!?" Mary/Karla shouted, while she tried to stand straighter, still keeping a hand on the wall as the intruder came back into sight.
He bore a huge wound across his side, leaking a trail of blood behind him as he rushed away from the hand, the smoke surrounding it now larger and more opaque.
Almost immediately the man noticed the her, having made no effort to hide when even walking in the hallway was difficult enough.
His face a mask of shock as his thoughts raced a mile a minute.
I thought I knocked this bitch the fuck out!?- Doesn't matter, I need to get away, I am not dying today to chucky's oversized hand!
He had every intent to bowl the girl over to make more space in the hallway, and if he was lucky the chick could serve as a distraction for the monster.
Though before he could reach her, something else made a move first. For from within the red mist that surrounded the doll hand, a second hand appeared and launched itself at the man, grabbing him by the leg. His weight hit the floor like a sack of potatoes before the second hand dragged him screaming back into the center of the red mist.
Definitely off-put by the creepiness of the hands, she still tries to give a command tentatively, hoping it followed her words, like a normal summon would. "Hit him, Disable him and prevent him from fighting back, y-you got that?"
Initially it seemed like it didnt work, until with horrific sincerity the hands began to brutally acting upon its newfound order.
As the second porcelain hand throws the man roughly against a nearby wall and pins him, as the knife hand began dragging the blade through the man, carving upwards from groin to nape, flesh forced to large as the knife tolerated no resistance.
The man began howling in agony as his body is slowly sawed in half.
"AHHHHHHHHH, someone help me, im dying, it hurts, h-he-.." The intruder babbling in despair, begging to be now saved, his eyes pleading to Mary/Karla.
While the alien laughter continued to fill the air beneath the mans screams as the hands worked.
The knife soon finished sawing upwards, blood and viscera spilled onto the floor into a pool, the mans scream finally ceasing once the task was done.
Mary stood there dumbfounded as her memories of Karla surfaced, curiosity driving her forward. Their body taking a few tentative steps to get a better look inside the mist, to understand what had happened inside.
But as soon as she saw the mess, she began to reliving the memory her own death, causing a severe dissonance as Mary's stomach lurched from the sight before her and her visions of Karla's death.
She vomited onto the pool of blood, her stomach empty now., Her mind wracked with turmoil from both her lifes memories, the acrid smell providing focus as she starts to sputter out her next commands.
"S-stop, stop now, he's dead, he can't harm me anymore! Just, drop him and vanish, go back to wherever you were from."
Though it tried to continue carving the dead body up further, her commands seemingly worked. The hands dropping the man's remains like a sack of potatoes as they go limp floating in the air.
The man's body falls onto the wooden floor, more blood gushing out of it, with many of its organs maimed from the seesaw motion of the blade, practically certain he's dead with how gruesome the hands handled the job.
They began fading from view, the hands crumbling apart bit by bit before vanishing, with the strange energy on her body now thin, the headache that had passively throbbed in the back of her mind now had gotten worse.
She needed to find her mother to make sure she was safe though, she could just resolve this migraine later.
Mary's memories resurfacing as she began stumbling around, exploring the novel yet familiar house, a hallway that goes through the center, with rooms branching off it like fruit.
She searched rooms one by one for her mother, trying to sort through the memories to recall where she said she'd be at the start of the home invasion.
She finally arrived at her room and opened the room door, seeing no one inside. Mary almost closed the bedroom door until she noticed the closet was closed, with a faint rustling sound within.
"Mom, the intruder is, uh- well he's not a problem anymore, come on out!" She used the door frame as support, her voice kept clean of the agony she was experiencing.
Moments later, her mom opens the closet, breathing a sigh of relief before seeing Mary's state, as all Mary can offer is a pained cramp smile.
Though before Mary could walk farther into the room, the will that kept her body moving had finally left her with the revelation of her mother's safety, as her knees and legs buckling, beginning her descent to the floor.
"Mary!?" Their mom steps out of the closet, rushing towards her, catching her before she hit the floor, slowly sitting down with her held against her mother's body.
"Mom is right here, sweetie." She started tearing some of her sleeves for cloth while she began to treat Mary's injuries with first aid.
With the last thoughts Mary/Karla's running through her head being something remarkedly tame compared to the murder she just committed.
I wonder if this makes me a Reincarnator then? Her thoughts then turned opaque, as she fell unconscious in her mother's arms, drifting off into a restless slumber.
