The Eye of Chaos (Council of Champions Book One) ✔️

Chapter Sixteen: New City

They rushed past him like a stampede; every one of them screaming like it was their last seconds of life. Which it kind of was. Dirt flung up, and mud mixed in with his bloodied wounds.

Kei crawled backwards, almost tripping over his own appendages. He placed his hands over his face and scrunched his body into a ball. Kei felt the men's feet as they trampled him, enemy staying enemy and ally becoming enemy.

When no more feet kicked him, and no more voices could be heard in the area, Kei slowly looked. The tent was down, all of the pale yellow material ripped to shreds. The cage door hung open and creaked with every breath of wind. Everywhere was death and battle, not just between men, but with women and children as well.

He saw a child no older than six summers, stab a painted man's foot with a knife as the woman he had been raping drove a dagger through his chest. The dead man slumped forward as the woman scooped the frightened child into her arms and fled the scene.

Kei recovered himself and climbed to his feet, keeping his eyes on the battle. With swords in hands, he sprinted away from the cage, cutting men down as he went. The place he had last seen the horse was on the other side of the village, but it would be near impossible to survive the battle, much less reach a planned destination.

His lips curved into a smile, and as he cut down another man, he thought about how it looked to the men he killed.

Kei drove forward and accepted the challenge of lumbering forward to the horse's place. He would reach it, and painted faces wouldn't stop him. That was when his mind fell out of his grasp, and he slipped into a trance. Kei felt the Blockers Durlock had inserted into him with hypnosis fell away instantly.

His eye stung behind the patch and his arm moved by itself, ripping off the patch. The faces of the men he fought turned from a wild frenzy to a state of panic and terror. He could see their actions before they made them, everything like he had been able to before, but this time it didn't come and go. Kei was able to use it at will.

Then he noticed another thing. His eye allowed him to peer into their bodies, finding the bones, organs, arteries, and hundreds of other colored dots within their body. He spotted pressure points, old injuries and their personal weak places.

Man after man was cut down in his wake and it started to scare him. His body killed at its own pleasure, or rather at the eye's pleasure. Within the second he had gained the ability of the eye, it had taken over his body.

Bright light flashed, obscuring his vision until he was on the verge of screaming. Then the light receded into a lady who stood before him. She wore a white dress which glowed luminously, yet held meaning Kei could not hope to understand. He didn't know how he knew that, but he knew that it was true.

The woman's hair was brown and silky, flowing like a river down her back. Her eyes were as kind as her smile warm. She held out her arms as if to pull him into an embrace and he took a step towards her, reaching out his hands.

A black shadow swooped down and covered them all in black, darker than darkness itself. The absolute lack of color.

Kei heard a woman scream, and another woman laughing as he felt himself pulled back into his body.

His body snapped forward, katana and rapier leaping out of his hands. Kei hit the ground hard, dirt stuffing itself into his nose as the mud atop of it pooled into his mouth. He gagged and pushed up, his vision still coming back and his memory fuzzy.

The dream he just had was blurred, the same as the few minutes before. His thoughts landed on the battle currently raging, and he dove for where his swords had fallen. But when he stood, armed, there was no one in sight. Simply a magnificent black horse standing not ten feet from where he stood.