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The two armies collided. Flashes of red and gold rushed past Kali's eyes on both sides. Clanging; metal on metal, armor scraping and moving. Her ears were flooded with sound. Her longsword rose above her head and smashed down on the enemy in front of her. It lowered and slashed through armor joints, ligaments, and bone. Her heart crashed against her ribs, though she hardly notice. She let out a cry with every swing of her sword, releasing adrenaline, then filling with more. She swung and she swung, again and again, caved in a helmet once and then twice with the pummel of her weapon.
Pain flared up her side. A scream tore from her throat. The cause of this was missing its head a moment later. Kali checked her swing, brought it through another's knee, and ran it through an eye hole behind her in a matter of seconds. Three bodies smacked the dirt. More rushed in.
If Kali had been asked a mere fortnight ago if she could have taken six men to one, she would have laughed and said, “In what world is one like me fighting six at once?” Now, however, she was. Numbness was creeping into her limbs, fear into her heart. She readied.
A blow deflected on the right and a rear to the ground on the left, Kali spun through the six closing in on her, danced through their attacks like a child's play. The men seemed bewildered with her speed and skill. Defense became their only option as they were driven back by her force. Light, would the noise ever stop?
One head gone. Another leg lost.
‘Someone is not going to be digesting much from here on,’ Kali thought as her sword split a man's stomach, coils of flesh spilling out like precious ropes from a saddlebag.
Another spilled his guts through his mouth, heaving what was left of his lunch, turned tail, and ran.
The last two, the ones she had clobbered in the beginning, closed in. She was heaving air, hardly holding anything inside her lungs. Her heart felt as though it wanted to be rid of her chest and her arms did not lift. They could not.
“Oh, Light,” Kali muttered furiously, fighting with her fatigue. A deflected slash; a fiery line up her spine. A disarmament; two stumps where fingers once were. Kali cried out in pain and anger, whipping her sword in any direction to avoid attack. Warmth blanketed her back and flowed over her hip, drenched the handle of her longsword. It was red. All of her was red. It made her dark skin shiny in the growing dawn. The pain erased her fluidity. She was losing. Tears welled in her eyes, pain rippling through her nerves, as she stumbled to the earth. “Thom-!”
Before she could even call his name, Tomas was crashing through the assaulting knights. He had seen them from afar. They had made a mess of what was his. His sword slashed an underbelly then thrusted through a helmet. Both lay dead in an instant.
Relief crashed through Kali. She groaned.
Tomas whipped around. He tore his helmet off and dropped beside her. The clanging of swords never ceased. Tomas met Kali's gaze anxiously. His brown eyes grazed over her wounds. Kali gasped.
Clang!
“Gotcha, sir!” A young man yelled to Tomas. He wrestled an enemy blade from striking the older man's neck. Following the young man's lead, Tomas’ knights formed a small ring around the two, protecting as much as they could. Tomas nodded gruffly at them all and shifted his attention back to the woman on the ground. Out of a bag on his side, he pulled a rolled cloth. Kali sat up, a groan escaping–though who could hear it but her–when Tomas began to tightly wrap the deep wound on her hip. She gripped his neck painfully, but he did not care. He was not going to lose her. Anyone but her.
He got her to her feet in less than a minute, panting at the adrenaline pumping through his veins. Warmth spilled down his spine. When had he been cut?
The ring around them began to break as more men pushed in. Knights yelled and called for each other. Overrun. Light, please no.
“Kali!” Tomas yelled over the collision of swords and the cries of men, still holding his love by her hands. She favored her left side–her good side.
“Tomas!” She replied, meeting his eyes with her earthy green ones. They searched him for comfort and courage. Tomas moved a hand around her waist, pulling her close so she could hear him speak.
“Marry me, Kali,” he said. His sword shiick-ed out of its sheath, ran through an approaching knight, then stabbed into the earth beside him. “Let me be yours.”
“Tomas! Here?” Kali scolded him incredulously, gripping a dagger she had hidden in her boot earlier and flinging it through a woman's throat.
“Why not?” He grinned, ignoring her harsh tone and brushed some hair behind her ear. It could be the last time. “You are not occupied, are you?”
Kali scoffed and rolled her eyes. Her fist lashed out and connected with someone's unprotected jaw. The same hand caressed Tomas' stubbled cheek softly only a second later. “Not at all, my love.”
“Then I am yours.” Tomas grew close and breathed against her skin. He thought he smelled the lavender she always wore. “By the Light, I am yours.”
Kali nodded roughly, then captured Tomas’ lips in a rushed kiss. It was not long enough. Tomas’ fingers grasped longingly at Kali's clothes. Warmth blossomed in her chest, but it did not fill the pit forming there, too. Somewhere else, far away from here, they may possibly have had another chance. Here, though? Kali did not want to think about it.
They broke the short kiss when Tomas was forced to take another life with his blade. She moved next to him. As they both looked to the far end of the battle, the next wave had already crashed into the previous one, clawing their way to those still living.
Kali and Tomas looked at one another again. Tomas wanted to get drunk on her gaze. She looked at him like he was the only thing that mattered. In her eyes, he was. His loving look sent another blossom of warmth through her chest. They nodded sharply at each other, readied their swords, and dashed forward at the encroaching wave. Praying to the Light, they clashed.