Regrets of The Fallen (Victis Honor Book 1) (33 page)

The monk looked away. “I know. Believe me, I’m never
not
thinking about that. I don’t want to spend most of that time running, either. There’s so much you haven’t done or seen that I want to do with you and all of this running seems like they’re wasting our time. But we have to deal with this.”

“You’re ruining the rest of your life just for this year. I just… I just want to make it worth it.”

Haruka smiled at her. “It’s already worth it.”

Isabella returned the smile before averting her eyes. “This is still better than anything I could’ve hoped for… This situation. But it’s still my fault.” She silenced Haruka with a look. “You can make me feel better, but don’t lie. We’re all in this situation because of me, and I keep pulling more people into it. First you, then Freya, then Able, and now this girl. So when I worry about this new threat… It’s not just because of me.”

Haruka sighed and leaned back, running a hand through her hair. “You’re worried you’re going to take someone with you.”

Isabella nodded. “I have nothing to lose, but the rest of you do.”

“You and I could leave to protect them, but honestly…?” Haruka shrugged. “These are people who get into danger anyway. Freya actively
seeks
danger; she’d be angry if we left her out of it. Able… Who knows what he gets into? And Suria ran into us because she was traveling alone through a dangerous and unexplored forest. And what’s more, all of us have our own problems that we’re leaving behind. As a group we’re stronger against all of them. I don’t want to go back at all.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Bella fidgeted with the edge of her cape, looking up at her. “I just don’t want
more
to feel guilty about.”

“Then don’t. Focus on how you’re helping.” Haruka reached up to brush a few strands of hair from Bella’s face. “You helped me to get away from my father. Your strength is what keeps us all going.”

“Was it really that bad?” Isabella gently caught the monk’s wrist, bringing the hand down to take it in her own. “I know what he was like, in general, but… only that.”

Haruka let out a sigh. “I did promise, didn’t I…? Tell you what, we’ll trade stories.”

Bella smiled. “You owe me like, seven stories, then.”

“Alright. We shouldn’t leave the others just standing around, though.”

“Right.” Isabella paused, looking around. “Okay… We can’t stay in this spot, we have to move. We can’t set up camp again. You can tell me while we walk. It’ll be just like when I talked while we were walking in the forest, except this one’s a lot creepier and there are
giant fucking spiders.”

Haruka laughed, turning to follow Isabella as they headed back to the others. “It sounds odd hearing you swear like that.”

“GIANT. FUCKING. SPIDERS, RUKI.” Isabella waved her hands above her head. “It’s like someone raided my nightmares for ideas!”

“Is there anything else you’re afraid of? I want to be prepared when it appears.”

“Don’t even joke like that!”

“Who’s joking? You got scared of sea zombies and those appeared. You’re scared of spiders and we’re caught by half a dozen giant ones. Obviously, whatever is coming next will be from another entry in your nightmare catalogue.”

“Then I should keep it a secret.”

“Think of the safety of the group! Is it dragons?”

“
Everyone
is afraid of dragons.”

“Oh, right. Ghosts?”

“Again, who isn’t scared of ghosts?”

“Okay… Snakes?”

“No.”

“Wolves?”

“They’re just slightly angry dogs.”

“Tigers?”

“What’s a tiger?”

“That’s a no…
for now
.”

“Please don’t
add
to my list of fears, Haruka.”

“Bats?”

“Nope.”

“Undead?”

“Please.”

“Demons?”

“I’m half one.”

“More of yourself?”

“Multiple Bella’s? Okay,
that’s
a nightmare.”

“Oh, not for me,” Haruka grinned. “For me that’s a fantasy.”

Isabella shook her head, laughing softly. “Your mind sure gets dirty fast.”

“Only when it comes to you, Bella. Only when it comes to you.”

IXH

“So,” Bella said, looking at Haruka. “Talk.”

They trailed behind their three allies by a good distance as the group walked through the forest, heading south at a fair pace. The three up front were talking but Isabella wasn’t interested in their conversation; she had dropped back with the hope of learning more about the woman she loved, a proposition that excited her as much as it scared her. When she really thought about it, it depressed her how little she knew about Haruka’s past. She had a general idea, but she didn’t know any more than the others did. She wanted to change that; she hoped to eventually know more than anyone.

Fortunately, Haruka seemed willing. She was looking up at the trees in thought, trying to decide what to start with. She had Bella’s hand in hers and would run her thumb over the knight’s fingers every so often, a habit she’d developed that she would subconsciously do while thinking, which Bella enjoyed far more than she would have expected considering what a simple thing it was. The monk finally nodded, looking to her girlfriend. “Alright… I’ve got a story that will give you a good idea of my life in the monastery. We’ll start with that, because it’s a good basis.”

“Okay,” Bella said with a nod of her own, preparing herself to hear it. She had a good idea that controlling her anger would be important soon.

Haruka looked at the others to make sure they were still out of hearing range before taking a breath and launching into the story.

“Again,” Kazuki said sternly, his voice amplified by the loudspeaker.

In the room below, Haruka did her best not to glare up through the observation window at her father. This was the thirteenth time she’d heard that word in the past several hours and it was getting old. The thin green vest and shorts she wore were drenched in sweat and her hair clung to her skin annoyingly. Various parts of her body were wrapped in bandages, mostly her limbs; every time she took an injury, she would simply wrap it there in the room and keep going.

The room she was in was built specifically for intense training. In theory it was there for everyone, but Haruka had spent hundreds of hours more in this place than anyone else did. She knew the room better than she knew her own face. She knew all the varied arrangements the room could take with the moving columns, boxes and platforms it was filled with. She knew what challenges she would face in it. She knew how to move around the room and take down all opposition. She even knew the exact number of steps from any point in the room to any other point in the room. From that tall black platform to the red column? Seventeen steps walking, six steps in a full-out sprint. From the horizontal blue bar to the mass of red pipes? Twenty-two steps walking, nine steps running, watch out for the pit six steps in. And that was just for this current arrangement; all the platforms and objects in the room could move into different arrangements, but she knew them all.

And still none of that was good enough for her father. Still he had her remain in this room until she collapsed, and he would always give her that disappointed look when she did, as if he expected her to be tireless and unrelenting like some sort of automaton. The room began moving and Haruka tightened the bandages on her blistered hands and feet, leaping up to climb onto a higher platform as it moved past. A whirring sound hit her ears and she went into a roll off the side of the platform, catching it to hang off the side as a turret sent a hail of gunfire across the platform. A blade flashed up from the floor and she tucked herself up and kicked over it, landing in a roll and coming up in a run.

Finally her opponents appeared. Sometimes they would be other monks from the monastery, sometimes they would be captured bandits or hired mercenaries. This time it was bandits; she could tell by the crazed look of the first man she spotted. Kazuki would set them loose in here with a weapon of their choice; she could hear his voice over the loudspeaker telling all in the room that if they killed her they would be set free and given a large sum of gold. The one she was sprinting towards had apparently chosen a cutlass and licked the blade to intimidate her as she ran at him. She’d seen it plenty so she kept running. He grinned and stepped forward, hacking horizontally. In theory it was a good move, it would make it more difficult to dodge in this narrow space between tall platforms.

Haruka ran up the wall to her right, coming up above the sword and sending her foot into the side of his head. He hit the other wall with a grunt and Haruka landed behind him, gripping his hair and pulling him away only to slam his head back into the wall. He crumpled and Haruka immediately ran up the platform, gripping the top and pulling herself up onto it as fire filled the makeshift hallway behind her. An arrow flew at her and she dropped to let it go over, spotting the archer perched on a platform a short distance away. A whirring sound made her eyes narrow and she shoved herself to her feet, beginning to sprint across the tops of the platforms as a turret tracked her, outrunning its line of fire just enough that it trailed a bit behind her.

The archer fired another arrow and she caught it this time, having no time to dodge with the turret’s line of fire almost catching her already. She sprinted past the wide-eyed archer and heard him scream as the bullets tore through him behind her. She then dropped between platforms, causing the turret to barely miss her. A spear-wielding bandit found her there and thrust his weapon into the narrow opening. Haruka knocked the spear point to the side before gripping the shaft and shoving it into the man’s stomach. She created a fulcrum by shifting her leg beneath the center of the spear and then smacked the head down, sending the bottom into the man’s jaw and putting him on the ground. Haruka flipped the spear and impaled him before she began running again.

The final bandit spotted her, but this one had been given a pistol. Haruka spun back into cover as he fired and slipped away, back through between platforms only to climb on top of them. She circled around and ended up coming down onto him from on top of one, landing on his shoulders and bringing him to the ground. She turned the pistol in his hand and fired it into his head before climbing off of him, panting. That was the last one, but she was a fool to think it was over. A long blade jutted out from the wall and slid towards her at a ridiculous speed. It was parallel to the ground and about three feet up. Haruka had no time to dodge; she threw her arms up in a cross block and channeled as much chi as she could after thirteen long training sessions in a row and endless fights.

It was enough to keep her from losing her arms as the blade slammed into her, but it still cut to the bone, sending a spray of blood everywhere. Haruka gave a cry of pain as the blade hit her, and another as it shoved her back and slammed her into the wall. She fought for breath as she was pinned in a corner and her arms were pressed against her chest. The blade continued shoving, trying to cleave her apart. She struggled against it, trying to push back, but now she couldn’t even breathe. She opened her eyes and saw her father watching from the observation area, making no move to stop it; as she expected. The blade cut deeper into her arms and she could now feel the bones weakening at the points where the blade pushed on them, as well as her ribs bending. One of her ribs cracked from the force but she held on, knowing that if she gave up, she was dead.

A whirring sound barely made it through to her oxygen-deprived brain – her father had activated another turret. She could see it lowering in the opposite corner and turning to aim at her. With a burst of strength Haruka slammed her knee up into the wall blade, snapping it off. The part of the broken blade remaining in the wall shot past her, no longer being restrained, tearing a gash in her right side as it did. Haruka ignored the pain, she had to, as she threw away the piece of the blade that had cut into her arms and darted away from the wall as it was filled with bullets. She barely managed to stumble behind a platform, safe from the turret.

“Make it to the exit,” her father’s voice said. Suddenly every turret in the room activated; they were set up so that there was no place to hide but down between the platforms, and those areas were now filled with superheated flame. Haruka’s eyes went wide and she leaped up to catch the edge of a platform, leaving blood on it as her injured side hit against it. She hauled herself up, ignoring the blood trailing from her arms and side as she began sprinting and leaping from platform to platform. Dozens of turrets filled the air with fire, forcing her to flip and kick off and slide her way across the room. Several times she nearly fell into the flames below or felt the air from the hail of bullets, but somehow she finally made it to the exit.

She stumbled out and fell to the floor, shuddering from a lack of oxygen, blood loss and exhaustion. The door to the observation room slid open and Kazuki stepped out, his arms folded behind his back. “I see you’re done for the day. When you’re ready, you can try to do better.” As
he walked past her she clenched her fists but she didn’t make a move; she never made a move. It was pointless
.