Tal The Protector

Moonlight glimmered off my flawlessly polished steel sword. I held it steady near my hip as my eyes closed in concentration and my nose inhaled the muggy air. My stance was tight and close, but my muscles were relaxed and ready to react to anything. When my eyes opened back up, I looked into the eyes of a brutish and ugly man. Dressed in dirty clothes and adorned with an ear piercing on his left ear was the man who haunted my dreams. Rage burned within me as I begged for him to make the first move.

“You look just like him.” The bandit called out with a grin, his eyes feasting on me with smugness. “I bet you’ll die just like him.”

The patience my father had drilled into me was abandoned immediately. A growl escaped my throat as I charged. The bandit readied his sword and once I neared, he swung overhead at me.

I raised my sword from my right and in a semi-circular motion, intercepted the bandit’s sword right over my head. The motion never stopped as I deflected the blade into the ground to my left. With the sword out of the question and his midsection defenseless, I planted my left foot, raised my right to his stomach, and sent a rib-crunching kick into the bandit’s midsection.

The bandit launched into the air, slamming onto his back with a heavy thud and groan, his sword clattering to the dirt. I straddled the bandit and lined the sword up to the man’s heart from above. I was not a coward. I looked into the brown eyes of the bandit and sent my sword down through his heart.

Despite the kill, the ****, and the victory, I felt nothing. Had I really become that desensitized to killing? But why didn’t it at least feel satisfying to have gotten ****? Was this the cycle of **** and **** that so many disdained? Why did I feel this way?

I was broken. That is why.

Crisp claps rang through the mostly silent night. I snapped from my thoughts and with a blink, found myself not standing upon the corpse of my father’s killer, but simply a wooden and straw practice dummy. The fury from my imagination left in a hurry and was instead replaced with embarrassment and shame.

That was the life I should be living. This… this life of nothing and only ever attacking practice targets was a joke. I was a man now. I should be out there with the other men my age fighting in war or protecting innocent people. I yearned for more, and there was only one person who kept me from at least attempting to do more.