That Nagging Feeling

3

Alex stopped face to face with him, inches apart. His arm was still lifted for the strike, his sword above his head and taking advantage of the high-ceilinged chamber. He sputtered as his blind rage turned to confusion. Her reflexes hadn't diminished over the years. Alex stepped back and planted a foot against the bronze plate covering his chest and stomach as leverage, pulling her sword back slowly so that the steel of the blade scraped loudly against the new holes in his armor. He collapsed to his knees slowly, finally crumpling slightly backwards once his brain registered that the body was dead.

        The remaining two attacked her blindly, throwing down their torches and charging, too enraged to think. Sixty years of training sliced through their mad lunges in moments, the scuffle so short that only one sword clang echoed into the tunnel to be answered by a single shout asking what had happened. Alex ignored the call and wiped off the blade of her jian on one of the corpses' cloaks as she retrieved the torch that was still burning.

        The woman, Adellexia, was peering over the top of the casket that Alex assumed held her eldest daughter – her oldest child. Alex held the torch high as she stood and turned to look over at ... eyes the same blue as Ixor's under hair that was a slightly darker blonde than their youngest son's. As Adellexia stood, Alex could see she was only slightly shorter than Alex – very tall for a woman in these times – and her figure was painfully similar to all the women that Alex shared her bloodlines with. Brasus's chin, Rishima's hands, and Tanaquilla's poise rounded out the familiarity that Alex could see on this young woman. The rest of her features belonged to strangers.

        "Calleous?" the voice that had just called a moment ago yelled again. Adellexia winced out of fear, but stayed standing.

        "Xia?" the voice belonging to the man who'd been punched earlier called out, the tone nearly panicked. Alex silenced the returned yell she could see forming on Adellexia's face with a warning glare.

        "Calleous!" the question turned to defensive alarm.

        "Adellexia!" his voice dropped into panic and the sounds of a bare-fisted scuffle began.

        Alex gestured with her sword for Adellexia to duck back down and then snuffed out the torch in the pot of sand set by the entrance for that purpose. Without the light in the immediate area, Alex could now see the approaching glow of more torches. She pressed her back to the wall beside the entry and hoped her relative was smart enough to follow simple orders. Heavy footsteps accelerated to a run and four men, all dressed just as finely as the newly made corpses, burst into the room. Their swords were drawn as they raced past where Alex was hidden, two men holding torches and two with shields. Adellexia was out of sight.

        "Calleous, brother," one of the men with a shield dropped beside the first corpse Alex had just made. In the torch light, and with the one who was kneeling showing his face in profile to Alex, he and the dead man could have been twins. A glimpse of movement caught Alex's eye, down low and between the caskets. The men didn't notice Adellexia sneaking closer to where Alex was standing.

        Alex waited, motionless, until her great-grand-whatever was well past where the men would easily see her. They were much too absorbed in the three bodies to notice almost anything outside of their small group. Alex scoffed condescendingly at them and they all spun to stare at her.

        "All of you, standing there like fools, staring at the bodies," she scolded them quietly. "And none of you looking for what created the corpses. The Legions have degraded significantly, apparently."

        "Who are you?" the brother demanded, surging up to his feet to square off with her rather than crouching.

        "Callsenius? What happened?" someone further up the tunnel grunted, managing to form words through the effort of still struggling with, likely, the man who was more worried about Adellexia.