The sword floated in front of Herstyl with a low hum.
Herstyl eyes were locked on the sword.
What…what the hell is this? A flying sword? Am I seeing things?
His eyes then moved at the monster's dead body that was going to devour him earlier.
Herstyl couldn't believe what he had just witnessed and what he was seeing at the moment.
A flying sword came out of his chest, flew through the monster's head and turned it into paste.
His hands moved to touch his chest while his eyes never took off the sword.
Who knew if it was going to kill him as well?
He touched his chest, expecting some kind of wound but there was nothing. The only thing he felt was the pain of his broken ribs.
"How is this possible?" He murmured, looking at the sword that pulsed with a slow red light, slow and steady.
Like a heartbeat.
He knew that rhythm.
He had felt it his whole life without knowing what it was. He had felt it when he slept, in the quiet after his grandmother's food, in the particular stillness of his grandfather's arms around his shoulders.
A constant, background warm he had always mistaken for simply being alive.
"You…you have been inside me this whole time?" He asked.
The sword hummed as if saying 'yes.'
This is so weird and creepy…
He got out of his daze and his eyes widened as he remembered his grandparents.
"Grandma! Gramps!" He screamed as he tried to stand up but failed. He looked at his leg where a huge bit mark that tore his flesh marked on it. Gritting his teeth, he crawled towards the door leaving a trail of blood behind him and soon came to the view of the living room. The sword followed behind him.
The furniture was destroyed, the windows were broken, the pot that had his favorite was on the floor. The pictures that hung on the walls were now stained with blood, so was the floor.
The riffles were broken and on the floor
His heart clenched in pain.
"G-grandma! Gramps! Where are you?!" He called again, his voice shivering.
He saw a trail of blood on the floor that led to the corner, so he crawled towards it and each crawl felt heavier than what it was supposed to be.
His heart bumped and bumped against his broken ribcage and he felt so much pain both physically and emotionally.
He didn't care if his body was all broken. He didn't care about the pain.
He only cared about the safety of his grandparents.
And he prayed…he prayed that they were okay, that they were alive and just injured.
He clung onto that hope because that was the only thing keeping him from going insane.
Please, please…be okay…
When he reached the corner and turned around…he saw them.
"Ah…ah..ah..ah!" Warm tears fell down his face.
Lying against the wall were his grandparents, leaning against each other.
His grandfather's right arm was ripped off at the elbow alongside his right leg.
The grandmother had deep claw marks on her chest and face where a part of her cheeks were torn off like paper, and you could see her teeth. Moreover, both of her legs were gone, and only their mangled stumps remained.
"No, no, no, no!" Herstyl screamed and crawled as fast as he could towards them.
When he reached them, he paused and looked at their eyes.
They were wide open.
But the light within them was gone.
"Please wake up, I know you're alive and that you're just joking so stop playing me!"
He imagined his grandfather would suddenly smile and say that it was a prank and tell one of his jokes or his grandma, hugging to assure that it wasn't the truth.
His hand touched their bodies and shook them to prove that they weren't dead.
That proof that this was all a lie.
He got no response.
He only felt the coldness of their bodies.
They were dead.
The truth was harsh and cruel but he couldn't deny it anymore.
They were gone.
He hated it.
He loathed it.
He detested the truth.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!" He screamed so much in pain. Not caring if the other monsters would hear him and come after him.
It hurt more than any physical pain he was feeling at the moment.
It was if someone stole something that completed his very whole being.
Why me? Why do I have to go through this? Why were they taken away from me? He sobbed.
He didn't know how to live without them. He had never needed to know. Every morning of his life there had been a voice calling his name and a smell coming from the kitchen and a pair of hands that were always, always warm.
He hadn't even said goodbye properly.
Herstyl laid down between his grandparents.
He grabbed both their hands and put them on his face but their hands fell down.
He grabbed their hands again but this time, he didn't let it go and laid them on his face.
"C-can I feel your warmth one last time?" He asked expecting no response.
He wanted to feel their warmth but their hands were so cold that it sent shivers to his heart.
But somehow, it was still comforting even when it was gut wretching.
The sword hung in the air behind him in silence without a humm, as if it was respecting his time with his deceased loved ones.
He cried and cried until he couldn't anymore.
Until his voice was hoarse and dry.
As he laid down there with them, he felt something much colder rising in his heart.
Hatred.
He felt so much hatred towards the beasts who caused all of this.
"It's all because of those damned beats…if…if they hadn't attacked our village, nothing would have happened and I would have still had my family."
His black eyes flickered gold for a moment as his tears stopped falling.
"If…they didn't exist, the world would be a better place…" he nodded to himself. "If I kill them all—every single one of them…and I will…I will avenge gramps and grandma."
He sat up and nuzzled his face against his grandparents hands.
Then he turned around and crawled back in his room where the dead monster was.
He kneeled in front of it and then raised his hand.
The sword drifted forward.
Herstyl did not tell it to but it moved like something that knew exactly what it was doing and had Ben waiting a very long time to do it.
He grabbed the hilt with both hands and raised it upwards.
He drove the blade in. Once. Then again.Then he stopped counting.
He didn't scream. He didn't say anything. The only sound was the sword going in and the wet resistance of it, and his own breathing, which was very even for someone doing what he was doing.
At some point he became aware that he was smiling.
He didn't try to stop.
You got an easy death, he thought. That was the last easy thing your kind will ever get from me.
He pulled the sword free and held it at his side, blood running down the blade to the floor.
"I will kill every last one of you," he said quietly. Not to the corpse. Not to the room. To himself, the way you say something when you want your own body to hear it and remember.
Huff, huff.
Then it hit him.
Not from outside — from inside, deep in the center of his chest, a heat that had nothing to do with rage. It moved downward through his stomach and outward into his limbs and he had just enough time to think what— before the pain erased the thought entirely.
He dropped.
His back hit the floor and arched off it immediately, every muscle pulling tight at once. He heard the cracking before he felt it.
A sound like wood splitting, and then he felt it everywhere, his ribs, his leg, the small bones in his hands, all of them breaking and pulling themselves back together in the same moment, and the worst part was that he couldn't tell which was the breaking and which was the healing because both felt the same.
He screamed until his voice gave out. Then he kept screaming without sound.
Then, between one breath and the next, it stopped.
It finally stopped?
He sat up slowly and looked at his hands. The bite wound on his leg was gone. The ribs that had ground against each other with every breath?
Gone.
He pressed his fingers against his side where the pain had lived and felt nothing but skin.
"What," he said, to no one in particular.
"You have awakened," a voice said.
He went very still.
It had come from in front of him. He raised his eyes.
The sword hung there, pulsing its slow red light.
"...Did you just talk?"
"Yes."
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then he scrambled to his feet, hit the wall behind him, and pointed at it with one finger.
"You're a talking sword!"
"Nuh-uh."